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TIGHT BINDING BOOK

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OSMANIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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Nelson's English Series

General Editor — ERNEST BERNBAUM

STRUCTURE

AND
STYLE

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College Composition bourse

Selected and Edited £y

GERDA OKERLUND and

ESTHER VINSON

Illinois State Normal University

New York

\-slioinus W Iclsoii ana G/o»t.s
1936

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PREFACE

IN PREPARING this collection of readings we have had three aims.

First we have tried to make the book directly useful for the cen-
tral purpose of the composition course — the development of the stu-
dent's ability to write. Part I is therefore devoted to essays on the
art of writing. We have allowed skilled craftsmen to set forth their
tested observations, knowing that students pay more respectful heed
to those who practice an art than to those of us who merely preach it.
This section may take the place of the customary textbook on rhetoric.
In Part II will be found illustrations of various kinds of expository
writing. Students who would rather attempt recognized literary
forms than meet classroom-born assignments of "themes" may be
interested in these as models. In Part III essays by various authors
have been brought together for analysis of organization and style.
Most of these selections are of today, written in the vigorous manner
of today, but a few nineteenth century essays have been included for
contrast.

Our second aim has been to reach the student who may have done
little reading, but who nevertheless has intellectual interests, even
though these may not be literary. The illustrative essays in Part
III will acquaint him with some of the cross-currents in modern
thought. The selections range widely in degree of difficulty. Some
are simple and concrete and therefore easily enjoyed ; others demand
more thoughtful study. The instructor will know best which
material will prove usable with a given class.

Finally we have hoped to make these essays the starting point
for independent reading. The notes at the end of the volume
have been designed not only as a Who's Who of authors, but also as
a guide to books for the student whose curiosity may have been
awakened ; for we know only too well that the education he seeks for
himself in answer to his own questions is the most effective kind of
education, even if it interrupts the course in composition. If writ-
ing maketh an exact man, it is nevertheless reading that maketh a
full man.

vi PREFACE

It would be ungracious not to acknowledge our debt to previous
compilers, from whom we have learned much and through whose
books in a few instances we have become acquainted with indispen-
sable essays which we might not have discovered for ourselves. The
selection "Two Types of Mind" by H. G. Wells we first read' in
Expository Writing by Maurice G. Fulton (Macmillan), which
we have used as a textbook for many years. "Our Fear of Excel-
lence" by Margaret Sherwood we came upon in Contemporary
Essays edited by Odell Shepard (Scribner's) ; and the discussion
"Labor and Leisure" by L. P. Jacks we found in Essays of Our
Times compiled by Sharon Brown (Scott, Foresman and Company).

CONTENTS

I. ON THE ART OF WRITING

GENERAL

[t's the Way It's Written .... Henry Juffin Smith ... i
Macaulay's Method of Work . . George Otto Trevelyan ... 12.

THE THOUGHT

Dn Style Arthur Schopenhauer ... 18

Paragraphs Barrett Wendell 2.6

THE READER

The Golden Rule of Writing . . Edwin E. Slosson .... 2.7

Crossing the Interest Dead-Line . H. A. Overftreet 31

The Goon and His Style .... Frederick L. Allen .... 41

WORDS

Growing Pains Margaret Joslyn 45

Mistaken Teachings about Certain

Points in English Charles Allen Lloyd ... 47

Learned Words and Popular Words /. B. Greenough and G. L.

Kittredge 54

American and English Today . . H. L. Mencken 61

STYLE

Cobblestone Style Marjorie True Gregg ... 69

The Rhythm of Prose Paule Franklin Baum . . 73

Divergent Theories of Prose Style Odell Shefard 77

On Style Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch . 81

II. TYPES OF EXPOSITION

THE BIOGRAPHICAL AND THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

Voltaire G. L. Strachey 86

A Crisis in My Mental History . John Stuart Mill .... 98

POPULARIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE

How Animals Spend the Winter . Austin H. Clark 107

Aristotle's Ethics Will Durant 113

viii CONTENTS

THE FAMILIAR ESSAY

The Pup Boy Robert Palfrey Utter ... 117

On the Art of Living with Others Sir Arthur Helps .... no
The Art of Conversation .... Michel de Montaigne . . . 114

THE SATIRICAL ESSAY

Elsie Dinsmore: A Study in Per-
fection Ruth Suckow 131

THE BOOK REVIEW AND THE LITERARY ESSAY

Robin Redbreast (Condemnation) Robert Littell 143

Huckleberry Finn (Praise) . . . John Erskine 147

Regionalism in the Middle West

^Interpretation) Joseph E. Baker 156

THE EDITORIAL

A Westminster Abbey Irony . . The Westminster Gazette . 165

Skill Hunger The New York Times ... 167

Character or Knowledge .... The Saturday Review of Lit-
erature 169

THE INVESTIGATIVE PAPER

The History of Student Residential
Housing W. H. Cowley 171

III. READINGS IN THE ESSAY

THOUGHT AND REASON

"Rationalizing James Harvey Robinson . . 193

The Moral Obligation to Be In-
telligent John Erskine 196

Two Types of Mind H. G. Wells 106

Of the Liberty of Thought and

Discussion John Stuart Mill .... 2.11

EDUCATION

The Religion of Punch Frank Aydelotte 1%%

The Inquiring Mind Zechariah Chafee, Jr. . . . 2.44

Definition of a Liberal Education Thomas H. Huxley ... 2.54
Knowledge Viewed in Relation to

Learning John Henry Newman ... 158

SCIENCE

The Stars Harlow Shapley 2.78

Biology and Our Future World . Julian S. Huxley .... 2.86
Science and Culture John R. Murlin 2.99

CONTENTS ix

RELIGION AND ETHICS

The Syrian Christ Abraham Mitrie Rihbany . 308

The Catholic Faith Sigrid Undset 314

A Protestant View of Religion . Erne ft Fremont Tittle . . . 331

Religion Meets Science Julian S. Huxley .... 338

PROBLEMS OF SOCIETY

The Great Sports Myth .... John R. Tunis 354

The Spotlight: Does Woman De-
serve It? Edna Yott 365

Romantic Government versus Un-

romantic Government .... Maurice C. Hall .... 372.

Our Fear of Excellence Margaret Sherwood .... 384

Six-Cylinder Ethics Stuart Chase 394

The Roots of Honor John Ruskin 407

COSMOPOLITAN ATTITUDES

The Chinese Character Bertrand Russell .... 412.

Pooled Self-Esteem A. Clutton-Brock .... 42.3

WORK AND LEISURE

Labour Thomas Carlyle 436

An Apology for Idlers Robert Louis Stevenson . . 440

Labor and Leisure L. P. Jacks 449

THE ARTS

Greek

Music and the Dance in Ancient

Greece G. Lowes Dickinson ... 459

The Idea of Tragedy Edith Hamilton 465

Renaissance

Leonardo da Vinci Thomas Craven 472.

Modern

The Glory of English Prose . . William John Tucker ... 485

A Novelist's Allegory .... John Galsworthy .... 498

Mr. Arliss Makes a Speech . . George Arliss 508

Painting since Cezanne .... Ralph M. Pearson . ... 513

General

Beauty as a Life Principle . . H. A. Overftreet 52.2.

Notes on Books and Authors 52.9

The Twenty-five Most Influential

Books Published since 1885 . . Edward Weeks, John Dewey,

and Charles A. Beard . 550

STRUCTURE

AND

STYLE

IT'S THE WAY IT'S WRITTEN1

HENRY JUSTIN SMITH

To DO any good writing you have to care about it tremendously.

This is what leading opera singers, painters, golf-players, poker
players do. They care about what they are doing tremendously.
They take no account of the flight of time, of exhaustion, of ob-
stacles to perfection. They are so intent upon the perfect note, the
exquisite line, the long drive, or the fat pot that excellence comes
to them almost without their being aware that they are working
hard. One hates to say it, but I am afraid comparatively few peo-
ple bring to the task of learning to write well the passionate enthu-
siasm, the tremendous energy that are put into things like music or
sport. It is so easy to write passably; so easy to acquire a fluency
that serves. You are surrounded, too, nearly everywhere, by the
spirit of doing things "just so as to get by." If you are not assailed
by it in college you are sure to hear it as soon as you are out of
college. "Get by; do just enough; put over a good bluff; don't kill
yourself." You'll hear it : the great American invitation to medi-
ocrity. The word mediocre means "indifferent, ordinary." There
is also "mediocre," a noun, to which an odd meaning is given in Old
English, that of "a young monk who was excused from performing
part of a monk's duties." Society will readily excuse you from
yours. Society does not especially care whether you rise above
mediocrity. It will let you trot along an easy path, if you choose
one; and very likely, society being itself mediocre, for the most part,
it may pay you well, and even puff you occasionally in its puff-ball
organs of publicity. But to the man who really cares it is a bitter
fate to be ordinary. Better fail ; better fail, drop out, do something
else, than be a slack, dull, or slipshod writer. In the end, even if
you have a good job, you are likely to hate yourself. I have heard

1 From an address by the same title. Copyright by the Chicago Daily
News. Reprinted by permission of Henry Justin Smith.

This advice, though addressed to future journalists, is included here
because it applies equally well to all good writing.

2 HENRY JUSTIN SMITH

of one very popular novelist who has "got by" for years, and now
he hates himself so badly that he's trying to reform; writes every-
thing over six or seven times, trying really to write. It's hope-
less. Mediocrity has him swamped. He didn't care enough to start
with. The same thing goes in the newspaper business. It is full
enough right now of white-blooded, faded, lack-lustre and shoddy
writers. Yet, generally speaking, there is a lot less bluff, a lot less
tolerance of mediocrity in the newspaper business than in most
others. You're in a keen-witted crowd; they label you; they see
through you. They're not going to excuse you; and even if you
don't become a drifter from one newspaper office to another, you'll
drop to the class of men who are allowed to stay along because no-
body else applies, or because they work cheaply. You've got to care
tremendously about newspaper work to learn it; and you've got to
put your back into this business of writing before you can master it.

It follows, then, that you'll have to

Work like the devil.

I can't say it any other way and be emphatic enough. If I said
"Work hard," I would only give you a picture of a plodder going
along at an easy swing and eking out a full eight hours. Working
like the devil means gritting your teeth, going to it with a high
pulse, tying a wet cloth about your head, burning yourself up on the
job. What if you do burn yourself up? It's worth doing for the
sake of excellence, of getting out what's really in you, deep buried
under layers of commonplaceness, literary conventionalities and per-
haps laziness. You don't burn yourself up, though; you get hard-
ened like steel. And your literary style becomes like steel, too; a
sharp and unbreakable weapon in your hand. How do reporters
get so that they can stay up all night at a national convention, and
at five o'clock in the morning be still streaming out terse, pointed
sentences with juice in them? They're not supermen. They've
simply worked as though they were supermen, and now at the crisis
the big strain so much resembles their ordinary experience that they
don't realize it as anything extraordinary. Stroll into a big news-
paper office any time, and you'll see veterans in the service — veterans
all of thirty or thirty-five years old, some of them — working under
high pressure, but without perspiration, or tearing their hair, or
changing the angle of their well-chewed cigars. They are "hard-
boiled." Their absorption, their concentration, at the right mo-
ments has become so trained that they show no trace. But don't

IT'S THE WAY IT'S WRITTEN 3

you think that, some time or other, they had to work furiously on
that training?

We'll assume you grant this rather obvious point. But what are
you to work at? And how go about it? Well, I should say, the
main thing is to

Write; write "your heads off/'

Write all the time. Write whether you feel like it or not. Write
whether you have anything to say or not. During this formative
stage, write books if you please ; or poems, or plays, or essays. Per-
haps not a single piece will be worth offering to a magazine editor.
I am not concerned about telling you how to write things that will
please magazine editors. 1 am only urging you to give those literary
muscles exercise. I am inviting you to get into the "gym" class,
with its literary spring-boards, parallel bars, and running track.
Most writers at the start are mentally muscle-bound, badly co-
ordinated. There are thoughts in their heads, but when the signal
comes to their vocabulary to express these thoughts the result is
stiff and self-conscious. The only cure for this is self-massage with
one's own pen or typewriter. After you have written about half a
million useless words there comes, sometimes suddenly, sometimes
slowly, a mastery not only of words, but of sentences and phrases,
that makes you a different being. It is like learning to swim or to
navigate an aeroplane. You have conquered your element. From
then on your personality, whatever that may be, goes onto paper
unhampered, and thus exhilarated. Nearly all writers have had to
pass this stage. Some reach it more naturally than others, and there
are geniuses who — but never mind geniuses. There are also writers
— some of them celebrated — who never acquire ease, but have to
fight their way through a jungle of words to finish their task.

One thing is pretty certain: If you confine yourself now to the
exercises set for you in class, you will not be doing enough writing ;
and if, after you land that newspaper job, you write only the things
the city editor tells you to, you will still be under-exercised. No-
body is going to make a writer of you. Writers are self-made.

Fifteen years ago I walked through the local room of the Daily
News about half past five in the afternoon. The room was almost
deserted ; but one desk-light burned, and before it a young man not
long past his 'teens sat grinding out sheet after sheet of copy. I
knew this chap was not on the late watch. He should have been
off duty hours before. I looked at the copy. It was not news; it

4 HENRY JUSTIN SMITH

wasn't anything recognizable at a glance. There seemed to be
bushels of it. So, a bit puzzled by this youth pounding away in the
dusk, 1 asked: "What's it all about?" He looked up smilingly, and
answered, "I'm trying to perfect a style."

What I have given you is a glimpse of Paul Scott Mowrer at the
outset of his career. Today he is a Paris correspondent. He was
one of those who sent home the most vivid stories of the great war ;
and whose style, whether he employs it upon "human interest"
topics or upon analysis of diplomatic tangles, is among the most
brilliant, well-poised and flexible media of expression wielded by
any journalist.

I have in mind how another young reporter mastered his element.
I don't dare mention his name, for he lives in Chicago instead of in
Paris. This youngster never got beyond high school. When I first
heard of him his newspaper job was somewhere between that of a
messenger boy and an assistant exchange editor. He cared tre-
mendously about becoming a writer. He used to hover about when
the reporters were talking shop, listening eagerly for any tip they
might let fall about the way they wrote things ; and he used to ask
them how they did it. But none of them could tell him how they
did it, and none of them cared much what became of him. So he
had to invent his own way of becoming a writer. The first thing
was to acquire words; a lot more words. He did this, not only by
reading all the books he could, but by making a serious study of
news stories and editorials. And whenever he came across a new
word he noted it down and looked it up. Not only that, but he
wrote sentences, hundreds of sentences, employing these new words
in all sorts of ways, until the use of them became instinctive. It
was almost like learning a foreign language to him. He grasped
the idea that to learn English — or American, if you prefer that —
he had literally to learn, just as though he had been acquiring Latin
or French. This process went on until suddenly the city editor
discovered that he had a cub who could "throw words around like
everything" ; and the city editor used to let him write little stories,
which often astonished the copy desk. Once, he tells me, he was
making a special study of the word "jettison," and by way of
brightening up a little story of a lake storm he wrote that the pas-
sengers "jettisoned their lunch." But the copy-desk was quick to
tell him when his mastery of words led him astray ; and he listened
good-naturedly, and put what he learned in his note-book. As he

IT'S THE WAY IT'S WRITTEN 5

progressed, he invented new exercises. He used to take long stories
that he found in the paper and rewrite them in condensed form.
And he used to sit composing head-lines, although he had no idea
of becoming a copy reader. But he knew that the squeezing of a
twelve-word idea into sixteen letters was excellent practice in writ-
ing "short and snappy." Still another feature of his education was
the writing of verse. He did not try to get anyone to print his
verse: he simply used the practice to make his style firmer, more
pointed, and more sparing of heavy phrases. And at last he had a
style he could simply play with. He could sit down at the machine
with a rush story in hand and stream off correct and vigorous writ-
ing faster than anybody in the office; or, if ordered to write a
"freak story," he had the words to do it with. And thus, from
being a cub, he advanced to be a reliable cog, and thence to be a
"star feature man," which he still is.

I like to think of that youngster, toiling away at his sample sen-
tences, going through his literary calisthenics, long after the rest of
the staff had gone home, and there was nobody left but janitors
emptying waste-baskets. I cannot help comparing him with other
newspaper men I have known, who after twenty years' work cannot
put together three sentences correctly; and with still others who
say, "I can get the goods, but Lord knows I'm no writer." These
so-called go-getters are great, but there is nothing to prevent their
being twice as great — except that they won't write, and conse-
quently can't write.

At this point let me drop a hint which I suspect the handbooks
have overlooked. It is this:

Hang around writers.

I might have put it more elegantly by saying "associate with
writers." But there's a shade of difference in meaning; it's harder
to associate with people than to hang around them. I am not sug-
gesting that you pursue writers down the street, or chase them to
their homes to read manuscripts to them ; nor do I propose that you
force your way into an august body like the Society of Midland
Authors. Just be crafty, and see if there isn't some writer or group
of them that you can hang around. Try to find excuses for loiter-
ing near or among newspaper men of the better sort while they are
talking shop. Haven't you some friend on a paper who will let you
sit on a desk with him after the last edition is made up ? Whatever
place you can find where you can listen to writing chatter, make

6 HENRY JUSTIN SMITH

that one of your regular stops. This chatter is rich in suggestion
for you. It is better than formal advice; the formal things you
read or hear don't stick in your mind half as much as the chance re-
marks made by fellows "just talking." It is when they gabble
among themselves that they reveal their hopes, their likes, their
skepticisms. And they do it then in words of one syllable. It's
what you soak in from being in the right atmosphere that counts.
If there were a newspaper club where reporters like to go I should
favor admitting students of schools of journalism. As it is, there
are only cigar store talk-fests, and so-called post-mortems in the
offices or elsewhere. You'll hear wild and heretical comments on
books and on editors: you'll hear strange judgments pronounced
upon first page stories. But you needn't believe all your hear. The
point is that you listen.

Now I suppose it is necessary to say something about reading. I
am in danger here of repeating things you have already heard; or
that have been better expressed elsewhere. But I will merely em-
phasize one or two things.

I want to emphasize volume and variousness of reading. There
really isn't any conspicuous stylist who can't give you something.
. . . Aside from classical reading, whom should you read ? Every-
body; everybody who kindles you, not so much by his plots as by
his individuality. Everybody who gives you the feeling: "I've
struck something new ; this fellow makes me see things ; this man is
strong medicine." The objective, of course, is to enrich you, not
merely with words, but with actual essence from those highly de-
veloped minds. If you read a book with sympathy you take some-
thing from it that makes you more complex and more potent. . . .

I urge you not only to absorb and analyze as many masterful
writers as you can, but to study discriminatingly the work of those
anonymous reporters whose work comes before you every morning
and evening.

Let me read to you a short piece published in the Chicago news-
papers awhile ago:

(On board vessel on the Volga river) —
There are no boating songs on the Volga this year.
The balalaika (the Russian guitar-like instrument) is not
ringing from the few boats which are floating along this once
mighty river. Its shallow waters are affording a poor avenue

IT'S THE WAY IT'S WRITTEN 7

of escape from the parched grain fields which mock the
peasants to whom they formerly yielded abundant bread.

Pawnbrokers have long since received the balalaikas in ex-
change for rubles necessary to buy food for the starving
families.

Samovars no longer sing merrily on the hearths of the
peasant cottages. They, too, have been exchanged for bread.

Together with the family ikons and the bright brass candle-
sticks that once adorned every mantelpiece, they are exhibited
in the second-hand shops of villages and cities while their
former owners are huddled together in miserable camps along
railways and rivers waiting for somebody to take them to a
land of food.

Priests who are as miserable as their parishioners have set
up altars in the wayside camps and are burying the dead and
praying for the half-dead who kneel submissively before the
cross and intone their petitions to heaven at sunrise and
sunset.

Fortunately, the sun does not fail them often. The autumn
has been dry so far and the glorious Indian summer has made
their lot more tolerable than it will be when autumn rains
add to the misery of the unsheltered, poorly clothed hun-
dreds of thousands.

A few families are still floating down the river in frail
rowboats stacked high with children and battered household
utensils.

The conditions are about as bad down the Volga as they
are here, but the more restless refugees say they feel better
if they keep moving. Here and there a family still has a
horse or an ox which has managed to live on parched stubble,
and is dragging along behind the rickety wagon until the time
when it shall drop dead.

Cemeteries surrounding the churches which line the entire
course of the Volga are crowded with refugees.

The drought and the grasshoppers have robbed them of
bread. Their prayers have been of little avail. Their priests
have not been able to get them food.

Yet they have not utterly lost hope and still devoutly cross
themselves and feebly voice petitions as they slowly merge into
the dust to which they are so soon to return.

Who wrote that? Oh, nobody in particular! Only an Associ-
ated Press correspondent. A faraway, lonely soul floating down
the Volga river on a battered steamer. He wrote it as the concen-

8 HENRY JUSTIN SMITH

trated image of what he had seen. He wrote it without thought of
rhetoric, I think; without any vain picture of an audience. There
had happened simply this: He had witnessed the tragedy of a na-
tion; his mind had become filled with imperishable visions. And,
like a faithful reporter, he wrote down, as simply as one of the
chroniclers of olden time, a sketch of what he had seen. And here
is this sketch, published for millions of readers, an example of fine
newspaper art. Day after day, if you search the papers with keen
eye, you can discover pieces of writing as good as this or better ; un-
signed, sometimes humbly placed. Make the search for them a
habit.

Suppose we analyze a bit the qualities of this story I have just
read.

For one thing, I find only about twenty adjectives or words used
as adjectives in the total of practically 400 words. Think how
abstemious this man was. And consider the art necessary to produce
vivid pictures without the handy little adjective. One of the max-
ims of Carl Sandburg is, "think twice before you use an adjective."

Another thing: Notice the small percentage of polysyllabic words
and words of Latin origin. This man employs "Anglo-Saxon," the
words of our common speech.

His sentences are short; or if he uses a long one here and there
he sandwiches it between a couple of short ones.

While painting a broad picture, without a single name of a person
or town in it, he succeeds in selecting details so homely, typical and
concrete that you feel as though you had actually witnessed a definite
place and seen definite things happen. Journalism extraordinary!
The work of no jazz journalist.

To show how easily this piece of newspaper writing might have
been spoiled I will do a part of it over for you in the style of a
jazz journalist:

"On the broad, gleaming bosom of the stupendous Volga as I
learn and hereby cable exclusively after unheard-of privations there
are no boating songs ringing out as of yore. The gleaming samovars
never again will utter their joyous ditties from the broad hearths of
the huddled cottages of the once wealthy and prosperous peasants.
Once, many months ago, prior to the advance of the grim reaper,
these samovars, together with the magnificent family ikons and the
gorgeous brass candlesticks, adorned the mantelpieces of all homes
in the fashionable residence districts of this the second largest town

IT'S THE WAY IT'S WRITTEN 9

of the province of Samara. Now, come to a lowly estate, they are
on exhibition in the fly-specked windows of the second-hand stores
of the villages and cities, all of which I have recently visited in my
capacity of special commissioner. The former owners, men once
prominent millionaires, women once flaunting their beauty in a
hundred salons, and children once ruddy-cheeked, swarm like flies
in miserable camps along the interminable railways and the vast
rivers waiting in terror and desperation for the arrival of that succor
which shall mean to them transportation to a land of peace and
plenty."

And so forth.

The lesson that emerges from all of this is that of self-control.
First enrich yourselves, then simplify yourselves. Supposing you
have increased your vocabulary by 200 per cent, and can hurl phrases
by handfuls, and can beat the entrails out of a typewriter in ten
minutes, the next thing is to master your own brilliancy. This is
the greatest mastery of all. A great many things that pass for
brilliancy are in reality nothing but verbose slop. One seems to see
the rabid editor standing over his slave and roaring, "Jazz it up,
you goof! Get pep into it. Make 'er smoke." And one sees the
slave, with eyes starting from his head, hurling pompous adjectives
and threadbare descriptive expressions, and thinking to himself, "By
Golly, I'll kill 'em dead with this story" ; and one sees, perhaps, the
paper issuing with smears of large-faced type, screaming its deadly
commonplaces to the world in the guise of brilliant writing, and
the thousands of poor gulls who never read anything better gulping
all this in as they hang to straps in the elevated.

To belong to the distinguished company of real newspaper writ-
ers you must rein in. A great tragedy like that of Russia needs no
artificial coloring. A story of a lost child or a tramp dying in the
county hospital must be simply told. The bigger the story, the
more it reaches into the complexities and mysteries of the human
soul, the less it needs embroidery.

But I am getting too far into the province of your class-room
instructors, and I am robbing some future editors of their privilege
of telling cubs when and when not to be funny, and when and when
not to be flowery. Let me recapitulate in brief the more or less
practical advice I have given, and I shall have finished.

To become a good newspaper writer, then,

First: Care about it tremendously. Get on fire with the idea

io HENRY JUSTIN SMITH

that writing is fascinating, thrilling, heart-breaking, better than
anything in the world.

Second: Work like the devil. Take hold of this man's-size job,
and sweat at it. Forget what you are paid; forget whether you're
on daylight saving or central time. Hustle.

Third: Write! Write all the time, any kind of stuff. Never
give the pen or typewriter a rest. Fill the campus wastepaper cans
with your manuscripts. Prepare for the thousands of words you
are to write by writing hundreds of thousands. Later, try to get on
the rewrite desk of a paper, with some terrible go-getter shooting
names and addresses at you, and the edition just going to press.

Fourth : Hang around the fellow who knows how to write.

Fifth : Read everything that stimulates you. Let the cheap men
alone, and don't bank too much on the best-sellers. Don't omit to
scan the newspapers for the work of those comrades of yours who
will never be best-sellers on their own account, but who do help
journalism to be the mighty influence that it is.

And after having soaked in all you can of the power and joy
available in this day of immense presses, grasp at the simplicity,
dignity, and beautiful reticence that the ablest men of all have
attained.

One more thing: It's a long road, and a tough one. Once on
somebody's pay-roll you will wonder many times why they let you
belong. You will encounter city editors who view your literary
children with a cynical eye. You will be at the mercy of copy
readers who will blot out your darling phrase, and slay your lovely
lead because it hasn't the initial news fact in it. You will go out
on a big story with an older man, and when you come into the office
he will be told to write the story, and he won't do it as well as you
could have done. And you will sit sometimes brooding in the ad-
jacent cigar store wishing that by Gosh you had gone into Uncle
Bill's leather business instead of into this deadly grind where you
haven't got a chance. But newspaper offices aren't all alike, and
every morning sun brings a new day and a fresh page in the assign-
ment book ; and if your story is butchered in the noon edition, why,
maybe it'll appear in full in the five o'clock.

And just as sure as you keep at it long enough, some day a boy
will bring a proof into the local room — a proof of your story — with
"fine work" written on the margin in the Old Man's hand. And
when you go home that night you'll hear one business man say to

IT'S THE WAY IT'S WRITTEN n

the other on the L: "Say, did you read this story in the Bazoo? It
ain't such important news perhaps, but it kind o' gets me. It's the
way it's written"

And then you'll feel that after all it was worth while to study
journalism.

MACAULAYfS METHOD OF WORK1

GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN

THE main secret of Macaulay's success lay in this, that to
extraordinary fluency and facility he united patient, minute, and
persistent diligence. He well knew, as Chaucer knew before him,
that

There is na workeman
That can bothe worken wel and hastilie.
This must be done at leisure parfaitlie.

If his method of composition ever comes into fashion, books proba-
bly will be better, and undoubtedly will be shorter. As soon as he
had got into his head all the information relating to any particular
episode in his History (such, for instance, as Argyll's expedition to
Scotland, or the attainder of Sir John Fenwick, or the calling in
of the clipped coinage), he would sit down and write off the whole
story at a headlong pace ; sketching in the outlines under the genial
and audacious impulse of a first conception; and securing in black
and white each idea, and epithet, and turn of phrase, as it flowed
straight from his busy brain to his rapid fingers. His manuscript,
at this stage, to the eyes of any one but himself, appeared to consist
of column after column of dashes and flourishes, in which a straight
line, with a half-formed letter at each end and another in the
middle, did duty for a word. It was from amidst a chaos of such
hieroglyphics that Lady Trevelyan, after her brother's death, de-
ciphered that account of the last days of William which fitly closes
the History?

As soon as Macaulay had finished his rough draft, he began to
fill it in at the rate of six sides of foolscap every morning; written

1From Life and Letters of Macaulay, 1878, Harper and Brothers and
Longmans, Green and Company. Reprinted by permission of the pub-
lishers.

2 Lord Carlisle relates how Mr. Prescott, as a brother historian, was much
interested by the sight of these manuscript sheets, "in which words are as
much abbreviated as *cle' for 'castle.' "

MACAULAY'S METHOD OF WORK 13

in so large a hand, and with such a multitude of erasures,8 that
the whole six pages were, on an average, compressed into two pages
of print. This portion he called his "task," and he was never quite
easy unless he completed it daily. More he seldom sought to ac-
complish; for he had learned by long experience that this was as
much as he could do at his best; and, except when at his best, he
never would work at all. "I had no heart to write," he says in
his journal of March 6th, 1851. "I am too self-indulgent in this
matter, it may be ; and yet I attribute much of the success which I
have had to my habit of writing only when I am in the humor,
and of stopping as soon as the thoughts and words cease to flow
fast. There are, therefore, few lees in my wine. It is all the
cream of the bottle."4

Macaulay never allowed a sentence to pass muster until it was
as good as he could make it. He thought little of recasting a chap-
ter in order to obtain a more lucid arrangement, and nothing what-
ever of reconstructing a paragraph for the sake of one happy stroke
or apt illustration. Whatever the worth of his labor, at any rate it
was a labor of love.

Antonio Stradivari has an eye

That winces at false work, and loves the true.

Leonardo da Vinci would walk the whole length of Milan that he

8 Mr. Woodrow, in the preface to his collection of the Indian Education
minutes, says: "Scarcely five consecutive lines in any of Macaulay's minutes
will be found unmarked by blots or correction."

* In small things as well as in great, Macaulay held that what was worth
doing at all was worth doing well. He had promised to compose an epitaph
for his uncle, Mr. Babington. In June, 1851, he writes: "My delay has
not arisen from any want of respect or tenderness for my uncle's memory.
I loved and honored him most sincerely. But the truth is, that I have
not been able to satisfy myself. People who are not accustomed to this
sort of literary exercise often imagine that a man can do it as he can work
a sum in rule of three, or answer an invitation to dinner. But these short
compositions, in which every word ought to tell strongly, and in which
there ought to be at once some point and much feeling are not to be pro-
duced by mere labor. There must be concurrence of luck with industry.
It is natural that those who have not considered the matter should think
that a man, who has sometimes written ten or twelve effective pages
in a day, must certainly be able to write five lines in less than a year. But
it is not so; and if you think over the really good epitaphs which you
have read, and consider how small a proportion they bear to the thou-
sands that have been written by clever men, you will own that I am right."

I4 GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN

might alter a single tint in his picture of the Last Supper. Na-
poleon kept the returns of his army under his pillow at night, to
refer to in case he was sleepless ; and would set himself problems at
the opera while the overture was playing : "I have ten thousand men
at Strasbourg; fifteen thousand at Magdeburg; twenty thousand at
Wurtzburg. By what stages must they march so as to arrive at
Ratisbon on three successive days?" What his violins were to
Stradivarius, and his fresco to Leonardo, and his campaigns to
Napoleon, that was his History to Macaulay. How fully it occu-
pied his thoughts did not appear in his conversation ; for he steadily
and successfully resisted any inclination to that most subtle form of
selfishness which often renders the period of literary creation one
long penance to all the members of an author's family. But none
the less his book was always in his mind; and seldom, indeed, did
he pass a day, or turn over a volume, without lighting upon a sug-
gestion which could be turned to useful purpose. In May, 1851,
he writes: "I went to the Exhibition and lounged there during
some hours. I never knew a sight which extorted from all ages,
classes, and nations such unanimous and genuine admiration. I felt
a glow of eloquence, or something like it, come on me from the
mere effect of the place, and I thought of some touches which will
greatly improve my Steinkirk." It is curious to trace whence was
derived the fire which sparkles through every line of that terse and
animated narrative, which has preserved from unmerited oblivion
the story of a defeat more glorious to the British arms than not a
few of our victories.

Macaulay deserved the compliment which Cecil paid to Sir
Walter Raleigh as the supreme of commendations: "I know that
he can labor terribly." One example will serve for many, in order
to attest the pains which were ungrudgingly bestowed upon every
section of the History:

March 2 ist — To-morrow I must begin upon a difficult and
painful subject, Glencoe.

March 23rd — I looked at some books about Glencoe. Then to
the Athenaeum and examined the Scotch Acts of Parliament on the
same subject. Walked a good way, meditating. I see my line.
Home, and wrote a little, but thought and prepared more.

March 2 5th — Wrote a little. Mr. Lovell Reeve, editor of the
Literary Gazette, called, and offered to defend me about Penn. I

MACAULAY'S METHOD OF WORK 15

gave him some memoranda. Then to Glencoe again, and worked
all day with energy, pleasure, and, I think, success.

March 26th — Wrote much. I have seldom worked to better pur-
pose than on these three days.

March 27th — After breakfast I wrote a little, and then walked
through April weather to Westbourne Terrace, and saw my dear
little nieces. Home, and wrote more. I am getting on fast with
this most horrible story. It is even worse than I thought. The
Master of Stair is a perfect lago.

March 28th — I went to the Museum and made some extracts
about Glencoe.

On the 2Qth, 3Oth, and 3 1st of March, and the ist and 2nd of
April, there is nothing relating to the History except the daily
entry, "Wrote."

April ^rd — Wrote. This Glencoe business is infernal.

April 4th — Wrote; walked round by London Bridge, and wrote
again. To-day I finished the massacre. The episode will, I hope,
be interesting.

April 6th — Wrote to good purpose.

April jth — Wrote and corrected. The account of the massacre
is now, I think, finished.

April 8th — I went to the Museum and turned over the Gazette
de Paris, and the Dutch dispatches of 1692. I learned much from
the errors of the French Gazette and from the profound silence of
the Dutch ministers on the subject of Glencoe. Home, and wrote.

April gth — A rainy and disagreeable day. I read a Life of
Romney, which I picked up uncut in Chancery Lane yesterday: a
quarto. That there should be two showy quarto lives of a man
who did not deserve a duodecimo ! Wrote hard, rewriting Glencoe.

April loth — Finished Don Carlos. I have been long about it;
but twenty pages a day in bed while I am waiting for the news-
paper will serve to keep up my German. A fine play, with all its
faults. Schiller's good and evil genius struggled in it; as Shake-
speare's good and evil genius, to compare greater things with
smaller, struggled in Romeo and Juliet. Carlos is half by the
author of The Robbers and half by the author of Wallenstein ; as
Romeo and Juliet is half by the author of Love's Labour Lost and
half by the author of Othello. After Romeo and Juliet, Shake-
speare never went back, nor Schiller after Carlos. Wrote all the

16 GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN

morning, and then to Westbourne Terrace. I chatted, played chess,
and dined there.

April nth — Wrote all the morning. Ellis came to dinner; I
read him Glencoe. He did not seem to like it much, which vexed
me, though I am not partial to it. It is a good thing to find
sincerity.

That author must have had a strong head and no very exag-
gerated self-esteem, who, while fresh from a literary success which
had probably never been equaled, and certainly never surpassed — at
a time when the book-sellers were waiting with almost feverish
eagerness for any thing that he chose to give them — spent nineteen
working days over thirty octavo pages, and ended by humbly
acknowledging that the result was not to his mind.

When at length, after repeated revisions, Macaulay had satisfied
himself that his writing was as good as he could make it, he would
submit it to the severest of all tests, that of being read aloud to
others. Though he never ventured on this experiment in the pres-
ence of any except his own family and his friend Mr. Ellis, it may
well be believed that, even within that restricted circle, he had no
difficulty in finding hearers. "I read," he says in December, 1849,
"a portion of my History to Hannah and Trevelyan with great
effect. Hannah cried, and Trevelyan kept awake. I think what I
have done as good as any part of the former volumes : and so thinks
Ellis."

Whenever one of his books was passing through the press,
Macaulay extended his indefatigable industry and his scrupulous
precision to the minutest mechanical drudgery of the literary calling.
There was no end to the trouble that he devoted to matters which
most authors are only too glad to leave to the care and experience
of their publisher. He could not rest until the lines were level to
a hair's breadth, and the punctuation correct to a comma; until
every paragraph concluded with a telling sentence, and every sen-
tence flowed like running water.5 I remember the pleasure with
which he showed us a communication from one of the readers in
Mr. Spottiswoode's office, who respectfully informed him that there
was one expression, and one only, throughout the two volumes of

5 Macaulay writes to Mr. Longman about the edition of 1858: "I have no
more corrections to make at present. I am inclined to hope that the book
will be as nearly faultless, as to typographical execution, as any work of
equal extent that is to be found in the world."

MACAULAY'S METHOD OF WORK 17

which he did not catch the meaning at a glance. And it must be
remembered that Macaulay's punctilious attention to details was
prompted by an honest wish to increase the enjoyment, and smooth
the difficulties, of those who did him the honor to buy his books.
His was not the accuracy of those who judge it necessary to keep
up a distinction in small matters between the learned and the un-
learned. As little of a purist as it is possible for a scholar to be,
his distaste for Mr. Grote's exalted standard of orthography inter-
fered sadly with his admiration for the judgment, the power, and
the knowledge of that truly great historian. He never could
reconcile himself to seeing the friends of his boyhood figure as
Kleon, and Alkibiades, and Poseidon, and Odysseus; and I tremble
to think of the outburst of indignation with which, if he had lived
to open some of the more recent editions of the Latin poets, he
would have lighted upon the "Dialogue with Lydia," or the "Ode
to Lyce," printed with a small letter at the head of each familiar
line.

ON STYLE1

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

IT WOULD generally serve writers in good stead if they would see
that, while a man should, if possible, think like a great genius, he
should talk the same language as every one else. Authors should
use common words to say uncommon things. But they do just the
opposite. We find them trying to wrap up trivial ideas in grand
words, and to clothe their very ordinary thoughts in the most ex-
traordinary phrases, the most far-fetched, unnatural, and out-of-the-
way expressions. Their sentences perpetually stalk about on stilts.
They take so much pleasure in bombast, and write in such a
high-flown, bloated, affected, hyperbolical and acrobatic style that
their prototype is Ancient Pistol, whom his friend Falstaff once im-
patiently told to say what he had to say, "like a man of this world."2

There is no expression in any other language exactly answering
to the French sale ernpese; but the thing itself exists all the more
often. When associated with affectation, it is in literature what
assumption of dignity, grand airs and primness are in society; and
equally intolerable. Dullness of mind is fond of donning this dress;
just as in ordinary life it is stupid people who like being demure
and formal.

An author who writes in the prim style resembles a man who
dresses himself up in order to avoid being confounded or put on
the same level with the mob — a risk never run by the gentleman,
even in his worst clothes. The plebeian may be known by a certain
showiness of attire, and a wish to have everything spick and span;
and in the same way, the commonplace person is betrayed by his style.

Nevertheless, an author follows a false aim if he tries to write ex-
actly as he speaks. There is no style of writing but should have a
certain trace of kinship with the epigraphic or monumental style,
which is, indeed, the ancestor of all styles. For an author to write
as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as

1From Parerga (1851). Translated by T. Bailey Saunders.
*"King Henry IV," Part II, Act v. Sc. 3.

ON STYLE 19

he writes ; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the
same time makes him hardly intelligible.

An obscure and vague manner of expression is always and every-
where a very bad sign. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it
comes from vagueness of thought; and this again almost always
means that there is something radically wrong and incongruous about
the thought itself — in a word, that it is incorrect. When a right
thought springs up in the mind, it strives after expression and is not
long in reaching it; for clear thought easily finds words to fit it. If
a man is capable of thinking anything at all, he is also always able
to express it in clear, intelligible, and unambiguous terms. Those
writers who construct difficult, obscure, involved, and equivocal
sentences, most certainly do not know aright what it is that they
want to say : they have only a dull consciousness of it, which is still
in the stage of struggle to shape itself as thought. Often, indeed,
their desire is to conceal from themselves and others that they really
have nothing at all to say. They wish to appear to know what they
do not know, to think what they do not think, to say what they do
not say. If a man has some real communication to make, which
will he choose — an indistinct or a clear way of expressing himself?
Even Quint ilian remarks that things which are said by a highly
educated man are often easier to understand and much clearer : and
that the less educated a man is, the more obscurely he will write —
"plerumque accidit ut faciliora sint ad intelligendum et lucidiora
multo qu& a doctissimo quoque dicuntur. . . . Erit ergo etiam
obscurior quo quisque deterior"

An author should avoid enigmatical phrases: he should know
whether he wants to say a thing or does not want to say it. It is this
indecision of style that makes so many writers insipid. The only
case that offers an exception to this rule arises when it is necessary to
make a remark that is in some way improper.

As exaggeration generally produces an effect the opposite of that
aimed at, so words, it is true, serve to make thought intelligible —
but only up to a certain point. If words are heaped up beyond it, the
thought becomes more and more obscure again. To find where the
point lies is the problem of style, and the business of the critical
faculty; for a word too much always defeats its purpose. This is
what Voltaire means when he says that "the adjective is the enemy of
the substantive." But, as we have seen, many people try to conceal
their poverty of thought under a flood of verbiage.

20 ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

Accordingly, let all redundancy be avoided, all stringing together
of remarks which have no meaning and are not worth perusal. A
writer must make a sparing use of the reader's time, patience and
attention ; so as to lead him to believe that his author writes what is
worth careful study, and will reward the time spent upon it. It is
always better to omit something good than to add that which is not
worth saying at all. This is the right application of Hesiod's maxim,
TrAe'oi/ fjfucrv 7rcu>Tos3 — the half is more than the whole. Le secret
pour etre ennuyeux, c'est de tout dire. Therefore, if possible, the
quintessence only! mere leading thoughts! nothing that the reader
would think for himself. To use many words to communicate few
thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity. To
gather much thought into few words stamps the man of genius.

Truth is most beautiful undraped; and the impression it makes
is deep in proportion as its expression has been simple. This is so,
partly because it then takes unobstructed possession of the hearer's
whole soul, and leaves him no by-thought to distract him; partly,
also, because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or cheated
by the arts of rhetoric, but that all the effect of what is said comes
from the thing itself. For instance, what declamation on the vanity
of human existence could ever be more telling than the words of
Job? — "Man that is borne of a woman hath but a short time to
live and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a
flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one
stay."

For the same reason Goethe's naive poetry is incomparably greater
than Schiller's rhetoric. It is this, again, that makes many popular
songs so affecting. As in architecture an excess of decoration is to
be avoided, so in the art of literature a writer must guard against
all rhetorical finery, all useless amplification, and all superfluity of
expression in general: in a word, he must strive after chastity of
style. Every word that can be spared is hurtful if it remains. The
law of simplicity and naivete holds good of all fine art; for it is
quite possible to be at once simple and sublime.

True brevity of expression consists in everywhere saying only
what is worth saying, and in avoiding tedious detail about things
which every one can supply for himself. This involves correct dis-
crimination between what is necessary and what is superfluous. A

*" Works and Days/' 40.

ON STYLE 21

writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear, to say
nothing of being grammatical. It shows lamentable want of judg-
ment to weaken the expression of a thought or to stunt the meaning
of a period for the sake of using a few words less. But this is the
precise endeavor of that false brevity nowadays so much in vogue,
which proceeds by leaving out useful words and even by sacrificing
grammar and logic. It is not only that such writers spare a word by
making a single verb or adjective do duty for several different periods,
so that the reader, as it were, has to grope his way through them
in the dark ; they also practice, in many other respects, an unseemly
economy of speech, in the effort to effect what they foolishly take to
be brevity of expression and conciseness of style. By omitting some-
thing that might have thrown a light over the whole sentence, they
turn it into a conundrum, which the reader tries to solve by going
over it again and again.4

It is wealth and weight of thought, and nothing else, that gives
brevity to style, and makes it concise and pregnant. If a writer's
ideas are important, luminous, and generally worth communicating,
they will necessarily furnish matter and substance enough to fill out
the periods which give them expression, and make these in all their
parts both grammatically and verbally complete ; and so much will
this be the case that no one will ever find them hollow, empty or
feeble. The diction will everywhere be brief and pregnant, and
allow the thought to find intelligible and easy expression, and even
unfold and move about with grace.

Therefore instead of contracting his words and forms of speech,
let a writer enlarge his thoughts. If a man has been thinned by
illness and finds his clothes too big, it is not by cutting them down,
but by recovering his usual bodily condition, that he ought to make
them fit him again.

Let me here mention an error of style very prevalent nowadays,
and, in the degraded state of literature and the neglect of ancient

* Translator's Note. — In the original, Schopenhauer here enters upon a
lengthy examination of certain common errors in the writing and speaking
of German. His remarks are addressed to his own countrymen, and would
lose all point, even if they were intelligible, in an English translation. But
for those who practice their German by conversing or corresponding with
Germans, let me recommend what he there says as a useful corrective to a
slipshod style, such as can easily be contracted if it is assumed that the
natives of a country always know their own language perfectly.

22 ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

languages, always on the increase; I mean subjectivity. A writer
commits this error when he thinks it enough if he himself knows
what he means and wants to say, and takes no thought for the reader,
who is left to get at the bottom of it as best he can. This is as though
the author were holding a monologue, whereas it ought to be a dia-
logue; and a dialogue, too, in which he must express himself all
the more clearly inasmuch as he cannot hear the questions of his
interlocutor.

Style should for this very reason never be subjective, but objec-
tive ; and it will not be objective unless the words are so set down
that they directly force the reader to think precisely the same thing
as the author thought when he wrote them. Nor will this result be
obtained unless the author has always been careful to remember that
thought so far follows the law of gravity that it travels from head to
paper much more easily than from paper to head; so that he must
assist the latter passage by every means in his power. If he does
this, a writer's word will have a purely objective effect, like that
of a finished picture in oils; while the subjective style is not much
more certain in its working than spots on the wall, which look like
figures only to one whose fantasy has been accidentally aroused by
them ; other people see nothing but spots and blurs. The difference
in question applies to literary method as a whole; but it is often
established also in particular instances. For example, in a recently
published work I found the following sentence : "I have not written
in order to increase the number of existing books." This means just
the opposite of what the writer wanted to say, and is nonsense as well.

He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very outset
that he does not attach much importance to his own thoughts. For
it is only where a man is convinced of the truth and importance
of his thoughts, that he feels the enthusiasm necessary for an un-
tiring and assiduous effort to find the clearest, finest, and strongest
expression for them, just as for sacred relics or priceless works of
art there are provided silvern or golden receptacles. It was this
feeling that led ancient authors, whose thoughts, expressed in their
own words, have lived thousands of years, and therefore bear the
honored title of classics, always to write with care. Plato, indeed,
is said to have written the introduction to his "Republic" seven
times over in different ways.5

6 Translator's Note. — It is a fact worth mentioning that the first twelve
words of the "Republic" are placed in the exact order which would be
natural in English.

ON STYLE 23

As neglect of dress betrays want of respect for the company a
man meets, so a hasty, careless, bad style shows an outrageous lack
of regard for the reader, who then rightly punishes it by refusing
to read the book. It is especially amusing to see reviewers criti-
cising the works of others in their own most careless style — the
style of a hireling. It is as though a judge were to come into
court in dressing-gown and slippers! If I see a man badly and
dirtily dressed, I feel some hesitation, at first, in entering into
conversation with him: and when, on taking up a book, I am
struck at once by the negligence of its style, I put it away.

Good writing should be governed by the rule that a man can
think only one thing clearly at a time ; and therefore, that he should
not be expected to think two or even more things in one and the
same moment. But this is what is done when a writer breaks up
his principal sentence into little pieces, for the purpose of pushing
into the gaps thus made two or three other thoughts by way of
parenthesis; thereby unnecessarily and wantonly confusing the
reader. And here it is again my own countrymen who are chiefly
in fault. That German lends itself to this way of writing, makes
the thing possible, but does not justify it. No prose reads more
easily or pleasantly than French, because, as a rule, it is free from
the error in question. The Frenchman strings his thoughts to-
gether, as far as he can, in the most logical and natural order, and
so lays them before his reader one after the other for convenient
deliberation, so that every one of them may receive undivided at-
tention. The German, on the other hand, weaves them together
into a sentence which he twists and crosses, and crosses and twists
again ; because he wants to say six things all at once instead of
advancing them one by one. His aim should be to attract and
hold the reader's attention; but, above and beyond neglect of this
aim, he demands from the reader that he shall set the above men-
tioned rule at defiance, and think three or four different thoughts
at one and the same time; or since that is impossible, that his
thoughts shall succeed each other as quickly as the vibrations of a
cord. In this way an author lays the foundation of his style em-
pese, which is then carried to perfection by the use of high-flown,
pompous expressions to communicate the simplest things, and other
artifices of the same kind.

In those long sentences rich in involved parentheses, like a box
of boxes one within another, and padded out like roast geese stuffed
with apples, it is really the memory that is chiefly taxed; while it

24 ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

is the understanding and the judgment which should be called into
play, instead of having their activity thereby actually hindered and
weakened.0 This kind of sentence furnishes the reader with mere
half-phrases, which he is then called upon to collect carefully and
store up in his memory, as though they were the pieces of a torn
letter, afterward to be completed and made sense of by the other
halves to which they respectively belong. He is expected to go on
reading for a little without exercising any thought, nay, exerting
only his memory, in the hope that, when he comes to the end of
the sentence, he may see its meaning and so receive something to
think about; and he is thus given a great deal to learn by heart
before obtaining anything to understand. This is manifestly wrong
and an abuse of the reader's patience.

The ordinary writer has an unmistakable preference for this
style, because it causes the reader to spend time and trouble in
understanding that which he would have understood in a moment
without it; and this makes it look as though the writer had more
depth and intelligence than the reader. This is, indeed, one of
those artifices referred to above, by means of which mediocre
authors unconsciously, and as it were by instinct, strive to conceal
their poverty of thought and give an appearance of the opposite.
Their ingenuity in this respect is really astounding.

It is manifestly against all sound reason to put one thought
obliquely on top of another, as though both together formed a
wooden cross. But this is what is done where a writer interrupts
what he has begun to say, for the purpose of inserting some quite
alien matter; thus depositing with the reader a meaningless half-
sentence, and bidding him keep it until the completion comes.
It is much as though a man were to treat his guests by handing
them an empty plate, in the hope of something appearing upon
it. And commas used for a similar purpose belong to the same
family as notes at the foot of the page and parentheses in the
middle of the text; nay, all three differ only in degree. If
Demosthenes and Cicero occasionally inserted words by way of
parentheses, they would have done better to have refrained.

But this style of writing becomes the height of absurdity when

e Translator's Note. — This sentence in the original is obviously meant
to illustrate the fault of which it speaks. It does so by the use of a construc-
tion very common in German, but happily unknown in English ; where,
however, the fault itself exists none the less, though in a different form.

ON STYLE 25

the parentheses are not even fitted into the frame of the sentence,
but wedged in so as directly to shatter it. If, for instance, it is
an impertinent thing to interrupt another person when he is speak-
ing, it is no less impertinent to interrupt one's self. But all bad,
careless, and hasty authors, who scribble with the bread actually
before their eyes, use this style of writing six times on a page, and
rejoice in it. It consists in — it is advisable to give rule and ex-
ample together, wherever it is possible — breaking up one phrase
in order to glue in another. Nor is it merely out of laziness that
they write thus. They do it out of stupidity; they think there is a
charming Ugerete about it ; that it gives life to what they say. No
doubt there are a few rare cases where such a form of sentence
may be pardonable.

Few write in the way in which an architect builds; who, before
he sets to work, sketches out his plan, and thinks it over down to
its smallest details. Nay, most people write only as though they
were playing dominoes ; and as in this game the pieces are arranged
half by design, half by chance, so it is with the sequence and con-
nection of their sentences. They only just have an idea of what
the general shape of their work will be, and of the aim they set
before themselves. Many are ignorant even of this, and write as
the coral-insects build; period joints to period, and Lord knows
what the author means.

Life nowadays goes at a gallop; and the way in which this
affects literature is to make it extremely superficial and slovenly.

PARAGRAPHS1

BARRETT WENDELL

How conspicuous the chief places in any paragraph are, a glance
at any printed page will show. Trained or untrained, the human
eye cannot help dwelling instinctively a little longer on the begin-
nings and the ends of paragraphs than on any other points in the
discourse. Let any one of you take up a book or an article, hitherto
strange, and try in a few minutes to get some notion of what it is
about. Whoever has tried to do even very little reviewing for the
newspapers; whoever has tried to collect authorities for a legal
brief, — knows the experience disagreeably well. First, you in-
stinctively look at the beginning of the article or book, then at the
end ; then, turning over the pages, you skim them, — in other words,
you glance at the beginning and at the end of each paragraph, to
see whether it is a thing you wish to read more carefully. And
if the paragraphs in question be well massed, you are made aware
of it by the fact that the process of intelligent skimming is me-
chanically easy: that you can, apparently by instinct, arrest your
attention on those parts which serve your purpose. If, on the
other hand, as is more frequently the case, the paragraphs in ques-
tion be ill massed, you find difficulty in discovering what you want.
All this is quite independent of sentence-structure, and of unity,
and of coherence. It is a simple question of visible, external out-
line; and it means, in other words, that the beginning and the end
of a paragraph are beyond doubt the fittest places for its chief ideas,
and so for its chief words.

1 From English Composition, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1894. Reprinted
by permission of the publishers.

THE GOLDEN RULE OF WRITING1

EDWIN E. SLOSSON

THE beauty and meaning of scientific discoveries can be revealed
to the general reader if there is an intermediary who can understand
equally the language of the laboratory and of the street. The mod-
ern journalist knows that anything can be made interesting to any-
body if he takes pains enough with the writing of it. ...

To the journalist there is something saddening about a great uni-
versity. He is distressed to see so much good copy going to waste
all the time. Here is a great knowledge factory in full blast, turning
out books and monographs and well-packed craniums; yet a large
part of its profit is lost because there is nobody to gather up the
by-products and put them into marketable shape. Every doctor's
dissertation contains a good newspaper story concealed in it. A man
could make a fair living translating them into English. A single
sentence of the thousands of lectures that are daily lavished upon
the inattentive ears of college students will suffice, when properly
diluted, to provide material for an editorial of average length and
consistency. I've done it often.

It is the business of the journalist to build bridges across the
chasms that divide humanity — to act as interpreter between those
who speak different languages. We have on the one side a public
mostly indifferent to the doings of scientific men. We have, on the
other, scientific men who too often are indifferent to the public.
There is an esoteric tendency in science as in all professional work.
I was once, in talking to a distinguished scientist, deploring popu-
lar ignorance of modern research. "The public does not know what
is being accomplished in the laboratories," I said. "Why should
they?" he retorted. "It is none of their business."

This attitude is quite natural. It is no advantage to the in-
vestigator to be written up. On the contrary, it usually injures him

1From "The Democracy of Knowledge" in A Preface to the Universe,
edited by Baker Brownell, D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1929. Re-
printed by permission of the publishers.

28 EDWIN E. SLOSSON

in the estimation of his colleagues, without gaining for him the
esteem of anyone else. The journalist often destroys a reputation in
the attempt to make one. The career of many a promising young
man has been ruined through the premature and sensational ex-
ploitation of his discoveries. Popular applause is only a disturbance
to the investigator if he does not listen to it; and if he does listen
to it, so much the worse for him for it alters his aim.

That is one reason why each science develops a language of its
own. A technical vocabulary serves the purpose of a private tele-
phone-system, connecting members of the same guild so they can
talk to one another anywhere in the world without being overheard
and interrupted by outsiders. The sciences that make most progress
are those that have the best cryptograms. Mathematicians, physi-
cists, and chemists can pursue their researches for years undis-
turbed ; for the layman, not understanding the language, does not
venture to interfere. But psychologists, sociologists, and economists
have difficulty in accomplishing anything, because they use much
the same language as everybody else, and consequently everybody
else thinks he understands what they are talking about and takes
part in all of their discussions.

But while we must recognize that a secret language has its ad-
vantages in securing freedom for the logical development of a
science, yet there is need for the interpreter to bring the results of
scientific investigation as quickly as possible to the knowledge of
those who are to put them into effect. Such intermediaries the
universities ought to turn out in abundance. Unfortunately, the
specialization inside the university has been carried so far as to
cause a division of labor that is neither efficient nor economical.
English has in recent years developed into a department by itself,
and as a consequence the other departments are apt to be left with-
out any English. One wing of the faculty devotes itself to form,
the other wing to matter. The student who divides his time be-
tween them rarely realizes that the two things belong together.
It is no wonder ; for his instructors in either or both wings often do
not realize that the two things belong together. The litterateur
sneers at the scientist, and the scientist returns the compliment with
interest. The more the student concentrates his work, the worse
he comes out. If he specializes in languages, he acquires an elegant
style, but has nothing much to say with it. If he specializes in sci-
ence, he will know a great deal, but he will have no style about him.

THE GOLDEN RULE OF WRITING 29

The result is that the graduating class of a college has come to
resemble in mental equipment the natives of that South Sea island,
where, the supply of clothing being short, they divided up and ap-
peared at church half of them wearing coats and the other half
trousers. This divorce between matter and form, between the idea
and its expression, is a serious defect of our educational system. I
suggest that it would be well if some university should take as its
motto e pluribus unum and teach the unity of knowledge, training
its graduates to see both sides of the shield. Here perhaps is the
function of journalism. For the journalist realizes as no other man
that his work is only half done when he has got his facts right.
He must then put his facts into such shape that they will produce
their full effect upon other people. The journalist no sooner gets
something than he wants to give it to somebody else. He is as
generous as a schoolboy with the mumps.

In consequence of this unfortunate feud between the literary and
scientific wings of the faculty, the great mass of scientific literature
remains unassimilated and unutilized. Papers of the highest im-
portance are sometimes quite buried, and may be accidentally un-
earthed years after the world might have profited by the discoveries
therein contained. Many a scientific paper should properly bear
the inscription we sometimes see on the title-page of a book, "Printed
but not published."

It is, then, not merely because of mental inertia that the average
of public opinion lags some ten or twenty years behind scientific
thought. It is partly because of lack of opportunity to become ac-
quainted with the recent results of scientific research. Public ig-
norance has naturally been followed by public indifference. . . .

The popularization of science docs not mean falsification, but its
translation from technical terms into ordinary language. Popular
science need not be incorrect, but has to be somewhat indefinite.
It differs from the exact sciences in being inexact. Popular science
may be defined as science in round numbers. The scientific mind
is set at too sharp a focus for ordinary use.

Since the object of a translation is to carry over the essential idea
so that it will, so far as possible, make the same impression upon
the reader in its new form as the original was designed to do, a
literal translation is often a misleading version. A missionary trans-
lating the New Testament into the Eskimo language rendered the

30 EDWIN E. SLOSSON

phrase "The Lamb of God" as "God's Baby Seal." This was lit-
erally a lie, but essentially a true translation.

To make a true translation requires the ability to "put yourself
in his place." It is not sufficient to know what you yourself mean
by what you say; you must also know what the other fellow means
by what he says.

The professional scientist, like the provincial patriot, is apt to
pride himself on saying, "I speak no language but my own"; and
since the layman cannot possibly learn the technical vocabularies
of all the sciences, he remains for the most part unaffected by sci-
entific thought. This also is the chief cause of the controversies
and misconceptions of science prevailing in the world at large.

But I venture to say that the effort to translate pure science into
the vernacular would be a useful exercise to the scientists them-
selves. I have spoken of mathematics as being the most difficult to
put into popular language; but a French mathematician, Gergonne,
said a hundred years ago, "We cannot flatter ourselves that we
ha ye completed a theory until we can explain it in a few words to
a man in the street." And Tolstoy holds the same opinion, for he
said, "A man could explain Kant to a peasant, if he understood
Kant well enough."

Certain scientists seem afraid to get off their own ground. They
dare not descend from the platform to the street. They cannot talk
unless they hold a piece of chalk in their hand. Now chalk is es-
sential when talking about the cretaceous formation in geology,
or about marble in mineralogy, but it is not necessary otherwise.
Archimedes could teach a lesson in geometry, and Jesus could teach
a lesson in ethics, by drawing on the sand.

After thirty-five years spent in reading contributions to the Press
and having to reject most of them, 1 think I can tell what is
mainly the matter with such manuscripts. It is usually not a lack
of information or intelligence. It is not lack of training or talent.
It is a moral defect — lack of sympathy. The authors have not been
able to realize the reader. They have neglected to consider what
he wanted to know and how he needed to have it put. They
wrote for their own amusement rather than for the profit of others.
The good writer is one who thinks more of others than of himself.
The poor and uneffective writer is lacking in sympathy, insight, and
understanding. He may understand his subject, but still may miss

THE GOLDEN RULE OF WRITING 31

the mark in failing to understand his readers. But authorship is
essentially an altruistic act. It is something done for others, unless
one is writing a private diary. So one must be unselfish about it if
he is to succeed. The Golden Rule is not only a good guide to life,
but also a guide to good writing.

CROSSING THE INTEREST DEAD-LINE1

H. A. OVERSTREET

THERE is, in all communication — written or spoken — a certair
dead-line of interest. If we can cross that dead-line we have the
world with us — temporarily at least. If we cannot cross it, we ma)
as well retire. The world will have none of us.

Note the following initial paragraph of an advertisement :

People's Popular Monthly has grown in power and influence
with its subscribers because of its outstanding editorial
strength.

Am I lured on to read more? Five paragraphs follow. I ma>
be hard to please, but I have still to read them. Why? Because
there is nothing of particular interest in that initial paragraph. Thf
statements made are quite general and commonplace. Even the
phrases are cliches: "in power and influence"; "outstanding edi-
torial strength." Thus, there is nothing in the paragraph that
arouses my curiosity; nor does the paragraph point ahead to some-
thing which promises to be of interest.

The paragraph has hit the interest dead-line !

Note by contrast, the following initial paragraph of another ad-
vertisement :

There are always those who question whether two and two
always make four, whether a bird in the hand is actually
worth two in the bush, and if a straight line is the shortest
distance between two points.

Aha! here is something that has flavor and zest! Do I read oni
I do.

The Missouri-minded we have always with us.
Better still! For I feel that I am being referred to as the

1Prom Influencing Human Beha<viort W. W. Norton and Company,
Inc. 1925. Reprinted by permission of the author and the publishers.

CROSSING THE INTEREST DEAD-LINE 33

Missouri-minded, and that I nm being complimented. And so I
read on to find out what is being said about the Missouri-minded.

That advertisement, in short, deftly leaps over the dead-line of
interest; pulls us along into the second paragraph and has us fol-
lowing inquiringly to the end!

Note the lure of this initial paragraph:

It's a huge organization employing thousands of workers.
And yet it is controlled by a handful of executives.

Or these two unusual paragraphs:

I am not interested in making up finished drawings, though
I can handle this part of the work if you so desire.

I am interested in giving you a new slant that will help you
sell your goods.

Then note this dull initial paragraph :

If in doubt about the expansion activities of the Gas Industry
look for "Construction Items" in any current issue of Gas
Age-Record.

Compare it with

Until recently it took an expert operator in our plant a
day to turn out 300 inside mortises. This was his maximum
production.

What happened after that? I ask myself. And I read on to
find out.

Note, now, how a writer of a semi-technical paper can begin an
article with a running jump. "Every now and then out of the
laboratories of the psychologists comes" — what? The reader in-
evitably asks himself that question. And so he goes on to read —
(he's over the dead-line!) — "comes an indication of a new interest
on the part of scientists" — in what? "In the business of adver-
tising."

Well, well, that sounds like something, says the business reader.
"They are beginning to take the mechanism of selling apart and
look with inquisitive eyes" — at what? "At the springs that make
it work." Good ! "To be sure, one notes in their findings a cer-
tain condescension" — of course, says the business reader, a little set
up, college professors; don't we know 'em? But then, what are
these scientific chaps discovering about business advertising anyway?

34 H. A. OVERSTREET

Does not the business reader wish to know ? Of course he does ;
and so he proceeds to find out.

Note in the above introductory sentences how "movement" (re-
call the kinetic technique) is the major note. "Every now and
then"; "out of the laboratories"; "comes" (a mighty word to keep
us going!) ; "they are beginning to take the mechanism of selling
apart"; "look with inquisitive eyes"; "at the springs that make it
work." Every phrase gives us a sense of moving on to something
else.

Note, now, how a dramatist does it. In Ibsen's John Gabriel
Borkman the scene opens in Mrs. Borkman's drawing-room. Mrs.
Borkman sits on the sofa, crocheting. She sits for a time erect and
immovable at her crochet. (A dramatic vacuum that cries out to
be filled!) Then the bells of a passing sledge are heard.

Mrs. Borkman (Listens; her eyes sparkle with gladness and
she involuntarily whispers). Erhart! At last!

(She rises and draws the curtain a little aside to look out.
Appears disappointed, and sits down to her work again, on the
sofa. Presently the maid enters from the hall with a visiting
card on a small tray.)

Mrs. Borkman (quickly). Has Mr. Erhart come after all?

The Maid. No, madam. But there's a lady

Mrs. Borkman (laying aside her crochet). Oh, Mrs. Wil-
ton, I suppose^

Maid (approaching). No, it's a strange lady

Not only are we carried along with expectancy from movement
to movement and from word to word (no word is useless), but al-
most instantly the dramatist gives us the feeling that there is some-
thing back of all this. The play is not just beginning. Much of it,
we feel, has already been played. What has happened? What is
going to happen? Here is the consummate art of the dramatist.

Note how a novelist does it. The first paragraph of Marcel
Proust's Swanns Way begins as follows. It is a long first para-
graph— shudderingly long! But we do not grow tired. And for
quite obvious reasons.

For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes,
when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly
that I had not even time to say "I'm going to sleep." And half
an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep
would awaken me and I would try to put away the book

CROSSING THE INTEREST DEAD-LINE 35

which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the
light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of
what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a
channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have
become the subject of my book. . . .

Compare that with some of the dull opening descriptions in the
novels you have read — and liberally skipped in the reading!

Or, finally, note how an essayist does it. The following are the
first sentences in H. L. Mencken's On Being An American:

Apparently there are those who begin to find it disagreeable
— nay, impossible. Their anguish fills the liberal weeklies, and
every ship that puts out from New York carries a groaning
cargo of them, bound for Paris, London, Munich, Rome and
way points — anywhere to escape the great curses and atrocities
that make life intolerable for them at home.

How do these advertisers, novelists, dramatists, essayists do it?
Unquestionably, they have a way of luring us on. "Luring" per-
haps is not the happiest word to use; but no other seems quite so
appropriate. They have the art of stirring us out of our mental
sluggishness and carrying us along with them wherever they will.

Obviously, no writer without something of this art can hope to
be widely successful. No teacher without it can hope to be any-
thing but dull; no speaker whether on the platform or in the
drawing-room, anything but a bore.

In what, precisely, does this art of crossing the interest dead-line
consist ?

START WITH SITUATIONS

The first thing we note is that in each of the above "luring"
paragraphs, we have not just words, abstract ideas, but a situation.
A man questioning whether two plus two equals four ! Whether a
bird in the hand is worth two in the bush! A huge organization,
thousands of workers, and only a few executives! A man telling
you outright that he does not wish to do your finished drawings but
will give you ideas.

Note by contrast the dull paragraph about the "power and influ-
ence" and "outstanding editorial strength" of the People's Popular

36 H. A. OVERSTREET

Monthly. No situation, there : only words about something general
and quite uninteresting.

Note again, how the skilled dramatist, instantly, at the rise of
curtain creates a situation. Note how one situation passes swiftly
into another and another. The outstanding weakness of amateur
dramatists — particularly those who write "dramas of ideas" — is that
they are wordy. They let their characters make long speeches or
engage in supposedly witty dialogues while the action halts precari-
ously at the dead-line. Words, to have dramatic quality in a
drama, should serve one of two purposes: either to carry the play
from situation to situation — always, in brief, pointing forward (un-
less a backward reference is necessary in order to carry the action
forward) ; or to bring out essential traits of character. In both
cases, words must be in the service of what is concrete — an action
situation or a character situation.

Note again that our novelist starts, not with general observations,
but with a concrete, easily visualized, and interesting situation.
Nor is the situation a static one. Each sentence is a situation, which
is part of the larger one ; and each moves us on to the next.

By a situation we do not necessarily mean something taking place
in the outer world. Note the following mental situation portrayed
in an opening sentence by John A. Hobson, the British economist:
"Nobody really loves the state or its government." There is some-
thing arresting about that. Suppose, however, Mr. Hobson had
begun his article: "The question whether, in the present day, in-
dustry is to be more and more governmentalized, or whether gov-
ernmental activities are to be increasingly restricted in scope and
potency, is one which needs rather profound consideration." Should
we not be mildly dozing at the dead-line?

START WITH SOMETHING THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE

Scientists and philosophers have the reputation of being the most
wretched writers in the world. All honor is due them for the keen
and rigorous use of their intelligence. One wishes, often, however,
that a bit of the artist could be mingled with their scientific and
philosophic souls. No doubt science and philosophy would have a
less difficult time making their effective entrance into our common
life if all scientists had something of the artistic genius of a Huxley,
a Pasteur, a Bergson, a William James.

CROSSING THE INTEREST DEAD-LINE 37

Now the chief literary and dramatic vice of the scientists and
philosophers is that they seldom begin at the point of the reader's
or hearer's interest. Here, for example, is a book on botany. It
begins — heaven save the mark! — with a long account of the history
of botany! But what do you or I (poor laymen we!) want to
know about the feeble beginnings of botany? We want to know
— provided, of course, that we want to be something more than the
ladylike botanists who only know the names of flowers — we want
to know what the border-land problems of botany are; in what
direction botanical research is tending; what difference all this
botanical research makes anyway ; why it is worth studying.

An introductory chapter in any book on science should begin,
then, not by looking backward, but forward. What is in process
of happening now? And what difference does it make if it is
happening? Therein lay the strength of the article about what
was coming out of the laboratories. . . .

BEGIN WITH AN EFFECT NEEDING A CAUSE

If a savage hears a leaf rustle, he is all alert. "What did that?"
If we find a large box in our room which was previously not there,
we are suddenly aroused. "Who put that there?" "Who was in
the room?"

We are essentially causal-minded creatures. Not that we think
much of causes and effects in our ordinary life; but let something
new enter the range of our experience and our mind leaps instantly
to the causal question : "What or who did it ?"

A something new, which is at the same time unexplained, acts as
an instant whip to our attention. Therein lies the attention-
arousing power of the paragraph quoted above about the expert
operator who, until recently, turned out only 300 inside mortises a
day. It is implied that now he turns out more. As a matter of
fact, we find, in the second paragraph, that now he turns out 17,200
a day! Instantly the causal question leaps to our mind : "How does
he do it?"

Therein, too, lies the power of Mencken's introductory sentences
about the anguished Americans leaving their country for London,
Munich, Rome, etc. Why are they leaving? What makes them
leave ?

Therein lies much of the power of Ibsen's opening. The maid

38 H. A. OVERSTREET

brings the card. Oh, the usual thing, Mrs. Wilton. No, says the
maid, a strange lady. . . . Why, the strange lady? What brought
her here?

We have already spoken of situations that are like vacuums which
demand filling. Wherever, as in the above cases, an effect is pre-
sented without its adequate cause, we have what might be called a
dynamic form of vacuum. If we can induce such a dynamic
vacuum, the mind of the reader or hearer is at once alert to fill the
causal emptiness with adequate explanation.

OR BEGIN WITH A CAUSE IMPLYING AN EFFECT

In the previous section we have noted how the mind, given an
unexplained effect, inevitably proceeds backward to the cause. In
the same manner, a mind presented with an uncompleted cause in-
evitably tends to proceed forward to its effect. Therein lay some-
thing of the interest of the paragraph quoted about those who are
always questioning whether two and two make four, whether a
bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Unusual individuals,
aren't they? What comes of it? And therein lay something of the
luring power in the assertion "I am not interested in making up
finished drawings." Well, then, being such an unusual creature,
what do you do ?

The following are the two opening sentences of a section of an
article: "The lady descended upon me after my lecture like a loco-
motive spurting steam. I edged back from the spray of her words."
Here is a cause in full action, implying an effect to follow. In-
stantly, we want to know what happened. "So you are the man
who wrote that nasty article about Americans in Mexico?" We
have leaped on to the moving platform of cause-effect and we are
not satisfied until we have reached the ultimate conclusion of it all.

So the rule is a good one: Present a cause in action. The mind
will demand the outcome. . . .

PRESENT A CONFLICT

Fundamental, of course, to all dramatic movement is the presence
of conflict. A situation arouses us when two forces are at grips;
and when we are unsure of the outcome. That was why, some
time ago, we followed the dash to Nome with breathless interest.

CROSSING THE INTEREST DEAD-LINE 39

It was human grit and dog grit against wild Nature. Most dull-
ness is dull because we are not precipitated into the midst of a fight.
We need not be squeamish about this. All life that is at all sig-
nificant is in some measure at grips with something — science at grips
with a disease ; a movement at grips with a social evil ; progressives
at grips with conservatives; enlightenment at grips with ignorance.

To dramatize anything at all means to present it in the form of
a conflict.

May the writer refer once again to his own subject of philosophy?
Suppose one wishes to make so apparently undramatic a subject
dramatic ; what must one do ? One most successful way is to find
the points of sharp conflict, not the conflicts that meant something
to people thousands of years ago or that are of a purely theoretical
interest, but the conflicts that are real to people now, the outcome
of which makes a vital difference to them. Are there any such
living conflicts? Certainly to start out with a discussion of Monism
versus Pluralism means little if anything to most of us. Suppose
the world is one, or is many, what of it? In either case we shall
go about our human concerns in quite the same way. But suppose
we describe a real conflict between two types of mind today: Mind
A, eager to improve the human situation; profoundly believing in
our power to achieve progress; Mind B, aloof, amused, a little
cynical, coolly declaring that we human beings, from our limited
point of view, cannot have the faintest notion of what progress
means; and that, even if we did have it, we should be unable to
achieve anything ourselves, since it is not the human mind that
governs but vast impersonal forces beyond our control. The ac-
tivist and the quietist; the ardent worker and the disillusioned
looker-on.

In France, Auguste Comte writes an essay with the title: "A
Prospectus of the Scientific Works Required for the Reconstruc-
tion of Society." In America, William Graham Sumner writes an
essay with the title: "The Absurd Attempt to Make the World
Over." A clash of viewpoints! Here, then, is a conflict that has
profound significance for all of us, for if the impersonal view of
world change is to be taken, there is little need for determined
effort on our part ; whereas if the contrasted view is held, it may
be precisely the determined effort which will turn the trick for
human progress.

40 H. A. OVERSTREET

Philosophy presented from such a point of view leaps over the
interest dead-line.

SUMMARY

We get our readers or our hearers over the interest dead-line,
then, first of all, by placing before them situations rather than ab-
stract ideas; second, by giving them at the outset the feeling that
here is something which really makes a difference. In the third
place, we do it by presenting a situation which calls for explanation
or from which something is bound to follow. Again, we may shock
our hearers or readers by a phrase or an event which interrupts the
calm flow of their ordinary consciousness. Finally, dramatic effect
is attained through the presentation of conflict.

Most of us, as writers or speakers, have died many deaths at the
fatal dead-line of interest. Doubtless many of us have never sought
out the causes of our various demises. A very slight analysis should
show us, however, that "holding people's interest," "carrying them
along with us," "keeping up their expectancy" is not the result of
some vague and mystical "dramatic" power possessed by a few for-
tunate individuals. It is the result of doing one or more of a few
very simple things. When we state these simple things they seem
to be so obvious as not to bear mentioning. And yet it is precisely
because we do not do these very simple things that the interest-
quality of what we say or write so often expires even before our
audience have had time to settle comfortably into their seats.

These deaths we have died, therefore, are by no means necessary.
It is altogether probable that attention to such matters as we have
mentioned may quite measurably reduce our mortality average.

THE GOON AND HIS STYLE1
FREDERICK L. ALLEN

"BECAUSE the contests in which the university teams take part
are attended by such keen excitement, let it not be thought by my
readers that the students who play on these teams are the only ones
to derive benefit from participation in athletic sports."

Here you have a perfect example of the goonish style. I admit it
reluctantly, because I wrote that sentence myself in all seriousness
a few days ago ; but I admit it positively.

I was writing an article for a foreign periodical about the uni-
versity with which I am associated. I didn't want to do the article,
but I had promised to and had to. It wasn't one of those cases
where the author burns to tell his readers the message that throbs
in him for utterance, or anything of that sort. It was a case where
the author knows that he can't put it off any longer and sits down
miserably and grinds it out. Furthermore, it happened in this case
that the author knew the article would have to be translated, any-
how, and felt that if he cut loose and wrote in his usual dashing
manner the translator would get twisted. He tried very hard to
express himself plainly and impeccably. The result was, "Let it
not be thought by my readers," and "derive benefit from participa-
tion in athletic sports" — sure marks of the goonish style.

A goon is a person with a heavy touch as distinguished from a
jigger, who has a light touch. While jiggers look on life with a
genial eye, goons take a more stolid and literal view. It is reported
that George Washington was a goon, whereas Lincoln was a jigger.
Gladstone seems to have been a goon, Disraeli a jigger. Victoria
and Prince Albert, as described by Mr. Lytton Strachey, were both
goons of the first water; Mr. Strachey himself, on the other hand,
is obviously a jigger. Most Germans are goons; most French,
jiggers. Mr. Lloyd George is a jigger; the way he squints up his
eyes is one of the most jiggerish things in contemporary affairs.

aFrom Harper's Magazine, December, 1921. Reprinted by permission
of the author and the publishers.

42 FREDERICK L. ALLEN

Mr. Harding, on the other hand, friendly and affable though he
may be, is revealed as a goon in his messages, the language of which
is of incredible specific gravity.

Mind you, it would be misleading to say that goonishness con-
sists of a lack of a sense of humor. I know many goons who have
a perfectly good standardized sense of humor. They laugh as hard
as anybody at a farce, and when an after-dinner story is told they
shout mightily with the rest. What they lack is the playful mind.
They regard humor as something embodied normally in jokes or
funny stories, which they can see the point of as readily as their
neighbors ; and sometimes they are a little baffled by a magazine like
Punch because they find in it pictures accompanied by captions
which manifestly are not jokes. How then, thinks the goon, can
they be humorous? Sometimes goons become somewhat uneasy as
to whether they really have a sense of humor, and resort to a test
consisting of a story with a concealed joke in it, which is usually
supposed to have baffled some legendary humorless Englishman.
The goon sharpens his wits, sees the point, laughs in profound
relief, and is satisfied.

A goonish style is one that reads as if it were the work of a goon.
It is thick and heavy. It suggests the sort of oatmeal served at
lunch counters, lumpy and made with insufficient salt. It is to be
found at its best in nature books, railroad folders, college catalogues,
and prepared speeches by high public officials. It employs the words
"youth" and "lad," likes the exclamation "lo!" says "one may
readily perceive" instead of "you can easily see," and speaks — yes,
I admit it with shame— of "deriving benefit from participation in
athletic sports."

The railroad-folder variety of goonishness sees fit to telNthe
reader that the hotels and boarding houses along the line "vie with
one another in offering amusements and recreations to delight the
visitor." Lake George, described by a goonish vendor of railroad
publicity as "alert with pristine life," is declared by him to be
"worthy of national acceptance as the rich fulfillment of the vaca-
tion hopes of every man and woman and child. For loveliness of
appearance, healthfulness of fresh mountain breezes, and varied
resources of entertainment, no place can boast an advantage over
this queen of American lakes."

The goonishness of nature books is usually in inverse ratio to the
amount of scientific information which they contain. So long as

THE GOON AND HIS STYLE 43

the author is content to state facts concerning length of bill, color
of fur, and number of eggs usually laid, he gives no offence; but
beware of him when his facts run low and he is moved to wash
down his pill of fact with a bucketful of rhetoric expressing his
love of nature. "The dark swamps," he says, "are made glad by
the joyous, wonderful song." Or, "Never shall I forget the bright
morning when I first beheld a flock of titmice. The little chaps
bubbled over with merriment, and as I watched them hopping from
tree to tree, their gladsome songs seemed to me indeed the veritable
embodiment of the spirit of the nuptial season."

J. Fenimore Cooper was a mighty goon, and G. A. Henty, his
pale shadow, while less mighty was no less goonish. "We will
profit by this pause in the discourse," wrote Cooper when he was
warming up for a description of two of his major characters, "to
give the reader some idea of the appearance of the men, both of
whom are destined to enact no insignificant parts in our legend. It
would not have been easy to find a more noble specimen of vigorous
manhood than was offered in the person of him who called himself
Hurry Harry." And thus did Henty set forth a conversation be-
tween father and son in a burning blockhouse besieged by Indians:

"I would rather stay and share your fate, father."

"I believe you, Guy; but you will, I know, obey my order. I
have faith that you will escape and the hope will lighten my last
moments. 1 have placed a rope at the window above. Take your
bow and arrows, your pistols and sword, and tell Shanti to do the
same. He is devoted and intelligent, and his companionship will be
invaluable. Bid him also shoot himself without hesitation should
he fall into the hands of the redskins. Now go, lad ; lose no mo-
ment ; the smoke grows more and more stifling."

The reader finishes this dialogue with the distinct impression that
Guy's father must have prepared his informal remarks some days
beforehand, and furnished advance copies to the press.

The trouble with the goonish style usually is that its possessor
forgets that he is addressing ordinary human beings, and writes for
something strange and portentous which he thinks of as a Public.
When I committed that sentence about "deriving benefit from ath-
letic sports," I had in mind a vague picture of a European Public,
consisting of spectacled worthies with frock coats and a fine aspira-
tion to hear the blameless story of American education. Perhaps
President Harding in his messages, utilizing what he conceives to

44 FREDERICK L. ALLEN

be presidential language, several sizes larger than ordinary language,
writes not to persuade normal people like Doctor Sawyer and Mr.
Crissinger and Mr. Christian of Marion, but a dim multitude of
self-governing entities called an American Public of One Hundred
Millions. The young or inexpert writer frequently achieves goon-
ishness by writing for Posterity, forgetting that the real posterity
will consist of a tremendous lot of people more or less like those
who live in the next block.

GROWING PAINS1

MARGARET JOSLYN

LIKE the girl he left behind him to the boy who's seen Paris is
my vocabulary to me. I'm tired of it. I'd like to get rid of it.
But after the years of assiduous attentions I've paid it, the jilting
process is not so easy. Just when I think I've bid a last farewell
to the unspeakably dowdy frump that is my vocabulary, she bobs
up again with all her gold teeth showing in a vulgar grin.

Should someone take down verbatim a record of my conversa-
tion, it would pass very well as an example of a Bowery Bertha's
monologue. The stream of polluted English that flows from my
lips often astonishes me. In the full glory of being a college girl,
with the right to wear my hat and my head very high, I was crushed
one day by the sound of my own voice. I stood there fingering a
Textbook of College English, speaking to a professor, when the
sound of my own \vords grated against my ears like squeaky chalk
against a blackboard. "Gee," I heard myself murmuring in my
best, lowest, newest accents. "Well, can you imagine that! For
Pete's sake, wouldn't that make you sick!" The knowledge that I
can't open my mouth without, like the wicked daughter in the
fairy tale, having the toads of slipshod slang leap out often has a
paralyzing effect upon me. In such cases I hide behind the rubber
screen of such ubiquitous expressions as "You don't say," "Well,
what do you know about that," or perhaps, in a rush of temporary
courage and refinement, "Oh, my dear, not really."

But, after all, it is not my spoken but my written vocabulary
that depresses me with its paucity. The wages of sin are death,
and the wages of foolish reading are ineffectualness. I know. All
the Liberty magazines I gulped, all the airy novels I dallied with,
all the bantam-weight articles with which I did not even wrestle,
come back on me now. I should like to dress my virgin ideas in
fresh, holy garb, and before I can do anything about it they slip

1From Atlantic Monthly College Prize Essays, 1927. Reprinted by per-
mission of the publishers.

46 MARGARET JOSLYN

into the easy fashions of Movie Weekly. Boomerang. I want to
put an exalted mood on paper, and the only words I have to use
are the gleanings from years of popular fiction. Throwback. I
want to be fashionably supercilious about cheap writing, and find
material for the mood in the results of my own struggles.

Time and again I see the words that served me faithfully in the
eighth grade bobbing up again in my college themes, carrying with
them their train of eighth-grade ideas. I used to glut myself with
Edna Ferber, and from her I plucked three words that were for
years the darlings of my heart. "Drab," "raucous," and "monot-
ony" were the words, and with true maternal devotion I displayed
them on every occasion. The recent sight of these words in the
syndicated newspaper stories on the women's pages, however, has
filled me with a sick shame. It is, to change the relationship, like
seeing one's mother come out of a roadhouse.

"Tawdry," from Fanny Hurst, "lurid," from the newspapers,
"moth-eaten," "spineless," "backboneless," from Irvin Cobb, are all
old nags that will never again hobble across the pages of my themes.
"Pugnacious," "glib," "rakish," "syncopating," "rhythmic," have
had their day with me. In the first place, they are overworked ; in
the second place, they are adjectives, and I am beginning to dislike
those confessions of an incompetent vocabulary. There are seven
words that I hate: "throbbing," "pathos," "gripping," "passion,"
"intrigue," "thrills," "adventure." For these words I have the
same cold contempt that I have for the me that frequented the
movies they describe. If I ever use them, may I go where all True
Story writers go when they die.

Now I shun the endearing words that I love too well. I look
with suspicion at the respectable ones that may lose their virtue at
any time among the movie subtitles and the Sunday papers. I shy
at the cloying ones that stick unconsciously to my mind from my
haphazard reading and clog expression. Embarrassed, pained, and
very uncomfortable, I stand stripped of my old vocabulary and
uncertain of my new. I am afraid of words!

MISTAKEN TEACHINGS ABOUT CERTAIN
POINTS IN ENGLISH1

CHARLES ALLEN LLOYD

THOSE of you who read the very interesting and usually accurate
newspaper feature put out by Mr. Robert L. Ripley under the title
of "Believe-It-or-Not" may recall that about a year ago there ap-
peared in his column the remarkable statement that there is no such
word in the English language as "unsanitary" ; the explanation
given the next morning was that the proper form is "insanitary."
A letter of protest to Mr. Ripley brought forth a mimeographed
reply to the effect that the addition of the prefix "un" to the word
"sanitary" turned it into a verb and that most of the unabridged
dictionaries do not list the word "unsanitary" at all.

Now, the truth of the matter is that the word "unsanitary" is
listed in all four of the leading English dictionaries — the Century,
Webster's, the Standard, and the Oxford — and, furthermore, that
there is nothing in any of them to indicate that it is in any way
inferior to "insanitary," which, of course, is also listed. A second
and a third letter to Mr. Ripley, pointing out these facts, were
answered only by a dignified silence. I have since learned indi-
rectly that on receipt of several hundred protests he submitted the
question to a group of scholars and they "decided" that "insanitary"
is the preferred form. This may well be true, but, of course, is
entirely beside the point, since the original statement was that there
was no such word as "unsanitary."

My aim in telling you this little story is not to bring out the
fallibility of Mr. Ripley or his unwillingness to admit an error;
we are all fallible, and none of us likes to admit he was mistaken in
a public statement. But I do wish to call your attention to the
fact that this notion that the word "unsanitary" is not to be found
in the dictionaries is only one of a large number of mistaken ideas

1 An address delivered before the National Council of Teachers of
English in 1932. Reprinted from the English Journal, May 1933, by per-
mission of the author and the English Journal.

48 CHARLES ALLEN LLOYD

about English that are prevalent in the minds of the general public,
including many of our students in schools and colleges. It happens
sometimes that our schools are at fault in spreading these pieces of
misinformation, and that we teachers are often to blame for
accepting them without thought or investigation and passing them
on to our pupils.

Many of you are doubtless already aware of the situation, but I
wonder if you realize fully the extent, variety, and tenacity of
these delusions. May I mention some of the more common ones?

The most widespread and tenacious of all is the notion that it is
necessarily bad English to end with a preposition. Although this
is not taught now, so far as I know, by any English textbook, and
although many of them specifically state the contrary, most people
who have any education at all hold it as a sacred article of faith.
Not, of course, that they observe it. Surely no native English-
speaking person would ask "At what are you laughing?" rather
than "What are you laughing at?" But they feel about as O. O.
Mclntyre put it in his column recently when he wrote : "There I
go, ending a sentence with a preposition, but then I never did have
any use for grammar." It seems that Dryden is largely responsible
for this superstition. He apparently became convinced that, be-
cause the word "preposition" means "placed before," one should
never be put after its object, and he took the trouble to go over
all his works and see that all his prepositions accorded with this
imagined rule. It would be difficult to find a sadder example of
the failure to appreciate the idiom of one's native tongue. Surely
no English teacher needs to be told that the question whether or not
a preposition should stand at the end of a sentence is to be decided
by taste and one's judgment of the ease or awkwardness of the ex-
pression, and that it is not a matter of correctness or incorrectness.

Some time ago in speaking over the radio on the subject of
English I made use of the expression "a grammatical error," and
shortly afterward received a card, unsigned, but evidently written
by a lady of considerable education and intelligence, saying: "Please,
isn't it 'error in grammar' rather then 'grammatical error' ?" As it
happens, some twenty years ago I first heard this point raised and
have noted its recurrence at intervals ever since. For the benefit
of any who may not be familiar with it I shall explain that those
who labor under the delusion that the expression "a grammatical
error" is incorrect argue that if an expression is grammatical it

MISTAKEN TEACHINGS ABOUT ENGLISH 49

cannot be an error. In other words, they assume that the only
meaning of the word "grammatical" is "in accordance with the
rules of grammar," whereas reference to any dictionary will show,
of course, that "grammatical" also means "pertaining to grammar,"
and in the Century Dictionary the very expression "a grammatical
error" is given as an example of its use in this sense. The remark-
able thing about the matter is that the point is always raised by per-
sons of intelligence and discrimination, just the sort most likely
to consult books of reference, and it is a mystery why it does not
occur to them to look in the dictionary to see whether their hyper-
critical objection is justified.

And now for one of the most astonishing things of all. Are you
aware that many elementary teachers and even some high-school
instructors in English teach their pupils that it is wrong to begin
a sentence with "but" or "and" ? I do not know how widespread
this delusion is, but I fear that it is more so than most of us think.
By inquiry in a summer-school class of mine last year I learned
that approximately half of the thirty-three members, coming from
about seven different states, had been taught this monstrous doc-
trine at some time in their school careers. One cannot help won-
dering if those who teach it ever read any English. Surely, if they
do, it is not the King James Version of the Bible, in which sentence
after sentence begins with "and" almost to the point of monotony;
nor can it be the writings of that master of style, Macaulay, who,
with his fondness for antithesis, starts hundreds of sentences with
"but." The teaching probably originates in a very laudable desire
to prevent pupils from splitting what should be properly a com-
pound sentence into two distinct parts, but the rule laid down is so
far from the actual practice of the "best writers and speakers,"
that it is absurd.

Another very strange delusion that many pupils absorb from
teachers somewhere along the line is the notion that "everyone" and
"anyone" are preferable to "everybody" and "anybody." In fact,
some even think that the last two forms are entirely wrong. Along
with these goes the notion that "should" is better than "ought"
to express obligation of any kind. Not long ago I tried an inter-
esting experiment on a class of thirty pupils, college Freshmen, most
of whom had had at least a fair high-school training and some even
a better than average one. On the board I wrote the sentence,
"Everybody ought to do their duty," with instructions to the pupils

50 CHARLES ALLEN LLOYD

to copy it on a sheet of paper in correct form, but to make no
changes unless they were absolutely essential for the sake of correct-
ness. Sixteen of the thirty properly changed "their" to "his",
but only ten of these sixteen made no other change. There were
five who changed "ought" to "should" though the latter is clearly
inappropriate in such a statement of strong moral obligation, and
nine changed "everybody" to "everyone." May I suggest that
when you take up your teaching again you try the same experiment ?
I believe you will get similar results, unless your group is care-
fully selected.

The work of Lounsbury and others has pretty well established
the fact by this time that the 'expressions "had better" and "had
rather" have an ancient and honorable position in the English
language. At least one hears little objection to them at present.
The same thing is true of "anybody else's." A number of teachers
used to spend much energy in a painful effort to make themselves
and their pupils say "anybody's else," but this unnatural expression
seems to have given way to the natural and proper English desire
to put the sign of the possessive at the end of the group of words to
which it belongs, as in "the King of England's crown."

But let us leave for a while these questions of grammar and
meaning to tread upon the much more uncertain ground of pro-
nunciation. The trouble here is that there are many who fail to
recognize that this is uncertain ground. They seem to believe that
for every English word there is one indisputably correct pro-
nunciation, that certain highly favored persons or dictionaries have
been divinely inspired to know just what these "correct" pro-
nunciations are, and that those who do not use them are scholastically
and socially beyond the pale. Let us take, for example, the ques-
tion of the pronunciation of words like "ask," "last," "class,"
"dance," etc. The usage of the overwhelming majority of Ameri-
cans favors that pronunciation of these words in which the a is
sounded as in "am," the so-called flat a. There are some who use
in them the a as in "father," the broad or Italian a, as it is called,
and others who give the a a sound in between the broad and the
flat, that is, the intermediate a. As a matter of fact, a careful ear
can distinguish four or five stages of flatness or broadness in the
pronunciation of these words by various individuals.

There is a general belief, however, among teachers and students
that the only truly correct sound of the vowel in these words is the

MISTAKEN TEACHINGS ABOUT ENGLISH 51

intermediate a and that all the dictionaries record this as the proper
'pronunciation. The fact of the case is that only one of the four
great English dictionaries makes any such statement. That one,
strange to say, is an American dictionary, Webster s. The Century,
the Standard, and even the Oxford all state in their introductions
that their marking of the a in these words is intended to be
ambiguous. The Century places a dot over the a in all these
words, but says that this intermediate a should be regarded "as
pointing out the varying utterance here described (from a in 'far*
to a in 'fat') rather than imperatively prescribing any shade of it."
The other two say the same thing in different words.

Surely these three are right, and Webster s is wrong in attempt-
ing to set up the personal opinion of its editors over the usage of
the English-speaking people. It will, of course, be noticed that
Webster s dictum brands the broad a as "incorrect" just as much
as the flat a, and selects as the one correct pronunciation a sound
that millions of English-speaking persons can make only with con-
siderable effort.2

But of all the remarkable situations that we find in dealing with
the vexed subject of pronunciation the most remarkable to my mind
is the very widespread effort on the part of a great number of our
English teachers to force American pupils to drop the natural
American pronunciation of the word "dictionary" and substitute
for it the British utterance, which I can best represent by the spell-
ing "dictionary," though we sometimes hear in it an obscure vowel
sound where I have put the apostrophe. I suppose that no one here
would like to question my statement that in the natural American
pronunciation of the word "dictionary" there is a slight secondary
accent on the penult, but, if you wish better authority for it than
your own ears, I can refer you to Jespersen, the great Danish stu-
dent of our tongue, who calls attention to this American utterance
in his monumental work on English grammar. Our own diction-
aries are somewhat ambiguous. They do not mark a secondary
accent in the word, but they do indicate that the a in the penult has
the sound either of long a or of the a in "senate" — not the obscure
sound of the British utterance. Webster's also speaks in its intro-

a Author's Note: Readers may be interested to know that the Second Edi->
tion of Webster's New International Dictionary, which was issued in July,
1934, supports the views expressed in this article concerning the "inter-
mediate a" and the pronunciation of the words ending in ~ary.

52 CHARLES ALLEN LLOYD

ductory pages of the difference between the British and the Ameri-
can pronunciations of words ending in -ary. It should be noted too
that our dictionaries do not mark any secondary accent for adverbs
derived from these -ary words, but what American is there who can
pronounce "ordinarily" without putting a secondary accent on the
antepenult? For the Century Dictionary, at least, and perhaps
for the others, the failure to mark these secondary accents is ex-
plained by the Century's statement that it does not mark secondary
accents when they come in their natural position, which is two
syllables removed from the one which bears the main accent. In
the words "decorate" and "operate" for instance, there is clearly a
secondary accent on the last syllable, but our dictionaries do not
indicate it.

A very strange feature of the whole matter is the fact that most
of the teachers who insist that their pupils say "dictionary" pro-
nounce all or nearly all of the other -ary words in the good Ameri-
can fashion. If it is so vitally important to say "dictionry,"
is it not equally as important to say "ordinary," "necess'ry,"
"second'ry," "military," "mission'ry," "secretary," "liter'ry,"
"statu'ry," "January," "February," and so on through the whole
list? As a matter of fact, the British do pronounce these words
consistently in just that fashion. Not only that, but they likewise
consistently say "territory" and "promont'ry." If we are to imitate
them, let's do the bally thing up in jolly good style !

Now, of course, I am not questioning the right of any teacher
or any other person to adopt the British pronunciation of any or
all of these words, if he sees fit. It seems to me that each individual
should determine his pronunciation for himself, just as he selects his
own clothes. But I do emphatically insist that no teacher has the
right to tell an American child that the standard American pro-
nunciation for any word is wrong and to endeavor to force him to
utter it in the British fashion. I use the word "force" advisedly,
since I know of cases where children were not allowed to consult
the dictionary unless they called it a "diction'ry," or to go to the
library unless they called it a "libr'ry." And this in the name of
"good English"!!

The harm of such teachings as these lies chiefly in the fact that
they throw discredit on the cause of good English, since they falsely
lead our boys and girls to believe that in order to use good English
they must speak in a very unnatural manner. Those of them who

MISTAKEN TEACHINGS ABOUT ENGLISH 53

are conscientious about improving their speech strain in a way pitiful
to behold to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition and develop
inferiority complexes over pronunciations that are natural to the
very large majority of intelligent, educated, and cultured Americans.
On the other hand, those who are not so docile as to be guided by
these teachings that are repulsive to all their normal instincts con-
ceive a distaste for the whole subject of English and refuse to be
guided by us even when we teach them what is eminently right
and proper. In their minds "good English" comes to mean affecta-
tion, or, as they would phrase it, "putting on," and I regret to say
that there is much in the teaching of many of us that justifies them
in this feeling.

In a burst of confidence a pupil once asked me, "Mr. Lloyd, why
are all English teachers crazy?" It was a crude question from a
rude boy, and, being an English teacher myself, I was not and am
not prepared to admit that we deserve to have such a harsh adjective
applied to us. But the question with me is why this boy should
have thought of asking such a thing about English teachers. In
one of O. Henry's stories he speaks of a certain waitress as being
"too anxious to please to please." Is there not such a thing as
being "too anxious to be correct to be correct"?

There are many self-constituted authorities who seem to take
particular delight in announcing with a great air of confidence that
some well-established locution or pronunciation is "bad English."
If examined closely, such assertions will usually be found to reveal
only the ignorance of those who make them. But the trouble is
that too often we do not examine them closely. Their surface
plausibility and the confidence with which they are put forward
deceive us. We unthinkingly accept them, pass them on to our
pupils as the gospel, and they in turn hand them on to theirs. The
result is that we turn the study of our language into a travesty, and
instead of implanting in the minds of the pupils an instinct and
feeling for good English, we instil into them a wholly unnatural
and artificial ideal of speech that effectually prevents them from
ever attaining a genuine mastery of their noble mother-tongue.

LEARNED WORDS AND POPULAR WORDS1

JAMES BRADSTREET GREENOUGH

AND
GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE

IN EVERY cultivated language there are two great classes of words
which, taken together, comprise the whole vocabulary. First, there
are those words with which we become acquainted in ordinary con-
versation,— which we learn, that is to say, from the members of our
own family and from our familiar associates, and which we should
know and use even if we could not read or write. They concern the
common things of life, and are the stock in trade of all who speak
the language. Such words may be called "popular," since they
belong to the people at large and are not the exclusive possession of
a limited class.

On the other hand, our language includes a multitude of words
which are comparatively seldom used in ordinary conversation.
Their meanings are known to every educated person, but there is
little occasion to employ them at home or in the market-place. Our
first acquaintance with them comes not from our mother's lips or
from the talk of our schoolmates, but from books that we read, lec-
tures that we hear, or the more formal conversation of highly edu-
cated speakers, who are discussing some particular topic in a style
appropriately elevated above the habitual level of everyday life.
Such words are called "learned," and the distinction between them
and "popular" words is of great importance to a right understanding
of linguistic process.

The difference between popular and learned words may be easily
seen in a few examples. We may describe a girl as "lively" or as
"vivacious." In the first case, we are using a native English forma-
tion from the familiar noun life. In the latter, we are using a
Latin derivative which has precisely the same meaning. Yet the

1 From Words and Their Ways in English Speech, The Macmillan Com-
pany, 1920. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.

LEARNED AND POPULAR WORDS 55

atmosphere of the two words is quite different. No one ever got
the adjective lively out of a book. It is a part of everybody's vocab-
ulary. We cannot remember a time when we did not know it, and
we feel sure that we learned it long before we were able to read.
On the other hand, we must have passed several years of our lives
before learning the word vivacious. We may even remember the
first time that we saw it in print or heard it from some grown-up
friend who was talking over our childish heads. Both lively and
vivacious are good English words, but lively is "popular" and
vivacious is "learned."

From the same point of view we may contrast the following
pairs of synonyms2: the same, identical; speech, oration; fire, con-
flagration; choose, select; brave, valorous; swallowing, deglutition;
striking, percussion; building, edifice; shady, umbrageous; puckery,
astringent; learned, erudite; secret, cryptic; destroy, annihilate; stiff,
rigid; flabby, flaccid; queer, eccentric; behead, decapitate; round,
circular; thin, emaciated; fat, corpulent; truthful, veracious; try,
endeavor; bit, modicum; piece, fragment; sharp, acute; crazy,
maniacal; king, sovereign; book, volume; lying, mendacious; beggar,
mendicant; teacher, instructor; play, drama; air, atmosphere; paint,
pigment.

The terms "popular" and "learned," as applied to words, are not
absolute definitions. No two persons have the same stock of words,
and the same word may be "popular" in one man's vocabulary and
"learned" in another's. There are also different grades of "popu-
larity"; indeed there is in reality a continuous gradation from in-
fantile words like mamma and papa to such erudite derivatives as
concatenation and cataclysm. Still, the division into "learned" and
"popular" is convenient and sound. Disputes may arise as to the
classification of any particular word, but there can be no difference
of opinion about the general principle. We must be careful, how-
ever, to avoid misconception. When we call a word "popular," we
do not mean that it is a favorite word, but simply that it belongs to
the people as a whole, — that is, it is everybody's word, not the
possession of a limited number. When we call a word "learned,"
we do not mean that it is used by scholars alone, but simply that
its presence in the English vocabulary is due to books and the culti-

aNot all the words are exact synonyms, but that is of no importance in

56 LEARNED AND POPULAR WORDS

vation of literature rather than to the actual needs of ordinary
conversation.

Here is one of the main differences between a cultivated and an
uncultivated language. Both possess a large stock of "popular"
words; but the cultivated language is also rich in "learned" words,
with which the ruder tongue has not provided itself, simply because
it has never felt the need of them.

In English it will usually be found that the so-called learned
words are of foreign origin. Most of them are derived from
French or Latin, and a considerable number from Greek. The
reason is obvious. The development of English literature has not
been isolated, but has taken place in close connection with the earnest
study of foreign literatures. Thus, in the fourteenth century, when
our language was assuming substantially the shape which it now
bears, the literary exponent of English life and thought, Geoffrey
Chaucer, the first of our great poets, was profoundly influenced by
Latin literature as well as by that of France and Italy. In the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Greek and Latin classics
were vigorously studied by almost every English writer of any con-
sequence, and the great authors of antiquity were regarded as
models, not merely of general literary form, but of expression in all
its details. These foreign influences have varied much in character
and intensity. But it is safe to say that there has been no time since
1350 when English writers of the highest class have not looked to
Latin, French, and Italian authors for guidance and inspiration.
From 1600 to the present day the direct influence of Greek litera-
ture and philosophy has also been enormous, — affecting as it has the
finest spirits in a peculiarly pervasive way, — and its indirect influ-
ence is quite beyond calculation. Greek civilization, we should
remember, has acted upon us, not merely through Greek literature
and art, but also through the medium of Latin, since the Romans
borrowed their higher culture from Greece.

Now certain facts in the history of our language have made it
peculiarly inclined to borrow from French and Latin. The Nor-
man Conquest in the eleventh century made French the language of
polite society in England; and, long after the contact between
Norman-French and English had ceased to be of direct significance
in our linguistic development, the reading and speaking of French
and the study of French literature formed an important part of the
education of English-speaking men and women. When literary

LEARNED AND POPULAR WORDS 57

English was in process of formation in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, the authors whose works determined the cultivated vo-
cabulary were almost as familiar with French as with their mother
tongue, and it was therefore natural that they should borrow a good
many French words. But these same authors were also familiar
with Latin, which, though called a dead language, has always been
the professional dialect of ecclesiastics and a lingua franca for edu-
cated men. Thus the borrowing from French and from Latin
went on side by side, and it is often impossible to say from which
of the two languages a particular English word is taken. The prac-
tice of naturalizing French and Latin words was, then, firmly estab-
lished in the fourteenth century, and when, in the sixteenth century,
there was a great revival of Greek studies in England, the close
literary relations between Greece and Rome facilitated the adoption
of a considerable number of words from the Greek. Linguistic
processes are cumulative : one does not stop when another begins.
Hence we find all of these influences active in increasing the modern
vocabulary. In particular, the language of science has looked to
Greece for its terms, as the language of abstract thought has drawn
its nomenclature from Latin.

It would, however, be a great mistake to suppose that all our
"popular" terms are of native origin, and that all foreign derivatives
are "learned." The younger and less cultivated members of a com-
munity are naturally inclined to imitate the speech of the older and
more cultivated. Hence, as time has passed, a great number of
French and Latin words, and even some that are derived from the
Greek, have made themselves quite at home in ordinary conversa-
tion. Such words, whatever their origin, are as truly popular as if
they had been a part of our language from the earliest period.

Examples of such popular words of foreign derivation are the
following :

From French : army, arrest, bay, card, catch, city, chase, chimney,
conveyance, deceive, entry, engine, Jorge, hour, letter, mantle, mason,
merchant, manner, mountain, map, move, navy, prince, pen, pencil,
Parlor, river, rage, soldier, second, table, veil, village.

From Latin: accommodate, act, add, adopt, animal, anxious, ap-
plause, arbitrate, auction, agent, calculate, cancer, circus, collapse,
collision, column, congress, connect, consequence, contract, contra-
dict, correct, creation, cucumber, curve, centennial, decorate, delicate,
dentist, describe, diary, diffident, different, digest, direct, discuss,

58 LEARNED AND POPULAR WORDS

divide, educate, elect, emigrant, equal, erect, expect, extra, fact,
genius, genuine, graduate, gratis, horrid, imitate, item, joke, junc-
tion, junior, major, magnificent, medicine, medium, miser, obstinate,
omit, pagan, pastor, pauper, pedal, pendulum, permit, picture,
plague, postpone, premium, prevent, prospect, protect, quiet, recess,
recipe, reduce, regular, salute, secure, series, single, species, specimen,
splendid, strict, student, subscribe, subtract, suburb, suffocate, sug-
gest, tedious, timid, urge, vaccinate, various, ventilation, vest, veto,
victor, vim, vote.

From Greek : anthracite, apathy, arsenic, aster, athlete, atlas, attic,
barometer, biography, calomel, catarrh, catholic, catastrophe, cate-
chism, caustic, chemist, crisis, dialogue, diphtheria, elastic, encyclo-
pedia, hector, homeopathy, iodine, lexicon, microscope, monotonous,
myth, neuralgia, panic, panorama, photograph, skeleton, strychnine,
tactics, telegraph, tonic, zoology.

No language can borrow extensively from foreign sources without
losing a good many words of its own. Hence, if we compare the
oldest form of English (Anglo-Saxon) with our modern speech,
we shall discover that many words that were common in Anglo-
Saxon have gone quite out of use, being replaced by their foreign
equivalents. The "learned" word has driven out the "popular**
word, and has thereupon, in many cases, become "popular" itself.
Thus instead of A.S. here we use the French word army] instead
of thegn or theow, the French word servant] instead of sciphere (a
compound of the Anglo-Saxon word for ship and that for army),
we use navy ] instead of mice!, we say large] instead of sige, victory]
instead of swlthe, very] instead of Idf, we say remainder or rem-
nant,— and so on.

Curiously enough, it sometimes happens that when both the na-
tive and the foreign word still have a place in our language, the
latter has become the more popular, — the former being relegated to
the higher or poetical style. Thus it is more natural for us to say
divide (from L. divido) than cleave (from A.S. cleofan) ] travel
than fare; river than stream; castle than burg; residence than dwell-
ing; remain than abide; expect than ween; pupil or scholar than
learner; destruction than bale; protect or defend than shield; imme-
diately than straightaway; encourage than hearten; present than
bestow; firm than steadfast; direct than forthright; impetuous than
heady; modest than shamefaced; prince than atheling; noise or
tumult or disturbance than din; people than folk; prophet than

LEARNED AND POPULAR WORDS 59

soothsayer; fate than weird; >uncer than spearman; I intend than
I am minded; excavate than delve; resist than withstand; beautiful
than goodly; gracious than kindly. The very fact that the native
words belong to the older stock has made them poetical; for the
language of poetry is always more archaic than that of prose.

Frequently we have kept both the native and the foreign word,
but in different senses, thus increasing our vocabulary to good pur-
pose. The foreign word may be more emphatic than the native:
as in brilliant ', bright: scintillate, sparkle; astonishment, wonder; a
conflagration, a fire; devour, eat up; labor, work. Or the native
word may be more emphatic than the foreign: as in stench, odor;
straightforward, direct; dead, deceased; murder, homicide. Often,
however, there is a wide distinction in meaning. Thus driver differs
from propellor; child from infant; history from tale; book from
volume; forehead from front; length from longitude; moony from
lunar; sunny from solar; nightly from nocturnal; churl from vil-
lain; wretch from miser; poor man from pauper; run across from
occur; run into from incur; fight from debate.

From time to time attempts have been made to oust foreign words
from our vocabulary and to replace them by native words that have
become either obsolete or less usual (that is to say, less popular).
Whimsical theorists have even set up the principle that no word of
foreign origin should be employed when a native word of the same
meaning exists. In English, however, all such efforts are pre-
destined to failure. They result, not in a simpler and more natural
style, but in something unfamiliar, fantastic, and affected. Foreign
words that have long been in common use are just as much English
as if they had been a part of our language from the beginning.
There is no rational theory on which they should be shunned. It
would be just as reasonable for an Englishman whose ancestors had
lived in the island ever since the time of King Alfred, to disown
as his countrymen the descendants of a Frenchman or a German
who settled there three hundred years ago. The test of the learned
or the popular character of a word is not its etymology, but the
facts relating to its habitual employment by plain speakers. Nor is
there any principle on which, of two expressions, that which is pop-
ular should be preferred to that which is learned or less familiar.
The sole criterion of choice consists in the appropriateness of one's
language to the subject or the occasion. It would be ridiculous to
address a crowd of soldiers in the same language that one would

60 LEARNED AND POPULAR WORDS

employ in a council of war. It would be no less ridiculous to
harangue an assembly of generals as if they were a regiment on the
eve of battle. The reaction against the excessive Latinization of
English is a wholesome tendency, but it becomes a mere "fad" when
it is carried out in a doctrinaire manner. As Chaucer declares :

Ek Plato seith, whoso that can him rede,
"The wordes mot be cosin to the dede."

Every educated person has at least two ways of speaking his
mother tongue. The first is that which he employs in his family,
among his familiar friends, and on ordinary occasions. The second
is that which he uses in discoursing on more complicated subjects,
and ;n addressing persons with whom he is less intimately
acquainted. It is, in short, the language which he employs when
he is "on his dignity," as he puts on evening dress when he is
going to dine. The difference between these two forms of lan-
guage consists, in great measure, in a difference of vocabulary. The
basis of familiar words must be the same in both, but the vocabu-
lary appropriate to the more formal occasion will include many
terms which would be stilted or affected in ordinary talk. There
is also considerable difference between familiar and dignified
language in the manner of utterance. Contrast the rapid utter-
ance of our everyday dialect, full of contractions and clipped
forms, with the more distinct enunciation of the pulpit or the plat-
form. Thus, in conversation, we habitually employ such contrac-
tions as I'll, don't, won't, it's, we'd, he'd, and the like, which we
should never use in public speaking, unless of set purpose, to give a
markedly colloquial tinge to what we have to say.

AMERICAN AND ENGLISH TODAY:
DIFFERENCES IN USAGE1

H. L. MENCKEN

IN HIS business, in his journeys from his home to his office, in
his dealings with his family and servants, in his sports and amuse-
ments, in his politics and even in his religion the American uses,
not only words and phrases, but whole syntactical constructions,
that are unintelligible to the Englishman, or intelligible only after
laborious consideration. A familiar anecdote offers an example in
miniature. It concerns a young American woman living in a
region of prolific orchards who is asked by a visiting Englishman
what the residents do with so much fruit. Her reply is a pun:
"We eat all we can, and what we can't we can." This answer
would mystify most Englishmen, for in the first place it involves
the use of the flat American a in cant and in the second place it
applies an unfamiliar name to the vessel that the Englishman
knows as a tin, and then adds to the confusion by deriving a verb
from the substantive. There are no such things as canned-goods
in England ; over there they are tinned. The can that holds them
is a tin; to can them is to tin them. . . . And they are counted, not
as groceries, but as stores, and advertised, not on bill-boards but on
hoardings. And the cook who prepares them for the table is not
Nora or Maggie, but Cook, and if she docs other work in addition
she is not a girl for general housework, but a cook-general, and not
help, but a servant. And the boarder who eats them is often not
a boarder at all, but a paying-guest. And the grave of the tin,
once it is emptied, is not the ash-can, but the dust-bin, and the man
who carries it away is not the garbage-man or the ash-man or the
white-wings, but the dustman. . . .

An Englishman does not wear suspenders, but braces. Sus-
penders are his wife's garters; his own are sock-suspenders. The
family does not seek sustenance in a rare tenderloin but in an under-

1From The American Language, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1921. Re-
printed by permission of the publishers.

62 H. L. MENCKEN

done undercut or fillet. It does not eat beets, but beet-roots. The
wine on the table, if white and German, is not Rhine wine, but
Hock. Yellow turnips, in England, are called Swedes, and are
regarded as fit food for cattle only; when rations were short there,
in 1916, the Saturday Review made a solemn effort to convince
its readers that they were good enough to go upon the table. The
English, of late, have learned to eat another vegetable formerly
resigned to the lower fauna, to wit, American sweet corn. But
they are still having some difficulty about its name, for plain corn
in England, as we have seen, means all the grains used by man.
Some time ago, in the Sketch, one C. J. Clive, a gentleman farmer
of Worcestershire, was advertising sweet corn-cob? as the "most
delicious of all vegetables," and offering to sell them at 6s. 6d. a
dozen, carriage-paid. Chicory is something else that the English
are unfamiliar with; they always call it endive. By chicken they
mean any fowl, however ancient. Broilers and friers are never
heard of over there. Neither are crawfish, which are always
crayfish.2 The classes which, in America, eat breakfast, dinner and
supper, have breakfast, dinner and tea in England; supper always
means a meal eaten late in the evening. No Englishman ever
wears a frock-coat or Prince Albert, or lives in a bungalow; he wears
a morning-coat and lives in a villa or cottage. His wife's maid, if
she has one, is not Ethel, or Maggie but Robinson, and the nurse-
maid who looks after his children is not Lizzie but Nurse? So, by
the way, is a trained nurse in a hospital, whose full style is not
Miss Jones, but Nurse Jones or Sister. And the hospital itself,
if private, is not a hospital at all, but a nursing-home, and its trained
nurses are plain nurses, or hospital nurses, or maybe nursing sisters.
And the white-clad young gentlemen who make love to them are
not studying medicine but walking the hospitals. Similarly, an
English law student does not study law, but reads the law.

If an English boy goes to a public school, it is not a sign that he
is getting his education free, but that his father is paying a good
round sum for it and is accepted as a gentleman. A public school
over there corresponds to our prep school; it is a place maintained

9 The verb to crawfish, of course, is also unknown in England.

8 The differences between the nursery vocabulary in English and Ameri-
can deserve investigation, but are beyond the jurisdiction of a celibate
inquirer. I have been told by an Englishman that English babies do not
say choo-choo to designate a railroad train, but puff-puff.

AMERICAN AND ENGLISH TODAY 63

chiefly by endowments, wherein boys of the upper classes are pre-
pared for the universities. What we know as a public school is
called a board school or council school in England, not because
the pupils are boarded but because it is managed by a school board
or county council. The boys in a public (i.e., private) school are
divided, not into classes, or grades, but into forms, which are num-
bered, the lowest being the first form. The benches they sit on
are also called forms. An English boy whose father is unable to
pay for his education goes first into a babies' class (a kindergarten
is always a private school) in a primary or infants' school. He
moves thence to class one, class two, class three and class four, and
then into the junior school or public elementary school, where he
enters the first standard. Until now boys and girls have sat to-
gether in class, but hereafter they are separated, the boy going to a
boys' school and the girl to a girls'. He goes up a standard a year.
At the third or fourth standard, for the first time, he is put under
a male teacher. He reaches the seventh standard, if he is bright,
at the age of 12, and then goes into what is known as the ex-seventh.
If he stays at school after this he goes into the ex-ex-seventh. But
many leave the public elementary school at the ex-seventh and go
into the secondary school, which is what Americans call a high-
school. "The lowest class in a secondary school," says an English
correspondent, "is known as the third form. In this class the boy
from the public elementary school meets boys from private prepara-
tory schools, who usually have an advantage over him, being armed
with the Greek alphabet, the first twenty pages of 'French Without
Tears/ the fact that Balbus built a wall, and the fact that lines
equal to the same line are equal to one another. But usually the
public elementary school boy conquers these disabilities by the end
of his first high-school year, and so wins a place in the upper fourth
form, while his wealthier competitors grovel in the lower fourth.
In schools where the fagging system prevails the fourth is the lowest
form that is fagged. The lower fifth is the retreat of the un-
scholarly. The sixth form is the highest. Those who fail in their
matriculation for universities or who wish to study for the civil
service or pupil teachers1 examinations go into a thing called the
remove, which is less a class than a state of mind. Here are the
Brahmins, the contemplative Olympians, the prefects, the lab.
monitors. The term public elementary school is recent. I* was
invented when the old board school system was abolished about

64 H. L. MENCKEN

1906. But the term standard is ancient." The principal of an
English public (i.e., private) school is a head-master, or head-
mistress, but in a council school he or she may be a principal. The
lower pedagogues used to be ushers, but are now assistant masters
(or mistresses). The titular head of a university is a chancellor or
rector.4 He is always some eminent public man, and a vice-
chancellor or vice-rector performs his duties. The head of a mere
college may be a president, principal, master, warden, rector, dean
or provost.

At the universities the students are not divided into freshmen,
sophomores, juniors and seniors, as with us, but are simply first-
year-men, second-year-men, and so on, though a fir st-y ear-man is
sometimes a fresher. Such distinctions, however, are not as im-
portant in England as in America; members of the university (they
are called members, not students) do not flock together according
to seniority, and there is no regulation forbidding an upper class-
man, or even a graduate, to be polite to a student just entered. An
English university man does not study; he reads. He knows nothing
of frats, class-days, senior-proms and such things; save at Cam-
bridge and Dublin he does not even speak of a commencement.
On the other hand his daily speech is full of terms unintelligible
to an American student, for example, wrangler, tripos, head, pass-
degree and don. . . .

The common objects and phenomena of nature are often differ-
ently named in England and America. Such Americanisms as creek
and run, for small streams, are practically unknown in England,
and the English moor and downs early disappeared from American.
The Englishman knows the meaning of sound (e.g., Long Island
Sound), but he nearly always uses channel in place of it. In the
same way the American knows the meaning of the English bog,
but rejects the English distinction between it and swamp, and
almost always uses swamp or marsh (often elided to ma'sh). The
Englishman seldom, if ever, describes a severe storm as a hurricane,
a cyclone, a tornado, or a blizzard. He never uses cold-snap, cloud-
burst or under the weather. He does not say that the temperature
is 29 degrees (Fahrenheit) or that the thermometer or the mercury

*This title has been borrowed by some of the American universities,
e.g., Chancellor Day of Syracuse. But the usual title remains president.
On the Continent it is rector.

AMERICAN AND ENGLISH TODAY 65

is at 29 degrees, but that there are three degrees of frost. He calls
ice water iced-water. . . .

The English have an ecclesiastical vocabulary with which we
are almost unacquainted, and it is in daily use, for the church bulks
large in public affairs over there. Such terms as vicar, canon,
verger, prebendary, primate, curate, noncomformist, dissenter, con-
vocation, minister, chapter, crypt, living, presentation, glebe, bene-
fice, locum tenens, suffragan, almoner, dean and pluralist are to be
met with in the English newspapers constantly, but on this side of
the water they are seldom encountered. Nor do we hear much of
matins, lauds, lay-readers, ritualism and the liturgy. The English
use of holy orders is also strange to us. They do not say that a
young man is studying for the ministry, but that he is reading for
holy orders. They do not say that he is ordained, but that he
takes orders. Save he be in the United Free Church of Scotland,
he is never a minister, though the term appears in the Book of
Common Prayer; save he be a nonconformist, he is never a pastor;
a clergyman of the Establishment is always either a rector, a vicar
or a curate, and colloquially a parson. . . .

In English usage, to proceed, the word directly is always used
to signify immediately; in American a contingency gets into it, and
it may mean no more than soon. In England quite means "com-
pletely, wholly, entirely, altogether, to the utmost extent, nothing
short of, in the fullest sense, positively, absolutely" ; in America it
is conditional, and means only nearly, approximately, substantially,
as in "he sings quite well." An Englishman does not say "I will
pay you up" for an injury, but "I will pay you back." He doesn't
look up a definition in a dictionary; he looks it out. He doesn't
say, being ill, "I am getting on well," but "I am going on well."
He doesn't use the American "different from" or "different than";
he uses "different to." He never adds the pronoun in such locutions
as "it hurts me" but says simply, "it hurts." He never "catches
up with you" on the street; he "catches you up." He never says
"are you through?" but "have you finished?" He never uses to
notify as a transitive verb; an official act may be notified, but not
a person. He never uses gotten as the perfect participle of get; he
always uses plain got? An English servant never washes the dishes;
she always washes the dinner or tea things. She doesn't livs out,

5 But nevertheless he uses begotten, not begot.

66 H. L. MENCKEN

but goes into service. Her beau is not her fellow, but her young
man. She does not keep company with him but walks out with
him. She is never hired, but always engaged; only inanimate
things, such as a hall or cab, are hired. When her wages are in-
creased she does not get a raise, but a rise. When her young man
goes into the army he does not join it; he joins up.

That an Englishman always calls out "I say!" and not simply
"say!" when he desires to attract a friend's attention or register
a protestation of incredulity — this perhaps is too familiar to need
notice. His hear, hear! and oh, oh! are also well known. He is
much less prodigal with good-bye than the American; he uses
good-day and good-afternoon far more often. A shop-assistant
would never say good-bye to a customer. To an Englishman it
would have a subtly offensive smack; good-afternoon would be
more respectful. Various very common American phrases are quite
unknown to him, for example, over his signature, on time and
planted to corn. The first-named he never uses, and he has no
equivalent for it; an Englishman who issues a signed statement
simply makes it in writing. He knows nothing of our common
terms of disparagement, such as kike, wop, yap and rube. His pet-
name for a tiller of the soil is not Rube or Cy, but Hodge. When
he goes gunning he does not call it hunting, but shooting; hunting
is reserved for the chase of the fox. When he goes to a dentist he
does not have his teeth filled, but stopped. He knows nothing oi
European plan hotels, or of day-coaches, or of baggage-checks.

An intelligent Englishwoman, coming to America to live, told
me that the two things which most impeded her first communica-
tions with untraveled Americans, even above the gross differences
between English and American pronunciation and intonation, were
the complete absence of the general utility adjective jolly from the
American vocabulary, and the puzzling omnipresence and versatility
of the verb to fix. In English colloquial usage jolly means almost
anything; it intensifies all other adjectives, even including miserable
and homesick. An Englishman is jolly bored, jolly hungry or jolly
well tired ; his wife is jolly sensible ; his dog is jolly keen ; the prices
he pays for things are jolly dear (never steep or stiff or high: all
Americanisms). But he has no noun to match the American
proposition, meaning proposal, business, affair, case, consideration,
plan, theory, solution and what not: only the German zug can be

AMERICAN AND ENGLISH TODAY 67

ranged beside it.6 And he Las no verb in such wide practise as
to fix. In his speech it means only to make fast or to determine.
In American it may mean to repair, as in "the plumber fixed the
pipe"; to dress, as in "Mary fixed her hair"; to prepare, as in "the
cook is fixing the gravy"; to bribe, as in "the judge was fixed"; to
settle, as in "the quarrel was fixed up" ; to heal, as in "the doctor
fixed his boil" ; to finish, as in "Murphy fixed Sweeney in the third
round"; to be well-to-do, as in "John is "well-fixed" ; to arrange,
as in "I fixed up the quarrel" ; to be drunk, as in "the whiskey fixed
him"; to punish, as in "I'll fix him"; and to correct, as in "he
fixed my bad Latin." Moreover, it is used in all its English senses.
An Englishman never goes to a dentist to have his teeth fixed. He
does not fix the fire ; he makes it up, or mends it. He is never well-
fixed, either in money or by liquor.7 The American use of to run
is also unfamiliar to Englishmen. They never run a hotel, or a rail-
road ; they always keep it or manage it.

The English use quite a great deal more than we do, and, as we
have seen, in a different sense. Quite rich, in American, means
tolerably rich, richer than most ; quite so, in English, is identical in
meaning with exactly so. In American just is almost equivalent to
the English quite, as in just lovely. Thornton shows that this use
of just goes back to 1794. The word is also used in place of exactly
in other ways, as in just in time, just how many and just what do
you mean? Two other adverbs, right and good, are used in Ameri-
can in senses strange to an Englishman. Thornton shows that the
excessive use of right, as in right awayf right good and right now,
was already widespread in the United States early in the last cen-
tury; his first example is dated 1818. He believes that the locution

*This specimen is from the Congressional Record of Dec. n, 1917: "I
do not like to be butting into this proposition, but I looked upon this post-
office business as a purely business proposition" The speaker was "Hon."
Homer P. Snyder, of New York. In the Record of Jan. 12, 1918, p. 8294,
proposition is used as a synonym for state of affairs. See also a speech
by Senator Norris on Feb. 21, 1921, Congressional Record, p. 3741 et seq.
He uses proposition in five or six different senses. See also a speech by
Senator Borah, Congressional Record, May 13, 1921, p. 1395, col. x.

'Already in 1855 Bristed was protesting that to fix was having "more
than its legitimate share of work all over the Union." "In English con-
versation," he said, "the panegyrical adjective of all work is nice; in
America it is fine" This* was before the adoption of jolly and its
analogues, ripping, stunning, rattling, etc. Perhaps to fix was helped into
American by the German word.

68 H. L. MENCKEN

was "possibly imported from the southwest of Ireland." Whatever
its origin, it quickly attracted the attention of English visitors.
Dickens noted right away as an almost universal Americanism dur-
ing his first American tour, in 1842, and poked fun at it in the
second chapter of "American Notes." Right is used as a synonym
for directly , as in right away, right off, right now and right on time]
.for moderately, as in right well, right smart, right good and right
often, and in place of precisely, as in right there. . . .

It would be easy to pile up words and phrases that are used in
both America and England, but with different meanings. I have
already alluded to tariff-reform. Open-shop is another. It means,
in England, what an American union man (English: trades-
unionist) calls a closed-shop. And closed-shop, in England, means
what an American calls an open-shop \ Finally, there is the verb-
phrase, to carry on. In the United States it means to make a great
pother ; in England it means to persevere. . . . But the record must
have an end.

COBBLESTONE STYLE1

To the Editor of The Saturday Review.
Sir:

Some time since you said in a Sermon on Style in the Review,
"Modern English is lacking in eloquence/' and "Science, having
come close to metaphysics, needs a new diction." How I pricked up
my ears ! For five or six years I have been noticing how poor was
the prevalent quality of expository writing, and asking myself would
nothing ever be done about it by the critics. At last you — and who
better qualified — were speaking to this point of rhetoric. "The
priests of the twentieth century babble in a jargon that has lost its
vitality (Cheers!) and the prophets are tongue-tied (Hear, hear!)
with a language that can say everything but what they most deeply
feel and mean." You were too kind. Their "language of the
machine" can say scarcely anything. Surely, surely, everyone sensi-
tive to style feels as I do, that the jargon grows steadily worse, that
one is bewildered, balked, estopped by the turgid rhetoric that pre-
vails in current American writing.

Here are a few examples — I have been collecting them for two
years, and my dossier bulges with choice specimens culled from per-
fectly reputable publications.

If there were a uniform condition with reference to the dis-
tribution of population it would be necessary to move forward
to a recognition of the desirability of such a readjustment.

The book provides them with a background, and an account
of existing reality such as exists nowhere else in readableness,
in authority of presentation, and in its underlying warning
to civilization.

The spiritual or esthetic value of the new wants is thus
made subordinate to the possibility of their being filled in
quantity.

When style is as bad as that we may look for the remedy on an

lFrom The Saturday Review of Literature, June 4, 1932. Reprinted by
permission of the author and the publishers.

70 COBBLESTONE STYLE

elementary level. Your sermon pleads for "a style made eloquent
by spiritual power." Amen and amen. But there again it seems to
me you were too kind. You were considering bad writing from
the point of view of mind and soul. Considering it from the point
of view of grammar I have seen one important defect to be some-
thing as simple as rough roads, and the cure something as feasible
as cement.

Almost everyone who writes to inform, whether on politics, sci-
ence, sociology, philosophy, or education — almost everyone nowa-
days overworks the noun construction. Verbal nouns, abstract
nouns, noun clauses introduced by "that" and "the fact that" —
these substantives are crowded so closely together that thought can-
not move ahead. Sentence after sentence presents such a jam of
noun constructions that the ideas are bumped to a standstill or a
breakdown. While nouns are overworked, verbs — active verbs with
personal subjects — are few and far between. This is the sort of
thing: The cause of the deterioration in the quality of the style of
the writers of America is the prevalence of their employment of the
substantive and their neglect of the use of the verb. Bump, bump,
bump— one verb, is, and twelve nouns. Cobblestone rhetoric, I call
it.

Why is there so much of it? The typewriter? German influ-
ence ? The jungle of new facts in our modern world ? Interesting
speculations these, but I am concerned only to set forth one simple
proposition — that too many substantives ruin style. Here are more
examples, out of their context to be sure, but perfectly typical of
what lies all about us.

The abundance of the next ten years already had its incep-
tion in the urgent need for replenishment of automobiles and
in construction and equipment wherein necessitous cessation
in favor of war works had built up a voluminous peace-time
demand.

The whole question of Anglo-Egyptian relations is bound
up in this difference of opinion, which may precipitate the
long-expected liquidation of outstanding differences between
the two governments.

Nothing could show more graphically the remarkable gulf

COBBLESTONE STYLE 71

of separation which has sprung up under the Soviet experi-
ment between Russia and all the other nations of the world.

Can a gulf spring up? Or might there be a gulf of union, pet -
haps?

Mistakes like that are appallingly common. These abstract nouns
are dangerous cobblestones. The famous old mixed metaphor of the
Irish orator amused us in our school days, — "I smelt a rat, T .aw
it floating in the air, and I nipped it in the bud," but one could
easily get away with this translation of it: "By my efforts I feel
that fruition has been denied to the possibilities inherent in a situa-
tion whose imminence was perceptible by its suspicious redolence."
That sounds quite the usual thing. An eminent philosopher perpe-
trated this last March — "The introduc/fow of the idea of mutarion
marks nothing less than a revolution in our entire scheme of inter-
preta//ow. What also is the nation of emergent evolution save
recognif/o/i of the novel, unexpected, unpredictable?" Why, oh
why did he not make the last noun appari/ion ? He must be com-
pletely deaf to the music of words.

Of course, egregious blunders, tautologies, verbosities, mistakes of
all kinds have always been common and will always need to be
fought. And editors and readers should wake up. Cobblestone
rhetoric is far too common. Perhaps my dossier of specimens should
be printed as an exercise book. Translating a few passages a day
is excellent training. And by way of refreshment afterwards I
recommend a page or two of William James. There is a style!
Even when he is defining philosophical concepts and necessarily
carries a boatload of abstractions his good verbs dip and push and
swing like well-handled oars.

I have been interested to note that English writing inflicts much
less suffering of the sort we are considering than does American.
We all know vaguely, uneasily, but very surely that English men
and women use the English language a thousand times more skil-
fully than we do. (Some of us even know why.) Last fall, ana-
lyzing two utterances dealing with the present crisis, the one by
Walter Lippmann, the other by Ramsay MacDonald, I found that
the comparison squared nicely with my grammatical theory. In 500
lines the Englishman used 2 verbal nouns, 97 nouns, 5 substantive
clauses, and 41 verbs; the American had 8 verbal nouns, 117 nouns,

72 COBBLESTONE STYLE

10 substantive clauses, and 23 verbs. Mr. MacDonald said: "For-
tunately, before the crisis came the new government had launched
both an economy bill and a supplementary budget, so that every one
knew that the British people were determined to reduce expendi-
tures, stop borrowing, and balance their budget on sound financial
principles. That gave confidence and enabled us to meet what was
in store for us." Mr. Lippmann put it thus: "We may confidently
assume that the specific measures agreed upon are fully adequate to
the immediate emergency providing the country believes that unity
of action — unity and action — are now agreed upon." Mr. Lipp-
mann writes vigorously, ably, often beautifully, but even with him I
swear I have my quarrel just on these four rhetorical points.

So, gentlemen of the pen and typewriter, critics, philosophers and
thinkers, I adjure you, purge yourselves of this plague. Pull up the
cobblestones, pour in hot tar or flowing cement. There is a royal
road of rhetoric. Watch yourselves constantly, rewrite firmly every
sentence if necessary. Note the substantive clauses, then cast them
out. Excise "the fact that," "the question whether," "the problem
of." Avoid those words that end in -tion, -ity, -ment, -ness, -ance.
Cut out the noun constructions that are clogging and clotting and
curdling your language. Use clauses that begin with when, if,
while, so that. Use active verbs. Verbs, if they are active, will
often be figurative. So much the better for you. Much that you
have been saying will remain unsaid. So much the better for us.
When you really have something to say, Style may descend upon
you from above.

MARJORIE TRUE GREGG
South Tamworth, N. H.

THE RHYTHM OF PROSE1
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM

No PROSE is without rhythmic curves; but the best prose, that
which always keeps in view the best ideals of prose, carefully avoids
consecutive repetitions of the same rhythmic patterns. It is the
distinction of verse to follow a chosen pattern, with due regard to
the artistic principles of variety and uniformity; it is the distinction
of prose to accomplish its object, whether artistic or utilitarian,
without encroaching on the boundaries of its neighbor. Prose may
be as "poetic," as charged with powerful emotion, as possible, but it
remains true prose only when it refuses to borrow aids from the
characteristic excellences of verse.

To be sure, it is not always easy to avoid regular patterns in
writing the most ordinary prose. They come uncalled; they seem
to be inherent in the language. Here is, chosen casually, the first
sentence of a current news item, written surely without artistic
elaboration, and subjected, moreover, to the uncertainties of cable
transmission. It was no doubt farthest from the correspondent's
intention to write "numerous" prose; but notice how the sentence
may be divided into a series of rhythmic groups of two stresses each,
with a fairly regular number of accompanying unstressed syllables:

A general mobilization / in Syria has been ordered / as a
reply to the French / ultimatum to King Feisal / that he ac-
quiesce in the French / mandate for Syria, / according to a
dispatch / to the London Times I from Jerusalem.

No one would read the sentence with a very clear feeling of this
definite movement; in fact, to do so rather obscures the meaning.
But the potential rhythm is there, and the reader with a keen
rhythmic sense will be to some extent aware of it.
Again, there is in the following sentence from Disraeli's Endymion

1 From The Principles of English Versif, cation, Harvard University
Press, 1924. Reprinted by permission of thr A -olishers.

74 PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM

a latent rhythm which actually affects the purely logical manner of
reading it :

She persisted in her dreams of riding upon elephants.

Here one almost inevitably pauses after dreams (or prolongs the
word beyond its natural length), though there is no logical reason
for doing so. Why? Partly, at least, because persisted in her
dreams and of riding upon el- have the same "swing," and the
parallelism of mere sound seems to require the pause.

For these reasons, then, among others, the most "natural" spon-
taneous and straightforward prose is not always the best. Study
and careful revision are necessary in order to avoid an awkward
and unpleasant monotony of rhythmic repetition, and at the same
time obtain a flow of sound which will form a just musical accom-
paniment to the ideas expressed. Only the great prose masters have
done this with complete success. Of the three following examples
the first is from Bacon; the second is from Milton, who as a poet
might have been expected to fall into metre while writing emotional
prose; the third is from Walter Pater — the famous translation into
words of the Mona Lisa painted by Leonardo da Vinci. The first
is elaborate but unaffected, the second is probably spontaneous, the
third highly studied.

This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst
the schoolmen: who having sharp and strong wits, and abun-
dance of leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits
being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle
their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of
monasteries and colleges, and knowing little history, either of
nature or time, did out of no great quantity of matter and in-
finite agitation of wit spin out unto us those laborious webs
of learning which are extant in their books. For the wit and
mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contempla-
tion of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff
and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider
worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed
cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread
and work, but of no substance or profit. — Advancement of
Learning, Bk. I, iv. 5.

Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine
Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on;

THE RHYTHM OF PROSE 75

but when he ascended, and his Apostles after him were laid
asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who,
as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his con-
spirators how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin
Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and
scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since,
the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the
careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris,
went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they
could find them. — Areopagitica.

Hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are
come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty
wrought from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell
by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and ex-
quisite passions. . . . She is older than the rocks among
which she sits ; like the vampire, she has been dead many times,
and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in
deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked
for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and, as Leda, was
the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother
of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of
lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it
has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids
and the hands. — "Leonardo da Vinci," in The Renaissance.

Here no continuous patterns are recognizable, yet the whole is
felt to be musically and appropriately rhythmic. In the next ex-
cerpt, however (from John Donne), and in many passages in the
Authorized Version of the Psalms, of Job, of the Prophets, there is
a visible balance of phrases and of clauses, a long undulating swing
which one perceives at once, though only half consciously, and which
approaches, if it does not actually possess, the intentional coincidence
of cadenced prose.

If some king of the earth have so large an extent of
dominion in north and south as that he hath winter and sum-
mer together in his dominions; so large an extent east and
west as that he hath day and night together in his dominions,
much more hath God mercy and justice together. He brought
light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; He can bring
thy summer out of winter though thou have no spring; though
in the ways of fortune, or of understanding, or conscience,
thou have been benighted till now, wintered and frozen,

76 PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM

smothered and stupefied till now, now God comes to thee, not
as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring,
but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the
sheaves in harvest to fill all penuries. All occasions invite
His mercies, and all times are His seasons.

DIVERGENT THEORIES OF PROSE STYLE1

ODELL SHEPARD

IF ONE were to judge from the books and articles about prose
style coming from the press in steadily increasing numbers, he
would suppose that this form of discourse, which M. Jourdain
learned with surprise that he had been using all his days quite
naturally and without effort, is almost as difficult to define as poetry
has proved to be. The divergency of opinion among those best
qualified to speak may be shown most clearly by considering what a
few of them have said about the excellencies of style and the ways
in which these excellencies may be attained. It will be most ex-
peditious, perhaps, to set down first two sharply opposed opinions
and then to attempt a resolution of their differences in the hope that
the truth may be found somewhere between them.

We may best begin with Stevenson, who gives us the most fa-
miliar example of one extreme. "I was always busy," he says, "on
my own private end, which was to learn to write. As I walked, I
was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words ; when I sat by
the roadside, I would either read, or a pencil and a penny version-
book would be in my hand, to note down the features of the scene
or commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words.
And what I thus wrote was for no ulterior use, it was written con-
sciously for practice. Whenever I read a book or a passage that
particularly pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect
rendered with propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous
force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once
and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I knew
it; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful and always unsuc-
cessful; but at least in these vain bouts, I got some practice in
rhythm, in harmony, in construction and the co-ordination of parts.
Nor is there anything here that should astonish the considerate.

1 From the Christian Science Monitor, August 26, 1925. Reprinted by
permission of the publishers and the author.

78 ODELL SHEPARD

Before he can tell what cadences he truly prefers the student should
have tried all that are possible ; before he can choose and preserve a
fitting key of words, he should long have practiced the literary
scales; and it is only after years of such gymnastics that he can sit
down at last, legions of words swarming to his call, dozens of turns
of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice, and he himself
knowing what he wants to do and able to do it."

There is the famous passage which has been quoted in thousands
of classrooms as the final authority on learning to write. What we
have particularly to notice in it is not the well-known theory of
imitation, but the pervading presupposition that style may and
should be prepared beforehand — that is, is not provided by the sub-
ject, but by the writer himself as something super-added. It was
this aspect of Stevenson's theory which drew the fire of Samuel
Butler, who serves very well as an exponent of the opposite extreme.

"Men like Newman and R. L. Stevenson," Butler wrote in his
Notebooks, "seem to have taken pains to acquire what they called a
style as a preliminary measure — as something that they had to form
before their writings could be of any value. I should like to put it
on record that I never took the smallest pains with my style, have
never thought about it, and do not know or want to know whether
it is style at all or whether any man can take thought for his style
without loss to himself and his readers."

These remarks are likely to seem to most readers nearer the truth
than Stevenson's, for the aesthetic excesses of the eighteen-nineties
have brought the self-conscious prose stylist at least temporarily
into disrepute. Butler's influence has been greatly corroborated,
moreover, by that of his disciple, Mr. Bernard Shaw, of whom Mr.
Yeats has written that, "he was right to claim Samuel Butler as his
master, for Butler was the first Englishman to make the discovery
that it is possible to write with great effect without music, without
style either good or bad, to eliminate from the mind all emotional
implication and to prefer plain water to every vintage." (One had
supposed that a man named De Foe made much the same discovery
two hundred years ago, but it is never wise to hold poets down to
facts.) Mr. Yeats shows us how much he admires this styleless
prose of Butler and Shaw by saying that after attending a per-
formance of one of the latter 's plays he was pursued for some time

DIVERGENT THEORIES OF PROSE STYLE 79

by visions of "a sewing-machine that clicked and shone, but the
incredible thing was that the machine smiled, smiled perpetually."

Here, then, are two very sharply opposed theories of prose style.
On the one hand is Stevenson's conception of it as something de-
cidedly "precious," patiently and laboriously acquired, and laid away
in lavender until needed. On the other hand is the sewing-machine
style of Butler and Shaw, brisk, efficient, purely utilitarian, trimmed
down remorselessly to the barest needs of the day's work. Now
who shall arbitrate? — for surely, between these widely sundered
extremes there must be some golden mean.

Every well-trained reader, to say nothing of writers, must feel
instinctively that neither Stevenson nor Butler came near stating
the truth about prose style. Stevenson's own writing shows that
when it came to practice he threw his theory to the winds and let
his style grow, as all good style must, out of the subject matter,
with the result that his blithe essay on Idlers, for example, seems
to come from a pen totally different from that which traced the
somber and sumptuous rhythms of Pulvis et Umbra. As for Butler,
he almost completely cancels the passage quoted above in a para-
graph which immediately precedes it in the Note-Books, saying that
"a man ought to take a great deal of pains to write clearly, tersely
and euphoniously ; he will write many a sentence three or four times
over ... he will be at great pains to see that he does not repeat
himself, to arrange his matter in the way that shall best enable the
reader to master it, to cut out superfluous words and, even more,
to eschew irrelevant matter." If this is not "taking pains with
style," what shall we call it? Butler's mistake lies in a radical con-
fusion, which he was not the first nor the last to make, between
"style" and "rhetoric," by which latter word we properly refer to
a writing cadenced, connotative, and highly emotional. Of rhetoric
in this high and worthy sense Butler's writing is unfortunately
devoid, because he had neither the intensity nor the elevation of
feeling which demands that kind of heightened utterance ; but style
he had abundantly, and he toiled to get it.

The actual practice of Stevenson and Butler alike was far more
sound, it is important to observe, than their theories; for in their
writing they almost always made the manner conform to the mat-
ter, whatever it might be. Butler, who had seldom anything other

8o ODELL SHEPARD

than clear thought and information to convey, quite properly used
for his purpose a plain pedestrian prose wholly admirable in its
straight-grained simplicity. Stevenson, with his far greater range
of feeling and of artistic intention, needed and achieved, in addition
to this, a cadenced prose which may be called rhetoric, upon which
he depended in that large part of his work in which thought and
feeling are mingled together. Both of these men must be considered
masters of style because their manner is almost always nicely ad-
justed to their matter.

From the practice of these two conflicting theorists, therefore, we
may derive a sound and middle theory of style which makes ade-
quacy, or, as one might say, strict and thoroughgoing honesty, the
supreme test of good prose. A main merit of this theory is that it
leaves to what we have called "rhetoric" its proper range and scope,
as few other theories have done. Much nonsense has been talked
and written lately about rhetoric, as though it were always an
ostentatious or dishonest kind of writing. Of course it may be that,
but it is more to our present purpose to observe that in many a
mood, not of all but of some writers, anything short of a heightened
and cadenced prose fails in adequacy and is therefore quite as dis-
honest and bad as a self-conscious and strutting style can ever be.
For Stevenson to have written Pulvis et Umbra in the plain man-
ner of Butler would have been quite as wrong as for Butler to have
borrowed Stevenson's plumes for Erewhon. Plainness, in other
words, is no more "the only wear" than motley. Sir Thomas
Browne would be masquerading in any other than his own gorgeous
robes. Fitness is all: plain prose for hodiernal needs, rhetoric for
the loftier slopes of experience, and verse for the mountain tops.

ON STYLE1
SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH

LOOKING back on a course of lectures which I deemed to be
accomplished; correcting them in print; revising them with all the
nervousness of a beginner; I have seemed to hear you complain —
"He has exhorted us to write accurately, appropriately; to eschew
Jargon; to be bold and essay Verse. He has insisted that Litera-
ture is a living art, to be practised. But just what we most needed
he has not told. At the final doorway to the secret he turned his
back and left us. Accuracy, propriety, perspicuity — these we may
achieve. But where has he helped us to write with beauty, with
charm, with distinction ? Where has he given us rules for what is
called Style in short ? — having attained which an author may count
himself set up in business."

Thus, Gentlemen, with my mind's ear I heard you reproaching
me. I beg you to accept what follows for my apology.

To begin with, let me plead that you have been told of one or
two things which Style is not] which have little or nothing to do
with Style, though sometimes vulgarly mistaken for it. Style, for
example, is not — can never be — extraneous Ornament. You re-
member, may be, the Persian lover whom I quoted to you out of
Newman : how to convey his passion he sought a professional letter-
writer and purchased a vocabulary charged with ornament, where-
with to attract the fair one as with a basket of jewels. Well, in
this extraneous, professional, purchased ornamentation, you have
something which Style is not: and if you here require a practical
rule of me, I will present you with this: "Whenever you feel an
impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it
— whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to
press. Murder your darlings" . . .

You have been told, I daresay often enough, that the business of
writing demands two — the author and the reader. Add to this

aFrom On the Art of Writing^ G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1916. Reprinted by
permission of the publishers.

82 SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH

what is equally obvious, that the obligation of courtesy rests first
with the author, who invites the seance, and commonly charges for
it. What follows, but that in speaking or writing we have an
obligation to put ourselves into the hearer's or reader's place ? It is
his comfort, his convenience, we have to consult. To express our-
selves is a very small part of the business: very small and almost
unimportant as compared with impressing ourselves : the aim of the
whole process being to persuade.

All reading demands an effort. The energy, the good-will which
a reader brings to the book is, and must be, partly expended in the
labour of reading, marking, learning, inwardly digesting what the
author means. The more difficulties, then, we authors obtrude on
him by obscure or careless writing, the more we blunt the edge of his
attention : so that if only in our own interest — though I had rather
keep it on the ground of courtesy — we should study to anticipate his
comfort.

But let me go a little deeper. You all know that a great part of
Lessing's argument in his Laokoon, on the essentials of Literature
as opposed to Pictorial Art or Sculpture, depends on this — that in
Pictorial Art or in Sculpture the eye sees, the mind apprehends, the
whole in a moment of time, with the correspondent disadvantage
that this moment of time is fixed and stationary; whereas in writ-
ing, whether in prose or in verse, we can only produce our effect by
a series of successive small impressions, dripping our meaning (so to
speak) into the reader's mind — with the correspondent advantage,
in point of vivacity, that our picture keeps moving all the while.
Now obviously this throws a greater strain on his patience whom
we address. Man at the best is a narrow-mouthed bottle. Through
the conduit of speech he can utter — as you, my hearers, can receive —
only one word at a time. In writing (as my old friend Professor
Minto used to say) you are as a commander filing out his battalion
through a narrow gate that allows only one man at a time to pass;
and your reader, as he receives the troops, has to reform and recon-
struct them. No matter how large or how involved the subject, it
can be communicated only in that way. You see, then, what an
obligation we owe to him of order and arrangement ; and why, apart
from felicities and curiosities of diction, the old rhetoricians laid
such stress upon order and arrangement as duties we owe to those
who honour us with their attention. "La clarte" says a French

ON STYLE 83

writer, "est la politesse!' X&puri KaLffx^yeLa Qve, recommends
Lucian. Pay your sacrifice to the Graces and to crx</^7€ta —
Clarity — first among the Graces.

What am I urging? "That Style in writing is much the same
thing as good manners in other human intercourse ?" Well, and
why not? At all events we have reached a point where Buffon's
often-quoted saying that "Style is the man himself" touches and
coincides with William of Wykeham's old motto that "Manners
makyth Man" ; and before you condemn my doctrine as inadequate
listen to this from Coventry Patmore, still bearing in mind that a
writer's main object is to impress his thought or vision upon his
hearer.

"There is nothing comparable for moral force to the charm of
truly noble manners. . . ."

I grant you, to be sure, that the claim to possess a Style must be
conceded to many writers — Carlyle is one — who take no care to put
listeners at their ease, but rely rather on native force of genius to
shock and astound. Nor will I grudge them your admiration. But
I do say that, as more and more you grow to value truth and the
modest grace of truth, it is less and less to such writers that you
will turn: and I say even more confidently that the qualities of
Style we allow them are not the qualities we should seek as a norm,
for they one and all offend against Art's true maxim of avoiding
excess.

And this brings me to the two great paradoxes of Style. For the
first (i), — although Style is so curiously personal and individual,
and although men are so variously built that no two in the world
carry away the same impressions from a show, there is always a
norm somewhere; in literature and art, as in morality. Yes, even
in man's most terrific, most potent inventions — when, for example,
in Hamlet or Lear Shakespeare seems to be breaking up the solid
earth under our feet — there is always some point and standard of
sanity — a Kent or an Horatio — to which all enormities and pas-
sionate errors may be referred; to which the agitated mind of the
spectator settles back as upon its centre of gravity, its pivot of
repose.

(2) The second paradox, though it is equally true, you may find
a little subtler. Yet it but applies to Art the simple truth of the
Gospel, that he who would save his soul must first lose it. Though
personality pervades Style and cannot be escaped, the first sin

84 SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH

against Style as against good Manners is to obtrude or exploit per-
sonality. The very greatest work in Literature — the Iliad, the
Odyssey, the Purgatorio, The Tempeft, Paradise Lostj the Republic,
Don Quixote — is all

Seraphically free
From taint of personality.

And Flaubert, that gladiator among artists, held that, at its high-
est, literary art could be carried into pure science. "I believe," said
he, "that great art is scientific and impersonal. You should by an
intellectual effort transport yourself into characters, not draw them
into yourself. That at least is the method." On the other hand,
says Goethe, "We should endeavour to use words that correspond
as closely as possible with what we feel, see, think, imagine, experi-
ence, and reason. It is an endeavour we cannot evade and must
daily renew." I call Flaubert's the better counsel, even though I
have spent a part of this lecture in attempting to prove it impossible.
It at least is noble, encouraging us to what is difficult. The
shrewder Goethe encourages us to exploit ourselves to the top of
our bent. I think Flaubert would have hit the mark if for "im-
personal" he had substituted "disinterested."

For — believe me, Gentlemen — so far as Handel stands above
Chopin, as Velasquez above Greuze, even so far stand the great
masculine objective writers above all who appeal to you by parade
of personality or private sentiment.

Mention of these great masculine "objective" writers brings me
to my last word : which is, "Steep yourselves in them : habitually
bring all to the test of them : for while you cannot escape the fate of
all style, which is to be personal, the more of catholic manhood you
inherit from those great loins the more you will assuredly beget."

This then is Style. As technically manifested in Literature it is
the power to touch with ease, grace, precision, any note in the gamut
of human thought or emotion.

But essentially it resembles good manners. It comes of endeav-
ouring to understand others, of thinking for them rather than for
yourself — of thinking, that is, with the heart as well as the head.
It gives rather than receives; it is nobly careless of thanks or ap-
plause, not being fed by these but rather sustained and continually
refreshed by an inward loyalty to the best. Yet, like "character" it

ON STYLE 85

has its altar within ; to that retires for counsel, from that fetches its
illumination, to ray outwards. Cultivate, Gentlemen, that habit of
withdrawing to be advised by the best. So, says Fenelon, "y°u will
find yourself infinitely quieter, your words will be fewer and more
effectual ; and while you make less ado, what you do will be more
profitable."

VOLTAIRE1
G. L. STRACHEY

CURIOUSLY enough . . . the work upon which Voltaire's reputa-
tion was originally built up has now sunk into almost complete
oblivion. It was as a poet, and particularly as a tragic poet, that he
won his fame ; and it was primarily as a poet that he continued to
be known to his contemporaries during the first sixty years of his
life (1694-1754). But to-day his poetry — the serious part of it, at
least, — is never read, and his tragedies — except for an occasional
revival — are never acted. As a dramatist Voltaire is negligible for
the very reasons that made him so successful in his own day. It
was not his object to write great drama, but to please his audience :
he did please them; and, naturally enough, he has not pleased
posterity. His plays are melodramas — the melodramas of a very
clever man with a great command of language, an acute eye for
stage-effect, and a consummate knowledge of the situations and
sentiments which would go down with his Parisian public. They
are especially remarkable for their wretched psychology. It seems
well-nigh incredible that Voltaire's pasteboard imitations of hu-
manity should ever have held a place side by side with the profound
presentments of Racine; yet so it was, and Voltaire was acclaimed
as the equal — or possibly the triumphant rival of his predecessor.
All through the eighteenth century this singular absence of psycho-
logical insight may be observed.

The verse of the plays is hardly better than the character-
drawing. It is sometimes good rhetoric; it is never poetry. The
same may be said of La Henriade, the National Epic which placed
Voltaire, in the eyes of his admiring countrymen, far above Milton
and Dante, and, at least, on a level with Virgil and Homer. The
true gifts displayed in this unreadable work were not poetical at all,
but historical. The notes and dissertations appended to it showed
that Voltaire possessed a real grasp of the principles of historical

1 From Landmarks in French Literature, Henry Holt and Company, Home
University Library, 1912. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.

VOLTAIRE 87

method — principles which he put to a better use a few years later
in his brilliant narrative, based on original research, of the life of
Charles XII.

During this earlier period of his activity, Voltaire seems to have
been trying — half unconsciously, perhaps — to discover and to ex-
press the fundamental quality of his genius. What was that qual-
ity? Was he first and foremost a dramatist, or an epic poet, or a
writer of light verse, or an historian, or even perhaps a novelist?
In all these directions he was working successfully — yet without ab-
solute success. For, in fact, at bottom, he was none of these things :
the true nature of his spirit was not revealed in them. When the
revelation did come, it came as the result of an accident. At the
age of thirty he was obliged, owing to a quarrel with a powerful
nobleman, to leave France and take up his residence in England.
The three years that he passed there had an immense effect upon his
life. In those days England was very little known to Frenchmen;
the barrier which had arisen during the long war between the two
peoples was only just beginning to be broken down; and when
Voltaire arrived, it was almost in the spirit of a discoverer. What
he found filled him with astonishment and admiration. Here, in
every department of life, were to be seen all the blessings so con-
spicuously absent in France. Here were wealth, prosperity, a con-
tented people, a cultivated nobility, a mild and just administration,
and a bursting energy which manifested itself in a multitude of
ways — in literature, in commerce, in politics, in scientific thought.
And all this had come into existence in a nation which had curbed
the power of the monarchy, done away with priestcraft, established
the liberty of the press, set its face against every kind of bigotry and
narrow-mindedness, and, through the means of free institutions,
taken up the task of governing itself. The inference was obvious:
in France also, like causes would lead to like results. When he was
allowed to return to his own country, Voltaire published the out-
come of his observations and reflections in his Lettres Philosophiques,
where for the first time his genius displayed itself in its essential
form. The book contains an account of England as Voltaire saw it,
from the social rather than from the political point of view. Eng-
lish life is described in its actuality, detailed, vivid, and various; we
are shown Quakers and members of Parliament, merchants and
philosophers; we come in for the burial of Sir Isaac Newton; we
go to a performance of Julius Caesar; inoculation is explained to

88 G. L. STRACHEY

us; we are given elaborate discussions of English literature and
English science, of the speculations of Bolingbroke and the theories
of Locke. The Letters may still be read with pleasure and instruc-
tion; they are written in a delightful style, running over with
humour and wit, revealing here and there remarkable powers of
narrative, and impregnated through and through with a wonderful
mingling of gaiety, irony, and common sense. They are journalism
of genius ; but they are something more besides. They are informed
with a high purpose, and a genuine love of humanity and the truth.
The French authorities soon recognised this; they perceived that
every page contained a cutting indictment of their system of govern-
ment; and they adopted their usual method in such a case. The
sale of the book was absolutely prohibited throughout France, and
a copy of it solemnly burnt by the common hangman.

It was only gradually that the new views, of which Montesquieu
and Voltaire were the principal exponents, spread their way among
the public; and during the first half of the century many writers
remained quite unaffected by them. , . .

As every year passed there were new accessions to ... the array
of writers, who waged their war against ignorance and prejudice
with an ever-increasing fury. A war indeed it was. On one side
were all the forces of intellect ; on the other was all the mass of en-
trenched and powerful dullness. In reply to the brisk fire of the
Philosophes — argument, derision, learning, wit — the authorities in
State and Church opposed the more serious artillery of censorships,
suppressions, imprisonments, and exiles. There was hardly an
eminent writer in Paris who was unacquainted with the inside of
the Conciergerie or the Bastille. It was only natural, therefore,
that the struggle should have become a highly embittered one; and
that at times, in the heat of it, the party whose watchword was a
hatred of fanaticism, should have grown itself fanatical. But it
was clear that the powers of reaction were steadily losing ground ;
they could only assert themselves spasmodically; their hold upon
public opinion was slipping away. Thus the efforts of the band of
writers in Paris seemed about to be crowned with success. But this
result had not been achieved by their efforts alone. In the midst of
the conflict they had received the aid of a powerful auxiliary, who
had thrown himself with the utmost vigour into the struggle, and,
far as he was from the centre of operations, had assumed supreme
command.

VOLTAIRE 89

It was Voltaire. This great man had now entered upon the
final, and by far the most important, period of his astonishing
career. It is a curious fact that if Voltaire had died at the age of
sixty he would now only be remembered as a writer of talent and
versatility, who had given conspicuous evidence, in one or two
works, of a liberal and brilliant intelligence, but who had enjoyed
a reputation in his own age, as a poet and dramatist, infinitely
beyond his deserts. He entered upon the really significant period of
his activity at an age when most men have already sought repose.
Nor was this all ; for, by a singular stroke of fortune, his existence
was prolonged far beyond the common span ; so that, in spite of the
late hour of its beginning, the most fruitful and important epoch of
his life extended over a quarter of a century (1754-78). That he
ever entered upon this last period of his career seems in itself to
have depended as much on accident as his fateful residence in Eng-
land. After the publication of the Lettres Philosophiques, he had
done very little to fulfil the promise of that work. He had retired
to the country house of Madame du Chatelet, where he had de-
voted himself to science, play-writing, and the preparation of a
universal history. His reputation had increased; for it was in these
years that he produced his most popular tragedies — Zaire, Merope,
Alzire, and Mahomet — while a correspondence carried on in the
most affectionate terms with Frederick the Great yet further added
to his prestige; but his essential genius still remained quiescent.
Then at last Madame du Chatelet died and Voltaire took the great
step of his life. At the invitation of Frederick he left France, and
went to live as a pensioner of the Prussian king in the palace at
Potsdam. But his stay there did not last long. It seemed as if the
two most remarkable men in Europe liked each other so well that
they could not remain apart — and so ill that they could not remain
together. After a year or two, there was the inevitable explosion.
Voltaire fled from Prussia, giving to the world before he did so
one of the most amusing jeux df esprit ever written — the celebrated
Diatribe du Docteur Akakia — and, after some hesitation, settled
down near the Lake of Geneva. A few years later he moved into
the chateau of Ferney, which became henceforward his permanent
abode.

Voltaire was now sixty years of age. His position was an envia-
ble one. His reputation was very great, and he had amassed a
considerable fortune, which not only assured him complete inde-

90 G. L. STRACHEY

pendence, but enabled him to live in his domains on the large and
lavish scale of a country magnate. His residence at Ferney, just
on the border of French territory, put him beyond the reach of
government interference, while he was yet not too far distant to be
out of touch with the capital. Thus the opportunity had at last
come for the full display of his powers. And those powers were
indeed extraordinary. His character was composed of a strange
amalgam of all the most contradictory elements in human nature,
and it would be difficult to name a single virtue or a single vice
which he did not possess. He was the most egotistical of mortals,
and the most disinterested; he was graspingly avaricious, and pro-
fusely generous; he was treacherous and mean, yet he was a firm
friend and a true benefactor; he was mischievous and frivolous, yet
he was profoundly serious and inspired by the noblest enthusiasms.
Nature had carried these contradictions even into his physical con-
stitution. His health was so bad that he seemed to pass his whole
life on the brink of the grave ; nevertheless his vitality has probably
never been surpassed in the history of the world. Here, indeed,
was the one characteristic which never deserted him : he was always
active with an insatiable activity; it was always safe to say of him
that, whatever else he was, he was not at rest. His long, gaunt
body, frantically gesticulating, his skull-like face, with its mobile
features twisted into an eternal grin, its piercing eyes sparkling and
darting — all this suggested the appearance of a corpse galvanised
into an incredible animation. But in truth it was no dead ghost
that inhabited this strange tenement, but the fierce and powerful
spirit of an intensely living man.

Some signs had already appeared of the form which his activity
was now about to take. During his residence in Prussia he had
completed his historical Essai sur les Mveurs, which passed over
in rapid review the whole development of humanity, and closed with
a brilliant sketch of the age of Louis XIV. This work was highly
original in many ways. It was the first history which attempted to
describe the march of civilisation in its broadest aspects, which in-
cluded a consideration of the great Eastern peoples, which dealt
rather with the progress of the arts and the sciences than with the
details of politics and wars. But its chief importance lay in the
fact that it was in reality, under its historical trappings, a work of
propaganda. It was a counterblast to Bossuet's Histoire Uni-
verselle. That book had shown the world's history as a part of the

VOLTAIRE 91

providential order — a grand unfolding of design. Voltaire's view
was very different. To him as to Montesquieu, natural causes
alone were operative in history; but this was not all; in his eyes
there was one influence which, from the earliest ages, had continu-
ally retarded the progress of humanity, and that influence was re-
ligious belief. Thus his book, though far more brilli'int and far
more modern than that of Bossuet, was nevertheless almost equall
biased. It was history with a thesis, and the gibe of Montesquieu
was justifiable. "Voltaire," he said, "writes history to glorify his
own convent, like any Benedictine monk." Voltaire's "convent"
was the philosophical school in Paris; and his desire to glorify it
was soon to appear in other directions.

The Essai sur les Moeurs is an exceedingly amusing narrative,
but it is a long and learned work filling several volumes, and the
fruit of many years of research. Voltaire was determined hence-
forward to distil its spirit into more compendious and popular forms.
He had no more time for elaborate dissertations; he must reach the
public by quicker and surer ways. Accordingly there now began to
pour into Paris a flood of short, light booklets — essays, plays, poems,
romances, letters, tracts — a multitude of writings infinitely varied
in form and scope, but all equally irresistible and all equally bearing
the unmistakable signs of their origin at Ferney. Voltaire's inimita-
ble style had at last found a medium in which it could display itself
in all its charm and all its brilliance. The pointed, cutting, mock-
ing sentences laugh and dance through his pages like light-toed,
prick-eared elves. Once seen, and there is no help for it — one must
follow, into whatever dangerous and unknown regions those magic
imps may lead. The pamphlets were of course forbidden, but with-
out effect; they were sold in thousands, and new cargoes, some-
how or other, were always slipping across the frontier from Holland
or Geneva. Whenever a particularly outrageous one appeared,
Voltaire wrote off to all his friends to assure them that he knew
nothing whatever of the production, that it was probably a transla-
tion from the work of an English clergyman, and that, in short,
everyone would immediately see from the style alone that it was —
not his. An endless series of absurd pseudonyms intensified the
farce. Oh no ! Voltaire was certainly not the author of this scan-
dalous book. How could he be? Did not the titlepage plainly
show that it was the work of Frere Cucufin, or the uncle of Abbe
Bazin, or the Comte de Boulainvilliers, or the Emperor of China?

92 G. L. STRACHEY

And so the game proceeded ; and so all France laughed ; and so a
France read.

Two forms of this light literature Voltaire made especially h
own. He brought the Dialogue to perfection; for the form suite
him exactly, with its opportunities for the rapid exposition of cor
trary doctrines, for the humorous stultification of opponents, an
for witty repartee. Into this mould he has poured some of his fines
materials; and, in such pieces as Le Diner du Comte de Boulai?
villiers and Frere Rigolet et I'Empereur de la Chine one finds th
concentrated essence of his whole work. Equally effective an
equally characteristic is the Dictionnaire Philosophique, which cor
tains a great number of very short miscellaneous articles arrange
in alphabetical order. This plan gave Voltaire complete freedor
both in the choice of subjects and in their manipulation; as th
spirit seized him he could fly out into a page of sarcasm or specuh
tion or criticism or buffoonery, and such liberty was precisely to h
taste; so that the book which had first appeared as a pocket die
tionary — "ce diable de portatif," he calls it in a letter proving quit
conclusively that he, at any rate, was not responsible for th
wretched thing — were there not Hebrew quotations in it? and wh
could accuse him of knowing Hebrew? — had swollen to six volume
before he died.

The subjects of these writings were very various. Ostensibly a
least, they were by no means limited to matters of controversy
Some were successful tragedies, others were pieces of criticism, oth
ers were historical essays, others were frivolous short stories, or ver
de societe. But, in all of them, somewhere or other, the clove
hoof was bound to show itself at last. Whatever disguises he migh
assume, Voltaire in reality was always writing for his "convent"
he was pressing forward, at every possible opportunity, the grea
movement against the old regime. His attack covers a wide grounc
The abuses of the financial system, the defects in the administratio
of justice, the futility of the restraints upon trade, — upon these an
a hundred similar subjects he poured out an incessant torrent c
gay, penetrating, frivolous, and remorseless words. But there wa
one theme to which he was perpetually recurring, which forms th
subject for his bitterest jests, and which, in fact, dominates th
whole of his work, "ficrasez rinfame!" was his constant exclams
tion; and the "infamous thing" which he wished to see stampe
under foot was nothing less than religion. The extraordinary fur

VOLTAIRE 93

of his attack on religion has, in the eyes of many, imprinted an
indelible stigma upon his name ; but the true nature of his position
in this matter has often been misunderstood, and deserves some
examination.

Voltaire was a profoundly irreligious man. In this he resembled
the majority of his contemporaries; but he carried the quality per-
haps to a further pitch than any man of his age. For, with him, it
was not merely the purely religious and mystical feelings that were
absent; he lacked all sympathy with those vague, brooding, emo-
tional states of mind which go to create the highest forms of poetry,
music, and art, and which are called forth into such a moving in-
tensity by the beauties of Nature. These things Voltaire did not
understand; he did not even perceive them; for him, in fact, they
did not exist; and the notion that men could be influenced by them,
genuinely and deeply, he considered to be so absurd as hardly to
need discussion. This was certainly a great weakness in him — a
great limitation of spirit. It has vitiated a large part of his writ-
ings ; and it has done more than that — it has obscured, to many of
his readers, the real nature and the real value of his work. For,
combined with this inability to comprehend some of the noblest parts
of man's nature, Voltaire possessed other qualities of high impor-
tance which went far to compensate for his defects. If he was
blind to some truths, he perceived others with wonderful clearness ;
if his sympathies in some directions were atrophied, in others they
were sensitive to an extraordinary degree. In the light of these
considerations his attitude towards religion becomes easier to under-
stand. All the highest elements of religion — the ardent devotion,
the individual ecstasy, the sense of communion with the divine —
these things he simply ignored. But, unfortunately, in his day there
was a side of religion which, with his piercing clear-sightedness, he
could not ignore. The spirit of fanaticism was still lingering in
France; it was the spirit which had burst out on the Eve of St.
Bartholomew, and had dictated the fatal Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes. In every branch of life its influence was active, infusing
prejudice, bitterness, and strife ; but its effects were especially terri-
ble in the administration of justice. It so happened that while
Voltaire was at Ferney some glaring instances of this dreadful fact
came to light. A young Protestant named Galas committed suicide
in Toulouse, and, owing to the blind zealotry of the magistrate of
the town, his father, completely innocent, was found guilty of his

94 G. L. STRACHEY

murder and broken on the wheel. Shortly afterwards, another
Protestant, Sirven, was condemned in similar circumstances, but
escaped to Ferney. A few years later, two youths of seventeen were
convicted at Abbeville for making some profane jokes. Both were
condemned to have their tongues torn out and to be decapitated;
one managed to escape, the other was executed. That such things
could happen in eighteenth-century France seems incredible; but
happen they did, and who knows how many more of a like atrocity?
The fact that these three came to light at all was owing to Voltaire
himself. But for his penetration, his courage, and his skill, the
terrible murder of Galas would to this day have remained unknown,
and the dreadful affair of Abbeville would have been forgotten in a
month. Different men respond most readily to different stimuli:
the spectacle of cruelty and injustice bit like a lash into the nerves
of Voltaire, and plunged him into an agony of horror. He re-
solved never to rest until he had not only obtained reparation for
these particular acts of injustice, but had rooted out for ever from
men's minds the superstitious bigotry which made them possible. It
was to attain this end that he attacked with such persistence and
such violence all religion and all priestcraft in general, and, in par-
ticular, the orthodox dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. It
became the great object of his life to convince public opinion that
those dogmas were both ridiculous and contemptible in themselves,
and abominable in their results. In this we may think him right or
we may think him wrong; our judgment will depend upon the na-
ture of our own opinions. But, whatever our opinions, we cannot
think him wicked; for we cannot doubt that the one dominating
motive in all that he wrote upon the subject of religion was a pas-
sionate desire for the welfare of mankind.

Voltaire's philosophical views were curious. While he entirely
discarded the miraculous from his system, he nevertheless believed
in a Deity — a supreme First Cause of all the phenomena of the
universe. Yet, when he looked round upon the world as it was, the
evil and the misery in it were what seized his attention and appalled
his mind. The optimism of so many of his contemporaries appeared
to him a shallow crude doctrine unrelated to the facts of existence,
and it was to give expression to this view that he composed the
most famous of all his works — Candide. This book, outwardly a
romance of the most flippant kind, contains in reality the essence of
Voltaire's maturest reflections upon human life. It is a singular

VOLTAIRE 95

fact that a book which must often have been read simply for the
sake of its wit and its impropriety, should nevertheless be one of the
bitterest and most melancholy that were ever written. But it is a
safe rule to make, that Voltaire's meaning is deep in proportion to
the lightness of his writing — that it is when he is most in earnest
that he grins most. And, in Candide j the brilliance and the serious-
ness alike reach their climax. The book is a catalogue of all the
woes, all the misfortunes, all the degradations, and all the horrors
that can afflict humanity ; and throughout it Voltaire's grin is never
for a moment relaxed. As catastrophe follows catastrophe, and
disaster succeeds disaster, not only does he laugh himself consumedly,
but he makes his reader laugh no less ; and it is only when the book
is finished that the true meaning of it is borne in upon the mind.
Then it is that the scintillating pages begin to exercise their grim
unforgettable effect; and the pettiness and misery of man seem to
borrow a new intensity from the relentless laughter of Voltaire.

But perhaps the most wonderful thing about Candide is that it
contains, after all, something more than mere pessimism — it con-
tains a positive doctrine as well. Voltaire's common sense withers
the Ideal; but it remains common sense. "II faut cultiver notre
jardin" is his final word — one of the very few pieces of practical
wisdom ever uttered by a philosopher.

Voltaire's style reaches the summit of its perfection in Candide \
but it is perfect in all that he wrote. His prose is the final embodi-
ment of the most characteristic qualities of the French genius. If
all that that great nation had ever done or thought were abolished
from the world, except a single sentence of Voltaire's, the essence of
their achievement would have survived. His writing brings to a
culmination the tradition that Pascal had inaugurated in his Lettres
Provtncialesi clarity, simplicity, and wit — these supreme qualities it
possesses in an unequalled degree. But these qualities, pushed to an
extreme, have also their disadvantages. Voltaire's style is narrow;
it is like a rapier — all point ; with such neatness, such lightness, the
sweeping blade of Pascal has become an impossibility. Compared to
the measured march of Bossuet's sentences, Voltaire's sprightly
periods remind one almost of a pirouette. But the pirouette is
Voltaire's — executed with all the grace, all the ease, all the latent
strength of a consummate dancer ; it would be folly to complain ; yet
it was clear that a reaction was bound to follow — and a salutary
reaction. Signs of it were already visible in the colour and passion

96 G. L. STRACHEY

of Diderot's writing; but it was not until the nineteenth century
that the great change came.

Nowhere is the excellence of Voltaire's style more conspicuous
than in his Correspondence, which forms so large and important a
portion of his work. A more delightful and a more indefatigable
letter-writer never lived. The number of his published letters ex-
ceeds ten thousand ; how many more he may actually have written
one hardly ventures to imagine, for the great majority of those that
have survived date only from the last thirty years of his long life.
The collection is invaluable alike for the light which it throws upon
Voltaire's career and character, and for the extent to which it re-
flects the manners, sentiments, and thought of the age. For Voltaire
corresponded with all Europe. His reputation, already vast before
he settled at Ferney, rose after that date to a well-nigh incredible
height. No man had wielded such an influence since the days when
Bernard of Clairvaux dictated the conduct of popes and princes from
his monastic cell. But, since then, the wheel had indeed come full
circle ! The very antithesis of the Middle Ages was personified in
the strange old creature, who in his lordly retreat by the Lake of
Geneva alternately coquetted with empresses, received the homage
of statesmen and philosophers, domineered over literature in all its
branches, and laughed Mother Church to scorn. As the years ad-
vanced, Voltaire's industry, which had always been astonishing, con-
tinually increased. As if his intellectual interests were not enough
to occupy him, he took to commercial enterprise, developed the re-
sources of his estates, and started a successful colony of watch-
makers at Ferney. Every day he worked for long hours at his desk,
spinning his ceaseless web of tracts, letters, tragedies, and farces. In
the evening he would discharge the functions of a munificent host,
entertain the whole neighbourhood with balls and suppers, and take
part in one of his own tragedies on the stage of his private theatre.
Then a veritable frenzy would seize upon him ; shutting himself up
in his room for days together, he would devote every particle of his
terrific energies to the concoction of some devastating dialogue, or
some insidious piece of profanation for his Dictionnaire Philosophi-
que. At length his fragile form would sink exhausted — he would be
dying — he would be dead ; and next morning he would be up again
as brisk as ever, directing the cutting of the crops.

One day, quite suddenly, he appeared in Paris, which he had not
visited for nearly thirty years. His arrival was the signal for one

VOLTAIRE 97

of the most extraordinary manifestations of enthusiasm that the
world has ever seen. For some weeks he reigned in the capital,
visible and glorious, the undisputed lord of the civilised universe.
The climax came when he appeared in a box at the Theatre Fran-
gais, to witness a performance of the latest of his tragedies, and the
whole house rose as one man to greet him. His triumph seemed to
be something more than the mere personal triumph of a frail old
mortal ; it seemed to be the triumph of all that was noblest in the
aspirations of the human race. But the fatigue and excitement of
those weeks proved too much even for Voltaire in the full flush of
his eighty-fourth year. An overdose of opium completed what Na-
ture had begun ; and the amazing being rested at last.

A CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY1
JOHN STUART MILL

FROM the winter of 1821, when I first read Bentham, and
especially from the commencement of the Westminster Review, I
had what might truly be called an object in life: to be a reformer
of the world. My conception of my own happiness was entirely
identified with this object. The personal sympathies I wished for
were those of fellow labourers in this enterprise. I endeavoured
to pick up as many flowers as I could by the way; but as a serious
and permanent personal satisfaction to rest upon, my whole re-
liance was placed on this; and I was accustomed to felicitate my-
self on the certainty of a happy life which I enjoyed, through
placing my happiness in something durable and distant, in which
some progress might be always making, while it could never be ex-
hausted by complete attainment.

This did very well for several years, during which the general
improvement going on in the world and the idea of myself as
engaged with others in struggling to promote it, seemed enough to
to fill up an interesting and animated existence. But the time
came when I awakened from this as from a dream. It was in the
autumn of 1826. I was in a dull state of nerves, such as every-
body is occasionally liable to; unsusceptible to enjoyment or pleas-
ureable excitement; one of those moods when what is pleasure at
other times, becomes insipid or indifferent; the state, I should
think, in which converts to Methodism usually are, when smitten
by their first "conviction of sin." In this frame of mind it oc-
curred to me to put the question directly to myself: "Suppose
that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in
institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could
be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great
joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self -consciousness
distinctly answered, "No!" At this my heart sank within^me:
the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.
aFrom Chapter V of the Autobiography, 1867.

A CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY 99

All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit
of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there
ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing
left to live for.

At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself; but
it did not. A night's sleep, the sovereign remedy for smaller
vexations of life, had no effect on it. I awoke to a renewed con-
sciousness of the woeful fact. I carried it with me into all com-
panies, into all occupations. Hardly anything had power to cause
me even a few minutes' oblivion of it. For some months the cloud
seemed to grow thicker and thicker. The lines in Coleridge's
"Dejection" — I was not then acquainted with them— exactly de-
scribe my case:

"A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet or relief
In word, or sigh, or tear."

In vain I sought relief from my favourite books; those memo-
rials of past nobleness and greatness from which I had always
hitherto drawn strength and animation. I read them now without
feeling, or with the accustomed feeling minus all its charm; and
I became persuaded that my love of mankind, and of excellence
for its own sake, had worn itself out. I sought no comfort by
speaking to others of what I felt. If I had loved any one suffi-
ciently to make confiding my griefs a necessity, I should not have
been in the condition I was. I felt, too, that mine was not an
interesting, or in any way respectable distress. There was nothing
in it to attract sympathy. Advice, if I had known where to seek
it, would have been most precious. The words of Macbeth to the
physician often occurred to my thoughts. But there was no one on
whom I could build the faintest hope of such assistance. My
father, to whom it would have been natural to me to have re-
course in any practical difficulties, was the last person to whom, in
such a case as this, I looked for help. Everything convinced me
that he had no knowledge of any such mental state as I was suf-
fering from, and that even if he could be made to understand it,
he was not the physician who could heal it. My education, which
was wholly his work< had been conducted without any regard to
the possibility of its ending in this result; and I saw no use in

ioo JOHN STUART MILL

giving him the pain of thinking that his plans had failed, when
the failure was probably irremediable, and, at all events, beyond
the power of his remedies. Of other friends, I had at that time
none to whom I had any hope of making my condition intelligible.
It was however abundantly intelligible to myself; and the more
I dwelt upon it, the more hopeless it appeared. . . .

All those to whom I looked up were of opinion that the pleas-
ure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings which made
the good of others, and especially of mankind on a large scale, the
object of existence, were the greatest and surest sources of happi-
ness. Of the truth of this I was convinced, but to know that a
feeling would make me happy if I had it, did not give me the
feeling. My education, I thought, had failed to create these feel-
ings in sufficient strength to resist the dissolving influence of analy-
sis, while the whole course of my intellectual cultivation had made
precocious and premature analysis the inveterate habit of my mind.
I was thus, as I said to myself, left stranded at the commencement
of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, but no sail;
without any real desire for the ends which I had been so carefully
fitted out to work for: no delight in virtue, or the general good,
but also just as little in anything else. The fountains of vanity
and ambition seemed to have dried up within me, as completely
as those of benevolence. I had had (as I reflected) some gratifica-
tion of vanity at too early an age : I had obtained some distinction,
and felt myself of some importance, before the desire of distinction
and of importance had grown into a passion: and little as it was
which I had attained, yet having been attained too early, like all
pleasures enjoyed too soon, it had made me blase and indifferent
to the pursuit. Thus neither selfish nor unselfish pleasures were
pleasures to me. And there seemed no power in nature sufficient to
begin the formation of my character anew, and create in a mind
now irretrievably analytic, fresh associations of pleasure with any
of the objects of human desire.

These were the thoughts which mingled with the dry heavy de-
jection of the melancholy winter of 1826-7. During this time I
was not incapable of my usual occupations. I went on with them
mechanically, by the mere force of habit. I had been so drilled
in a certain sort of mental exercise, that I could still carry it on
when all the spirit had gone out of it. I even composed and spoke
several speeches at the debating society, how, or with what degree

A CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY 101

of success, I know not. Of four years' continual speaking at that
society, this is the only year of which I remember next to nothing.
Two lines of Coleridge, in whom alone of all writers I have found
a true description of what I felt, were often in my thoughts, not
at this time (for I had never read them), but in a later period of
the same mental malady:

"Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live."

In all probability my case was by no means so peculiar as I
fancied it, and I doubt not that many others have passed through
a similar state; but the idiosyncrasies of my education had given
to the general phenomenon a special character, which made it seem
the natural effect of causes that it was hardly possible for time to
remove. I frequently asked myself, if I could, or if I was bound
to go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. I gen-
erally answered to myself, that I did not think I could possibly
bear it beyond a year. When, however, not more than half that
duration of time had elapsed, a small ray of light broke in upon
my gloom. I was reading, accidentally, MarmontePs Memoires,
and came to the passage which relates his father's death, the dis-
tressed position of the family, and the sudden inspiration by which
he, then a mere boy, felt and made them feel that he would be
everything to them — would supply the place of all that they had
lost. A vivid conception of the scene and its feelings came over
me, and I was moved to tears.

From this moment my burden grew lighter. The oppression of
the thought that all feeling was dead within me, was gone. I
was no longer hopeless : I was not a stock or a stone. I had still,
it seemed, some of the material out of which all worth of char-
acter, and all capacity for happiness, are made. Relieved from
my ever present sense of irremediable wretchedness, I gradually
found that the ordinary incidents of life could again give me some
pleasure; that I could again find enjoyment, not intense, but suffi-
cient for cheerfulness, in sunshine and sky, in books, in conversa-
tion, in public affairs; and that there was, once more, excitement,
though of a moderate kind, in exerting myself for my opinions, and
for the public good. Thus the cloud gradually drew off, and I
again enjoyed life: and though I had several relapses, some of

102 JOHN STUART MILL

which lasted many months, I never again was as miserable as I
had been.

The experiences of this period had two very marked effects on
my opinions and character. In the first place, they led me to adopt
a theory of life, very unlike that on which I had before acted,
and having much in common with what at that time I certainly
had never heard of, the anti-self-consciousness theory of Carlyle.
I never, indeed, wavered in the conviction that happiness is the
test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life. But I now thought
that this end was only to be attained by not making it the direct
end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds
fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happi-
ness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art
or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end.
Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.
The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient
to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, with-
out being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they
are immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a
scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself whether you are happy, and
you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but
some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your self-
consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust them-
selves on that ; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will
inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it
or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination,
or putting it to flight by fatal questioning. This theory now be-
came the basis of my philosophy of life. And I still hold to it as
the best theory for all those who have but a moderate degree of
sensibility and of capacity for enjoyment, that is, for the great
majority of mankind.

The other important change which my opinions at this time
underwent, was that I, for the first time, gave its proper place,
among the prime necessities of human well-being, to the internal
culture of the individual. I ceased to attach almost exclusive im-
portance to the ordering of outward circumstances, and the train-
ing of the human being for speculation and for action.

I had now learnt by experience that the passive susceptibilities
needed to be cultivated as well as the active capacities, and re-
quired to be nourished and enriched as well as guided. I did not,

A CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY 103

for instance, lose sight of, or undervalue, that part of the truth
which I had seen before! I never turned recreant to intellectual
culture, or ceased to consider the power and practice of analysis
as an essential condition both of individual and of social improve-
ment. But I thought that it had consequences which required to
be corrected, by joining other kinds of cultivation with it. The
maintenance of a due balance among the faculties, now seemed to
be of primary importance. The cultivation of the feelings became
one of the cardinal points in my ethical and philosophical creed.
And my thoughts and inclinations turned in an increasing degree
towards whatever seemed capable of being instrumental to that
object.

I now began to find meaning in the things which I had read or
heard about the importance of poetry and art as instruments of
human culture. But it was some time longer before I began to
know this by personal experience. The only one of the imagina-
tive arts in which I had from childhood taken great pleasure, was
music; the best effect of which (and in this it surpasses perhaps
every other art) consists in exciting enthusiasm; in winding up to
a high pitch those feelings of an elevated kind which are already
in the character, but to which this excitement gives a glow and a
fervor, which, though transitory at its utmost height, is precious for
sustaining them at other times. This effect of music I had often
experienced; but like all my pleasurable susceptibilities it was sus-
pended during the gloomy period. I had sought relief again and
again from this quarter, but found none. After the tide had
turned, and I was in process of recovery, I had been helped for-
ward by music, but in a much less elevated manner. I at this time
first became acquainted with Weber's Oberon, and the extreme
pleasure which I drew from its delicious melodies did me good,
by showing me a source of pleasure to which I was as susceptible
as ever.

The good, however, was much impaired by the thought that
the pleasure of music (as is quite true of such pleasure as this
was, that of mere tune) fades with familiarity, and requires either
to be revived by intermittence, or fed by continual novelty. And
it is very characteristic both of my then state, and of the general
tone of my mind at this period of my life, that I was seriously
tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility of musical combina-
tions. The octave consists only of five tones and two semitones,

104 JOHN STUART MILL

which can be put together in only a limited number of ways, of
which but a small proportion are beautiful : most of these, it seemed
to me, must have been already discovered, and there could not be
room for a long succession of Mozarts and Webers, to strike out,
as these had done, entirely new and surpassingly rich veins of
musical beauty. This source of anxiety may, perhaps, be thought
to resemble that of the philosophers of Laputa, who feared lest the
sun should be burnt out. It was, however, connected with the best
feature in my character, and the only good point to be found in my
very unromantic and in no way honourable distress. For though
my dejection, honestly looked at, could not be called other than
egotistical, produced by the ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of
happiness, yet the destiny of mankind in general was ever in my
thoughts, and could not be separated from my own. I felt that
the flaw in my life, must be a flaw in life itself; that the question
was, whether, if the reformers of society and government could
succeed in their objects, and every person in the community were
free and in a state of physical comfort, the pleasures of life, being
no longer kept up by struggle and privation, would cease to be
pleasures. And I felt that unless I could see my way to some
better hope than this for human happiness in general, my dejection
must continue; but that if I could see such an outlet, I should
then look on the world with pleasure; content as far as I was
myself concerned, with any fair share of the general lot.

This state of my thoughts and feelings made the fact of my read-
ing Wordsworth for the first time (in the autumn of 1828), an
important event in my life. I took up the collection of his poems
from curiosity, with no expectation of mental relief from it, though
I had before resorted to poetry with that hope. In the worst
period of my depression, I had read through the whole of Byron
(then new to me), to try whether a poet whose peculiar depart-
ment was supposed to be that of the intenser feelings could rouse
any feeling in me. As might be expected, I got no good from
this reading, but the reverse. The poet's state of mind was too
like my own. His was the lament of a man who had worn out
all pleasures, and who seemed to think that life, to all who possess
the good things of it, must necessarily be the vapid, uninteresting
thing which I found it. His Harold and Manfred had the same
burden on them which I had; and I was not in a frame of mind
to desire any comfort from the vehement sensual passion of his

A CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY 105

Giaours, or the sullenness of his Laras. But while Byron was
exactly what did not suit my condition, Wordsworth was exactly
what did. I had looked into the Excursion two or three years
before, and found little in it; and I should probably have found
as little, had I read it at this time. But the miscellaneous poems,
in the two-volume edition of 1815 (to which little of value was
added in the latter part of the author's life) proved to be the pre-
cise thing for my mental wants at that particular juncture.

In the first place, these poems addressed themselves powerfully
to one of the strongest of my pleasurable susceptibilities, the love
for rural objects and natural scenery; to which I had been in-
debted not only for much of the pleasure of my life, but quite
recently for relief from one of my longest relapses into depression.
In this power of rural beauty over me, there was a foundation laid
for taking pleasure in Wordsworth's poetry; the more so, as his
scenery lies mostly among mountains, which, owing to my early
Pyrenean excursion, were my ideal of natural beauty.

But Wordsworth would never have had any great effect on
me, if he had merely placed before me beautiful pictures of natural
scenery. Scott does this still better than Wordsworth, and a very
second-rate landscape does it more effectually than any poet. What
made Wordsworth's poems a medicine for my state of mind, was
that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feel-
ing, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of
beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which
I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a source of
inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could
be shared in by all human beings; which had no connexion with
struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by every im-
provement in the physical or social condition of mankind. From
them I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources of
happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed.
And I felt myself at once better and happier as I came under their
influence. There have certainly been, even in our own age, greater
poets than Wordsworth; but poetry of deeper and loftier feeling
could not have done for me at that time what his did. I needed
to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in
tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only
without turning away from, but with a greatly increased interest
in the common feelings and common destiny of human beings. And

106 JOHN STUART MILL

the delight which these poems gave me, proved that with culture
of this sort, there was nothing to dread from the most confirmed
habit of analysis. At the conclusion of the Poems came the famous
Ode, falsely called Platonic, "Intimations of Immortality": in
which, along with more than his usual sweetness of melody and
rhythm, and along with the two passages of grand imagery but
bad philosophy so often quoted, I found that he too had had simi-
lar experience to mine ; that he also had felt that the first freshness
of youthful enjoyment of life was not lasting; but that he had
sought for compensation, and found it, in the way in which he was
now teaching me to find it. The result was that I gradually, but
completely, emerged from my habitual depression, and was never
again subject to it. I long continued to value Wordsworth less
according to his intrinsic merits, than by the measure of what he
had done for me. Compared with the greatest poets, he may be
said to be the poet of unpoetical natures, possessed of quiet and con-
templative tastes. But unpoetical natures are precisely those which
require poetic cultivation.

HOW ANIMALS SPEND THE WINTER1
AUSTIN H. CLARK

WINTER out-of-doors, when compared with summer, seems al-
most a dead season. Most of the trees are leafless, and the grasses
and low plants are dead, or at least seem to be. In the north the
ponds and lakes and streams are blanketed with ice more or less
completely, and the ground is frozen for some distance down.

Most of our familiar friends among the birds are missing, but in
compensation for their loss we see, chiefly along the coast and about
the open waters of the larger streams and lakes, various other kinds
that are not with us in the summer. Nearly all the various sorts
of field-mice have completely disappeared. The bears have van-
ished from the wilder woods. Squirrels are seen but rarely, and
only on warm, bright and sunny days. Snakes, turtles, frogs, and
toads are merely memories. And there are no flies or wasps or bees
or butterflies or other sorts of insects.

The world seems almost dead. And yet we know that with the
advent of the warm spring days it will come to life again. So it is
clear that it is not really dead, but merely sleeping; that somewhere
and in some fashion most of the familiar life of summer is resting
quietly, but is prepared and ready to awaken and to become active
with the coming of the spring.

Some creatures are always active. For instance, all the birds are
just as lively and alert in winter as they are in summer. They live
the same life throughout the year. With us the crows and jays and
various other kinds of common birds are just as familiar features
of the winter landscape as they are of the green woods and fields of
summer. But in the case of very many birds the coming of the
winter reduces their food supply, or even altogether cuts it off. As
an example, the disappearance of the insects cuts off the food supply
of the insect-eating birds; and the freezing over of the ponds and
lakes and streams prevents the ducks and geese and herons and

1From Scientific Monthly, February, 1934. Reprinted by permission of
the author and the publishers.

107

io8 AUSTIN H. CLARK

other water- and shore-feeding birds from getting the food they
need.

So in order to live during the winter months most of the northern
birds are forced to leave their homes and to move southward into
regions where the insect life has not been chilled into inactivity,
and where the waters are still open.

Some of our birds, as the common robin, go only a short distance
southward, into the southern states, where the winter is less severe
than it is in their northern homes. Others, like the swallows and
the warblers, go further, to Central and northern South America
and the West Indies. In the West Indies in the winter, in the
heat and brilliant sunlight of the Tropics and among the palms,
bananas, mangoes, limes, nutmegs, bread-fruit, and many other
equally unfamiliar plants, and along the white and glaring coral
reefs, it is an interesting sight to see several of our familiar northern
birds apparently just as happy and just as much at home as they
are with us. For instance, our kingfisher is a well-known and
common bird in the West Indies, and about the bushy hillsides and
the gardens of those islands our redstart is not at all uncommon.
Along the mountain streams the spotted sandpiper runs about wag-
ging his tail just as he does along the streams in Massachusetts or
in Maine.

Birds are very interesting creatures. With nearly all of them
sight is the most important sense. They find their food and avoid
their enemies by means of their unusually keen eyes. A few, as
most owls and night-flying birds in general, have wonderfully keen
ears, but for the most part the eyes are the chief reliance of the
birds. And so it naturally follows that the longer the day the
longer the time in which any given bird can find its food and avoid
its enemies. Night is a time of danger for most birds. The dark-
ness brings many dangers. So besides the question of securing food
there is for birds the problem presented by the long winter nights.
Some birds, such as the golden plover and the Arctic tern, breed
in the far north, at the time when the days are longest, or at least
are very long, and the night is short, or there is no night at all.
These birds after the breeding season journey south and, passing
through the Tropics, spend the winter in the southern portion of
the southern hemisphere, where it is then summer and the days are
long. The Arctic tern has the longest migratory flight of all
birds. In the summer it is found about the Arctic ice, while in the

HOW ANIMALS SPEND THE WINTER 109

winter it is equally at home about the Antarctic ice, ten thousand
miles away. This bird, the golden plover and some other shore birds
have two summers every year. The shortest days they know are
those they see when passing through the Tropics, where the days
and nights are always equal.

The birds with their power of flight are able to move about
over great distances and to avoid the northern winter by simply
moving south. Among the mammals such extended journeys are
only in rare cases possible. Some of the bats go south in winter,
and in the early days the buffalo in the east withdrew in winter
from the northern portion of its range into the southern states.

But most of the mammals stay more or less at home in winter,
though they may wander widely in their search for food. Many
of them, like the bears, the woodchucks, most of the wild mice, the
common squirrels and some of the bats, when the autumn comes
find a suitable place, or make one, and therein pass the winter
in that long sleep called hibernation. During this period of hiber-
nation the body temperature is lowered so that they exist with the
least possible expenditure of energy.

In the same way the snakes and the box turtle find an appropriate
place or burrow in the ground and sleep away the winter. The
pond turtles and the frogs burrow in the mud in the shallow water
along the shores of ponds or lakes or streams and spend the winter
under a protective covering of ice.

The fishes for the most part stay where they are or move into
deeper water. But some, like the northern trout, if they can do
so, go into the salt marshes or the sea. In the far north, where
the bogs and ponds freeze solid, certain of the fishes are firmly
frozen in the ice where they remain immovable until the thaws of
spring release them. During the short summer they are active,
but for most of the year they are asleep in their solid icy prison.

The backboned animals all are large, or at least they are larger
than the insects. But insects, small and delicate as they are, sur-
vive the winter quite as well as any of the backboned animals. In-
sects pass the winter in every conceivable way, and in every con-
ceivable condition. Many of them, as some of our butterflies,
wasps, bees, flies and others, live through the winter in the adult
stage, hidden away in some snug retreat. A few warm days in
winter often serve to bring them out, and they fly around until
the returning cold puts them to sleep again. Very many butter-

no AUSTIN H. CLARK

flies and moths spend the winter as chrysalids, which among the
moths usually are enclosed in a silk cocoon, but which among the
butterflies usually are uncovered. In most cases the caterpillars
transform to chrysalids toward the end of summer or in the early
autumn, and the butterflies or moths emerge in spring. One of our
smaller butterflies, a very pretty one called the orange-tip, flies in
March and April, lays its eggs and dies. The caterpillars that issue
from the eggs feed until toward the end of May, then turn to
chrysalids. These chrysalids remain inert, fastened to the trunks
of trees all through the heat of summer and the following cold of
winter, until in early spring the butterflies emerge. Two thirds
of the entire life of this delicate little creature is spent asleep in
the chrysalis.

Some other butterflies spend the winter as full-grown cater-
pillars hidden away in a loose cocoon. In the first warm days of
spring these caterpillars transform to chrysalids from which in a
few days come the butterflies. Still other butterflies live through
the winter as caterpillars partly grown, which in the spring complete
their growth and then transform to adults. Most of those butter-
flies called fritillaries, in color golden brown with silver spots on
the under surface of the hinder wings, lay their eggs in summer.
The little caterpillars that issue from these eggs lie quietly on the
ground and will not eat until the following spring. For six or
even seven months, through the heat of the late summer and the
cold of winter, they are completely passive, waiting for the proper
time to begin to eat. A few butterflies and many different moths
spend the winter in the eggs which are laid in summer but do not
hatch till spring.

In the country districts in the winter it is not unusual to see a
medium-sized white butterfly in houses when it is very cold out-
side. This is the common cabbage butterfly which long ago was
introduced from Europe and now is all too common here. The
caterpillars live on cabbages and when full grown crawl away and
form the chrysalids on any firm support, on fences, on the sides of
barns or houses or on firewood. If logs with chrysalids on them
be brought into the house the butterflies emerge, and we are treated
to the unusual sight of butterflies in winter.

Life, dormant or active, is everywhere about us at all seasons of
the year. Just because we do not see it in the winter does not
mean it is not there.

HOW ANIMALS SPEND THE WINTER in

On land the activity of most living things, such as the very
lumerous insects, the snails and slugs and earthworms, slows down
Dr comes entirely to rest at a temperature of about 40°, or at the
rery lowest at 32°, the freezing-point of water. But in certain
sortions of the sea, far down beneath the surface where the sun's
beat and light does not penetrate and where it is darker than the
darkest night we know, there is perpetual winter with an abso-
lutely unchanging temperature of below 30°, that is, well below
the temperature at which fresh water freezes. At the temperature
found at these places in the ocean's depths our lakes and ponds and
rivers would be solid blocks of ice ; but salt water freezes at lower
temperatures than fresh, so that in these frigid depths no ice is
Formed.

Along the western shores of the Okhotsk and Japanese seas there
is a broad band of this very cold water, and within it life is so very
abundant as to challenge comparison with any other region in the
world. There are various other regions where the sea bottom is
just as cold as it is here, or even colder, in the Arctic and Antarctic
Oceans and in the deep waters of the Norwegian Sea. In all
these places, with temperatures ranging between 28.4° and 32°,
inimals are especially abundant. Millions and millions of ani-
mals, living on and over large areas of sea bottom, spend their
entire lives in a temperature colder than that of the cakes of ice
in our refrigerators. They live in full activity and enjoyment at
temperatures at which most of the life on land is dormant.

Life is full of paradoxes. On land not all the weak and feeble
things are dormant in the winter. In the colder parts of the north-
ern hemisphere there is a strange insect, a wingless kind of cranefly
3r daddy-longlegs, which reverses the usual habit of insects by
living in summer as a grub or larva under decaying leaves and
becoming an active adult in the very coldest months of the entire
pear. These insects are most active in cold snowy weather from
January to April, even when the temperature is below zero, run-
ling rapidly across the surface of the snow in perfectly straight
lines. In April it has been noticed that if in the morning the sun
>hone brightly, causing a slight thaw, few of these insects would
ae visible. But if in the afternoon the weather changed and be-
:ame colder with a flurry of snow, then large numbers would come
burrying from all directions. These insects are very sensitive to
ivarmth, and will die in a few minutes if held in a warm hand.

ii2 AUSTIN H. CLARK

There is another insect belonging to an entirely different group,
a wingless panorpid or scorpion-fly looking somewhat like a small
grasshopper, which has similar habits.

One of the commonest, most conspicuous and most active of the
insects seen in winter is the so-called snow-flea, which is in no
way related to the fleas. But this is only seen when the tempera-
ture rises above the freezing point.

Winter is an interesting season. In it the speed of life slows
down — life largely comes to rest. But though it sometimes pauses,
life never stops. No matter how cold and bleak it is in the woods
and fields, abundant life is always there ready to resume activity
with the coming of the spring.

ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS1

WILL DURANT

As ARISTOTLE developed, and young men crowded about him to
be taught and formed, more and more his mind turned from the
details of science to the larger and vaguer problems of conduct and
character. It came to him more clearly that above all questions of
the physical world there loomed the question of questions — what is
the best life ? — what is life's supreme good ? — what is virtue ? — how
shall we find happiness and fulfilment?

He is realistically simple in his ethics. His scientific training
keeps him from the preachment of superhuman ideals and empty
counsels of perfection. "In Aristotle," says Santayana, "the con-
ception of human nature is perfectly sound ; every ideal has a nat-
ural basis, and everything natural has an ideal development."
Aristotle begins by frankly recognizing that the aim of life is not
goodness for its own sake, but happiness. "For we choose happiness
for itself, and never with a view to anything further; whereas we
choose honor, pleasure, intellect . . . because we believe that
through them we shall be made happy." But he realizes that to
call happiness the supreme good is a mere truism ; what is wanted is
some clearer account of the nature of happiness, and the way to it.
He hopes to find this way by asking wherein man differs from other
beings; and by presuming that man's happiness will lie in the full
functioning of this specifically human quality. Now the peculiar
excellence of man is his power of thought; it is by this that he sur-
passes and rules all other forms of life; and as the growth of this
faculty has given him his supremacy, so, we may presume, its devel-
opment will give him fulfilment and happiness.

The chief condition of happiness, then, barring certain physical
pre-requisites, is the life of reason — the specific glory and power of
man. Virtue, or rather excellence, will depend on clear judgment,
self-control, symmetry of desire, artistry of means; it is not the pos-

1From The Story of Philosophy, Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1927. Re-
printed by permission of the publishers.

ii4 WILL DURANT

session of the simple man, nor the gift of innocent intent, but the
achievement of experience in the fully developed man. Yet there
is a road to it, a guide to excellence, which may save many detours
and delays: it is the middle way, the golden mean. The qualities
of character can be arranged in triads, in each of which the first and
last qualities will be extremes and vices, and the middle quality a
virtue or an excellence. So between cowardice and rashness is
courage; between stinginess and extravagance is liberality; between
sloth and greed is ambition ; between humility and pride is modesty ;
between secrecy and loquacity, honesty; between moroseness and
buffoonery, good humor; between quarrelsomeness and flattery,
friendship; between Hamlet's indecisiveness and Quixote's impul-
siveness is self-control. "Right," then, in ethics or conduct, is not
different from "right" in mathematics or engineering; it means
correct, fit, what works best to the best result.

The golden mean, however, is not, like the mathematical mean,
an exact average of two precisely calculable extremes; it fluctuates
with the collateral circumstances of each situation, and discovers
itself only to mature and flexible reason. Excellence is an art won
by training and habituation : we do not act rightly because we have
virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted
rightly; "these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions";
we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a
habit: "the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of
excellence in a complete life ; ... for as it is not one swallow or
one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time
that makes a man blessed and happy."

Youth is the age of extremes: "if the young commit a fault it is
always on the side of excess and exaggeration." The great difficulty
of youth (and of many of youth's elders) is to get out of one ex-
treme without falling into its opposite. For one extreme easily
passes into the other, whether through "over-correction" or elsewise :
insincerity doth protest too much, and humility hovers on the preci-
pice of conceit. Those who are consciously at one extreme will give
the name of virtue not to the mean but to the opposite extreme.
Sometimes this is well; for if we are conscious of erring in one
extreme "we should aim at the other, and so we itfay reach the
middle position, ... as men do in straightening bent timber." But
unconscious extremists look upon the golden mean as the greatest
vice ; they "expel towards each other the man in the middle position ;

ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS 115

the brave man is called rash by the coward, and cowardly by the
rash man, and in other cases accordingly" ; so in modern politics
the "liberal" is called "conservative" and "radical" by the radical
and the conservative.

It is obvious that this doctrine of the mean is the formulation of
a characteristic attitude which appears in almost every system of
Greek philosophy. Plato had had it in mind when he called virtue
harmonious action ; Socrates when he identified virtue with knowl-
edge. The Seven Wise Men had established the tradition by en-
graving, on the temple of Apollo at Delphi, the motto meden agan,
— nothing in excess. Perhaps, as Nietzsche claims, all these were
attempts of the Greeks to check their own violence and impulsive-
ness of character; more truly, they reflected the Greek feeling that
passions are not of themselves vices, but the raw material of both
vice and virtue, according as they function in excess and dispropor-
tion, or in measure and harmony.

But the golden mean, says our matter-of-fact philosopher, is not
all of the secret of happiness. We must have, too, a fair degree of
worldly goods: poverty makes one stingy and grasping; while pos-
sessions give one that freedom from care and greed which is the
source of aristocratic ease and charm. The noblest of these ex-
ternal aids to happiness is friendship. Indeed, friendship is more
necessary to the happy than to the unhappy ; for happiness is multi-
plied by being shared. It is more important than justice: for "when
men are friends, justice is unnecessary; but when men are just,
friendship is still a boon." "A friend is one soul in two bodies."
Yet friendship implies few friends rather than many; "he who has
many friends has no friend" ; and "to be a friend to many people
in the way of perfect friendship is impossible." Fine friendship re-
quires duration rather than fitful intensity ; and this implies stability
of character; it is to altered character that we must attribute the
dissolving kaleidoscope of friendship. And friendship requires
equality; for gratitude gives it at best a slippery basis. "Benefactors
are commonly held to have more friendship for the objects of their
kindness than these for them. The account of the matter which
satisfies most persons is that the one are debtors and the others
creditors, . . . and that the debtors wish their creditors out of the
way, while the creditors are anxious that their debtors should be
preserved." Aristotle rejects this interpretation; he prefers to be-
lieve that the greater tenderness of the benefactor is to be explained

ii6 WILL DURANT

on the analogy of the artist's affection for his work, or the mother's
for her child. We love that which we have made.

And yet, though external goods and relationships are necessary to
happiness, its essence remains within us, in rounded knowledge and
clarity of soul. Surely sense pleasure is not the way: that road is
a circle : as Socrates phrased the coarser Epicurean idea, we scratch
that we may itch, and itch that we may scratch. Nor can a political
career be the way; for therein we walk subject to the whims of
the people; and nothing is so fickle as the crowd. No, happiness
must be a pleasure of the mind ; and we may trust it only when it
comes from the pursuit or the capture of truth. "The operation of
the intellect . . . aims at no end beyond itself, and finds in itself
the pleasure which stimulates it to further operation ; and since the
attributes of self-sufficiency, unweariedness, and capacity for rest,
. . . plainly belong to this occupation, in it must lie perfect happi-
ness."

Aristotle's ideal man, however, is no mere metaphysician. He is
open in his dislikes and preferences; he talks and acts frankly, be-
cause of his contempt for men and things. . . . He is never fired
with admiration, since there is nothing great in his eyes. He can-
not live in complaisance with others, except it be a friend ; complai-
sance is the characteristic of a slave. . . . He never feels malice,
and always forgets and passes over injuries. . . . He is not fond of
talking. ... It is no concern of his that he should be praised, or
that others should be blamed. He does not speak evil of others, even
of his enemies, unless it be to themselves. His carriage is sedate,
his voice deep, his speech measured ; he is not given to hurry, for he
is concerned about only a f e\v things ; he is not prone to vehemence,
for he thinks nothing very important. A shrill voice and hasty
steps come to a man through care. ... He bears the accidents of
life with dignity and grace, making the best of his circumstances,
like a skilful general who marshals his limited forces with ail the
strategy of war. ... He is his own best friend, and takes delight
in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst
enemy, and is afraid of solitude. Such is the Superman of Aristotle.

THE PUP BOY1

ROBERT PALFREY UTTER

SOME men won't start anywhere out of doors without a dog; I
wouldn't if I could help it. Some won't budge over the threshold
without a pipe ; neither will I. Some won't stir without a gun ; I
used to feel that way. Some need a little book that fits the pocket :
I have several worn volumes that are good companions. But have
you ever tried a real boy? If not, you have something to live for.
Of course you want the dog and the pipe, too, and you may take
the book and the gun if you like, but you won't have much use
for them.

Any real boy under eighty years of age who can walk is good,
but I rather like them under twelve. If I want to get anywhere
in particular I like a companion over nine; but for an aimless
ramble of short radius from home, little fat legs can do wonders.
Sizes from nine to twelve are physically efficient and have the pup
traits — I say sizes rather than ages, for it isn't wholly a matter of
years with boys any more than it is with the purely canine varieties.
Some keep the pup traits longer than others. The Irish terrier for
that reason is the best of all four-legged pups to scour the country
with. The others are all good, suiting different moods; the collie,
ornamental, amiable, suave ; the spaniel, lively and sympathetic ; the
Airedale, faithful but somewhat blase and a trifle dour, like the
true Scot that he is. But the Irish terrier is the real boy, alert,
imaginative, humorous, audacious, affectionate, wistful; with him
there is something doing every minute. When he trots ahead with
his tail cocked and looks back to see if you are coming, and you say,
"Having a good time, Old Scout?" and he takes a running jump
and lands his forefeet in the pit of your stomach, you feel a strong
sense of companionship, and you wish that he could talk and tell
you what is going on inside his fuzzy head. The pup boy has all
his traits, and he can talk — my word, can't he though ! Of course

1 From Pearls and Pepper, Yale University Press, 1924. Reprinted by
permission of the author and the publishers.

117

ii8 ROBERT PALFREY UTTER

boys vary as much as dogs, and it is unsafe to generalize too broadly,
but if there is such a thing as a typical eleven or twelve-year-old
boy he is an Irish terrier on two legs.

He is alert ; he will try anything once, and is always on his mark
and set for a go at it. He is audacious; he has few of the in-
hibitions that come from disillusioning experience. Half the time
you don't know whether it is blissful ignorance or sheer nerve that
so often takes him where angels fear to tread. He has a kindling
imagination that attaches itself readily to things and acts; it is
ignited instantly by anything he can do. It translates the con-
crete into the imaginary, and the imaginary into the concrete — a
crevice in rock becomes a cave swarming with bandits, and he the
chief ; the action of a story you tell him or an animal you describe
he turns forthwith into bodily motion with the formula, "Look, he
went like this; see?1' You win his faith on about the same terms as
that of the pup dog, and his capacity for hero-worship is the same,
and makes you feel — well, he puts it up to you.

Like the pup dog he has no notion of going straight from one
place to another for the sake of getting there. Each moment and
each place is to him an entity, capable of being enjoyed for and by
itself. Your idea is, in most cases, to get on; his is to exhaust the
possibilities of each spot before passing on to the next. He is a
good sport. When his legs grow weary he trails you doggedly,
silently. Ask him if he is tired and he clears his throat and says,
"Not very." A few yards further on you find a comfortable spot
where you simply must sit down and light your pipe. You produce
first-aid chocolate, which he receives with glad, sweet surprise, and
in a few minutes you have him chattering and scurrying again.

Senseless chatter? Sometimes it doesn't have much to do with
what you may consider the rational interests of life, but then, if you
want to know what goes on inside the tousled head, there it is. Be-
sides, what do you talk about when you are out with your con-
temporaries? The binomial theorem? Don't you come home
and boast of having renewed your youth? If that is what you
want, the pup boy will give you the real thing. What is more,
he will call for all the exact knowledge you have before you hear
the last of his rapid-fire questions: "How do trees make sap?"
"Why do clouds float?" "What are frogs' eggs made of?" If you
really want to renew your youth, get him to laughing — if you try
you can soon find the trick. It is a cheerful sound, and he will

THE PUP BOY 119

keep it up for long stretches, a running obbligato to your march.
Like the pup dog he is engagingly sincere. He seldom tries to fool
you except by way of a joke, and when he is polite you take it with-
out effort of imagination as a mark of true esteem. He does not
beg for demonstrations of affection as openly as does the pup dog,
but when you slip one over on him, you can see it strike home.

Men are apt to think that few women really understand dogs. A
woman who brings up a pup from the woolly-waddly stage may
give (and receive) love untellable. She sympathizes with him,
feeds him, tends him, makes him happy and comfortable. He
guards her and loves her, but his love "is of his life a thing apart."
She is the presiding genius of his eating and sleeping ; but eating and
sleeping, much as he likes them, he will abandon at any time for the
more real things of life, which, as a rule, she does not share. His
hero for whom he will die, but with whom he would rather live, is
he who shares with him the "vivid and resolute" life in the open.

So also the pup boy. If you never see him except indoors or on
parade, you simply do not know him. While he is in waddling
clothes it is easy enough; so long as you do not make him afraid
of you, you have his full confidence. But soon comes the time when
you feel him "growing away from you." He does not share his
life with you. Do you share yours with him? You can't take him
to the office ; he can't take you to school. Take him and a frying-
pan and start for the woods. You need not propose to teach him
how to build a fire or fry the bacon; go at it yourself, and in half
a minute he will beg for the privilege. In five minutes he will
learn more than in many a "lack-lustre period between sleep and
waking in the class." And in half an hour you will learn more of
what goes on in the tousled head than by half a year of patronizing
breakfast-table questions on your part and quasi-respectful "Yes,
sir," and "No, sir," from him.

The pup boy is not a business proposition, but he is like one in
so far as the returns from him are pretty strictly commensurate with
your investment. If you put in nothing but worthless stuff, such
as money, you get nothing; others will get the money — and they,
too, shall reap as they sow. But if you give yourself, you will get
what shall be your other self.

ON THE ART OF LIVING WITH OTHERS1

SIR ARTHUR HELPS

THE Iliad for war; the Odyssey for wandering: but where is
the great domestic epic? Yet it is but commonplace to say that
passions may rage round a tea-table which would not have mis-
become men dashing at one another in war chariots ; and evolutions
of patience and temper are performed at the fireside worthy to be
compared with the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Men have wor-
shipped some fantastic being for living alone in a wilderness; but
social martyrdoms place no saints upon the calendar.

We may blind ourselves to it if we like, but the hatreds and dis-
gusts that there are behind friendship, relationship, service, and,
indeed, proximity of all kinds, is one of the darkest spots upon
earth. The various relations of life which bring people together
cannot, as we know, be perfectly fulfilled except in a state where
there will, perhaps, be no occasion for any of them. It is no harm,
however, to endeavor to see whether there are any methods which
may make these relations in the least degree more harmonious now.

In the first place, if people are to live happily together, they must
not fancy, because they are thrown together now, that all their
lives have been exactly similar up to the present time, that they
started exactly alike, and that they arc to be for the future of the
same mind. A thorough conviction of the difference of men is the
great thing to be assured of in social knowledge : it is to life what
Newton's law is to astronomy. Sometimes men have a knowledge
of it with regard to the world in general: they do not expect the
outer world to agree with them in all points, but are vexed at not
being able to drive their own tastes and opinions into those they
live with. Diversities distress them. They will not see that there
are many forms of virtue and wisdom. Yet we might as well say
"Why all these stars; why this difference; why not all one star?"

Many of the rules for people living together in peace, follow
from the above. For instance, not to interfere unreasonably with
1 From Friends in Council, 1859.

120

ON THE ART OF LIVING WITH OTHERS 121

others, not to ridicule their tastes, not to question and requestion
their resolves, not to indulge in perpetual comment on their proceed-
ings, but to delight in their ' aving other pursuits than ours, are all
based upon a thorough perception of the simple fact, that they are
not we.

Another rule for living happily with others is to avoid having
stock subjects of disputation. It mostly happens, when people live
much together, that they come to have certain set topics, aiound
which, from frequent dispute, there is such a growth of ait^ry
words, mortified vanity and the like that the original subject of
difference becomes a standing subject for quarrel; and there is a
tendency in all minor disputes to drift down to it.

Again, if people wish to live well together, they must not hold
too much to logic, and suppose that everything is to be settled by
sufficient reason. Dr. Johnson saw this clearly with regard to
married people, when he said "wretched would be the pair above
all names of wretchedness who should be doomed to adjust by reason
every morning, all the minute detail of a domestic day." But the
application should be much more general than he made it. There
is not time for such reasonings, and nothing that is worth them.
And when we recollect how two lawyers, or two politicians, can go
on contending, and that there is no end of one-sided reasoning on
any subject, we shall not be sure that such contention is the best
mode for arriving at truth. But certainly it is not the way to arrive
at good temper.

If you would be loved as a companion, avoid unnecessary criti-
cism upon those with whom you live. The number of people who
have taken out judges' patents for themselves is very large in any
society. Now it would be hard for a man to live with another who
was always criticizing his actions, even if it were kindly and just
criticism. It would be like living between the glasses of a micro-
scope. But these self -elected judges, like their prototypes, are very
apt to have the persons they judge brought before them in the guise
of culprits.

One of the most provoking forms of the criticism above alluded
to is that which may be called criticism over the shoulder. "Had I
been consulted," "had you listened to me," "but you always will,"
and such short scraps of sentences may remind many of us of dis-
sertations which we have suffered and inflicted, and of which we
cannot call to mind any soothing effect.

122 SIR ARTHUR HELPS

Another rule is, not to let familiarity swallow up all courtesy.
Many of us have a habit of saying to those with whom we live
such things as we say about strangers behind their backs. There
is no place, however, where real politeness is of more value than
where we mostly think it would be superfluous. You may say
more truth, or rather speak out more plainly, to your associates, but
not less courteously, than you do to strangers.

Again, we must not expect more from the society of our friends
and companions than it can give; and especially must not expect
contrary things. It is somewhat arrogant to talk of travelling over
other minds (mind being, for what we know, infinite) : but still we
become familiar with the upper views, tastes and tempers of our
associates. And it is hardly in man to estimate justly what is
familiar to him. In travelling along at night, as Hazlitt says, we
catch a glimpse into cheerful-looking rooms with light blazing in
them, and we conclude, involuntarily, how happy the inmates must
be. Yet there is Heaven and Hell in those rooms, the same Heaven
and Hell that we have known in others.

There are two great classes of promoters of social happiness,
cheerful people, and people who have some reticence. The latter
are more secure benefits to society even than the former. They are
non-conductors of all heats and animosities around them. To have
peace in a house, or a family, or any social circle, the members of it
must beware of passing on hasty and uncharitable speeches, which,
the whole of the context seldom being told, is often not conveying,
but creating, mischief. They must be very good people to avoid
doing this ; for let human nature say what it will, it likes sometimes
to look on at a quarrel: and that, not altogether from ill nature,
but from a love of excitement — for the same reason that Charles
the Second liked to attend the debates in the Lords, because they
were as "good as a play.*'

We come now to the consideration of temper, which might have
been expected to be treated first. But to cut-off the means and
causes of bad temper is, perhaps, of as much importance as any
direct dealing with the temper itself. Besides, it is probable . that
in small social circles there is more suffering from unkindness than
ill-temper. Anger is a thing that those who live under us suffer
more from than those who live with us. But all the forms of ill-
humour and sour-sensitiveness, which especially belong to equal in-
timacy (though indeed they are common to all) are best to be met

ON THE ART OF LIVING WITH OTHERS 123

by impassiveness. When two sensitive persons are shut up together,
they go on vexing each other with a reproductive irritability. But
sensitive and hard people get on well together. The supply of
temper is not altogether out of the usual laws of supply and demand.

Intimate friends and relations should be careful when they go
out into the world together, or admit others to their own circle,
that they do not make a bad use of the knowledge which they have
gained of each other by their intimacy. Nothing is more common
than this, and did it not proceed from mere carelessness, it would
be superlatively ungenerous. You seldom need wait for the written
life of a man to hear about his weaknesses, or what are supposed to
be such, if you know his intimate friends or meet him in company
with them.

Lastly, in conciliating those we live with, it is most surely done,
not by consulting their interests, nor by giving away to their opin-
ions, so much as by not offending their tastes. The most refined
part of us lies in this region of taste which is perhaps a result of
our whole being rather than a part of our nature, and at any rate
is the region of our most subtle sympathies and antipathies.

It may be said that if the great principles of Christianity were
attended to, all such rules, suggestions and observations as the
above would be needless. True enough! Great principles are at
the bottom of all things; but to apply them to daily life, many
little rules, precautions, and insights are needed. Such things hold
a middle place between real life and principles, as form does be-
tween matter and spirit, moulding the one and expressing the other.

THE ART OF CONVERSATION1

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

IT is customary for our courts to punish some men as a warning
to others. To punish them for having done wrong would be foolish,
as Plato says, for what is done can never be undone. They are
punished that they may offend no more and that others may avoid
their example. We do not correct the man we hang; we correct
others through him. I do the same. My errors are sometimes
natural and incorrigible; but whereas good men benefit the public
by making themselves imitated, I shall perhaps do so by making my
manners avoided.

Do you not see how wretchedly the son of Albius lives and
how miserably Barrus? An excellent warning not to waste
one's patrimony. — HORACE, Satires, I, iv.

If I make public my own imperfections and condemn them,
someone may perhaps learn to shun them. The qualities that I
most esteem in myself will be more appreciated if I disparage than
if I praise myself, which is the reason why I so often drop into
self-criticism. But when all is said, a man seldom speaks of himself
except at a loss. A man's accusations of himself are always believed,
his praises never. There may be those, however, who like myself
are better instructed by contrast than by example, and by what to
avoid rather than by what to imitate. Cato the Elder had an eye
to this sort of discipline when he said that "the wise may learn
more from fools than fools from the wise"; and Pausanias tells us
of an ancient player of the lyre who used to make his pupils go to
hear a very bad player across the way from him that they might
learn to hate his discords and false measures. The horror of
cruelty inclines me to mercy more than any example of clemency
could do. A good rider does not teach me nearly so well how to sit
in the saddle as does an awkward attorney or a Venetian on horse-

aFrom Essays t vol. iii. Adapted and abridged from the Cotton trans-
lation and the original.

124

THE ART OF CONVERSATION 125

back; and a vulgar manner of speaking does more to reform mine
than the most polished. The uncouth appearance of another man
always admonishes me ; that which pricks, rouses, and incites works
much better than that which pleases. Under such circumstanc »s
we may reform by going in the opposite direction, by disagreeing
rather than by agreeing, by contrast rather than by imitation.
Profiting little by good examples, I make use of those that are b "J,
which are everywhere to be found. I try to make myself as agree-
able as I see others offensive, as constant as I see others fickle, ?s
affable as I see others rude, as good as I see others evil. . . .

The most fruitful and natural exercise of the mind, in my opin-
ion, is conversation. I find it more pleasant than any other activity.
That is the reason why, if I were compelled to choose, I think I
should sooner consent to lose my sight than my hearing and speech.
The Athenians and the Romans also held this exercise in great
esteem in their academies. The Italians retain some traces of it to
this day, to their great advantage, as may be seen from a comparison
of their intellect with ours. The study of books is an enervating
and feeble activity which does not kindle the mind, whereas con-
versation teaches and exercises it at the same time. If I converse
with an intelligent man and an agile disputant who presses hard
upon me and pricks me on both sides, his imagination stimulates
mine. Jealousy, glory, and rivalry push me up above my ordinary
level. Agreement, on the other hand, is altogether obnoxious in
conversation. Just as our minds grow stronger through intercourse
with vigorous and logical intellects, so they may deteriorate through
continual association with people of feeble and slow wit. There is
no contagion that spreads like dullness. I know from experience
what it is worth. . . .

Differences of opinion neither offend nor alter me; they only
arouse and stir me. We avoid correction, whereas we ought to
invite it, especially when it appears in the form of conversation and
not as the exercise of authority. When we are contradicted, we
do not seek to find the truth, but only how we may extricate our-
selves from the argument. Instead of extending our arms, we
thrust out our claws. I can stand being roughly treated by my
friends, even to being told that I am a fool and do not know what
I am talking about. I like to be in the company of frank men
where one speaks freely and Tets his words run with his thoughts.
. . . The fact that Socrates always welcomed smilingly the objec-

126 MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

tions made to his arguments can be ascribed to the strength of his
intellect, and to his confidence that the advantage was sure to fall
on his side, so that he accepted a challenge as an opportunity for a
new victory. On the other hand we see that nothing so blinds us
as our belief in our own superiority and in the inferiority of our
adversary, and our opinion that it is for the weaker to accept in
good spirit the opposition that corrects him and sets him right. I
myself prefer the company of those who attack me to that of those
who fear me. It is a dull and hurtful pleasure to be with people
who admire and yield to us. Antisthenes commanded his children
never to take it kindly or as a favor when any man commended
them. I am much more proud of the victory I win over myself
when, in the very ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my
adversary's force of reason than I am of the victory I win over him
because of his weakness. . . .

It is always arrogant and captious not to be able to endure a
manner different from one's own. Besides, there can be no greater
folly than to be irritated by the follies of the world, no matter how
absurd, for to do so is to become at odds with oneself. . . . How
many things do I say every day that seem ridiculous even to myself ;
then how many more of them must seem ridiculous to others! If I
bite my lips, what must not others do? Indeed, we must live among
the living and let the stream flow under the bridge without our
care, or at least without our interference. Why is it that we meet
a man with a humpback or some other physical deformity without
being disturbed, yet cannot endure the encounter with an ill-ordered
mind without becoming angry? Such testy intolerance reflects
more upon the judge than upon the fault. Let us always remember
this saying of Plato's : "Do I not find things unsound because I am
not myself sound ?" A wise and divine saying that lashes the most
universal and common error of mankind. The reproaches we
make against others, our reasoning, our arguments, our controversies
can all be turned against us, and we wound ourselves with our own
weapons. . . .

Our eyes see nothing that lies behind them. We mock ourselves
a hundred times a day when we deride our neighbors. We detest
in others the faults that are still more noticeable in ourselves, and
in our marvelous blindness and impudence, we wonder at them. It
was but yesterday that I heard a man of intelligence and breeding
justly and pleasantly making fun of a foolish man who wearies

THE ART OF CONVERSATION 127

everybody with talk about his family tree and his alliances, more
than half false, (for it is the people whose origin is the most doubt-
ful that are the most likeh 'o engage in this kind of folly) and yet,
if he had looked at himself, he would have found that he was
no less unrestrained and tiresome on the subject of his wife's
family. . . .

I hate all sorts of tyranny whether in word or in deed. I de-
liberately stiffen myself against those vain circumstances that mis-
lead our judgment through our senses. Holding myself on guard
against great celebrities, I find that they are at best but men like
other men:

Rare is common sense in those of high fortune. — Ju VENAL,
viii, 73-

Perhaps we value them for less than they are because they under-
take more and reveal themselves more; they do not measure up to
the part they have assumed. There must be more vigor and strength
in the bearer than in the burden. He who has not exerted all his
strength leaves us to guess whether he still has more and whether he
has been tried to this limit. He who sinks under his load reveals
his own measure and the weakness of his shoulders. This is the
reason why we see so many awkward souls among the learned.
They would have made good husbandmen, good merchants, and
good artisans; their natural ability was cut to these proportions.
Knowledge is a thing of great weight : they faint under it. Their
natural talent has neither the strength nor the dexterity to install,
distribute, and make use of so rich and powerful a matter. Knowl-
edge is of value only in strong natures, and these are rare. Weaker
natures, according to Socrates, destroy the dignity of philosophy in
handling it, for philosophy is useless and even harmful when lodged
in the wrong mind.

Just like an ape, simulator of the human face, whom a
wanton boy has dizened up in rich silks above, but left bare
below for the amusement of the guests. — CLAUDIAN.

Likewise it is not enough for those who govern and direct us
and have everything their own way to possess merely ordinary in-
telligence and be able to do what we are able to do. They are far
beneath us if they are not far above us. As they promise more, so
they owe more. With them, therefore, silence is not only cere-

128 MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

monious and dignified, but also advantageous. Megabysus, who had
gone to see the painter Apelles in his workroom, stood a long time
silent and then began to speak of the work. Whereupon he re-
ceived this rude rebuke : "So long as you kept silent, you seemed to
be some great personage, because of your jewelry and your rich
attire, but now that we have heard you speak, there is not an ap-
prentice in the room who does not hold you in contempt."2 The
magnificent attire, the great finery, did not permit him to be as
ignorant as others or to speak unintelligently about painting. He
should have preserved the illusion of knowledge through silence.
To how many a blockhead in my time has a cold and taciturn
behavior given the reputation of wisdom and ability !

Dignities and high places are necessarily won more by good luck
than by merit. Yet we should not condemn kings when they make
mistakes in their appointments. It is a wonder that they do so
well when they have so little skill in choosing men.

Of all the virtues of a prince, the greatest is to know his
courtiers. — MARTIAL, viii, 15.

Nature has not given them so strong a sight that it can include
many people, discern which one excels the rest, or penetrate into
our hearts, where the knowledge of our wills and real value lies.
They must choose by conjecture and by feeling their way; by fam-
ily, wealth, and learning; and by the voice of the people, which are
all very feeble arguments. Whoever could find a way whereby a
man might judge truly and choose men according to desert would
in this one thing establish a perfect form of government. . , .

Wherefore I say that events are but weak testimonies of our
worth and capacities. We need only to see a man promoted to
dignity, and though three days before we had known him to be of
no importance, an image of greatness and competence slips into our
minds, and we persuade ourselves that as he has grown in renown
and position, so has he grown in worth. We judge him not by his
merits but by his rank, as we judge counters in a game. If fortune
turns and he falls back to his place among the common lot, people
inquire wonderingly how he had happened to rise so high. "Is this
he?" they say. "Didn't he know any more than this when he was
in his high place ? Are princes contented with so little ? Truly, we
were in good hands." — This is a thing I have often seen in my

8 Plutarch, How to Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend.

THE ART OF CONVERSATION 129

time. Even the representation of grandeur on the stage moves us
and deceives us. What I myself admire in kings is the crowd of
their admirers. All reverence and submission is due them save that
of the intellect. My reason is not formed to bend or bow; my
knees are. When Malanthius was asked what he thought of the
tragedy of Dionysus, he answered: "I could not see it; it was so
hidden in words." In the same way most of those who comment
on the speech of men in high station ought to say: "I was not able
to understand his thought ; it was so hidden in gravity, importance,
and authority." . . .

I differ from this common fashion and am more likely to be
suspicious of the ability that is accompanied by good fortune and
public applause. Consider what an advantage it is to a man to
speak when he pleases, to choose the subject he will speak of, to
interrupt or change other men's arguments with a magisterial au-
thority, to protect himself from the opposition of others by a nod,
a smile, or silence, in an assembly that trembles with reverence and
respect. A man of prodigious fortune who came to give his judg-
ment upon some slight dispute that had foolishly been set on foot at
his table began in this way: "It can only be a liar or a fool that
will say otherwise than so and so." Pursue this philosophical point
with a dagger in your hand.

Another observation from which I draw great advantage, is that
in conferences and debates every word that seems good is not imme-
diately to be accepted. Most men are rich in borrowed words; a
man may very probably say a good thing without comprehending
the force of it himself. That a man does not perfectly understand
all he borrows may perhaps be verified in myself. . . .

As for the rest, nothing annoys me so much about stupidity as
that it is so much more satisfied with itself than intelligence ever
can be. It is unfortunate that wisdom forbids us to be pleased with
ourselves and sends us away discontented and cautious, whereas
prejudice and shallowness fill their hosts with satisfaction and self-
assurance. It is those who are least informed who look patroniz-
ingly at other men and return from an argument full of joy and
triumph. And for the most part this arrogance of speech and
briskness of manner impresses their audience, which is commonly
incapable of judging the merits of the case. Obstinacy and heat in
argument are the surest proof of stupidity. Is there anything so

130 MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

assured, so resolute, so disdainful, so contemplative, so serious, and
so grave as an ass ?

May we not include under the subject of conversation and dis-
cussion the quick and sharp repartee which gayety and familiarity
introduce among friends bantering and joking with one another.
It is an exercise for which my natural good-humor fits me, and if
it is not so extended and serious as that of which I have just spoken,
it is no less clever and ingenious, nor less profitable, as it seemed to
Lycurgus. For my part, I contribute to it more freedom than wit,
and depend more upon luck than invention. But I am accomplished
in forbearance, for I endure retaliation that is not only sharp but
also indiscreet, and that without irritation. If I do not have a
quick retort ready when I am attacked, I do not try to pursue the
point into a wearisome contest approaching obstinacy. I let it pass
and laughingly lower my flag for the time, deferring my revenge to
a better occasion. There is no merchant who always makes a profit.
Most men change their expression or their tone of voice when their
wits fail, and instead of avenging themselves allow an unseasonable
anger to reveal both their weakness and their impatience.

In this good-natured clash of wits we sometimes pinch the secret
cords of our imperfections which in a more sober mood we should
not be able to touch without hurt, and so mutually help each other
discover our own defects, to our profit.

ELSIE DINSMORE: A STUDY IN PERFECTION1
OR HOW FUNDAMENTALISM CAME TO DIXIE

RUTH SUCKOW

MANY years ago there was born in a remote corner of our land
a little girl-child endowed by the angels and Martha Finley with
every qualification for a perfect heroine of fiction. Charm,
beauty, background, complexes — all were hers. But we doubt if
even the angels hovering that night over the snowy mansion could
have foretold for the newborn babe the long life and longer in-
fluence that were to be hers. She was entered according to Act of
Congress in the year 1868, but in 1927 she is still to be found in
flourishing state and new bindings, while she will never cease to
haunt the minds of millions of women. The name of the child
was Elsie Dinsmore.

There can be no comprehension of Elsie without some knowl-
edge of the background whence she sprang. Although Congress
was not aware of her until 1868, her childhood was passed in those
halcyon days befo' de wah. Her home was the Sunny South — the
precise spot we are not told and no shaft of purest marble marks
the holy ground, for thus does America in its hurly-burly pass by
those who have helped to make its history; but situated in such
wise that her own little sitting-room opened out upon "a grassy
lawn ... and beyond, far away in the distance, rolled the blue
sea." It was that South which has ever furnished to American
fiction the most saintly and brilliant of its heroines: Little Eva,
Edna Earl, the Little Colonel and the Hard-Boiled Virgin. It
was the South of pillared mansions, mint juleps, banjos, jasmine,
mammies, goatees and Colonels, highbred gallants and horses, and
faithful old black Catos crying "I'se comin', Massa!" wid de
misery in de back. Yet we are told that it was but a worldly region
where the young folk danced in the evening, rode out for pleasure

1From The Bookman, October, 1927. Reprinted by permission of the
author and the publishers.

131

i3a RUTH SUCKOW

on the Sabbath, read secular newspapers, and engaged in worldly
conversation before the coming of the little Elsie.

To cast no hint of shadow upon the auspicious entrance of the
child into fiction, the mother died upon giving her birth. This
mother's name she bore; and so closely did the little Elsie resemble
the departed Elsie that the heart of the father was often troubled
when he gazed upon her and a deep sigh escaped his lips; while
around her neck she was thus privileged to wear a miniature set in
gold and diamonds which she frequently drew from her breast at
crucial moments and raised to her lips. Of the father, Mr.
Travilla once fittingly said: "Were I asked to describe his char-
acter in a few words, I should say he is a man of indomitable
will." His honor was unstained. Yet he was proud and worldly,
seeing himself "not for what he really was in the sight of God, a
guilty, hell-deserving sinner — lost, ruined and undone, but as quite
deserving of the prosperity with which he had been blessed in the
affairs of this world, and just as likely as anyone to be happy in the
next!" In a word, a Southern gentleman. Horace Dinsmore —
for such was his name — on his part acted well the role of ideal male
parent of our heroine. Blaming the innocent child for the mother's
death, he hastened instantly to Europe there to wander many years,
perhaps in company with St. Elmo and those other Southern heroes
whose hearts were but ruined fanes, leaving the small Elsie in the
custody of others and granting her no place in his proud but pas-
sionate heart. Thus he paved the way for one of those complexes
vitally necessary to the interpretation of any really great character :
a sense of inferiority. The passionate adoration of the love-starved
little heart for the unknown father supplied the other with splendid
largesse. Of it we may say:

O Complex thou wert great!
And Electra was thy name.

But Elsie possessed likewise all of those more material things neces-
sary to the childhood of the Victorian heroine: male and female
persecutors, a pony, a mammy, blots in her copybook, a worn Bible,
glossy curls, and an aching heart.

But another quality set Elsie apart as peculiarly destined to be a
messenger to her time and place. She was a professing Christian.
Miss Rose Allison, a young lady from the North visiting among
the Dinsmores, and destined some day to stand in a nearer and

ELSIE DINSMORE 133

dearer relation to the little Elsie herself, had been "greatly pained
by the utter disregard of the family in which she was sojourning
for the teachings of God's word." That typical Southern family
was to be led one by one to the cross through the persuasion and
example of Elsie and the avenging wrath of Martha Finley.

As for Elsie herself, let her tell the story in her own words:
"It was dear old mammy who first told me how He suffered and
died on the cross for us." There was, moreover, a pious Scotch-
woman, unable to open her lips without letting the ains and aulds
tumble out, once a housekeeper in the home of the Dinsmores, who
had early told the child of her total depravity and given her the
blessed comfort of the tidings. Thus among the lowest began those
teachings destined to spreao! through the example of our heroine to
the highest reaches of the haughty and aristocratic Southern so-
ciety and to bring it later to complete repudiation of the vile doc-
trine that men are descended from monkeys.

But to begin our story. For we have forty volumes before us.

Now I shall point out to my readers the early workings of that
golden complex from which Elsie drew that "ornament of a meek
and quiet spirit" which has placed her upon the shelves of thou-
sands of Sunday School libraries. It is a bonny day when our story
opens. The Dinsmore children are gathered in the schoolroom at
Roselands. There are the proud Louise, the high-spirited Lora,
the impertinent Enna, the profligate Arthur; while apart from the
others sits the one professing Christian, their step-niece the little
eight-year-old Elsie. Of Miss Day, the governess, we have this
significant description: "She was always more severe with Elsie
than with any of her other pupils." All the while that Elsie is
"bent over her writing, taking great pains," the profligate Arthur
stands "jogging her elbow in such a way" that her fair copybook
is ruined. Then we see all the others riding off gaily to the fair,
leaving Elsie "weeping and sobbing" and taking out a small pocket
Bible. Her inferiority is established.

But think not that the superior Dinsmores enjoy forever the
fruits of their wordly scorn! You reckon not with the just spirit
of Martha Finley. Let us take a peep into the future, for so the
biographer is privileged to do. One by one we see the oppressors
driven to repentance or hell. To Adelaide Dinsmore, always more

134 RUTH SUCKOW

gentle to the little Elsie, God and the author are kind. They do
but take away from her that one who was her all, thus enabling
her to hearken to the comforting words of Elsie: "Perhaps He
saw that you loved your friend too well, and would never give your
heart to Jesus unless He took him away." With Lora, too, the
avenging hand is mild. She is merely brought to the edge of
eternity by runaway horses, after which she is glad to receive the
consolations of Elsie interspersed with appropriate texts. But what
of those others ? We see the profligate Arthur slain in battle ; the
saucy Enna deserted by the scoundrel whom she had wilfully mar-
ried; while apoplexy strikes the proud Louise in her prime and
she must die without the blessed hope of a glorious eternity. Nor
is the unjust governess forgotten by either Martha or God. Many
volumes have passed. We see the rude structure of a log hut built
in a wild spot and evidently the abode of pinching poverty. An
invalid, blind and on the edge of the grave, reclines in a rude
chair. It is Miss Day. But there is a still greater affliction. This
wretched woman, we are told, had loved that very man now wedded
to the little Elsie, and "there had been a time when she would
almost have given her hopes of heaven for a return of her affec-
tion." What wonder that the ci-devant governess is ready now to
receive from Elsie appropriate texts and tempting viands!

But modern psychology opens up to us the dawn of another
complex.

The wanderer is returning. Elsie's thoughts are all of that
father. "Oh! Will he love me? My own papa! will he let me
love him? will he take me in his arms and call me his own darling
child ?" Weak would that complex be, and imperfect the character
of our heroine, did Horace Dinsmore love his child upon sight. He
greets her coldly. Many chapters are to pass before the father takes
his child upon his knee, and an enormous amount of weeping and
sobbing and Bible perusal accomplished by the little Elsie.

Meanwhile, the keen eye of the modern biographer is able to
discern beneath passing events the meaning of the whole. In the
great pattern of existence, the life of Elsie Dinsmore shows a
two-fold purpose of its creator. One branch of this purpose is the
ideal perfection of the character of our heroine herself; the other

ELSIE DINSMORE 135

is the salvation by her of Dixie impersonated in the proud and
worldly Horace Dinsmore.

For we are told many times that our little Elsie is "not yet per-
fect." And without that second, more than golden — that dia-
mond!— complex, so beneficently bestowed upon her by a far-
seeing creator and now brought to light for the first time by an
all-seeing biographer, it is plain that later generations would never
have heard the name of Elsie Dinsmore. Elsie's life hereafter is
but a cheerful carrying-out of the great commandment : Honor thy
father and thy mother : that thy days may be long upon the land.
Immediate, unquestioning obedience is demanded by Mr. Dinsmore.
Many are the tests to which the little girl must submit through the
long pages to determine the perfect subordination of her will to his.
Our readers will recall them. Meat, hot cakes, sweetmeats and
coffee — the most tempting viands of the South — are taken away
from the unprotesting child and dry bread and water frequently
substituted. She is separated from her little companions, forbidden
to play jack-stones, sent away from the merrymaking to keep an
early bedtime, and sits at the table in perfect silence eating what-
ever her father sees fit to put upon her plate. She is never allowed
to ask why. "All you have to do is obey. Papa knows best."
Under these highly favorable conditions, love for her father waxes
stronger and stronger until it almost fills the little breast.

But in spite of her cheerful, unquestioning obedience, we must
remember that our heroine is "not yet perfect." In fact, she stands
in the greatest spiritual peril. It is all too likely that in her ab-
sorbing complex she will forget her Heavenly Father in submis-
sion to the earthly one. "Do you love Jesus?" the father wonder-
ingly asks her. "Oh ! yes, sir ; very very much ; even better than I
love you, my own dear papa." But more and still severer tests
must be visited upon our Elsie in all loving-kindness until the
thesis of the biographer has been proved.

We may pass over the less agonizing of these ordeals until we
come to that awful crisis forgotten by no disciple of the little
heroine, and serving as well to bring upon the scene in his true
importance one of whom we shall Jiear much hereafter: Mr.
Travilla.

It is the Sabbath. At Roselands a goodly company is gathered.
But ah, what a scene ! "They were nearly all gentlemen, and were
now collected in the drawing-room laughing, jesting, talking poli-

136 RUTH SUCKOW

tics, and conversing with each other and the ladies upon various
worldly topics, apparently quite forgetful that it was the Lord's
day." One of the gentlemen has received a glowing account of the
precocious musical talent of the little Elsie, and has now conceived
a great desire to hear her play and sing. "I shall be most happy
to gratify you," replies the proud young father. And he pulled the
bell-rope. Ere she obeyed the call, Elsie "knelt down for a moment
and prayed earnestly for strength to do right." For as luck would
have it, it was a secular piece of music which the father had chosen
for her display.

"Dear papa, you know this is the holy Sabbath day."

"Well, my daughter, and what of that? / consider this song
perfectly proper to be sung today, and that ought to satisfy you."

"Dear papa, I cannot break the Sabbath."

It has been evident all along that Horace Dinsmore is one of
those typical men who are stern but kind. He is now not even
kind. He speaks in thundering tones:

"Elsie, you shall sit there until you obey me, though it shall be
until tomorrow morning."

Hours passed. One by one the guests came in kindly mood to
beg the child to obey her earthly father and commit the more deadly
sin of disobeying that father who is in heaven. She answered with
appropriate texts. Day passes into night. The child is alone —
when suddenly, to the gentlemen conversing in the portico, there
comes a sound as of something falling! It is Mr. Travilla who
rushes into the drawing-room, raises the unconscious child in his
arms, with her fair face, her curls, and her white dress all dabbled
in blood, while he addresses to Mr. Dinsmore those thrilling words
that have rung down the ages:

"Dinsmore, you're a brute!"

Surely it has been proved that the little Elsie loves her Heavenly
Father! Mr. Dinsmore was made to tremble with fear that the
gentle spirit had taken its flight; and while nothing could break
his indomitable will, she was not forced to play the song until the
dawn of a secular week-day. But do not forget that we are view-
ing this life, not merely from a single, but from a double view-
point! Horace Dinsmore must be brought to his knees.

ELSIE DINSMORE 137

Well into the second volume, when he has grown dearly to love
his little daughter, often passing his hand caressingly over the glossy
curls and holding her for hours upon his knee, the insidious process
begins unseen by any but the biographer. Mr. Dinsmore falls ill of
a low fever. Ah, these were happy days for the little Elsie ! And
she proved a capital nurse, so that her father grew almost to recipro-
cate the violence of the complex. But there are breakers ahead.
Our author warns us with appropriate texts and quotations from
the poets.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,
and again:

The storm of grief bears hard upon her youth,
And bends her, like a drooping flower, to earth.

That dreadful Sabbath rolls 'round again. Mr. Dinsmore, his
feverish mind weary at last of appropriate texts even when read
by that sweet voice, bids Elsie bring the book that she was reading
yesterday. Oh, now we are approaching a catastrophe even more
awful than the fall from the piano stool ! For as luck would have
it, this book was "simply a fictitious moral tale, without a particle
of religious truth in it, and, Elsie's conscience told her, entirely
unfit for Sabbath reading." Now must our little Southern beauty
be tested sure enough !

"Oh, papa, please do not ask me to read that book today."

"Elsie, I do not ask you to read that book, I command you to do
it, and what is more, I intend to be obeyed"

The italics are Martha Finley's.

In every way the child is tested. "Why, my daughter," the
father says in gentler mood, "I have seen ministers reading worse
books than that on the Sabbath." Even that does not move her.
She is banished from the presence of her suffering father, to see him
no more until she comes ready to offer cheerful, instant, implicit
obedience to his word. Elsie had never before got through such a
quantity of weeping and sobbing, while her little Bible was well-
nigh worn to shreds. But Mr. Dinsmore's word was as the laws
of the Medes and Persians, his indomitable will remained unbroken,
he refused to come to the Saviour ; and even when he was brought
to death's door by the shock of his child's disobedience, her meek
and gentle spirit did not yield. At length he decided to leave her.

138 RUTH SUCKOW

Once more he would try to forget his sorrow by European wander-
ings. He left without one kiss.

"When thus left alone the little Elsie fell upon her knees, weep-
ing and sobbing." From that day she pined. Still the tests came
thicker and thicker upon her. Some were in the nature of worldly
temptations. For Elsie was not yet perfect. She was led through
the rooms of a splendid mansion, fitted with every elegance that
could be supplied by taste, money and the advantages of foreign
travel, and told that if she would but yield she might live there by
her father's side. Finally came the awful news that if she remained
obdurate, her father had determined to send her to a convent.

Then the overburdened little heart broke indeed.

"Save me ! Tell papa I would rather he would kill me at once
than send me to such a place."

For even before the organization of the first knights of the pil-
lowslip, the horrors of such abodes of wickedness were well known.
Although Elsie might not peruse novels, we are told that "much of
her reading had been on the subject of Popery and Papal institu-
tions; she had pored over histories of the terrible tortures of the
Inquisition, and stories of martyrs and captive nuns." Her views on
the subject, indeed, have quite a modern ring.

"They will try to make me go to mass, and pray to the Virgin,
and bow down to the crucifixes; and when I refuse, they will put
me in a dungeon and torture me. They will hide me from papa
when he comes, and tell him that I want to take the veil, and refuse
to see him ; or else they will say that I am dead and buried."

To those familiar with the processes of fiction, it will be no aston-
ishment to learn that ere morning Elsie had fallen into a raving fit
of brain fever ; that her glossy curls were all severed ; and that when
the agonized father at last returned, he found his daughter tossing
and raving in the wildest delirium, now shrieking with fear, now
laughing an unnatural hysterical laugh, with the soft light in her
eyes changed to the glare of insanity. The father paced his room
like a caged lion. But still he did not acknowledge his Saviour.
Then Martha Finley decided upon a stroke so daring that none but
a genius might venture its use. Since the indomitable will of the
Southern gentleman refused to break when his child tottered on the
brink of the grave, Martha would push her over! We see the
doctor turning to his fellow-watchers with a look there was no
mistaking. We hear others than Elsie weeping and sobbing. And

ELSIE DINSMORE 139

the father? What of him? Ah, glorious tidings! For when a
little packet was thrust into his hand, containing the worn Bible
and a glossy curl from his lost darling, his indomitable will broke
and he acknowledged the loving-kindness of his Saviour ! . . . Even
better than that, to the human heart of the reader, are the tidings
that "it was his turn now to long, with an unutterable longing, for
one caress."

"Quick! quick! Aunt Chloe, throw open that shutter wide. I
thought I felt a little warmth about the heart, and — yes! yes! there
is a slight quivering of the eyelid. She may live yet!"

When the father next saw his darling, he told her welcome news.

"I have learned to look upon you now, not as absolutely my own,
but as belonging first to Him, and only lent to me for a time; and
I know that I will have to give an account of my stewardship. And
now, dear one, we are travelling the same road at last."

Ah, these were happy days for the little Elsie! Her father
promised her to bring the servants together every morning and eve-
ning for family worship. We are told that the two were more like
lovers than like father and daughter. One complex answered an-
other. And even when the father took to wife that sincere profess-
ing Christian, Miss Rose Allison, the little Elsie did not lose first
place in his heart. He lavished upon her pearl necklaces, two or
three gold watches, and a dear little pony. But Elsie was now
indeed perfect. Still her father exacted immediate, implicit, un-
questioning obedience ; but only as a steward.

And Elsie's Heavenly Father likewise was stern but kind. A
few minor trials for the Dinsmores are scattered through the next
thirty-eight volumes, but I doubt if ever a typical Southern family
has been so blessed. Elsie's hair returned in ringlets. As she grew,
she received many offers of marriage from the neighboring planters.
But, as her father told her while he folded her to his heart: "My
darling, you are mine. You belong entirely to me." While Elsie
returned "Yes, papa," looking up with the same loving smile. Once
a villain wooed her. But to her papa's stern commands she yielded
only immediate, implicit, unquestioning obedience. And that "papa
knew best" was justified when she discovered that the wretch to
whom she had all but yielded the treasure of her lips "had been

i4o RUTH SUCKOW

tried for man-slaughter and forgery, found guilty on both charges,
and sentenced to the State's Prison." Mr. Dinsmore took his
daughter abroad where counts, lords, and dukes hung upon her
smiles and threw their coronets at her feet. But her heart was re-
served for the one who had in secret loved her for years. "Oh, my
darling — could you, is it — can it be — " It was. Ah, these were
sad days for Mr. Dinsmore ! "My precious one, I don't know how
to resign you to another." But do not fear the introduction of sex
into the story of our perfect heroine. This is a biography for Bos-
ton. We are told that there was "indeed nothing sentimental" in
the conduct of the lovers; "their courtship was disturbed by no
feverish heat of passion." The fortunate lover? Oh — Mr.
Travilla!

Ever after, Martha Finley watches over the Dinsmores. When
Civil War hits the South, they are fortunately embarked upon a
long stay in Europe, their fortunes invested in foreign bonds, and
their mansion set back from the road to escape the eyes of Yankee
marauders. Elsie passes many years with her loved ones at the
home of Mr. Travilla. She seems to grow younger with each
passing page; and so gloriously has the inspiration of her complexes
stood her in stead, that upon her fiftieth birthday we are told with
great particularity that there are no silver threads in her hair and
no lines in her forehead or about the mouth or eyes — she is still
worthy to be loved. Many happy times are in store for the family
which increases rapidly volume by volume. Elsie yachted, Elsie
visited Nantucket, Elsie journeyed on inland waters, Elsie went to
the World's Fair.

Nor was she fated always to be separated from dear papa's side.
Mr. Travilla, ever kind and generous, and lacking only the in-
domitable will to be also a perfect Southern gentleman, chivalrously
relinquished his claim. Sorrowfully we reach a volume entitled
"Elsie's Widowhood."

Ah, these were happy days for the little Elsie! She had dear
papa forever by her side and was privileged to yield him the most
cheerful obedience. Once again Grandmother Elsie sat upon his
knee while he passed his hand caressingly over the glossy curls.
"My own! Was ever father blessed with so sweet a daughter?"
And when she thought of Mr. Travilla, she had the ineffable con-
solation of knowing how well it was with him.

Still the volumes pass. Infinite now are the little Horaces and

ELSIE DINSMORE 141

the little Elsies. Still the days of our heroine are long in the land.
Sad? Ah, you forget the well-worn Bible. Proud of her riches?
Still the golden sense of inferiority glitters above that other gold.
Widowed? But it is so well with him! Does she think with sor-
row of the long unbroken obedience of her life? Not when she
looks into the mirror and sees not one line of care upon her youthful
brow. Does she regret, perchance, that she has never known the
worldly pleasures of dancing, Sunday travelling and the like ? Not
when she glances around her and sees relatives, friends and even
chance acquaintances all brought to the cross; rich, but counting
themselves only as stewards; and the old secular conversation ex-
changed for merry discourses on "the claims of Home and Foreign
Missions, the perils threatening their country from illiteracy, an-
archy, heathenism, Mormonism, Popery, Infidelity &c. — anxious
first of all for the advancement of God's kingdom and secondly for
the welfare and prosperity of the dear land of their birth, the
glorious old Union transmitted to us by our revolutionary fathers !"
The worldly Dixie is no more.

And Martha Finley? She has told us, with appropriate texts,
all that we need to know of God. But what of her? There is the
long labor of her lifetime to attest her fundamental doctrines and
her emotional complexes. Her teachings are plain. To both the
earthly and the heavenly fathers, immediate, cheerful, implicit, un-
questioning obedience. A woman craves a master. But much as
Elsie loved dear papa, did a few softer dreams hover about the
figure of Mr. Travilla? Still we hear his sweet whisper: "Marry
me, my darling, and you shall do as you please for the rest of your
life." Still his "brute" rings in our ears. Once or twice, before
Elsie was yet perfect, a shadow of rebellion swelled her gentle
breast. Did it never heave also the womanly, Christian bosom of
Martha Finley? Seemingly not. And yet ...

There are two occasions: slight, yet yielding a wealth of subtle
suggestion to the keen insight of the biographer. We remember
that moment when a friend, congratulating Elsie upon the noble
partner of her choice, let fall the murmur : "A man should be con-
siderably older than his wife, that she may find it easier to look up
to him." And there may have been just a tinge of vicarious tart-

142 RUTH SUCKOW

ness in the post-marital speech of Mr. Travilla when, refusing gal-
lantly to avail himself of his privilege to command, he said: "I
sometimes think, my darling, that you have had enough of obeying
to last you the rest of your life."
The rest is silence.

ROBIN REDBREAST1
ROBERT LITTELL

EUROPE: Thy coming is like unto the dawning of the
morning! (making a gesture toward America's attendants)
What radiant beings are these? (Thoughtfully) Methinks
they look like old-time friends.

AMERICA: Prosperity and Progress. They are ever with me.

THE above lines are from a four-act play called "The New Pa-
triotism," which is only one of many dulcet items in this book by
an assistant principal in a New York school. I did not realize, nor
do I believe that many of us realize, the full horror of the vanilla
patriotism to which our public-school children are exposed. Miss
Niemeier's collection of dramatized ice-cream cones is a revelation.

Some of these plays (all of which will in due course of time be
acted somewhere by innocent youngsters in clean collars and white
dresses) are semi-historical, others are highly imaginary allegories.
There is "George Washington at the Helm of State," "Our Coun-
try's Flag," "News of the Adoption of the Constitution," "Thanks-
giving Time in Plymouth," and then there are "The Joys of the
New Year," "Arbor Day or Bird Day in the Woods," "The Mean-
ing of Labor Day," and "A Visit from Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus."

They are worthy, well laundered, high-minded, pure and noble
efforts, calculated to instill into children that Americanism which
salutes the flag and washes thoroughly behind the ears. They put
into the mouths of Founding Fathers words which would make
Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and even Roosevelt, whose gen-
erous system was capable of digesting almost any variety of pa-
triotism, slightly seasick.

Here are "Perseverance and Doubt, expressing widely different
opinions," here is "Gay little Everyday," who "drops in unexpect-
edly and succeeds in giving everybody a stolen glimpse of the joys

1 Prom The New Republic, April 25, 1928. Reprinted by permission of
the author and the publishers.

143

144 ROBERT LITTELL

that each month of the year is preparing." Here is Martha Wash-
ington, interrupting an important conference: "How now, Mr.
President George Washington! should affairs of state make you
forget the midday meal?" Here is Prudence, speaking to Betsy
Ross: "This little room, behind thy dead husband's shop at 239
Arch Street, will be a hallowed spot. . . ." Here is Queen Isa-
bella backing up Columbus: "Almost I see a vision like unto it."
Here is Santa Claus: "That will give me time to dash down to
Sadie's house." Here is America "taking South America by the
hand," and saying, "My own dear people" . . . Here is the Tenth
Scout, "eagerly mounting the platform and speaking in clear, ring-
ing tones accompanied by forceful gestures" : "Know the past, aye,
and the glorious present of your country!" Here is Jessie, "clasp-
ing her hands": "The entertainment in school today made me love
Mother's Day." Here is January Joy, "bringing long winter eve-
nings for bowling," and February Joy, with "two beloved days
wherever the American Flag waves," and May Joy ("a carpet of
green and maidens fair"), and September Joy, "dressed in green
with touches of brown and red," who "slips in and takes August
by the arm."

Free speech or no free speech, I would be delighted to see a law
passed which prohibited drowning sensible, natural, unself -conscious
American kids in this kind of adult goo-goo. However, I doubt
very much if the children get any great good from it, or take it very
seriously, or remember it very long. In many ways children are
better protected against slop than grown-ups, and, of course, their
native capacity to resist all kinds of predigested education is infinite.
Still, it isn't pleasant to think that some of the youngsters who take
part in Miss Niemeier's plays will come out from under them with
pink ribbon tied permanently around their souls.

How much better it would be to let the children write their
own plays from what they have read and understood of American
history. Miss Niemeier has apparently left absolutely nothing at
all to the children's own initiative or originality. Even their ges-
tures and tones of voice are plotted out for them. They must speak
"soothingly," or "indignantly," or "firmly," or "softly but firmly,"
or "scornfully," or "jubilantly," or "joyfully," or "breathlessly,"
or "gleefully," or "merrily," or "heartily," or "longingly," or
"brightly," or "coaxingly," or "snappily," or "manfully," or "rever-
ently," or with "enthusiasm," "dignity," "decision," "diffidence," or

ROBIN REDBREAST 145

"grave thoughtfulness." They must "strike an oratorical attitude,"
"whirl off with a merry laugh," "view the statue with satisfaction,"
"rock contentedly," "stand up and scatter the blossoms," "move
their fingers quickly to imitate rain-drops," "jump up and down
with delight," or "burst spontaneously into song." And what a
song:

Robin Redbreast, we love you
And your nest of birdlings too!

I have tried, by a strong dose of quotations, to communicate the
peculiar feeling of disgust and despair which this book produced in
me. Despair, because it is undoubtedly typical of what is sprayed
over the children in many of our public schools. If they don't get
it in plays — and, thank heaven, not all school-teachers are as gifted
as Miss Niemeier — they get it in the text-books, in what the teach-
ers say to them, in the pansy and peppermint atmosphere which
almost goes with the attempt, by grown-ups, to fill children full of
reverence, idealism and civic pride. It seems that a large portion of
our public education is a sort of dew-droppy West Point with
lavender-minded females as drill-sergeants.

Here it is in a nutshell, in the stage directions for Act III of
"Arbor Day or Bird Day in the Woods." "A band of happy chil-
dren, led by their teacher, visit these Spring-decked woods, pick the
flowers, spare the roots and the trees, watch and discuss the birds,
listen to a bird record, then sing their 'Robin Redbreast Song* and
go home." Go home and, I hope, forget all about it.

Some of Miss Niemeier's indirect teaching is a bit more than just
woodsy and sentimental. It feeds, quite without knowing that it
does, the most sinister passion of mankind, the itch to be like every-
body else and force everybody else to be like you. In the play,
"One Country, One Flag, One Language," designed for perform-
ance on Roosevelt's birthday, children are taught to be ashamed of
the language of their or their parents' birth and chuck it overboard.

CAPTAIN OF SCOUTS: But, schoolmates dear, the parents
of those little children are still foreigners — foreigners on
America's soil.

GIRL: That's right! My father claims that we allowed
every European to bring a bit of Europe with him.

ANOTHER GIRL: They live in that bit, speak their foreign
language, and read their foreign-tongued newspaper.

i46 ROBERT LITTELL

CAPTAIN: Theodore Roosevelt worked hard to overcome
that evil.

SCOUTS (all) : Americanize the foreigner ! Americanize
America !

CAPTAIN: The jargon our people speak should never be
heard in America. (Emphatically) We have room for but one
language here, and that is the English language. (Cries:
Hear! Hear! Hear!)

SIXTH SCOUT: The members of our Roosevelt Club have
resolved to speak only the ENGLISH language in our homes, on
the streets, to our parents and to our sisters and brothers.

But this is not the worst. In "The Meaning of Labor Day" the
boy who refuses to celebrate or work and prefers to go fishing is
scared into conformity by a crowd of laborers wearing paper masks
and led by a witch. Not unnaturally, he is "terror stricken, drops
his rod, springs up, and faces them," and, of course, comes around
to the majority way of seeing things. I never suspected that the
methods of the Ku Klux Klan were being instilled into the school-
children of New York City. Neither, I am sure, does Miss Nie-
meier. She simply didn't know it was loaded.

HUCKLEBERRY FINN1
JOHN ERSKINE

"You don't know about me without you have read a book by
the name of 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer* ; but that ain't no
matter," says Huckleberry Finn. He is quite right. We can
understand his masterly story even if we have not read the book
to which it is the sequel, but most Americans have read both, and
a comparison of them helps us to see the greatness of the later one.
In the preface to Tom Sawyer Mark Twain tells us he is drawing
on his own memories of boyhood, and hopes to entertain young
readers, but he adds that older folk may be interested in the picture
of the Middle West, around 1850, and in the incidental record of
the odd superstitions which were then prevalent among children
and slaves.

In Huckleberry Finn the superstitions still appear, and the story
certainly fascinates boys and girls, but mature readers value it for
the rich picture of human nature, a satirical picture, if you will,
but mellow and kind. In the preface to this book Mark Twain
calls our attention to the various dialects the characters use, but it
is hard not to believe his own interest was chiefly in providing us
with our first and still our best account of Main Street — of the
small community, narrow as to their virtues and their vices, and
starved in their imaginations, all but the children and the most
childlike among them.

Since the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the later book have
the same background and much the same characters, it looks as
though Mark Twain must have discovered his true subject during
the eight years which separated the stories. Huckleberry Finn
tells us far more than he knows; through his native confessions we
see the panorama of his world and become sophisticated. We are
really studying ourselves. In the earlier books, however, we have
episodes of boyhood, rather loosely strung together, with one terrific

aFrom The Delight of Great Books, by John Erskine, Copyright 1928.
Used by special permission of the publishers, The Bobbs Merrill Company.

i48 JOHN ERSKINE

stroke of melodrama to help out the plot. No doubt Tom Sawyer
would be enjoyed by young people even if Huckleberry Finn did
not lend it fame and keep it alive, but taken by i.self it now seems
a rather poorly constructed book. The story is built up with
anecdotes, each one complete in itself, and none developed beyond
the point of the joke.

In this early book Tom Sawyer interests us by his love of mis-
chief and by his exuberant fancy. He contrives more than the
usual share of histrionics ; other boys make believe, but Tom dram-
atizes his boyish sentimentality on the grand scale, and we have
the suspicion that by emphasizing and isolating the boy, Mark
Twain gets the total picture of life out of focus, and makes it
difficult for us to interpret the exceptional events in terms of the
normal parts of his story.

These comments on the earlier book may help us to see why we
instinctively admire Huckleberry Finn. The same elements reap-
pear, the same characters, though new persons enter the tale, the
same scene is described, though Huckleberry and the negro Jim
have their chief adventures down the river on a raft, and the spirit
of adventure in boyhood again is the central theme of the book.
But this time the elements are arranged in a proportion which con-
vinces us, and we are sure the picture is true.

When you sit down to write a novel, you find you must have
something besides characters and a plot ; you must have a philosophy
of life. You must decide, for example, what parts of experience
are worth writing about, and then you must make up your mind
how to dispose of the other parts. Most men and women will take
sides on the question whether it is the exceptional experience we
should consider important, or whether any experience would seem
exceptional if we attached importance to it. Our temperament dic-
tates the answer, but we usually frame it in some kind of philos-
ophy. There are novelists who believe that humdrum experience,
the typical daily round of all of us, is the proper material for fic-
tion, and that the novelists, by bearing down hard on it, may bring
out the grain of significance under the smoothworn surface. An-
other kind of artist portrays the average life remorselessly, to show
that it is even less significant than it seems. He is the satirist, and
he shows himself frequently in American literature to-day, a strong
critic of narrowness and meanness, especially as observed in village
life. A third kind of story-teller, with perhaps the same dislike of

HUCKLEBERRY FINN 149

what is familiar and trite, turns resolutely to fresh material, to the
unusual event; he looks, as • e say, for an escape from the world
which shuts him in.

In Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain is all three kinds of story-
teller at once. He gives us a kindly picture of men and women in
very small towns along the river, people with no heroic experience,
who yet find their lives of considerable importance to themselves.

There is a satiric picture, too, an intermittent glimpse into fhe
smallness of human nature. Huckleberry has learned how to make
use of men by appealing to their mean side. When the two oars-
men come near the raft and almost discover the runawav lave,
Huckleberry saves Jim by inviting them to come on board and
minister to the crew. There's a mild case of smallpox, he explains,
and the two men row away, after giving him forty dollars, to salve
their conscience for thus denying the appeal of the sick.

The way in which the realistic elements and the satiric are com-
bined with extraordinary adventure might well be the envy and the
admiration of any novelist. The quiet river towns which Mark
Twain remembered from his youth had something of the frontier
still; violent death varied the monotony, from time to time, and
the outcasts of older parts of the world chanced along, for shelter,
or for a last opportunity to play their tricks in a place where
they weren't known. The law-abiding portions of the community
would condemn such interruptions of the peace, but they would also
be fairly hardened to them. If a novelist tried to tell us now that
the performance of the two quacks in Romeo and Juliet, or in the
Royal Nonesuch, was ever accepted by any American community
we should probably decline to believe him. But when we watch
these rascals and their doings through the eyes of Huckleberry Finn,
we are free to believe them as exceptional as we please, yet we
understand perfectly why the boy took them for granted. Huckle-
berry has had a bringing-up which has prepared him to be surprised
at nothing. We know that his approach to life is peculiar; if his
judgments are not those of the average person, we know why they
aren't, and we know just how far they depart from the normal,
and he has our sympathy. Mark Twain manipulated his material,
therefore, so that the most outrageous melodrama could present it-
self as matter of fact, through the medium of Huckleberry's tem-
perament, and even while we are rearranging the values, and

I5o JOHN ERSKINE

discerning what the boy was blind to, we like him, and concede that
he is true to life.

He is not supposed to be an average boy, like Tom Sawyer ; he is
the son of the village drunkard, a waif who grows up uneducated
and uncared for, so far as the community can see. Parents warn
their children not to play with him; the schoolmaster whips any
boy who is caught in his society. He frankly smokes a corn-cob
pipe ; he always wears a tattered hat ; trousers and shirt are all his
dress ; he carries a dead cat by the tail, because he considers a dead
cat a treasure, and believes it is good magic.

Huckleberry is explained by his father. The elder Finn is as
thorough a study of good-for-nothing propensities as we are likely
to find in literature. Whenever he can, he drinks himself into a
mad fit, and becomes rather dangerous. Huckleberry sits up all
night in the hut on the island, with his father's gun in hand, for
fear it may be necessary to blow his father's brains out. But in his
sober moments the man is even uglier; when he asks Huckleberry
next morning what he is doing with the gun, the boy knows he had
better invent at once an elaborate lie about a thief who tried to get
in during the night.

This extraordinary parent just escapes being lynched for a crime
which, oddly enough, he didn't commit, but afterward he is shot
in the back during a drunken brawl in a disorderly house. Huckle-
berry is rather fond of his father — thoroughly afraid of him, of
course, and critical of his worst excesses, yet disposed to enjoy the
less dangerous periods of his society. From him and from nature
has come all the boy's education. His father's temper taught
Huckleberry the advantages of falsehood ; lying is the better part of
discourse, he thinks, one's natural protection against society. He is
modest about it, he always believes that Tom Sawyer could make
up a far handsomer story, being a superior boy who has had ad-
vantages, but we can't see much room for improvement in the
gorgeous fables Huckleberry improvises at the slightest challenge of
fate. His father's changeable moods taught him also to expect any-
thing of life.

Huckleberry's mother does not exist, so far as the story is con-
cerned. We may imagine her the victim of her husband's brutality,
if we are so inclined, and we may endow her with enough virtues
to account for her son's kind heart and gentle instincts. But Mark
Twain is at his best when he leaves her history a blank. Huckle-

HUCKLEBERRY FINN 151

berry's isolation is complete, and we are under no compulsion to
measure him by the accustomed traditions of society.

The handling of the romantic or melodramatic elements in the
story can be admired from another angle also. Though the life of
the small village may seem unduly quiet, it is the person from the
city who chiefly finds it dull; the people involved in it often are
aware of excitements. Of course the excitements come at long in-
tervals, and they are cherished most often as scandal. Every small
community has its stories about this woman or that man, stories
which are often wild enough and improbable, but they really hap-
pened. But if a whole and steady view of life seems to us desira-
ble, we can admire the way in which Mark Twain allows us to
enjoy the wild adventures of Huckleberry, and at the same time
shows us, in the not too remote background, a just picture of the
folks who will talk about such experiences, but to whom they will
never come. It is extraordinary that this balance is preserved
through so long a succession of wHd episodes ; but even at the end,
we still are aware of some surprise when a new accident occurs, we
still consider ourselves the inhabitants of a quite normal world.

Several technical devices for securing this sense of the normal, for
convincing us that the eccentric character is eccentric, no matter
how often he appears, can easily be recognized by any one who
knows the formulas of literary criticism. We can see, for example,
that the characters speak for themselves. Though Huckleberry is
telling the story, he reports conversations fully, and rarely makes a
comment. This is the ancient rule for rendering character vividly,
but it is easier to state the principle than to follow it. When the
two rascals, driven out of town simultaneously by enraged mobs,
happen to meet on the raft, Huck and Jim are wise enough to say
nothing until the new arrivals disclose themselves. The younger
man, diagnosing their simplicity, as he thinks, breaks the news that
he is a duke in disguise, and that his rank entitles him to the only
comfortable bed in the raft. Jim and Huck don't care ; they know
he isn't a duke, but he might as well have the bed. The older man,
however, is not so complacent, and in a few moments he has con-
fessed that he is really the lost Dauphin of France, by rights a
king. The conversations of the king and the duke are among the
great passages of dramatic satire. They know they are not fooling
each other, they pretend to be deceiving the negro and the boy, and
yet we half think they would have kept up the nonsense even if

iS2 JOHN ERSKINE

they had been alone, so strong in them was the instinct for im-
posture. The device is the strictly dramatic one of omitting com-
ment and letting the characters talk, but the formula is used here
by a genius.

It would be in the sound tradition of criticism to say also that
Mark Twain established a human scale throughout by descriptions
of nature. The broad and changing river, the starry nights, the
fogs, the glorious storms, refer us constantly to a scheme of things
against which man even at his best would seem small. When the
first heavy rain makes the river rise, and sweeps away whole vil-
lages in the flood, Huck and Jim paddle over to a rather sub-
stantial wreck of a house and climb in through the window. Wise
as he is in much wickedness, Huckleberry seems not to know what
sort of house this was before it was swept away, but we see clearly
enough. At the time he doesn't know that the murdered man they
find in a corner of the room is his own father. We are too much
interested ourselves, perhaps, in the description of the room and in
the finding of the corpse to grasp the full irony, but later it comes
upon us, the contrast between that mighty flood and the wretched
occupations it put an end to.

But when we have said this about the descriptions of nature in
the story, we ought to add that perhaps Mark Twain put them in
for no other reason than his love of them. The joy in grand aspects
of weather is so evident that their effect on the story may well have
been a happy result, not altogether intended. It is a pagan love of
nature — and we might say, a typically American love of the thing
for itself, without asking what it means.

The book owes more of its fame than we sometimes recognize to
the portrait of the negro, Jim, who runs away from a good home
and from the neighborhood of his wife and children because he has
reason to fear he may be sold down the river. He is the one elab-
orate picture we have of the negro slave before the war, and in a
community in which owner and slave alike take slavery very much
for granted. Mrs. Stowe's famous book is full of correct observa-
tion ; she gives us no doubt a fair account of slavery at its happiest —
along with other reports which some Southerners will always think
exaggerated. But Uncle Tom's Cabin remains a discussion of
slavery as an issue in justice; the problem colors every sentence in
the book. There must have been thousands of families in which
the issue never suggested itself. That is the version of slavery

HUCKLEBERRY FINN 153

which Mark Twain has given us — the picture of good Christian
homes in which the slaves were as natural an incident as any other
human relation. Even as propaganda, if Huckleberry Finn had
been written early enough to serve that purpose, it would have been
more subtly convincing than Mrs. Stowe's book, for the dramatic
method, without preaching of any kind, here stirs the emotions
deeply.

One of the moving themes of the story is Huck's uneasiness over
the fact that by accident he is helping a "nigger" to run away. He
has his own code of morality, where property is concerned ; he
doesn't wish to be a thief. The refinements of honesty, so to speak,
he had learned from his father, who always said it was wrong to
take what was another man's, unless you had the intention of pay-
ing it back sometime. When he and Jim found themselves obliged
to rob orchards and gardens, in order to maintain life, they quieted
their conscience by making it a rule never to steal all they could.
Crab-apples, for instance, they always left untouched. But when it
came to stealing niggers! On the other hand, when he thought of
Jim's kindness to him, of the negro's terror of the plantations from
which he could never hope to return to his wife and children,
Huckleberry was in a, tangle. He did go so far as to write Miss
Watson and tell her where Jim could be found, but he couldn't
bring himself to post the letter. "It was a tight place. I took it
up and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to
decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied
a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself :
" 'All right, then, I'll go to hell,' and tore it up."
Though our sympathy for the slave is profound, we are allowed
to see the negro on more sides of his character than Mrs. Stowe
may have been aware of. She knew that the colored race was
deeply religious, but she took religion to mean the reading of the
Bible and the attendance on a Christian church. Uncle Tom is
religious in this sense. What we have more recently learned to ap-
preciate, the wealth of folk-lore, superstition and mysticism which
still seems to be the inheritance of negroes, even when they live
among the whites, Mrs. Stowe did not portray. Mark Twain
makes the most of it ; he shows us the African in Jim, the ignorance
which to the casual white seems absurd, but which really is con-
nected with powers the white does not share. Altogether he is a
wonderful creation, the more remarkable for the matter-of-fact way

154 JOHN ERSKINE

in which he is presented, without emphasis or exaggeration. He
does not take the important place in the scene — Huckleberry re-
mains the hero of the story, but when we have laid the book down,
the patient inscrutable black, with his warm heart and his child-
like wisdom, remains not the least vivid of our memories.

Whether the portrait of the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons,
in their famous feud, is true to historical fact, those must decide
who know the regions of the South before the war where this feud
is supposed to occur. But there is no question that the persons
seem real, and that the satire on the follies of human nature bites
rather deep in this part of the story. Here again the fact that
Huckleberry is telling the story serves to secure a splendid literary
effect. Nothing in the book is told with greater restraint, and
nothing is quite so tragic. The restraint is art, but it seems the
work of nature, because Huck wishes, as he says, to hurry over the
details — he tries not to remember them for fear they may spoil his
sleep. Yet out of the tragedy the reader seizes a noble emotion.
When you reflect on the wickedness of feuds and duels, as on the
wickedness of war, you may be troubled that a noble emotion should
be roused by such material, but when you let yourself go uncriti-
cally you can enjoy the courage, the chivalry, the romance which
Mark Twain has put into this episode.

At the end of the story Tom Sawyer reappears. He comes to
the place where Jim has been captured as a runaway slave, and
Huck is hoping to contrive an escape. Tom happens to know that
Jim is no longer a slave, but a freeman. The idea of getting him
out of his prison, however, is too fruitful to be resisted; Tom be-
gins to make believe — the log cabin becomes a dungeon — the meth-
ods of release must be as elaborate as though there were a moat and
high walls to cross, and valiant guards to beat down. From this
point on, the story lags. The adventures which Tom imagines are
cheap after the real dangers Huck and Jim have gone through. We
wonder whether this effect of anticlimax was accidental or intended.
Did Mark Twain wish to draw this comparison between the gen-
uine experience and the fanciful? Whether he did or not, the
contrast is there.

For that reason I have thought it not unjust to compare the two
stories to the advantage of Huckleberry Finn. We always think
of them together, and here at the close of his masterpiece the author
sets the two boys side by side for us to look at. Tom Sawyer is a

HUCKLEBERRY FINN 155

fine story, but the other is one of those books which occur all too
rarely in a national literature, a book so close to the life of the
people that it can hold any reader, and yet so subtle in its art that
the craftsman tries to find out how it was done. I don't see why
we shouldn't recognize it as a masterpiece now, without waiting for
posterity to cast any more votes. Indeed, we thought a while ago
that the ballot was closed. But recently it has been suggested that
Mark Twain, poor man, missed his full development as an artist,
that American life in his time was not sophisticated enough in mat-
ters of art to demand of him perfect workmanship, or to applaud
when he gave it. Well, that sort of argument breaks down when
we ask to see what men have written who were more fortunately
placed than he, and when we set their work beside his. Some
things he wrote will suffer by the comparison, but not the Adven*
tures of Huckleberry Finn.

REGIONALISM IN THE MIDDLE WEST1
JOSEPH E. BAKER

DEFINITELY a product of our growing regional consciousness,
yet not consciously a part of the regionalist movement, Ruth Suck-
ow's The Folks raises a question of vital importance in American
culture. It is a novel written to illustrate a theory, a theory that
challenges certain assumptions which had become literary conven-
tion a few years ago. Very seldom does an author write a maga-
zine article telling what ought to be done and then settle down
quietly to devote four years to doing it. But to understand the
significance of the very title of The Folks one must go back to an
article by Ruth Sockow in Scrlbners in 1930, where she protested
against the superficial interpretation of America as standardized,
lacking in variety, rootless. Her article was one of the manifestos
of the year which marked the end of the twenties in a more than
chronological sense:

I do not see how it would be possible for any one to travel
across country by automobile . . . and arrive at either coast
with a remembrance made up wholly of noise, dirt, mechanical
industry, and ugly provincialism. His memory of towns must
be interspersed with that of farm lands teeming with abun-
dance, crops of every description, deserts inhabited only by
burrowing animals and fantastic cacti, great rivers, mountains,
chasms, and forests. He must travel with the blinders of prej-
udice and preconception if he perceives only what is alike,
and not what is different. He has driven through the brick-
built, pre-revolutionary village of McVeytown, Penn., and
through brand-new Tulsa, Oklahoma. He has caught varied
glimpses of the spirit of the country in the settled prosperity
of the plain frame houses of the Middle West and the delicate
and forlorn distinction of white Southern houses in a pleasantly
dilapidated landscape; in the new settlements of tourist cabins
that shelter a huge nomad population; and those deserted
mining towns where pack-rats scamper over decaying floors
1From the American Review, March, 1935. Reprinted by permission of
the author and the publishers.

156

REGIONALISM IN THE MIDDLE WEST 157

in shacks with broken windows. At the end of such a journey,
the much-talked-of standardization of gasoline-stations and
chain stores seems nothing but a hasty superstructure erected
of necessity ... to bridge the mighty gaps of an overwhelming
variety.

But it is all American — no one can doubt that. Something
deeply homogeneous binds together the extravagant differences.
It comes out in the catchwords and slogans ; ... in the confi-
dently friendly approach of strangers met by chance at the same
table in a coffee-shop; in the final question of the waitress in
the Western restaurant: "Have you folks had all you want?"
Generous, easy-going, well-met, obtuse, and nai've, friendly
first and suspicious only later — it is quite unlike the hard, inte-
grated peasant simplicity of the folk of Europe. It is the
"folks" spirit.

Thus she called upon the intelligentsia "to cease chasing 'folk art*
and to understand the real basis of American civilization — the
folks." "The whole matter may be summed up in this: the folk
idea in America has become the idea of 'folks'." In the similarity
and difference between the two words she finds the similarity and
difference between the basis of European culture and what should
be the basis of American culture. We do not have the customs
of a peasant folk, but we have the equally colorful customs of the
family, "the folks."

The Christmas-tree, lighted with candles and festooned
with popcorn, with its tip touching the ceiling, held presents
for everybody, later distributed by the most restless class of
boys and the prettiest class of girls. . . . The schoolroom . . .
decorated for the Thanksgiving program with corn-stalks,
pumpkins, autumn leaves, and pictures of turkey gobblers
drawn in colored chalks on the blackboards. . . . The lore
and legend so prized by the best Americans when it gilds the
lives of the heroes of ancient foreign lands tried to make a
beginning in the tale of George Washington's cherry-tree and
Lincoln's funny stories. . . . No one could claim that the high
schools were not likely centers of communal amusements. . . .

Yet this is the very period when serious division began. The
rebellious children of this era grew up to be more rebellious
still, until most of them broke away from the folks life alto-
gether. When they searched for a folk art, they went else-
where. People who would travel any distance to see the Span-
ish church processions in New Mexico, for example, are not

i58 JOSEPH E. BAKER

apt to recognize the old Christmas Eve program as in any
way related to a church festival. . . . Today we have the
spectacle of a whole tribe of aesthetic nomads, a flock of cuckoo
birds, always trying to make their homes in nests that other
birds have builded. Many have gone clear abroad; but even
more are now abroad in their own country. New York, of
course, is the stronghold; but there are a handful of other
American cities where they may find an exotic, and therefore
artistic, atmosphere — San Francisco, New Orleans, Santa Fe.

In The Folks the daughter Margaret typifies the aesthete who
breaks away from the sane, prosaic life of a Middle- Western small
town and is infatuated with the "artily Spanish" Santa Fe and the
decadence of Greenwich Village — in New York, where "the past
didn't count any more." In Spengler's language (for Ruth
Suckow's photograph of the great city gives a concrete illustration
of the analysis in The Hour of Decision) Margaret "sinks to the
bottom" and becomes a part of the aesthetic underworld of New
York, hating "ethical, religious, national ideas, marriage for the
sake of children, the family, state authority." The novelist makes
it clear that Margaret is nothing in herself: she is as completely
devoid of artistic genius as she is devoid of brains and of normal
instincts. She is attracted by any cheap and "smarty" fashion that
can be made to sound shocking:

Still, she wasn't going to be judged any more by Harry and
Carl. They would be out of place among people who lived
in New York and talked about music, and sex, and perversion.
The wonderful Dr. Finkbein was interested — she could see it
in the alertness of his eyes, and feel it in his body as he pressed
close to her, breathing too near her face. Now it seemed that
all the old values were overturned. . . . When she told them
that she had been fired from the Normal, she achieved her
greatest success. . . .

Now the gin was gone and they were all eating hot dogs and
drinking coffee out of chipped Italian pottery cups. Jane em-
braced Margaret, and hid her head, wailing. There was
Lossie's apartment! Daggie had the key. Lossie had left it
with him when she got a chance to go abroad as secretary to
that woman with the sandals and fillets who was going to
revive the ancient arts of Greece.

In this passage New York is satirized from the point of view of

REGIONALISM IN THE MIDDLE WEST 159

the "hinterland"; in contrast to the literature of the 1920*8 which
preferred to satirize the "hinterland" from the point of view of New
York. This is one of the chief differences between the Middle-
Western writers who dominated the twenties (Anderson, Lewis,
Dreiser, Masters) and the regionalists who are leading one of
the live literary movements of the thirties. The Folks, lacking in
suspense and drama, is not very important for its story, but it is
important for the attitude of the author and the promise that per-
haps the Middle West is beginning to stand on its own feet, to for-
get the inferiority complex which has afflicted its creative work
up to the present.

The new determination to develop the cultural wealth native to
each different region of America has come late to the Middle West,
having already established a foothold in the South, the Southwest,
and Old New England. At the very turn of the decade, in 1930,
a group of Southern regionalists issued a manifesto under the title
I'll Take My Stand. Since that, the movement has developed an
extremely interesting body of critical discussion — giving currency
to a new interpretation of American society, creating, in Matthew
Arnold's phrase, the sort of "stir and growth" out of which may
"come the creative epochs of literature.' ' One of the most signifi-
cant developments in this growth was the acquisition of an organ
of expression when the Bookman was changed to The American
Review in 1933 — particularly valuable because The American Re-
view is interested in cognate movements, such as Humanism and
Distributism, which will tend to save regionalism from complacent
provinciality and provide the needed cultural and economic accom-
paniment. The South has a number of regional periodicals of the
very best type, but it was only a few months ago that the Midwest
was founded in Chicago, protesting that this region, which has
produced so many of the American novelists, poets, and critics for
a generation, should abandon the self-deprecating attitude of a giant
that fails to recognize his own strength. "Some day the Middle
West will awaken to realize what a tradition lies behind it in
American letters. And then it will stop letting New York steal
its people to vitiate them with its stale culture, and exhaust them
with its worn-out creeds." But the Midwest was weak just where
The American Review and the Southern periodicals have been
strong: it failed to relate regionalism to other profound intellectual
currents of our decade that are flowing into America from Europe —

160 JOSEPH E. BAKER

but are flowing around New York, leaving "our greatest foreign
city" in a sort of Cockney isolation, still mulling over the "worn-
out creeds" of the twenties.

Though the Middle West still lacks its own periodical, it does
have individuals who are doing important pioneering work. Paul
Robert Beath, one of this group who is preparing an anthology of
regional tales, is a Middle- Westerner, and I know of no one who
has phrased more neatly than he the difference between the region-
alist and the Marxian views as to the immediate function of the
artist in America. And in The Folks, by another Middle-West-
erner, we have the first popular success in the new regional litera-
ture of the Middle West. It gives us an unsurpassed picture of
the people of Iowa (and of Middle- Westerners in New York and
California) painted with a superb selection of the details which
suggest the genuine atmosphere. And if we have got beyond the
fashions of the twenties, this does not mean that we have turned
back to the older local-color school, for the local-color school gave
us nothing like this study of the socially typical :

There was a dreadful wrench of loneliness in the onward-
rushing noise of the train, in the rattle of the couplings, when
at noon she went unsteadily through the Pullman coaches to
the dining car. The coffee joggled in her cup, and not even the
silver shine of the cover that the colored waiter lifted with
a cherishing flourish from her platter of sweetbreads could
take away the solemn finality of the backward rush of country
she was leaving. All the little towns they were passing made
her think of home. . . . The train stopped, and she stared out
at another brown-and-yellow depot, another town that — with
its vacant lots across the tracks, and its asphalted street under
shady trees leading to the business section past a dingy old
frame house with a shingled tower — might just as well have
been Belmond. . . . The country itself was shadowed over
with the feeling that she could find no acceptance in it. It
belonged to the folks and the folks1 ideas ... the great rolling
country, where the rough stubble was getting brown in the
fields, the autumn was drying the rich pastures.

But that is just the great defect of the novel. It does not show
the folks' ideas. A sound regional literature would reveal what
Middle-Westerners think ; would recognize, for example, the polit-
ical agrarianism that is continually springing up in the Middle

REGIONALISM IN THE MIDDLE WEST 161

West. Men, Ruth Suckow shows only in so far as their lives touch
household affairs — and consequently she leaves the impression that
Middle- Western business men never talk about business or politics!
Her folks do not read — but publishers' statistics show that they
do read. In 1930 she recognized that "The colleges were not set
apart from the life of the 'folks/ They were right in the center
of it." But in this book about the only thing we are told concerning
Carl in college is that he was so good-natured as to wash dishes
for his landlady! His reaction to the world's ideas, which no one
can escape in college, does not seem to interest the author. Now
contact with college graduates in Middle- Western towns will show
that college has made a great deal of difference to them. A true
picture of the Middle West would not fail to show the high value
it places on the traditional culture of the Occident — a culture origi-
nated soon after Greece had been the Wild West, transmitted by
Rome when she was on the marches of civilization, developed by
France and England when they were just out of the period of con-
quering a new "West." To be on the western center of the white
man's civilization has always been an advantage. But this novel
would leave us with a conception of a Middle West which could
never have produced the Middle-Western universities, could never
have produced the Middle-Western symphony orchestras or art
galleries or contributions to science, or the "Globe Theatre" Eliza-
bethan staging of Shakespeare. Some critics have hailed The Folks
as a complete picture of the Middle West. This is not only ab-
surd, it is condescending, insulting, and ignorant, with the imperti-
nent ignorance that we are trying to get away from.

A book that told us everything about lowans would tell us every-
thing about Herbert Hoover, Henry Wallace, and the School of
Letters at the University of Iowa. What we are given is merely
the same old picture used by the satirists of the twenties, with the
satire removed — a photograph, real as far as it goes, but cut off
across the top so that the men have no heads above the eyes. It
still misses the inner reality which some future literary genius,
looking with his own eyes, will see. What would we think of a
picture of Scotland that left out the University of Edinburgh and
failed to indicate the soil that grew Burns and Carlyle, or argued
that Carlyle was being disloyal to his "folks" when he applied Ger-
man thought to French history to point a moral for English "lib-
erals"? His Scotch roots were perhaps deeper by the very height

162 JOSEPH E. BAKER

that he raised his head into the upper air, where the strong winds
of his century were blowing — or rather the winds of the centuries,
for Carlyle rose that high: he could see a "practical-devotional"
monk of the twelfth century, and he could see the "New Spiritual
Pythons, plenty of them," that America would have to fight; and
he was none the less Scotch :

. . . Enormous Megatherions, as ugly as were ever born
of mud, loom huge and hideous out of the twilight Future on
America; and she will have her own agony, and her own
victory, but on other terms than she is yet quite aware of.

When Carlyle was in London, his roots were still in Scotland.
He needed a strong grip. When our Middle- Western authors, be-
fore Ruth Suckow, migrated to New York, they preferred to trans-
plant their minds, and it is little wonder that their "intellectual"
life failed to go high, as it failed to go deep. With the horizon
shut in, with no perspective, a reviewer in a New York "literary"
journal even today is capable of referring to our nearest past, the
Victorian Age, as "primeval"! Depth, height, and vision go to-
gether, and I am not sure that all of our Regionalists realize this.
One of the mud-ugliest Megatherions we have to fight today is the
deadly lie that we can separate the life lived by European mankind,
in any given region of the world, from the past experience of Euro-
pean mankind, without paying the penalty of reversion to barbarism.
The Folks shows us a land without any gentlemen, and happily that
is not a true picture of the Middle West. Indeed, if we accepted
the picture as final, we would have to assume that the Middle West
could never produce a Sandburg, a Rolvaag, or a Ruth Suckow.

If we accept this picture as final, the Middle West will cease to
produce Sandburgs, Rolvaags, and Ruth Suckows, for "nature imi-
tates art," and a people tends to model itself upon the picture of
itself which is conventionally accepted as sound. It is poor pedagogy
for a prophet to say to unformed people: "You are incapable of
rising above material interests and empty conventions ; you are pre-
destined to hopeless triviality; you are congenital lowbrows." The
flattering answer comes, "Yes, I suppose we are," followed only
too soon by, "And we are proud of it; what are you doing here?"
— and the arts have a new enemy. Doubtless many a barbarian was
confirmed in his barbarism by contact with an Alexandrian aesthete,
only to be converted to the rudiments of European culture when he

REGIONALISM IN THE MIDDLE WEST 163

was told that he had a valuable soul worth saving. And when,
centuries later, Hellenic culture, having lost its superciliousness,
finally did reach the Northern peoples with the message that man
is noble in reason and infinite in 'faculty, the results were encour-
aging. To the superficial sight of a Sinclair Lewis, what a ridicu-
lous place Stratford-on-Avon would have been, infinitely more Phil-
istine than Gopher Prairie, Middletown, Winesburg, or Belmond.
And what conventional, dull, warm-hearted, narrow, awkward peo-
ple Ruth Suckow would show us in portraying a shop-keeper's
family devoted to wool-selling and social climbing. We might grant
her that the Italianate Englishman, uprooted, is worse, and still
wonder if we had the whole truth. Must we always have an oppo-
sition between "native" and "culture"? Might we not discover,
even here in Stratford, something of a "native culture" not afraid
to feed on ideas from distant lands and distant ages? Even in
Belmond, Iowa, we suspect that there are some great books to read,
and that someone reads them.

Or to take a closer parallel : Balzac in Cousin Bette says that the
Slavic race "has spread like an inundation and now covers an im-
mense portion of the earth's surface. It inhabits deserts where the
free space is so vast that its peoples feel at their ease ; it rubs shoul-
ders with no other races (as the European nations do), and civiliza-
tion is impossible without the constant friction of ideas and
interests." We read that, and it sounds plausible, and we think im-
mediately of the Middle- Western parallel, and we might be tempted
to despair, had not Tolstoy shown us, from within, what provincial
Slavic life is really like. After Tolstoy, it would be impossible *:o
accept the neat and superficial generalization by the Parisian. But
the Middle West has had no Tolstoy, so that it is still possible to
give too much credence to what Stevenson called "the spectral un-
reality of realistic books."

This is not breaking a butterfly upon a wheel. The Folks is any-
thing but a butterfly ; it is a massive work of more than seven hun-
dred full pages. Moreover, the novel has been presented to us with
claims that challenge the comparison we have made, and it has
been hailed by reviewers, in their generous way, as doing consider-
ably more than it does. But if we recognize the limitations of the
novel, and the dangers it suggests which confront Middle- Western
writers in this crucial period of our literature, we must admit that
what Ruth Suckow has done she has done well. She has given us

164 JOSEPH E. BAKER

an unusually faithful record of social transition touching four gen-
erations. So far as the characters are concerned, she does the social
transition a little too well; they tend to be types, studied from the
outside, sociologically, the Inhibited Carl, the Rebel Margaret, the
typical Iowa retired banker going to California, the Communist
challenging the mores of the folks, the rootless Hollywood-bridge-
expert type of man, whom the author unfortunately refers to, quite
seriously, as masculine. (Her men, as I have pointed out, are not
whole men.) But if it is an external, "scientific" study it is at least
not a caricature. And her scenes live. They catch the group spirit,
the feeling, the atmosphere, of the Middle- Western farms, churches,
streets, homes, band concerts, schools — presented not as if they were
static, but changing, as living organisms change, with the growth
of the century. The novel takes us beyond the satire of the twenties,
and it is a promise of solider literature to come.

A WESTMINSTER ABBEY IRONY1

THE Dean of Westminster's prompt willingness to sanction the
burial of Thomas Hardy in the Abbey is not without its elements of
irony, though it meets the mind of the nation, and also makes a
breach in the theological wall which has in the past made the test
of orthodox Christian faith a whimsy of Deans. It restores the
idea that the Abbey is the proper shrine for men of all sides of great
achievement. In these latter days Hardy's fame was so massive that
a refusal on the part of the Dean would have raised a storm which
would have reverberated through the land and played its part in the
dissatisfaction with mere ecclesiasticism which was behind the rejec-
tion of the Prayer Book. Some other Dean, however, might have
vetoed the public demand, and it is instructive to recall that George
Meredith, Hardy's nearest fellow novelist and poet, was excluded
from the Abbey in 1910, when the desire to have him buried there
was indorsed by the Prime Minister of the day, Lord Oxford.

There is something seriously lacking in the administration of our
Cathedrals which leaves the Deans — who are usually chosen as
Disraeli said in one of his inspired flippancies because of their dogma
— the deciding voice in these matters. Meredith was just as entitled
as Hardy to burial in the Abbey. He preached the same artistic
theology that "In tragic life, God wot, no villain need be; we are
betrayed by what is false within." His nature poems, like Hardy's
are perhaps the chief part of his philosophic work, full of "hard
weather" and depicting man as of the very essence of the soil to
which the body returns. Meredith's women rank, too, with Hardy's
as among the most wonderful portraits in English fiction and in the
true line of the heroines of Shakespeare and Scott. There may
have been more enchantment, and a more tonic accent, in some of
Meredith's writings. But both were great Pantheists as well as
great writers. They should have had the same national sepulcher.

Even now Hardy might not have been taken into the Abbey if he
had died in the height of the controversy over "Tess" and "Jude

xFrom the Westminster Gazette, January 14, 1928. Reprinted by per-
mission of the publishers.

165

166 A WESTMINSTER ABBEY IRONY

the Obscure"; the most discussed but not the most esteemed of his
novels, these being "The Mayor of Casterbridge," "The Return of
the Native," and "The Woodlanders" — that glorious book in
which you can hear the sap running in the trees. Some who believe
Hardy was entitled to this tribute and agree that he should have
been offered it, may still think it more appropriate that he should
have been buried in his native Wessex, as he expressed a wish to be.
But Hardy's relatives should know best whether he would have
been willing to accept the homage of a national burial. It is cer-
tainly not likely that he could have expressed such a wish in his
will. It would not have been like the man. We think that all
these considerations should be put aside in view of the recognition
made by the authorities, with the full indorsement of public opinion,
that our men of letters count as much as our successful statesmen,
soldiers, and sailors. This is a hard doctrine to get into the con-
sciousness of the average man. Yet there never was an age in which
it was more necessary to challenge the material estimate of merit
and reward. As Prof. Ernest Barker said, in his charming essay in
our columns on Wednesday, "we rise a little toward the stature of
the dead when we pay a heartfelt tribute to their memory." We
regard the burial of Thomas Hardy in the Abbey as one of the
spiritual victories of the day.

SKILL HUNGER1

BODILY hunger has driven man to find ways of getting food. He
has pushed back the shadows of forests and planted fields and gar-
dens. He has drained marshes and irrigated arid regions. He has
invented sustenance for himself and his family. There is no more
impelling motive to effort in all the range of human existence than
hunger — except the sight of a starving child for whose nourishment
one has a responsibility.

Professor Jacks has called attention to another kind of hunger
which is general to mankind — an urge to something even beyond
what one has achieved, a craving for skill. It is the repeated satis-
faction of this hunger, ever renewed, that results in mental growth
and the highest sort of happiness. It is often questioned whether
education has increased happiness in the individual. It may be that
the mere addition of information does not contribute to the making
of a happier human being. But the continuing struggle for higher
skill in some worthy field of human effort — "creative activity" is
the phrase most often used to describe it — not only brings nourish-
ment of spirit and happiness but adds to the wealth of the world in
terms of human intellectual values. The greatest skills of the
greatest number may determine the greatest good of the greatest
number. Certainly it would if the choice of skills were wise —
and that does not mean if the skills merely produced materially
valuable things.

Plutarch remarks, in his essay on Pericles, that he who busies
himself in mean occupations produces, in the very pains he takes
about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of his
negligence and indisposition to do what is really good. But the
something which one does with infinite pains may be of good in the
development of the individual who does it, even if the product is
not of valuable substance. Ismenias could not have been a
"wretched being," for he was an "excellent" piper. Alexander the
Great need not have been ashamed, as his practical father, Philip of

1From the New York Times, November 20, 1931. Reprinted by permis-
sion of the publishers.

167

168 SKILL HUNGER

Macedon, thought he should have been, for playing a piece of music
so charmingly and skillfully. Leisure "hobbies" are for increasing
numbers who cannot find in the narrow range of their vocations
their salvation.

The mind's desire for excellence in something is a mystery, but
it does after all suggest the course which our education must take
in the development not only of the child but also of the man and
woman to the end of their lives. And with this sort of training
should be given, as Dr. Jacks suggests in his three "reforms," a
larger place to physical education and the appreciation of beauty.

CHARACTER OR KNOWLEDGE1

ROBERT MAYNARD HUTCHINS, who quit as head of the Yale
Law School to become president of Chicago University at an
"extravagantly young" age, as Thomas Beer would say, has blighted
one more old chestnut in the current issue of The Yale Review.
"Universities," he says, "have developed the idea in parents, or
parents have developed it in universities, that the institution is in
some way responsible for the moral, social, physical, and intellectual
welfare of the student. This is very nice for the parents ; it is hard
on the universities, for besides being expensive, it deflects them from
their main task, which is the advancement of knowledge."
". . . sooner or later," Mr. Hutchins adds, "the university must
take the position that the student should not be sent to the univer-
sity unless he is independent and intelligent enough to go there."

No doubt, Mr. Hutchins will have a lot of explaining to do
when the boys get their knives working. For he has attacked^ al-
most casually, one of the oldest "vested interests" in the university
world. How many professors, dull, obtuse, with no imaginative
grasp of their own subject matter, have fled for refuge to the word
"character" ! It long ago became the favorite rock of a particular
type of schoolmaster who admired the English of Eton's playing
fields above all other people; "character," to this type of teacher,
became synonymous with a kind of pigheaded, uncomprehending
loyalty to a set of first principles bequeathed by the past to the
present, a set of first principles whose dead hand it should be the
initial prerogative of the student to question, lest he go through his
life a walking ghost of a dead age. In America, the proponents
of "character development" have produced the "beef-eater," whose
"muscular Christianity" became a byword to the "esthete." And
the "esthete" himself was called into being as the dialectical op-
posite of the type smiled upon by the character builders. "Char-
acter" has produced hundreds of graduates — names on request,
though the interrogator must be sworn to secrecy — with the brain-

1From The Saturday Review of Literature, July 15, 1933. Reprinted
by permission of the publishers.

169

170 CHARACTER OR KNOWLEDGE

pans of dinosaurs, graduates who lumber about in the grooves set
for them in adolescence. Fruitful thinkers along social lines de-
veloped by the American universities have, by and large, been the
few fortunate souls who have escaped the character-moulding
processes. We give you Thorstein Veblen, Sinclair Lewis, Ed-
mund Wilson, to name a few Yale and Princeton graduates. Har-
vard, most hospitable to the eccentric, and of all American
universities least addicted to the official shaping of character, has,
perhaps, contributed more good men to the arts and sciences than
any other institution. And for a very good reason.

The bearing of all this on books should be obvious. Character
builders would keep the young away from the type of book which
promotes skepticism of the values dear to the heart of the pedagogue
in question. This is the very negation of education, which is, or
ought to be, an exposure to all books on all questions. The char-
acter builders of the World War epoch in American education,
who sedulously kept their students away from the German tongue
and German works in the interests of creating and conditioning a
certain type of graduate, were only one cut above Hitler. We say
"one cut above," for the fact of the War was perhaps too
much for mortal men to handle. Yet German was certainly just as
much of an intellectual tool, the key to scientific works as well as
cultural, in 1917 as it is today. Mr. Hutchins deserves the thanks
of those who believe knowledge comes from exposure to books — nil
books.

THE HISTORY OF STUDENT RESIDENTIAL
HOUSING1

W. H. COWLEY

To ACHIEVE an understanding of the present-day residential
housing situation for students in the American college and university
one must review with some care the pressures from the past which
have produced it. One of three major philosophies, developed largely
from historical accidents, has consciously or unconsciously dominated
the thinking of every dormitory builder and every student residence
planner since the erection of Old College at Harvard in I&42.2
These philosophies can neither be comprehended nor evaluated with-
out being traced both to and from their sources. An awareness of the
influences of former times may be expected to illuminate and perhaps
to give better direction to present and future practises.

STUDENT HOUSING IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Housing, whether for citizens or for students, always becomes a
problem when population takes a sudden turn upward. How and
where to house students became a matter of concern in the universities
of the Middle Ages chiefly because thousands of vagantes, or wander-
ing students, flocked to the seats of learning at Bologna and Paris
and Oxford. In the thirteenth century, Paris and Bologna en-
rolled from six to seven thousand students, and during the Middle

1 From School and Society, December i and 8, 1934. Reprinted by per-
mission of the author and The Science Press. The type of writing exempli-
fied in this paper is found in the technical and scholarly journals rather
than in the general magazines, and is the form that students are usually
expected to follow in writing a "term paper." It should be noted that
the author supports by evidence all statements for which he takes the re-
sponsibility, and that he gives careful reference to the source for all
statements made on the authority of other investigators so that their
validity may be examined. — Editors.

* Samuel Eliot Morison, The Founding of Harvard College, p. 257 and
p. 271. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935.

172 W. H. COWLEY

Ages Oxford offered instruction to from 1500 to jooo.3 That the
influx of these hordes of students created a housing problem of con-
siderable magnitude is clear when one remembers that medieval
cities seldom numbered more than five thousand people.4

Moreover, these multitudes of students were practically all in
their teens, and the majority of them not over 14 or I5.5 Although
they organized into self-governing (and faculty-governing) groups,
the need for discipline and control grew the more they fought among
themselves, with the townsmen and with the civil and ecclesiastical
authorities. Many students, furthermore, were poverty-stricken.
Sons of wealthy men could hire suites or houses for themselves and
their retinues, but some provision became necessary for the poor
beneficiarii whose resources often amounted to no more than the
scant clothes upon their backs. In the early days of Bologna and
Paris students lived anywhere they could find lodging. Some rented
garrets, some boarded with masters, still others with townsmen, and
a few took over houses of their own. Slowly from this confusion
there grew up a housing plan which, in its general outlines, has con-
tinued at Oxford and Cambridge ever since.

Some time during the twelfth century the students at Bologna
began to withdraw from the homes of townsmen and masters and
to organize into groups called socii. They hired houses and set up
establishments known as hospicia or hostels. The plan spread to
Paris and to Oxford. At the former they were first called paeda-
gogies and at the latter halls and colleges. Each group elected one
of its number to manage its affairs. On the Continent these leaders
were known as regents or paedagogues and at Oxford as principals.0
The university had no control over either the halls or their prin-
cipals.7 They were democratic, self-governing groups which set up
their own financial and disciplinary regulations and their own meth-
ods of enforcement. Each student maintained his personal autonomy,

8 H. Rashdall, The Universities in Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol. II,
pp. 581-590. Oxford, 1895.

4 Werner Sombart, Der Moderne Kapitalismus, Vol. I, p. 215 ff. Munchen
und Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker und Humbolt, 1924.

6 Rashdall, op. cit.t Vol. II, p. 604. Also: Report of the Royal Commis-
sion on Oxford and Cambridge Universities, p. 9. London: His Majesty's
Stationery Office, 1922.

9 H. Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol. I,
p. 481. Oxford, 1895.

'Ibid., Vol. II, p. 607.

STUDENT RESIDENTIAL HOUSING 173

however, and could move freely from one establishment to another
if he found the food or his associates or the discipline distasteful.

THE GROWTH OF THE OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE COLLEGES

In the course of time special hostels were organized and endowed
by pious founders to provide residences for the poorer students. Ac-
cording to Rashdall,8 these establishments were "mere eleemosynary
institutions for poor boys. . . . The objective of the . . . founders
was simply to secure board and lodging for poor students who could
not pay for it themselves." Over these endowed hostels or domus
pauperum the universities gradually asserted authority. They be-
gan by insisting upon approving the principals or paedagogues elected
by the students. Soon thereafter they took over the prerogative of
nominating the principals, and with this arrangement well estab-
lished they appointed older students, and later members of the
faculty. By the time Elizabeth came to the throne of England, the
complete responsibility of the university authorities for the halls had
been permanently fixed.

Meanwhile the ability of the student to move from one hospicium
to another had been limited first at Paris and then at Oxford and
Cambridge. In 1452 the chancellor of Paris ruled that no paeda-
gogue could receive into his house a student who had left another
paedagogium to avoid correction. Five years later he ordered that
all students were required to live in paedagogies and that no new halls
could be established without his permission. In the course of two
centuries the houses which students had established on their own
initiative had passed entirely from their control into the hands of
the university authorities.

The Oxford and Cambridge colleges of to-day have come down
through the centuries step by step, following this chain of develop-
ments. After 1284, when John Peckham, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, spoke of Walter of Merton as the "founder and planter of
your college," the endowed halls at Oxford and Cambridge came
in time to be known as colleges. At the beginning of the fourteenth
century three colleges and 300 halls were flourishing at Oxford, but
by the beginning of the sixteenth century 10 colleges had appeared
and the number of halls had been reduced to 55. To-day Oxford9

8H. Rashdall, op. cit.t Vol. I, pp. 482 and 495-

9 Cambridge comprises 18 colleges for men and two for women.

174 W. H. COWLEY

is made up of 23 colleges, all separate corporations, one public hall
and seven private halls. One of the colleges and four of the halls
are for women. They are all, as at Cambridge, under the control
of the faculties. Student self-government has slowly worn away
through the centuries.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF COLLEGES ON THE CONTINENT

The residential colleges at Oxford and Cambridge were duplicated
from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries in France and from
the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries in Germany. During the
fourteenth century 40 colleges were in operation at the University
of Paris. The collegiate system, indeed, originated at Paris and
had been taken over to Oxford and Cambridge during the middle
of the thirteenth century. In Germany,10 upon the founding of the
great universities during the 150 years preceding the Reformation,
halls or Bursen were organized. The Reformation, however, changed
the structure of the universities of Central Europe, and the Bursen11
disappeared to give place, in the course of time, to the boarding house
system in vogue to-day. The French retained their colleges more
tenaciously, but all educational institutions in France closed their
doors during the Revolution. Upon their reorganization in 1808 the
residential foundations vanished.

Besides the Reformation and Revolution other factors contributed
to the abandonment of the residential system in continental countries.
Before the Lutheran revolt all members of German faculties were
required to live in Bursenzwanz or celibacy. The great majority
of them, therefore, were clerics who favored the monastic mores of
their orders. In about 500 St. Benedict had brought to Europe the
monastic system which had become so prominent a part of the re-
ligious life of the East and the Near East. He substituted, however,
group life for the eremitical practises which predominated among
oriental Christians. The establishment of the Benedictine and later
orders and the setting up of monasteries influenced all the life of
the Middle Ages and in turn had its effect upon the universities.
With the break from the church which followed Luther's theses,
the monastic system waned in Germany. As it waned in religious

"Frederick Paulsen, Geschichte des Gelehrten Unterrichts, Vol. I,
pp. 260-261. Leipzig: Verlag von Veit und Comp., 1919.

uWilhelm Bruchmuller, Der Leipztgen Student, 1409-1909, p. 142 ff.
Leipzig: Teubner, 1909.

STUDENT RESIDENTIAL HOUSING 175

groups it all but disappeared from the universities. Members of
the faculty married, the clerical garb which scholars had universally
worn gave way to civilian dress, and the majority of students were
no longer clerks reading for holy orders.

The German Bursen, moreover, had been of a different character
from the French and English halls. Large sleeping rooms or dormi-
tories were more common than the smaller studies and bedrooms in
France and England. Students, sometimes as many as 200, slept
in large rooms, and often at the command of their provincial rulers
they lived in barracks, better to be hardened for military service.
The disappearance of the monastic system brought these large sleep-
ing apartments into disrepute because of their close resemblance to
the dormitories of the religious orders. The Bursen, in fact, dis-
appeared entirely.

Still another factor entered into the situation. Both German and
French educators, during the latter part of the eighteenth century,
under the influence of the Encyclopedists, gave all their enthusiasm
to scholarship and the advancement of knowledge. What monies
they had available they preferred to devote to instruction and re-
search. When the University of Berlin was established in 1809 no
provisions were made for the housing of students, not only because
the need of dormitories was no longer apparent but also because the
leading spirits in its founding preferred to put all their emphasis
upon spreading the frontiers of knowledge. But following the char-
acteristic British method of procedure, Oxford and Cambridge
muddled through with the college system which they had inherited
from Paris. The insularity of England protected it from the direct
impact of both the Reformation and the Revolution, and the colleges
continued in the original Continental design.

THE AMERICAN HERITAGE FROM ENGLAND

If the Reformation and the French Revolution, with their attend-
ant influences upon Continental education, can be thought of as
historical accidents, then the colonization of America, chiefly by
Englishmen, may be similarly characterized. The present American
system of higher education obviously would not and could not have
been developed had Frenchmen or Spaniards dominated America.
The colonial American college followed the British pattern because
its founders knew no other. More than twoscore Cambridge grad-

176 W. H. COWLEY

uates migrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony during its first
three decades, and naturally enough they brought with them a
predilection in favor of the educational structures which they knew
in England. With the exception of James Blair, founder of William
and Mary, who had been graduated at Edinburgh, all the founders
of the colonial colleges were Oxford and Cambridge graduates or
Americans who had been educated in England or in the early Ameri-
can colleges established by Englishmen.

The British background of the pre-revolutionary college organizers
had more to do with the establishment of residential colleges in
America than any other factor. There were, however, several others
of importance. College students of the seventeenth century usually
entered at 13 or 14 years of age, and since communities were small
and travel difficult it was to be expected that the college would
board and room them. The founders, moreover, were all devoutly
religious men who conceived of the college more as a religious insti-
tution than as a seat of learning. Students had souls to be saved
and the early faculties were bent upon saving them. To have a
student entirely under their control from the 5 A.M. rising time until
lights out at 9 gave them the opportunity they sought to minister
continuously to the souls' welfare of their charges. Professors and
tutors were expected to pray regularly, morning and evening, with
their students, and if a youngster misbehaved they believed with
certainty that they were exorcising the devil when they whipped
him.

It should be observed that the heritage from England by no means
completely controlled early American institutions. In both Oxford
and Cambridge the universities consisted of a growing number of
independent foundations or colleges. In America the collegiate
system never developed, chiefly because of the sparsity of the popu-
lation and its relative poverty. One college at Harvard, one at
William and Mary and one at Yale were all that the founders
could achieve. They may have had plans for universities such as
those in England, but the environmental forces of pioneer America
directed their energies into the establishment of institutions which
were English in general point of view, but American in im-
plementation. Thus English precedences implanted the residential
principle, but American contingencies modified it to fit the colonial
situation. In time American colleges and universities were to grow
as large and even larger than those in England, but meanwhile

STUDENT RESIDENTIAL HOUSING 177

English ties had been broken and the American college followed its
own course of development. Dormitory buildings were erected, but
the British system of coordinate colleges came in for no serious
thought until Wilson12 tried unsuccessfully to introduce it at Prince-
ton in 1905, and Harvard and Yale inaugurated their house plans in
the late twenties.

The chief point of difference between the British and American
philosophies of student residential housing has amounted to this: at
Oxford and Cambridge the residential colleges developed into highly
significant educational agencies; in America dormitories during the
nineteenth century became little more than body shelters. The Brit-
ish have used their housing units to bring dons and students to-
gether, not only for formal individual conferences upon their aca-
demic work but also for social and intellectual intercourse. Kept
small by design, the colleges have supplied the Empire with men
at once splendidly trained intellectually and admirably cultivated
socially. Without labeling oneself an Anglophile one can assert
with assurance that Oxford and Cambridge have come nearer satis-
fying the scholar-and-gentleman ideal than the universities of any
other nation.

The early American college might have developed in much the
same fashion, had not the pioneer situation and more particularly
the bogey of student discipline persistently interfered. Oxford and
Cambridge tutors were fortunately relieved of practically all disci-
plinary responsibilities during the eighteenth century.13 Deans,
proctors and bedels were charged with keeping the peace, and the
dons were unhampered by the necessity of enforcing administrative
regulations. From this student-teacher relationship the Oxford and
Cambridge intellectual and social esprit has grown and flowered.

In America, on the other hand, the faculty member living in the
dormitory became the student's natural enemy. Circumstances made
him a martinet, and conscientiously he lived up to his responsibilities.
The results are well known. Student riots and rebellions against
the faculty have bespattered the historical records of every American
college up until the inception of athletics and extra-curricular activi-

M Princeton had made an unsuccessful attempt in 1818 to introduce the
British tutorial system. See Varnum Lensing Collins, Princeton, pp. 134-
135. New York: Oxford University Press, 1914.

13 Ralph Durand, Oxford, Its Buildings and Gardens, p. 28. London:
Grant Richards, 1909. Also V. L. Collins, op. cit., p. 191.

i?8 W. H. COWLEY

ties in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Students lived
under the suspicious eyes of clergyman-professors who, as one his-
torian remarks, were "also required to be detectives, sheriffs, and
prosecuting attorneys." "It was my privilege," wrote President
White,14 describing his experiences as an undergraduate at Hobart,
"to behold a professor, an excellent clergyman, seeking to quell hide-
ous riot in a student's room, buried under a heap of carpets, mat-
tresses, counterpanes, and blankets; to see another clerical professor
forced to retire through the panel of a door under a shower of
lexicons, boots and brushes, and to see even the president himself,
on one occasion, obliged to leave his lecture-room by a ladder from
a window, and, on another, kept at bay by a shower of beer-bottles."

At Dartmouth unpopular members of the faculty were visited by
groups of students who would stand outside their windows and blow
tin horns late into the night. At Princeton in 1802 the students
burned down Nassau Hall, the only college building, and in 1814
for no particular reason they set fire to one of its outhouses and
again almost wrecked the hall itself by exploding two pounds of
gunpowder in a corridor. A few years earlier the undergraduate
body at Williams, chafing under the severities of several of the
tutors, petitioned their removal, and when President Olds refused to
treat with them the entire junior class stayed away from recitations
for almost a week. At Yale in 1828 the food at the commons pre-
cipitated the famous "Bread and Butter Rebellion." Two years
later the sophomore class none too politely declined to recite their
mathematics as the rules required, and the riots that ensued have
come down in history as the "Conic Section Rebellion." W. H.
Prescott, one of America's leading historians, lost an eye when, as a
Harvard sophomore, he participated in a Commons uprising. About
the same time a Harvard tutor was so severely beaten by under-
graduates that he went through the remainder of his life with a
limp. And many were the black eyes and bruised skulls nursed by
students and faculty alike.

These citations might be multiplied, but they are enough to
demonstrate the faculty-student antipathy in nineteenth century
American colleges. Fortunately, Oxford and Cambridge, either by
accident or design, avoided these catastrophies by separating their
proctoring and instructional functions. Students and tutors became

14 Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Vol. I, pp. 18-20. New
York: The Century Company, 1905.

STUDENT RESIDENTIAL HOUSING 179

intellectual and often close friends, while in America they battled
one another. The more cordial the relationships of the English don
and student grew, the more liberal became the instructional pro-
cedures. The rigid rules of the proctors and bedels15 have been
unchanged for centuries, but the academic abracadabra of com-
pulsory class attendance, point systems and daily quizzes typical of
the American college never appeared. The individual student has
been put upon his own in a stimulating educational environment.

Meanwhile disciplinary problems in the American college took
on such importance that the dormitory never developed into a meet-
ing place of expanding minds. The office of tutor brought from
England in the early days disappeared entirely by the middle of the
nineteenth century. Residence halls became places for students
merely to sleep, to eat and occasionally to study. The opportunity
to make them the core of the educational program has been lost in
the disciplinary muddle. The attempts being made to-day at Har-
vard and Yale to reclaim the dormitory for educational purposes
will very likely be successful, but the typical American college will
perforce follow the American rather than the British pattern.

THE PARTIAL DISINTEGRATION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Chiefly because of the messiness and magnitude of the disciplinary
problem dormitories came in for a series of attacks during the nine-
teenth century. In 1830 a speaker at a convention held in connec-
tion with the founding of New York University inveighed against
dormitories because of the importance which discipline had assumed.
His reasoning16 proceeded as follows:

It is proper to touch here one peculiar feature of the system
of education of the United States . . . , namely, the collegiate
life. It is, historically as well as by the name itself, well known
to be of monkish origin; it is the remnant of the habit of edu-
cating youth in convents ; it is the constant source of dissension
between the faculty and the student. . . . The education of the
young man and its corporal feeding must be separated. A

15 Called bulldogs by undergraduates.

WF. Hasler, Journal of the Proceedings of a Convention of Literary and
Scientific Gentlemen, pp. 262-263. Common Council Chamber of the City
of New York, October, 1830. New York: Leavitt and Carvill, 1831. (Re-
printed by New York University, 1933.)

i8o W. H. COWLEY

place where a college is placed must afford the student the
means of decent living; if it does not, it shows that it is too
much secluded from the society of men, to be able to educate
a man for the society he is destined to enter.

President Henry Philip Tappan, of the University of Michigan,
led the onslaught in the fifties, following the point of view early
expressed by the New York University speaker and by President
Francis Wayland of Brown. He had been a professor at New York
University and, soon after becoming the president of Michigan in
1852, he converted the one dormitory that had been built into class-
rooms. He expressed the philosophy behind his action as follows :17

The dormitory system is objectionable in itself. By with-
drawing young men from the influences of domestic circles, and
separating them from the community, they are often led to
contract evil habits, and are prone to fall into disorderly con-
duct. It is a mere remnant of the monkish cloisters of the
Middle Ages, still retained in England, but banished from the
universities of Germany.

One of the historians of the University of Michigan further illu-
minated the Tappan point of view when he wrote in 1891 that:18

. . . To a certain extent the system of espionage is a neces-
sary concomitant of dormitories, and their abolition was the be-
ginning of a broader and more liberal method of discipline.
The charm of dormitory life — for such a charm there doubtless
is — was exchanged for the ordinary life of an ordinary lodger.
The result was twofold at least. In the first place, it pre-
vented to a great extent concerted attempts at practical jokes
and more serious follies of college life, which do not add to
proficiency in studies or to the dignity of young manhood, and,
secondly, it made the students feel to some extent that they
were not a distinct and privileged order of beings, but were
of the same clay as the rest of the world around them. . . .

The Tappan philosophy rapidly predominated in the Middle
West and West, but there were other points of attack besides disci-
pline. In the first place, Tappan had become enamored of German

17 Henry S. Frieze, A Memorial Discourse on the Life and Services of
Henry Philip Tappan, p. 35.

18 Andrew C. McLaughlin, History of Higher Education in Michigan,
p. 52. Bureau of Education Circular of Information No. 4, 1891. Wash-
ington: Government Printing Office, 1891.

STUDENT RESIDENTIAL HOUSING 181

as opposed to British educational ideology. German thought had
begun to attract attention in the United States early in the century
upon the occasion of the publication of Madame de StaeTs book,
Germany. In 1829 John Griscon's book, A Year in Europe,
appeared, followed in 1831 by an English translation from the
French of M. Victor Couzens' Report on the State of Public In-
struction in Prussia. These volumes found no American reader
more interested than Dr. Tappan, who later traveled in Germany
and brought home with him the conviction that the Prussian edu-
cational system must be "acknowledged to be the most perfect educa-
tional system in the world." He made every attempt, therefore, to
transplant the Prussian program to the University of Michigan and
to the schools of the state.

Since German universities paid no attention to students outside
of the classroom and since they insisted that they find their own
social life and boarding and rooming facilities, Tappan introduced
the same methods at Ann Arbor. With the rapid growth of state
universities immediately after the Civil War, his ideas came in for
considerable vogue. The German point of view also gained strength
from the return to the United States of hundreds of professors who
had taken graduate work at Berlin, Leipzig, Heidelberg and Got-
tingen. The German point of view, in fact, ruled, and as it grew
in popularity dormitories were frowned upon, occasionally abolished,
and seldom built at state universities.

The financial situation in these new institutions fanned the flame
of disapproval. All available monies were needed for instruction.
Dormitories were expensive to build and state university administra-
tors, anxious for their institutions to become the academic equals of
those in the East, put all their funds into salaries, classrooms and
laboratories. Moreover, state university students were, in general,
poor boys and girls who could ill afford to pay for dormitory resi-
dence. In order to secure an education, in the terms in which they
conceived it, they were willing to live in inexpensive rooms and fre-
quently in garrets and cellars. If they could live at home while
attending college, so much the better. The great growth of the
junior college19 since 1900 has come about chiefly because of the
inability of many parents to educate their children away from home.

As American institutions of higher education grew in size, the

10 L. V. Koos, The Junior College, Vol. I, p. 124. Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota, 1924.

W. H. COWLEY

possibility of erecting dormitories to care for more than a small per-
centage grew less and less remote. The upward trend in college
registrations, so. marked in recent decades, began ten years after the
Civil War, and few colleges, whether east or west, were unable to
keep pace with the multitudes of students who were clamoring at
their doors. All resources were needed for strictly academic activi-
ties. Fraternities and sororities, which were originally organized as
social and intellectual groups, took on residential functions. Since
the eighties fraternity and sorority houses have become fixtures on
most college campuses chiefly because students needed places to
live and eat, and the colleges were unable, if not unwilling, to pro-
vide them.

The dormitories built early in the nineteenth century continued
in operation, but many of them had been allowed to fall into semi-
decay. "When I lived in the college dormitory," observed President
Eliot in I9O9,20 "the water often stood two feet deep in the spring
in the cellar. I frequently had to put on rubber boots in order to go
down cellar to get coal. There was no running water in any of the
buildings. We all had to draw our own water by means of two
pumps in the college yard, located quite out in the open. There was
no gas in any of the buildings when I lived in the college dormitory
and no means of lighting, except whale oil, and a very inflammable
liquid which was called appropriately 'burning liquid.' " The con-
ditions under which Eliot and his college generation lived continued
at Harvard long after the public had become accustomed to better
living arrangements.

As at Harvard, so also in most other colleges and universities.
Students, irked by the primitive conditions under which they were
expected to live, moved out in large numbers to fraternity houses,
private residences, and at Cambridge to the dormitories which pri-
vate individuals had built for profit. During the same period the
rise of fraternity houses at Amherst became so pronounced that the
administration abandoned its newest dormitory. Its number of
students in dormitories had diminished from 53 per cent, in 1870 to
24 per cent, in 1905. By 1900 no dormitories had yet been built
at most state universities. The Eastern and the small Middle
Western liberal arts colleges continued in general to defend and pro-
mote the residential philosophy, but the Zeitgeist prevailed against
its extension and even against its claim to academic desirability.
30 C. W. Eliot, Religious Education, Vol. 4, p. 56, 1909-10.

STUDENT RESIDENTIAL HOUSING 183

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY REVIVAL

The attacks upon dormitories in eastern colleges and the indiffer-
ence toward them of state university administrators in the Middle
West and West continued without abatement until the iSgo's.
The importation from Germany of the university idea, which brought
Johns Hopkins, Clark and Chicago into existence and which changed
Harvard, Columbia and other institutions from colleges into uni-
versities, accentuated the swing from the British heritage to a dis-
tinctly German emphasis. But the old-time American college was
not to die easily. It had been essentially an Alma Mater, "knowing
her children," as Cardinal Newman expressed it, "one by one."
It was not, he pointed out, "a foundry, or a mint, or a treadmill."
Yet in the opinion of a large number of educators the university idea
had transformed the college into just what Cardinal Newman said
it ought not to be. Those who raised the protest agreed with New-
man's judgment of the nature of a college, and although they
recognized the need of explorations! in search of new knowledge,
they strongly dissented against the slaughter of Alma Mater as a
burnt offering upon the altar of research and scholarship.

Several examples from a large array are perhaps sufficient to
illustrate how strongly many college-minded professors felt about
the matter. One comes from Yale and one each, interestingly
enough, from Harvard and Chicago. Overwhelmed by the shat-
tering of "college life" over the country, Arthur T. Hadley, who
was soon to become president of Yale, asked these questions in
1895 :21

Can Yale preserve its distinctive features as a college in the
midst of its widening work as a university? Can it meet the
varying intellectual necessities of modern life without sacri-
ficing the democratic traditions which have had so strong an
influence upon character? Can it give the special education
which the community asks without endangering the broader
education which has produced generations of "all round" men,
trained morally as well as intellectually?

He went on to point out that "these are questions which every
large college has to face. They are not peculiar to Yale. If

21 Arthur T. Hadley, Four American Universities, pp. 83-84. New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1895.

1 84 W. H. COWLEY

Vale feels their difficulty most, it is because she is the largest
representative of the traditional American college idea, which
Harvard has, to all intents and purposes, abandoned."

Even before Hadley's pertinent queries, the residential idea, so
strongly entrenched at Yale, had begun to penetrate into the Mid-
dle West. William Rainey Harper, a Yale professor of Hebrew,
had organized and become president of the University of Chicago
in 1893, and he brought with him an enthusiasm for dormitories.
He built four (57.3 per cent, of the total building cubature at
Chicago in 1893 was in dormitories22) in the first group of univer-
sity buildings and sought money for more. In 1900 he had erected
seven "in spite of the prejudice against them at the' time in the
West on the ground that they were mediaeval, British and auto-
cratic."23 The Chicago leadership, so potent in all other matters
of higher education, had its important influence upon arousing
other Middle Western institutions to an interest in housing.

Soon after Hadley's plea for the college as opposed to the Ger-
man university idea, important developments began to take place
at Princeton. In 1901 a graduate department was organized under
the deanship of Andrew F. West, and in contrast to the graduate
work being done at Hopkins, Harvard, Columbia and Chicago
major emphasis was to be put upon the educational environment.
The Princeton people insisted that:

... the conditions surrounding the daily lives of graduate
students at Princeton should be reenforced and elevated, and
the satisfaction of the double purpose pointed directly at a
residential college where this body of advanced scholars would
mingle freely in common daily association with one another,
not leading solitary existences scattered over the town, but
securing in their distinctively graduate life the enriching ad-
vantages of mutual incentives and community of intellectual in-
terests coupled with an identity in mode of living, advantages
obtainable in no other way so well as in residential intimacies
like those so peculiarly characteristic of Princeton under-
graduate life.24

28 Floyd W. Reeves, Ernest C. Miller and John Dale Russell, Trends in
University Growth, p. 158. The University of Chicago Survey, Volume I.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933.

23 Edwin E. Slosson, Great American Universities, p. 422. New York:
Macmillan Company, 1910.

84 V. L. Collins, op. cit., p. 267.

STUDENT RESIDENTIAL HOUSING 185

The building of the beautiful graduate school at Princeton sev-
eral years later implemented this philosophy, but meanwhile Wood-
row Wilson, who had been inaugurated as president in 1902, es-
tablished the preceptorial system in 1905, modeled directly after
the systems in vogue at Oxford and Cambridge. Since Princeton
dormitories were not adapted to the complete taking over of Eng-
lish methods, Mr. Wilson in 1907 proposed a scheme for social
coordination known as the Quadrangle Plan. This contemplated
the grouping of the dormitories of the university into a number of
quadrangles and the housing of unmarried members of the faculty
with students in order "to bring them in close habitual natural as-
sociation with undergraduates and so intimately tie the intellectual
and social life of the place into one another."25

Because the quadrangle plan involved the abandonment of the
strongly entrenched club system at Princeton, alumni, students
and some members of the faculty rose in vigorous protest. In much
bitterness President Wilson dropped his project ; but the stir which
his writings and addresses created, not only at Princeton but
throughout the United States, focused attention once again upon
the important values of the English residential system and brought
a resurgence of interest and even enthusiasm for reintroducing into
American colleges the programs of Oxford and Cambridge. The
Princeton program unfortunately met serious snags, but President
Lowell, who twenty-five years later introduced the house plan at
Harvard, began actively upon his succession to the Harvard presi-
dency in 1909 to work toward the Wilsonian objectives.

Lowell had been influenced not only by Wilson's ideas and ex-
periences at Princeton, but he very likely also read the articles
of Edwin E. Slosson on higher education which appeared in four-
teen issues of The Independent during 1909 and early 1910, and
which were later published as a volume entitled Great American
Universities. One dominant motif pervaded Slosson's book — the
need of individualization in the colleges! "Here," he wrote,26 "is
the weak point of all the great colleges, and even of the smaller
ones — the lack of personal contact between teacher and student.
It is not due to the influx of an overwhelming number of students,
because the faculty has generally grown in proportion or more. It

^Woodrow Wilson, The Princeton Alumni Weekly, June 12, 1907.

20 Edwin E. Slosson, op. cit.t pp. 17-18, 76.

i86 W. H. COWLEY

is partly due to defective organization and partly to the develop-
ment of a new school of teachers, who detest teaching, who look
upon students as a nuisance, and class work as a waste of time. . . .
Almost every educator, if asked what was the main fault of our
large colleges, would have said that it was the loss of personal
relationship between instructor and student, resulting in ill-adapted
and careless teaching on the one side and in diversion of interest
on the other. Teacher and pupil were not even on opposite ends
of the same log. They were at opposite ends of a telephone work-
ing only one way." Mr. Slosson even went so far as to point out
that at Harvard (Eliot had just resigned and no one knew who
would follow him) "it will be the duty of President Eliot's suc-
cessor to see that individualized education is applied."

Whether or not Mr. Lowell read Mr. Slosson *s articles, certain
it is that he began even in his inaugural address to sponsor the
doctrine to which Slosson gave voice and for which Wilson had
worked so vigorously at Princeton. He devoted his address en-
tirely to Harvard College and its needs, neglecting even to mention
research and scholarship. He talked about the values of "college
life," a phrase which Eliot never used. He suggested that grad-
uate education had sabotaged the distinctive functions of the col-
lege. He urged that dormitories, especially for freshmen, be built
and that everything within reason be done to develop undergrad-
uates as people as well as students. "Among his other wise say-
ings," he pointed out,27 "Aristotle remarked that man is by nature
a social animal ; and it is in order to develop his powers as a social
being that American colleges exist. The object of the undergradu-
ate department is not to produce hermits, each imprisoned in the
cell of his own intellectual pursuits, but men fitted to take their
places in the community and live in contact with their fellow
men."

The program which Lowell inaugurated in 1909 moved for-
ward slowly during his twenty-four-year administration, bringing
concentration of studies in special fields after the sophomore year,
comprehensive examinations, reading periods, tutorial work and fi-
nally the much-discussed House Plan. What Wilson had failed

27 A. Lawrence Lowell, "Inaugural Address," quoted by S. E. Morison,
Development of Harvard University, 1869-1929, p. Ixxix. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930.

STUDENT RESIDENTIAL HOUSING 187

to accomplish by frontal attack Lowell achieved two decades later
by Fabian indirection. But meanwhile other influences in favor
of dormitories were accumulating. Three of these deserve dis-
cussion : First, the effect upon all institutions of the several women's
colleges in the East; second, the emphasis placed upon dormitories,
especially in the Middle West, by deans of women, and third, the
clamor of students and alumni in defense of "college life" and the
dormitory as a means thereto.

Mount Holyoke, Wellesley, Vassar, and Smith had all been
organized during the second half of the nineteenth century with
the residential philosophy dominant. It might be very well for
men's colleges and coeducational institutions to put students upon
their own, but few in those days were willing to allow young
women undergraduates to shift for themselves. The notion that
women were physically unequal to higher education had by no
means completely died down, and the Victorian morality left no
room for anything but strict housing regimentation.

In time these women's colleges grew to considerable influence,
especially in coeducational institutions. Many of their graduates
joined the faculties of Middle Western colleges and universities,
and they brought with them the housing philosophy. Some of them
became deans of women, and charged with the social and physical
welfare of their students, they gave devoted and continuous atten-
tion to housing.

The first deans of women, although usually called preceptresses,
had been appointed in the early days in the Middle West, but in
the late nineties their numbers grew, and in 1902 a small group
of them met at Northwestern University and laid the foundations
for a permanent organization. To-day this organization totals some
1,500 members, and during the past three decades it has been a
powerful influence, especially in the direction of bringing the at-
tention of administrators to the housing of women students. The
annual meetings of the National Association of Deans of Women
always devote considerable time to housing, and in its first years
a large fraction of their discussions were on this topic. Consider-
ing the primitive conditions of rooming houses as they existed in the
Middle West, even in the first decade of this century, it is no
wonder that the deans have been persistent in their efforts to
create better living arrangements for their charges.

i88 W. H. COWLEY

A survey of rooming houses at a Middle Western institution in
1906 brought out these facts:28

. . . that 1 8 of the 40 householders admitted both sexes;
that approximately 30 householders permitted students to pro-
vide and prepare their own food; that cooking, eating, sleeping
and studying were done in the same room ; that in these houses
girls had no parlors in which to entertain friends or callers;
that none of the houses provided single beds; that only six
had bathrooms and inside toilets; that ten had furnace heat;
that three still used kerosene lamps. . . . Those doing light
housekeeping might wash and • iron in their own rooms,
where kitchen duties were usually taken care of on kerosene
stoves. . . .

By slow, persistent effort the deans of women have succeeded
in improving the rooming houses in which a large percentage of
their students are still forced to live. Much remains to be done,
but the appearance on many campuses of new dormitories during
the past thirty years has considerably ameliorated the situation.
Dormitories have not only put marginal rooming houses out of
business, but they have also set standards for those that remain.29
The deans of women have made a large contribution to improving
the living and, therefore, the educational environment of students.
Their vigilance, moreover, continues and will very likely always
be one of their dominant interests.

In turning to the third of these supplementary influences to-
ward a revival of interest in student housing, it must be remem-
bered that "college life," as we understand the term to-day, has
grown up since the i86o's. The first intercollegiate athletic con-
test of any sort was a boat race between Yale and Harvard in
1852 on Lake Winnipiseogee. Seventeen years later the first in-
tercollegiate football game took place, but in general both sports
and social life were undeveloped. During this period a few student
publications existed, but they were in general poorer than the
journalistic ventures of our preparatory school students of to-day.
Because a large percentage of students planned careers in the

38 Caroline Grote, Housing and Living Conditions of Women Students.
T. C., Columbia University, Contributions to Education, No. 507, 1932, pp.
25-26.

29 Survey of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities. U. S. Office of Edu-
cation Bulletin, 1930, No. 9. (Directed by A. J. Klein.) Vol. I, p. 426.

STUDENT RESIDENTIAL HOUSING 189

ministry and in the law, debating had some vocational value, but
intercollegiate contests did not begin until the seventies in the Mid-
dle West and not until the nineties in the East. Fraternities had
been part of the college scene for four or five decades, but the
fraternity house had not yet appeared and the societies were com-
paratively few in number and insignificant in prestige. The guitar
and banjo had recently been introduced, but polite people still con-
sidered dancing a libidinous device of Satan.

The football played in those days resembled a street brawl more
than a game, since twenty-five men made up a team, and the
players wore no uniforms. Yale played Columbia in 1872 with
twenty men on a side, and Princeton and Harvard played in 1876
with fifteen men on a side. It was not until 1880 that the eleven-
man team became standard, and until 1890 paid coaches had not
yet appeared. Basketball, hockey, soccer, tennis and swimming were
not to become college sports for some years, and track had not
begun until the seventies. Athletic letters were not generally
awarded until the last decade of the century. Athletic cheers
and cheer leaders arrived with their questionable pageantry about
the same time. College colors came in with athletics, Yale first
adopting green in 1853, and Harvard crimson at the suggestion
of Eliot when, as a member of the crew that rowed against the
Boston Irish in 1858, he and another oarsman wore crimson hand-
kerchiefs upon their heads. "Fair Harvard" had been written in
1836 on the occasion of the bicentennial anniversary of Harvard's
founding, but most of our present-day college songs did not come
into vogue until after athletic contests grew in popularity.

By the beginning of the century this new type of college life
had become thoroughly entrenched in practically every college and
university in the country. It had likewise become an important
part of the system of values of the great majority of alumni. To
many graduates the contributions to their education from athletics
and from extra-curricular activities in general appeared to be
more important and more lasting than their classroom and
laboratory work, and they sought to foster every instrument that
would keep or expand the active give-and-take of intimate under-
graduate life. The alumni were chiefly responsible for scuttling
Wilson's Quadrangle Plan at Princeton because it seemed likely to
undermine the undergraduate social system; they gave Eliot many
uneasy days and nights; and even Hadley at Yale, though gen-

i9o W. H. COWLEY

erally sympathetic with their notions, had difficulty in keepinj
them from stealing the academic show. At Columbia, where thi
absence of residence halls had interfered with the development o
a college life as colorful as at other comparable institutions, th
alumni in the nineties set up a demand for dormitories. In iSgi
the Board of Trustees capitulated and adopted a resolution ii
favor of raising money for student buildings. The action brough
immediate alumni enthusiasm and attracted considerable newspape
attention. University officials were interviewed, and among thei
statements was one from Dean Van Amringe which appeared ii
the New York Evening* Post of November 21, 1896, and whicl
summarized the situation:

. . . Since the acquisition of the new site, there is, perhaps, no
single matter connected with the college that has received
more general attention and more hearty commendation than
the dormitory system. It has been looked to by students and
alumni as, a means of supplying what the college has always
lacked, an opportunity to cultivate what is distinctly known as
college life. . . .

The rejuvenation of the belief that where and how students liv<
is of large educational significance has by these several means beer
achieved :

The Hadley protest at Yale

The establishment of dormitories at Chicago

The efforts of Wilson at Princeton

The Lowell program at Harvard

The residential philosophy of the eastern women's colleges

The work of the deans of women

The hue and cry for more student life from students and alumn

The opinion built up by these several forces in favor of dormitoriei
accumulated to such potency that it rapidly spread through the coun
try. Cornell, which had been under the Tappan influence in the
person of President White, built a small cottage for women ir
1898 and its first large dormitory in 1914. Minnesota erected its firsi
building for women in 1897, Illinois in 1916, and even Michigan fel
in line with two in 1915. Hundreds of other colleges and uni
versities have followed these Eastern and Middle Western leaders
and the movement has gone steadily forward. It has been consider-

STUDENT RESIDENTIAL HOUSING 191

ably hampered by the depression, but it has remained actively
alive. That it will continue to become even more important can
hardly be doubted.

THE THREE DOMINANT HOUSING PHILOSOPHIES

Proponents of dormitories have accomplished much of educa-
tional importance during the past thirty years. It must be pointed
out with emphasis, however, that the great majority of dormitories,
even those built in recent years and many now being erected, have
not been conceived primarily as educational agencies. They house
students in comfort and almost complete safety, and they serve
vitally in the social development of undergraduates. Organically,
however, they are separate from the curriculum and the active in-
tellectual life of the colleges. Few housing plans, besides those in
effect at Harvard and Yale, at once house students and bring them
into daily formal and informal relationship with members of the
faculty. Expensive plants, such as those at Harvard and Yale,
will never be possible for more than a small fraction of American
colleges and universities, but the values which accrue from this
interlinking of living arrangements and educational effort (espe-
cially at Harvard) will more than likely lead to the adaptation
at other institutions of buildings, which are now merely dormi-
tories, into residences which more actively contribute to the educa-
tional process.

This brief critical discussion upon the foundation of a historical
review gives point to contrasting three major housing philosophies,
all of which have their adherents in American institutions of higher
education. First, the British point of view exemplified best at
Harvard and to a degree at Yale; second, the German philosophy
still dominant at the Universities of California and Nebraska; and
third, the American method which has developed from the impact
of British30 and German principles. The British system makes
the residence hall the center of the student's formal as well as
his informal education. The German principle rules out the de-
sirability of any concern with the student outside the lecture hall

80 The English provincial universities have not followed the example of
Oxford and Cambridge. Founded in the nineteenth century or later they
have encountered the same financial problems as American state universities.

192 W. H. COWLEY

and, therefore, eschews dormitories. The American compromise
gives students body shelter (sometimes only a small fraction of the
total enrolment) and varying degrees of social education, but as
yet it remains considerably apart from the curricular life of
the campus.

RATIONALIZING1
JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON

FEW of us take the pains to study the origin of our cherished con-
victions; indeed, we have a natural repugnance to so doing. We
like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept
as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any
of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for
clinging to them. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning
consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already
do.

I remember years ago attending a public dinner to which the
Governor of the state was bidden. The chairman explained that
His Excellency could not be present for certain "good" reasons;
what the "real" reasons were the presiding officer said he would
leave us to conjecture. This distinction between "good" and "real"
reasons is one of the most clarifying and essential in the whole realm
of thought. We can readily give what seem to us "good" reasons
for being a Catholic or a Mason, a Republican or a Democrat, an
adherent or opponent of the League of Nations. But the "real"
reasons are usually on quite a different plane. Of course the im-
portance of this distinction is popularly, if somewhat obscurely, rec-
ognized. The Baptist missionary is ready enough to see that the
Buddhist is not such because his doctrines would bear careful inspec-
tion, but because he happened to be born in a Buddhist family in
Tokio. But it would be treason to his faith to acknowledge that
his own partiality for certain doctrines is due to the fact that his
mother was a member of the First Baptist Church of Oak Ridge.
A savage can give all sorts of reasons for his belief that it is
dangerous to step on a man's shadow, and a newspaper editor can
advance plenty of arguments against the Bolsheviki. But neither
of them may realize why he happens to be defending his particular
opinion.

1From The Mind in the Making, Harper & Brothers, 1921. Reprinted
by permission of the publishers.

193

194 JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON

The "real" reasons for our beliefs are concealed from ourselves
as well as from others. As we grow up we simply adopt the ideas
presented to us in regard to such matters as religion, family rela-
tions, property, business, our country, and the state. We uncon-
sciously absorb them from our environment. They are persistently
whispered in our ear by the group in which we happen to live. . . .

Opinions, on the other hand, which are the result of experience
or of honest reasoning do not have this quality of "primary certi-
tude." I remember when as a youth I heard a group of business
men discussing the question of the immortality of the soul, I was
outraged by the sentiment of doubt expressed by one of the party.
As I look back now I see that I had at the time no interest in the
matter, and certainly no least argument to urge in favor of the
belief in which I had been reared. But neither my personal in-
difference to the issue, nor the fact that I had previously given it no
attention, served to prevent an angry resentment when I heard my
ideas questioned.

This spontaneous and loyal support of our preconceptions — this
process of finding "good" reasons to justify our routine beliefs — is
known to modern psychologists as "rationalizing" — clearly only a
new name for a very ancient thing. Our "good" reasons ordinarily
have no value in promoting honest enlightenment, because, no mat-
ter how solemnly they may be marshaled, they are at bottom the
result of personal preference or prejudice, and not of an honest
desire to seek or accept new knowledge.

In our reveries we are frequently engaged in self- justification, for
we cannot bear to think ourselves wrong, and yet have constant
illustrations of our weaknesses and mistakes. So we spend much
time finding fault with circumstances and the conduct of others,
and shifting on to them with great ingenuity the onus of our own
failures and disappointments. Rationalizing is the self-exculpation
which occurs when we feel ourselves, or our group, accused of mis-
apprehension or error.

The little word ray is the most important one in all human affairs,
and properly to reckon with it is the beginning of wisdom. It has
the same force whether it is my dinner, my dog, and my house, or
my faith, my country, and my God. We not only resent the impu-
tation that our watch is wrong, or our car shabby, but that
our conception of the canals of Mars, of the pronunciation of

RATIONALIZING 195

"Epictetus," of the medicinal value of salicine, or the date of
Sargon I, are subject to revision.

Philosophers, scholars, and men of science exhibit a common
sensitiveness in all decisions in which their amour propre is involved.
Thousands of argumentative works have been written to vent a
grudge. However stately their reasoning, it may be nothing but
rationalizing, stimulated by the most commonplace of all motives.
A history of philosophy and theology could be written in terms of
grouches, wounded pride, and aversions, and it would be far more
instructive than the usual treatments of these themes. Sometimes,
under Providence, the lowly impulse of resentment leads to great
achievements. Milton wrote his treatise on divorce as a result of
his troubles with his seventeen-year-old wife, and when he was ac-
cused of being the leading spirit in a new sect, the Divorcers, he
wrote his noble Areopagitica to prove his right to say what he
thought fit, and incidentally to establish the advantage of a free
press in the promotion of Truth. . . .

And now the astonishing and perturbing suspicion emerges that
perhaps almost all that had passed for social science, political econ-
omy, politics, and ethics in the past may be brushed aside by future
generations as mainly rationalizing. John Dewey has already
reached this conclusion in regard to philosophy. Veblen and other
writers have revealed the various unperceived presuppositions of the
traditional political economy, and now comes an Italian sociologist,
Vilfredo Pareto, who, in his huge treatise on general sociology, de-
votes hundreds of pages to substantiating a similar thesis affecting
all the social sciences. This conclusion may be ranked by students
of a hundred years hence as one of the several great discoveries of
our age. It is by no means fully worked out, and it is so opposed
to nature that it will be very slowly accepted by the great mass of
those who consider themselves thoughtful. As a historical student
I am personally fully reconciled to this newer view. Indeed, it
seems to me inevitable that just as the various sciences of nature
were, before the opening of the seventeenth century, largely masses
of rationalizations to suit the religious sentiments of the period, so
the social sciences have continued even to our own day to be ra-
tionalizations of uncritically accepted beliefs and customs.

THE MORAL OBLIGATION TO BE
INTELLIGENT1

JOHN ERSKINE

IF A wise man should ask, What are the modern virtues? and
should answer his own question by a summary of the things we
admire; if he should discard as irrelevant the ideals which by tradi-
tion we profess, but which are not found outside of the tradition
or the profession — ideals like meekness, humility, the renunciation
of this world; if he should include only those excellences to which
our hearts are daily given, and by which our conduct is motived, — •
in such an inventory what virtues would he name ?

This question is neither original nor very new. Our times await
the reckoning up of our spiritual goods which is here suggested.
We have at least this wisdom, that many of us are curious to know
just what our virtues are. I wish I could offer myself as the wise
man who brings the answer. But I raise this question merely to
ask another — When the wise man brings his list of our genuine
admirations, will intelligence be one of them ? We might seem to
be well within the old ideal of modesty if we claimed the virtue of
intelligence. But before we claim the virtue, are we convinced
that it is a virtue, not a peril ?

The disposition to consider intelligence a peril is an old Anglo-
Saxon inheritance. Our ancestors have celebrated this disposition
in verse and prose. Splendid as our literature is, it has not voiced
all the aspirations of humanity, nor could it be expected to voice an
aspiration that has not characteristically belonged to the English
race ; the praise of intelligence is not one of its characteristic glories.

"Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever."

Here is the startling alternative which to the English, alone among
great nations, has been not startling but a matter of course. Here

1From The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent and Other Essays, 1921.
Used by special permission of the publishers, The Bobbs Merrill Company.

196

MORAL OBLIGATION TO BE INTELLIGENT 197

is the casual assumption that a choice must be made between good-
ness and intelligence; that stupidity is first cousin to moral conduct,
and cleverness the first step into mischief; that reason and God are
not on good terms with each other; that the mind and the heart
are rival buckets in the well of truth, inexorably balanced — full
mind, starved heart — stout heart, weak head.

Kingsley's line is a convenient text, but to establish the point that
English literature voices a traditional distrust of the mind we must
go to the masters. In Shakspere's plays there are some highly in-
telligent men, but they are either villains or tragic victims. To be
as intelligent as Richard or I ago or Edmund seems to involve some
break with goodness; to be as wise as Prospero seems to imply
some Faust-like traffic with the forbidden world ; to be as thoughtful
as Hamlet seems to be too thoughtful to live. In Shakspere the
prizes of life go to such men as Bassanio, or Duke Orsino, or
Florizel — men of good conduct and sound character, but of no par-
ticular intelligence. There might, indeed, appear to be one general
exception to this sweeping statement: Shakspere does concede in-
telligence as a fortunate possession to some of his heroines. But
upon even a slight examination those ladies, like Portia, turn out to
have been among Shakspere's Italian importations — their wit was
part and parcel of the story he borrowed; or, like Viola, they are
English types of humility, patience, and loyalty, such as we find in
the old ballads, with a bit of Euphuism added, a foreign cleverness
of speech. After all, these are only a few of Shakspere's heroines;
over against them are Ophelia, Juliet, Desdemona, Hero, Cordelia,
Miranda, Perdita — lovable for other qualities than intellect, — and
in a sinister group, Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra, Goneril, intelligent
and wicked.

In Paradise Lost Milton attributes intelligence of the highest
order to the devil. That this is an Anglo-Saxon reading of the
infernal character may be shown by a reference to the book of Job,
where Satan is simply a troublesome body, and the great wisdom
of the story is from the voice of God in the whirlwind. But Milton
makes his Satan so thoughtful, so persistent and liberty-loving, so
magnanimous, and God so illogical, so heartless and repressive, that
many perfectly moral readers fear lest Milton, like the modern
novelists, may have known good and evil, but could not tell them
apart. It is disconcerting to intelligence that it should be God's
angel who cautions Adam not to wander in the earth, nor inquire
concerning heaven's causes and ends, and that it should be Satan

ig8 JOHN ERSKINE

meanwhile who questions and explores. By Milton's reckoning of
intelligence the theologian and the scientist to-day alike take after
Satan.

If there were time, we might trace this valuation of intelligence
through the English novel. We should see how often the writers
have distinguished between intelligence and goodness, and have en-
listed our affections for a kind of inexpert virtue. In Fielding or
Scott, Thackeray or Dickens, the hero of the English novel is a
well-meaning blunderer who in the last chapter is temporarily res-
cued by the grace of God from the mess he has made of his life.
Unless he also dies in the last chapter, he will probably need rescue
again. The dear woman whom the hero marries is, with a few
notable exceptions, rather less intelligent than himself. When
David Copperfield marries Agnes, his prospects of happiness, to the
eyes of intelligence, look not very exhilarating. Agnes has more
sense than Dora, but it is not even for that slight distinction that
we must admire her ; her great qualities are of the heart — patience,
humility, faithfulness. These are the qualities also of Thackeray's
good heroines, like Laura or Lady Castlewood. Beatrice Esmond
and Becky Sharp, both highly intelligent, are of course a bad lot.

No less significant is the kind of emotion the English novelist in-
vites towards his secondary or lower-class heroes — toward Mr.
Boffin in Our Mutual Friend, for example, or Harry Foker in
Pendennis. These characters amuse us, and we feel pleasantly
superior to them, but we agree with the novelist that they are
wholly admirable in their station. Yet if a Frenchman — let us say
Balzac — were presenting such types, he would make us feel, as in
Pere Goriot or Eugenie Grandet, not only admiration for the stable,
loyal nature, but also deep pity that such goodness should be so
tragically bound in unintelligence or vulgarity. This comparison
of racial temperaments helps us to understand ourselves. We may
continue the method at our leisure. What would Socrates have
thought of Mr. Pickwick, or the Vicar of Wakefield, or David
Copperfield, or Arthur Pendennis? For that matter, would he
have felt admiration or pity for Colonel Newcome?

Ill

I hardly need confess that this is not an adequate account of Eng-
lish literature. Let me hasten to say that I know the reader is

MORAL OBLIGATIONTO BE INTELLIGENT 199

resenting this somewhat cavalier handling of the noble writers he
loves. He probably is wondering how I can expect to increase his
love of literature by such unsympathetic remarks. But just now I
am not concerned about our love of literature ; I take it for granted,
and use it as an instrument to prod us with. If we love Shakspere
and Milton and Scott and Dickens and Thackeray, and yet do not
know what qualities their books hold out for our admiration, then
— let me say it as delicately as possible — our admiration is not dis-
criminating; and if we neither have discriminaton nor are disturbed
by our lack of it, then perhaps that wise man could not list intelli-
gence among our virtues. Certainly it would be but a silly account
of English literature to say only that it set little store by the things
of the mind. I am aware that for the sake of my argument I have
exaggerated, by insisting upon only one aspect of English literature.
But our history betrays a peculiar warfare between character and
intellect, such as to the Greek, for example, would have been incom-
prehensible. The great Englishman, like the most famous Greeks,
had intelligence as well as character, and was at ease with them
both. But whereas the notable Greek seems typical of his race, the
notable Englishman usually seems an exception to his own people,
and is often best appreciated in other lands. What is more singular
— in spite of the happy combination in himself of character and
intelligence, he often fails to recognize the value of that combination
in his neighbors. When Shakspere portrayed such amateurish states-
men as the Duke in Measure for Measure, Burleigh was guiding
Elizabeth's empire, and Francis Bacon was soon to be King James's
counsellor. It was the young Milton who pictured the life of
reason in U Allegro and // Penserosoy the most spiritual fruit of
philosophy in Comus] and when he wrote his epic he was probably
England's most notable example of that intellectual inquiry and
independence which in his great poem he discouraged. There re-
main several well-known figures in our literary history who have
both possessed and believed in intelligence — Byron and Shelley in
what seems our own day, Edmund Spenser before Shakspere's time.
England has more or less neglected all three, but they must in fair-
ness be counted to her credit. Some excuses might be offered for
the neglect of Byron and Shelley by a nation that likes the proprie-
ties; but the gentle Spenser, the noblest philosopher and most
chivalrous gentleman in our literature, seems to be unread only be-
cause he demands a mind as well as a heart used to high things.

200 JOHN ERSKINE

This will be sufficient qualification of any disparagement of Eng-
lish literature; no people and no literature can be great that are
not intelligent, and England has produced not only statesmen and
scientists of the first order, but also poets in whom the soul was
fitly mated with a lofty intellect. But I am asking you to recon-
sider your reading in history and fiction, to reflect whether our race
has usually thought highly of the intelligence by which it has been
great; I suggest these non-intellectual aspects of our literature as
commentary upon my question — and all this with the hope of press-
ing upon you the question as to what you think of intelligence.

Those of us who frankly prefer character to intelligence are
therefore not without precedent. If we look beneath the history of
the English people, beneath the ideas expressed in our literature, we
find in the temper of our remotest ancestors a certain bias which
still prescribes our ethics and still prejudices us against the mind.
The beginnings of our conscience can be geographically located. It
began in the German forests, and it gave its allegiance not to the
intellect but to the will. Whether or not the severity of life in a
hard climate raised the value of that persistence by which alone life
could be preserved, the Germans as Tacitus knew them, and the
Saxons as they landed in England, held as their chief virtue that
will-power which makes character. For craft or strategy they had
no use ; they were already a bulldog race ; they liked fighting, and
they liked best to settle the matter hand to hand. The admiration
for brute force which naturally accompanied this ideal of self-
reliance, drew with it as naturally a certain moral sanction. A
man was as good as his word, and he was ready to back up his word
with a blow. No German, Tacitus says, would enter into a treaty
of public or private business without his sword in his hand. When
this emphasis upon the will became a social emphasis, it gave the
direction to ethical feeling. Honor lay in a man's integrity, in his
willingness and ability to keep his word ; therefore the man became
more important than his word or deed. Words and deeds were
then easily interpreted, not in terms of absolute good and evil, but
in terms of the man behind them. The deeds of a bad man were
bad; the deeds of a good man were good. Fielding wrote Tom
Jones to show that a good man sometimes does a bad action, con-
sciously or unconsciously, and a bad man sometimes does good, in-
tentionally or unintentionally. From the fact that Tom Jones is
still popularly supposed to be as wicked as it is coarse, we may

MORAL OBLIGATION TO BE INTELLIGENT 201

judge that Fielding did not convert all his readers. Some progress
certainly has been made; we do not insist that the more saintly of
two surgeons shall operate on us for appendicitis. But as a race we
seem as far as possible from realising that an action can intelligently
be called good only if it contributes to a good end; that it is the
moral obligation of an intelligent creature to find out as far as
possible whether a given action leads to a good or a bad end; and
that any system of ethics that excuses him from that obligation is
vicious. If I give you poison, meaning to give you wholesome food,
I have — to say the least — not done a good act ; and unless I intend
to throw overboard all pretence to intelligence, I must feel some
responsibility for that trifling neglect to find out whether what I
gave you was food or poison.

Obvious as the matter is in this academic illustration, it ought to
have been still more obvious in Matthew Arnold's famous plea for
culture. The purpose of culture, he said, is "to make reason and
the will of God prevail." This formula he quoted from an Eng-
lishman. Differently stated, the purpose of culture, he said, is "to
make an intelligent being yet more intelligent." This formula he
borrowed from a Frenchman. The basis culture must have in
character, the English resolution to make reason and the will of
God prevail, Arnold took for granted; no man ever set a higher
price on character — so far as character by itself will go. But he
spent his life trying to sow a little suspicion that before we can
make the will of God prevail we must find out what is the will of
God.

I doubt if Arnold taught us much. He merely embarrassed us
temporarily. Our race has often been so embarrassed when it has
turned a sudden corner and come upon intelligence. Charles Kings-
ley himself, who would rather be good than clever, — and had his
wish, — was temporarily embarrassed when in the consciousness of
his own upright character he publicly called Newman a liar. New-
man happened to be intelligent as well as good, and Kingsley's dis-
comfiture is well known. But we discovered long ago how to evade
the sudden embarrassments of intelligence. "Toll for the brave,"
sings the poet for those who went down in the Royal George. They
were brave. But he might have sung, "Toll for the stupid." In
order to clean the hull, brave Kempenfelt and his eight hundred
heroes took the serious risk of laying the vessel well over on its side,

202 JOHN ERSKINE

while most of the crew were below. Having made the error, they
all died bravely; and our memory passes easily over the lack of a
virtue we never did think much of, and dwells on the English vir-
tues of courage and discipline. So we forget the shocking blunder
of the charge of the Light Brigade, and proudly sing the heroism of
the victims. Lest we flatter ourselves that this trick of defence has
departed with our fathers — this reading of stupidity in terms of the
tragic courage that endures its results — let us reflect that recently,
after full warning, we drove a ship at top speed through a field of
icebergs. When we were thrilled to read how superbly those hun-
dreds died, in the great English way, a man pointed out that they
did indeed die in the English way, and that our pride was therefore
ill-timed ; that all that bravery was waste ; that the tragedy was in
the shipwreck of intelligence. That discouraging person was an
Irishman.

I have spoken of our social inheritance as though it were entirely
English. Once more let me qualify my terms. Even those ancestors of
ours who never left Great Britain were heirs of many civilizations
— Roman, French, Italian, Greek. With each world-tide some
love of pure intelligence was washed up on English shores, and en-
riched the soil, and here and there the old stock marvelled at its
own progeny. But to America, much as we may sentimentally
deplore it, England seems destined to be less and less the source of
culture, of religion and learning. Our land assimilates all races;
with every ship in the harbor our old English ways of thought must
crowd a little closer to make room for a new tradition. If some of
us do not greatly err, these newcomers are chiefly driving to the
wall our inherited criticism of the intellect. As surely as the severe
northern climate taught our forefathers the value of the will, the
social conditions from which these new citizens have escaped have
taught them the power of the mind. They differ from each other,
but against the Anglo-Saxon they are confederated in a Greek love
of knowledge, in a Greek assurance that sin and misery are the
fruit of ignorance, and that to know is to achieve virtue. They
join forces at once with that earlier arrival from Greece, the scien-
tific spirit, which like all the immigrants has done our hard work

MORAL OBLIGATION TO BE INTELLIGENT 203

and put up with our contempt. Between this rising host that fol-
low intelligence, and the old camp that put their trust in a stout
heart, a firm will, and a strong hand, the fight is on. Our college
men will be in the thick of it. If they do not take sides, they will
at least be battered in the scuffle. At this moment they are readily
divided into those who wish to be men — whatever that means — and
those who wish to be intelligent men, and those who, unconscious
of blasphemy or humor, prefer not to be intelligent, but to do the
will of God.

When we consider the nature of the problems to be solved in our
day, it seems — to many of us, at least — that these un-English ar-
rivals are correct, that intelligence is the virtue we particularly
need. Courage and steadfastness we cannot do without, so long as
two men dwell on the earth; but it is time to discriminate in our
praise of these virtues. If you want to get out of prison, what you
need is the key to the lock. If you cannot get that, have courage
and steadfastness. Perhaps the modern world has got into a kind
of prison, and what is needed is the key to the lock. If none of the
old virtues exactly fits, why should it seem ignoble to admit it?
England for centuries has got on better by sheer character than some
other nations by sheer intelligence, but there is after all a relation
between the kind of problem and the means we should select to
solve it. Not all problems are solved by will-power. When Eng-
land overthrew Bonaparte, it was not his intelligence she over-
threw; the contest involved other things besides intelligence, and
she wore him out in the matter of physical endurance. The enemy
that comes to her as a visible host or armada she can still close with
and throttle; but when the foe arrives as an arrow that flieth by
night, what avail the old sinews, the old stoutness of heart! We
Americans face the same problems, and are too much inclined to
oppose to them similar obsolete armor. We make a moral issue of
an economic or social question, because it seems ignoble to admit it
is simply a question for intelligence. Like the medicine-man, we
use oratory and invoke our hereditary divinities, when the patient
needs only a little quiet, or permission to get out of bed. We ap-
plaud those leaders who warm to their work — who, when they
cannot open a door, threaten to kick it in. In the philosopher's
words, we curse the obstacles of life as though they were devils.
But they are not devils. They are obstacles.

204 JOHN ERSKINE

Perhaps my question as to what you think of intelligence has been
pushed far enough. But I cannot leave the subject without a con-
fession of faith.

None of the reasons here suggested will quite explain the true
worship of intelligence, whether we worship it as the scientific
spirit, or as scholarship, or as any other reliance upon the mind.
We really seek intelligence not for the answers it may suggest to
the problems of life, but because we believe it is life, — not for aid
in making the will of God prevail, but because we believe it is the
will of God. We love it, as we love virtue, for its own sake, and
we believe it is only virtue's other and more precise name. We
believe that the virtues wait upon intelligence — literally wait, in the
history of the race. Whatever is elemental in man — love, hunger,
fear — has obeyed from the beginning the discipline of intelligence.
We are told that to kill one's aging parents was once a demonstra-
tion of solicitude ; about the same time, men hungered for raw meat
and feared the sun's eclipse. Filial love, hunger, and fear are still
motives to conduct, but intelligence has directed them to other ends.
If we no longer hang the thief or flog the school-boy, it is not that
we think less harshly of theft or laziness, but that intelligence has
found a better persuasion to honesty and enterprise.

We believe that even in religion, in the most intimate room of
the spirit, intelligence long ago proved itself the master-virtue. Its
inward office from the beginning was to decrease fear and increase
opportunity; its outward effect was to rob the altar of its sacrifice
and the priest of his mysteries. Little wonder that from the begin-
ning the disinterestedness of the accredited custodians of all temples
has been tested by the kind of welcome they gave to intelligence.
How many hecatombs were offered on more shores than that of
Aulis, by seamen waiting for a favorable wind, before intelligence
found out a boat that could tack! The altar was deserted, the
religion revised — fear of the uncontrollable changing into delight
in the knowledge that is power. We contemplate with satisfaction
the law by which in our long history one religion has driven out
another, as one hypothesis supplants another in astronomy or mathe-
matics. The faith that needs the fewest altars, the hypothesis that
leaves least unexplained, survives ; and the intelligence that changes
most fears into opportunity is most divine.

MORAL OBLIGATION TO BE INTELLIGENT 205

We believe this beneficent operation of intelligence was swerving
not one degree from its ancient course when under the name of the
scientific spirit it once more laid its influence upon religion. If the
shock here seemed too violent, if the purpose of intelligence here
seemed to be not revision but contradiction, it was only because
religion was invited to digest an unusually large amount of intelli-
gence all at once. Moreover, it is not certain that devout people
were more shocked by Darwinism than the pious mariners were by
the first boat that could tack. Perhaps the sacrifices were not
abandoned all at once.

But the lover of intelligence must be patient with those who can-
not readily share his passion. Some pangs the mind will inflict
upon the heart. It is a mistake to think that men are united by
elemental affections. Our affections divide us. We strike roots in
immediate time and space, and fall in love with our locality, the
customs and the language in which we were brought up. Intelli-
gence unites us with mankind, by leading us in sympathy to other
times, other places, other customs; but first the prejudiced roots of
affection must be pulled up. These are the old pangs of intelligence,
which still comes to set a man at variance against his father, saying,
"He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of
me."

Yet, if intelligence begins in a pang, it proceeds to a vision.
Through measureless time its office has been to make of life an
opportunity, to make goodness articulate, to make virtue a fact. In
history at least, if not yet in the individual, Plato's faith has come
true, that sin is but ignorance, and knowledge and virtue are one.
But all that intelligence has accomplished dwindles in comparison
with the vision it suggests and warrants. Beholding this long lib-
eration of the human spirit, we foresee, in every new light of the
mind, one unifying mind, wherein the human race shall know its
destiny and proceed to it with satisfaction, as an idea moves to its
proper conclusion ; we conceive of intelligence at last as the infinite
order, wherein man, when he enters it, shall find himself.

Meanwhile he continues to find his virtues by successive insights
into his needs. Let us cultivate insight.

O Wisdom of the Most High,
That readiest from the beginning to the end,
And dost order all things in strength and gracr,
Teach us now the way of understanding.

TWO TYPES OF MIND1
H. G. WELLS

IT WILL lead into my subject most conveniently to contrast and
separate two divergent types of mind, types which are to be dis-
tinguished chiefly by their attitude toward time, and more particu-
larly by the relative importance they attach and the relative amount
of thought they give to the future of things.

The first of these two types of mind, and it is, I think, the pre-
dominant type, the type of the majority of living people, is that
which seems scarcely to think of the future at all, which regards it
as a sort of black nonexistence upon which the advancing present
will presently write events. The second type, which is, I think,
a more modern and much less abundant type of mind, thinks con-
stantly and by preference of things to come, and of present things
mainly in relation to the results that must arise from them. The
former type of mind, when one gets it in its purity, is retrospective
in habit, and it interprets the things of the present, and gives value
to this and denies it to that, entirely with relation to the past. The
latter type of mind is constructive in habit; it interprets the things
of the present and gives value to this or that, entirely in relation
to things designed or foreseen. While from that former point of
view our life is simply to reap the consequences of the past, from
this our life is to prepare the future. The former type one might
speak of as the legal or submissive type of mind, because the busi-
ness, the practice, and the training of a lawyer dispose him toward
it; he of all men must most constantly refer to the law made, the
right established, the precedent set, and most consistently ignore
or condemn the thing that is only seeking to establish itself. The
latter type of mind I might for contrast call the legislative, crea-
tive, organizing, or masterful type, because it is perpetually attack-
ing and altering the established order of things, perpetually falling
away from respect for what the past has given us. It sees the world

1From "The Discovery of the Future," an address delivered before the
Royal Institution and printed in Nature (London) February 6, 1902. Re-
printed by permission of the author and the publishers.

206

TWO TYPES OF MIND 207

as one great workshop, and the present is no more than material
for the future, for the thing that is yet destined to be. It is in
the active mood of thought, while the former is in the passive ; it is
the mind of youth, it is the mind more manifest among the western
nations, while the former is the mind of age, the mind of the oriental.

Things have been, says the legal mind, and so we are here. And
the creative mind says we are here because things have yet to be.

Now I do not wish to suggest that the great mass of people
belong to either of these two types. Indeed, I speak of them as
two distinct and distinguishable types mainly for convenience and
in order to accentuate their distinction. There are probably very
few people who brood constantly upon the past without any thought
of the future at all, and there are probably scarcely any who live
and think consistently in relation to the future. The great mass of
people occupy an intermediate position between these extremes;
they pass daily and hourly from the passive mood to the active;
they see this thing in relation to its associations and that thing in
relation to its consequences, and they do not even suspect that
they are using two distinct methods in their minds.

But for all that they are distinct methods, the method of refer-
ence to the past and the method of reference to the future, and
their mingling in many of our minds no more abolishes their dif-
ference than the existence of piebald horses proves that white is
black.

I believe that it is not sufficiently recognized just how different
in their consequences these two methods are, and just where their
difference and where the failure to appreciate their difference takes
one. This present time is a period of quite extraordinary uncer-
tainty and indecision upon endless questions — moral questions, es-
thetic questions, religious and political questions — upon which we
should all of us be happier to feel assured and settled, and a very
large amount of this floating uncertainty about these important
matters is due to the fact that with most of us these two insuf-
ficiently distinguished ways of looking at things are not only present
together, but in actual conflict in our minds, in unsuspected con-
flict; we pass from one to the other heedlessly without any clear
recognition of the fundamental difference in conclusions that exists
between the two, and we do this with disastrous results to our con-
fidence and to our consistency in dealing with all sorts of things.

But before pointing out how divergent these two typ'.s or habits

208 H. G. WELLS

of mind really are, it is necessary to meet a possible objection to
what has been said. I may put that objection in this form: Is not
this distinction between a type of mind that thinks of the past and
of a type of mind that thinks of the future a sort of hair-splitting,
almost like distinguishing between people who have left hands and
people who have right? Everybody believes that the present is en-
tirely determined by the past, you say; but then everybody believes
also that the present determines the future. Are we simply separat-
ing and contrasting two sides of everybody's opinion? To which
one replies that we are not discussing what we know and believe
about the relations of past, present, and future, or of the relation
of cause and effect to each other in time. We all know the pres-
ent depends for its causes on the past, and that the future depends
for its causes upon the present. But this discussion concerns the
way in which we approach things upon this common ground of
knowledge and belief. We may all know there is an east and a
west, but if some of us always approach and look at things from
the west, if some of us always approach and look at things from
the east, and if others again wander about with a pretty disre-
gard of direction, looking at things as chance determines, some of
us will get to a westward conclusion of this journey, and some of
us will get to an eastward conclusion, and some of us will get to
no definite conclusion at all about all sorts of important matters.
And yet those who are traveling east, and those who are traveling
west, and those who are wandering haphazard, may be all upon
the same ground of belief and statement and amidst the same as-
sembly of proven facts. Precisely the same thing will happen if
you always approach things from the point of view of their causes,
or if you approach them always with a view to their probable ef-
fects. And in several very important groups of human affairs it
is possible to show quite clearly just how widely apart the two
methods, pursued each in its purity, take those who follow them.
I suppose that three hundred years ago all people who thought
at all about moral questions, about questions of right and wrong,
deduced their rules of conduct absolutely and unreservedly from
the past, from some dogmatic injunction, some finally settled de-
cree. The great mass of people do so to-day. It is written, they
say. Thou shalt not steal, for example — that is the sole, complete,
and sufficient reason why you should not steal, and even to-day
there is a strong aversion to admit that there is any relation be-

TWO TYPES OF MIND 209

tween the actual consequences of acts and the imperatives of right
and wrong. Our lives are to reap the fruits of determinate things,
and it is still a fundamental presumption of the established mo-
rality that one must do right though the heavens fall. But there
are people coming into this world who would refuse to call it
right if it brought the heavens about our heads, however authori-
tative its sources and sanctions, and this new disposition is, I be-
lieve, a growing one. I suppose in all ages people in a timid,
hesitating, guilty way have tempered the austerity of a dogmatic
moral code by small infractions to secure obviously kindly ends,
but it was, I am told, the Jesuits who first deliberately sought to
qualify the moral interpretation of acts by a consideration of their
results. To-day there are few people who have not more or less
clearly discovered the future as a more or less important factor in
moral considerations. To-day there is a certain small proportion
of people who frankly regard morality as a means to an end, as
an overriding of immediate and personal considerations out of
regard to something to be attained in the future, and who break
away altogether from the idea of a code dogmatically established
for ever. Most of us are not so definite as that, but most of us
are deeply tinged with the spirit of compromise between the past
and the future; we profess an unbounded allegiance to the pre-
scriptions of the past, and we practice a general observance of its
injunctions, but we qualify to a vague, variable extent with con-
siderations of expediency. We hold, for example, that we must
respect our promises. But suppose we find unexpectedly that for
one of us to keep a promise, which has been sealed and sworn in
the most sacred fashion, must lead to the great suffering of some
other human being, must lead, in fact, to practical evil? Would
a man do right or wrong if he broke such a promise? The prac-
tical decision most modern people would make would be to break
the promise. Most would say that they did evil to avoid a greater
evil. But suppose it was not such very great suffering we were
going to inflict, but only some suffering? And suppose it was a
rather important promise? With most of us it would then come
to be a matter of weighing the promise, the thing of the past,
against this unexpected bad consequence, the thing of the future.
And the smaller the overplus of evil consequences the more most
of us would vacillate. But neither of the two types of mind we
are contrasting would vacillate at all. The legal tyre of mind

2io H. G. WELLS

would obey the past unhesitatingly, the creative would unhesitat-
ingly sacrifice it to the future. The legal mind would say, "they
who break the law at any point break it altogether," while the
creative mind would say, "let the dead past bury its dead." It is
convenient to take my illustration from the sphere of promises,
but it is in the realm of sexual morality that the two methods are
most acutely in conflict.

And I would like to suggest that until you have definitely deter-
mined either to obey the real or imaginary imperatives of the past,
or to set yourself toward the demands of some ideal of the future,
until you have made up your mind to adhere to one or other of
these two types of mental action in these matters, you are not even
within hope of a sustained consistency in the thought that under-
lies your acts, that in every issue of principle that comes upon
you, you will be entirely at the mercy of the intellectual mood
that happens to be ascendant at that particular moment in your
mind.

In the sphere of public affairs also these two ways of looking at
things work out into equally divergent and incompatible conse-
quences. The legal mind insists upon treaties, constitutions, legiti-
macies, and charters; the legislative incessantly assails these.
Whenever some period of stress sets in, some great conflict be-
tween institutions and the forces in things, there comes a sorting
between these two types of mind. The legal mind becomes glori-
fied and transfigured in the form of hopeless loyalty, the creative
mind inspires revolutions and reconstruct ions. And particularly is
this difference of attitude accentuated in the disputes that arise
out of wars. In most modern wars there is no doubt quite trace-
able on one side or the other a distinct creative idea, a distinct
regard for some future consequence; but the main dispute even in
most modern wars and the sole dispute in most mediaeval wars
will be found to be a reference, not to the future, but to the past;
to turn upon a question of fact and right. The wars of Plantag-
enet and Lancastrian England with France, for example, were
based entirely upon a dummy claim, supported by obscure legal
arguments, upon the crown of France. And the arguments that
center about the present war in South Africa ignore any ideal of a
great united South African state almost entirely, and quibble this
way and that about who began the fighting and what was or was
not written in some obscure revision of a treaty a score of years

TWO TYPES OF MIND 211

ago; yet beneath the legal issues the broad creative idea has been
very apparent in the public mind during this war. It will be found
more or less definitely formulated beneath almost all the great
wars of the past century, and a comparison of the wars of the nine-
teenth century with the wars of the middle ages will show, I
think, that in this field also there has been a discovery of the fu-
ture, an increasing disposition to shift the reference and values from
things accomplished to things to come.

Yet though foresight creeps into our politics and a reference
to consequence into our morality, it is still the past that dominates
our lives. But why ? Why are we so bound to it ? It is into the
future we go; to-morrow is the eventful thing for us. There lies
all that remains to be felt by us and our children and all those
that are dear to us. Yet we marshall and order men into classes
entirely with regard to the past, we draw shame and honor out
of the past; against the rights of property, the vested interests,
the agreements and establishments of the past the future has no
rights. Literature is for the most part history or history at one
remove, and what is culture but a mold of interpretation into
which new things are thrust, a collection of standards, a sort of
bed of King Og, to which all new expressions must be looped or
stretched? Our conveniences, like our thoughts, are all retro-
spective. We travel on roads so narrow that they suffocate our
traffic; we live in uncomfortable, inconvenient, life-wasting houses
out of a love of familiar shapes and familiar customs and a dread
of strangeness; all our public affairs are cramped by local boun-
daries impossibly restricted and small. Our clothing, our habits
of speech, our spelling, our weights and measures, our coinage,
our religious and political theories, all witness to the binding
power of the past upon our minds. Yet we do not serve the past
as the Chinese have done. There are degrees. We do not wor-
ship our ancestors or prescribe a rigid local costume; we venture
to enlarge our stock of knowledge, and we qualify the classics
with occasional adventures into original thought. Compared with
the Chinese we are distinctly aware of the future. But compared
with what we might be the past is all our world.

OF THE LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND
DISCUSSION1

JOHN STUART MILL

IF ALL mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one
person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more
justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power,
would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a per-
sonal possession of no value except to the owner, if to be obstructed
in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make
some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few
persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expres-
sion of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race, posterity as
well as the existing generation, those who dissent from the opinion
still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are
deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if
wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer per-
ception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision
with error.

It is necessary to consider separately these two hypotheses, each
of which has a distinct branch of the argument corresponding to it.
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle
is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an
evil still.

First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority
may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it of course
deny its truth ; but they are not infallible. They have no authority
to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other
person from the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an

1 Abridged from On Liberty, 1864. Some of the longer paragraphs have
been broken up. The student will the more readily appreciate the fine
reasoning behind this essay if he will take the trouble to make a brief of the
argument.— Editors.

212

LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION 213

opinion because they are sure that it is false is to assume that their
certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of
discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may
be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the worse for
being common.

Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their
fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judg-
ment which is always allowed to it in theory; for while everyone
well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any
precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition
that any opinion of which they feel very certain may be one of the
examples of the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be
liable. Absolute princes, or others who are accustomed to unlim-
ited deference, usually feel this complete confidence in their own
opinions on nearly all subjects. People more happily situated, who
sometimes hear their opinions disputed and are not wholly unused
to be set right when they are wrong, place the same unbounded
reliance only on such of their opinions as are shared by all who
surround them, or to whom they habitually defer ; for in proportion
to a man's want of confidence in his own solitary judgment, does
he usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibility of "the
world" in general. And the world, to each individual, means the
part of it with which he comes in contact; his party, his sect, his
church, his class of society; the man may be called, by comparison,
almost liberal and large-minded to whom it means anything so
comprehensive as his own country or his own age. Nor is his faith
in this collective authority at all shaken by his being aware that
other ages, countries, sects, churches, classes, and parties have
thought, and even now think, the exact reverse. He devolves upon
his own world the responsibility of being in the right against the
dissentient worlds of other people; and it never troubles him that
mere accident has decided which of these numerous worlds is the
object of his reliance, and that the same causes which make him a
Churchman in London, would have made him a Buddhist or a
Confucian in Pekin. Yet it is as evident in itself, as any amount
of argument can make it, that ages are no more infallible than in-
dividuals, every age having held many opinions which subsequent
ages have deemed not only false but absurd ; and it is as certain that
many opinions now general will be rejected by future ages, as it is
that many, once general, are rejected by the present. . . .

214 JOHN STUART MILL

When we consider either the history of opinion, or the ordinary
conduct of human life, to what is it to be ascribed that the one and
the other are no worse than they are? Not certainly to the in-
herent force of the human understanding; for, on any matter not
self-evident, there are ninety-nine persons totally incapable of judg-
ing of it for one who is capable ; and the capacity of the hundredth
person is only comparative; for the majority of the eminent men of
every past generation held many opinions now known to be errone-
ous, and did or approved numerous things which no one will now
justify. Why is it, then, that there is on the whole a preponderance
among mankind of rational opinions and rational conduct? If
there really is this preponderance — which there must be unless
human affairs are, and have always been, in an almost desperate
state — it is owing to a quality of the human mind, the source of
everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral
being, namely, that his errors are corrigible. He is capable of recti-
fying his mistakes by discussion and experience. Not by experience
alone. There must be discussion to show how experience is to be
interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact
and argument; but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on
the mind, must be brought before it. Very few facts are able to tell
their own story without comments to bring out their meaning.
The whole strength and value, then, of human judgment depending
on the one property that it can be set right when it is wrong, reli-
ance can be placed on it only when the means of setting it right are
kept constantly at hand.

In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of
confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind
open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been
his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit
by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and upon
occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he
has felt that the only way in which a human being can make some
approach to knowing the whole of a subject is by hearing what can
be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying
all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind.
No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor
is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other
manner. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own
opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing

LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION 215

doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable
foundation for a just reliance on it: for, being cognizant of all that
can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his
position against all gainsayers — knowing that he has sought for ob-
jections and difficulties instead of avoiding them, and has shut out
no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter —
he has a right to think his judgment better than that of any person,
or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.

It is not too much to require that what the wisest of mankind,
those who are best entitled to trust their own judgment, find neces-
sary to warrant their relying on it, should be submitted to by that
miscellaneous collection of a few wise and many foolish individuals,
called the public. . . . The beliefs which we have most warrant
for have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the
whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not
accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough
from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing
state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that
could give the truth a chance of reaching us: if the lists are kept
open, we may hope that if there be a better truth, it will be found
when the human mind is capable of receiving it; and in the mean-
time we may rely on having attained such approach to truth as is
possible in our own day. This is the amount of certainty attainable
by a fallible being, and this the sole way of attaining it.

Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the argu-
ments for free discussion, but object to their being "pushed to an
extreme" ; not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme
case, they are not good for any case. Strange that they should
imagine that they are not assuming infallibility, when they ac-
knowledge that there should be free discussion on all subjects which
can possibly be doubtful, but think that some particular principle
or doctrine should be forbidden to be questioned because it is so
certain, that is, because they are certain that it is certain. To call
any proposition certain while there is any one who would deny its
certainty if permitted, but who is not permitted, is to assume that
we ourselves and those who agree with us are the judges of cer-
tainty, and judges without hearing the other side.

In the present age — which has been described as "destitute of
faith, but terrified at scepticism" — in which people feel sure, not so
much that their opinions are true, as that they should not know

216 JOHN STUART MILL

what to do without them — the claims of an opinion to be pro-
tected from public attack are rested not so much on its truth, as on
its importance to society. There are, it is alleged, certain beliefs so
useful, not to say indispensable, to well-being that it is as much the
duty of governments to uphold those beliefs, as to protect any
other of the interests of society. In a case of such necessity, and so
directly in the line of their duty, something less than infallibility
may, it is maintained, warrant, and even bind, governments to act
on their own opinion, confirmed by the general opinion of mankind.
It is also often argued, and still oftener thought, that none but bad
men would desire to weaken these salutary beliefs; and there can
be nothing wrong, it is thought, in restraining bad men and pro-
hibiting what only such men would wish to practise.

This mode of thinking makes the justification of restraints on
discussion not a question of the truth of doctrines, but of their
usefulness; and flatters itself by that means to escape the responsi-
bility of claiming to be an infallible judge of opinions. But those
who thus satisfy themselves, do not perceive that the assumption of
infallibility is merely shifted from one point to another. The use-
fulness of an opinion is itself a matter of opinion, as disputable, as
open to discussion, and requiring discussion as much as the opinion
itself. There is the same need of an infallible judge of opinions to
decide an opinion to be noxious as to decide it to be false, unless
the opinion condemned has full opportunity of defending itself.
And it will not do to say that the heretic may be allowed to main-
tain the utility or harmlessness of his opinion, though forbidden to
maintain its truth. The truth of an opinion is part of its utility.
If we would know whether or not it is desirable that a proposition
should be believed, is it possible to exclude the consideration of
whether or not it is true? In the opinion, not of bad men but of
the best men, no belief which is contrary to truth can be really
useful. . . .

Mankind can hardly be too often reminded, that there was once
a man named Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and
public opinion of his time there took place a memorable collision.
Born in an age and country abounding in individual greatness, this
man has been handed down to us by those who best knew both him
and the age as the most virtuous man in it ; while we know him as
the head and prototype of all subsequent teachers of virtue, the
source equally of the lofty inspiration of Plato and the judicious

LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION 217

utilitarianism of Aristotle, "i maestri di color che sanno" the two
headsprings of ethical as of all other philosophy. This acknowl-
edged master of all the eminent thinkers who have since lived —
whose fame, still growing after more than two thousand years, all
but outweighs the whole remainder of the names which make his
native city illustrious — was put to death by his countrymen, after a
judicial conviction, for impiety and immorality. Impiety, in deny-
ing the gods recognized by the State; indeed his accuser asserted
(see the "Apologia") that he believed in no gods at all. Immoral-
ity, in being, by his doctrines and instructions, a "corruptor of
youth." Of these charges the tribunal, there is every ground for
believing, honestly found him guilty, and condemned the man who
probably of all then born had deserved best of mankind, to be put to
death as a criminal.

To pass from this to the only other instance of judicial iniquity,
the mention of which, after the condemnation of Socrates, would
not be an anti-climax : the event which took place on Calvary rather
more than eighteen hundred years ago. The man who left on the
memory of those who witnessed his life and conversation such an
impression of his moral grandeur that eighteen subsequent centuries
have done homage to him as the Almighty in person, was ignomini-
ously put to death, as what? As a blasphemer. Men did not
merely mistake their benefactor; they mistook him for the exact
contrary of what he was, and treated him as that prodigy of impiety
which they themselves are now held to be for their treatment of
him. The feelings with which mankind now regard these lamenta-
ble transactions, especially the later of the two, render them ex-
tremely unjust in their judgment of the unhappy actors. These
were, to all appearance, not bad men — not worse than men com-
monly are, but rather the contrary; men who possessed in a full, or
somewhat more than a full measure, the religious, moral, and pa-
triotic feelings of their time and people : the very kind of men who,
in all times, our own included, have every chance of passing through
life blameless and respected. The high-priest who rent his garments
when the words were pronounced, which, according to all the ideas
of his country, constituted the blackest guilt, was in all probability
quite as sincere in his horror and indignation as the generality of
respectable and pious men now are in the religious and moral
sentiments they profess ; and most of those who now shudder at his
conduct, if they had lived in his time and been born Jews, would

2i8 JOHN STUART MILL

have acted precisely as he did. Orthodox Christians who are
tempted to think that those who stoned to death the first martyrs
must have been worse men than they themselves are ought to re-
member that one of those persecutors was Saint Paul.

Let us add one more example, the most striking of all, if the im-
pressiveness of an error is measured by the wisdom and virtue of
him who falls into it. If ever any one possessed of power had
grounds for thinking himself the best and most enlightened among
his contemporaries, it was the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Abso-
lute monarch of the whole civilized world, he preserved through
life not only the most unblemished justice, but what was less to be
expected from his Stoical breeding, the tenderest heart. The few
failings which are attributed to him were all on the side of in-
dulgence: while his writings, the highest ethical product of the
ancient mind, differ scarcely perceptibly, if they differ at all, from
the most characteristic teachings of Christ. This man, a better
Christian in all but the dogmatic sense of the word than almost any
of the ostensibly Christian sovereigns who have since reigned, per-
secuted Christianity. Placed at the summit of all the previous
attainments of humanity, with an open, unfettered intellect, and a
character which led him of himself to embody in his moral writings
the Christian ideal, he yet failed to see that Christianity was to be
a good and not an evil to the world, with his duties to which he
was so deeply penetrated. Existing society he knew to be in a de-
plorable state. But such as it was, he saw, or thought he saw, that
it was held together and prevented from being worse by belief and
reverence of the received divinities. As a ruler of mankind, he
deemed it his duty not to suffer society to fall in pieces; and saw
not how, if its existing ties were removed, any others could be
formed which could again knit it together. The new religion
openly aimed at dissolving these ties: unless, therefore, it was his
duty to adopt that religion, it seemed to be his duty to put it down.
Inasmuch then as the theology of Christianity did not appear to him
true or of divine origin; inasmuch as this strange history of a
crucified God was not credible to him, and a system which pur-
ported to rest entirely upon a foundation to him so wholly unbe-
lievable, could not be foreseen by him to be that renovating agency
which, after all abatements, it has in fact proved to be; the gentlest
and most amiable of philosophers and rulers, under a solemn sense
of duty, authorized the persecution of Christianity. To my mind

LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION 219

this is one of the most tragical facts in all history. It is a bitter
thought how different a thing the Christianity of the world might
have been if the Christian faith had been adopted as the religion of
the empire under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those
of Constantine. But it would be equally unjust to him and false
to truth to deny that no one plea which can be urged for punishing
anti-Christian teaching was wanting to Marcus Aurelius for punish-
ing, as he did, the propagation of Christianity. No Christian more
firmly believes that Atheism is false and tends to the dissolution of
society than Marcus Aurelius believed the same things of Chris-
tianity— he who, of all men then living, might have been thought
the most capable of appreciating it. Unless any one who approves
of punishment for the promulgation of opinions flatters himself that
he is a wiser and better man than Marcus Aurelius — more deeply
versed in the wisdom of his time, more elevated in his intellect
above it, more earnest in his search for truth, or more single-
minded in his devotion to it when found — let him abstain from that
assumption of the joint infallibility of himself and the multitude
which the great Antoninus made with so unfortunate a result.

Aware of the impossibility of defending the use of punishment
for restraining irreligious opinions by any argument which will not
justify Marcus Antoninus, the enemies of religious freedom, when
hard pressed, occasionally accept this consequence, and say, with
Dr. Johnson, that the persecutors of Christianity were in the right;
that persecution is an ordeal through which truth ought to pass,
and always passes successfully, legal penalties being in the end
powerless against truth though sometimes beneficially effective
against mischievous errors. This is a form of the argument for
religious intolerance sufficiently remarkable not to be passed with-
out notice.

A theory which maintains that truth may justifiably be perse-
cuted because persecution cannot possibly do it any harm, cannot
be charged with being intentionally hostile to the reception of new
truths; but we cannot commend the generosity of its dealing with
the persons to whom mankind are indebted for them. To dis-
cover to the world something which deeply concerns it, and of
which it was previously ignorant, to prove to it that it had been
mistaken on some vital point of temporal or spiritual interest, is as
important a service as a human being can render to his fellow-
creatures; and in certain cases, as in those of the early Christians

220 JOHN STUART MILL

and of the Reformers, those who think with Dr. Johnson believe
it to have been the most precious gift which could be bestowed on
mankind. That the authors of such splendid benefits should be
required by martyrdom, that their reward should be to be dealt
with as the vilest of criminals, is not, upon this theory, a deplorable
error and misfortune, for which humanity should mourn in sack-
cloth and ashes, but the normal and justifiable state of things. The
propounder of a new truth, according to this doctrine, should
stand, as stood, in the legislation of the Locrians, the proposer of a
new law, with a halter round his neck, to be instantly tightened if
the public assembly did not, on hearing his reasons, then and there
adopt his proposition. People who defend this mode of treating
benefactors cannot be supposed to set much value on the benefit;
and I believe this view of the subject is mostly confined to the
sort of persons who think that new truths may have been desirable
once, but that we have had enough of them now.

But, indeed, the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecu-
tion is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one
another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience
refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by perse-
cution. . . . No reasonable person can doubt that Christianity might
have been extirpated in the Roman Empire. It spread and became
predominant because the persecutions were only occasional, lasting
but a short time, and separated by long intervals of almost undis-
turbed propagandism. It is a piece of idle sentimentality that
truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error of
prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. Men are not more
zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient ap-
plication of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed
in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which
truth has consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be
extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages
there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one
of its reappearances falls on a time when from favorable circum-
stances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to with-
stand all subsequent attempts to suppress it. ...

It is the social stigma which is really effective, and so effective
is it, that the profession of opinions which are under the ban of
society is much less common in England than is, in many other
countries, the avowal of those which incur risk of judicial punish-

LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION 221

ment. In respect to all persons but those whose pecuniary circum-
stances make them independent of the good will of other people,
opinion, on this subject, is as efficacious as law ; men might as well
be imprisoned as excluded from the means of earning their bread.
Those whose bread is already secured and who desire no favors
from men in power, or from bodies of men, or from the public,
have nothing to fear from the open avowal of any opinions but to
be ill-thought of and ill-spoken of, and this it ought not to require
a very heroic mould to enable them to bear. There is no room for
any appeal ad misericordiam in behalf of such persons.

But though we do not now inflict so much evil on those who
think differently from us as it was formerly our custom to do, it may
be that we do ourselves as much evil as ever by our treatment of
them. Socrates was put to death, but the Socratic philosophy rose
like the sun in heaven, and spread its illumination over the whole
intellectual firmament. Christians were cast to the lions, but the
Christian church grew up a stately and spreading tree, overtopping
the older and less vigorous growths, and stifling them by its shade.
Our merely social intolerance kills no one, roots out no opinions,
but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain from any active
effort for their diffusion. With us, heretical opinions do not per-
ceptibly gain, or even lose, ground in each decade or generation;
they never blaze out far and wide, but continue to smoulder in
the narrow circles of thinking and studious persons among whom
they originate, without ever lighting up the general affairs of man-
kind with either a true or a deceptive light. And thus is kept up a
state of things very satisfactory to some minds, because, without
the unpleasant process of fining or imprisoning anybody, it main-
tains all prevailing opinions outwardly undisturbed, while it does
not absolutely interdict the exercise of reason by dissentients
afflicted with the malady of thought. A convenient plan for hav-
ing peace in the intellectual world, and keeping all things going on
therein very much as they do already.

The price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification is the
sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind. A state
of things in which a large portion of the most active and inquiring
intellects find it advisable to keep the general principles and grounds
of their convictions within their own breasts, and attempt, in what
they address to the public, to fit as much as they can of their own
conclusions to premises which they have internally renounced, can-

222 JOHN STUART MILL

not send forth the open, fearless characters, and logical, consistent
intellects who once adorned the thinking world. The sort of men
who can be looked for under it are either mere conformers to com-
mon-place, or time-servers for truth whose arguments on all great
subjects are meant for their hearers, and are not those which have
convinced themselves. Those who avoid this alternative do so by
narrowing their thoughts and interest to things which can be spoken
of without venturing within the region of principles, that is, to
small practical matters which would come right of themselves if
but the minds of mankind were strengthened and enlarged, and
which will never be made effectually right until then: while that
which would strengthen and enlarge men's minds, free and daring
speculation on the highest subjects, is abandoned. . . .

Let us now pass to the second division of the argument, and dis-
missing the supposition that any of the received opinions2 may be
false, let us assume them to be true, and examine into the worth
of the manner in which they are likely to be held when their truth
is not freely and openly canvassed. However unwillingly a per-
son who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his
opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration
that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fear-
lessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.

There is a class of persons (happily not quite so numerous as
formerly) who think it enough if a person assents undoubtingly to
what they think true, though he has no knowledge whatever of the
grounds of the opinion, and could not make a tenable defence of it
against the most superficial objections. Such persons, if they can
once get their creed taught from authority, naturally think that no
good, and some harm, comes of its being allowed to be questioned.
Where their influence prevails, they make it nearly impossible for
the received opinion to be rejected wisely and considerately, though
it may still be rejected rashly and ignorantly; for to shut out dis-
cussion entirely is seldom possible, and when it once gets in, beliefs
not grounded on conviction are apt to give way before the slightest
semblance of an argument. Waiving, however, this possibility —
assuming that the true opinion abides in the mind, but abides as
a prejudice, a belief independent of, and proof against, argument —

2 I.e., the prevailing opinions. — Editors.

LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION 223

this is not the way in which truth ought to be held by a rational
being. This is not knowing the truth. Truth, thus held, is but
one superstition the more, accidentally clinging to the words which
enunciate a truth.

If the intellect and judgment of mankind ought to be culti-
vated, a thing which Protestants at least do not deny, on what
can these faculties be more appropriately exercised by any one than
on the things which concern him so much that it is considered neces-
sary for him to hold opinions on them? If the cultivation of the
understanding consists in one thing more than in another, it is
surely in learning the grounds of one's own opinions. Whatever
people believe on subjects on which it is of the first importance to
believe rightly, they ought to be able to defend against at least the
common objections.

But, some one may say, "Let them be taught the grounds of
their opinions. It does not follow that opinions must be merely
parroted because they are never heard controverted. Persons who
learn geometry do not simply commit the theorems to memory, but
understand and learn likewise the demonstrations; and it would
be absurd to say that they remain ignorant of the grounds of
geometrical truths because they never hear any one deny, and
attempt to disprove them." Undoubtedly: and such teaching suf-
fices on a subject like mathematics, where there is nothing at all
to be said on the wrong side of the question. The peculiarity of
the evidence of mathematical truths is that all the argument is on
one side. There are no objections, and no answers to objections.
But on every subject on which difference of opinion is possible, the
truth depends on a balance to be struck between two sets of con-
flicting reasons. Even in natural philosophy there is always some
other explanation possible of the same facts, some geocentric theory
instead of heliocentric, some phlogiston instead of oxygen; and it
has to be shown why that other theory cannot be the true one : and
until this is shown, and until we know how it is shown, we do not
understand the grounds of our opinion. But when we turn to
subjects infinitely more complicated, to morals, religion, politics,
social relations, and the business of life, three-fourths of the argu-
ments for every disputed opinion consist in dispelling the appear-
ances which favor some opinion different from it.

The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it jn record
that he always studied his adversary's case with as great, if not still

224 JOHN STUART MILL

greater, intensity than even his own. What Cicero practised as the
means of forensic success requires to be imitated by all who study
any subject in order to arrive at the truth. He who knows only
his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be
good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he
is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he
does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for
preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would
be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with
that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of
the world, the side to which he feels most inclination. Nor is it
enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his
own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by
what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice
to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own
mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually
believe them, who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost
for them. He must know them in their most plausible and per-
suasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which
the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else
he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which
meets and removes that difficulty.

Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are
in this condition, even of those who can argue fluently for their
opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for
anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the
mental position of those who think differently from them, and con-
sidered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they
do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which
they themselves profess. They do not know those parts of it which
explain and justify the remainder, the considerations which show
that a fact which seemingly conflicts with another is reconcilable
with it, or that, of two apparently strong reasons, one and not the
other ought to be preferred. All that part of the truth which
turns the scale, and decides the judgment of a completely informed
mind, they are strangers to ; nor is it ever really known, but to those
who have attended equally and impartially to both sides, and en-
deavored to see the reasons of both in the strongest light. So
essential is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and
human subjects, that if opponents of all important truths do not

LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION 225

exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and supply them with
the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil's advocate can
conjure up. ...

If, however, the mischievous operation of the absence of free
discussion, when the received opinions are true, were confined to
leaving men ignorant of the grounds of those opinions, it might be
thought that this, if an intellectual, is no moral evil, and does not
affect the worth of the opinions, regarded in their influence on the
character. The fact, however, is, that not only the grounds of the
opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often the
meaning of the opinion itself. The words which convey it cease
to suggest ideas, or suggest only a small portion of those they were
originally employed to communicate. Instead of a vivid concep-
tion and a living belief, there remain only a few phrases retained by
rote; or, if any part, the shell and husk only of the meaning is re-
tained, the finer essence being lost. The great chapter in human
history which this fact occupies and fills, cannot be too earnestly
studied and meditated on.

It is illustrated in the experience of almost all ethical doctrines
and religious creeds. They are all full of meaning and vitality to
those who originate them, and to the direct disciples of the origina-
tors. Their meaning continues to be felt in undiminished strength,
and is perhaps brought out into even fuller consciousness, so long as
the struggle lasts to give the doctrine or creed an ascendancy over
other creeds. At last it either prevails, and becomes the general
opinion, or its progress stops ; it keeps possession of the ground it has
gained, but ceases to spread further. When either of these results
has become apparent, controversy on the subject flags, and gradually
dies away. The doctrine has taken its place, if not as a received
opinion, as one of the admitted sects or divisions of opinion: those
who hold it have generally inherited, not adopted it ; and conversion
from one of these doctrines to another, being now an exceptional
fact, occupies little place in the thoughts of their professors. In-
stead of being, as at first, constantly on the alert either to defend
themselves against the world, or to bring the world over to them,
they have subsided into acquiescence, and neither listen, when they
can help it, to arguments against their creed, nor trouble dissentients
(if there be such) with arguments in its favor. From this time
may usually be dated the decline in the living power of the doctrine.

We often hear the teachers of all creeds lamenting the Jifficulty

226 JOHN STUART MILL

of keeping up in the minds of believers a lively apprehension of the
truth which they nominally recognize, so that it may penetrate the
feelings, and acquire a real mastery over the conduct. No such
difficulty is complained of while the creed is still fighting for its
existence: even the weaker combatants then know and feel what
they are fighting for, and the difference between it and other doc-
trines; and in that period of every creed's existence, not a few
persons may be found who have realized its fundamental principles
in all the forms of thought, have weighed and considered them in
all their important bearings, and have experienced the full effect on
the character which belief in that creed ought to produce in a mind
thoroughly imbued with it. But when it has come to be an
hereditary creed, and to be received passively, not actively — when
the mind is no longer compelled in the same degree as at first to
exercise its vital powers on the questions which its belief presents
to it, there is a progressive tendency to forget all of the belief except
the formularies, or to give it a dull and torpid assent, as if accept-
ing it on trust dispensed with the necessity of realizing it in con-
sciousness, or testing it by personal experience, until it almost ceases
to connect itself at all with the inner life of the human being. Then
are seen the cases, so frequent in this age of the world as almost to
form the majority, in which the creed remains as it were outside the
mind, incrusting and petrifying it against all other influences ad-
dressed to the higher parts of our nature, manifesting its power by
not suffering any fresh and living conviction to get in, but itself
doing nothing for the mind or heart except standing sentinel over
them to keep them vacant.

To what an extent doctrines intrinsically fitted to make the deep-
est impression upon the mind may remain in it as dead beliefs with-
out being ever realized in the imagination, the feelings, or the
understanding, is exemplified by the manner in which the majority
of believers hold the doctrines of Christianity. By Christianity I
here mean what is accounted such by all churches and sects — the
maxims and precepts contained in the New Testament. These are
considered sacred and accepted as laws by all professing Christians.
Yet it is scarcely too much to say that not one Christian in a thou-
sand guides or tests his individual conduct by reference to those
laws. The standard to which he does refer it is the custom of his
nation, his class, or his religious profession. He has thus, on the
one hand, a collection of ethical maxims which he believes to have

LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION 227

been vouchsafed to him by infallible wisdom as rules for his gov-
ernment, and on the other a set of every-day judgments and prac-
tices which go a certain length with some of those maxims, not so
great a length with others, stand in direct opposition to some, and
are, on the whole, a compromise between the Christian creed and
the interests and suggestions of worldly life. To the first of these
standards he gives his homage, to the other his real allegiance.

All Christians believe that the blessed are the poor and humble,
and those who are ill-used by the world ; that it is easier for a camel
to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of heaven; that they should judge not, lest they be judged;
that they should swear not at all ; that they should love their neigh-
bor as themselves ; that if one take their cloak, they should give him
their coat also; that they should take no thought for the morrow;
that if they would be perfect they should sell all that they have and
give it to the poor. They are not insincere when they say that
they believe these things. They do believe them, as people believe
what they have always heard lauded and never discussed. But in
the sense of that living belief which regulates conduct, they believe
these doctrines just up to the point to which it is usual to act upon
them. The doctrines in their integrity are serviceable to pelt ad-
versaries with ; and it is understood that they are to be put forward
(when possible) as the reasons for whatever people do that they
think laudable. But any one who reminded them that the maxims
require an infinity of things which they never even think of doing
would gain nothing but to be classed among those very unpopular
characters who affect to be better than other people. The doc-
trines have no hold on ordinary believers — are not a power in their
minds. They have an habitual respect for the sound of them, but
no feeling which spreads from the words to the things signified
and forces the mind to take them in and make them conform to
the formula. Whenever conduct is concerned, they look round for
Mr. A and B to direct them how far to go in obeying Christ.

Now we may be well assured that the case was not thus, but far
otherwise, with the early Christians. Had it been thus, Christian-
ity never would have expanded from an obscure sect of the despised
Hebrews into the religion of the Roman empire. When their
enemies said, "See how these Christians love one another" (a re-
mark not likely to be made by anybody now), they assuredly had
a much livelier feeling of the meaning of their creed taan they

228 JOHN STUART MILL

have ever had since. And to this cause, probably, it is chiefly owing
that Christianity now makes so little progress in extending its
domain, and after eighteen centuries is still nearly confined to
Europeans and the descendants of Europeans. Even with the
strictly religious, who are much in earnest about their doctrines,
and attach a greater amount of meaning to many of them than
people in general, it commonly happens that the part which is thus
comparatively active in their minds is that which was made by
Calvin, or Knox, or some such person much nearer in character to
themselves. The sayings of Christ coexist passively in their minds,
producing hardly any effect beyond what is caused by mere listening
to words so amiable and bland. There are many reasons, doubt-
less, why doctrines which are the badge of a sect retain more of
their vitality than those common to all recognized sects, and why
more pains are taken by teachers to keep their meaning alive; but
one reason certainly is that the peculiar doctrines are more ques-
tioned and have to be oftener defended against open gainsayers.
Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there
is no enemy in the field.

The same thing holds true, generally speaking, of all traditional
doctrines — those of prudence and knowledge of life, as well as of
morals or religion. All languages and literatures are full of gen-
eral observations on life, both as to what it is, and how to conduct
oneself in it — observations which everybody knows, which every-
body repeats, or hears with acquiescence, which are received as
truisms, yet of which most people first truly learn the meaning when
experience, generally of a painful kind, has made it a reality to
them. How often, when smarting under some unforeseen mis-
fortune or disappointment, does a person call to mind some proverb
or common saying, familiar to him all his life, the meaning of
which, if he had ever before felt it as he does now, would have
saved him from the calamity. There are indeed reasons for this
other than the absence of discussion; there are many truths of
which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experi-
ence has brought it home. But much more of the meaning even
of these would have been understood, and what was understood
would have been far more deeply impressed on the mind, if the
man had been accustomed to hear it argued pro and con by people
who did understand it. The fatal tendency of mankind to leave
off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause

LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION 229

of half their errors. A contemporary author has well spoken of
"the deep slumber of a decided opinion."

But what! (it may be asked) Is the absence of unanimity an
indispensable condition of true knowledge? Is it necessary that
some part of mankind should persist in error to enable any to realize
the truth ? Does a belief cease to be real and vital as soon as it is
generally received — and is a proposition never thoroughly under-
stood and felt unless some doubt of it remains? As soon as man-
kind have unanimously accepted a truth, does the truth perish within
them? The highest aim and best result of improved intelligence,
it has hitherto been thought, is to unite mankind more and more in
the acknowledgment of all important truths; and does the intelli-
gence only last as long as it has not achieved its object? Do the
fruits of conquest perish by the very completeness of the victory?

I affirm no such thing. As mankind improve, the number of doc-
trines which are no longer disputed or doubted will be constantly on
the increase: and the well-being of mankind may almost be meas-
ured by the number and gravity of the truths which have reached
the point of being uncontested. The cessation, on one question
after another, of serious controversy, is one of the necessary inci-
dents of the consolidation of opinion, a consolidation as salutary in
the case of true opinions as it is dangerous and noxious when the
opinions are erroneous. But though this gradual narrowing of the
bounds of diversity of opinion is necessary in both senses of the
term, being at once inevitable and indispensable, we are not there-
fore obliged to conclude that all its consequences must be bene-
ficial. The loss of so important an aid to the intelligent and living
apprehension of a truth as is afforded by the necessity of explaining
it to, or defending it against, opponents, though not sufficient to
outweigh, is no trifling drawback from, the benefit of its universal
recognition. Where this advantage can no longer be had, I confess
I should like to see the teachers of mankind endeavoring to provide
a substitute for it, some contrivance for making the difficulties of
the question as present to the learner's consciousness as if they were
pressed upon him by a dissentient champion eager for his con-
version.

But instead of seeking contrivances for this purpose, they have
lost those they formerly had. The Socratic dialectics, so magnifi-
cently exemplified in the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance of
this description. They were essentially a negative discussion of

230 JOHN STUART MILL

the great question of philosophy and life, directed with consummate
skill to the purpose of convincing any one who had merely adopted
the commonplaces of received opinion that he did not understand
the subject — that he as yet attached no definite meaning to the
doctrines he professed; in order that, becoming aware of his igno-
rance, he might be put in the way to obtain a stable belief, resting on
a clear apprehension both of the meaning of doctrines and of their
evidence. The school disputations of the Middle Ages had a
somewhat similar object. They were intended to make sure that
the pupil understood his own opinion, and (by necessary correla-
tion) the opinion opposed to it, and could enforce the grounds of
the one and confute those of the other. These last-mentioned con-
tests had indeed the incurable defect that the premises appealed to
were taken from authority, not from reason; and as a discipline to
the mind they were in every respect inferior to the powerful dia-
lectics which formed the intellects of the "Socratici viri"; but the
modern mind owes far more to both than it is generally willing to
admit, and the present modes of education contain nothing which in
the smallest degree supplies the place either of the one or of the
other. . . .

It still remains to speak of one of the principal causes which
make diversity of opinion advantageous, and will continue to do so
until mankind shall have entered a stage of intellectual advance-
ment which at present seems at an incalculable distance. \Ve have
hitherto considered only two possibilities: that the received opinion
may be false, and some other opinion, consequently, true; or that,
the received opinion being true, a conflict with the opposite error is
essential to a clear apprehension and deep feeling of its truth. But
there is a commoner case than either of these : when the conflicting
doctrines, instead of being one true and the other false, share the
truth between them; and the nonconforming opinion is needed to
supply the remainder of the truth, of which the received doctrine
embodies only a part.

Popular opinions on subjects not palpable to sense are often true,
but seldom or never the whole truth. They are a part of the truth ;
sometimes a greater, sometimes a smaller part, but exaggerated, dis-
torted, and disjointed from the truths by which they ought to be

LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION 231

accompanied and limited. Heretical opinions, on the other hand,
are generally some of these suppressed and neglected truths, burst-
ing the bonds which kept them down, and either seeking reconcilia-
tion with the truth contained in the common opinion, or fronting
it as enemies and setting themselves up with similar exclusiveness
as the whole truth. The latter case is hitherto the most frequent,
as in the human mind one-sidedness has always been the rule and
many-sidedness the exception. Hence, even in revolutions of
opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while another rises.
Even progress, which ought to superadd, for the most part only
substitutes one partial and incomplete truth for another, improve-
ment consisting chiefly in this, that the new fragment of truth is
more wanted, more adapted to the needs of the time, than that
which it displaces. Such being the partial character of prevailing
opinions even when resting on a true foundation, every opinion
which embodies somewhat of the portion of truth which the com-
mon opinion omits ought to be considered precious, with whatever
amount of error and confusion that truth may be blended. No
sober judge of human affairs will feel bound to be indignant be-
cause those who force on our notice truths which we should other-
wise have overlooked, overlook some of those which we see. Rather
he will think that so long as popular truth is one-sided, it is more
desirable than otherwise that unpopular truth should have one-
sided assertors too, such being usually the most energetic, and the
most likely to compel reluctant attention to the fragment of wis-
dom which they proclaim as if it were the whole.

Thus in the eighteenth century, when nearly all the instructed
and all those of the uninstructed who were led by them were lost
in admiration of what is called civilization and of the marvels of
modern science, literature, and philosophy, and while greatly over-
rating the amount of unlikeness between the men of modern and
those of ancient times, indulged the belief that the whole of the
difference was in their own favor, with what a salutary shock did
the paradoxes of Rousseau explode like bombshells in the midst,
dislocating the compact mass of one-sided opinion, and forcing its
elements to recombine in a better form and with additional in-
gredients. Not that the current opinions were on the whole farther
from the truth than Rousseau's were; on the contrary, they were
nearer to it; they contained more of positive truth and very much
less of error. Nevertheless there lay in Rousseau's doctrine, and

232 JOHN STUART MILL

has floated down the stream of opinion along with it, a considerable
amount of exactly those truths which the popular opinion wanted ;
and these are the deposit which was left behind when the flood sub-
sided. The superior worth of simplicity of life, the enervating and
demoralizing effect of the trammels and hypocrisies of artificial
society, are ideas which have never been entirely absent from culti-
vated minds since Rousseau wrote; and they will in time produce
their due effect, though at present needing to be asserted as much
as ever, and to be asserted by deeds, for words, on this subject, have
nearly exhausted their power.

In politics, again, it is almost a commonplace that a party of
order or stability and a party of progress or reform are both neces-
sary elements of a healthy state of political life, until the one or
the other shall have so enlarged its mental grasp as to be a party
equally of order and of progress, knowing and distinguishing what
is fit to be preserved from what ought to be swept away. Each of
these modes of thinking derives its utility from the deficiencies of
the other, but it is in a great measure the opposition of the other
that keeps each within the limits of reason and sanity. Unless
opinions favorable to democracy and to aristocracy, to property and
to equality, to co-operation and to competition, to luxury and to
abstinence, to sociality and individuality, to liberty and discipline,
and all the other standing antagonisms of practical life, are ex-
pressed with equal freedom, and enforced and defended with equal
talent and energy, there is no chance of both elements obtaining
their due ; one scale is sure to go up, and the other down.

Truth, in the great practical concerns of life, is so much a ques-
tion of the reconciling and combining of opposites that very few
have minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjust-
ment with an approach to correctness, and it has to be made by the
rough process of a struggle between combatants fighting under
hostile banners. On any of the great open questions just enumer-
ated, if either of the two opinions has a better claim than the other,
not merely to be tolerated, but to be encouraged and countenanced,
it is the one which happens at the particular time and place to be in
a minority. That is the opinion which, for the time being, repre-
sents the neglected interests, the side of human well-being which
is in danger of obtaining less than its share. I am aware that there
is not, in this country, any intolerance of differences of opinion on
most of these topics. They are adduced to show, by admitted and

LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION 233

multiplied examples, the universality of the fact that only through
diversity of opinion is there, in the existing state of human intel-
lect, a chance of fair play to all sides of the truth. When there are
persons to be found who form an exception to the apparent
unanimity of the world on any subject, even if the world is in the
right, it is always probable that dissentients have something worth
hearing to say for themselves, and that truth would lose something
by their silence.

It may be objected, "But some received principles, especially on
the highest and most vital subjects, are more than half-truths. The
Christian morality, for instance, is the whole truth on that subject,
and if any one teaches a morality which varies from it, he is wholly
in error." As this is of all cases the most important in practice,
none can be fitter to test the general maxim. But before pro-
nouncing what Christian morality is or is not, it would be desirable
to decide what is meant by Christian morality. If it means the
morality of the New Testament, I wonder that any one who de-
rives his knowledge of this from the book itself can suppose that
it was announced, or intended, as a complete doctrine of morals.
The Gospel always refers to a pre-existing morality, and confines
its precepts to the particulars in which that morality was to be
corrected, or superseded by a wider and higher; expressing itself,
moreover, in terms most general, often impossible to be interpreted
literally, and possessing rather the impressiveness of poetry or elo-
quence than the precision of legislation. To extract from it a body
of ethical doctrine has never been possible without eking it out from
the Old Testament, that is, from a system elaborate indeed, but in
many respects barbarous, and intended only for a barbarous people.
St. Paul, a declared enemy to this Judaical mode of interpreting
the doctrine and filling up the scheme of his Master, equally assumes
a pre-existing morality, namely that of the Greeks and Romans;
and his advice to Christians is in a great measure a system of accom-
modation to that, even to the extent of giving an apparent sanction
to slavery. What is called Christian, but should rather be termed
theological, morality, was not the work of Christ or the Apostles,
but is of much later origin, having been gradually built up by the
Catholic Church of the first five centuries, and though not im-
plicitly adopted by moderns and Protestants, has been much less
modified by them than might have been expected. For the most
part, indeed, they have contented themselves with cutting off the

234 JOHN STUART MILL

additions which had been made to it in the Middle Ages, each sect
supplying the place by fresh additions adapted to its own character
and tendencies.

That mankind owe a great debt to this morality and to its early
teachers I should be the last person to deny; but I do not scruple to
say of it that it is in many important points incomplete and one-
sided, and that unless ideas and feelings not sanctioned by it had
contributed to the formation of European life and character, human
affairs would have been in a worse condition than they now are.
Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction;
it is in great part a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative
•rather than positive; passive rather than active; Innocence rather
than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil rather than energetic Pur-
suit of Good; in its precepts (as has been well said) "thou shalt
jiot" predominates unduly over "thou shalt." In its horror of
sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually
compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the hope of
heaven and the threat of hell as the appointed and appropriate
motives to a virtuous life ; in this falling far below the best of the
Ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an
essentially selfish character, by disconnecting each man's feelings of
duty from the interests of his fellow-creatures, except so far as a
self-interested inducement is offered to him for consulting them.
It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates sub-
mission to all authorities found established, who indeed are not to
be actively obeyed when they command what religion forbids, but
who are not to be resisted, far less rebelled against, for any amount
of wrong to ourselves. And while in the morality of the best
Pagan nations duty to the State holds even a disproportionate place,
infringing on the just liberty of the individual, in purely Christian1
ethics that grand department of duty is scarcely noticed or acknowl-
edged. It is in the Koran, not the New Testament, that we read
the maxim — "A ruler who appoints any man to an office when
there is in his dominions another man better qualified for it sins
against God and against the State." What little recognition the
idea of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality is de-
rived from Greek and Roman sources, not from Christian, as even'
in the morality of private life whatever exists of magnanimity, high-
mindedness, personal dignity, even the sense of honor, is derived
from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and

LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION 235

never could have grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only
worth, professedly recognized, is that of obedience.

I am as far as any one from pretending that these defects are
necessarily inherent in the Christian ethics in every manner in which
it can be conceived, or that the many requisites of a complete moral
doctrine which it does not contain do not admit of being reconciled
with it. Far less would I insinuate this of the doctrines and pre-
cepts of Christ himself. I believe that the sayings of Christ are
all that I can see any evidence of their having been intended to be ;
that they are irreconcilable with nothing which a comprehensive
morality requires ; that everything which is excellent in ethics may be
brought within them, with no greater violence to their language than
has been done to it by all who have attempted to deduce from them
any practical system of conduct whatever. But it is quite consistent
with this to believe that they contain, and were meant to contain,
only a part of the truth ; that many essential elements of the highest
morality are among the things which are not provided for, nor in-
tended to be provided for, in the recorded deliverances of the
Founder of Christianity, and which have been entirely thrown aside
in the system of ethics erected on the basis of those deliverances by
the Christian Church. And this being so, I think it a great error
to persist in attempting to find in the Christian doctrine that com'
plete rule for our guidance which its author intended it to sanction
and enforce, but only partially to provide. I believe, too, that this
narrow theory is becoming a grave practical evil, detracting greatly
from the moral training and instruction which so many well-
meaning persons are now at length exerting themselves to promote.
I much fear that by attempting to form the mind and feelings on
an exclusively religious type, and discarding those secular standards
(as for want of a better name they may be called) which hereto-
fore co-existed with and supplemented the Christian ethics, receiv-
ing some of its spirit, and infusing into it some of theirs, there will
result, and is even now resulting, a low, abject, servile type of
character, which, submit itself as it may to what it deems the Su-
preme Will, is incapable of rising to or sympathizing in the con-
ception of Supreme Goodness.

I believe that other ethics than any which can be evolved from
exclusively Christian sources must exist side by side with Christian
ethics to produce the moral regeneration of mankind, and that the
Christian system is no exception to the rule that in an imperfect

236 JOHN STUART MILL

state of the human mind the interests of truth require a diversity
of opinions. It is not necessary that in ceasing to ignore the moral
truths not contained in Christianity men should ignore any of those
which it does contain. Such prejudice, or oversight, when it occurs,
is altogether an evil; but it is one from which we cannot hope to
be always exempt, and must be regarded as the price paid for an
inestimable good. The exclusive pretension made by a part of the
truth to be the whole, must and ought to be protested against ; and
if a reactionary impulse should make the protestors unjust in their
turn, this one-sidedness, like the other, may be lamented but must
be tolerated. If Christians would teach infidels to be just to Chris-
tianity, they should themselves be just to infidelity. It can do truth
no service to blink the fact, known to all who have the most
ordinary acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion
of the noblest and most valuable moral teaching has been the work,
not only of men who did not know, but of men who knew and
rejected, the Christian faith.

I do not pretend that the most unlimited use of the freedom of
enunciating all possible opinions would put an end to the evils of
religious or philosophical sectarianism. Every truth which men
of narrow capacity are in earnest about is sure to be asserted, in-
culcated, and in many ways even acted on, as if no other truth
existed in the world, or at all events none that could limit or qualify
the first. I acknowledge that the tendency of all opinions to be-
come sectarian is not cured by the freest discussion, but is often
heightened and exacerbated thereby, the truth which ought to have
been, but was not, seen, being rejected all the more violently be-
cause proclaimed by persons regarded as opponents. But it is not
on the impassioned partisan, it is on the calmer and more disinter-
ested bystander that this collision of opinions works its salutary
effect. Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the
quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil; there is always
hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when they
attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices, and truth
itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated into
falsehood. And since there are few mental attributes more rare
than that judicial faculty which can sit in intelligent judgment be-
tween two sides of a question of which only one is represented by
an advocate before it, truth has no chance but in proportion as
every side of it, every opinion which embodies any fraction of the

LIBERTY OF THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION 237

truth, not only finds advocates, but is so advocated as to be
listened to.

We have now recognized the necessity to the mental well-being
of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of free-
dom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four
distinct grounds, which we will now briefly recapitulate.

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may,
for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to
assume our own infallibility.

Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and
very commonly does, contain a portion of truth ; and since the gen-
eral or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole
truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the re-
mainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the
whole truth, unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously
and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be
held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feel-
ing of its rational grounds. And not only this, but fourthly, the
meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or
enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and con-
duct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious
for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of
any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal ex-
perience.

THE RELIGION OF PUNCH1

FRANK AYDELOTTE

IT HAS for some years been evident to such persons as have had
the curiosity to inquire about the matter that there is in the minds
of many American college boys, and many college professors who
are their advisers, a vague, intangible prejudice against the Rhodes
Scholarships. This prejudice is not caused by the requirement of
Greek. It is not a mere jingoistic objection to having anything to
do with other than American universities. It is not due to the
popular superstition that England is "behind the times" and hence
as good as dead. Nor is it a result of the very wide-spread and very
dense popular ignorance of what the scheme stands for, what are the
conditions of obtaining an appointment, and what are the oppor-
tunities which an appointment opens.

The particular objection to which I allude is different from all
these, founded much deeper in our national feeling, and much less
frequently voiced in plain words. It is an objection based partly on
observation of the Americans who have returned from Oxford. It
represents a shrewd analysis of the effect which Oxford has had on
them : it rests on a fact, but a fact misunderstood.

Perhaps the clearest statement of this objection is to be found in
the verdict of a keen, emphatic, hard-driving, Middle-Western
educator on an ex-Rhodes Scholar who was a candidate for a posi-
tion in his educational institution : "He's a gentleman, he is a good
scholar, and not afraid of work, but he has lost his punch! Oxford
has tamed him!" There it is — roughly but adequately put! In
the opinion of a certain class of American educators the effect of
Oxford on American boys has been to tame them. They come back,
say these men, well trained, possibly more thoroughly grounded in
the fundamentals of their subjects than they would have been in
America. They are pleasant fellows socially, they have plenty of
energy, and are ready to do hard work, they are not Anglo-maniacs,

1 From The Oxford Stamp, Oxford University Press, 1917. Reprinted by
permission of the publishers.

238

THE RELIGION OF PUNCH 239

they have no intention of trying to make America over on the Eng-
lish pattern (our objectors would take perhaps more joy in them
and be less suspicious if they had), but they have lost that indefina-
ble American characteristic known as punch.

What is this quality which we so admire and for which we have
no other name than the slang word punch ? It is a quality which
can be known truly only by its works, and they are mighty and
innumerable. It is the ability to achieve the end without the means,
the whole without the parts. It makes railways without money,
churches without religion, literature without art, newspapers with-
out news, and educational institutions without educated men. It is
not, however, to be confused with bluff. It is not the quality which
wins poker games without cards. It is bluff raised to a higher
power; it survives "calling" — at least for a generation. The next
generation pays, as in the case of the site of the Panama Canal.

Admiration for punch is not confined to the Western Hemisphere.
All Europeans admire this quality (though they will not always
admit the fact) in our conduct of business. Englishmen who have
spent a good part of their lives in the colonies admire it more than
those who have stayed at home. And these are precisely the Eng-
lishmen with whom Americans are most comfortable. But the dis-
tinctive feature of American punch is that we do not confine its
range to the world of business and practical life, but are beginning
to extend it to the intellectual and spiritual world as well. A new
type of college professor, a new type of preacher and lecturer and
teacher is appearing among us — the man with punch.

Our fathers, so far as we of this generation can make out, did
not know this man. In their churches and universities he would
perhaps not have been tolerated ; there are some places where he is
not tolerated to-day. But he is extending his domains. The trend
of the times is in his favor. This is an age of experiment in educa-
tion. We no longer have the majority of our students taking a
"classical" course, the subject-matter of which is more or less stand-
ard and fixed. We have very few "courses" to-day; under the
elective system each student makes his own. In education at pres-
ent we are engaged in trying all things. It looks sometirr.es as if,

240 FRANK AYDELOTTE

like the lady in Piers Plowman, we had forgotten to turn over the
leaf and learn that we must hold fast to that which is good.

The great difference between the education of the present and
that of a few generations ago is not that we have substituted science
and the modern languages for the classics. Nor is it that we have
largely substituted bread-and-butter values for cultural. It is that
in place of a standard and regular discipline we have now the tacit
theory of the educational equality of all subjects and the anarchy
of the elective system. The result is that our work is tentative and
ineffective; our very degrees have lost their old meaning and ac-
quired no new; the word education is one of the vaguest in our
language. It does not follow that we are educationally on the
road to perdition. More likely the reverse. Experiment and tenta-
tive efforts are the price of progress, and it is only by this means
that a new educational discipline can be evolved, summing up the
lessons of a longer past and meeting the needs of a more complex
future.

But meanwhile, in the confusion, has come the opportunity of the
man with punch. Lured by the magnitude of our educational sys-
tem, he has invaded this field as he might have invaded South
America or the Orient in business, using the same "practical" meth-
ods, and insisting on the same immediate results. He has not been
admitted everywhere, but he has been admitted and applauded too
much. As a result of his efforts, our universities are organized for
"efficiency," and "scientific management" threatens to tell men how
to teach classes as well as how to lay bricks or load bars of pig iron
on a car. Our university presidents tend to become captains of
industry, and athletic sports tend to justify themselves not as sport,
but as advertising.

The man with punch has commercialized education and adver-
tised it, and in some cases well-nigh destroyed it. For the rough-
and-ready methods, the impatience, the liking for show, the hasty
contempt for thoroughness, the disregard of preparation and of fin-
ish, which are elements of a certain kind of machine-made success
in the practical sphere, are handicaps in the world of intellect. A
man with punch may be made into a philosopher, but in the process
he will lose part of his admiration for punch. For punch is not so
much the faculty of getting results as of getting the appearance of
them. It is at bottom the talent for publicity, expressing itself al-
ways in "grand-stand play." Flashiness, show, advertising — all

THE REI/ 1ION OF PUNCH 24

these qualities which it love'. — are attributes of charlatanism in tl
intellectual world. And if the intellectual life means anything ;
all, it means never-ending opposition to charlatanism. Charlatans
is not only inimical to it, it is a complete and total negation <jf i
"Sainte-Beuve relates/' says Arnold, "that Napoleon once ^ai
when somebody was spoken of in his presence as a charlau.r
'Charlatan as much as you please; but where is there not char!
tanism?' 'Yes,' answers Sainte-Beuve, 'in politics, in the art <
governing mankind, that is perhaps true. But in the ore jr <
thought, in art, the glory, the eternal honour is that charlatanis
shall find no entrance; herein lies the inviolableness of that nob
portion of man's being.' "

It may be that we shall find one day that charlatanism is not a
a good in practical life, that it is worth while to have our clothir
all wool as well as prominently advertised, our food pure as well ;
packed in fancy boxes. If we ever learn that, we shall probab
learn it when our universities learn it, when they acquire mo
respect for thoroughness, when they promise less and perform mor
when we teach our students the difference between really knowir
a thing and half-knowing it, when we distinguish between shodc
work in the intellectual sphere and sound.

That is the lesson which Oxford is teaching our American boy
They take various courses, the things they learn have various d
grees of "practical" value, or perhaps no practical value at all. Bi
when they return they are all firmly impressed with one thing: tl
necessity for thoroughness in intellectual work, the difference b
tween knowledge and smatterings. And the inevitable effect of th
is to sober them, to make them less disposed to pretend to kno
what they do not know, to make them settle down rather quiet
and seriously to the work which they wish to do (or can find to dc
at home.

It must be repeated that the writer is under no delusion that e:
Rhodes Scholars are the only Americans who do this. Our o\v
universities have many hard-working, sound scholars and clear thin!
ers — men who spend their time in work and not in advertising. Bi
too often they are not the men with the widest influence, or tl
largest salaries, or the greatest reputations. Among the otuden

242 FRANK AYDELOTTE

whom they send out are many more of the same sort. Only they
are not always the most loudly heralded of our graduates. And
with the Rhodes Scholars there is likely to be one curious difference.
Appointments to Oxford are made entirely by American committees.
The qualifying examination (notwithstanding the many failures to
pass it) is very elementary, testifying to a certain very small ac-
quaintance with Latin and Greek, arithmetic, and algebra. Any
man who has had a little classics can pass it, and a man with punch
can pass it with almost no classics at all. Now, the man with punch
is just the man who will not fear to attempt it, and he is also the
man whom the committee of selection in his native state is likely to
admire and to appoint to the scholarship. Nor is there anything to
lament in this fact; punch is not so much a vice as a dangerous
virtue; our young American may be the better for it, though per-
haps not the more comfortable in Oxford at first. In Oxford he
meets something new in his experience, something which he learns
slowly to understand, and not merely to understand but to love.
He is met by an attitude at once hospitable and critical — a democ-
racy where men are known intimately and personally by one an-
other and by their teachers, where ideas count as ideas, and character
as character, where good intentions are not allowed to pass for
knowledge, nor a ready memory for power of thought. There are
shams in Oxford, it is true, but the spirit of the place is against
them. Honesty and thoroughness are the most important charac-
teristics of its intellectual life. The beauty of Oxford is built upon
them, as all real beauty is. There are gigantic stupidities in Ox-
ford, and in the men who rule Oxford from without, but there is
also that in the spirit of the place which will dissolve them and
conquer them and take away from them their power. Reforms in
Oxford are slow, but they are always coming, and when they come
they are not stupid reforms, sweeping away good and evil together
to set up new good and evil in their place. Oxford has the patience
to gather up the best of her traditions into her new self, year by
year and century by century, as she carefully preserves the best of
her old buildings in her unceasing reconstructions.

Into this atmosphere and into this life comes our young American
with his punch. He is not a bad man for Oxford on the whole ; as
I have said, he may be the better for his punch, and he will be better
still when he returns from Oxford with his faith in punch shaken
and a belief in quiet thoroughness in its place. But in his case the

THE RELIGION OF PUNCH 243

change is very evident, and our emphatic Middle- Western educator,
instead of seeing the improvement, thinks his young protege has
been ruined by the experience.

Other Americans will not find him ruined, but the reverse.
They will find him an ally in the battle which thoroughness is
waging and must wage against charlatanism in our education and
in our national life. The forces of thoroughness would have won
the battle in this country without the aid of the Rhodes Scholar-
ships. The evidence of their progress can be read more clearly
every year. Our popular belief in method at the expense of knowl-
edge, our worship of form at the expense of substance, our faith in
administrative machinery at the expense of thought — all these ele-
ments of our intellectual life are doomed by forces that we have the
power to generate and are generating ourselves. But in this battle,
Oxford, by means of the Rhodes Scholarships, is furnishing a little
band of recruits whose influence, never urged by organization or
machinery, but quietly by individual thought and effort, will be felt
more and more as the years go on, against the operation in our intel-
lectual life of the American ideal of punch.

THE INQUIRING MIND1
ZECHARIAH CHAFEE, JR.

KNOWLEDGE is not a series of propositions to be absorbed, but
a series of problems to be solved. Or rather I should say, to be
partly solved, for all the answers are incomplete and tentative.
This view of life is in no way original, but it is frequently ignored.
From the fact that reading, writing, and arithmetic are the bases
of education and were long the only education for most persons,
we have unfortunately been led to regard them as typical of all
education. We feel that knowledge is something that has been
settled by others and given us to learn, just as we learned the
multiplication table.

Nevertheless, outside the field of such established facts as the
three R's there lies a much vaster area, and with it citizens must
acquaint themselves if democratic government is to manage our
modern industrial civilization successfully. Knowledge of this
vaster area cannot be obtained merely from what others tell us;
it must come from what we find out ourselves by asking and an-
swering questions. Therefore, the true type of education is not
the certainty of the multiplication table, but the incomplete ap-
proximation of the square root of two, or better yet, the undis-
coverable ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a
circle. (How strange that such a common fact should be so com-
plex!) Indeed, we may eventually come to take as our typical
fact the square root of minus one, which, although we call it an
imaginary quantity, forms a necessary element of many of the elec-
trical calculations that make possible the ordinary operations of
our daily lives. In school geometries the propositions are printed
in large type and the originals are tucked away in the back in

1From The Inquiring Mind, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1928. Re-
printed by permission of the author and the publishers.

244

THE INQUIRING MIND 245

small print. Some day we shall realize that the propositions are
far less important than the originals.

The fruitfulness of this method of constant inquiry is demon-
strated by the experience of Darwin. His voyage around the world
brought him into contact with many interesting facts which he
recorded faithfully, but he was not content to rest with the acquisi-
tion of facts. He began to ask himself a question that he could
not answer. Soon after his return to England he opened his note-
book on the origin of species, in which he preserved all the in-
formation he could find for the sake of answering that one ques-
tion. His method of using books he learned from Buckle, who
used to jot down on the fly-leaf of every book he read references
to passages in it which he thought might prove serviceable to him.
"How do you know," Darwin asked, "which passages to select?*1
Buckle replied that he did not know, that a sort of instinct guided
him. When the thinker has formulated his problem, the facts
he meets are bound to shape themselves with regard to it, just
as a magnet throws all the iron filings brought near it into one
pattern.

Darwin asked himself one question, and spent the rest of his
life answering it. Pasteur propounded a succession of riddles, and
his earlier problems offered little prospect that their solution would
aid mankind. What relation to human happiness was there in his
first riddle, the difference in the deflection of light through the
crystals formed by tartaric and paratartaric acids, a difference which
apparently concerns nobody? From this he passed to the even
more useless problem of the possibility of spontaneous generation.
Yet this led to the question of fermentation, and from the diseases
of beverages he turned to explain those of animals and men. The
possession of theoretical knowledge, indeed, seems almost sure to
create opportunities for its practical use.

This progress from the theoretical to the practical was reversed
in the riddles that beset Kepler, the forerunner of Newton. Find-
ing himself financially prosperous, he decided to place some well-
filled casks in his cellar. They must be made of wood, and wood
was expensive. Hence a problem, quite independent of the pleasures
of theory, but all-important to the economical head of a house-

246 ZECHARIAH CHAFEE, JR.

hold: how to get the greatest cubical content of wine into the
minimum amount of wood. Should the cask be apple-shaped,
pear-shaped, or lemon-shaped? We can imagine him out in his
orchard laying boards in various positions on temporary frames
and then generalizing his results in mathematical formulae. They
developed into his book on the measurement of casks, and became
the foundation of infinitesimal calculus, the basis of all our pure
and applied science today.

Einstein at five years of age was, as he lay in his cot, given a
compass by his father. The remembrance of the swinging needle
remained with him, suggesting invisible forces, which later he was
to explore in electromagnetic waves and gravitation. At twenty-
two, struggling with poverty as a private tutor, a friend obtained
for him a position as examiner of patents in the Swiss Patent Of-
fice. Instead of repining at this job as five years' enslavement,
he made his experience in varied fields of invention interlock so
widely with the solution of theoretical problems that before he
left he published in quick succession the first series of his disserta-
tions on the theory of relativity. To the inquiring mind, all ex-
perience is gathered into the solution of overmastering problems.

Nor need my illustrations be limited to the non-human sciences.
Frederick William Maitland, the English legal historian, became
interested in a German treatise on the political theories of the
Middle Ages. What could be more alien to the twentieth century
than medieval doctrines of the relation between the empire, the
church, and the guilds? Yet Maitland's attitude was, "Today
we study the day before yesterday, in order that yesterday may
not paralyze today, and today may not paralyze tomorrow." He
began to inquire into the nature of groups of human beings, in-
corporated and unincorporated. Is such a group merely an aggrega-
tion of human beings, or is it in itself a person ? Facts accumulated
in his mind, he cross-examined documents like a string of hostile
witnesses, he talked about his problem, he wrote to America, to
men he had never seen, for data about our corporations. And
somehow the problem of the Middle Ages became the problem of
the great unincorporated groups of today: the Roman Catholic
Church; the trade unions — Chief Justice Taft's decision in the
Coronado case on the possibility of suing the United Mine Workers
of America is just this question; the New Jersey corporation doing
business in states where it owes none of its legal existence to the

THE INQUIRING MIND 247

local legislature; the nature of that most powerful of groups, the
state itself. Is the state only a sort of glorified public service com-
pany, as Maitland's followers would have it, that sells police pro-
tection and schooling to its citizens as a trolley company sells rides ?
Or is it, as the other side contends, a sort of ethical culture society to
lead us onward and upward toward the light ? Whichever of these
two views we take of the state, whether it is an organization for
specific business services to the community or an inspirer of souls,
why does it haggle over the settlement of its contracts, impose double
taxation, deny all responsibility when its mail-trucks run over us,
refuse to be sued in its own courts, and in general fall far below
the standards of fair dealing which it imposes upon every taxicab
driver or keeper of a restaurant?

The old system of water-tight compartments into which
knowledge was supposed to be divided, and each of which had to
be entered separately, is breaking down. The late Jacques Loeb,
whose vital personality was hard to explain by his own mechanistic
doctrines, once remarked: "People ask me, 'Why are you studying
mathematics? Why are you learning physics? Aren't you a
physiologist?' And I say, 'I don't know.' Then, 'Aren't you a
chemist?' or 'Aren't you a biologist?' I don't understand these
questions. I am preoccupied with problems." Problems — the ma-
terial for solving them must be drawn from every available source!
No place, then, for jealousy between workers in sharply demar-
cated fields. As H. G. Wells says in Joan and Peter, "All good
work is one."

ill

It will probably be objected that all this is very well for the
leaders of thought, but that few of us can hope to be ranked among
them. What are the inquiries of the rest of us worth? On the
contrary, I insist that this way of looking at life as a series of ques-
tions and answers is not for originators and specialists alone, but
for every man and woman whose vision is not confined to the acqui-
sition of a bare subsistence. Beyond the facts that immediately
affect us are the problems of the world in which we find ourselves
with no choice of our own, the solutions of which are bound to
mold us in the end, however remote such problems seem. It has
become a commonplace to remark, and yet it cannot be said too

248 ZECHARIAH CHAFEE, JR.

often or it will be forgotten, that a shot in Bosnia brought over a
hundred thousand homes in this country into mourning. Financial
disorganization in Central Europe means foreclosed mortgages in
the Dakotas. The time has long since passed when Dr. Johnson
could say that he would not give half a guinea to live under one
form of government rather than another, because it was of no
moment to the happiness of the individual. The government of
these days can decide what we shall think or what we shall drink,
allow sugar to go up and the dollar to go down, tax us out of
the income we meant to devote to travel or the education of our
children, force our boys — by imperceptible extensions of the present
training-camps — to spend one or two of the best years of their
lives in barracks learning the art of killing, then send them out to
be shot by some nation we happen to dislike at the moment, and
afterward dictate school-books to demonstrate how profitably they
died.

Most of us are too busy contending with the effects of these
obscure forces to probe long into their causes, but the undergradu-
ates in our colleges have abundant leisure for acquiring an under-
standing of the obstacles to progress, and if they acquire it, may
do much to remove those obstacles in after life. Instead, they
allow the leisure available for such inquiries to be filched from
them by those who want them to use it up in the drudgery of man-
agerships and committee meetings — just the sort of tasks on which
they will have to spend all their lives after they leave the campus.

Why is it that the average undergraduate allows himself to be
lured into thus anticipating the Gradgrind monotony of his middle
life and away from the pursuit of ideas, for which he now has
opportunities that will never return? In large measure because
such college activities seem a part of real life, while the reading and
thinking that he is asked to do appear unrelated to his own experi-
ence and expectations. Once this supposed want of relationship is
shown to be a falsity, once the solution of a given problem is proved
to be as intimate an influence upon his life as the choice of a room-
mate, will not the natural human thirst for ideas assert itself?
Learning, therefore, must be related to individual experience, but
that experience may reach beyond the maintenance of bodily exist-
ence to the enjoyment of distant landscapes, of children at play,
music, the converse of friends, the mind voyaging through strange
seas of thought alone.

THE INQUIRING MIND 249

A few illustrations will make clearer what I mean by the rela-
tionship between theory and our own experience, and the way in
which the investigation of a problem draws in facts from several
departments of knowledge.

The front page of every daily newspaper was occupied in 1924
by the senatorial committees investigating the oil scandal and the
Department of Justice. It is the fashion in many quarters to
regard such investigations as annoying interruptions to legislation —
an attitude somewhat inconsistent with the usual sigh of relief
when Congress adjourns without inflicting any more legislation
upon us. But this attitude of hostility toward the committees was
vigorously combated by an editorial in a newspaper that can hardly
be called radical — the Boston Transcript. It insisted that the
investigative function of a legislature is just as important as its law-
making function. College undergraduates might well turn from
their study of political science as an abstraction, and ascertain the
limits of this investigative function. On what occasions did the
British Parliament call Cabinet ministers to account? Is the pun-
ishment of impeachment a satisfactory remedy for official miscon-
duct? What was the process in Parliament by which the removal
of an official by impeachment became obsolete as too cumbersome,
and was succeeded by the custom that he should resign on receiving
a vote of want of confidence? What would happen to a British
minister if he did not resign? Did the vote of the Senate calling
for Denby's resignation mark the beginning of a similar process in
this country? Is the separation of the executive from the legisla-
ture an essential incident of democracy, as Mr. Coolidge told the
Filipinos? If so, why is it that England and France are not
democracies ?

Under Washington and under Taft, proposals were nearly
adopted for Cabinet officials to appear on the floor of Congress and
answer questions. Should this be done? Would it be superior to
investigating them long after they have acted? Does the great
increase of federal powers in the last few years necessitate the cre-
ation of more definite channels through which the representatives
of the people may get at the conduct of officials who have acquired

250 ZECHARIAH CHAFEE, JR.

so much control over our daily lives? In such inquiries, history
and political science would interlock. . . .

An inquirer interested in economics will find plenty of material
at hand in the income tax. Loud complaints have been made that
most of this tax has been paid by the citizens of a few states — New
York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts — whose representation in
Congress is small compared with that of the citizens of states
wherein little or no income taxes are paid. The basis of this
resentment is plain. Taxes ought not to be imposed by those who
do not pay them, and, it is natural to assume that the man who
gets the tax bill and sends in his check to the collector is the man
who pays the tax. But now we find that the persons who are
loudest in making this complaint have been the most eager advocates
of the Mellon plan for the reduction of high surtaxes, on the
ground that the man who gets the bill for the surtax does not
really pay it at all, but collects it from his poor customers! In
advocating its abolition, he is consequently acting for their advan-
tage and from entirely disinterested motives!

Now, this may be true ; if so, let the investigating undergraduate
prove it. He could show, for instance, how, when the author of
a very successful two-dollar novel, such as Main Street, was obliged
to pay a big surtax, he shifted it to the reading public by increasing
the price of his novel, and selling it for more than another two-
dollar novel that had fallen stillborn from the press. Or he might
find even more telling examples for Mr. Mellon's argument. But
how can it be that the 50 per cent surtax is not paid by the man
who pays it, when the total income taxes levied in New York,
Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts are paid entirely by citizens of
those three states ? If the poor pay the surtax, why don't they pay all
income taxes, and why do not the customers in the West and
South, who buy from those three States, pay a very large share of
the taxes imposed there? Either theory may be right, or neither,
but not both. An inquiry will show which is. A widely diffused
knowledge of the principles of that very difficult subject, the shift-
ing and incidence of taxation, would make it possible for the
American people to criticize Mr. Mellon's next proposal with
much greater discrimination.

I should like to go on with other problems: in history, whether
the American Revolution was really, as some recent writers inti-
mate, a combination of debtors and smugglers against the pros-

THE INQUIRING MIND 251

perous and law-abiding, and if so, how the participation of Franklin
and Washington is to be explained; in literature, how much mis-
fortune is necessary to stimulate an author to create without going
so far as to kill him off; in classical studies, how far the conditions
which brought about the flowering of Athenian culture are attain-
able in a modern factory city. But I hope that enough has been
said to indicate the fruitfulness of the method of the inquiring
mind.

Nor are such problems as these for undergraduates alone. The
inquiring mind is not to be thrown aside with cap and gown, rolled
up in a diploma with a ribbon of the appropriate color around it.
Oxford was once said to be a place of such great learning because
so much was brought there and so little taken away. The value
of a man's education cannot be determined until we see what books
he is reading ten years after he has been graduated. Dallas Lore
Sharp has said that the student passing through college is like the
wind blowing through the orchard; it carries away some of the
fragrance and none of the fruit. Unless the college man has
enrolled in a fifty-year course, in a continuing education, his four-
year course has failed of its purpose. And if my view of the
nature of education be sound, this means that he must continue to
preoccupy himself all his life with problems. . . .

As one leaves youth behind, the problem of growing old well
acquires unexpected importance. Our anticipations become trans-
formed into responsibilities. There is less to look forward to, and
more to lose by changes. Extensive experience of human mean-
ness is disheartening. For many of us, our college stands out as
one of the few spots of idealism in our lives, and we resent the
slightest possibility of alteration there, lest that, too, be lost to us.
Such a motive may account for the almost savage intensity with
which alumni have at times opposed novel tendencies in teaching.
But we cannot expect to live over our own lives in those of others,
either our own children or the children of our contemporaries.
All we can do is to assure to them the same opportunities which

252 ZECHARIAH CHAFEE, JR.

we possessed to live our lives, and enjoy the spectacle of the use
they make of their freedom for continuous development. Mean-
while we must keep our ideas like our wardrobes constantly
renewed, opening new lines of inquiry, so that to the last each day
brings us new pleasures and new work.

There is much uneasiness abroad among alumni today over radi-
cal teachers. I believe that this springs largely from the view
which I opposed at the opening of this article, that the multiplication
table is the type of knowledge, and that a teacher is assumed to
hand out chunks of doctrine to his students which they accept
unquestioningly. Elderly gentlemen easily exaggerate the immatur-
ity of the undergraduate. President Cutten of Colgate stated in an
address that one had to "talk to the little ones in words of one
syllable." An effective statement of this multiplication-table view
may be quoted from President Elliott, president of railroads, not of
a university:

In giving young people their physical nourishment we do not
spread before them every kind of food and say, "Eat what you
like whether it agrees with you or not.'* We know that the
physical machine can absorb only a certain amount and that all
else is waste and trash, with the result that bodies are poisoned
and weakened. In giving them mental nourishment, why lay
before young and impressionable men and women un-American
doctrines and ideas that take mental time and energy from
the study and consideration of the great fundamental and
. eternal truths, and fill the mind with unprofitable mental trash?
. . . After they get into the real world it takes them consider-
able time to become convinced that certain laws controlling
social and material affairs are as unchangeable as the law of
gravitation, and some never learn it.

Without pausing to ask what these unchangeable laws are, or to
recall that even the law of gravitation is not so firmly settled as it
was before Einstein, I protest that this food analogy misses the duty
of a teacher, and of every man of inquiring mind, who inevitably
(whether paid to do so or not) feels it one of his highest tasks to
stimulate the same sort of mind in those younger thaa himself,
whether his students, his children, or his friends. It is the busi-
ness of such a man, not to hand out rigid bodies of doctrine,
whether Socialism, Home Market Club protectionism, or any-
thing else, but to train those to whom he speaks to think for them-

THE INQUIRING MIND 253

selves. He is not the gentleman behind the quick-lunch counter
that Mr. Elliott's criticism suggests. He is more like the leader
of a group of miners going into partially opened country. He has
been there before; he knows more than they do about the technique
of exploration and detecting the metal they seek, but he cannot give
them definite directions which will enable them to go to this or that
spot and strike it rich. He can only tell them what he knows of
the lay of the land and the proper methods of search, leaving it to
them to explore and map out for themselves regions which he has
never visited or rivers whose course he has erroneously conceived.

DEFINITION OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION1
THOMAS H. HUXLEY

SUPPOSE it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of
every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning
or losing a game at chess. Don't you think that we should all
consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and
the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen
eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check? Do
you not think that we should look with a disapprobation amount-
ing to scorn upon the father who allowed his son, or the state
which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a pawn
from a knight?

Yet, it is a very plain and elementary truth that the life, the
fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less,
of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing
something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and com-
plicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold
ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players
in a game of his or her own. The chess-board is the world, the
pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game
are what we call the laws of nature. The player on the other side
is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just,
and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never over-
looks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.
To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that
sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows de-
light in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated — without
haste, but without remorse.

My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture in
which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess with man for
his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm,
strong angel who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather
lose than win — and I should accept it as an image of human life.

1 From the lecture A Liberal Education and Where to Find It, 1868.

254

DEFINITION OF LIBERAL EDUCATION 255

Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this
mighty game. In other words, education is the instruction of the
intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not
merely things and their forces, but men and their ways; and the
fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and
loving desire to move in harmony with those laws. For me, edu-
cation means neither more nor less than this. Anything which pro-
fesses to call itself education must be tried by this standard, and if
it fails to stand the test, I will not call it education, whatever may
be the force of authority or of numbers upon the other side.

It is important to remember that, in strictness, there is no such
thing as an uneducated man. Take an extreme case. Suppose
that an adult man, in the full vigour of his faculties, could be sud-
denly placed in the world, as Adam is said to have been, and then
left to do as he best might. How long would he be left unedu-
cated? Not five minutes. Nature would begin to teach him,
through the eye, the ear, the touch, the properties of objects. Pain
and pleasure would be at his elbow telling him to do this and avoid
that; and by slow degrees the man would receive an education,
which, if narrow, would be thorough, real and adequate to his
circumstances, though there would be no extras and very few ac-
complishments.

And if to this solitary man entered a second Adam, or, better
still, an Eve, a new and greater world, that of social and moral
phenomena, would be revealed. Joys and woes, compared with
which all others might seem but faint shadows, would spring from
the new relations. Happiness and sorrow would take the place of
the coarser monitors, pleasure and pain; but conduct would still
be shaped by the observation of the natural consequences of actions ;
or, in other words, by the laws or the nature of man.

To every one of us the world was once as fresh and new as to
Adam. And then, long before we were susceptible of any other
modes of instruction, nature took us in hand, and every minute
of waking life brought its educational influence, shaping our ac-
tions into rough accordance with Nature's laws, so that we might
not be ended untimely by too gross disobedience. Nor should I
speak of this process of education as past for anyone, be he as
old as he may. For every man, the world is as fresh as it was
at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has
the eyes to see them. And Nature is still continuing her patient

256 THOMAS H. HUXLEY

education of us in that great university, the universe, of which
we are all members — Nature having no Test-Acts.

Those who take honours in Nature's university, who learn the
laws which govern men and things and obey them, are the really
great and successful men in this world. The great mass of man-
kind are the "Poll," who pick up just enough to get through with-
out much discredit. Those who won't learn at all are "plucked" ;
and then you can't come up again. Nature's "pluck" means ex-
termination.

Thus the question of compulsory education is settled so far as
Nature is concerned. Her bill on that question was framed and
passed long ago. But, like all compulsory legislation, that of
Nature is harsh and wasteful in its operation. Ignorance is visited
as sharply as wilful disobedience — incapacity meets with the same
punishment as crime. Nature's discipline is not even a word and
a blow, and the blow first; but the blow without the word. It
is left to you to find out why your ears are boxed.

The object of what we commonly call education — that educa-
tion in which man intervenes and which I shall distinguish as arti-
ficial education — is to make good these defects in Nature's methods;
to prepare the child to receive Nature's education, neither incap-
ably nor ignorantly, nor with wilful disobedience; and to under-
stand the preliminary symptoms of her displeasure, without wait-
ing for the box on the ear. In short, all artificial education ought
to be an anticipation of natural education. And a liberal educa-
tion is an artificial education which has not only prepared a man
to escape the great evils of disobedience to natural laws, but has
trained him to appreciate and to seize upon the rewards which
Nature scatters with as free a hand as her penalties.

That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been
so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will,
and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism,
it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with
all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready,
like a steam-engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin
the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose
mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental
truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no
stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are
trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender

DEFINITION OF LIBERAL EDUCATION 257

conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature
or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.

Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal educa-
tion; for he is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony with
Nature. He will make the best of her, and she of him. They
will get on together rarely; she as his ever beneficent mother; he
as her mouthpiece, her conscious self, her minister and interpreter.

KNOWLEDGE VIEWED IN RELATION
TO LEARNING1

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

IT WERE well if the English, like the Greek language, possessed
some definite word to express, simply and generally, intellectual
proficiency or perfection, such as "health," as used with reference
to the animal frame, and "virtue," with reference to our moral
nature. I am not able to find such a term; — talent, ability, genius,
belong distinctly to the raw material, which is the subject-matter,
not to that excellence which is the result of exercise and training.
When we turn, indeed, to the particular kinds of intellectual per-
fection, words are forthcoming for our purpose, as, for instance,
judgment, taste, and skill; yet even these belong, for the most part,
to powers or habits bearing upon practice or upon art, and not
to any perfect condition of the intellect, considered in itself. Wis-
dom, again, is certainly a more comprehensive word than any other,
but it has a direct relation to conduct, and to human life. Knowl-
edge, indeed, and Science express purely intellectual ideas, but
still not a state or quality of the intellect; for knowledge, in its
ordinary sense, is but one of its circumstances, denoting a possession
or a habit; and science has been appropriated to the subject-matter
of the intellect, instead of belonging in English, as it ought to do,
to the intellect itself. The consequence is that, on an occasion
like this, many words are necessary, in order, first, to bring out
and convey what surely is no difficult idea in itself, — that of the
cultivation of the intellect as an end ; next, in order to recommend
what surely is no unreasonable object; and lastly, to describe and
make the mind realize the particular perfection in which that
object consists. Everyone knows practically what are the con-
stituents of health or of virtue; and everyone recognizes health
and virtue as ends to be pursued; it is otherwise with intellectual
excellence, and this must be my excuse, if I seem to anyone to be
bestowing a good deal of labor on a preliminary matter.

In default of a recognized term, I have called the perfection or

1 Discourse VI of The Idea of a University (1852).

25*

KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 259

virtue of the intellect by the name of philosophy, philosophical
knowledge, enlargement of mind, or illumination ; terms which are
not uncommonly given to it by writers of this day: but, whatever
name we bestow on it, it is, I believe, as a matter of history, the
business of a University to make this intellectual culture its direct
scope, or to employ itself in the education of the intellect, — just
as the work of a Hospital lies in healing the sick or wounded,
of a Riding or Fencing School, or of a Gymnasium, in exercising
the limbs, of an Almshouse, in aiding and solacing the old, of an
Orphanage, in protecting innocence, of a Penitentiary, in restoring
the guilty. I say, a University, taken in its bare idea, and before
we view it as an instrument of the Church, has this object and
this mission; it contemplates neither moral impression nor mechani-
cal production ; it professes to exercise the mind neither in art nor
in duty; its function is intellectual culture; here it may leave its
scholars, and it has done its work when it has done as much as
this. It educates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach
out towards truth, and to grasp it.

This, I said in my foregoing Discourse, was the object of a
University, viewed in itself, and apart from the Catholic Church,
or from the State, or from any other power which may use it ; and
I illustrated this in various ways. I said that the intellect must
have an excellence of its own, for there was nothing which had
not its specific good; that the word "educate" would not be used
of intellectual culture, as it is used, had not the intellect had an
end of its own; that, had it not such an end, there would be no
meaning in calling certain intellectual exercises "liberal," in con-
trast with "useful," as is commonly done; that the very notion of
a philosophical temper implied it, for it threw us back upon re-
search and system as ends in themselves, distinct from effects and
works of any kind; that a philosophical scheme of knowledge, or
system of sciences, could not, from the nature of the case, issue in
any one definite art or pursuit, as its end; and that, on the other
hand, the discovery and contemplation of truth, to which research
and systematizing led, were surely sufficient ends, though nothing
beyond them were adde.d, and that they had ever been accounted
sufficient by mankind.

260 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

Here then I take up the subject; and, having determined that
the cultivation of the intellect is an end distinct and sufficient in
itself, and that, so far as words go it is an enlargement or illumina-
tion, I proceed to inquire what this mental breadth, or power, or
light, or philosophy consists in. A Hospital heals a broken limb
or cures a fever: what does an Institution effect, which professes
the health, not of the body, not of the soul, but of the intellect?
What is this good, which in former times, as well as our own, has
been found worth the notice, the appropriation, of the Catholic
Church?

I have then to investigate, in the Discourses which follow, those
qualities and characteristics of the intellect in which its cultivation
issues or rather consists; and, with a view of assisting myself in
this undertaking, I shall recur to certain questions which have
already been touched upon. These questions are three: viz., the
relation of intellectual culture, first, to mere knowledge; secondly,
to professional knowledge ; and thirdly, to religious knowledge. In
other words, are acquirements and attainments the scope of a Uni-
versity Education? or expertness in particular arts and pursuits^
or moral and religious proficiency ? or something besides these three ?
These questions I shall examine in succession, with the purpose I
have mentioned; and I hope to be excused, if, in this anxious
undertaking, I am led to repeat what, either in these Discourses
or elsewhere, I have already put upon paper. And first, of Mere
Knowledge, or Learning, and its connection with intellectual il-
lumination or Philosophy.

I suppose, the primdrfacie view which the public at large would
take of a University, considering it as a place of Education, is
nothing more or less than a place for acquiring a great deal of
knowledge on a great many subjects. Memory is one of the first
developed of the mental faculties; a boy's business when he goes
to school is to learn, that is, to store up things in his memory. For
some years his intellect is little more than an instrument for taking
in facts, or a receptacle for storing them; he welcomes them as
fast as they come to him; he lives on what is without; he has his
eyes ever about him; he has a lively susceptibility of impressions;
he imbibes information of every kind ; and little does he make his

KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 261

own in a true sense of the word, living rather upon his neighbors
all around him. He has opinions, religious, political, and literary,
and, for a boy, is very positive in them and sure about them ; but
he gets them from his schoolfellows, or his masters, or his parents,
as the case may be. Such as he is in his other relations, such also
is he in his school exercises; his mind is observant, sharp, ready,
retentive; he is almost passive in the acquisition of knowledge. I
say this in no disparagement of the idea of a clever boy. Geog-
raphy, chronology, history, language, natural history, he heaps up
the matter of these studies as treasures for a future day. It is the
seven years of plenty with him: he gathers in by handfuls, like the
Egyptians, without counting; and though, as time goes on, there
is exercise for his argumentative powers in the Elements of Mathe-
matics, and for his taste in the Poets and Orators, still, while at
school, or at least, till quite the last years of his time, he acquires,
and little more; and when he is leaving for the University, he is
mainly the creature of foreign influences and circumstances, and
made up of accidents, homogeneous or not, as the case may be.
Moreover, the moral habits, which are a boy's praise, encourage
and assist this result; that is, diligence, assiduity, regularity, dis-
patch, persevering application; for these are the direct conditions
of acquisition, and naturally lead to it. Acquirements, again, are
emphatically producible, and at a moment; they are a something to
show, both for master and scholar; an audience, even though
ignorant themselves of the subjects of an examination, can com-
prehend when questions are answered and when they are not.
Here again is a reason why mental culture is in the minds of men
identified with the acquisition of knowledge.

The same notion possesses the public mind, when it passes on
from the thought of a school to that of a University: and with the
best of reasons so far as this, that there is no true culture without
acquirements, and that philosophy presupposes knowledge. It re-
quires a great deal of reading, or a wide range of information, to
warrant us in putting forth our opinions on any serious subject;
and without such learning the most original mind may be able
indeed to dazzle, to amuse, to refute, to perplex, but not to come
to any useful result or any trustworthy conclusion. There are
indeed persons who profess a different view of the matter, and even
act upon it. Every now and then you will find a person of Vigorous

262 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

or fertile mind, who relies upon his own resources, despises all
former authors, and gives the world, with the utmost fearlessness,
his views upon religion, or history, or any other popular subject.
And his works may sell for a while; he may get a name in his day;
but this will be all. His readers are sure to find on the long run
that his doctrines are mere theories, and not the expression of facts,
that they are chaff instead of bread, and then his popularity drops
as suddenly as it rose.

Knowledge then is the indispensable condition of expansion of
mind, and the instrument of attaining to it ; this cannot be denied,
it is ever to be insisted on ; I begin with it as a first principle ; how-
ever, the very truth of it carries men too far, and confirms to them
the notion that it is the whole of the matter. A narrow mind is
thought to be that which contains little knowledge ; and an enlarged
mind, that which holds a great deal; and what seems to put the
matter beyond dispute is, the fact of the great number of studies
which are pursued in a University, by its very profession. Lectures
are given on every kind of subject; examinations are held; prizes
awarded. There are moral, metaphysical, physical Professors ; Pro-
fessors of languages, of history, of mathematics, of experimental
science. Lists of questions are published, wonderful for their range
and depth, variety and difficulty; treatises are written, which carry
upon their very face the evidence of extensive reading or multi-
farious information ; what then is wanting for mental culture to a
person of large reading and scientific attainments? what is grasp of
mind but acquirement? where shall philosophical repose be found,
but in the consciousness and enjoyment of large intellectual pos-
sessions ?

And yet this notion is, I conceive, a mistake, and my present
business is to show that it is one, and that the end of a Liberal
Education is not mere knowledge, or knowledge considered in its
matter; and I shall best attain my object, by actually setting down
some cases, which will be generally granted to be instances of the
process of enlightenment or enlargement of mind, and others which
are not, and thus, by the comparison, you will be able to judge for
yourselves, Gentlemen, whether Knowledge, that is, acquirement,
is after all the real principle of the enlargement, or whether that
principle is not rather something beyond it.

KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 263

For instance,1 let a person, whose experience has hitherto been
confined to the more calm and unpretending scenery of these islands,
whether here or in England, go for the first time into parts where
physical nature puts on her wilder and more awful forms, whether
at home or abroad, as into mountainous districts; or let one, who
has ever lived in a quiet village, go for the first time to a great
metropolis, — then I suppose he will have a sensation which perhaps
he never had before. He has a feeling not in addition or increase
of former feelings, but of something different in its nature. He
will perhaps be borne forward, and find for a time that he has lost
his bearings. He has made a certain progress, and he has a con-
sciousness of mental enlargement ; he does not stand where he did,
he has a new center, and a range of thoughts to which he was before
a stranger.

Again, the view of the heavens which the telescope opens upon
us, if allowed to fill and possess the mind, may almost whirl it
round and make it dizzy. It brings in a flood of ideas, and is rightly
called an intellectual enlargement, whatever is meant by the term.

And so again, the sight of beasts of prey and other foreign ani-
mals, their strangeness, the originality (if I may use the term) of
their forms and gestures and habits and their variety and independ-
ence of each other, throw us out of ourselves into another creation,
and as if under another Creator, if I may so express the temptation
which may come on the mind. We seem to have new faculties,
or a new exercise for our faculties, by this addition to our knowl-
edge ; like a prisoner, who, having been accustomed to wear manacles
or fetters, suddenly finds his arms and legs free.

Hence Physical Science generally, in all its departments, as
bringing before us the exuberant riches and resources, yet the or-
derly course, of the Universe, elevates and excites the student, and
at first, I may say, almost takes away his breath, while in time it
exercises a tranquilizing influence upon him.

Again, the study of history is said to enlarge and enlighten the
mind, and why? because, as I conceive, it gives it a power of judg-

xThe pages which follow are taken almost verbatim from the author's
i4th (Oxford) University Sermon, which, at the time of writing this Dis-
course, he did not expect ever to reprint. [Newman.]

264 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

ing of passing events, and of all events, and a conscious superiority
over them, which before it did not possess.

And in like manner, what is called seeing the world, entering
into active life, going into society, traveling, gaining acquaintance
with the various classes of the community, coming into contact with
the principles and modes of thought of various parties, interests,
and races, their views, aims, habits and manners, their religious
creeds and forms of worship, — gaining experience how various yet
how alike men are, how low-minded, how bad, how opposed, yet
how confident in their opinions; all this exerts a perceptible influ-
ence upon the mind, which it is impossible to mistake, be it good or
be it bad, and is popularly called its enlargement.

And then again, the first time the mind comes across the argu-
ments and speculations of unbelievers, and feels what a novel light
they cast upon what he has hitherto accounted sacred; and still
more, if it gives in to them and embraces them, and throws off as
so much prejudice what it has hitherto held, and, as if waking
from a dream, begins to realize to its imagination that there is now
no such thing as law and the transgression of law, that sin is a
phantom, and punishment a bugbear, that it is free to sin, free to
enjoy the world and the flesh ; and still further, when it does enjoy
them, and reflects that it may think and hold just what it will, that
"the world is all before it where to choose," and what system to
build up as its own private persuasion ; when this torrent of willful
thoughts rushes over and inundates it, who will deny that the fruit
of the tree of knowledge, or what the mind takes for knowledge,
has made it one of the gods, with a sense of expansion and elevation,
— an intoxication in reality, still, so far as the subjective state of the
mind goes, an illumination? Hence the fanaticism of individuals
or nations, who suddenly cast off their Maker. Their eyes are
opened ; and, like the judgment-stricken king in the Tragedy, they
see two suns, and a magic universe, out of which they look back
upon their former state of faith and innocence with a sort of con-
tempt and indignation, as if they were then but fools, and the dupes
of imposture.

On the other hand, Religion has its own enlargement, and an
enlargement, not of tumult, but of peace. It is often remarked of
uneducated persons, who have hitherto thought little of the unseen
world, that, on their turning to God, looking into themselves,
regulating their hearts, reforming their conduct, and meditating on

KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 265

death and judgment, heaven and hell, they seem to become, in
point of intellect, different beings from what they were. Before,
they took things as they came, and thought no more of one thing
than another. But now every event has a meaning; they have
their own estimate of whatever happens to them ; they are mindful
of times and seasons, and compare the present with the past; and
the world, no longer dull, monotonous, unprofitable, and hopeless,
is a various and complicated drama, with parts and an object, and
an awful moral.

Now from these instances, to which many more might be added,
it is plain, first, that the communication of knowledge certainly is
either a condition or the means of that sense of enlargement or
enlightenment, of which at this day we hear so much in certain
quarters: this cannot be denied; but next, it is equally plain, that
such communication is not the whole of the process. The enlarge-
ment consists, not merely in the passive reception into the mind of a
number of ideas hitherto unknown to it, but in the mind's energetic
and simultaneous action upon and towards and among those new
ideas, which are rushing in upon it. It is the action of a formative
power, reducing to order and meaning the matter of our acquire-
ments; it is a making the objects of our knowledge subjectively our
own, or, to use a familiar word, it is a digestion of what we receive,
into the substance of our previous state of thought; and without
this no enlargement is said to follow. There is no enlargement,
unless there be a comparison of ideas one with another, as they come
before the mind, and a systematizing of them. We feel our minds
to be growing and expanding then, when we not only learn, but
refer what we learn to what we know already. It is not the mere
addition to our knowledge that is the illumination ; but the locomo-
tion, the movement onwards, of that mental center, to which both
what we know, and what we are learning, the accumulating mass
of our acquirements, gravitates. And therefore a truly great intel-
lect, and recognized to be such by the common opinion of mankind,
such as the intellect of Aristotle, or of St. Thomas, or of Newton,
or of Goethe (I purposely take instances within and without the
Catholic pale, when I would speak of the intellect as such,) is one
which takes a connected view of old and new, past and present, far
and near, and which has an insight into the influence nf all these

266 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

one on another; without which there is no whole, and no center.
It possesses the knowledge, not only of things, but also of their
mutual and true relations; knowledge, not merely considered as
acquirement, but as philosophy.

Accordingly, when this analytical, distributive, harmonizing proc-
ess is away, the mind experiences no enlargement, and is not reck-
oned as enlightened or comprehensive, whatever it may add to its
knowledge. For instance, a great memory, as I have already said,
does not make a philosopher, any more than a dictionary can be
called a grammar. There are men who embrace in their minds a
vast multitude of ideas, but with little sensibility about their real
relations towards each other. These may be antiquarians, annal-
ists, naturalists ; they may be learned in the law ; they may be versed
in statistics ; they are most useful in their own place ; I should shrink
from speaking disrespectfully of them ; still, there is nothing in such
attainments to guarantee the absence of narrowness of mind. If
they are nothing more than well-read men, or men of information,
they have not what specially deserves the name of culture of mind,
or fulfills the type of Liberal Education.

In like manner, we sometimes fall in with persons who have seen
much of the world, and of the men who, in their day, have played
a conspicuous part in it, but who generalize nothing, and have no
observation, in the true sense of the word. They abound in infor-
mation in detail, curious and entertaining, about men and things;
and, having lived under the influence of no very clear or settled
principles, religious or political, they speak of every one and every
thing, only as so many phenomena, which are complete in them-
selves, and lead to nothing, not discussing them, or teaching any
truth, or instructing the hearer, but simply talking. No one would
say that these persons, well informed as they are, had attained to
any great culture of intellect or to philosophy.

The case is the same still more strikingly where the persons in
question, are beyond dispute men of inferior powers and deficient
education. Perhaps they have been much in foreign countries, and
they receive, in a passive, otiose, unfruitful way, the various facts
which are forced upon them there. Seafaring men, for example,
range from one end of the earth to the other; but the multiplicity
of external objects, which they have encountered, forms no sym-
metrical and consistent picture upon their imagination; they see
the tapestry of human life, as it were on the wrong side, and it

KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 267

tells no story. They sleep, and they rise up, and they find them-
selves, now in Europe, now in Asia; they see visions of great cities
and wild regions; they are in the marts of commerce, or amid the
islands of the South; they gaze on Pompey's Pillar, or on the
Andes ; and nothing which meets them carries them forward or back-
ward, to any idea beyond itself. Nothing has a drift or relation ;
nothing has a history or a promise. Every thing stands by itself,
and comes and goes in its turn, like the shifting scenes of a show,
which leave the spectator where he was. Perhaps you are near such
a man on a particular occasion, and expect him to be shocked or
perplexed at something which occurs; but one thing is much the
same to him as another, or, if he is perplexed, it is as not knowing
what to say, whether it is right to admire, or to ridicule, or to
disapprove, while conscious that some expression of opinion is ex-
pected from him; for in fact he has no standard of judgment at
all, and no landmarks to guide him to a conclusion. Such is mere
acquisition, and, I repeat, no one would dream of calling it phi-
losophy.

Instances, such as these, confirm, by the contrast, the conclusion
I have already drawn from those which preceded them. That only
is true enlargement of mind which is the power of viewing many
things at once as one whole, of referring them severally to their
true place in the universal system, of understanding their respective
values, and determining their mutual dependence. Thus is that
form of Universal Knowledge, of which I have on a former oc-
casion spoken, set up in the individual intellect, and constitutes its
perfection. Possessed of this real illumination, the mind never views
any part of the extended subject-matter of Knowledge without
recollecting that it is but a part, or without the associations which
spring from this recollection. It makes every thing in some sort
lead to every thing else; it would communicate the image of the
whole to every separate portion, till that whole becomes in imagi-
nation like a spirit, everywhere pervading and penetrating its com-
ponent parts, and giving them one definite meaning. Just as our
bodily organs, when mentioned, recall their function in the body,
as the word "creation" suggests the Creator, and "subjects" a sov-
ereign, so, in the mind of the Philosopher, as we are abstractedly

268 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

conceiving of him, the elements of the physical and moral world,
sciences, arts, pursuits, ranks, offices, events, opinions, individualities,
are all viewed as one, with correlative functions, and as gradually
by successive combinations converging, one and all, to the true
center.

To have even a portion of this illuminative reason and true
philosophy is the highest state to which nature can aspire, in the
way of intellect; it puts the mind above the influences of chance
and necessity, above anxiety, suspense, unsettlement, and supersti-
tion, which is the lot of the many. Men, whose minds are possessed
with some one object, take exaggerated views of its importance, are
feverish in the pursuit of it, make it the measure of things which
are utterly foreign to it, and are startled and despond if it happens
to fail them. They are ever in alarm or in transport. Those on
the other hand who have no object or principle whatever to hold
by, lose their way, every step they take. They are thrown out,
and do not know what to think or say, at every fresh juncture; they
have no view of persons, or occurrences, or facts, which come sud-
denly upon them, and they hang upon the opinion of others, for
want of internal resources. But the intellect, which has been dis-
ciplined to the perfection of its powers, which knows, and thinks
while it knows, which has learned to leaven the dense mass of facts
and events with the elastic force of reason, such an intellect cannot
be partial, cannot be exclusive, cannot be impetuous, cannot be at a
loss, cannot but be patient, collected, and majestically calm, because
it discerns the end in every beginning, the origin in every end, the
law in every interruption, the limit in each delay; because it ever
knows where it stands, and how its path lies from one point to
another. It is the Tcrpaywvos of the Peripatetic,1 and has the "nil
admirari"2 of the Stoic, —

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acheron tis avari."

1 Aristotle was called the Peripatetic from his habit of walking about
while teaching. The reference is to a passage in his Ethics (I, 10, xi),
"He that is truly good and foursquare without a flaw."

8 "To be disturbed by nothing."— Horace, Epistles, I, 6, i.

3 Happy is he who is able to understand the secrets of nature and thus
triumphs over all fear and inexorable fate and the roar of greedy Acheron.
— Virgil, Georgics, II, 490-2.

KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 269

There are men who, when in difficulties, originate at the moment
vast ideas or dazzling projects; who, under the influence of excite-
ment, are able to cast a light, almost as if from inspiration, on a
subject or course of action which comes before them; who have a
sudden presence of mind equal to any emergency, rising with the
occasion, and an undaunted magnanimous bearing, and an energy
and keenness which is but made intense by opposition. This is
genius, this is heroism ; it is the exhibition of a natural gift, which
no culture can teach, at which no Institution can aim; here, on
the contrary, we are concerned, not with mere nature, but with
training and teaching. That perfection of the Intellect, which is
the result of Education, and its beau ideal, to be imparted to indi-
viduals in their respective measures, is the clear, calm, accurate
vision and comprehension of all things, as far as the finite mind
can embrace them, each in its place, and with its own characteristics
upon it. It is almost prophetic from its knowledge of history; it
is almost heart-searching from its knowledge of human nature; it
has almost supernatural charity from its freedom from littleness
and prejudice; it has almost the repose of faith, because nothing
can startle it; it has almost the beauty and harmony of heavenly
contemplation, so intimate is it with the eternal order of things and
the music of the spheres.

And now, if I may take for granted that the true and adequate
end of intellectual training and of a University is not Learning or
Acquirement, but rather, is Thought or Reason exercised upon
Knowledge, or what may be called Philosophy, I shall be in a posi-
tion to explain the various mistakes which at the present day beset
the subject of University Education.

I say then, if we would improve the intellect, first of all, we
must ascend ; we cannot gain real knowledge on a level ; we must
generalize, we must reduce to method, we must have a grasp of
principles, and group and shape our acquisitions by means of them.
It matters not whether our field of operation be wide or limited ;
in every case, to command it, is to mount above it. Who has not
felt the irritation of mind and impatience created by a deep, rich
country, visited for the first time, with winding lanes, and high
hedges, and green steeps, and tangled woods, and every thing smil-
ing indeed, but in a maze? The same feeling comes upon us in a

270 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

strange city, when we have no map of its streets. Hence you hear
of practiced travelers, when they first come into a place, mounting
some high hill or church tower, by way of reconnoitering its neigh-
borhood. In like manner, you must be above your knowledge, not
under it, or it will oppress you; and the more you have of it, the
greater will be the load. The learning of a Salmasius or a Bur-
man, unless you are its master, will be your tyrant. "Imperat aut
servit" j1 if you can wield it with a strong arm, it is a great weapon;,
otherwise,

Vis consili expers
Mole ruit sua.a

You will be overwhelmed, like Tarpeia, by the heavy wealth which
you have exacted from tributary generations.

Instances abound ; there are authors who are as pointless as they
are inexhaustible in their literary resources. They measure knowl-
edge by bulk, as it lies in the rude block, without symmetry, without
design. How many commentators are there on the Classics, how
many on Holy Scripture, from whom we rise up, wondering at the
learning which has passed before us, and wondering why it passed !
How many writers are there of Ecclesiastical History, such as
Mosheim or Du Pin, who, breaking up their subject into details,
destroy its life, and defraud us of the whole by their anxiety about
the parts ! The Sermons, again, of the English Divines in the seven-
teenth century, how often are they mere repertories of miscellaneous
and officious learning! Of course, Catholics also may read without
thinking; and in their case, equally as with Protestants, it holds
good, that such knowledge is unworthy of the name, knowledge
which they have not thought through, and thought out. Such read-
ers are only possessed by their knowledge, not possessed of it ; nay,
in matter of fact they are often even carried away by it, without
any volition of their own. Recollect, the Memory can tyrannize,
as well as the Imagination. Derangement, I believe, has been con-
sidered as a loss of control over the sequence of ideas. The mind,
once set in motion, is henceforth deprived of the power of initia-
tion, and becomes the victim of a train of associations, one thought
suggesting another, in the way of cause and effect, as if by a me-
chanical process, or some physical necessity. No one, who has had

1"It either rules or serves."

8 Strength without intelligence falls of its own weight.— HORACE.

KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 271

experience of men of studious habits, but must recognize the exist-
ence of a parallel phenomenon in the case of those who have over-
stimulated the Memory. In such persons Reason acts almost as
feebly and as impotently as in the madman; once fairly started on
any subject whatever, they have no power of self-control; they
passively endure the succession of impulses which are evolved out
of the original exciting cause ; they are passed on from one idea to
another and go steadily forward, plodding along one line of thought
in spite of the amplest concessions of the hearer, or wandering from
it in endless digression in spite of his remonstrances. Now, if, as
is very certain, no one would envy the madman the glow and origi-
nality of his conceptions, why must we extol the cultivation of that
intellect, which is the prey, not indeed of barren fancies but of
barren facts, of random intrusions from without, though not of
morbid imaginations from within ? And in thus speaking, I am not
denying that a strong and ready memory is in itself a real treasure ;
I am not disparaging a well-stored mind, though it be nothing
besides, provided it be sober, any more than I would despise a
bookseller's shop : — it is of great value to others, even when not so
to the owner. Nor am I banishing, far from it, the possessors of
deep and multifarious learning from my ideal University; they
adorn it in the eyes of men; I do but say that they constitute no
type of the results at which it aims; that it is no great gain to the
intellect to have enlarged the memory at the expense of faculties
which are indisputably higher.

Nor indeed am I supposing that there is any great danger, at
least in this day, of over-education ; the danger is on the other side.
I will tell you, Gentlemen, what has been the practical error of
the last twenty years, — not to load the memory of the student with
a mass of undigested knowledge, but to force upon him so much that
he has rejected all. It has been the error of distracting and
enfeebling the mind by an unmeaning profusion of subjects ; of imply-
ing that a smattering in a dozen branches of study is not shallow-
ness, which it really is, but enlargement, which it is not ; of consider-
ing an acquaintance with the learned names of things and persons,
and the possession of clever duodecimos, and attendance on eloquent
lecturers, and membership with scientific institutions, and the sight
of the experiments of a platform and the specimens of a museum,

272 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

that all this was not dissipation of mind, but progress. All things
now are to be learned at once, not first one thing, then another,
not one well, but many badly. Learning is to be without exertion,
without attention, without toil; without grounding, without ad-
vance, without finishing. There is to be nothing individual in it;
and this, forsooth, is the wonder of the age. What the steam
engine does with matter, the printing press is to do with mind; it
is to act mechanically, and the population is to be passively, almost
unconsciously enlightened, by the mere multiplication and dissemi-
nation of volumes. Whether it be the school boy, or the school girl,
or the youth at college, or the mechanic in the town, or the poli-
tician in the senate, all have been the victims in one way or other
of this most preposterous and pernicious of delusions. Wise men
have lifted up their voices in vain; and at length, lest their own
institutions should be outshone and should disappear in the folly
of the hour, they have- been obliged, as far as they could with a
good conscience, to humor a spirit which they could not withstand,
and make temporizing concessions at which they could not but
inwardly smile.

It must not be supposed that, because I so speak, therefore I have
some sort of fear of the education of the people: on the contrary,
the more education they have, the better, so that it is really edu-
cation. Nor am I an enemy to the cheap publication of scientific
and literary works, which is now in vogue : on the contrary, I con-
sider it a great advantage, convenience, and gain; that is, to those
to whom education has given a capacity for using them. Further,
I consider such innocent recreations as science and literature are
able to furnish will be a very fit occupation of the thoughts and the
leisure of young persons, and may be made the means of keeping
them from bad employments and bad companions. Moreover, as
to that superficial acquaintance with chemistry, and geology, and
astronomy, and political economy, and modern history, and biog-
raphy, and other branches of knowledge, which periodical literature
and occasional lectures and scientific institutions diffuse through the
community, I think it a graceful accomplishment, and a suitable,
nay, in this day a necessary accomplishment, in the case of edu-
cated men. Nor, lastly, am I disparaging or discouraging the
thorough acquisition of any one of these studies, or denying that,
as far as it goes, such thorough acquisition is a real education of the
mind. All I say is, call things by their right names, and do not

KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 273

confuse together ideas which are essentially different. A thorough
knowledge of one science and a superficial acquaintance with many,
are not the same thing; a smattering of a hundred things or a
memory for detail, is not a philosophical or comprehensive view.
Recreations are not education; accomplishments are not education.
Do not say, the people must be educated, when, after all, you only
mean, amused, refreshed, soothed, put into good spirits and good
humor, or kept from vicious excesses. I do not say that such amuse-
ments, such occupations of mind, are not a great gain ; but they are
not education. You may as well call drawing and fencing educa-
tion, as a general knowledge of botany or conchology. Stuffing
birds or playing stringed instruments is an elegant pastime, and a
resource to the idle, but it is not education; it does not form or
cultivate the intellect. Education is a high word ; it is the prepara-
tion for knowledge, and it is the imparting of knowledge in pro-
portion to that preparation. We require intellectual eyes to know
withal, as bodily eyes for sight. We need both objects and organs
intellectual; we cannot gain them without setting about it; we
cannot gain them in our sleep, or by haphazard. The best telescope
does not dispense with eyes; the printing press or the lecture room
will assist us greatly, but we must be true to ourselves, we must be
parties in the work. A University is, according to the usual desig-
nation, an Alma Mater, knowing her children one by one, not a
foundry, or a mint, or a treadmill.

I protest to you, Gentlemen, that if I had to choose between a
so-called University, which dispensed with residence and tutorial
superintendence, and gave its degrees to any person who passed an
examination in a wide range of subjects, and a University which
had no professors or examinations at all, but merely brought a
number of young men together for three or four years, and then
sent them away as the University of Oxford is said to have done
some sixty years since, if I were asked which of these two methods
was the better discipline of the intellect, — mind, I do not say which
is morally the better, for it is plain that compulsory study must be
a good and idleness an intolerable mischief, — but if I must deter-
mine which of the two courses was the more successful in training,
molding, enlarging the mind, which sent out men the more fitted

274 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

for their secular duties, which produced better public men, men
of the world, men whose names would descend to posterity, I have
no hesitation in giving the preference to that University which did
nothing, over that which exacted of its members an acquaintance
with every science under the sun. And, paradox as this may seem,
still if results be the test of systems, the influence of the public
schools and colleges of England, in the course of the last century,
at least will bear out one side of the contrast as I have drawn it.
What would come, on the other hand, of the ideal systems of edu-
cation which have fascinated the imagination of this age, could
they ever take effect, and whether they would not produce a gen-
eration frivolous, narrow-minded, and resourceless, intellectually
considered, is a fair subject for debate; but so far is certain, that
the Universities and scholastic establishments, to which I refer,
and which did little more than bring together first boys and then
youths in large numbers, these institutions, with miserable de-
formities on the side of morals, with a hollow profession of Chris-
tianity, and a heathen code of ethics, — I say, at least they can boast
of a succession of heroes and statesmen, of literary men and phi-
losophers, of men conspicuous for great natural virtues, for habits
of business, for knowledge of life, for practical judgment, for culti-
vated tastes, for accomplishments, who have made England what it
is, — able to subdue the earth, able to domineer over Catholics.

How is this to be explained ? I suppose as follows : When a mul-
titude of young men, keen, open-hearted, sympathetic, and observant,
as young men are, come together and freely mix with each other,
they are sure to learn one from another, even if there be no one
to teach them ; the conversation of all is a series of lectures to each,
and they gain for themselves new ideas and views, fresh matter
of thought, and distinct principles for judging and acting, day by
day. An infant has to learn the meaning of the information which
its senses convey to it, and this seems to be its employment. It
fancies all that the eye presents to it to be close to it, till it actually
learns the contrary, and thus by practice does it ascertain the rela-
tions and uses of those first elements of knowledge which are neces-
sary for its animal existence. A parallel teaching is necessary for
our social being, and it is secured by a large school or a college ; and
this effect may be fairly called in its own department an enlarge-
ment of mind. It is seeing the world on a small field with little

KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 275

trouble ; for the pupils or students come from very different places,
and with widely different notions, and there is tnuch to generalize,
much to adjust, much to eliminate, there are inter-relations to be
defined, and conventional rules to be established, in the process, by
which the whole assemblage is molded together, and gains one tone
and one character.

Let it be clearly understood, I repeat it, that I am not taking into
account moral or religious considerations ; I am but saying that that
youthful community will constitute a whole, it will embody a
specific idea, it will represent a doctrine, it will administer a code
of conduct, and it will furnish principles of thought and action.
It will give birth to a living teaching, which in course of time will
take the shape of a self-perpetuating tradition, or a genius loci, as
it is sometimes called ; which haunts the home where it has been
born, and which imbues and forms, more or less, and one by one,
every individual who is successively brought under its shadow.
Thus it is that, independent of direct instruction on the part of
Superiors, there is a sort of self-education in the academic institu-
tions of Protestant England; a characteristic tone of thought, a
recognized standard of judgment is found in them, which, as devel-
oped in the individual who is submitted to it, becomes a twofold
source of strength to him, both from the distinct stamp it impresses
on his mind, and from the bond of union which it creates between
him and others, — effects which are shared by the authorities of the
place, for they themselves have been educated in it, and at all times
are exposed to the influence of its ethical atmosphere. Here then
is a real teaching, whatever be its standards and principles, true or
false ; and it at least tends towards cultivation of the intellect ; it at
least recognizes that knowledge is something more than a sort of
passive reception of scraps and details; it is a something, and it
does a something, which never will issue from the most strenuous
efforts of a set of teachers, with no mutual sympathies and no inter-
communion, of a set of examiners with no opinions which they
dare profess, and with no common principles, who are teaching or
questioning a set of youths who do not know them, and do not
know each other, on a large number of subjects, different in kind,
and connected by no wide philosophy, three times a week, or three
times a year, or once in three years, in chill lecture-rooms or on a
pompous anniversary.

276 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

Nay, self-education in any shape, in the most restricted sense,
is preferable to a system of teaching which, professing so much,
really does so little for the mind. Shut your College gates against
the votary of knowledge, throw him back upon the search ings and
the efforts of his own mind ; he will gain by being spared an entrance
into your Babel. Few indeed there are who can dispense with the
stimulus and support of instructors, or will do anything at all, if
left to themselves. And fewer still (though such great minds are to
be found), who will not, from such unassisted attempts, contract a
self-reliance and a self-esteem, which are not only moral evils, but
serious hindrances to the attainment of truth. And next to none,
perhaps, or none, who will not be reminded from time to time of
the disadvantage under which they lie, by their imperfect ground-
ing, by the breaks, deficiencies, and irregularities of their knowledge,
by the eccentricity of opinion and the confusion of principle which
they exhibit. They will be too often ignorant of what everyone
knows and takes for granted, of that multitude of small truths which
fall upon the mind like dust, impalpable and ever accumulating;
they may be unable to converse, they may argue perversely, they
may pride themselves on their worst paradoxes or their grossest
truisms, they may be full of their own mode of viewing things,
unwilling to be put out of their way, slow to enter into the minds
of others; — but, with these and whatever other liabilities upon
their heads, they are likely to have more thought, more mind, more
philosophy, more true enlargement, than those earnest but ill-used
persons, who are forced to load their minds with a score of subjects
against an examination, who have too much on their hands to
indulge themselves in thinking or investigation, who devour premiss
and conclusion together with indiscriminate greediness, who hold
whole sciences on faith, and commit demonstrations to memory,
and who too often, as might be expected, when their period of edu-
cation is passed throw up all they have learned in disgust, having
gained nothing really by their anxious labors, except perhaps the
habit of application.

Yet such is the better specimen of the fruit of that ambitious
system which has of late years been making way among us: for
its result on ordinary minds, and on the common run of students,
is less satisfactory still; they leave their place of education simply

KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 277

dissipated and relaxed by the multiplicity of subjects, which they
have never really mastered, and so shallow as not even to know
their shallowness. How much better, I say, is it for the active and
thoughtful intellect, where such is to be found, to eschew the Col-
lege and the University altogether, than to submit to a drudgery
so ignoble, a mockery so contumelious ! How much more profitable
for the independent mind, after the mere rudiments of education,
to range through a library at random, taking down books as they
meet him, and pursuing the trains of thought which his mother wit
suggests! How much healthier to wander into the fields, and there
with the exiled Prince to find "tongues in the trees, books in the
running brooks!" How much more genuine an education is that
of the poor boy in the Poem — a Poem, whether in conception or in
execution, one of the most touching in our language — who, not in
the wide world, but ranging day by day around his widowed
mother's home, "a dexterous gleaner" in a narrow field, and with
only such slender outfit

". . . as the village school and books a few
Supplied,"

contrived from the beach, and the quay, and the fisher's boat, and
the inn's fireside, and the tradesman's shop, and the shepherd's walk,
and the smuggler's hut, and the mossy moor, and the screaming
gulls, and the restless waves, to fashion for himself a philosophy and
a poetry of his own !

But in a large subject, I am exceeding my necessary limits.
Gentlemen, I must conclude abruptly; and postpone any summing
up of my argument, should that be necessary, to another day.

THE STARS1

HARLOW SHAPLEY

IT is generally admitted by those who trouble to ponder the sub-
ject that man pays a pretty high price for civilization. His senses
of sight, hearing, and smell are becoming dull ; his natural defenses
against many diseases are weakened; his ability to live by and for
himself is disappearing with the growth of modern improvements
of civilization; and his contacts with Nature are less frequent or
are increasingly artificial. One price he pays for his mechanical,
social, and educational advancement is the loss of common knowledge
of the skies. Edison has shut off millions of people from the stars
by devising and developing electric illumination. The desert Arab
for two thousand years has known more of the existence and motions
of the heavenly bodies than ninety per cent of the college and uni-
versity graduates of our enlightened western civilization. The loss
we have thus suffered, to be sure, is nothing at all if we measure
gain and loss in dollars and cents or in other material units. The
loss is very considerable, however, if we measure in units that are
cultural and of the spirit.

But even on this higher evaluation we can, if we will, make good
the loss and far outstrip the nature-loving Arab, for this same
mechanical civilization has produced the means for great advance-
ment of our knowledge of the universe. . . .

The principal value of astronomy, in the opinion of the writer,
is to broaden man's concept of the significance of the planet Earth,
and of the processes, physical and biological, that we observe on the
surface of the planet. To be sure, there are some so-called practical
uses of astronomy — the determination of time, the measures of sun-
light, the prediction of tides — but all are small in comparison with
the intellectual value that can be derived by simple studies of the
stellar universe.

1Prom a pamphlet in the Reading with a Purpose series published by
the American Library Association. Reprinted by courtesy of the American
Library Association.

278

THE STARS 279

Instead of finding, in the light of the stars, that man is materially
of high significance in the universe, as we might infer from his
vaunted control over most of the terrestrial animals and from his
ability to deface or beautify parts of the surface of our small planet,
we are led to discover the opposite, to find that he is insignificant to
a humiliating degree ; and there is nothing so cleansing as humility.
Instead of finding that man is the central design of cosmic evolution
and the Lord of Creation, we are led to suspect that he is but a
brief and trivial incident in a universe where the reverend and im-
portant features are space, time, gravity, energy, and radiation ; and
there is nothing so useful spiritually as natural reverence.

But although knowledge of the stars may tend to shrivel man up
in size and cut him off briefly in time, it convinces him as nothing
else does of the capabilities of the human mind, of the power of that
biological phenomenon that tries to grasp the meanings of all things,
tries to comprehend the nature of the universe, the laws and reasons
back of the stars and nebulae. . . .

We generally think of the Earth as the subject matter for the
sciences of geology, geography, and geodesy, the first letters of those
words indicating that they relate to the Earth. But the Earth is
also of great interest as an astronomical body. It is a fair sample
of the planets. It originated at a remote time in the past from the
atmosphere of the Sun and is therefore, in its chemistry, a sample also
of typical star materials. Its motion and the motion of its satellite,
the Moon, give us typical problems in the field of celestial mechanics.

Astronomy, then, can well begin with a study of this hard little
celestial fragment which is not only typical of the material universe,
but is at the same time provided with telescopes, and with human
beings who are curious to learn something of the fragment and the
cosmos which it represents.

Of the Sun's family, comprising eight planets, twenty-six moons,
hundreds of comets, thousands of asteroids, and innumerable meteors,
the Earth is not exceptional in any of the common properties, except
that its density (specific gravity) is higher than for any of the other
planets. Mercury and Venus are nearer to the Sun; Mercury,
Mars, and Venus are smaller in diameter and in mass ; some planets
have heavier atmospheres; in brightness, as seen from a point out-
side the solar system, the Earth is also intermediate. But in all of
these properties — brightness, mass, temperature, dimensions, and
atmosphere — the Sun far transcends all of its dependent bodies. The

280 HARLOW SHAPLEY

Sun, in fact, may be considered a primary body, a star, which gener-
ates an enormous amount of energy for radiation, and controls
gravitationally the movements of its numerous family. The planets,
on the other hand, should be considered secondary bodies, born from
the Sun at a remote time in the past and ever afterwards wholly de-
pendent on it for light, heat, and motion.

The reader who looks at the Earth astronomically will find how
it produces night and day by rotation, and gives rise to the seasons
through its annual trip around the Sun, how it controls the Moon
through tidal action so that the satellite always faces the earth
throughout its monthly revolutions. The reader will find that these
motions of rotation and revolution introduce complexities into the
astronomer's observations of other planets and of the Sun and the
remoter stars. He will find that special systems of coordinates are
necessary to indicate the positions and motions of the heavenly bodies.
Angular measures must be used — degrees, minutes, seconds — and, to
register the positions in the sky, the terms right ascension and declina-
tion, latitude and longitude, are introduced. But such details must
be left to full-length books.

Probably the most interesting of the studies of the Earth from
an astronomical standpoint is an inquiry into the origin of the
planet. Of course, it is hard to prove beyond doubt the cosmic
procedure of the remote past. We are handicapped in such re-
searches not only by the factor of limited time for observations, but
by the enormous magnitude of the forces involved, and by the dis-
tances. But we have in mathematics a powerful instrument for
searching the past, present, and future ; so that, hopeless as the prob-
lem may seem to the uninitiated, astronomers have been able to
develop generally acceptable and logical theories to account for the
present state of affairs in the solar system.

There was a time when the Laplacian nebular hypothesis was
pretty generally accepted. Originally proposed in its broader out-
lines by Kant some fifty years before Laplace's speculations, the
hypothesis stood for approximately one hundred and fifty years as
the best interpretation available. It was never very vigorously
backed, because there was too little evidence for or against the pro-
posal that the Sun and planets had evolved from a slowly shrinking
and rotating nebula. Certain mathematical, geological, and as-
tronomical difficulties became gradually apparent, and at about the

THE STARS 281

beginning of the present century a radically different theory was
developed.

The new hypothesis of the origin of the planets was proposed by
Chamberlin and Moulton of Chicago University. With some im-
portant modifications, the theory stands today as the best we have
been able to formulate. It has visualized the origin of the planets
through catastrophic disruption of the solar surface rather than
through the condensation of detached rings of matter from a shrink-
ing nebula. In this introduction to the subject space cannot be
given to a detailed description of the stellar encounter of the past
that gave rise to the Earth and the remainder of the Sun's family.
Suffice it to say that a large star, passing near the Sun, raised such
enormous tides in the gaseous atmosphere that the surface was dis-
rupted and a considerable amount of gas poured out into space.
Much of this material fell back to the Sun's surface, but some of
it, given a considerable crosswise motion by the passing star, pro-
ceeded to move in elliptical orbits around the Sun. These orbits,
gradually rounding off, became in time the parts of the planets.

Although originally gaseous and hot, the Earth and the other
smaller planets rapidly cooled off, became liquid, and then solid, at
least at the surface. For the last three thousand million years there
has been little change in the size of the Earth, and its surface,
though essentially solid, has been going through the various altera-
tions that are recorded in the building and unbuilding of moun-
tains, valleys, and volcanic islands. . . .

Much could be said about the other planets of the solar system,
but we must let the Earth represent them all. Fascinating ques-
tions connected with the tiny moons of Mars, with the surface
markings of that planet, and the possibility of life in such a place
are omitted here. There are books that deal with these matters in
much detail, and also with asteroids and comets, the complicated
moon systems of Jupiter and Saturn, and the various other bodies
of the planetary system. Leaving such problems to the explorations
of the reader, we go directly into the depths of space, to the larger
universe of stars and nebulae, stopping, however, almost before we
get started to look at the Sun — the star we can study most in
detail. ...

An observer with a small telescope, or even with field glasses,
can [in years of maximum sunspot activity] find small black spots on
the Sun. Occasionally some of the spots are large enough to be

282 HARLOW SHAPLEY

seen with the unaided eye; but of course the observer should pro-
tect his vision, whether through a lens or not, by smoked glass or
an overexposed photographic film. Otherwise the Sun's rays will
cause inconvenience if not injury, for raw sunlight is no respecter
of human vision. The Sun is pouring out radiation into space at
the rate of four million tons per second, and since this comes from
a surface with a temperature of ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit,
its energy intensity is painfully high.

The astronomer has not yet explained in detail the nature and
cause of sunspots. These markings seem to be coupled in some way
with vortex rings at or near the surface of the hot gaseous at-
mosphere of the Sun; and they are accompanied by magnetic phe-
nomena that are felt even on the Earth, ninety-three million miles
away. The spottedness appears in cycles of eleven years, and dur-
ing the maximum one or more groups are nearly always visible.
The life of an individual spot is on the average but a week or two.
The amateur observer can readily detect the drifting of the spots
from day to day across the disk as the Sun rotates. In fact, he may
easily verify for himself that the period of rotation of the Sun is
a little less than one month. . . .

We cannot see spots on other stars, nor study their surfaces in
any detail whatever, because of their excessive remoteness. But we
know from studies of colors and of spectra that the Sun is a typical
star of a common class. Nearly all the stars we see with the un-
aided eye are, to be sure, much brighter intrinsically than the Sun
and larger in mass. The bigger and brighter stars can be seen from
great distances, whereas small stars like the Sun can appear bright
enough for naked eye observation only when near at hand. But
there are thousands, even millions, of stars smaller and fainter than
the Sun. We safely infer the existence of such numbers from our
sampling of the accessible regions, though we have observed scarcely
one per cent of those that we suppose to exist.

To illustrate the typical character of the Sun a few numerical
data are given. The mass of the Sun is 1.8 x io33 grams (which is
the astronomer's brief way of saying 1.7 thousand million million
million million tons) ; whereas some stars are about one-tenth as
massive, and many have ten times as much material in them as
the Sun. The surface temperature of the Sun, as mentioned above,
is about ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit; the whole temperature
range so far observed for stars is from 3,800° to 60,000°. The

THE STARS 283

average density throughout the Sun is slightly greater than that of
water; but gigantic stars like Betelgeuse and Antares are a thou-
sand times as rarefied as the Sun; and a few dwarf stars, like the
queer telescopic companion to Sirius, are believed to be several thou-
sand times as dense.

The diameter of the Sun is a little less than a million miles.
The extremes in size are the giant reddish stars, which have several
million times the Sun's volume, and the little hot dwarfs which are
probably only slightly larger than the planet Jupiter. But these are
exceptions; the great majority of the stars are between half a million
and two million miles in diameter.

Early in the course of his reading, the beginning student will
want to connect his book knowledge with the appearance of things
in the sky. He will begin to wonder about the meaning and the
permanency of the various constellations. The astronomer will
hasten to inform him that these configurations, with their legendary
names, are scientifically of little importance, whatever be their value
to poetry and mythology. But among the constellations there are
also a few real systems of stars, such as those in Orion and Taurus.
The Pleiades form an actual organization of several hundred stars,
only half a dozen of which can be seen with the naked eye.

As we carry further our inquiries concerning the organization of
star systems, we enter one of the most interesting fields of astronomy.
Although we cannot verify the existence of other systems like that
associated with the Sun, composed of a dominating star with a group
of secondary bodies, we do find large numbers of double stars, triples,
quadruples, and groups with higher degrees of multiplicity. Among
the double stars are those like Algol, which undergoes periodical
eclipses. Among the higher organizations are the globular clusters
of stars, which have been considerably studied in recent years in the
explorations of remote parts of the sidereal universe.

The mutual eclipses of stars give rise to variations in light. There
are also other types of periodic stellar variation, some partially un-
derstood and some still mystifying. For instance, among the vari-
able stars that periodically fluctuate in light intensity are the Cepheid
variables, which have been of prime importance in recent determina-
tions of the distances of remote clusters, star clouds, and nebulae.
A Cepheid variable seems to be a giant star undergoing periodic
pulsations which affect the light, color, and apparent motion. The
period of these fluctuations has been found to be an indicator of the

284 HARLOW SHAPLEY

star's candle power, and thus indirectly an indicator of its distance
from us in space. The study of the light variations of the Cepheid
variable stars is an active department of modern astronomy.

Another type of stellar variation is illustrated by Mira, a faint
star in the constellation Cetus. Mira becomes visible to the un-
aided eye once in eleven months, and then drops off to fainter mag-
nitudes, where telescopic aid must be employed. It is typical of a
large class of variables which are systematically studied by the ama-
teur astronomer, equipped with very small instruments. An associa-
tion of amateurs for the study of these variables and similar objects
has been formed, with headquarters at the Harvard Observatory,
and with two or three hundred active members distributed all over
the Earth. Their work is so well done that the professional as-
tronomers have practically left the whole field of visual observations
of long period variables to the members of this association, although
the professional astronomers always stand ready to cooperate with
the amateur society in its observational work. . . .

With the development of large telescopes, especially in America,
there has been conspicuous advance in our knowledge of those hazy,
partly luminous patches scattered among the fixed stars, to which
the term nebula has been given. The term includes a great variety
of objects. There are the diffuse irregular nebulosities such as the
Great Orion Nebula, distinctly visible with the unaided eye. There
are the obscure patches, similar in irregular outline to these ordi-
nary diffuse nebulae, but nearly or wholly without light, and re-
vealed to us mainly by their obscuring of the more distant star fields.

The ring nebulae and the so-called planetary nebulae are other
types which are not very common. All of those referred to so far
are nebular types found within our own galactic system; except for
some planetaries, they are, in a sense, disorganized masses of cosmic
material, composed of gases and dust, in marked contrast to the
highly organized gaseous stars.

But beyond the confines of our own stellar system are other types
of objects which also receive the name nebula. We call them the
nebulae of the spiral family, or the extra-galactic nebulae. They in-
clude objects that show spiral arms, objects that are spheroidal or
ellipsoidal in form, and also irregular stellar organizations such as
the Clouds of Magellan. Investigations of the last few years have
pretty well established a century-old hypothesis that these extra-

THE STARS 285

galactic nebulae are other stellar systems, in some respects comparable
with our own Galaxy.

The great telescopes have begun to resolve the nearer spiral nebu-
lae into distinct stars, and among these stars variables of the Cepheid
class have been found which lead us directly to values of the dis-
tances of the spirals. The picture revealed by these investigations
is highly impressive. We see that there are hundreds of thousands of
stellar systems, each probably very populous in stars, and more or
less independent of all the others. They are scattered throughout
a region that is to be measured in millions of light years, and there
is no evidence whatever that we have reached the limit of star popu-
lated space. Their remoteness, difficulty of observation, and great
interest continually lead astronomers to the planning of more power-
ful instruments, and to the development of more sensitive apparatus
for recording the feeble but revealing pulses of light that travel for
millions of years across space to give the earthbound astronomer a
little more information about his universe.

BIOLOGY AND OUR FUTURE WORLD1

JULIAN HUXLEY

BIOLOGY is just reaching a stage of development at which it will
soon be applied on a large scale in practical affairs.

The most obvious way in which biological science can be made
practical is in its effect upon the environment of man. Not only
can it influence this or that particular kind of animal or plant,
encouraging one, destroying another, remodelling a third, but it
must be called in to adjust the balance of nature.

The balance of nature is a very elaborate and very delicate system
of checks and counterchecks. It is continually being altered as cli-
mates change, as new organisms evolve, as animals or plants perme-
ate to new areas. But in the past the alterations have for the most
part been slow, whereas with the arrival of man, and especially of
civilized man, their speed has been multiplied many fold : from the
evolutionary time-scale, where change is measured by periods of ten
or a hundred thousand years, they have been transferred to the
human time-scale in which centuries, and even decades, count.

Everywhere man is altering the balance of nature. He is facili-
tating the spread of plants and animals into new regions, sometimes
deliberately, sometimes unconsciously. He is covering huge areas
with new kinds of plants, or with houses, factories, slagheaps, and
other products of his civilization. He exterminates some species
on a large scale, but favors the multiplication of others. In brief,
he has done more in five thousand years to alter the biological aspect
of the planet than nature has done in five million years.

Many of these changes which he has brought about have had un-
foreseen consequences. Who would have thought that the throwing
away of a piece of Canadian water- weed would have caused half
the waterways of Britain to be blocked for a decade, or that the
provision of pot cacti for lonely settlers' wives would have led to

1From Harper's Magazine, September, 1931. Reprinted by permission
of the publishers.

286

BIOLOGY AND OUR FUTURE WORLD 287

eastern Australia being overrun with forests of prickly pear ? Who
would have prophesied that the cutting down of forests on the
Adriatic coasts or in parts of Central Africa could have reduced the
land to a semi-desert, with the very soil washed away from the
bare rock? Who would have thought that improved communica-
tions would have changed history by the spreading of disease — sleep-
ing sickness into East Africa, measles into Oceania, very possibly
malaria into ancient Greece ?

These are spectacular examples; but examples on a smaller scale
are everywhere to be found. We may make a nature sanctuary for
rare birds, prescribing absolute security for all species, and we may
find that some common and hardy kind of bird will multiply beyond
measure and oust the rare kinds in which we were particularly
interested. We see, owing to some little change brought about by
civilization, the starling spread in hordes over the English country-
side. We improve the yielding capacities of our cattle, and find
that now they exhaust the pastures which sufficed for less exigent
stock. We gaily set about killing the carnivores that molest our
domestic animals, the hawks that eat our fowls and game birds, and
find that in so doing we are also removing the brake that restrains
the multiplication of mice and other little rodents that gnaw away
the farmer's profits.

In brief, our human activities are everywhere altering nature and
its balance, whether we realize it or no, and whether we want to or
no. If we do not wish the alterations to be chaotic, disorderly, and
often harmful, we must do our best to control them, and constitute
new balances to suit our purposes.

The first and most obvious department of control is the conserva-
tion of nature and its resources. It is extremely easy to kill the
goose that lays the golden egga; and when the goose is a wild species,
once killed it is gone forever. The Maoris killed the moas, of
which a number of different kinds used to inhabit New Zealand,
for their meat. Sailors exterminated the great auk. The final
extinction of the mammoths was in all probability caused by the
attacks of our Stone Age ancestors. The white man reduced the
bison from an abundance comparable with the abundance of zebra or
gnu in Africa, until to-day its precarious remnant has to be looked
after like a museum specimen. The fur seals of the Pacific were
brought by indiscriminate slaughter to the verge of disappearance

288 JULIAN HUXLEY

and were saved only by international agreement. The huge hordes
of whales of the northern seas were harried into insignificance ; and
now there is danger that their southern relatives will follow suit.
Of the elephants of Africa, according to Major Kingston, ten per
cent are killed every year. The marvellous guano deposits of the
west coast of South America were being exhausted and have been
saved only by the careful regulations at last imposed by the Peruvian
Government.

If we want wild creatures to go on providing us with oil, furs,
fertilizers, ivory, meat, or sport, we must regulate their affairs as
we would regulate a business. We must know where and when they
breed, how many young they have, how long they take to grow up,
what their natural mortality is and, on the basis of this knowledge,
must adjust our exploitation so that it only skims off the natural
increase. This has been done for some animals; it can be done
for those others that are now in danger of our reckless methods.

But as well as the preservation of particular species, there is the
preservation of nature as a whole to think about. If we do not
take care, we shall find civilization infiltrating all but the most
inhospitable parts of our planet and leaving no regions in their pris-
tine and exhilarating state. It is so easy to kill out game, leaving
a country still untamed but sadly barren ; to dot the wilderness with
straggling outliers of industrialism, leaving it neither wild nor
civilized ; to cut down forests without making provision for replace-
ment, leaving scrub forests of second growth, as over so much of
the United States, or even only bare hillsides; in brief, to mix
nature and civilization so that the fine essence of the one is de-
stroyed, of the other not fully realized, and the net result an unsatis-
fying compromise.

The remedy is conscious planning. No one supposes that the
game animals of Africa can everywhere remain as they are, that
forests and jungles will not often need to be cut down, or replanted
artificially and scientifically, that many swamps should not be
drained, many stretches of seacoast turned into holiday towns. But
we can delimit different areas for different purposes. Man does not
live by bread alone. There is his need for solitude to consider and
his scientific interests; there is the recreation and refreshment af-

BIOLOGY AND OUR FUTURE WORLD 289

forded to him by nature, and the unique excitement and interest of
seeing wild creatures.

These needs can all be met if we only take them in time. There
are different balances of nature and civilization, each of them ad-
mirable in its way, whose preservation can be deliberately planned.
We can plan the city so that it provides beauty, ease of movement,
varied activities, and a sense of civic pride. We can plan the small
town so that it provides a center of life for its area, yet without
spoiling the zone of country round it. The real countryside is pro-
foundly artificial, with nature tamed by man; but it represents a
particular balance, which has its own unique possibilities of beauty
and interest, and it can be guarded from unwarranted intrusions,
its peculiar attractions can be preserved, its development can be
guided. The half-wild country of moor, mountain, marsh, forest,
or seashore can be either entirely reclaimed or kept unspoilt.

When we come to setting aside definite tracts of land for other
than material needs, we can plan them with precise aims in view.
Some areas should be set apart as specimens of nature, just as we
preserve specimens of interesting animals and plants in our museums.
These are nature sanctuaries, to which access should be only spar-
ingly accorded, and then mainly for purposes of scientific study. The
prime object here is to keep the original balance as unaltered as
possible. Then there are national parks, where nature is conserved
not in the interests of the inquiring scientific spirit of man, but in
the interests of his love of natural beauty and need of wildness and
solitude. The essentials of nature must here be preserved, but a
compromise will often have to be struck with the need for making
nature accessible. All grades of naturalness can be preserved in
national parks, from the unspoilt wildness of the Grisons or the
Yosemite to the partially tamed beauties of Sussex down land or
the New Forest. And finally, we can provide scheduled areas ; for
these, while recognizing that their prime purpose is utilitarian, we
can introduce regulations which will ensure that their wild life and
their other attractions are interfered with as little as may be and
that their possibilities of providing recreation and beauty are made
plentifully available.

In addition to these main categories, we may establish reserves
for special purposes — for bird life, for the preservation of rare or
beautiful plants, or even for strange human beings like che pygmies.
But in every case we must have in mind just what we want to do

290 JULIAN HUXLEY

and carry out our plans accordingly. In almost every case some
degree of control will be needed to preserve this or that balance,
for the original balance of nature is gone, destroyed by the mere pres-
ence of man on earth ; and even in the remotest regions it will rarely
be enough to leave everything to nature, for nature almost every-
where has already been in some measure modified by man, and is,
therefore, already to that extent artificial. I will give but one illus-
tration. The traveler through East Africa naturally thinks that the
great stretches of thorn-scrub country are a part of primeval nature.
But much of it exists by virtue of human interference; if it were
not for the black man's cattle, and his habit of burning the bush, it
would be woodland, of quite a different character. Those who
want other examples will find them in abundance in Ritchie's inter-
esting book, The Influence of Man on Animal Life in Scotland.
Even to preserve nature we need to have a knowledge of the ma-
chinery by which the balance of nature is adjusted, and for that we
need a well-developed science of ecology, that branch of biology
which studies the relations of wild organisms to one another and to
their environment.

But there are other and more practically urgent uses of ecology.
This leads on by a natural transition to the other province of eco-
logical biology — its aid not in preserving nature as near her original
self as possible, but in controlling and remolding her to suit the
economic purposes of man.

Agriculture is the chief of man's efforts at the biological remodel-
ling of nature. If we reflect that agriculture is less than a paltry
ten thousand years old out of the three hundred million years that
green plants have been on earth, and that apart from forest fires
and perhaps a little occasional clearing, before that there had been
no human interference with the natural mantle of vegetation, we
begin to grasp something of the revolution wrought by this biological
discovery.

But agriculture is, if you like, unnatural; it concentrates in-
numerable individuals of a single species — and always, of course, a
particularly nutritious one — in serried ranks, while nature's method
is to divide up the space among numerous competing or comple-
mentary kinds. Thus it constitutes not merely an opportunity but a
veritable invitation to vegetable-feeding animals, of which the most
numerous and most difficult to control are the small, insinuating, and
rapidly multiplying insects. And the better and more intensive

BIOLOGY AND OUR FUTURE WORLD 291

the agriculture, the richer becomes the banquet, the more obvious
the invitation. Shifting cultivation, with poorly developed crop-
plants and plenty of weeds, is one thing ; but mile upon square mile
of tender, well-weeded wheat or tea or cotton offers the optimum
possibilities for the rapid multiplication and spread of any species
of insect which can take advantage of man's good nature towards
his kind.

Finally, man's insatiable desire for rapid and easy transit has
capped the trouble. Evil communications, we all know, corrupt
good manners; it is not generally realized how much good com-
munications have done to corrupt the balance of nature.

By accident or intention, animal and plant species find their way
along the trade routes to new countries. They are in a new environ-
ment, among a new set of competing creatures to whose particular
equilibrium of struggle they are not adapted. In such circumstances
the majority fail to gain a foothold at all; some survive on suffer-
ance ; but a few find in the new circumstances a release instead of a
hindrance, and multiply beyond measure. The release may be a
release from competitors, as when the mongoose was introduced
into one of the West Indian islands, or more frequently, a release
from enemies, whether large and predatory or small and parasitic.

Then it is- up to the biologist to see what his knowledge can do.
Can he, by studying the pest in its original home, discover what are
the other species that normally act as checks on its over-multiplica-
tion, make sure that if he imports them to the new country they will
not there change their habits and turn into pests themselves, then
successfully transport them, and breed them, and let them loose in
sufficient numbers to bring the enemy of the crops down to insignifi-
cance? Sometimes he can. Let me give two examples. On Fiji,
coconuts have for some time been one of the staple products. Some
few decades ago the plantations on one of the main islands were re-
duced to nutless, leafless poles. That was bad enough; but then,
after the War, the plague began to appear on the other and larger
main island.

The men are still alive and active who brought prosperity back
to Fiji. It had already been discovered that the cause of the trouble
was a little moth — very beautiful, with violet wings — whose grubs
devoured the leaves of the palm trees; and it prospered so alarm-
ingly because in Fiji it had no parasite enemies. Three biologists

292 JULIAN HUXLEY

were appointed to find a parasite. They searched the remote cor-
ners of the Pacific. At last they found, in the Malay States, not
the same moth, but a closely related species, which was provided
with its natural complement of parasites, notably a kind of fly. It
was not easy to bring the parasites the long distance to Fiji, for they
do not hibernate, and so must be fed and tended all the time. They
had to be provided with living moth-caterpillars, and these, in turn,
had to be provided with newly-sprouted coconuts, grown in specially
built cages. As there was no direct communication from this part
of the Malay States to Fiji, a steamer had to be chartered for the
voyage.

By these means, three hundred precious parasitic flies were in
1925 safely landed in Fiji. These were bred on the caterpillars of
the Fiji coconut moth, and within twelve months had increased to
thirty-two thousand. Then the liberation of the parasites began,
and they went to their work with such gusto that by 1928, at least
four-fifths of the coconut-moth caterpillars of Fiji were parasitized
and, therefore, came to nothing. By 1929 the coconut moth, which
threatened to ruin the archipelago, had become reduced to the status
of a minor nuisance. Man had readjusted the environment, whose
balance he had in the first instance upset.

Then there is the prickly pear in eastern Australia. I remember
once hearing a lecture by Doctor Tillyard, now in charge of pest
control and related problems in Australia. After he had been talk-
ing of the prickly pear for a bit, he drew out his watch. "It is
seven minutes," he said, "since I began discussing this subject; dur-
ing that time another seven acres of Australian land have been cov-
ered with this impenetrable and useless scrub." That, however, was
five or six years ago. In the meanwhile the research scheme begun
by the Australian Commonwealth in 1920 has matured. At their
research station established on the American continent — original
home of the prickly pear and other cacti — every possible enemy of
the cactus was tried out; and at last a mixed team was sent to
Australia — a caterpillar to tunnel through the "leaves" (which are
really the prickly pear's stems), a plant bug and a cochineal insect
to suck its juices, and a mite to scarify its surface. These were the
Four Arthropods of the prickly pear's Apocalypse ; instead of increas-
ing any longer in Australia, it is now halted, and in many places
the thickets are melting away under the combined attack.

BIOLOGY AND OUR FUTURE WORLD 293

One could multiply instances. How the sugar cane of Hawaii
was saved from its weevil destroyers ; how the destruction of North
American forests by gipsy-moths was held in check ; how an attack is
being launched upon the mealy-bugs that are such a pest to Kenya
coffee, by massed battalions of lady-birds, bred on a generous ration
consisting of chopped eggs, cream, marmite, honey, and radiomalt.
To cope with all the demands for anti-pest organisms a veritable
industry has sprung up. There exists near Slough an establish-
ment usually nicknamed the Parasite Zoo, whose prime function is
to breed the supply of pest-parasites demanded by the British
Empire.

All the spectacular successes have been achieved when a pest has
invaded new territory ahead of its enemies. Even in such cases,
however, success has not always been attained. Sometimes this may
be due to the weakness of human nature ; there have been Boards of
Pest Control which were not too anxious to find their occupations
gone with the going of their particular pest. But leaving such non-
biological or hyper-biological considerations on one side, there have
been many pests which have so far baffled research. One need only
think of the invading thickets of blackberries in New Zealand; of
the disease that has recently been blighting the elms in its march
across Western Europe, of the spread of the European corn-borer
over the United States to the great detriment of the corn crop,
of the permanent pest of rabbits in Australia.

Such being the difficulties of the work when reduced to its
simplest terms, we should expect to find them far more severe when
the pest is an old-established inhabitant of the country. For then
it will already possess its full complement of enemies and parasites
and exist in a natural equilibrium with them, so that we can have
little hope of causing a speedy reduction by the mere liberation of a
parasite. And it has become a pest because man has provided, in his
own person or in that of his domestic animals or plants, a new and
susceptible source of food. Problems of this type are set to us by
malaria, spread by indigenous mosquitoes; human sleeping sickness
and nagana disease of cattle, transmitted by tsetse-flies • plague, de-
pendent for its spread upon the ubiquitous rat. In Africa, in the
British colonies alone, areas aggregating many times the size of

294 JULIAN HUXLEY

Great Britain are infested by tsetse, and so made uninhabitable by
any native population save hunting nomads ; since all settled native
culture involves the keeping of cattle. In some places the issue is
whether man or the fly shall dominate the country; at the present
moment the fly's domination in Tanganyika is twice the size of
man's. The disease-agents which it transmits — the blood-parasites
called trypanosomes — live normally in the blood of game and other
wild animals and do them no harm, since host and parasite have
become mutually adapted through millennia of selective adjustment;
but man and his beasts are new hosts, and are without any such adap-
tive resistance. In such a case the best remedy seems to be to alter
the whole environment in such a way that the tsetse can no longer
happily live in it. Most tsetse-flies live in bush country. They
cannot exist either in quite open country or in cultivated land or in
dense woodland or forest. So that either wholesale clearing or
afforestation may get rid of them. Or it may be possible that a
change of conditions will favor one of the local parasites and so
bring about a new balance between the fly and its enemies. And by
studying the precise habits of the creature, efficient methods of
trapping may be devised.

That pests of this nature can cease to be serious is shown by the
history of malaria and of plague. In various parts of Europe and
America, these diseases, once serious, have wholly or virtually died
out. And this has happened through a change in human environ-
ment and human habits. Take plague. Modern man builds better
houses, clears away more garbage, segregates cases of infectious dis-
eases, is less tolerant of dirt and parasites and, in fine, lives in such
a way that his life is not in such close contact with that of rats.
The result has been that rats have fewer chances of transmitting
plague to man, and that the disease, if once transmitted, has less
chance of spreading. With regard to malaria, agricultural drainage,
cleanliness, and better general resistance have in many places done
as much or more than deliberate anti-mosquito campaigns to reduce
or banish the disease.

So, too, typhus disappears with the spread of cleanliness, typhoid
with the arrival of a good water supply: and tuberculosis is more
likely to be reduced by changed habits as regards fresh air, nourish-
ing diet, and the public attitude to clean milk than by direct attack
upon the tubercle bacillus.

All the methods of which I have spoken have this in common —

BIOLOGY AND OUR FUTURE WORLD 295

that they attempt to break the power of a pest by altering the rest of
the environment, by interfering directly or indirectly with the bal-
ances of existing nature so that the conditions were no longer so
favorable for the obnoxious species.

But we could attack the problem from another angle. We could
alter the very nature of nature, changing the balance not by chang-
ing the conditions, but by changing the inherent qualities of the
organisms involved. For instance, instead of trying to attack a pest
by means of introducing enemies, or altering the environment in
which it has to carry on its operations, we can often deliberately
breed stocks which shall be resistant to the attacks of the pest. Thus
we can now produce relatively rust-proof wheat; and the Dutch
have given us spectacular examples of what can be accomplished by
the thoroughgoing application of Mendelian methods, by crossing
a high-yielding but disease-susceptible sugar cane with a related wild
species which is disease-resistant and, in spite of the fact that the
wild parent contains no trace of sugar, extracting from the cross
after a few generations a disease-resistant plant with an exceptionally
high yield of sugar.

Ecology here joins hands with genetics. And genetics offers the
prospect of the most radical transformations of our environment.
Cows or sheep, rubber-plants or beets represent from one aspect just
so many living machines, designed to transform raw material into
finished products available for man's use. And their machinery can
be improved. Modern wheats yield several times as much per acre
as the unimproved varieties grown by early and primitive agricul-
turalists; and of late years, through the deliberate breeding of new
types, the range of its successful cultivation has been extended nearly
a hundred miles nearer the pole, and far into areas previously con-
sidered semi-desert.

Modern cows grow about twice as fast as the cattle kept by
semi-savage tribes, and when they are grown produce two or three
times as much milk in a year. This has thrown a new strain on
the pastures upon which they feed ; for if the cow eventually draws
its nourishment out of the soil, and if the animal machine for utiliz-
ing grass is improved, the plant machine which is responsible for the
first stage of the process, of working up raw materials out of earth
and air, must be improved correspondingly. Accordingly research
is actively in progress not only to discover the best fertilizers for
grass but to manufacture new breeds of grass which shall be as

296 JULIAN HUXLEY

much more efficient than ordinary grass as a modern dairy beast is
than the aboriginal cow.

Of course, if we choose to give rein to our speculative fancy, there
is hardly a limit to the goals to be set to deliberate breeding. Evolu-
tion is one long sermon on the text of the infinite plasticity of living
matter. Temperament as well as anatomy, habits as well as struc-
ture, can be molded by selection. We can breed out high-thyroid
and low-thyroid strains of doves, or tame and savage strains of
rats, which depend on clear-cut Mendelian differences as much as
do blue-eyed or brown-eyed strains of human beings, or the tall and
dwarf pea-plants of Mendel himself. If we wished, we could un-
doubtedly inflict upon other felines what we have already inflicted
upon a number of breeds of domestic cat — namely, placid amiability
in place of spit-fire ferocity; and we could obtain tigers which in
actual fact, and not only in Mr. Belloc's verse, were "kittenish and
mild." But such speculations belong to the remoter future; and I
leave my readers to pursue them in the pages of Mr. Wells's Men
Like Gods or Mr. Stapledon's First and Last Men. They serve
to remind us, however, in moments of discouragement in our more
immediate and pedestrian tasks, of the possibilities that do exist, and
of the folly of impatience in a world which achieves its real results
not in decades but in millennia.

If I have chosen to concentrate largely upon the subject of pests,
it is because it brings out so clearly the intricate interrelationships
of what we usually call the balances of nature and the possibility
of striking achievements provided we build up the ecological science
which alone can give us the necessary knowledge. There are plenty
of other topics which could as fruitfully have been explored. Selec-
tive breeding I have just touched upon. I have hardly mentioned
the sea, although it covers three-fifths of the earth's surface and is
inhabited in three dimensions instead of only two like the land.
With the invention by Professor Hardy of Hull of the continuous
plankton recorder, we now can get a quantitative knowledge of the
floating microscopic plants and animals that are at the basis of all
the food-economics of the sea ; with its aid we could and should pre-
pare a map of the sea, analogous to a vegetation map of the earth,
showing the zoning of the raw materials available for fish and
whales and of other larger and more humanly interesting life.

Then many microscopic forms of life themselves produce valuable
materials ; we could begin the deliberate cultivation of useful species

BIOLOGY AND OUR FUTURE WORLD 297

of diatoms or filamentous algae or protophyta with a view eventually
to growing them on a large scale in enclosed bays or arms of the
sea.

Again, now that Baly has been able to produce sugar (albeit only
a trace) out of nothing but water, salts, air, and light, we can look
forward to steady progress in the direct synthesis of food-stuffs from
inorganic matter. But progress is bound to be slow, and meanwhile
we can set our existing methods in order by not wasting any of the
essential raw materials used in nature's way of food manufacture
by the agency of green plants. At the moment the world is squan-
dering its capital of available phosphorus and nitrogen certainly as
fast as Great Britain is spending her accumulated financial capital.
The chief way in which we waste it is by discharging our sewage
into the sea, whence but little material ever returns to land. Nitro-
gen can be replaced out of the unlimited resources in the atmosphere
now that we have found how to tap those resources and turn them
into available form. But there appears to be no reserve source of
phosphorus: unless we want our descendants to starve, we must
plan the conservation of this essential element.

These few examples must suffice to show the kind of control
which man is just realizing he could exert over his environment.
But they are enough to give us a new picture — the picture of a
world controlled by man. It will never be fully controlled, for
man cannot prevent earthquakes or eruptions, control the seasons or
the length of day, change the climate of the poles, stop hurricanes
or ocean-currents, or tap the resources of the ocean floor; but just
as the control exercised by man to-day is far greater than that ex-
erted by any other animal species, so the future control of man will
enormously exceed his present powers; and even where he does not
control, he will often within limits be regulating or guiding the
course of nature ; and where he does not guide, he will at least be
exploiting in a conscious and deliberate way. The world will be
parcelled out into what is needed for crops, what for forests, what
for gardens and parks and games, what for the preservation of wild
nature ; what grows on any part of the land's surface will grow there
because of the conscious decision of man ; and many kinds of animals
and plants will owe not merely the fact that they are allowed to
grow and exist, but their characteristics and their very nature, to
human control.

298 JULIAN HUXLEY

The sea will be mapped in new ways, exploited scientifically with-
out waste, and much of it almost certainly will be farmed or culti-
vated as we cultivate the land, to give a larger yield. And disease-
germs, pests, noxious weeds and vermin will be in large measure
abolished or at least under the thumb of a scientific humanity.

SCIENCE AND CULTURE1

JOHN R. MURLIN

"ON THE truth of nature," declared Sir Francis Bacon over 300
years ago, "we shall build a system for the general amelioration of
mankind." Bacon was voicing the first significant dissent from the
old authoritarianism which had come down from Aristotle. "Let
us look at the facts and then draw our conclusions," said Bacon,
and while he was writing on the inductive method Harvey was
putting it into practise in his demonstration of the circulation of
the blood, "on the truth of nature." Descartes, having set analyti-
cal geometry on its conquering way 50 years later, exclaimed:
"When we know the force and action of fire, water, air, the stars,
the heavens and all other objects as we now know the various
trades, we shall make ourselves masters and possessors of life. . . .
This will not be solely for the pleasure of enjoying with ease . . .
the good things of the world (he continues), but principally for the
preservation and improvement of human health which is both
the foundation of all other goods and the means of strengthening
the human spirit." By a slight paraphrasis we may find in Des-
cartes' words an outline of the great services of science during
these 300 years: (i) contributing to the ease and comfort and
convenience of life; (2) the improvement of human health; and
(3) strengthening the human spirit. Does any one doubt the first
of these great services? Let him look back only a generation to
kerosene lamps, wood stoves, horse and buggy transportation. Or
the second? Let him recall the typhoid fever epidemics of only
30 years ago — the last one in Philadelphia occurred while I was
there as a student in 1900; the enormous mortality from tubercu-
losis only twenty years ago; the ravages of rickets in children of
the tenements only ten years ago — all these and many other dis-
eases either wholly brought under control, to remain so (if we
remain civilized), or rapidly yielding to the science of prevention

1 From Science, July 27, 1934. Reprinted by permission of the author and
the Science Press.

299

300 JOHN R. MURLIN

and treatment. True, there is much for medical science yet to
do. Cancer, influenza and pneumonia remain unconquered, but
there is definite hope in the case of pneumonia at least, and scores
of scientific men are concentrating on cancer. Nobody doubts that
the means of prevention or cure some day will be found. . . .

My main theme has to do with the third great service of science,
to strengthen the human spirit. Here lies the realm of true cul-
ture. Suppose we accept the definition of culture which was first
given, I believe, by Matthew Arnold: Culture is the criticism of
life, that is, criticizing life so as to choose what is worth while and
eliminate that which is not. Without regard to material welfare
what can these young men and young women of Ursinus gain from
science that will strengthen this kind of a life? Three sources of
strength at least. The first is confidence that the solution of life's
problems lies in the use of reason, not passion, however lofty, nor
propaganda, however clever. What better method of gaining con-
fidence in the human mind than constant contact with the great
masters of science who have achieved greatly with their minds.
There is nothing so good as example in the application of common
sense, and science, said Huxley, is only trained and organized
common sense.

Observe Harvey laboriously studying the valves of all the veins
of the body. All, without exception, open toward the heart. What
could it mean but that the blood flows through the veins toward
the heart? He grasped the blood vessels between his fingers on
one side of a beating heart; the heart failed to fill. He grasped
them on the other side; the heart failed to empty. What could
it mean save that the first set of vessels furnishes blood to the
heart; the second set receives it from the heart? Finally he placed
a light bandage about the arm, the hand became warm and suffused
with blood; he drew the bandage tight and the hand became cold
and pale. What could it mean save that the superficial veins com-
pressed by the light bandage carry blood up the arm from the
hand, and the deep-lying artery, compressed only by the tight
bandage, carries blood down the arm to the hand. Putting all these
observations together, what could be the common-sense meaning
save that the blood circulates round and round, ceaselessly flowing.
Now perfectly clear to us, these matters once were completely
obscured in uncertainty, because nobody until Harvey had the
audacity to question the ancient doctrines of Aristotle and Galen,

SCIENCE AND CULTURE 301

to trust his own senses and draw his own perfectly obvious com-
mon-sense conclusions. Can you imagine how that triumph strength-
ened the human spirit, gave it courage to seek the truth of nature
at first hand?

For an entirely different picture of human audacity and triumph
of mind observe Newton weighing the moon. The story as told
by Voltaire, you remember, is that seeing an apple fall from a
tree, Newton was led to wonder if the same force which pulls
the apple to the earth may not extend its influence as well into
great distances, and apply, for example, to the moon, or possibly
to the still more distant heavenly bodies. Obviously, said Newton,
some force pulls the moon constantly toward the earth; otherwise
it would fly off at a tangent, as a piece of mud flies off a carriage
wheel, and it would never return. But it does return every 28
days.

The thought which came to his mind was this: Let me make a
diagram illustrating the orbital course of the moon for a given
period of time — say one minute. I shall then find that the moon
departs from a straight line by a measurable distance; that is to
say, it is pulled toward the earth by an amount which represents
the difference between its observed position and the position it
would have had, if its course were tangential. That difference,
that fall every minute should agree with the law of inverse squares
as do objects near the earth. The problem is a perfectly simple
one which any freshman who knows his trigonometry can do.
Newton undertook this calculation of the moon's fall, as he called
it, first in 1666 and found, using the values then available for the
moon's distance and the earth's radius, that the moon should fall
toward the earth 13 feet every minute. On the supposition that
the force of gravity decreases inversely as the square of the dis-
tance which Newton had found to be true for falling bodies at
the surface of the earth, the fall should have been a little over
15 feet. I have known a good many freshmen who would let it
go at that. The agreement was not good enough for a Newton
and the problem never wholly escaped from his mind. Sixteen
years later, upon learning that a French astronomer, Picard, had
made more accurate measurements of the earth's dimensions (find-
ing, for example, that i° of the earth's meridian was actually 69.1
miles instead of 60 miles, which was the value Newton had used
to get the radius), he at once took up again the problem of the

302 JOHN R. MURLIN

falling moon. As he proceeded with his calculations he became
more and more certain that this time the calculated displacement
would agree with his law of inverse squares. The story goes, you
remember, he was so completely overwhelmed with emotion that
he was forced to ask a friend to complete the calculation. Can
one imagine that emotion? For the first time the human mind
had demonstrated to itself the obedience of a heavenly body to
the same law that governs the falling of an apple from a tree.
Newton saw that this same law probably compelled all heavenly
bodies to their orbits as, indeed, was subsequently proved. What
an uplift to the human spirit ! LaGrange, who frequently asserted
that Newton was the greatest genius that ever lived, used to add,
and the most fortunate, for nobody ever again could be the first
to set the world in order." The reflective mind captures the truth.
Newton's mind by previous training and reflection was prepared
for the incident of the falling apple. He himself tells us he was
led to formulate the law of gravitation by "intending" his mind
steadily to the problem for long hours at a time.

The story of Harvey's and Newton's discoveries illustrates early
but outstanding successes of what we call to-day the research mind.
Starting with an observation which may have been accidental or
the result of mere curiosity, the research mind, unlike the ordinary
mind, is compelled by some inner feeling of dissatisfaction to re-
peat and then to reflect upon the observation until an explanation
is suggested. This may lead to experiment as in Harvey's case
or to mathematical search for proof as in Newton's. Once con-
viction of a new truth is reached, clearness and forcefulness of
presentation and courage in its defense bring the reward of
recognition.

Seen from our present position, what made Harvey's and New-
ton's discoveries in their respective fields stand out like beacons on
the dark coast of ignorance was the completeness of their proofs.
When either of them had finished with a subject there was no
longer any room for reasonable doubt.

We move forward 200 years. We are now at the beginning of
the modern period of experimentation in biological science. Ob-
servations without number have been recorded, and Darwin has
used many of them to prove that new species arise from old. If we
wish to know how such a thing as the origin of new species could
occur we must resort to experimentation. Incidentally, the new

SCIENCE AND CULTURE 303

science of genetics is now ready to prove to you, not only that new
species do occur, but how. If Bryan had lived only a few years
more his challenge to the biologist to show him a single new
species could have been answered with a number of them, produced
in the laboratory or the experimental field outdoors.

Observe the experimentalist at work. Let me give you two illus-
trations from France — Claude Bernard, the greatest physiologist
of his time and founder of experimental medicine, and Louis
Pasteur, the great chemist, biologist and founder, with Koch, of
the science of bacteriology. Bernard was a man of marvelous
skill in operative procedures. But he was much more, and we are
not interested so much in his hands as in his mind. Let us see
how his mind worked. As he himself has told us, "To the observer
brooding over the phenomena which he has witnessed, there comes
the thought that if a certain state of things were supposed to exist or
a certain sequence of events were supposed to take place, the occur-
rence of the phenomena as witnessed would necessarily follow,"
and forthwith the scientific mind sets about to seek for evidence
that the supposed state of things does exist or the supposed sequence
of events does take place. "Observation starts an hypothesis and
experimentation tests whether the hypothesis be true."

Bernard himself one day observed that the blood of a dog coming
from the liver contained more sugar than the blood entering that
organ, although the dog had been fed no carbohydrate. How could
this be? The liver must produce sugar out of something else.
What could that substance be? Possibly meat — the hypothesis.
He feeds a dog on nothing but meat. Now no sugar at all is in
the alimentary tract, no sugar passing from it to the liver — the ex-
periment ; and here's the answer, much sugar still coming out of the
liver. The hypothesis is now a fact. The liver does produce sugar
from protein, and at once we have learned why the diabetic person
suffers emaciation, and a whole new field of chemical transforma-
tions in the body is opened up for further investigation. That
field we now call intermediary metabolism and it answers such
questions as these : how does the protein of the ox which you eat as
beefsteak get transformed into substance of your own muscle? One
crucial fact thoroughly proved and a thousand additional facts be-
come available ; they fall into line. Thus does knowledge grow and
become organized into science.

In 1879 Pasteur was engaged in the study of chicken cholera.

304 JOHN R. MURLIN

Returning from a vacation he found that some of his cultures of
the cholera organism had become sterile. He could not produce
the disease from them. About to throw away these old cultures, it
occurred to him that it might be well to see whether a fresh young
culture would produce the disease in chickens which resisted the
old culture. To his amazement they resisted, while other chickens
not treated with the old culture succumbed. With one blow not
only chicken cholera was controlled, but the great principle of
vaccination was explained. DuClaux, the distinguished pupil of
Pasteur, has written a book about him entitled "The History of a
Mind." "What secret instinct, what spirit of divination," asks
DuClaux, "impelled Pasteur to knock at this door which was wait-
ing to be opened ?" The answer is, the subconscious mind influenced
by the incessant ponderings which had been going on in the con-
scious realm, coupled with the power of imagination. As Pasteur
himself expresses the thought :

The illusions of the experimenter form a great part of his
power. These are the preconceived ideas which serve to
guide him. Many of them must vanish in the long path which
he must travel, but one fine day he discovers and proves that
some of them are adequate to the truth. Then he finds him-
self master of facts and of new principles, the applications of
which, sooner or later, bestow their benefits.

It should be our aim in our teaching to preserve the atmosphere
of the great minds of science, and we should not omit to study their
lives constantly. Not having time in the curriculum for this, it has
been our custom for many years to gather the staff and graduate
students at our house once a month for readings and discussion in
the history of science and particularly in the lives and works of the
great men of science. Confidence in these great minds, which have
known how to draw inference from demonstrated fact, how to
apply common sense, how to knock at doors ready to be opened, is
an essential part of the culture of modern education. For this is a
confidence each of us should have in his own mind.

The second source of strength to the human spirit which science
ought to furnish is the simple, unaffected pleasure of finding things
out for oneself. Put the question to any one of the great scientists
of the past, Why did you labor so long and so painfully at this
problem of yours? Hear Harvey's answer: "It is sweet not
merely to toil, but to grow weary, when the pains of discovering

SCIENCE AND CULTURE 305

are amply compensated by the pleasure of discovery." When
Pasteur separated from his mixture of tartaric acid crystals those
which had right-handed hemihedral facets from those which had
the left-handed and found that the former rotated polarized light
to the right and the latter rotated it to the left, just as he had
predicted, he received such a shock of pleasure that he left the
laboratory immediately, incapable of applying his eye again to the
polariscope. He was simply overwhelmed with joy. It was a
game — an intellectual contest with nature — he had put the ques-
tion in such a way that she was compelled to answer and to answer
in the way he had guessed. It was the joy of conquest.

Listen to Kepler when he had completed the evidence which
established his third law of planetary motion:

What I prophesied two-and-twenty years ago ... at length
I have brought to light and recognized its truth beyond my
most sanguine expectations. It is not 18 months since I got
the first glimpse of light, 3 months since the dawn, very few-
days since the unveiled sun burst upon me. Nothing holds me ;
I will indulge my sacred fury.

Again the joy of conquest by one's own strength. This is still
the attitude of the scientist. Dr. A. V. Hill, probably the greatest
living biophysicist, expressed it well a few years ago by saying that
men work at these problems mainly "because it is amusing." We
have encouraged our young men and women to rejoice in physical
conquest. Have we taught them to rejoice equally in mental con-
quest? Why not?

I have spoken of scientific research as a game. Our laboratories,
even the elementary laboratories, must be pervaded with the atmos-
phere of research. We must encourage the student to see for him-
self and reason from the observation to the explanation — for the
pure joy of arriving at the answer for himself — just as on the play-
ground, we encourage him to carry the ball, to sprint, pole vault,
himself. Here is Huxley's description of the great game:

The life, the fortune and the happiness of every one of us
depends on our knowing something of the rules of a game
infinitely more complicated than chess. It is a game which
has been played for untold ages, each man and womar of
us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own.
The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena

306 JOHN R. MURLIN

of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws
of nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us.
We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. But
we also know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake
or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man
who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort
of overflowing generosity with which the strong delight in
strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated — without
haste, but without remorse. My metaphor will remind you
of the famous picture in which a great painter has depicted
Satan playing at chess with man for his soul. Substitute
for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, strong angel who
is playing for love, . . . and would rather lose than win, and
I should accept it as an image of human life. Well, what I
mean by education is learning the rules of this mighty game.
In other words, education is the instruction of the intellect
in the laws of nature, under which name I include not merely
things and their forces but men and their ways.

And a little farther on it is added that "a liberal education should
teach us to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art." Pro-
fessor Archibald Henderson recently has expressed this thought
something as follows : "If art be defined as man's joy in the pursuit
of beauty, science is the expression of man's joy in the pursuit
of truth."

The third source of strength to the human spirit which may be
derived from science is the love of truth — not as something of one's
own to be defended and advocated, but as something universal,
belonging to all. Just as the player on a football team very prop-
erly takes pride in his own contribution, his higher motive is to win
for his college — something bigger than himself. So the scientist,
with a just pride in his own work and pardonable pleasure in win-
ning the game — the true scientist thinks mainly of establishing truth
for what good it may bring to his fellow man. Could Harvey
claim that the circulation of the blood was his own property ? Could
Newton secure a patent on the law of gravitation?

We are learning slowly that it doesn't matter whose truth it is
that prevails so much as it matters that we find truth which all
fair minds can accept. The depression from which we are begin-
ning to emerge has taught us that it is not important whether Demo-
cratic theories of government or Republican shall prevail — we are
concerned rather to find a plan which will work. What if it does

SCIENCE AND CULTURE 307

require some experimenting to find a method which shall bring
a fair share of prosperity to the farmer — nobody well trained in
science is afraid of an experiment as such — that's his everyday life.
All science to-day is experimental. Why should not the science
of government be experimental? The aim of the experiment in
chemistry, in physics, in biology is to bring out the truth. Train-
ing in any or all of these sciences should fit us the better to apply
any method no difference what its name, so long as it brings the
truth. "Truth," said Coleridge, "is the highest good man can
keep."

To be cultured one must be critical of life. To be justly critical
one must have confidence in one's own reason, must find pleasure
in working out one's own way of life and must prize the truth
above anything else.

THE SYRIAN CHRIST1

ABRAHAM MITRIE RIHBANY

JESUS CHRIST, the incarnation of the spirit of God, seer, teacher
of the verities of the spiritual life, and preacher of the fatherhood
of God and the brotherhood of man, is, in a higher sense, 'a man
without a country/ As a prophet and a seer Jesus belongs to all
races and all ages. Wherever the minds of men respond to simple
truth, wherever the hearts of men thrill with pure love, wherever
a temple of religion is dedicated to the worship of God and the serv-
ice of man, there is Jesus' country and there are his friends. There-
fore, in speaking of Jesus as the son of a certain country, I do
not mean in the least to localize his Gospel, or to set bounds and
limits to the flow of his spirit and the workings of his love.

Nor is it my aim in these papers to imitate the astute theologians
by wrestling with the problem of Jesus' personality. To me the
secret of personality, human and divine, is an impenetrable mystery.
My more modest purpose in this writing is to remind the reader
that, whatever else Jesus was, as regards his modes of thought and
life and his method of teaching, he was a Syrian of the Syrians.
According to authentic history Jesus never saw any other country
than Palestine. There he was born ; there he grew up to manhood,
taught his Gospel, and died for it.

It is most natural, then, that Gospel truths should have come
down to the succeeding generations — and to the nations of the West
— cast in Oriental moulds of thought, and intimately intermingled
with the simple domestic and social habits of Syria. The gold of
the Gospel carries with it the sand and dust of its original home.

From the foregoing, therefore, it may be seen that my reason
for undertaking to throw fresh light on the life and teachings of
Christ, and other portions of the Bible whose correct understanding
depends on accurate knowledge of their original environment, is

^rom the Atlantic Monthly^ March, 1916. Reprinted by permission of
the publishers.

308

THE SYRIAN CHRIST 309

not any claim on my part to great learning or a profound insight
into the spiritual mysteries of the Gospel. The real reason is rather
an accident of birth. From the fact that I was born not far rom
where the Master was born, and brought up under almost the
identical conditions under which He lived, I have an 'inside VKW*
of the Bible which, by the nature of things, a Westerner cannot
have. I know this, not from the study of the mutilated tablet.* of
the archaeologist and the antiquarian, precious as such discoveries
are, but from the simple fact that as a sojourner in this Western
world, whenever I open my Bible it reads like a letter from home.

Its unrestrained effusiveness of expression ; its vivid, almost flashy
and fantastic imagery; its naive narrations; the rugged unstudied
simplicity of its parables; its unconventional (and to the more
modest West rather unseemly) portrayal of certain human rela-
tions; as well as its all-permeating spiritual mysticism — so far as
these qualities are concerned, the Bible might all have been written
in my primitive village home, on the western slopes of Mount
Lebanon some thirty years ago.2

You cannot study the life of a people successfully from the out-
side. You may by so doing succeed in discerning the few funda-
mental traits of character in their local colors, and in satisfying your
curiosity with surface observations of the general modes of be-
havior; but the little things, the common things, those subtle con-
nectives in the social vocabulary of a people, those agencies which
are born and not made, and which give a race its rich distinctiveness,
are bound to elude your grasp. Social life, like biological life,
energizes from within, and from within it must be studied.

And it is those common things of Syrian life, so indissolubly in-
terwoven with the spiritual truths of the Bible, which cause the
Western readers of holy writ to stumble, and which rob those
truths for them of much of their richness. By sheer force of genius,
the aggressive, systematic Anglo-Saxon mind seeks to press into

8 1 do not mean to assert or even to imply that the Western world has
never succeeded in knowing the mind of Christ. Such an assertion would
do violent injustice, not only to the Occidental mind, but to the Gospel
itself as well, by making it an enigma, utterly foreign to the native spiritu-
ality of the majority of mankind. But what I have learned from intimate
associations with the Western mind, during almost} a score of years in
the American pulpit, is that, with the exception of the few specialists, it is
extremely difficult, if not impossible, for a people to understand fally a
literature which has not sprung from that people's own racial life. — The
Author.

3io ABRAHAM MITRIE RIHBANY

logical unity and creedal uniformity those undesigned, artless, and
most natural manifestations of Oriental life, in order to 'understand
the scriptures.'

'Yet show 1 unto you a more excellent way/ by personally
conducting you into the inner chambers of Syrian life, and showing
you, if I can, how simple it is for a humble fellow countryman of
Christ to understand those social phases of the scriptural passages
which so greatly puzzle the august minds of the West.

In the Gospel story of Jesus' life there is not a single incident
that is not in perfect harmony with the prevailing modes of thought
and the current speech of the land of its origin. I do not know how
many times I heard it stated in my native land and at our own
fireside that heavenly messengers in the forms of patron saints or
angels came to pious, childless wives, in dreams and visions, and
cheered them with the promise of maternity. It was nothing un-
common for such women to spend a whole night in a shrine
'wrestling in prayer/ either with the blessed Virgin or some other
saint, for such a divine assurance; and I remember a few of my
own kindred to have done so.

In a most literal sense we always understood the saying of the
psalmist, 'Children are a heritage from the Lord.' Above and
beyond all natural agencies, it was He who turned barrenness to
fecundity and worked the miracle of birth. To us every birth was
miraculous and childlessness an evidence of divine disfavor. From
this it may be inferred how tenderly and reverently agreeable to the
Syrian ear is the angel's salutation to Mary, 'Hail, thou that art
highly favored, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among
women ! — Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth
a son.'

A miracle? Yes. But a miracle means one thing to your
Western science, which seeks to know what nature is and does by
dealing with secondary causes, and quite another thing to an Ori-
ental, to whom God's will is the law and gospel of nature. In
times of intellectual trouble this man takes refuge in his all-embrac-
ing faith — the faith that to God all things are possible.

The Oriental does not try to meet an assault upon his belief in
miracles by seeking to establish the historicity of concrete reports

THE SYRIAN CHRIST 311

of miracles. His poetical, mystical temperament seeks its ends in
another way. Relying upon his fundamental faith in the omnip
otence of God, he throws the burden of proof upon his assailant
by challenging him to substantiate his denial of the miracles. So
did Paul (in the twenty-sixth chapter of the Book of Acts) put
his opponents at a great disadvantage by asking, 'VvThy shouM it
be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should rais« he
dead?'

But the story of Jesus' birth and kindred Bible records disclose
not only the predisposition of the Syrian mind to accept miracles
as divine acts, without critical examination, but also its attitude
toward conception and birth — an attitude which differs funda-
mentally from that of the Anglo-Saxon mind. With the feeling
of one who has been reminded of having ignorantly committed an
improper act, I remember the time when kind American friends
admonished me not to read from the pulpit such scriptural passages
as detailed the accounts of conception and birth, but only to allude
to them in a general way. I learned in a very short time to obey the
kindly advice, but it was a long time before I could swing my psy-
chology around and understand why in America such narratives
were so greatly modified in transmission.

The very fact that such stories are found in the Bible shows that
in my native land no such sifting of these narratives is ever under-
taken when they are read to the people. From childhood I had
been accustomed to hear them read at our church, related at the
fireside, and discussed reverently by men and women at all times
and places. There is nothing in the phraseology of such statements
which is not in perfect harmony with the common, everyday speech
of my people.

To the Syrians, as I say, 'children are a heritage from the Lord.'
From the days of Israel to the present time, barrenness has been
looked upon as a sign of divine disfavor, an intolerable calamity.
Rachel's cry, 'Give me children, or else I die,' does not exaggerate
the agony of a childless Syrian wife. When Rebecca was about to
depart from her father's house to become Isaac's wife, her mother's
ardent and effusively expressed wish for her was, 'Be thou the
mother of thousands, of millions.' This mother's last message to
her daughter was not spoken in a corner. I can see her following
the bride to the door, lifting her open palms and turning her face

312 ABRAHAM MITRIE RIHBANY

toward heaven, and making her affectionate petition in the hearing
of the multitude of guests, who must have echoed her words in
chorus.

In the congratulations of guests at a marriage feast the central
wish for the bridegroom and bride is invariably thus expressed:
'May you be happy, live long, and have many children!' And
what contrasts very sharply with the American reticence in such
matters is the fact that shortly after the wedding, the friends of the
young couple, both men and women, begin to ask them about their
'prospects' for an heir. No more does a prospective mother under-
take in any way to disguise the signs of the approaching event, than
an American lady to conceal her engagement ring. Much mirth
is enjoyed in such cases, also, when friends and neighbors, by con-
sulting the stars, or computing the number of letters in the names
of the parents and the month in which the miracle of conception is
supposed to have occurred, undertake to foretell whether the
promised offspring will be a son or a daughter. In that part of the
country where I was brought up, such wise prognosticators be-
lieved, and made us all believe, that if the calculations resulted in
an odd number the birth would be a son, but if in an even number,
a daughter, which, as a rule, is not considered so desirable.

Back of all these social traits and beyond the free realism of
the Syrian in speaking of conception and birth, lies a deeper fact.
To Eastern peoples, especially the Semites, reproduction in all the
world of life is profoundly sacred. It is God's life reproducing
itself in the life of man and in the living world below man ; there-
fore the evidences of this reproduction should be looked upon and
spoken of with rejoicing.

Notwithstanding the many and fundamental intellectual
changes which I have undergone in this country of my adoption, I
count as among the most precious memories of my childhood my
going with my father to the vineyard, just as the vines began to
'come out,' and hearing him say as he touched the swelling buds,
'Blessed be the Creator. He is the Supreme Giver. May He pro-
tect the blessed increase.' Of this I almost always think when I
read the words of the psalmist, 'The earth is the Lord's and the
fullness thereof !'

Now I do not feel at all inclined to say whether the undis-
guised realism of the Orientals in speaking of reproduction is better

THE SYRIAN CHRIST 313

than the delicate reserve of the Anglo-Saxons. In fact I have been
so reconstructed under Anglo-Saxon auspices as to feel that the ex-
cessive reserve of this race with regard to such things is not a
serious fault, but rather the defect of a great virtue. My purpose
is to show that the unreconstructed Oriental, to whom reproduction
is the most sublime manifestation of God's life, cannot see why
one should be ashamed to speak anywhere in the world of the fruits
of wedlock, of a 'woman with child.' One might as well be
ashamed to speak of the creative power as it reveals itself in the
gardens of roses and the fruiting trees.

Here we have the background of the stories of Sarah, when the
angel-guest prophesied fecundity for her in her old age: of Rebecca,
and the wish of her mother for her, that she might become 'the
mother of thousands'; of Elizabeth, when the 'babe leaped in her
womb,' as she saw her cousin Mary; and of the declaration of the
angel to Joseph's spouse, 'Thou shalt conceive in thy womb and
bring forth a son.'

Here it is explained, also, why upon the birth of a 'man-child/
well wishers troop into the house, — even on the very day of
birth, — bring their presents, and congratulate the parents on the
divine gift to them. It was because of this custom that those
strangers, the three 'Wise Men' and Magi of the Far East, were
permitted to come in and see the little Galilean family, while the
mother was yet in childbed. So runs the Gospel narrative: 'And
when they were come into the house, they saw the young child
with Mary his mother, and fell down and worshipped him: and
when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him
gifts, — gold, frankincense and myrrh.'

So also were the humble shepherds privileged to see the wondrous
child shortly after birth. 'And it came to pass, as the angels were
gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to an-
other, "Let us now go to Bethlehem, and see this thing which is
come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us." And
they came with haste, and found Mary and Joseph and the babe
lying in a manger/

In the twelfth verse of the second chapter of the Gospel of Saint
Luke, the English version says, 'And this shall be a sign unto you;
ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lyirg in a
manger.' Here the word clothes is somewhat misleading. The

3H ABRAHAM MITRIE RIHBANY

Arabic version gives a perfect rendering of the fact by saying, 'Ye
shall find a swaddled babe, laid in a manger.'

According to general Syrian custom, in earliest infancy a child
is not really clothed, it is only swaddled. Upon birth the infant
is washed in tepid water by the midwife, then salted, or rubbed
gently with salt pulverized in a stone mortar especially for the
occasion. (The salt commonly used in Syrian homes is coarse-
chipped.) Next the babe is sprinkled with rehan, — a powder
made of dried myrtle leaves, — and then swaddled.

The swaddle is a piece of stout cloth about a yard square, to
one corner of which is attached a long narrow band. The infant,
with its arms pressed close to its sides, and its feet stretched full
length and laid close together, is wrapped in the swaddle, and the
narrow band wound around the little body, from the shoulders to
the ankles, giving the little one the exact appearance of an
Egyptian mummy. Only a few of the good things of this mortal
life were more pleasant to me when I was a boy than to carry in
my arms a swaddled babe. The 'salted1 and 'peppered* little crea-
ture felt so soft and so light, and was so appealingly helpless, that
to cuddle it was to me an unspeakable benediction.

Such was the 'babe of Bethlehem* that was sought by the wise
men and the shepherds in the wondrous story of the Nativity.

And in describing such Oriental customs it may be significant
to point out that, in certain localities in Syria, to say to a person
that he was not 'salted* upon birth is to invite trouble. Only a
bendu, or the child of an unrecognized father, is so neglected.
And here may be realized the full meaning of that terrible arraign-
ment of Jerusalem in the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Ezekiel.
The Holy City had done iniquity, and therefore ceased to be the
legitimate daughter of Jehovah. So the prophet cries, 'The Lord
came unto me, saying, "Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her
abominations, and say, Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem;
Thy birth and thy nativity are of the land of Canaan; thy father
was an Amorite, and thy mother a Hittite. And as for thy nativity,
in the day thou wast born — neither wast thou washed in water to
supple3 thee ; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. No
eye pitied thee, to do any of these things for thee, to have com-
passion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the
loathing of thy person, in the day thou wast born." '
8 Cleanse in the Revised Version. — The Author.

THE SYRIAN CHRIST 313

And how natural to the thought of the East the story of the
'star' is ! To the Orientals 'the heavens declare the glory of God/
and the stars reveal many wondrous things to men. They are the
messengers of good and evil, and objects of the loftiest idealization,
as well as of the crudest superstitions.

I was brought up to believe that every human being had a star
in heaven which held the secret of his destiny and which watched
over him wherever he went. In speaking of an amiable person it
is said, 'His star is attractive' (nejmo jeddeeb). Persons love one
another when 'their stars are in harmony.' A person is in unfavor-
able circumstances when his star is in the sphere of 'misfortune*
(nehiss), and so forth. The stars indicated the time to us when
we were traveling by night, marked the seasons, and thus fulfilled
their Creator's purpose by serving 'for signs, and for seasons, and
for days and years.'

In every community we had 'star-gazers' who could tell each
person's star. We placed much confidence in such mysterious men,
who could 'arrest' an absent person's star in its course and learn
from it whether it was well or ill with the absent one.

Like a remote dream, it comes to me that as a child of about ten
I went out one night with my mother to seek a 'star-gazer' to locate
my father's star and question the shining orb about him. My
father had been away from home for some time, and owing to the
meagreness of the means of communication in that country, espe-
cially in those days, we had no news of him at all. During that
afternoon my mother said that she felt 'heavy-hearted' for no reason
that she knew; therefore she feared that some ill must have befallen
the head of our household, and sought to 'know' whether her fear
was well grounded. The 'star-arrester,' leaning against an aged
mulberry tree, turned his eyes toward the stellar world, while his
lips moved rapidly and silently as if he were repeating words of
awful import. Presently he said, 'I see him. He is sitting on a
cushion, leaning against the wall and smoking his narghile. There
are others with him, and he is in his usual health.' The man took
pains to point out the 'star' to my mother, who, after much sym-
pathetic effort, felt constrained to say that she did see what the

316 ABRAHAM MITRIE RIHBANY

star-gazer claimed he saw. But at any rate, mother declared that
she was no longer 'heavy-hearted/

In my most keen eagerness to see my father and his narghile in
the star, at least for mere intellectual delight, I clung to the arm
of the reader of the heavens like a frightened kitten, and insisted
upon 'seeing.' The harder he tried to shake me off, the deeper did
my organs of apprehension sink into his sleeve. At last the com-
bined efforts of my mother and the heir of the ancient astrologers
forced me to believe that I was 'too young to behold such sights.'

It was the excessive leaning of his people upon such practices
that led Isaiah to cry, 'Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy
counsels. Let now the astrologers, the star-gazers, the monthly
prognosticators, stand up and save thee from these things that shall
come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall
burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the
flames.'

Beyond all such crudities, however, lies the sublime and sustain-
ing belief that the stars are alive with God. The lofty strains of
such scriptural passages as the nineteenth Psalm and the beautiful
story of the star of Bethlehem, indicate that to the Oriental mind
the 'hosts of heaven' are no mere masses of dust, but the agencies
of the Creator's might and love. So the narrative of the Nativity
in our Gospel sublimates the beliefs of the Orientals about God's
purpose in those lights of the firmament, by making the guide of
the Wise Men to the birthplace of the Prince of Peace a great
star, whose pure and serene light symbolized the peace and holiness
which, in the 'fullness of time,' his kingdom shall bring upon the
earth.

Of Jesus' life between the period spoken of in the narrative of
the Nativity and the time when he appeared on the banks of the
Jordan, seeking to be baptized by John, the New Testament says
nothing. One single incident only is mentioned. When twelve
years old, the boy Jesus went with his parents on a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem. In this brief but significant record, of all the filial
graces which Jesus must have possessed one only is mentioned in
the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, where it is stated that

THE S^ HAN CHRIST 317

he went down to Nazareth with his parents 'and was subject unto
them.'

This seemingly casual remark is full of significance. With us
in Syria, ta'-at-el-walideen— obedience to parents — has always
been youth's crowning virtue. Individual initiative must not
overstep the boundary line of this grace. Only in this way the
patriarchal organization of the family can be kept intact. In my
boyhood days in that romantic country, whenever my father took
me with him on a Visit of homage* to one of the lords of the land,
the most fitting thing such a dignitary could do to me was to place
his hand upon my head and say with characteristic condescension,
'Bright boy, and no doubt obedient to your parents.'

The explanation of the origin of sin in the third chapter of
Genesis touches the very heart of this matter. The writer ascribes
the 'fall of man/ not to any act which was in itself really harmful,
but to disobedience. Adam was commanded by his divine parent
not to eat of the 'tree of knowledge of good and evil' ; but he did
eat, and consequently became a stranger to the blessings of his
original home.

This idea of filial obedience has been at once the strength and
weakness of Orientals. In the absence of the restraining interests of
a larger social life this patriarchal rule has preserved the cohesion
of the domestic and clannish group, and thus safeguarded for the
people their primitive virtues. On the other hand, it has served
to extinguish the spirit of progress, and has thus made Oriental
life a monotonous repetition of antiquated modes of thought.

And it was indeed a great blessing to the world when Jesus broke
away from mere formal obedience to parents, in the Oriental sense
of the word, and declared, 'Whosoever shall do the will of my
Father in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.'

Of Jesus' public ministry and his characteristics as an Oriental
teacher, I shall speak in later papers. The remainder of this article
must be devoted to a portrayal of the closing scenes in his personal
career. The events of the 'upper room' on Mount Zion, and of
Gethsemane, are faithful photographs of striking characteristics of
Syrian life.

The Last Supper was no isolated event in Syrian history. Its

3i8 ABRAHAM MITRIE RIHBANY

fraternal atmosphere, intimate associations, and sentimental inter-
course are such as characterize every such gathering of Syrian
friends, especially in the shadow of an approaching danger. From
the simple 'table manners' up to that touch of sadness and idealism
which the Master gave that meal, — bestowing upon it the sacri-
ficial character that has been its propelling force through the
ages, — I find nothing which is not in perfect harmony with what
takes place on such occasions in my native land. The sacredness
of the Last Supper is one of the emphatic examples of how Jesus'
life and words sanctified the commonest things of life. He was no
inventor of new things, but a discoverer of the spiritual significance
of things known to men to be ordinary.

The informal formalities of Oriental life are brimful of senti-
ment. The Oriental's chief concern in matters of conduct is not
the correctness of the technique, but the cordiality of the deed. To
the Anglo-Saxon the Oriental appears to be perhaps too cordial,
decidedly sentimental, and over-responsive to the social stimulus.
To the Oriental, on the other hand, the Anglo-Saxon seems in
danger of becoming an unemotional intellectualist.

Be that as it may, the Oriental is never afraid to 'let himself
go* and to give free course to his feelings. The Bible in general,
and such portions of it as the story of the Last Supper in particular,
illustrate this phase of Oriental life.

In Syria, as a general rule, the men eat their fraternal feasts
alone, as in the case of the Master and his disciples at the Last
Supper, when, so far as the record goes, none of the women fol-
lowers of Christ were present. They sit on the floor in something
like a circle, and eat out of one or a few large, deep dishes. The
food is lifted into the mouth, not with a fork or spoon, — except in
the case of liquid food, — but with small 'shreds' of thin bread.
Even liquid food is sometimes 'dipped up' with pieces of bread
formed like the bowl of a spoon. Here may be readily understood
Jesus' saying, 'He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the
same shall betray me.'

'Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of his disciples,
whom Jesus loved.' The posture of the 'beloved disciple/ John, —
so objectionable to Occidental taste, — is in perfect harmony with
Syrian customs. How often have I seen men friends in such an
attitude. There is not in it the slightest infringement of the rules
of propriety; the act was as natural to us all as shaking hands. The

THE SYRIAN CHRIST 319

practice is especially indulged in when intimate friends are about
to part from one another, as on the eve of a journey, or when
about to face a dangerous undertaking. They then sit with their
heads leaning against each other, or the one's head resting upon the
other's shoulder or breast.

They talk to one another in terms of unbounded intimacy and
unrestrained affection. The expressions, 'My brother,' 'My eyes/
'My soul,' 'My heart,' and the like, form the life-centres of the
conversation. 'My life, my blood are for you; take the very sight
of my eyes, if you will !' And lookers-on say admiringly, 'Behold,
how they love one another! By the name of the Most High, they
are closer than brothers.'

Was it, therefore, strange that the Master, who knew the
deepest secret of the divine life, and whose whole life was a living
sacrifice, should say to his intimate friends, as he handed them the
bread and the cup on that momentous night, 'Take, eat; this is
my body'; and 'Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood'? Here
again the Nazarene charged the ordinary words of friendly inter-
course with rare spiritual richness and made the common speech
of his people express eternal realities.

The treachery of Judas is no more an Oriental than it is a human
weakness. Traitors can claim neither racial nor national refuge.
They are fugitives in the earth. But in the Judas episode is in-
volved one of the most tender, most touching acts of Jesus' whole
life. To one familiar with the customs of the East, Jesus' handing
the 'sop' to his betrayer was an act of surpassing beauty and signi-
ficance. In all my life in America I have not heard a preacher
interpret this simple deed, probably because of lack of knowledge
in its meaning in Syrian social intercourse.

'And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot,
the son of Simon.' At Syrian feasts, especially in the region where
Jesus lived, such sops are handed to those who stand and serve the
guests with wine and water. But in a more significant manner
those morsels are exchanged by friends. Choice bits of food are
handed to friends by one another, as signs of close intimacy. It
is never expected that any person would hand such a sop to one
for whom he cherishes no friendship.

I can never contemplate this act in the Master's story without
thinking of 'the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.' To the
one who carried in his mind and heart a murderous plot against

320 ABRAHAM MITRIE RIHBANY

the loving Master, Jesus handed the sop of friendship, the morsel
which is never offered to an enemy. The rendering of the act in
words is this : 'Judas, my disciple, I have infinite pity for you. You
have proved false, you have forsaken me in your heart; but I will
not treat you as an enemy, for I have come, not to destroy, but
to fulfill. Here is my sop of friendship, and "that thou doest, do
quickly."'

Apparently Jesus1 demeanor was so cordial and sympathetic that,
as the evangelist tells us, 'Now no man at the table knew for what
intent he spoke this unto him. For some of them thought, because
Judas had the bag, that Jesus had said unto him, "Buy those things
that we have need of against the feast," or that he should give
something to the poor.'

Thus in this simple act of the Master, so rarely noticed by
preachers, we have perhaps the finest practical example of 'Love
your enemies' in the entire Gospel.

Is it therefore to be wondered at that in speaking of Judas, the
writer of St. John's gospel says, 'And after the sop Satan entered
into him'? For, how can one who is a traitor at heart reach for
the gift of true friendship without being transformed into the very
spirit of treason?

Again, Judas' treasonable kiss in Gethsemane was a perversion
of an ancient, deeply cherished and universally prevalent Syrian
custom. In saluting one another, especially after having been
separated for a time, men friends of the same social rank kiss one
another on both cheeks, sometimes with very noisy profusion.
When they are not of the same social rank, the inferior kissses
the hand of the superior, while the latter at least pretends to kiss
his dutiful friend upon the cheek. So David and Jonathan 'kissed
one another, until David exceeded.' Paul's command, 'Salute one
another with a holy kiss,' so scrupulously disobeyed by Occidental
Christians, is characteristically Oriental. As a child I always felt
a profound reverential admiration for that unreserved outpouring
of primitive affections, when strong men 'fell upon one another's
neck' and kissed, while the women's eyes swam in tears of joy.
The passionate, quick, and rhythmic exchange of affectionate words
of salutation and kisses sounded, with perhaps a little less harmony,
like an intermingling of vocal and instrumental music.

So Judas, when 'forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, "Hail,
Master," and kissed him,' invented no new sign by which to point

THE SYRIAN CHRIST 321

Jesus out to the Roman soldiers, but employed an old custom for
the consummation of an evil design. Just as Jesus glorified the
common customs of his people by using them as instruments of
love, so Judas degraded those very customs by wielding them as
weapons of hate.

Perhaps nowhere else in the New Testament do the fundamental
traits of the Oriental nature find so clear an expression as in this
closing scene of the Master's life. The Oriental dependence, to
which the world owes the loftiest and tenderest scriptural passages,
finds here its most glorious manifestations.

As I have already intimated, the Oriental is never afraid to 'let
himself go/ whether in joy or sorrow, and to give vent to his
emotions. It is of the nature of the Anglo-Saxon to suffer in
silence and to kill when he must, with hardly a word of complaint
upon his lips or a ripple of excitement on his face. He disdains
asking for sympathy. His severely individualistic tendencies and
spirit of endurance convince him that he is 'able to take care of
himself.' During my early years in this country the reserve of
Americans in times of sorrow and danger, as well as in times of
joy, was to me not only amazing, but appalling. Not being as yet
aware of their inward fire and intensity of feeling, held in check
by a strong bulwark of calm calculation, as an unreconstructed
Syrian I felt prone to doubt whether they had any emotions to
speak of.

It is not my promise here to undertake a comparative critical
study of these opposing traits, but to state that, for good or evil,
the Oriental is preeminently a man who craves sympathy, yearns
openly and noisily for companionship, and seeks help and support
outside himself. Whatever disadvantages this trait may involve,
it has been the one supreme qualification that has made the Oriental
the religious teacher of the whole world. It was his childlike
dependence on God that gave birth to the twenty-third and fifty-
first Psalms, and made the Lord's Prayer the universal petition of
Christendom. It was also this dependence on companionship, hu-
man and divine, which inspired the great commandments, Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor
as thyself.'

Now it is in the light of this fundamental Oriental trait that
we must view Christ's utterances at the Last Supper and in Geth-
semane. The record tells us that while at the Supper he said to his

322 ABRAHAM MITRIE RIHBANY

disciples, 'With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you
before I suffer,' — or, as the marginal note has it, 'I have heartily
desired/ and so forth, which brings it nearer the original text.
Again, 'He was troubled in spirit, and testified and said, "Verily,
verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me." "This is
my body. . . This is my blood. . . Do this in remembrance of me." '
We must seek the proper setting for these utterances, not merely
in the upper room in Zion, but in the deepest tendencies of the
Oriental mind.

And the climax is reached in the dark hour of Gethsemane, the
hour of intense suffering, imploring need, and ultimate triumph in
Jesus' surrender to the Father's will. How true to that demonstra-
tive Oriental nature is the scriptural record, 'And being in an agony
he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops
of blood falling down to the ground.'

The faithful and touching realism of the record here is an ex-
ample of the childlike responsiveness of the Syrian nature to feelings
of sorrow, no less striking than the experience itself. It seems to
me that if an Anglo-Saxon teacher in similar circumstances had
ever allowed himself to agonize and to sweat 'as it were great drops
of blood,' his chronicler in describing the scene would have safe-
guarded the dignity of his race by simply saying that the distressed
teacher was Visibly affected'!

The darkness deepened and the Master 'took with him Peter
and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very
heavy. Then saith he unto them, "My soul is exceedingly sorrow-
ful, even unto death ; tarry ye here, and watch with me." ' Three
times did the Great Teacher utter that matchless prayer, whose
spirit of fear as well as of trust vindicates the doctrine of the
humanity of God and the divinity of man as exemplified in the
person of Christ: *O, my Father, if.it be possible, let this cup pass
from me : nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt !'

The sharp contrast between the Semitic and the Anglo-Saxon
temperament has led some unfriendly critics of Christ to state
very complacently and confidently that he 'simply broke down
when the critical hour came.' In this assertion I find a very pro-
nounced misapprehension of the facts. If my knowledge of the
traits of my own race is to be relied on, then in trying to meet this
assertion I feel that I am entitled to the consideration of one who
speaks with something resembling authority.

THE SYRIAN CHRIST 323

The simple fact is that while in Gethsemane, as indeed every-
where else throughout his ministry, Jesus was not in the position of
one trying to 'play the hero.' His companions were his intimate
earthly friends and his gracious heavenly Father, and to them he
spoke as an Oriental would speak to those dear to Ivm, — just as
he felt, with not a shadow of show or sham. His words were nc :
those of weakness and despair, but of confidence and affection, fiie
love of his friends and the lave of his Father in heaven were his
to draw upon in his hour of trial, wi:h not the slightest artificial
reserve. How much better and happier this world would be if we
all dealt with one another and with God in the warm, simple, and
pure love of Christ!

As the life and words of Christ amply testify, the vision of the
Oriental has been to teach mankind not science, logic, or juris-
prudence, but a simple, loving, childlike faith in God. Therefore,
before we can fully know our Master as the cosmopolitan Christ,
we must first know him as the Syrian Christ.

THE CATHOLIC FAITH1

SIGRID UNDSET

"EVANGELICAL conversion has in well-marked cases as its normal
and expected resultant a state of assurance, Catholic conversion a
state of compunction. If you address the question 'Are you saved ?'
to the average Protestant who has experienced 'conversion/ he will
have no hesitation in answering affirmatively, but no Catholic
would dare say more than he hoped to be. The two answers are
not merely expressions of dogmatic prejudices; they have a psychic
value of their own. The Protestant feels that he is saved, that he
is conscious of a state of assurance, of unbounded confidence. He
theologizes the cause and end of this assurance and this confidence;
that is challengeable interpretation, but he feels and is acutely
aware of these affective states. He is 'saved* psychologically, for he
feels safe. The dominant feeling of the Catholic, on the other
hand, is sorrow and hope, the warp and woof of compunction.
Dogma apart, he cannot truthfully answer the question, 'Are you
saved?' in the affirmative, for his sins are ever before him. That
this is a normal psychic state in the truly converted Catholic, no
reader of the lives of the saints, no student of The Imitation of
Christ can venture to deny. It was in no perfunctory ceremonial
sense that St. Theresa speaks of herself as a great sinner, and is
always recalling her sins to the no little scandal of many good tepid
worldly Catholics. She who had led a singularly blameless life is
at one with such great penitents like St. Augustine in the perma-
nence of her compunction. Is it not playing with words then, to
regard these two species of conversion as one and the same ? They
are manifestly two distinct psychoses."2

The Catholic feeling of insecurity, however, has reference not
to God but to man himself. The Catholic church has no room for
varying conceptions of God, or of the divine-human nature of
Christ, or of the motherhood of the Virgin Mary. For the church,

aFrom Katholsk Propaganda, Oslo, 1927. Translated by Gerda Oker-
lund with permission of the author.

2 John Howley, M.A., Psychology and Mystical Experience, London, 1920.

324

THE CATHOLIC FAITH 325

Christ is himself the way to the kingdom of God, and His death
upon the cross the secret which opens the Kingdom of God for the
race of Adam ; His blood really does wash the sinner free from his
sins; His body is really the nourishment upon which the faithful
live. Whoever does not believe this is not a Catholic, but something
else. If he is a priest, the church maintains that he is not its priest;
if he is a layman, the churches refuses him the sacraments because
it believes that the sacraments harm rather than help the unbe-
liever; the church excommunicates him, that is, it breaks off their
relations. And the Catholic will maintain that it is both the duty
and the right of the church to do so. If Jesus Christ is the Word
incarnate who was in the beginning, the way, the truth, and the
life, who has promised to be with his own all days even to the con-
summation of the world, who said to his apostles, "He who heareth
you heareth me," — then the essence of the church is infallibility,
the infallibility of God.

But redemption is a drama enacted between two. Within the
boundless personality of God rests the human personality, a tiny
speck in the infinite, as the earth itself is a mere speck in that
portion of the universe which our consciousness can grasp. Com-
pared with the infinite, earth, humankind, and atoms are about
equally small. With the same sense for dimensions of space and
time with which man comprehends the distances between the heav-
enly bodies, he understands his own minuteness in comparison to
Sirius, the age of the earth and the relative insignificance of his
own span of life; and he senses, if he does not understand, such con-
ceptions as eternity — the infinity of space and time. . . .

Christianity, in common with other religions, declares that this
unseen infinity is God: everything visible or invisible He has
created out of himself, and everything rests in Him. As a separate
act He created man in His image; according to Catholic theology,
as white light is broken by a prism, so God's simple nature is
broken into human powers. (The image is incomplete, for, as St.
Thomas Aquinas bids us remember, all attempts to explain God
are limited by the limitations of human nature. All talk about the
finger of God, the shadow of God's wings, and the anger of God
are unavoidable anthropomorphisms.) . . .

It is the Catholic belief that an act of will on the part of man is
absolutely essential if he is to be saved. The will is the very

326 SIGRID UNDSET

center of the individual character. Together with external capaci-
ties, such as intellect, emotion, and imagination, it forms a whole,
just as the glowing center of the earth together with mountains,
soil, water, and vegetation form a globe. Of his own will man
turned away from God; of his own will he may return to God.,
God pours out his saving grace upon us out of love alone and with-
out our having in the least degree merited or deserved it. ... But
this grace through Christ man must "receive" as St. John
expresses it.

The battle between the Church and the men of the reformation
was in reality fought over the question : .What is man's will ? What
is it worth? The will is free, says the church; the will is bound,
said Luther. God has foreknowledge of who is to be saved and
who is to be lost. According to Calvinism, God has this fore-
knowledge because He has Himself chosen some men for eternal
light and others for eternal fire. According to the Church, God does
not desire the death of any sinner, but he has from eternity known
each man's will better than that man does himself. It is true that
for the tamed men of our time the question thereupon arises, why
then did God create us? Scholasticism answers boldly: that we
may realize ourselves. A reading of Dante's Inferno will explain a
little more clearly what scholasticism meant. In the Inferno,
Farinata degli Uberti is still Farinata the proud. — The conclusion
is therefore forced upon us: all that about the sale of indulgences
was, for the most part, merely the pretext, and the battle against
the papacy was the consequence. But if the numerous sects which
have arisen as further developments of the work of Luther and
Calvin have forgotten what the issue was over which the battle was
fought, Rome still remembers and maintains its position: no man
is saved unless he himself wills to be saved ; no man is lost unless
he wills to be lost rather than let his will fall in harmony with the
will of God.

Arguing from his own premises Luther maintains that human
nature was so corrupted by original sin that it lies like a disin-
tegrating piece of wood; it becomes enveloped in grace. The
merits of Christ cover the sinner with forgiveness of his sins if only
he has faith. . . . To find any consistently sustained principle in
Luther's writings other than the attack upon the freedom of the
will and the divinely instituted doctrinal authority is a doubtful

THE CATHOLIC FAITH 327

puzzle, and Protestants and Catholics will never reach the same
solution.

The teaching of the Church as to original sin is that it is a kind
of inherited myopia of the soul. Man was created for blesssed-
ness — for the sight of God as He is. But with the fall of man
he lost this supernatural power of sight. In the supernatural
world, which has now become an invisible world for him, he feels
his way like a blind man. Not everything he has felt is a mistake ;
it is only incompletely comprehended. When "the morning sun
visited us from on high," men knew what they had touched in the
darkness; venomous monsters as well as flowers and stones that
gleam like jewels in the light. This explains the position of Catho-
licism toward paganism : why, as non-Catholics maintain, it has ac-
cepted pagan elements. In the country surrounding the newly
founded Rome, the peasants worshiped the benevolent powers which
they felt to be watching their children. What the powers were
that they had sensed in the darkness they did not know until our
Lord gave them the radiant solution: they are your good angels.
Our forefathers made offerings to their forefathers in the grave as
nearly all early peoples have done. The church asserts that to do
so was right. Death does not destroy the fellowship between
friends and kindred, but it is a fellowship in prayer and in the
worship of God ; of food and drink the dead have no need. . . .

But it follows from this blindness to the supernatural light not
only that man touches poisonous serpents or steps into a bog or off
a precipice, but also that he fears the dark and takes perverse de-
light in pushing others down and in harming himself and others
so that they become moral cripples.

Through grace man is given back his supernatural sight; he is
really freed from original sin. But the power of sight which is now
to be trained to endure God's full light is still weak. God must
lead his child, and the hardening process is purgatory, here or
hereafter or both. Morally man has grown more or less distorted.
There are people who have so much moral power and beauty that
from our point of view they are good enough, but if they have been
given back their supernatural sight and can begin to discern God,
they themselves know what miserably barren images they are of
God. For Catholics, grace is a healing remedy which the sinner
must use unremittingly if he is to grow straight and become a

328 SIGRID UNDSET

saint,8 be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. Not until we
really are as good as God are we good enough.

Since religious awakening, according to the Catholic conception,
is awakening to activity — to work with God, not against him —
no Catholic can settle down contented that he is saved. Nor can
he, if after the conversion he is unfaithful, comfort himself with
the thought that it is man's nature to sin. He cannot under-
stand those human-legal conceptions of sin and punishment and
divine retribution which make God sit like a criminal judge meting
out so much suffering for so much sin, whereas the believer es-
capes punishment because Christ has paid for him, or which show
the man who is punished complaihing that God's punishment is not
fair. For the Catholic, to sin after awakening is precisely what is
not natural. It is a bent toward an unnatural life, and each breach
of faith is an indication of how much he lacks to reach complete
spiritual health, the health of the saints. It is not enough that he
unceasingly pray God to grant him His forgiveness, to give him
more of His healing remedy, and never to relax His hold upon the
soul even if there are times when man involuntarily struggles to be
free because the healing hand touches spots so sensitive that it seems
more comfortable to let the disease take its course than to have it
treated. Man must in any case have an honest desire to submit, to
do what God commands; then, according to God's own promise,
shall he see. Hence the dogma that good deeds are indispensable if
man is to be saved.

The tendency of the human mind to form associations of ideas, to
gather impressions into complexes, to hide ugly or shameful desires
and thoughts in a kind of cellar of the soul, or, if we wish to let
them remain in the open, to disguise them in trim and modern
costumes — all this the Church has always known, and it has based its
work upon this knowledge of human nature which it has demon-
strated in various ways throughout the ages. Richard of St.
Victor (cii4o), for example, expressed it sometimes in hopelessly
tedious allegories, sometimes in brief passages wherein each phrase

8 By saints the Church means all the dead who have come to see God
as He is. In the case of a few, God makes known through signs that
they have reached their goal. To these saints Catholics address prayers
for intercession, even if they may not have known them in life, and from
the saints they select examples to follow. But in all Catholic families
where children have died while small, their parents and brothers and
sisters pray to them for intercession.

THE CATHOLIC FAITH 329

gleams like a naked sword. To us it is natural that the Church
should have this knowledge since we believe that the church is in
some mysterious way identical with Him who made us. Yet it is
curious to see how modern psychology busies itself with the laws
governing the formation of complexes — it was upon these laws that
St. Ignatius built his spiritual exercises — or how psychoanalysis
claims to be the discoverer of the phenomenon against which every
confessional, at least from the twelfth century on, has in some way
been directed. (For that matter I cannot see how anyone can bring
himself to confess anything, whether great or small, to another hu-
man being unless he is convinced that he is making his confession not
to a human being but to a priest acting for God. That people can
put their faith in a physician in this respect, revealing their inmost
soul to gain physical well-being, is something I have never been able
to understand.)

The Catholic church seeks to find the center within each complex
of emotions that conflicts with the influence of Christ. . . . The
worst weeds must first be pulled; it will then be comparatively
easy to clear the loosened soil of the smaller weeds. In their place
must be planted those "theological virtues" which with their com-
plex of ideas are best fitted to choke down the weeds sprouting
anew. Obviously no Catholic can believe that he is himself able
to do this without a continuous influx of superhuman grace through
prayer and sacraments. To use the image of St. Theresa: if the
silkworm is to become a butterfly, it must work unremittingly and
spin the envelope in which the mysterious development is to be
completed ; but the power to spin the thread the silkworm has not
given to itself any more than it has created the world of law in
which and by which it lives. . . .

We Catholics are encouraged to doubt ourselves but to have faith
in God and in other people, to judge ourselves but no one else.
The Church refuses to have anything to do with human opinion in
matters where it recognizes a revealed dogma, and it forbids us to
speak of what our Lord calls sin by any other name. Here it is
exclusive and uncompromising. But it also refuses to elevate into
dogmas purely human opinions in secular matters, such as forms of
government or foreign relations. There it reserves for itself and
for us the freedom to act and counsel as seems wisest »n any given
situation in so far as we can do so without sin. And it forbids us
also to pass judgment upon the inmost character of any human be-

330 SIGRID UNDSET

ing. It cannot give a ceremonious funeral to heretics and suicides,
in part because it can give its help only to believers — and for that
matter it is not customary in worldly affairs to bury rebels and
deserters under the regimental colors. But the church does not
forbid either priest or layman to hope and pray for all; no one
knows what may have taken place between the soul and God even
in the very last moment. Its saints have never felt themselves sure
of victory before death, and it gives the same consolation to the
sinner who prays for grace at the last, frightened by the thought
of hell, as it gives to him who has sorrowed all his life over his
own unlikeness to the Lord of eternal love. . . .

From this intense vitality, restlessness, anxiety, and strain, from
the difficult command to look upon our own sin and not upon that of
others — for the confession becomes a sacrilege if the penitent tries
directly or indirectly to blame others or to urge extenuating cir-
cumstances before the father confessor — there arises the deep peace
in Catholic churches, the idyll and festivity in the daily life in
Catholic lands. We can agree with the Protestants that this world
is a vale of tears. The Protestant may feel convinced that he will
escape from it ; the Catholic, on the other hand can never be sure.
In fear and trembling he must work his own sanctification, but work
he will. And yet — or therefore — the heaviness of spirit and the
cheerlessness which are so often met with in "awakened" Protestant
circles are virtually unknown among Catholics. Is it strange if
we believe that underneath the apparent logic and consistency of
other Christian and non-Christian philosophies there lies a deep
fallacy: they are divorced from life. The inconsistencies and the
incongruities of Catholicism point to a fundamental inner and
organic consistency. The church is built upon rock. Catholicism
does not explain all the mysteries of existence, but it explains more
of them and goes deeper than any other philosophy of life.

A PROTESTANT VIEW OF RELIGION1

ERNEST FREMONT TITTLE

THE indefinite article in this title needs to be stressed. What
follows is a, not the, Protestant view of the social function of re-
ligion. Who would be rash enough to present the Protestant view
of anything, even God ? Theologically, Protestantism is both Doc-
tor Fosdick and Doctor Machen. In its social consciousness, it is
both Harry Ward and Frank Buchman, Sherwood Eddy and Mark
Matthews, Bishop McConnell and Bishop Candler, the pronounce-
ments of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ and those
members of its constituent bodies (probably a majority) who bit-
terly oppose such "extreme" (!) pronouncements. Protestantism
has its creeds, theological and social, but it has no conception of
life and the world which is "official."

The Protestant Church (with deplorable exceptions) is now
fully awake to the awful sin and peril of international war.
Ashamed of its ignorance, it is now seeking to become informed
concerning the underlying causes of war. Even more ashamed of
the fact that during the last war it gave to Caesar what belongs
to God, it is now, in the name of God and humanity, condemning
war and insisting upon the creation of adequate machinery for the
pacific settlement of international disputes. In its demand for the
outlawry of war and the building of "institutions of peace" is any
voice so persistent or so powerful as that of the church (both Pro-
testant and Catholic) and the synagogue?

But within the churches, as outside them, there is as yet no gen-
eral recognition of the fact that the chief cause of modern war is
economic. Hence the sad and anomalous spectacle of earnest
churchmen demanding the outlawry of war and, at the same time,
insisting upon the retention of the economic practices which, moti-
vated by selfish profit-seeking, make for war as inevitably as un-
sanitary streets and houses make for disease. Even now the

1The World Tomorrow, March 29, 1933. Reprinted by permission of
the author and the publishers of the Christian Century, with which the
former publication has been merged.

331

332 ERNEST FREMONT TITTLE

attention of the church is mostly fixed upon armaments, which
undoubtedly ought to be scrapped but never will be so long as
the world is organized to secure individual gain, whether personal
or national, and not the welfare of mankind.

Nevertheless, Protestantism is not wholly blind to the flagrant
evils and inherent perils of the present social order. Many Pro-
testant bodies (mostly clerical) have expressed the deliberate judg-
ment that concerning the social order which we now have the
hand of God has written: "Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin." Wit-
ness the declaration2 of the Reformed Church of the United States :
"Unemployment is the product of an unchristian economic order
built upon greed and ruthless competition"; the declaration of the
Conference of Protestant Ministers of Ohio: "A just regard for
human beings has never been central in the capitalist system" ; the
judgment expressed by the Protestant Episcopal Church: "Too
often conditions have fostered a freedom to win great rewards
through privilege"; the judgment voiced by the bishops of the
Methodist Episcopal Church upon "the ruthlessness of the pagan
forces which now so largely rule the affairs of men and nations
. . . providing big profits for these at the top while often disregard-
ing the welfare of the common man"; and the declaration of the
General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1932):
"The present industrial order is unchristian, unethical, and anti-
social." It is doubtless true that such declarations as these do not
represent the deliberate judgment of the present majority of Pro-
testant laymen or even clergymen. But they do represent a signifi-
cant trend in Protestant thinking; and it is worth remembering
that, hitherto, progress has come through far-seeing minorities who,
daring to think and live ahead of the majority, have at last suc-
ceeded in making their own view prevail.

As to the new social order which, it is hoped, will rise out of the
ruins of the old, the voice of Protestantism is somewhat vague.
Recent pronouncements of clerical bodies have for the most part
laid down principles rather than programs. They have called for
"a reconstruction of our whole economic system upon the basis of
brotherhood and justice";3 "a social way of life in which all men

9 For the quotations in this and the following paragraph I am idebted to
the Social Service Bulletin (Jan. i. 1933) of the Methodist Federation
for Social Service.

3 Reformed Church of the United States, 1932.

A PROTESTANT VIEW OF RELIGION 333

have opportunity to develop their capacity to the fullest possible
extent";4 "the administration of our economic and social affairs so
that men can live happy and useful lives free from the dread of
poverty or the fear of war";5 the enforcement of "the principle of
human rights above property rights";6 "an industrial system which
shall be conducted primarily for the human well-being rather than
for huge profits for the few."7 Only a few pronouncements have
made specific recommendations, as, for example, the declaration of
the New York East Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church
that "the principal means of production and distribution, which are
now primarily organized, controlled, and operated mainly for the
benefit of a relatively small proportion of our population, must be
brought under some form of social ownership and management";
and the article in the new Social Creed adopted by the Federal
Council of Churches which calls for "social planning and the con-
trol credit, of the monetary system, and of economic processes for
the common good."

Generally speaking, these clerical pronouncements concerning a
new social order have been idealistic pictures, not realistic pro-
grams. But the latter they could hardly be in view of the fact
that they have emanated from socially minded clergymen who recog-
nize the unchristian character of our present social order, and who
clearly see the principles which must be applied in the building of
a more Christian order, but whose training has not equipped them
with the technical knowledge needed to draw blueprints for such
an order. It is not today as it was in the day of Amos, when men
of ethical insight could trust themselves to offer concrete political
and economic panaceas for the ills of a relatively simple society. In
a society as complex as ours, the religious idealist may well hesi-
tate to be too specific lest he not only speak without knowledge
but allow his idealism to become merely the executive, not the
judge, of political and economic proposals. There is, to be sure,
the opposite danger that an idealism which does not endorse con-
crete proposals for the attainment of its own ends will presently
become impotent, if not cowardly and hypocritical. Without tech-
nical training, the religious idealist must steer a perilous course

4 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1932.

8 New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Chu.ch, 1931.

8 Northern Baptist Convention, 1931.

7 Conference of the Congregational Churches, 1931.

334 ERNEST FREMONT TITTLE

between the Scylla of a premature concreteness and the Charybdis
of an impotent indefiniteness. God help him.

Religion, as I see it, is both refuge and challenge, security and
adventure. Religion provides security because it gives men needed
assurance that they are not alone in a universe that is hostile or
indifferent to them and their cause. It fortifies them with the
conviction that underneath all the confusion and strife, all the
suffering and madness of the world, are the everlasting arms of
a power which always has been and is now wresting life from death
and victory from defeat. Hence you find Jesus saying, "I am
alone, yet not alone, for the Father is with me" ; and you find him,
in utter devotion to what he conceives to be the will of God, stead-
fastly setting his face to go to Jerusalem, though he knows what
awaits him there is probably a cross. Religion provides refuge
because it enables men to transcend the limitations and hardships,
the disappointments and frustrations, of their earthly lot in con-
templation of an eternal world of truth, beauty and love in which
they may find satisfaction for all the deepest hungers of their
hearts. At the same time, it provides a continuous summons to
heroic adventure because, inasmuch as it does open men's eyes to
this eternal world of truth, beauty and love, it makes them forever
dissatisfied with the world they now have — and forever hopeful
that a better world is possible. Hence you find religious men
saying,

"A mighty fortress is our God,

A bulwark never failing:
Our helper he, amid the flood

Of mortal ills prevailing."

Religion presents the most sublime goal for human striving —
the kingdom of God. And note should be taken of the fact,
pointed out by Rabbi Israel in his article in The World Tomorrow,
that the goal of religion is a flying goal, an ever new heaven, an
ever new earth. For this reason a high religion is altogether the
most disturbing force in the world. It is not content with any
present achievement, personal or social. Historically speaking,
idealism has been born in the souls of seers who, in lonely com-
munion with the Eternal, have caught glimpses of a good as yet
unachieved and even unenvisaged by the masses of mankind. And,
as history also shows, it is only the profoundly religious man who,

A PROTESTANT VIEW OF RELIGION 335

continuously disturbed by that haunting vision of a good as yet
unachieved, manages to avoid the pitfalls of self-satisfaction and
premature contentment. The sons of revolutionists may become
conservatives, even reactionaries; but never the true sons of God!
Related in spirit to that which is Most High, they remain revo-
lutionists to the end of the day. Religion, which is the historic
mother of social idealism, is ever needed to keep her offspring alive.
If Russia does succeed in reaching her goal, only religion can save
her from a deplorable contentment with things as they are!

Religion generates the motive needed for social change. It does
not believe that man is "an ape who chatters to himself of kin-
ship with archangels while filthily he digs for ground nuts"; or
that "man's life has no more significance than that of the humblest
insect which crawls from one annihilation to another." It main-
tains that man is a spiritual being with a spiritual background and
a spiritual destiny. It declares that he is a son of God. Having
this high conception of man, religion can never consent to his ex-
ploitation. Its prophets have always denounced "man's inhu-
manity to man." They have always cried out against greed and
injustice. They must decry "the profit motive" inasmuch as it
springs from greed and produces injustice. They must insist upon
the "service motive," which has in view the welfare of mankind.
They are demanding that society shall be so organized as to give
to the service motive a real and an expanding chance to function.
Before long, I think, they will be stressing the need of social insur-
ance and a socially planned economy.

As to the method of securing desperately needed social changes,
Protestants differ. The majority deplore violence, especially when
it is employed by the underdog. If only they were equally vigorous
in their condemnation of violence when it is used by power and
privilege to beat the underprivileged into submission! A few even
of Christian idealists are prepared to believe that violence is in-
evitable in any serious struggle for a better world. Speaking for
myself, I can but say that to me the method of violence appears
to be both unchristian and ineffective. It is, I think, beyond dis-
pute that it is opposed not only to the Christian ethic but to the
Christian conception of God. A teacher who said, "Whosoever
smiteth thee on thy right cheek turn to him the othe^ also" can
hardly be brought forward as an advocate of violent means of
securing needed social changes. A God who reveals his glory in

336 ERNEST FREMONT TITTLE

the face of Jesus Christ and who secures his triumphs through the
instrumentality of a cross (vicarious suffering) can hardly be sup-
posed to give his blessing to any revolutionary method which in-
volves the use of violence — the killing, let it be frankly said, of
men, women and children. And if anyone feels disposed to ex-
claim, "So much the worse, then, for the Christian ethic and the
Christian conception of God," the reply is — an appeal to history,
including that which is now in the making.

In the limited space allotted to this article it is obviously im-
possible to debate the outcome of such an appeal. I can only
express a personal judgment that violence has always produced more
of evil than it has been able to overcome. Its immediate results,
as in the case of Russia, may be spectacular, but what of its final
results? In the case of Russia it is too early to say. But, histori-
cally, it may be said that even such apparently good results as
have been achieved by violence have turned out to be superficial
and impermanent, whereas its evil results have lingered on to curse
the lives of succeeding generations. At best, the advocate of vio-
lence appears to me to be an impatient man whose eagerness for
quick results has led him into a position which is far more "senti-
mental" than that of the most thorough-going pacifist. To say
this is not to say that idealism must be content only to talk. It is
to say that idealism, if it desires to be radically redemptive, must
not employ the bloody hands of violence. It may, if necessary,
employ police power and even economic power to secure the ends
of justice. // may not kill men, women, and children.

Religion, as I view it, provides the one true goal for human
striving — a flying goal of increasing splendor. It provides the one
dependable motive for social change — a regard for man which
creates an everlasting desire to promote his welfare and secure
his advancement. It insists upon the one method of securing social
change which offers any chance of radical and permanent success —
the slow, costly method of truth and love, employing, when neces-
sary, non-violent forms of justly controlled coercion. And further,
religion provides the sine qua non of any new and glorious society,
namely, faith in the possibility of its achievement — a faith which
appeals not only to history but, in spite of much history, to the
moral constitution of the world, and which, therefore, is not
daunted by immediate defeat or long delay, being supported by

A PROTESTANT VIEW OF RELIGION 337

the assurance that the fight is not only man's but God's and that
soon or late God is destined to win.

Such, as I conceive it, is the social function of religion. But
ill religion be allowed thus to function in our time? Unmistak-
ably, on the part of some, there is a tendency to flee for refuge
to religions of authority; and, on the part of many, there is a
tendency to fall in with movements such as Buchmanism — move-
ments which secure to the individual an inexpensive private ad-
justment to life and the world. But, these tendencies notwithstand-
ing, steadily increases the number of those who find in prophetic
religion the only goal worth striving for and the only consolation
for their own tormented hearts.

RELIGION MEETS SCIENCE1
JULIAN S. HUXLEY

RELIGION and Science — it is a difficult subject, not one that is
easy to discuss fully and frankly without arousing angry emotions
or bruising intimate and sacred feelings. Yet the task is one which
ought to be attempted. Provided that a man treats of these things
honestly and sincerely, with no desire to sneer at or provoke oth-
ers, those who differ from him have indeed no right to be angry
or feel hurt.

I have devoted most of my life to science. But I have always
been deeply interested in religion, and believe that religious feel-
ing is one of the most powerful and important of human attributes.
So here I do not think of myself as a representative of science, but
want to talk as a human being who believes that both the scien-
tific spirit and the religious spirit are of the utmost value.

No one would deny that science has had a great effect on the
religious outlook. If I were asked to sum up this effect as briefly
as possible, I should say that it was twofold. In the first place,
scientific discoveries have entirely altered our general picture of the
universe and of man's position in it. And, secondly, the application
of scientific method to the study of religion has given us a new
science, the science of comparative religion, which has profoundly
changed our general views on religion itself.

To my mind, this second development is in many ways the more
important, and I shall begin by trying to explain why.

There was a time when religions were simply divided into two
categories, the true and the false; one true religion, revealed by
God, and a mass of false ones, inspired by the Devil. Milton
has given expression to this idea in his beautiful hymn, "On the
Morning of Christ's Nativity." Unfortunately this view was held
by the adherents of a number of different religions — not only by

1From the Atlantic Monthly, March, 1931. Reprinted by permission of
the publishers.

338

RELIGION MEETS SCIENCE 339

Christians, but also by Jews, Mohammedans, and others; and
with the growth of intelligent tolerance many people began to feel
doubtful about the truth of such mutually contradictory state-
ments. But in any case the rise of the science of comparative re-
ligion made any such belief virtually impossible. After a course
of reading in that subject, you might still believe that your own
religion was the best of all religions; but you would have a very
queer intellectual construction if you still believed that it alone
was good and true, while all others were merely false and bad.

I would say that the most important contribution which the
comparative study of religions has made to general thought is this.
We can no longer look on religions as fixed ; there is a development
in religion as there is in law, or science, or political institutions.
Nor can we look on religions as really separate systems; different
religions interconnect and contribute elements to one another.
Christianity, for instance, owes much not only to Judaism, but also
to the so-called mystery religions of the Near East, and to Neo-
Platonism.

From this point of view, all the religions of the world appear
as different embodiments of the religious spirit of man, some primi-
tive and crude, some advanced and elaborate, some degenerate and
some progressive, some cruel and unenlightened, some noble and
beautiful, but all forming part of the one general process of man's
religious development.

But does there really exist a single religious spirit? Are there
really any common elements to be found in Quakerism, say, and
the fear-ridden fetishism of the Congo, or in the mysticism and
renunciation of pure Buddhism and the ghastly cruelties of the
religion of ancient Mexico? Here, too, comparative study helps
us to an answer. The religious spirit is by no means always the
same at different times and different levels of culture. But it
always contains certain common elements. Somewhere at the root
of every religion there lies a sense of sacredness; certain things,
events, ideas, beings, are felt as mysterious and sacred. Some-
where, too, in every religion is a sense of dependence; man feels
himself surrounded by forces and powers which he does not under-
stand and cannot control, and he desires to put himself into har-
mony with them. And, finally, into every religion there enters a
desire for explanation and comprehension; man knows himself sur-

340 JULIAN S. HUXLEY

rounded by mysteries, yet he is always demanding that they shall
make sense.

The existence of the sense of sacredness is the most basic of these
common elements; it is the core of any feeling which can properly
be called religious, and without it man would not have any re-
ligion at all. The desire to be in harmony with mysterious forces
and powers on which man feels himself dependent is responsible for
the expression of religious feeling in action, whether in the sphere
of ritual or in that of morals. And the desire for comprehension
is responsible for the explanations of the nature and government of
the universe, and of the relations between it and human destiny,
which in their developed forms we call theology.

This is all very well, some of my readers will have been saying
to themselves, but there has been no mention of God and no men-
tion of immortality; surely the worship of some God or gods, and
the belief in some kind of future life, are essentials of religion?
Here again, comparative religion corrects us. Those are un-
doubtedly very general elements of religion; but they are not uni-
versal, and, therefore, not essential to the nature of religion. In
pure Buddhism there is no mention of God; and the Buddhist's
chief preoccupation is to escape continued existence, not to achieve
it. Many primitive religions think in terms of impersonal sacred
forces permeating nature; personal gods controlling the world
either do not exist for them, or, if they do, are thought of vaguely
as creators or as remote final causes, and are not worshiped. And
a certain number of primitive peoples either have no belief at all
in life after death, or believe that it is enjoyed only by chiefs and
a few other important persons.

The three elements I have spoken of seem to be the basic ele-
ments of all religions. But the ways in which they are worked
out in actual practice are amazingly diverse. To bring order into
the study of the hundreds of different religions known, we must
have recourse to the principle of development. But before em-
barking on this I must clear up one point.

I said that an emotion of sacredness was at the bottom of the
religious spirit. So it is; but we must extend the ordinary mean-
ing of the word "sacred" a little if we are to cover the facts. For

RELIGION MEETS SCIENCE 341

the emotion I am trying to pin down in words is a complex one
which contains elements of wonder, a sense of the mysterk us, a
feeling of dependence or helplessness, and either fear or respect.
And not only can these ingredients be blended with each other and
with still further elements in very different proportions, so as to
give in one case awe, in another case superstitious terror, in one
case quiet reverence, in another ecstatic self-abandonment, but the
resulting emotion can be felt about what is horrifying or even evil,
as well as about what is noble or inspiring. Indeed, the majority
of the gods and fetishes of various primitive tribes are regarded as
evil, or at least malevolent; and yet this quality which I have called
sacredness most definitely adheres to them. As Dr. Marett points
out in one of his books, we really want two words — "good-sacred"
and "bad-sacred."

It will, perhaps, help to explain what I mean if I remind you
that Coleridge in Kubla Khan uses the word "holy" in this same
equivocal way, of the "deep romantic chasm" in Xanadu: —

A savage place, as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover.

In most primitive religions the two feelings are intimately
blended and equally balanced; it is only later that the idea of the
"good-sacred" gets the upper hand and the "bad-sacred" dwindles
into a subordinate position, as applied to witchcraft, for instance, or
to a Devil who is inferior to God in power as well as goodness.

Do not be impatient at my spending some time over these bar-
baric roots of religion. They may not at first sight seem to have
anything to do with our modern perplexities, but they are as a
matter of fact of real importance, partly because they are funda-
mental to Our idea of what religion is, partly because they repre-
sent the base line, so to speak, from which we must measure
religious development. And, I repeat, the idea of development in
religion is perhaps the most important contribution of science to our
problem.

It is not possible for me to go fully into this huge subject of
religious development. But I can, perhaps, manage to remind you
of some of its major stages.

In the least developed religions, then, it is universally agreed
that magic is dominant. And by magic is meant the idea that

342 JULIAN S. HUXLEY

mysterious properties and powers inhere in things or events, and
that these powers can be in some measure controlled by appropriate
formulas or ritual acts. It is also universally agreed that the ideas
behind magic are not true. Primitive man has projected his own
ideas and feelings into the world about him. He thinks that what
we should call lifeless and mindless objects are animated by some
sort of spirit; and because they have aroused an emotion of fear
or mystery in him, he thinks that they are themselves the seat of a
mysterious and terrifying power of a spiritual nature. He also
used false methods in his attempts at achieving control; an obvious
example is the use of "sympathetic magic," as when hunting savages
kill game in effigy, believing that this will help them to kill it in
reality.

But, though the ideas underlying magic are demonstrably false,
a good many magic beliefs still linger on, either still entwined with
religion, or disentangled from it as mere isolated superstition, like
superstitions about good and bad luck, charms and mascots. Any-
one who really believes in the efficacy of such luck bringers is in that
respect reasoning just as do the great majority of savages about
most of the affairs of their life.

As I said before, in the magic stage, gods may play but a small
part in religion. The next great step is for the belief in magic to
grow less important, that in gods to become dominant. Instead of
impersonal magic power inherent in objects, man thinks of personal
Beings, controlling objects that are themselves inanimate.

When we study different religions at the beginning of this stage,
we find an extraordinary diversity of gods being worshiped. Man
has worshiped gods in the semblance of animals; gods that are rep-
resented as half human and half bestial; gods that are obviously
deified heroes (in Imperial Rome even living emperors were
accorded divine honors) ; gods that are the personification of
natural objects or forces, like sun gods, river gods, or fertility gods ;
tribal gods that preside over the fortunes of the community; gods
that personify human ideals, like gods of wisdom ; gods that preside
over human activities, like gods of love or gods of war.

From these chaotic origins, progress has been mainly in two
directions— ethical and logical. Beginning often by assigning
barbaric human qualities to deity, qualities such as jealousy, anger,
cruelty, or even voluptuousness, men have gradually been brought
to higher conceptions. Jehovah was thought of in very different

RELIGION MEETS SCIENCE 343

terms after the time of the Hebrew prophets. His more spiritual
and universal aspects came to be stressed, in place of the less spirit-
ual and more tribal aspects which appealed to the earlier Jews.
Many men in the great age of Greece revolted against the tradi-
tional Greek theology which made the gods lie and desire and
cheat like men. A great many modern Christians have put away
the traditional idea of Hell from their theology because they hold
fast to a more merciful view of God. We may put the matter
briefly by saying that, as man's ethical sense developed, he found it
impossible to go on ascribing "bad-sacred" elements to divine per-
sonality, and came to hold an ethically higher idea of God.

On the logical side, the natural trend has been toward unity
and universality. The many incomplete and partial gods of poly-
theism give place to a complete and single God ; warring tribal gods
give place to the universal God of all the world.

What exactly this means, whether man, as his powers develop,
is seeing new aspects of God which previously he could not grasp,
whether he is investing with his own ideas something which is es-
sentially unknowable, or whether, as some radical thinkers believe,
the concept of God is a personification of impersonal powers and
forces in nature, it is not possible to discuss here. What is assur-
edly true is that man's idea of God gradually alters, and becomes
more exalted. Theology develops; and, with the change in
theology, religious feeling and practice alter, too.

At the moment a new difficulty is cropping up as a result of the
progress of science. If nature really works according to universal
automatic law, then God, regarded as a ruler or governor of the
universe, is much more remote from us and the world's affairs than
earlier ages imagined. Modern theology is meeting this by stress-
ing the idea of divine immanence in the minds and ideals of men.

Here I must get back to the general idea of religious develop-
ment. There is one rather curious fact about this. The intensity
of religious feeling may be as great, the firmness of belief as strong,
in the lowest religions as they are in the highest. The difference
between a low and a high religion is due to the ethical, moral, and
intellectual ideas which are interwoven with the religious spirit,
which color it and alter the way it expresses itself in action.

344 JULIAN S. HUXLEY

The spiritual insight of the Hebrew prophets could not tolerate
the idea that material sacrifices and burnt offerings were the best
means of propitiating God, and they inaugurated a new and higher
stage in Hebrew religion, epitomized in the words of the psalmist,
"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit : a broken and a contrite
heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." Jesus could not tolerate the
idea that forms and ritual observances were the road to salvation,
and inaugurated not only a new religion but a new phase in world
history by his insistence on purity of heart and self-sacrifice, epito-
mized in the words, "The kingdom of God is within you." Paul
could not tolerate the idea that God would offer salvation to one
nation only, and made of infant Christianity a world religion in-
stead of merely an improved religion for the Jews.

Those are cases where the new insight was from the start applied
directly to religion. But often the new ideas begin their career
quite independently of religion, and only later come to influence it.
Orthodox religion, for instance, was on the whole favorable to the
institution of slavery. The abolition of slavery was due at least as
much to new humanitarian and social ideas, often regarded at the
time as heterodox or even subversive, as to religious sentiment.
But, the change in public sentiment once effected, it had a marked
effect on religious outlook. The same sort of thing could be said
about our changed ideas on the use of torture, on the treatment of
criminals and paupers and insane people, and many other subjects.

But it is in the intellectual sphere, during the last few centuries
at least, that changes which in their origin were unrelated to re-
ligion have had the most considerable effect upon the religious out-
look. Those who are interested will find a lucid and thought-
provoking treatment of the whole subject in Mr. Langdon-Davies's
new book, Man and His Universe. Here I must content myself
with two brief examples. When Kepler showed that the planets
moved in ellipses instead of circles, when Galileo discovered craters
on the moon, and spots on the sun, or showed that new fixed stars
could appear, their discoveries were not indifferent to religion, as
might have been supposed. On the contrary, they had as much
influence on the religious outlook of the day as did the ideas of Dar-
win on the religious outlook of the Victorian age, or as the ideas of
Freud and Pavlov are having on that of our own times. For to the
Middle Ages a circle was a perfect form, an ellipse an imperfect

RELIGION MEETS SCIENCE 345

one; and the planets ought to move in circles to justify the per-
fection of God.

So, too, mediaeval religious thought was impregnated with the
idea (which dates back to Aristotle) that change and imperfection
were properties of the sublunary sphere — the earth alone. All
the heavenly regions and bodies were supposed to be both perfect
and changeless. So that the discoveries of imperfections, like the
sun's spots or the moon's pockmarks, or of celestial changes like
the birth of a new star, meant an overhauling of all kinds of
fundamental ideas in the theology of the time.

As a second example, take Newton. We are so used to the idea
of gravity that we forget what a revolution in thought was caused
by Newton's discoveries. Put simply, the change was this. Before
Newton's time, men supposed that the planets and their satellites
had to be perpetually guided and controlled in their courses by
some extraneous power, and this power was almost universally
supposed to be the hand of God. Then came Newton, and showed
that no such guidance or controlling power was, as a matter of
fact, needed ; granted the universal property of gravitation, the
planets could not help circling as they did. For theology, this
meant that men could no longer think of God as continually con-
trolling the details of the working of the heavenly bodies ; as regards
this aspect of the governance of the universe, God had to be thought
of at one remove farther away, as the designer and creator of a
machine which, once designed and created, needed no further
control.

And this new conception did, as a matter of historical fact, exert
a great influence on religious thought, which culminated in Paley
and the Bridgewater School, early in the last century.

It is considerations like these which lead us. on to what is usually
called the conflict between science and religion. If what I have
been saying has any truth in it, however, it is not a conflict between
science and religion at all, but between science and theology. The
reason it is often looked on as a conflict of science with religion is
that the system of ideas and explanations and reasonings which
crystallizes out as a theology tends to become tinged with the feel-
ing of sacredness which is at the heart of religion. It thus gets

346 JULIAN S. HUXLEY

looked on as itself sacred, not to be interfered with, and does, in
point of fact, become an integral part of the particular religion at
its particular stage of development. So we may, if we like, say
that science can be in conflict with particular stages of particular
religions, though it cannot possibly be in conflict with religion in
general.

Now the man of science, if he is worth his salt, has a definitely
religious feeling about truth. In other words, truth is sacred to
him, and he refuses to believe that any religious system is right, or
can satisfy man in his capacity of truth seeker, if it denies or even
pays no attention to the new truths which generations of patient
scientific workers painfully and laboriously wrest from nature.
You may call this a provocative attitude if you like; but on this
single point the scientist refuses to give way, for to do so would
be for him to deny himself and the faith that is in him — the faith
in the value of discovering more of the truth about the universe.

He knows quite well that what he has so far discovered is the
merest fraction of what there is to know, that many of his explana-
tions will be superseded by the progress of knowledge in the future.
But he also knows that the accumulated effect of scientific work
has been to produce a steady increase in the sum total of knowledge,
a steady increase in the accuracy of the scientific explanation of
what is known. In other words, scientific discovery is never com-
plete, but always progressive; it is always giving us a closer ap-
proximation to truth.

Thus, knowing as he does that both science and religion have
grown and developed, and believing that they should continue to
do so, he does not feel he is being subversive, but only progressive,
in what he asks. And what he asks is that religion, on its theologi-
cal side, shall continue to take account of the changes and expan-
sions of the picture of the universe which science is drawing.

I say shall continue, for it has done so in the past, although
often grudgingly enough. It gave up the idea of a flat earth; it
gave up the ideas that the earth was the centre of the universe and
that the planets moved in perfect circles; it gave up the idea of a
material heaven above a dome-like sky, and accepted the idea of an
enormous space peopled with huge numbers of suns, and indeed
with other groups of suns each comparable to what we for long
thought was the whole universe; it accepted Newton's discovery
that the heavenly bodies need no guidance in their courses, and the

RELIGION MEETS SCIENCE 347

discoveries of the nineteenth-century physicists and chemists about
the nature of matter; it has abandoned the idea that the world is
only a few thousand years old, and has accepted the time scale
discovered by geology. And it finds itself no worse off for having
shed these worn-out intellectual garments.

But there are still many discoveries of science which it has not
yet woven into its theological scheme. Only certain of the churches
have accepted evolution, though this was without doubt the most
important single new idea of the nineteenth century. Religion has
not yet assimilated recent advances in scientific knowledge of the
brain and nervous system, of heredity, of psychology, or of sex
and the physiology of sex. And in a great many cases, while ac-
cepting scientific discoveries, it has only gone halfway in recasting
its theology to meet the new situation.

But, whatever this or that religion may choose to do with new
knowledge, man's destiny and his relation to the forces and powers
of the world about him are, and must always be, the chief concerns
of religion. It is for this reason that any light which science can
shed on the nature and working of man and the nature and work-
ing of his environment cannot help being relevant to religion.

What, then, is the picture which science draws of the universe
to-day, the picture which religion must take account of (with due
regard, of course, for the fact that the picture is incomplete) in its
theology and general outlook? It is, I think, somewhat as follows.
It is the picture of a universe in which matter and energy, time and
space, are not what they seem to common sense, but interlock and
overlap in the most puzzling way. A universe of appalling vast-
ness, appalling age, and appalling meaninglessness. The only trend
we can perceive in the universe as a whole is a trend toward a final
uniformity when no energy will be available, a state of cosmic
death.

Within this universe, however, on one of the smaller satellites
of one of its millions of millions of suns, a different trend is in
progress. It is the trend we call evolution, and it has consisted
first in the genesis of living out of non-living matter, and then in
the steady but slow progress of this living matter toward greater
efficiency, greater harmony of construction, greater control over

348 JULIAN S. HUXLEY

and greater independence of its environment. And this slow
progress has culminated, in times which, geologically speaking, are
very recent, in the person of man and his societies. This is the
objective side of the trend of life; but it has another side. It has
also been a trend toward greater activity and intensity of mind,
toward greater capacities for knowing, feeling, and purposing; and
here, too, man is preeminent.

The curious thing is that both these trends, of the world of life-
less matter as a whole, and of the world of life on this planet,
operate with the same materials. The matter of which living things
are composed is the same as that in the lifeless earth and the most
distant stars; the energy by which they work is part of the same
general reservoir which sets the stars shining, drives a motor car,
and moves the planets or the tides. There is, in fact, only one
world-stuff. And since man and life are part of this world-stuff,
the properties of consciousness or something of the same nature as
consciousness must be attributes of the world-stuff, too, unless we
are to drop any belief in continuity and uniformity in nature. The
physicists and the chemists and the physiologists do not deal with
these mind-like properties, for the simple reason that they have not
so far discovered any method of detecting or measuring them
directly. But the logic of evolution forces us to believe that they
are there, even if in lowly form, throughout the universe.

Finally, this universe which science depicts works uniformly and
regularly. A particular kind of matter in a particular set of cir-
cumstances will always behave in the same way; things work as
they do, not because of inherent principles of perfection, not be-
cause they are guided from without, but because they happen to be
so made that they cannot work in any other way. When we have
found out something about the way things are made so that we
can prophesy how they will work, we say we have discovered a
natural law; such laws, however, are not like human laws, im-
posed from without on objects, but are laws of the objects' own
being. And the laws governing the evolution of life seem to be as
regular and automatic as those governing the movements of the
planets.

In this universe lives man. He is a curious phenomenon : a piece
of the universal world-stuff which, as a result of long processes of
change and strife, has become intensely conscious — conscious of
itself, of its relations with the rest of world-stuff, capable of con-

RELIGIOr MEETS SCIENCE 349

sciously feeling, reasoning, desiring, and planning. These capaci-
ties are the result of an astonishingly complicated piece of physical
machinery — the cerebral hemispheres of his brain. The limitations
to our capacities come from the construction of our brains and
bodies which we receive through heredity; with someone else's body
and brain, our development even in the same environment could
have been different. And these differences in human capacity due
to differences in inheritance may be enormous. The method of
inheritance in men is identical in principle with the method of in-
heritance in poultry or flies or fish. And by means of further
detailed knowledge we could control it, and therefore control
human capacity, which is only another way of saying that man has
the power of controlling his own future; or, if you like to put it
still more generally, that not only is he the highest product of
evolution, but, through his power of conscious reason, he has be-
come the trustee of the evolutionary process. His own future and
that of the earth are in large measure in his hands. And that future
extends for thousands of millions of years.

Lastly, we must not forget to remind ourselves that we are rela-
tive beings. As products of evolution, our bodies and minds are
what they are because they have been moulded in relation to the
world in which we live. The very senses we possess are relative —
for instance, we have no electric sense and no X-ray sense, because
electrical and X-ray stimuli of any magnitude are very rare in
nature. The working of our minds, too, is very far from absolute.
Our reason often serves only as a means of finding reasons to justify
our desires; our mental being, as modern psychology has shown, is
a compromise — here antagonistic forces in conflict, there an un-
desirable element forcibly repressed, there again a disreputable
motive emerging disguised. Our minds, in fact, like our bodies, are
devices for helping us to get along somehow in the struggle for ex-
istence. We are entrapped in our own natures. Only by deliberate
effort, and not always then, shall we be able to use our minds as
instruments for attaining unvarnished truth, for practising disin-
terested virtue, for achieving true sincerity and purity of heart.

I do not know how religion will assimilate these facts and these
ideas; but I am sure that in the long run it will assimilate them
as it has assimilated Kepler and Galileo and Newton and u begin-
ning to assimilate Darwin; and I am sure that the sooner the
assimilation is effected, the better it will be for everybody concerned.

350 JULIAN S. HUXLEY

So far I have spoken almost entirely of the effect of science upon
the religious outlook — of the effect of scientific method upon the
study of religion itself, leading us to the idea of development in
religion; and of the effect of scientific discoveries in general upon
man's picture of the universe, which it is the business of religion to
assimilate in its theology. Now I must say something about the
limitations of science. Science, like art, or morality, or religion, is
simply one way of handling the chaos of experience which is the
only immediate reality we know. Art, for instance, handles ex-
perience in relation to the desire for beauty, or, if we want to put
it more generally and more philosophically, in relation to the desire
for expressing feelings and ideas in aesthetically satisfying forms.
Accuracy of mere fact is and should be a secondary consideration to
art. The annual strictures of the Tailor and Cutter on the men's
costumes in the Academy portraits are more or less irrelevant to
the question of whether the portraits are good pictures or bad
pictures.

Science, on the other hand, deals with the chaos of experience
from the point of view of efficient intellectual and practical han-
dling. Science is out to find laws and general rules, because the
discovery of a single law or rule at once enables us to understand
an indefinite number of individual happenings — as the single law
of gravitation enables us to understand the fall of an apple, the
movement of the planets, the tides, the return of comets, and in-
numerable other phenomena. Science insists on continual verifica-
tion by testing against facts, because the bitter experience of history
is that, without such constant testing, man's imagination and logical
faculty run away with him and in the long run make a fool of him.
And science has every confidence in these methods because experi-
ence has amply demonstrated that they are the only ones by which
man can hope to extend his control over nature and his own destiny.
Science is in the first instance merely disinterested curiosity, the
desire to know for knowing's sake; yet in the long run the new
knowledge always brings new practical power.

But science has two inherent limitations. First, it is incomplete,
or perhaps I had better say partial, just because it only concerns
itself with intellectual handling and objective control. And sec-

RELIGION MEETS SCIENCE 351

ondly, it is morally and emotionally neutral. It sets out to describe
and to understand, not to appraise or to assign values. Indeed,
science is without a scale of values; the only value which it recog-
nizes is that of truth and knowledge.

This neutrality of science in regard to emotions and moral and
aesthetic values means that, while in its own sphere of knowledge
it is supreme, in other spheres it is only a method or a tool. What
man shall do with the new facts, the new ideas, the new opportuni-
ties of control which science is showering upon him does not de-
pend upon science, but upon what man wants to do with them ; and
this in turn depends upon his scale of values. It is here that religion
can become the dominant factor. For what religion can do is to
set up a scale of values for conduct, and to provide emotional or
spiritual driving force to help in getting them realized in practice.
On the other hand, it is an undoubted fact that the scale of values
set up by a religion will be different according to its intellectual
background: you can never wholly separate practice from theory,
idea from action. Thus, to put the matter in a nutshell, while
the practical task of science is to provide man with new knowledge
and increased powers of control, the practical task of religion is to
help man to live and to decide how he shall use that knowledge
and these powers.

The conflict between science and religion has come chiefly from
the fact that religion has often been afraid of the new knowledge
provided by science, because it had unfortunately committed itself
to a theology of fixity instead of one of change, and claimed to be
already in possession of all the knowledge that mattered. It
therefore seemed that to admit the truth and the value of the new
knowledge provided by science would be to destroy religion. Most
men of science and many thinkers within the churches do not be-
lieve this any longer. Science may destroy particular theologies;
it may even cause the downfall of particular brands of religion if
they persist in refusing to admit the validity of scientific knowledge.
But it cannot destroy religion, because that is the outcome of the
religious spirit, and the religious spirit is just as much a property
of human nature as is the scientific spirit.

What science can and should do is to modify the forms m which
the religious spirit expresses itself. And once religion recognizes
that fact, there will no longer remain any fundamental conflict be-

352 JULIAN S. HUXLEY

tween science and religion, but merely a number of friendly adjust-
ments to be made.

In regard to this last point, let me make myself clear. I do not
mean that science should dictate to religion how it should change
or what form it should take. I mean that it is the business and the
duty of the various religions to accept the new knowledge we owe
to science, to assimilate it into their systems and to adjust their
general ideas and outlook accordingly. The only business or duty
of science is to discover new facts, to frame the best possible
generalizations to account for the facts, and to turn knowledge to
practical account when asked to do so. The problem of what man
will do with the enormous possibilities of power which science has
put into his hands is probably the most vital and the most alarming
problem of modern times. At the moment, humanity is rather like
an irresponsible and mischievous child' who has been presented with
a set of machine tools, a box of matches, and a supply of dynamite.
How can religion expect to help in solving the problem before the
child cuts itself or blows itself up if it does not permeate itself with
the new ideas, and make them its own in order to control them ?

That is why I say — as a human being and not as a scientist —
that it is the duty of religion to accept and assimilate scientific
knowledge. I also believe it to be the business of religion to do so,
because if religion does not do so, religion will in the long run lose
influence and adherents thereby.

I see the human race engaged in the tremendous experiment of
living on the planet called earth. From the point of view of
humanity as a whole, the great aim of this experiment must be to
make life more truly and more fully worth living ; the religious man
might prefer to say that the aim was to realize the kingdom of
God upon earth, but that is only another way of saying the same
thing.

The scientific spirit and the religious spirit both have their parts
to play in this experiment. If religion will but abandon its claims
to fixity and certitude (as many liberal churchmen are already
doing), then it can see in the pursuit of truth something essentially
sacred, and science itself will come to have its religious aspect. If
science will remember that it, as science, can lay no claim to set up
values, it will allow due weight to the religious spirit.

At the moment, however, a radical difference of outlook obtains
as between change in science and change in religion. An alteration

RELIGION MEETS SCIENCE 353

in scientific outlook — for instance the supersession of pure New-
tonian mechanics by relativity — is generally looked on as a victory
for science; but an alteration in religious outlook — for instance,
the abandonment of belief in the literal truth of the account of
creation in Genesis — is usually looked on as in some way a defeat
for religion. Yet, either both are defeats or both are victories —
not for particular activities such as religion or science, but for the
spirit of man. In the past, religion has usually been slowly or
grudgingly forced to admit new scientific ideas ; if it will but accept
the most vivifying of all the scientific ideas of the past century, —
that of the capacity of life, including human life and institutions,
including religion itself, for progressive development, — the conflict
between science and religion will be over, and both can join hands
in advancing the great experiment of man, of ensuring that men
shall have life and have it more abundantly.

THE GREAT SPORTS MYTH1
JOHN R. TUNIS

"Suppose that while the motor pants,
We miss the nightingale?"

— E. V. Lucas

I HAVE an English friend who, some thirty years ago, was cham-
pion of a little golf club situated on the Sussex Downs between
Hove and Worthing. During the Boer War, in which he served
as a subaltern, he lost his left arm, which incapacitated him for
golf. With zeal he turned to tennis, developed a good game and
in a few years became, despite his handicap, one of the best players
in the local club. When the World War arrived he somehow
wangled a commission for himself and, leading a battalion into
action on the Somme, lost his right leg. My last meeting with him
took place several winters ago at a British Lawn Tennis and
Croquet Club on the French Riviera. He had learned croquet and
was by then a low handicap player, pressing the club champion
closely.

That man, I submit, is a sportsman. He knows the thrill of real
sport, of playing, not for championships, for titles, for cash, for
publicity, for medals, for applause, but simply for the love of play-
ing. Everyone knows the thrill who has felt a golf ball soar from
his club and watched it bound down the middle of the course, two
hundred and fifty yards ahead ; who has finished a long, tense rally
at tennis with a passing shot that cuts the sideline and leaves a
helpless adversary shaking his head in admiration at the net; who
has followed two Airedales jumping and leaping through country
uplands on a mellow, crisp afternoon in fall. A long cross-country
walk with a dog, three close sets of tennis, a foursome on a day
when the course is uncrowded and the sun shines high above —
this is sport, real sport, the expression of the sporting spirit at its
best. On these occasions one tastes the full flavor of the game, one

iFrom Sports, Heroics, and Hysterics. John Day Company, 1928. Re-
printed by permission of the author and the publishers.

354

THE GREAT SPORTS MYTH 355

finds that complete and satisfying relaxation of mind and body
which to the work-weary brain is such perfect solace. In this in-
formal and unorganized sport one finds not only the game, but the
player at his best. Umpires? Referees? Officials? The need of
them does not exist. Implicitly one trusts one's opponent because
one trusts oneself; impossible to question the score, impossible to
hesitate as to whether a shot did or did not touch the line. All
that is finest in sport can be found — is found — in such friendly
encounters upon golf links and tennis courts.

But of late years a strange and curious fiction appears to have
grown up regarding sport, whereby the effects of such friendly
sport are improperly attributed to those highly organized athletic
competitions that take place each year from January to December.

Let us grant that sport between individuals is a working labora-
tory for the building of character. Let us admit freely that the
health of nations is being improved by friendly outdoor games. By
all means let us give thanks and sing praises for the opportunities
afforded by such sports to get out into the open air and freshen
ourselves for the burdens of life that grow daily more exhausting.
But let us not confound the precious informality of individual sport
with the huge, widely advertised sporting contests with which we
are being inundated from year's end to year's end.

This fiction I call the Great Sports Myth. It is a fiction sus-
tained and built up by the large class of people now financially
interested in sport. There are the newsgatherers and the sports
functionaries for the daily press; in their very natural efforts to
glorify their trade, they have preached unceasingly the notion that
all the values to be found in informal athletic games are present as
well in the huge, organized, sporting spectacles. There is the paid
instructor, the football or baseball or track coach, the trainer or
association head who, after all, can hardly be blamed if he at-
tempts to depict his efforts as a cross between those of a religious
revivalist and of a social service uplifter. These gentry — the news-
gatherer, and the new professional sports uplifter — tell us that
competitive sport, as well as informal, unorganized sport, is health-
giving, character-building, brain-making. They imply, more or less
directly, that its exponents are heroes, possessed of none but the
highest moral qualities; tempered and steeled in the greai, white
heat of competition; purified and made holy by their devotion to
intercollegiate and international sport. Thanks to them — and to

356 JOHN R. TUNIS

others not entirely disinterested — there has grown up in the public
mind an exaggerated and sentimental notion of the moral value of
great, competitive, sport spectacles.

The sports writers are required to regard the whole sporting
panorama with an almost religious seriousness. It is their job;
their bread and butter. Hardly one dares publicly to question the
sanctity of organized competitive athletics. One who should dare
to suggest that our idols of the sporting world have feet of clay
might find himself in serious trouble when next he went out upon
a story. If he intimates that this or that sport has become a vast
and complicated business, he will get short shrift should he ever visit
its Association headquarters. What more natural, therefore, than
that everyone so employed should further embroider that delightful
fiction, the Great Sports Myth ? Hence the annual appeal to rally
to the defense of the Davis Cup is as solemn as if our national life
hung in the balance. And the amount of space given by the press
to the college football system is proof of the hold the Great Sports
Myth has upon us. On the evening before the Harvard-Yale game
at Cambridge, even as sedate a newspaper as the Boston Transcript
devotes no less than four pages to the conflict; special writers,
sporting writers, feature writers, editors, and their more humble
confreres, treat the morrow's match as earnestly and sententiously
as they do the forecasts of a Presidential election upon Election Eve.

The manner in which the American public is fostered and fed
upon the Great Sports Myth is not only amazing; for anyone who
gets an opportunity to peek behind the scenes it is one of the most
disconcerting signs of the times. For the sporting heroes of the
nation are its gods. From day to day, from month to month, from
year to year, we are deluged with a torrent of words about these
Galahads of sport — the amateur football players of the colleges, and
the "shamateur" golf or tennis players, who often take a hand in
exalting their own personalities through the medium of the press.
In the winter months we are treated to columns of "dope" about
these supermen, of chatter and gossip about their every movement.
In early spring the star of sport moves eastward ; for six weeks we
are regaled, via the Atlantic cables, with the feats of Mr. Tilden,
Mr. Hagen, Miss Wills, or Mrs. Mallory, in the great French
and British tennis and golf championships. By July the travelers
are back again in their native haunts — not infrequently with hard
words to say about conditions and competitors across the sea — and

THE GREAT SPORTS MYTH 357

then the deluge of sporting bunk begins in earnest. The channel
swimmers are busy explaining why channels are so broad and train-
ers so thick. In August come the big aquatic events, the yachting
and motor boat races ; in early September, the matches for the Davis
Cup. Almost every fall we have a "major league" prize fight.
October brings colds, coal bills, and the World's Series, with its
front page cavortings of Home-run Kings and Strike-out Emperors.
And as the sporting year draws to an end in late November, the
nation goes completely daft over intercollegiate football. Except
for the imposing lists of All-American teams — composed by gentle-
men who have perhaps seen in action some three hundred of the
thirty thousand football players of the United States — we have a
rest in December. And we need it!

Man has always, I suppose, been a hero worshiper. Doubtless
he always will be. We Americans do not seem to take to religious
prophets. We have no Queen Marie, nor even a Mussolini, to
raise upon a pedestal. Consequently we turn hopefully to the
world of sports. There we find the material to satisfy our lust for
hero worship; there we discover the true gods of the nation.
Messrs. Hagen, Tunney, Tilden, Jones, Ruth, Cohen, Dempsey —
these are becoming the idols of America's masculine population,
young and old. And why not? After all, we ask ourselves, are they
not athletes? Have they not been cleansed (and so sanctified) in the
great white heat of competition, upon the links or the gridiron, the
court or the diamond ? That competitive sport — any kind of com-
petitive sport from squash tennis to prize fighting — makes for no-
bility of character, such is the first commandment of the American
sporting public. This, in fact, is the foundation of the Great
Sports Myth.

Yet, in plain truth, highly organized competitive sports are not
character-building; on the contrary, after a good deal of assistance
at and some competition in them, I am convinced that the reverse is
true. So far are they from building character that, in my opinion,
continuous and excessive participation in competitive sports tends
to destroy it. Under the terrific stress of striving for victory, vic-
tory, victory, all sorts of unpleasant traits are brought out and
strengthened. Too frequently the player's worst side is magnified ;
his self-control is broken down much more than it is brilt up. I
know this is heresy. I realize that the contrary is preached from
every side. (Most fervently, however, by the sports writers,

358 JOHN R. TUNIS

football coaches, or others who have some other direct and per-
sonal interest in the furtherance of the Great Sports Myth.) I
am aware that the participants in American sports are all supposed
to be little short of demi-gods. Yet if football, for instance, is the
noble, elevating and character-building sport it is supposed to be,
why, I wonder, is it necessary to station an umpire, a field judge, a
head linesman, and half a dozen assistants to follow the play at a
distance of a few yards and to watch zealously every one of the
twenty-two contestants in order that no heads and no rules may be
simultaneously broken?

"NERVE TENSED STALWARTS KEYED UP
FOR SUPREME EFFORT OF SEASON."

So ran the headline of a pre-game football story in a big New
York daily last fall. Anyone who has seen the average athletic
contest at close range will testify to the accuracy of this charac-
terization. Instead of being in sound mental and physical condition
when they go out on the links, the gridiron, or the river, our gods
are actually in a state of nerves which often leads them to do
things otherwise incomprehensible. The plain truth is that the in-
tensive strain of modern competition and the glare of publicity
created by the press, the movies, and the radio, wear down and
destroy the nerve tissue of the average competitor. How else can
one explain the petulant outburst and the no less petulant actions
of Mr. Walter Hagen on his return from his trip to England after
having failed to win their golfing title some years ago? Or the
performances of Mr. Tilden upon the court? Off the court, Mr.
Tilden, as his friends will testify, is a charming and urbane gentle-
man. Once he gets into combat, however, he becomes, in his zest
for victory — a zest that every champion in competitive sport must
have or perish — something totally unlike his normal self. He will
turn and glare at any linesman who dares give a decision against
his judgment; before the thousands in the stands he will demand
the removal of the offender; he will request "lets" at crucial mo-
ments, object when new balls are thrown out, in short do things he
would never do were he not so intensely concentrated on winning.

Nor would it be just to Mr. Tilden to single him out for criti-
cism. Those who saw the Davis Cup Challenge Round in 1914
will remember the childish behavior of the man who is considered
by many the greatest tennis player of all time, Mr. Norman

THE GREAT SPORTS MYTH 359

Everard Brookes. After the third set of his match with Mr. R. N.
Williams (which was won by the American, 10-8) the crowd,
anticipating a victory for the United States, rose — as was but nat-
ural— in loud and vociferous cheering. Mr. Brookes promptly
clapped his hands to his ears and kept them there as long as the
cheering went on.

Any one who has spent a winter in the south of France during
the reign of the late Queen of French tennis, Mademoiselle Suzanne
Lenglen, will testify to her strenuous efforts to avoid defeat by
remaining out of tournaments in which she seemed likely to be
beaten. In 1926, during the visit of Miss Helen Wills to the
Riviera, her attempts to avoid the American were so amusing that
a famous Parisian daily ran an article entitled, "Tennis ou Cache-
Cache?" (Tennis or Hide and Seek?) This, mind you, is not
the conduct of youngsters new to competitive sport ; it is the conduct
of champions and super-champions. Concentrating as they must to
win, they hardly know what they are doing or saying. For the
time being, they become self-hypnotized. Follow them around the
sport circle from week to week, and from year to year, and you
will, I am sure, lose any illusion you may have about the uplifting
effect of present-day competitive sport.

The popular belief is that sport teaches self-control, that it shows
us how to accept not only victory but defeat with a graceful and
sincere smile. If you are a believer in the Great Sports Myth, I
wish you might visit the locker-rooms and dressing-quarters of our
clubhouses and athletic buildings and mingle with our champions
before and after their contests.

"He beat the gun, that's why he copped."

"I was interfered with in the last quarter, on that forward pass,
or I'd have scored a touchdown."

"I'll beat that big stiff or burst a blood vessel."

"That decision in the third set cost me the match — sure the ball
was on the line, I saw it."

"This man Smith has always been against us; we'll have to see
he doesn't get a chance to referee any of the Varsity games again."

These — with embellishments unprintable — are the sort of things
you hear on the inside at every big sporting contest. You may,
perhaps, imagine this to be an exaggeration. Get someone who has
umpired a match between Mr. Tilden and Mr. Richards to tell you
how they addressed each other as they shook hands across the net

360 JOHN R. TUNIS

after a tense, five-set battle ! It is no accident that Mr. Robert T.
Jones is almost the only champion in any branch of sport who is
genuinely popular with those who play against him and, therefore,
see him under the stress of modern competition. The strain at the
top is too great for most men.

Curiously enough, although the majority of our sporting heroes
are magnified and worshiped, Mr. Jones seems to have had some-
thing less than the breaks from the gentry of the sporting press.
This doubtless came about because these devotees of the Great
Sports Myth have created a charming fable about Mr. Jones which
exactly fitted into their ideas about the character-building benefits
of competitive sport. Mr. Jones as a youngster, they aver, was a
perfectly terrible chap. When he first took up golf he threw his
clubs about. He broke them up whenever he missed a six-foot putt.
He swore. He cursed. Really, he was a perfectly terrible fellow!
But behold the influence of the game! Now a more charming
young sportsman it would be hard to find. Due, of course, the
inference is, to the soul-saving and character-forming effects of
sport.

A lovely fiction. But untrue. Yet I have never seen this un-
truth refuted in an American newspaper; to do so would tend to
destroy the Great Sports Myth. However, to an English reporter,
about a year ago in London, Mr. Jones vouchsafed the following:

"IVe read newspaper comments in which I am told that I not
only won the British championship at St. Andrews but conquered
myself as well. What is it all about? Have I ever been a bunch
of fireworks? I played my first championship when I was fourteen
years old, and I am twenty-five now. In all that time I have made
a fool of myself only twice, once at the Red Cross tournament in
Boston in 1915, when I was fifteen years old, and once at the
British open championship at St. Andrews when I was nineteen.
Is that being worse than anyone else? Chick Evans can throw a
club away in the midst of a championship and nobody minds. Why
pick on me?

"The only break I ever made at home was in Boston ten years
ago. IVe played right along since then. Where's the sense of
throwing Boston at me now? Of course it's nice to have people
say nice things about you, but honestly, when New York papers
make me out such a glowing example of moral discipline I don't
know what to make of it."

THE GREAT SPORTS MYTH 361

Poor Mr. Jones. Of all our athletic stars, he is most surely the
one who deserves a fair break and yet, thanks to the obsession of
sporting writers and their devotion to the Great Sports Myth, he
has received a bad one. There is a moral in this for those who
have the time and patience to discover it.

Yet another tenet of the Great Sports Myth is the time-worn
belief that international competition in sports strengthens the bonds
between nations and between individuals. It usually does nothing
of the sort ! Surely, if football players from two of the largest uni-
versities in the United States indulge in fisticuffs before eighty
thousand spectators in their big test of the season, there is little
chance for a general kissing-match at an international sporting
reunion such as the Olympic games!

When these games approach and one hears the usual platitudes
about the great good they do in international relations and the
benefits they confer upon humanity at large, I am minded of a
small paragraph which was culled from the Auto, the great Parisian
sporting newspaper. Translated exactly, it reads: "M. Moneton,
the referee of the match between the Racing Club de Calais and
the Stade Roubaisienne, thanks the members of the Racing Club de
Calais team for saving his life directly after the match."

Not every sporting contest ends in a free fight as this one pre-
sumably did, but there is far more hard feeling generated by sport
than is usually admitted by the adherents of the Great Sports Myth.
When the Irish Rugby team played France last winter, the crowd
got out of hand and rushed for the referee, the Captain of a Scot-
tish team twenty-five years ago. He managed to escape to the
dressing-room, whence, as the mob stood outside howling for his
blood, he was eventually escorted from the grounds under police
protection.

You never hear much about such things? Certainly not. The
sporting writers do not dwell upon them for very obvious reasons.
The sort of thing they prefer to play up can be illustrated by an
article which appeared several years ago in the Princeton Alumni
Weekly entitled, "The Sublimation of War." The writer's argu-
ment was to the effect that if all nations were "sport loving and
dominated by the true instincts^ of sport," war would be completely
eradicated. The Sublimation of War! We had a taste of it sev-
eral months later when the break came between Harvard and
Princeton.

362 JOHN R. TUNIS

Dignified in front-page headlines by the sonorous title, "SEVER-
ANCE OF ATHLETIC RELATION," this episode reflected
credit upon neither of the universities nor upon their followers.
According to the tenets of the Great Sports Myth, Princeton and
Harvard undergraduates should have been loyal friends and good
fellows both on the field and in the stands. Such, as the saying
goes, was not the case. Trouble began early in 1922 when one
after another of the best Harvard players were taken from the
gridiron in the Princeton game with various injuries which removed
them from the "sublimation" effects of sport for the rest of the
season. Murmurs of rough play were heard at Cambridge; they
continued, in increasing volume, as Princeton went on defeating
Harvard by overwhelming scores. The climax was reached in the
season <of 1926 when, the day before the game, the Harvard
Lampoon appeared with a disgraceful attack upon Princeton and
her supporters. The game which followed was a sorry spectacle;
hisses and groans arose from both sides of the field and, in their
comments during the following week, even the most ardent devo-
tees of the Great Sports Myth, in writing for the press, agreed
that such an affair was neither stimulating nor worth repeating.
After the game the undergraduates of the two universities regarded
one another much as did Germans and Americans in 1918. With
all the solemnity of a nation rupturing diplomatic relations with a
powerful neighbor, Princeton "broke with Harvard/' as the news-
papers screamed in headlines from their front pages.

Recriminations, insinuations, rhetorical attacks, and counter-
attacks ensued; the press carried columns and pages of the effect of
this break upon the world of sport — and not a soul who commented
on the fracas appeared to see the amusing side of the whole affair.
Sport, the healer of relationships between nations; sport, the pro-
moter of good feeling and good comradeship; sport, that brings
forth all that is best and noblest in human nature, was producing —
what? Gouged noses, broken ankles, bad feeling, cursing, and
reviling in the sanctity of dressing-rooms; coarse accusations and
cheap humor in the publications of a great university. If sport
cannot do better than this among representatives of two of the
principal American colleges, how can it be expected to unite Gaul
and Teuton, Arab and Scandinavian, black man and white, as it is
popularly supposed to do by those who prate glibly about peoples
"dominated by the true instincts of sport."

THE GREAT SPORTS MYTH 363

Such breaks in relations between our universities, are not, it ap-
pears, uncommon in intercollegiate football. The facts are not
generally known; but almost every large college in the country
has, at some time in its history, broken with some great rival. Thus
the Army and Navy broke between 1893 and 1899; now they are
at it again. Harvard and Yale broke between 1894 and 1897.
Pennsylvania and Lafayette broke between 1900 and 1903. Prince-
ton and Harvard, after breaking between 1897 and 1912, broke
again in 1926 until some future date unknown, thereby bidding fair
to establish a National Intercollegiate Breaking record for all
time. At the present moment the list of colleges is a fairly large
one; should it increase materially it would seem that our universi-
ties might have difficulty in completing their schedules. Thus
Princeton, having broken with Pennsylvania years ago, has now
broken with Harvard; the Army has broken with Syracuse; Co-
lumbia has broken with New York University; and the Navy has
broken with the Army. These are some of the breaks publicly
announced. Others are being kept under cover.

Now, if our highly organized sports taught as much of mutual
understanding, generosity, and forbearance as their advocates claim
they do, there might be some excuse for the elevation of sport into
a kind of national religion. Yet why is it that the United States,
by common acclaim the greatest sporting nation in the world, is so
sensitive to criticism, so open to flattery? In point of fact, what
the fetish of competitive sport inculcates in us most successfully is
the desire to win. Not at any cost? Certainly not! There are
far too many linesmen, referees, umpires, field judges, and minor
officials to permit of that sort of thing. But our gods are all win-
ners: it is Tunney, Hagen, Jones, Miss Wills, not Mrs. Mallory,
Johnston, or Ouimet who are worshiped and glorified. It is the
champion, not the way in which the championship is won or lost,
that attracts the plaudits of the mob whose creed is the Great
Sports Myth. The King can do no wrong. And the King (pro
tern) is always the man at the top of the pile.

Moreover, by thus elevating our athletic heroes to peaks of
prominence, by prying into their private lives, by following them
incessantly in the columns of the daily press, by demanding of them
victories and yet more victories, we force them to lose all sense of
proportion — if indeed they ever had any. For it is a debatable

364 JOHN R. TUNIS

question whether any one with a sense of proportion— or a sense
of humor, which comes to much the same thing — could so far lose
himself in this sporting miasma as to become a champion. Judging
by their remarks in public, one is forced to conclude that many,
if not all, of our sporting gods are muscle bound between the ears.

THE SPOTLIGHT— DOES WOMAN DESERVE IT?1

EDNA YOST

I HAVE been a fascinated reader in recent years of what the
magazines for Intellectuals have had to say on the subject of woman.
Any one who has followed these periodicals with some degree of
regularity realizes that the revelation of woman's mind and soul has
been played upon by certain magazines for a fifty-cent audience just
as definitely as physical nudity has been played upon by others for a
fifteen-cent one. The editorial psychology is fundamentally iden-
tical ; the aim in either case is to increase sales.

As a member of the frequently exposed sex, I am forced to admit
that I do not believe that, as a human being separate and apart
from man, woman is worth the paper and printer's ink recently
devoted to her. But it is satisfying to the feminine ego to consult
the Readers Guide for recent years and compare the amount of
material listed under Woman, as a genus per se, with that listed
under Man. For the comparison seems to indicate that we women
really are far the more important and interesting of the two. Such
a conclusion, however, is rooted more in the shallow printed page
than in life itself. For to one who attempts to live as well as to
read, any discussion about human beings which is based upon their
physical separation into two sexes and then treats of one of them as
an entity separate and apart from the rest of the race is seen to be
an evasion of one sort or another.

Yet it would be a simple matter to name a lengthy list of pre-
sumably serious articles bought and published by editors of our bet-
ter magazines in the past few years which treat woman as a distinct
and separate species with laws peculiar to herself — articles which
discuss her problems as if they are apart from, rather than an in-
separable part of, the problems of the whole race. Let me recall a
few of them: "Can Intellectual Women Live Happily?" "Are
Women Pikers?" "Logic and the Ladies," "Can a Woman Drive a
Car?" "Do Women Lose Their Power to Think Earlier Than

1From Scrlbner's Magazine, May, 1931. Reprinted by permission of the
publishers.

365

366 EDNA YOST

Men?" "Ladies and Lawlessness," "Are Brains a Handicap to a
Woman?" "Are Women Inferior or Are They Trying to Side-
Track Nature?" "Do Women Really Like Each Other?" "Are
Women More Irritable Than Men?" "Things I Can't Understand
About Women," and "Some Masculine Thoughts About Women."
Though why this last title seemed necessary I scarcely know, since
practically all the above articles record masculine thoughts on
women.

Examination of these articles and of innumerable others easily
reveals the lop-sided point of view on life which brought them into
existence. Discussions about the unmarried woman are indulged
in, for example, instead of discussions about unmarried people.
Whether or not the intellectual woman can be happy is written
about in these modern days as if intellectual development in woman
is some feminine abnormality instead of an inevitable part of the
intellectual progress of the race. And certainly the insertion of the
feminine, or protective, point of view (that is, that the human race
is more important than the cash profits from the work it does) into
the highly efficient capitalistic system which the masculine half of
the race alone has created in the world of business and industry,
will be accomplished as much through man's readjustment as
through woman's adjustment. Yet when or where do we see the
matter discussed from some fundamental standpoint which recog-
nizes the need for the feminine contribution here before the system
will be completely human instead of just masculine? From read-
ing the magazines one would think that the economic world is some
perfect creation into which woman fits imperfectly, and that the
fault lies in her rather than in both.

It seems to me that this extensive focussing of the spot-light on
woman alone is the result of somebody's failure to recognize the
essential unity of all human life; and that in these modern days
such a failure is becoming more and more deliberate and stupid.
For any intelligent person knows that a spot-light not only shows
up the chosen object, but that its glare casts shadows over sur-
rounding objects. Since it is impossible to view human beings
fairly except in their setting in the rest of the world, this constant
focussing of a spot-light on woman alone looks suspiciously at times
like somebody's clever attempts to keep the other half of the race
away from the Kleigs. Of course it turns out to be a compliment
to woman. It gives the feminine half of the race a tremendous

WOMAN IN THE SPOTLIGHT 367

confidence in itself — a confidence which is bound to get it some-
where. But it does not help any of us, male or female, to see our-
selves in the proper perspective.

Intellectuals of either sex are funny. And never are they funnier
than when they write from their own deep-seated prejudices. They
make one think of Vesuvius trying to be gentle. When they erupt
it's always white-hot lava. Whatever else an Intellectual may be,
he (or she) often seems to be an individual who transfers to the
opposite sex all those not quite admirable traits which his mind
knows all about but which emotionally he has never accepted in
himself or in members of his own sex. Thus, men Intellectuals
are able to write scathingly about selfishness or a lack of logic,
€t cetera, et cetera, as if they are predominantly the traits of women
rather than of many, many human beings regardless of sex.

Lest I seem to be betraying my own prejudices in the next few
pages in naming men rather than women as examples of funny
Intellectuals, I refer again to the Readers' Guide for recent years
as proof of the fact that articles about Man as a biological and
psychological specimen are not being indulged in by the best maga-
zines. This does not mean that Intellectuals of the feminine persua-
sion are above writing them, but merely that editors are not
publishing them. Women are as blind and prejudiced about men
as men are about women — though most of them do not believe it.
Virginia Woolf has recently attributed the lack of books written
by women about men (in the British Museum) to the fact that
women do not write them, a judgment which I accept. I think it
is true, however, that plenty of women Intellectuals have written
magazine-length articles about man as blindly prejudiced as a John
Macy or an Ernest Boyd could ever be about woman. But as long
as men are the final judges of what is to be published in our high-
class magazines, the public may depend upon it that articles which
are distinctly unfair to men in a derogatory way will have little
opportunity of appearing in print. This does not mean that they
are deliberately tabooed because they tramp on an editor's masculine
toes. But when an editor judges an article for publication (this is
not true of fiction) he not only wants it to have sales value, but he
usually wants to believe that its underlying thought is sound. It
need not be deep always, but it should be sound. And snow me
the man who is able to believe a woman is thinking soundly about
men when she does it from a reverse Ernest Boyd- John Macy slant,

368 EDNA YOST

and I'll show you a flying rhinoceros with six delicate gossamer
wings.

Back in the middle of the eighteenth century when Lord Ches-
terfield was trying by correspondence to instruct his illegitimate
son in the art of being a gentleman, he wrote him : "Your conversa-
tion with women should always be respectful, but at the same time
enjoue, and always addressed to their vanity. Everything you say
or do should convince them of the regard you have (whether you
have it or not) for their beauty, their wit, or their merit. . . ."
And later, "The penetration of princes seldom goes deeper than the
surface. It is the exterior which always engages their hearts, and
I would never advise you to give yourself much trouble about their
understanding. Princes in general (I mean those who are born and
bred to the purple) are about the pitch of women; bred up like
them, and to be addressed and gained in the same manner."

Now our modern Intellectuals have little in common with Ches-
terfield in their approach to women. Much of what they write is
an attempt to convince us that they have no regard whatsoever for
our wit or merit (whether they have it or not!) and their conversa-
tion is quite as likely to be persimmony as enjoue. But like Ches-
terfield they have never given themselves "much trouble about their
understanding." Like that old gallant, too, they possess an ego-
protecting blindness which enables them to see that it is the other
fellow only who is not penetrating beneath the surface. They have
created their own two-dimensional canvases, one of man and an-
other of woman, to suit their own intellectual and physical needs,
and because woman does not stay framed nicely within hers they
blame her for spoiling the picture rather than themselves for put-
ting on the frame.

For example : James Truslow Adams wrote in a recent article,
"I think it cannot be denied that woman in America has failed in
her age-long duty of civilizing her man. . . . Woman having
failed to socialize and humanize her man, it may yet be his job to
civilize her." This is a point of view which antedates even Chester-
field— this canvas which paints woman as with an "age-long duty
of civilizing her man." The modern idea is that here we are, male
and female, each with a contribution to make toward humanizing
(not masculinizing or femininizing) the world we live in, and each
achieving our own salvation through learning to make that con-

WOMAN IN THE SPOTLIGHT 369

tribution. Adult growth comes through doing, not in being done
to. If Mr. Adams is right in his contention that the American man
is not yet civilized, it merely means that man has not yet made his
rightful contribution. When he does, he will be civilized. And
all that woman would ever be able to do to him is highly unim-
portant. The only function either sex has in the life of the other
is that of honest, unthwarting cooperation. Any other idea is far
too antiquated for modern life. And I blush with shame for those
published males and unpublished females who still think of their
own sex as capable of acting as God for the rest of us, and of the
opposite sex as responsible for the lack of human perfection in the
world.

Frankly, the point of view which the Intellectual so often has on
the opposite sex fascinates me. When John Macy, who humbly
admits that "it is from women that I try to learn about women,"
says bluntly that "the reason women are more subject to hysteria
than men, in the proportion of twenty to one, is in plain terms that
their brains are weaker," I marvel in all sincerity at his ability to
discard other explanations in favor of this one. It is the "why" of
the ability of people of recognized intellectual capacity to be utterly
stupid when it comes to an attempted understanding of the op-
posite sex which intrigues me. Why, for instance, did Mr. Macy
not say that the reason might be that women are capable of much
greater emotional heights than men, that they are, hence, more
capable of all forms of emotional enjoyment, including sex, and that
with external conditions made favorable, this force (controlled)
will doubtless lead them to eclipse man in many forms of artistic
creativeness. Not that I believe it! But from the coldly logical
standpoint (and Mr. Macy was talking about logic and the ladies)
one explanation is just as rational as the other. The trouble is that
both are somewhat removed from life.

Then there is D. H. Lawrence who frankly studied the barn-
yard to learn about women before writing his "Cocksure Women
and Hensure Men," and devoted, I hasten to add, but five lines of
type to hensure men. Observing that when an airplane swoops
over the chickenyard it is always the cock who flaps his wings and
calls the hens to shelter (though why they need shelter from some-
thing harmless and interesting he does not discuss), he somehow
arrives at the conclusion that the tragedy of the modern woman is
that having lived her life with so much cocksureness, the hensure-

370 EDNA YOST

ness which is the real bliss of every female (chicken or human, ob-
viously) has been denied her, so she has missed life altogether.
Poignantly he summarizes this awful woman tragedy with one
word. "Nothingness !" says he! Which aptly summarizes much of
the drivel being written by the Intellectuals about women, it seems
tome.

Men and women are different — no question about that. But not
so different as this spot-light on women is tending to suggest. There
is more of the man in civilized woman and more of the woman in
civilized man than most of us are willing to admit. Somehow the
feeling still clings that it unsexes either sex to cultivate, or even
admit, its similarities with the other. Strong-minded women are
still loath to be called intellectual, and tender-hearted men still
cringe at being called emotional. The significance of "human"
has not yet gripped us; because mental and emotional adolescence
must be put behind us before we are able to understand where
qualities that are merely male and female leave off and those which
are truly human begin. Until both men and women realize that
the acceptance and development of their human qualities will make
them greater rather than feebler male and female men and women,
the antagonisms which arise from sex fears will crowd out the co-
operation which would arise from genuine sex understanding —
which is love. Let's learn to be chickens as well as mere, though
excellent, cocks and hens.

I suppose from the strictly logical standpoint the one thing which
would counterbalance easiest the unfair effects of all the spot-light
which has been played upon woman would be a similar spot-light
on man as a species separate and apart from the rest of the race.
Stick him on a pin, too, and watch him wriggle. But two stupidities
rarely bring forth wisdom, even in print. Rather we need to hear
more from both men and women who have achieved the state of
being human beings instead of that of only maleness or femaleness.

I think we have been hearing far too little from women of this
caliber. The policies of our high-grade magazines have been in-
teresting in recent years not only for what has been said in them
about woman but for what they have permitted women to say in
their valuable pages. I have talked considerably with editors who
help to create magazines and infinitely more with the public which
reads them. The idea seems to be prevalent that, in comparison
with the other sex, women who really think are few; and that this

WOMAN IN THE SPOTLIGHT 371

accounts for the dearth of thought material which has been pub-
lished over women's names, and for the fact that when you find an
article by a woman on a subject which would allow for personal
thought, it is almost always either cleverly amusing or merely repor-
torial. There may be truth in their explanation of this — that
women who think are few — but life has not convinced me of it.
Too many women have the experience of being told, "You think
exactly like a man" (it is supposed to be a compliment), and then,
when they arrive at some conclusion which seems simple and inevita-
ble to them, of being told paternally, "But no; I don't follow you
there. I'm afraid you're being emotional (or illogical)." It is not
likely to happen in a discussion on some impersonal subject like
mathematics* (It is surprising how well we get along with men
on mathematics!) But once let us get into a discussion on some
phase of what we call "life," and what appears to be legitimate
thought to us is too often held to be the sheerest emotionalism, or
lack of logic, by men — including editors. I am willing to admit
that men may be right. But then again, they may not be. I sub-
mit as a fact that nobody yet knows. And until women who believe
they are thinking break into print and think further on those very
topics where men find them illogical, the whole subject of thought
which is completely human is being kept much darker than is good
for us. The field of thought, like the business and industrial world,
may be more purely masculine and, hence, less human, than we
suspect.

Woman, I think, needs not so much to be talked about as to be
permitted a natural light and a natural setting. Until the spot-
light is removed from her, she cannot be seen for what she really is.
For, as long as she must face the glare, she is bound to keep her
make-up on. Which is a silly performance both for her and for
the spot-light tenders. Woman alone, as a species separate and
apart from man, actually is not worth a hill of beans, for the simple
reason that she does not exist that way. Only the Intellectuals see
life like that — the Intellectuals and those-to-be-pitied others whose
inner disunion with reality prevents them from recognizing the es-
sential oneness of all life.

ROMANTIC GOVERNMENT VERSUS
UNROMANTIC GOVERNMENT1

MAURICE C HALL

THE human animal is an incurable romantic. Other animals
seem to view life rather objectively, taking it as it comes for what
it seems to be, but man prefers to view it subjectively, painting it
over in his favorite gay or somber colors, dramatizing it, and in
one way or another transforming the spectacle and action into
something befitting the animal which lives at the center of the uni-
verse and is the most important of created things. Through his
animistic romanticism he achieves his religion, by chivalrous and gal-
lant romanticism he elevates passion or the routine of marriage to
the status of love, and by an admixture of hero worship and fetish-
ism he formulates his governments.

This passion for romanticism in our personal life has some
desirable aspects. In its religious phases it has taken form in some
commendable ethics and some noble architecture, painting and
sculpture. In the field of individual emotions, it leads to pleasant
relationships and the works of Lucian and Cabell. In personal
matters, the right to romance and romanticism is well within our
circle of personal rights. But in government romanticism expresses
itself, only too clearly as regards the comfort and safety of man-
kind, in democracy, autocracy, aristocracy, dictatorship and similar
romantic ideology.

It must be admitted that in all probability the romanticism which
has colored all government from ancient times to the present was
and still is inevitable and inescapable. The reasons for a human
behavior that is world-wide and rooted in the ages must be real,
profound and convincing. But at this time I challenge the neces-
sity for continuing to regard government from a romantic point of
view.

From the romantic point of view, government is a matter of poli-

1From the Scientific Monthly, November, 1934. Reprinted by permission
of the author and the publishers.

372

ROMANTIC GOVERNMENT 373

tics, statecraft, diplomacy, principles, tradition, leaders and similar
components. All these things can be defined objectively, and all
are rich in connotation and prone to arouse warm emotional reac-
tions. To one man democracy is a fetish, and dictatorship an abomi-
nation; to another man dictatorship is a fetish, and democracy an
abomination. Such emotional reactions have carried governments
through alternate cycles of one thing and another, but there is little
profit in the alternate testing and disapproving of this and that.

It is proposed here to examine the concepts of government some-
what briefly and critically, not to settle anything whatever, but to
present a point of view which is seldom utilized in considering gov-
ernments. Briefly, we think that governments are not good subjects
for romantic treatment, that romantic ideas of government obscure
facts that are self-evident except to romanticists, and that an exist-
ing move towards unromantic government, a move not generally
recognized, should be given consideration as offering something more
fitting for modern times and present-day needs.

To make clear the distinction between romantic and unromantic
concepts of government and to provide a background for discussion,
we define unromantic government as the conduct of the communal
business, government that attends to such business as is not at-
tended to by individuals or non-governmental groups, such business
as the commonplace routine of public works, roads, taxes and public
health. If we look at government in this light, we can regard it as
a matter calling for the employment by the state, whether the state
be federal or town in scope, of persons well informed and well
trained in such subjects as public works, roads, taxes and public
health. This simple and unromantic view of government is remote
from the accepted views, and we proceed to take issue with those
views.

One of the romantic elements of government is the entire concept
of politics. It finds romantic expression in the American devotion to
a two-party system, supposedly expressive of the Gilbert and Sulli-
van concept that "Every boy and every gal that's born into the
world alive is either a little liberal or else a little conservative."
How true this concept of a right and left wing may be can be
judged by the national political platforms of our leading parties in
1928, when the left wing, not unnaturally, proved to be a mirror
image of the right wing.

The romantic American sees nothing incongruous in selecting as

374 MAURICE C. HALL

mayor of a city a Democrat or a Republican at a time when a Demo-
crat is defined as a believer in tariff for revenue, and a Republican
as a believer in a protective tariff. Obviously, one's tariff beliefs
have nothing to do with judging whether Main Street should be re-
paved, nor does a mayor vote on tariff legislation, but to the ro-
mantic American that does not matter.

Romantic government deals in emotionalism, in patriotism ex-
emplified in ritual, ceremony and formula, in international hatreds,
in the reform of its citizenry by Mann acts, Volstead acts and sim-
ilar noble experiments and acts of faith in unbelievable things.

The smart politician is not in the least deceived in this matter.
Voters may think that there is a principle at stake in local elections
on a national party basis, but the shrewd politico knows that the
thing at stake is the question of who gets the office and influence,
and, too frequently, who gets the concessions, graft and other perqui-
sites. The smart business man realizes that in a world of ro-
manticists government will control government, so he and the poli-
tician have an understanding from which romanticism is eliminated.

Another priceless pair of romantic concepts is that of statecraft
and diplomacy. These elements of grand strategy are eternally
conjoining with the military forces to seize some Alsace-Lorraine
and thereby sow the seeds of new wars, all of them destructive to
winner and loser alike. Their smartest achievements of to-day are
seen in some not remote to-morrow to be stupid and vicious, and it
is difficult to find in the long list of statesmen and diplomats any
whose judgment and achievements have had historical justification.

Traditions are the special heritage of romantic government. Many
of them are immensely valuable to the stage, the movies and litera-
ture, since it is undeniably fascinating to find in such places as Lon-
don the endless picturesque doing of elaborate things for no reason
other than that these things were done a thousand years ago for
reasons long ago forgotten or no longer applicable. As a spectator
one can approve these things almost whole-heartedly; as a citizen
one could ask that they be transported from the field of government
to the field of histrionics, where they belong. Traditions ennoble
not merely the gaudy and useless, but also the preposterous and in-
iquitous. They tie us with the fetters of dead men, dead beliefs,
dead emotions. They close the avenues to change, experimentation
and progress, and force on the unromantic element of government
the role of iconoclast.

ROMANTIC GOVERNMENT 375

At this time the world is in a mad search for leaders, and the
supply of leaders is, as usual, quite equal to the demand. Leaders
are such a simple solution for a lot of baffling problems. They
answer all the moronic demands of bewildered minds for a Moses to
lead them to some Promised Land, for a magician who can solve all
problems, national and international, by the magic of personality
and leadership. It is a comforting idea to romanticists, vvho find
that thought is conducive to headaches, and hard work productive
of backaches. The history of the world's leaders shows that if the
mob will follow, leaders will lead them somewhere, but not to the
land of heart's desire. A Peter the Great may learn ship-building
and lead in that art a people that are not ship-builders, but in gen-
eral the political romanticist wishes nothing so simple and so diffi-
cult. He wishes leaders of an inspirational sort, who by inspiration
know the answers to the questions of tariff, coinage, transportation,
communication, immigration, international trade and such bagatelles
of government. The realist in government does not wish to be led ;
he wants trained, capable, intelligent, honest public officials who will
attend to the public business.

Among the romantic concepts of government is democracy.
Democracy is too valuable to be subjected to the fetishistic treat-
ment of romanticists, for this sort of treatment endangers the ex-
istence of realistic democratic government. Democracy has this
valuable characteristic: it ensures individual safety as no other
forms of government have ensured it, and on that one score alone
democracy should be saved from its friends and its foes alike. It
is notorious that democracies have often proved inefficient, but thou-
sands of years of dangerous autocracy of one sort and another have
driven nations to democracy. All Latin America knows that when
dictators have destroyed the machinery of democracy elections must
be by revolution, and that revolutions are the inevitable sequel to
dictators.

Nevertheless, we have the swing to the romantic concept of the
ancient cult of the dictator, the Man on Horseback. It is astound-
ing to have in modern times this recrudescence of belief in the Able
Man, with its flavor of divine right of kings, of the law of lese-
majeste, its suppression of opposition, criticism, alien groups and the
like. To a realist there is nothing surprising in a band of vikings
hailing as leader their best fighting man, for theirs was a govern-
ment that dealt in war; these men were realists, the greatest war-

376 MAURICE C. HALL

rior was their expert in government, and he gave them precisely
what the realist wishes, expert government. To-day, the dictator is
an anachronism, the skeleton of an ancient realist dug up by ro-
manticists and set to rule over romanticists. Your hero worshipper
has the faith of all romanticists, the faith that a dictator can know
all the complex business of government. To a realist it seems evi-
dent that dictators are too small for the large job of government, and
too impermanent for its long-time needs.

It is said that dictators are efficient. To this assertion the realist
may cock an incredulous ear. It is admitted that dictators have the
unimpaired authority to do things that their title implies. It is ad-
mitted that they do the things they wish to do. But it is not ad-
mitted that doing what one wishes to do is efficiency. A child may
break its toys quite painstakingly, and not be efficient or admirable.
Efficiency in government implies not only that things are done but
that these things are desirable things and are for the general wel-
fare. On any such basis we note that dictators, unpredictably, may
do preponderantly good things, or preponderantly bad things, or, as
in the case of Napoleon, may balance a Code Napoleon and some
good roads against devastating wars and "forty battles won." On
the whole their record of efficiency is little, if any, better than that
of democracies. Against any efficiency dictators may exhibit, we
set the fact that the dictator is dangerous to the life, liberty and
happiness of the citizens he governs. He imposes on them the ne-
cessity of agreeing with him or suffering, a thing for which only
a romanticist can hurrah ; your realist in government, who believes
the whole greater than any of its parts, finds this a droll concept
of a government attending to the communal business by molding
a nation in the form of one of its citizens. One can see the work-
ings of a dictator to very great advantage in the small-scale opera-
tions of a Latin-American country, and having seen it on such a
small scale the realist will not wish to see it on a larger scale. The
romanticist, of course, will continue to find Diaz of Mexico,
Emiliano Chamorro of Nicaragua and Machado of Cuba admirable
dictators, just as he finds Caesar, Tamerlane, Napoleon, Mussolini,
Stalin and Hitler admirable dictators. As individuals these men
may have great charm and ability, but the unromantic realist will
look askance at all dictators as dictators.

As a realist in matters of government, I speak now for unro-
mantic government. For a quarter of a century I have participated

ROMANTIC GOVERNMENT 377

in the unromantic government of the United States, and, at Me same
time and at close range, have been a spectator of the roman-u: gov-
ernment. During that time romantic government has beer rep-
resented in the White House by the strenuous Teddy Roosevelt,
the judicial Taft, the scholarly Wilson, the genial HardLig;, the
calm Coolidge, the engineer Hoover, and Franklin Rooseve1*, whom
history will characterize better after all the returns aic in. It
is sufficient to name these men, to recall their characteristics and
the manner and reasons of their accession to power, to see how
romantic government functions. Do you recall how up to a cer-
tain March fourth, each of them was to almost half of our citizens
the embodiment of all objectionable things, and how after that
certain date each became imposing, oracular and incredibly im-
portant? This is magic, the magic of the romanticists.

And in the same period, who constituted the unromantic gov-
ernment? During that period the unromantic government con-
sisted of bureau chiefs, division chiefs, editors, scientists, physicians,
veterinarians, lawyers, officers and men of the army and navy, clerks
and other workers. You probably know little about the personnel
of this unromantic governing group, but you may recall Goethals,
Gorgas, Reed, Carroll, Asaph Hall, Peary, Byrd, Stiles, Walcott,
Stratton, Galloway, Taylor, Mohler, Harvey Wiley, Gifford
Pinchot, L. O. Howard, Goldenweiser, Durand or Atwater as some
of the distinguished representatives of unromantic government.

And what did these realists in government do? They proved that
yellow fever was! carried by mosquitoes, they drove yellow fever
from the Isthmus of Panama, and they built the Panama Canal;
they lessened the incidence of amebiasis, malaria and hookworm dis-
ease ; they developed high-frequency radio communication ; they gave
over 5,000 bearings a month to merchant ships to make navigation
safe; they devised the sonic depth-finder for rapid surveys of ocean
depths; they invented smokeless gunpowder; they provided precise
time for surveying, astronomy and gravity determinations ; they pub-
lished the Nautical Almanac and American Ephemeris; they con-
quered the North Pole and the South Pole; they brought relief to
sufferers from pellagra and Rocky Mountain spotted fever; they
developed the anticlinal theory and the carbon ratio theory for the
use of the petroleum industry; they devised a system for the blind
landing of aircraft ; they supplied data for ventilating the Holland
Tunnel; they built the tide-calculating machine which, with one

378 MAURICE C. HALL

operator, does the work of 70 mathematicians and saves $150,000 in
salaries annually; they developed disease-resistant plants; they in-
troduced durum wheat into this country; they synthesized ammonia
directly from hydrogen and nitrogen to make fertilizers; they de-
veloped control measures for dust explosions and lowered insurance
rates; they found a method of making furfural for 10 to 17 cents a
pound instead of $30 a pound ; they found that Southern cattle fever
was carried by the cattle tick, and they drove the tick from over
89 per cent of its range and are driving it from the parts of those
states where it makes its final stand, saving $40,000,000 annually
for a total cost of less than $40,000,000; they developed a treat-
ment for human hookworm disease, and for hookworm disease and
heartworm disease in your dogs; developed the hog cholera serum
which saves millions of dollars worth of swine annually; they pro-
tected you from adulterated foods and inert drugs; they inspected
your meats; they compelled the adoption of safety devices on rail-
roads, ships and airplanes for your protection ; they supplied expert
information on finance, tariffs and similar subjects; and in a thou-
sand ways they carried out the communal business, the work of
the United States Government, the unromantic government that is
overshadowed by the more gaudy and vocal romantic government.

The personnel of this unromantic government is selected by Civil
Service competitive examination on the basis of education, experi-
ence, training and knowledge. Any one of several qualified per-
sons at the top of a list may be appointed to a position, but all these
persons are qualified. Compare this with our romantic government,
elected on a platform of ballyhoo, favorite sons, stupid slogans, elec-
tion promises, vilification, innuendo, such magical cantraps and
abracadabras as will most certainly enchant the romanticist, and such
doodads, dingbats and thingumabobs as will delight the grown-up
children. Does this system secure qualified persons? Perhaps it
does in your party, but it quite obviously does not in the other
party.

The unromantic government is expert government. In the list
of names given here are many of men who are rated as the best
or among the best in the world in their field. Most of them had
this rating when they were being paid from $1,400 to $5,000 a
year. How many Congressmen selected on the romantic basis of
politics are the best or among the best in the world in their field ?
How many have an expert rating in any field ? . . .

ROMANTIC GOVERNMENT 379

But, you may ask, what of it? We have two kinds of govern-
ment; granted. So what? I answer: Why not abolish the ro-
mantic methodology and substitute the unromantic? How? Con-
tinue to substitute the professional non-political type of government
for the political non-professional type, and keep on until the pro-
fessional type is carrying on all the nation's business instead of
sharing it with the political type. How could this be done ? By the
extension of a sound civil service or other merit system, gradually
encroaching, as it has in the past, on the field of the spoils system, of
the political henchman and of political nepotism, until romantic gov-
ernment is replaced by unromantic government. We should .lose
nothing from our romantic selections except the incompetents, as
the competent would be more certain of selection under a merit
system.

Does this seem difficult? It is no more difficult to hold a Civil
Service examination for a sheriff than for a geologist, for a judge
than for a psychologist, for a congressman than for an economist,
for a president than for a sociologist. Let us grant that you can
name a half dozen presidents, selected by romanticist measures,
whom you regard as highly competent presidents ; you can also name
a half dozen whom you regard as highly incompetent. Unromantic
government would retain all the safety of democracy by allowing
the electorate to vote for presidents, but would eliminate the in-
efficiency of democracy by limiting the candidacies to qualified candi-
dates only, so that regardless of who was elected the president would
be a qualified person. Such a system would not get ideal execu-
tives, but it would eliminate preposterous persons from the presi-
dency, governorships and mayoralties. It would ensure that judges
were competent in judicial matters, and that legislators knew some-
thing of law-making and were never elected merely as good fel-
lows, hand-shakers and donors of cigars.

The objections that will occur to you are easily foreseen. Some
persons without education, training or experience, but with quali-
ties of leadership, would be disqualified. However, the unromantic
realist will refuse to weep if there is never again a Jackson in the
White House. Jackson fitted his era, but the era is over and we
face complicated problems through which no amount of hard-
headedness can butt a way. Courage alone will not solve banking
and monetary problems.

Another objection is that this unromantic government is merely

38o MAURICE C. HALL

bureaucracy under another name. There would be good grounds
for this objection. Bureaucracy is government by bureaus, accord-
ing to definition, and on this basis you have bureaucracy already,
since a half million persons, from admirals, generals and bureau
chiefs to the doughboys, gobs, mail carriers and messengers, quietly
carry on your bureaucratic government twelve months in the year,
while your romantic government puts on its lesser and noisier show
for a small part of the year and then joyfully rushes home to take
up its more serious occupations.

But bureaucracy may have an unpleasant connotation, and this
unpleasant term is defined as officialism with officials endeavoring to
concentrate power in their individual bureaus. Speaking as a bureau-
crat, in the sense of an officer in a government bureau, I note that
in the government bureaus one finds about the same variety in am-
bition that one finds elsewhere, some officials being satisfied with
small organizations and some desiring large organizations. There
is little damage evident in either case, but it is evident that a too
small organization may be inadequate for the demands made on it,
just as a large organization may be too large for the demands on it.

But, you may say, bureaucracy implies officiousness. Admittedly,
we occasionally meet with officiousness, usually on the part of lesser
and relatively unimportant persons, among bureaucrats as among
bankers and ribbon clerks. Officiousness is a nuisance, and nuisances
are objectionable. But if we weigh the nuisances of our unromantic
government against the dishonesty of some romantic administrations,
the stupidity of some others and the danger from fanatical legisla-
tion in some others, we must see the officiousness of a minor bureau-
crat as the least of the evils named.

In the high but not so far-off days of the spoils system, when all
American politics was romantic politics, one section of the govern-
ment service was known as The Harem, and there were Congress-
men's lady friends who were paid as artists, although they never
drew anything except their salaries. Finally, a disappointed office-
seeker shot a President, and a Civil Service that should have been
born earlier of common sense and realism was born of anger and
grief. The political romanticists provided that the unromantic gov-
ernment it had created must keep out of the romantic side of gov-
ernment. Why? Because political romanticism was ruinous to
efficiency and unbiased honesty. It was not noticed at the moment
that political romanticism is quite generally ruinous to efficiency or

ROMANTIC GOVERNMENT 381

honesty or both, and not merely in the Civil Service. It is, of course,
as ruinous in a legislative body as it is in a scientific laboratory. A
really able legislator, La Guardia, has said: "The most humble
research scientist in the Department of Agriculture is at this time
contributing more to his country than the most useful member of
Congress." If this is even partially true, it is because the selection
of legislators on a romantic basis can be depended on to turn up
very few La Guardias, whereas a merit system of selection, such as
the Civil Service, can be depended on to turn up qualified persons
with great regularity.

By virtue of the prohibition of activity in the field of romantic
government, and by virtue of residence in the District of Columbia
which deprives them of their right to vote and ensures that they will
be taxed without representation, the Washington representatives of
our unromantic government may be said to have been deprived of
their political rights. Now, there is no fetish more dear to political
romanticists than political rights. Undoubtedly they are important.
But just what are our political rights? Are they what the political
romanticist thinks they are? Are they the right to shout and write
for this, that or the other action on subjects of which the romantics
know little or nothing, and ultimately to vote for persons with
whom they agree and who likewise know little about these subjects?
Apparently they are just these things. And is this important or
valuable ? Was all the oratory and ink that went into the McKinley-
Bryan campaign of 1900 of any more value and benefit than the con-
current debate as to whether the century began in 1900 or 1901 ?
Was all the Coolidge-Davis debate and controversy of more im-
portance than the question : How old is Ann ?

There are certain personal rights which are of value. One is the
right to be safe in one's person, liberty, property and freedom of
expression within the bounds of law and of consideration for the
rights of others. If this right is important, dictatorships of all
varieties are intolerable. There are certain political rights which
are of value. One of them, not generally recognized, is the right to
have only qualified persons appointed to office or presented to the
electorate as candidates for office. This is a very different thing
from fetishistic democracy and all other forms of political romanti-
cism. Political romanticism allows one to appoint officials and to
vote for candidates regardless of qualifications, and the right to do
this is a highly cherished right of fetishistic democracy. In religion

38a MAURICE C. HALL

one must have the right to go to hell if one does not wish to go to
heaven, but that is a personal matter. No such option should be
tolerated in government. In the field of politics we can maintain
our personal rights only by maintaining the community rights, and
it is a violation of the community rights to permit unqualified per-
sons to govern.

Hence we may say that our Washington representatives of un-
romantic government have been deprived of nothing of value in not
being allowed to vote for Tweedledee instead of Tweedledum, or
for a second-rate orator instead of a third-rate orator, or for any of
the other offerings of political romanticism. However, they have
been deprived of the right to have only competent persons appointed
or presented to the electorate, and this is a serious matter, as it
exposes them and the majority of our citizens, if not all of us, to
the stupidities and iniquities of incompetent romanticism. . . .

And since we are dealing with romantic government, what do we
mean by romantic? According to the dictionary, romantic is re-
lating to romance; fanciful; visionary; fictitious and improbable;
fantastic; sentimental. Romance is prose fiction, an extravagant
story, things strange, fascinating, heroic, adventurous or mysterious.
These things are the essence of romantic politics — the spells of the
spellbinder, the painfully concocted ambiguities of political plat-
forms, the campaign promises, the sentimental misuse of the Wash-
ington, Jefferson and Hamilton traditions, the mysterious misdeeds
of opposing parties and candidates and the rest of the propaganda
regarding our fictitious virtues and our opponent's improbable vices.

As regards things fanciful, visionary, fictitious and heroic in poli-
tics, the writer has this thought in common with Stalin, Mussolini,
Kemal Pasha and Hitler, that political parties should be abolished.
But where the dictators' solution is merely a change from the ro-
mantic plural to the romantic singular, from fanciful parties to one
allegedly heroic party, the writer would go farther and abolish all
political parties, leaving only the professional force charged with
the serious, commonplace business of government.

What is the prospect of our giving up our romantic government
in favor of unromantic government ? There is a fair prospect. The
unromantic civil service and other merit systems are actually making
headway, slowly but surely, against romantic government. The
United States and Britain have sound civil service systems, extending
in Britain up to under-secretaries in the cabinet, and just stopping

ROMANTIC GOVERNMENT 383

short of assistant secretaries in the United States. A few of our
states have merit systems, some of them effective. A very few coun-
ties have merit systems. Among our cities, 445 have changed from
the romantic mayor to the unromantic city manager, and 165 other
cities have city managers of limited responsibility. Historians may
find that the greatest advance of Franklin Roosevelt's administra-
tion was his employment of expert advisers in economics and
sociology. . . .

Romantic government has a strong hold on a humanity that re-
luctantly ceases to play with its toys. Mankind does not quickly
give up its torch-light processions, its love of royal pageantry, its
affection for the catchwords of democracy or autocracy, its belief
in the magic of politicians, its desire for leaders to find the way to
happiness along some road that does not involve thinking or hard
work. But in time it does give them up. The torch-light proces-
sions are gone, in most countries the thrones have fallen, and al-
though we still play at romantic democracy, indulge in the cere-
monials of the fascist salute or the adoration of the Hakenkreuz,
and still manifest faith in political promises and leaders, we shall
come, sooner or later, to a realization that accomplishment of our
ends lies in the direction of sound thinking and hard work. We
shall employ more trained thinkers and competent workers, not as
adjuncts to romanticists temporarily in office, but as the real and
permanent government. We shall in time abandon romantic gov-
ernment, as we have abandoned fire worship, witchcraft and medieval
chivalry, in favor of unromantic government by qualified persons
only.

OUR FEAR OF EXCELLENCE1

MARGARET SHERWOOD

IN THIS age crying out for democracy there come, even to loyal
Americans, ardent believers in America and the potentialities of
America, moments of question as to whether it is not possible to
carry democracy too far. On the street, in railway trains, in mar-
ket place and lecture hall, misgivings creep into the minds of the
stoutest-hearted among us; and the printed word does not always
reassure. Liberty, equality, fraternity, are for us a glorious
heritage, a privilege, a responsibility, but the haunting sense will
not down that there may be an excess of liberty, equality, and
fraternity.

The hard and cutting blows that, from time to time, strike at
the very root of our political faith, do not always concern political
matters; it is increasingly apparent that great and beneficent move-
ments may have, as by-products, wholly disconcerting results. A
remark, heard long ago on a steamer deck, of a fellow-passenger
who declared to admiring listeners, that, in her recent visit to the
continent, she had seen many famous pictures, at Antwerp, Paris,
Florence, and elsewhere, but that nothing she had seen abroad
could at all compare in excellence with those exhibited a year before
at Pebble, Colorado, the work of local talent, comes back to me
now and then as a suggestion of the influence of our civic faith upon
our ways of thinking, as a possible foreshadowing of the goal toward
which our feet are set.

Among the various aspects of a triumphing democracy, none is
more distressing than this tendency of a consciousness of liberty,
equality, and fraternity to creep into the wrong place, this fatal
confusion of liberty, equality, and fraternity with intellectual and
aesthetic ideals. The remark, and others like it, which float in our
buoyant American air, could hardly come from any country but
our own. Reading the records of early days, of the endeavor, the
aspirations of the founders of our country, and watching in-

1From The North American Review, August, 1921. Reprinted by per-
mission of the author and the publishers.

384

OUR FEAR OF EXCELLENCE 385

numerable manifestations of life, east, west, north, and south, we
are forced to realize that our national creed has had wholly unex-
pected, and not always happy, results. Urged on by a desire to
secure Tightness of condition for the many, justice among men, our
ancestors looked forward to a fairer commonwealth where no man
should be oppressed. They hardly foresaw the effect of their doc-
trine in a new attitude toward men's feeling, judgment, or dreamed
for the future anything so disastrous as the triumphant conviction
prevalent to-day that one man's opinion is as good as another's,
with the threatened loss of standards inherent in this belief.

Doubtless out of the struggle for liberty and equality has come
our sheep-like tendency, our longing to be gathered into one
aesthetic or intellectual fold. One must not protest, of course,
against the desire of the young to look alike, act alike, dress alike,
resulting in so precise a similarity in thousands upon thousands of
the new generation that one might imagine them a manufactured
product, turned out with a stamp by some gigantic machine.
Fashion lays all low in whatsoever country, and the passion for
sameness in dress is not so extraordinary nor so deplorable as a
curious levelling tendency manifest here in standards of thought
and of action. The desire shown, the country over, to be alike in
ways of thinking and of appreciation would suggest that one article
in our national creed had defeated another, and that, however far
we may have gone in achieving equality, we are far, very far from
achieving liberty. In the community at large, in schools, in col-
leges we are slaves to the fear of being unlike the others, and no
Clarkson, no Wilberforce rises to break the fetters of the human
soul, as the fetters binding the human body were broken. The
country over, we thrill to the same cheap oratory; the standardized
prettiness of our magazine covers triumphantly sweeps the land;
best sellers delight us because they are best sellers.

Even in institutions of learning, if I may so designate our col-
leges, the young are, as a rule, ashamed of intellectual distinction,
concealing any unusual interest in things of the mind, feeling that
they have disgraced their families if they win Phi Beta Kappa,
hiding artistic ability as if it were a sign of shame. There is cer-
tainly an idea abroad among us in America, and especially astir in
the hearts of the young, that to see a bit farther, to hold one's
standard a bit higher than one's fellows, is not being a good sport,
as if some advantage were being taken in the great game. He who

386 MARGARET SHERWOOD

betrays finer appreciation or unusual insight is as one playing with
marked cards.

Undoubtedly this is, in part, the effect of a new generosity. When
we take our place in the long list of the prehistoric, in line with
the Stone Age, the Age of Bronze, and other ages which have had
their day, as we are having ours, we shall doubtless be known as
the Chemical Age. Yet if periods were named, not for the weapons
which men used, or the material for fashioning household equip-
ment, but for their inner trend of life, this would perhaps be known
as the Age of Sympathy. For that vast awakening to the needs,
the suffering of others, in progress for a century and a half, no one
can be too grateful. It is almost as limitless, as many-sided as
human life itself, this new discernment of another's woes, this pene-
trative understanding of another's need, this swift effort to help.
Everywhere is a literature of sympathy, pleas for the oppressed
in mine and in factory; sympathy of working man for working
man, of pal for pal, of criminal for criminal, even of good man for
good man. It is, preeminently, the mark of our advance, this
extension of one's interest beyond the narrow bounds of one's own,
this ability to put oneself into another's place. So great is our
pride in the breaking of the old Puritan sternness, when cruelty
often masqueraded as righteousness, that one hesitates to speak
questioningly, yet there is cause for fear in this extreme, possibly as
great as the other.

All great gifts have peril in their holding. Sympathy is almost
the most beautiful thing in the world, but it is also the most danger-
ous, to be cherished with prayer and fasting and heart searching.
All lofty places are fraught with hazard ; standing on them it may
be well to remember the depth to which we must plunge. The
greater the height, the greater the possible fall, and this supreme
human attribute carries with it a supreme menace. Hearts of great
saints meet in this great accord, but sympathy for one another,
loyalty to one another is also one of the most marked characteris-
tics of thieves. With one's brother, yes, our whole modern hope is
here, but with one's brother on the downward path is a different
story. Keeping step is highly desirable, but one has to remember
not only the union, but the direction of the step. Triumphant
democracy will do well to recall that ancient, picturesque, yet
accurate statement of spiritual truth, that broad is the path leading
to destruction, and many feet in unison go down it together. Are

OUR FEAR OF EXCELLENCE 387

we forgetting entirely the direction of our step in the feeling that
all will be well because we are altogether ?

Narrow the way, — just as narrow as ever, — that leadeth unto
life, and few there be that find time to look for it: we have so
many engagements now-a-days !

One welcomes this new sympathy, much of it at least ; one recog-
nizes it as, in part, a consequence of that determination toward
justice in which our civic history began. Increasingly we thrill
to the finer hope of a liberty, equality, and fraternity, wherein
all human beings shall have their rights and their privileges; yet,
looking the country over, observing the present condition of things,
we are aware of something subtly wrong. The new generosity in
spirit is not matched in practice; our deeds limp haltingly behind
our facile emotions. That likeness, kinship, sameness of which
we are aware in listening to public speakers, reading the printed
word, hearing the conversation of our fellows in mart, market place,
and on the street, this one stamp of idea and manner, reaching from
Maine to California, disappears when we fix our attention on
material things. Turning from the intangible to the tangible,
from men's thoughts and feelings to their possessions, the similarity
vanishes ; one is aware in the spectacle of life in our land of hideous
contrasts, of a something, in spite of the vast increase in human
sympathy, unfulfilled in the hope of the world. No royalty-ridden
country of Europe can show more appalling differences between
wealth and poverty, more appalling inequalities in the matter of
food, clothing, and material things. The question inevitably arises
as to whether the levelling has not been in the wrong place,
whether the sharing has not been of the wrong things, whether
we have not become free and equal in the wrong way. We have
pooled our ideas, our standards, and have clung fast to our material
possessions; that which should be kept sacred and individual, our
ideals and aspirations, we have tossed into the general store, while
we have clung tightly to that which should have been shared. Our
only communism is a commonness of thought and of belief, a lack
of standards. Men and women who pride themselves on the
exclusive foods they eat, on the individual distinctiveness of the cut
of their clothing, yet thrill to the same cheap eloquence of the stump
orator, and are content, by way of diversion, with the crude emo-
tional appeal and the distorted lines of the same moving pictures.
In matters where there should be difference, constant personal effort

388 MARGARET SHERWOOD

to work out standards, to bring to bear upon the mass the impress
of higher endeavor, thought, feeling, — that right development of
individuality which is the goal of democracy, and the hope at the
heart of Christianity, — mass opinions are substituted for finer indi-
vidual judgments; mob psychology invades our standards. It is
not the unique jewels, the priceless fur coats, the automobiles that
cannot be duplicated, but souls that are thrown into the melting pot.

All this is sad, but undeniable ; who can tell the reasons? Perhaps
it means that we are but following the line of least resistance ; it is
easier to give up standards than it is to give up bodily comforts and
luxuries; moreover, the excellent is more difficult to discern in the
world of thought and of spiritual endeavor than in the "em-
porium." The truth is that we have grown to have a certain fear
of standards, both of thought and of action, because they are above
the comprehension of the many; while we delight in outstripping
Brown, Jones, and Robinson in the matter of wearing apparel, and
glory in getting the better of them, even through a little trickery,
in business, we do not want to have any ideas or ideals which these
fellow human beings do not share. We are shamefaced in owning
a loftier aspiration, a finer insight, and hide the better man within
us under a hail-fellow-well-met manner, and bluff Yankee speech,
preferably slangy, or a bit ungrammatical. There are moments
when one wonders whether we have not wholly mistaken the point
of that great endeavor in which our country had its birth ; our fore-
fathers struggled to break the rule of force, so that spirit might be
free to rule. I cannot believe that they wished to eliminate leader-
ship ; rather, they severed bonds in order to let real leaders emerge
and take their rightful places. In our deification of the average
man we defeat their high intent, and prevent the future. We must
outgrow our nai've and childish fear, — whether it mean recognition
in others or cultivation in ourselves, — of that which is beyond the
mass, if we are ever to achieve anything of value, morally, po-
litically, or in the world of art and of letters. When liberty and
equality get into our intellectual and aesthetic standards, the result
is intellectual and aesthetic chaos. All men's judgments may be
free, but they can never, please God, be equal.

Whether or not our present condition is the inevitable result
of democracy we do not know; historians have suggested that it is
by way of democracies that civilizations go out. If democracy is,
as we believe, a glorious opportunity, the best solution that has

OUR FEAR OF EXCELLENCE 389

been found for the problem of human rule, it is also a great and
perilous experiment for the human soul, full of a fatal impulsion
toward levelling down. Its watchword may be a golden thread
leading us to the very heart of God, or a trail ending in a quick-
sand where aspiration, endeavor, higher hope go down. Its subtle
menace was as apparent in ancient as in modern times. We should
pause, in our triumphant praise of democracy, to recall the fact
that an ancient democracy put to death its greatest philosopher,
Socrates, for proclaiming, in an age enchanted with the sophist con-
viction that this man's idea and that man's idea were the measure
of things, and all that men could know of truth, — a belief in the
existence of universal standards of excellence, standards of truth,
of conduct, objective, enduring, different from the mere subjective
judgment, the momentary whim, conviction, impulse, of this person
or that.

Thinking of our period, thinking of our own country, one realizes
that, in our present self-complacence is the measure of our failure,
in our persistent belief that a deeper faith, a higher conviction can-
not be true, because our neighbors do not believe them to be true.
We are tolerant of our fellow sophist, and gladly grant him a free-
dom as great as our own, but there is something lacking in the pro-
gramme of both of us. Tolerance is undoubtedly a virtue, but not
sufficient as the sole basis of a civilization, into which, if it is to
endure, must be mortised not only negative but positive virtues,
knowledge, wisdom, faith, and unshrinking conviction as to the
difference between right and wrong.

As for the future, it is fairly evident where we are going to
get tolerance, where we are going to get sympathy, but where are
we going to get standards to guide mind and soul? The young
are the future, and, in the unwillingness of the young to admit a
gift or to confess an aspiration not shared by the crowd, we see the
most menacing aspect of our contemporary tendency. Full of
generosity to one another, of desire not to be conspicuous, they yet
betray, these children of triumphant democracy, a certain spiritual
short-sightedness. Perhaps the trouble comes from thinking too
much in terms of things, of confusing intellectual superiority and
high inner endeavor with delicacies pleasing to the palate at the
human banquet, with choice bits of sweet, in regard to which the
young are perhaps more scrupulous than their elders as to claiming
more than their share. There is a mistake here, for there is a

390 MARGARET SHERWOOD

fundamental difference between standards of life, intellectual,
moral, spiritual, artistic, and chocolate creams. In any assembled
company one does not want more than one's share of these; so
should it be with all material things. But generosity in matters of
mind and spirit is a different thing; it is a very energy of life,
showing itself in search for hid treasure, the finder, the darer, being
under stern obligation to seek out and share with his fellows what
perhaps he only could discover; it may be a lone search for lost
trails, for the higher trail, that others may follow after.

He who shirks the responsibility of the greater gift, the keener
insight, betrays a species of mental obliquity, a lack of vision. In
striving toward excellence, winning it, there is something imper-
sonal; aspiration is not necessarily vanity, genuine aspiration never;
the attainment of the fine and high in thought and in conduct should
be for the sake of that ever clearer discernment of the better whereby
the race measures its inner growth. Refusing to try to win, be-
cause all may not win together, may not the very conception of the
fine and high vanish? In this scruple, this hesitation to put forth
one's utmost, there is fallacy, subtle and insidious, a thinking about
people, rather than about intellectual or spiritual excellence. The
quest of the greater, the unattained, represents no selfish claim;
absolute self-forgetfulness may come in winning toward the goal;
honestly facing the greatest, one loses sight of the ego. It is a
mistaken sympathy which means thinking of oneself and the other
man, rather than of that which draws attention from both to some-
thing higher. Here is failure to discover the presence of anything
but individuals in our cosmos, the many, not the One.

Stern is the obligation to search beyond one's self and one's neigh-
bor, in order to find stepping-stones leading to high places. One
must do more than understand one's brother, and put oneself in his
place ; one must love him deeply enough to hurt him, if necessary,
by failing to acquiesce in his present programme. It is a duty, not
only to keep step with one's fellow, but to try to hasten that step.
One must understand his possibilities, help keep quick and alive the
principle of growth in him, help him discern a something beyond
his or one's own present attainment. There must be something
deeper than surface sympathy that pities his wrongs, profounder
than that sympathy with the lesser self which holds potential menace,
cutting off the future ; there must be sympathy at times like a keen-
edged, naked sword, piercing to the very heart of his lack or limita-

OUR FEAR OF EXCELLENCE 391

tion, as self-scrutiny pierces to one's own, cutting off all that
hampers or keeps back. Without this higher sympathy one does
not, in truth, understand one's brother at all.

The business of a true citizen of a democracy is to search out
continually better and better standards of thought and of conduct,
to carry on, worthily, in the face of new challenge, the effort of our
forefathers, to justify the open road of freedom. The impact of
mind on mind, of soul on soul, in a land where thought and speech
are free, ought to mean, not a levelling down but a levelling up,
each individual soul doing its utmost, by stern endeavor, by search-
ing the ways of truth and beauty through life, to render its own in-
dividual interpretation, a something no other human soul could
do, of possibilities of higher existence.

If mediaeval saint and Indian mystic of to-day err on the side
of too exclusive contemplation of the Principle of Excellence, — too
steady a gaze meaning, perhaps, a blinding of the eyes; if, thus,
human sympathies shrivel, and one deep path of wisdom and under-
standing, knowledge of the human heart, of the facts of life, of
human experience, the way of the Lord through human lives, be
closed, — this excess is still no excuse for our closing our eyes to
that other glorious way of the Lord, the long and splendid dream
of human aspiration, the unwearied striving toward the best, the
contemplation of the beauty of the Lord our God.

Of the great behests, Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart
and soul and mind, and love thy neighbor as thyself, the former was
given first.

There is one simple, but absolute condition of growth, after the
soul has become conscious of itself, the stern and constant measur-
ing of oneself by something higher than oneself, rather than the
excusing of one's defects and limitations because one's neighbors
also have theirs. Our chief human business is, in truth, a discern-
ing of values, all life being but a process of selection and refusal.
Life without constant challenge of the higher is not life at all, nor
subject to the laws of physical and spiritual development, as ancient
intuition and modern logic have revealed them.

We must search out excellence, through great personalities, great
artistic achievements, great faiths, gaining, by contemplation of the
highest reach of thought and conduct of individuals, in different
times and different places, ?. constantly enlarging intellectual and
spiritual apprehension. Working on the stuff that human life

392 MARGARET SHERWOOD

has wrought out, the best that the long struggle, the undying
creative impulse have evolved, gaining acquaintance with great
thought, great feeling, great men, we shall be constantly revising
our idea concerning that which is excellent. Thus, measuring by
great personalities, great deeds, great faiths, we shall at last dis-
cern more clearly the white light of truth, of which these are the
breaking. Following the ways of those other neighbors of other
times and other countries, thinkers, statesmen, creators of any
kind, we shall learn some measure for our own self-assertion.
Pebble, Colorado, must learn to make obeisance to the Uffizzi and
the Louvre.

It is in contemplating human life and human thought at their
greatest that we realize how inadequate our new standard of sym-
pathy proves as a statement of the whole human case. This kind-
liness, this feeling for humanity which we are achieving, means
great gain, but, in the very measure of our preoccupation with our
contemporary fellow-man, there is danger, grave cause for fear
lest, in learning to understand my brother, I lose desire or power
to understand anything else. There may be farther reaches of the
human soul than are manifest in my brother. This making the
individual, the mere human characteristic the measure of excellence,
putting the personality, the qualities of this man or that in place oi
a loftier conception, to whose formation all high thought and great
deeds contribute, is a dangerous process; this great gust of common
thinking may be the wind that blows civilization out. Another
loyalty is necessary, loyalty to a higher ideal, a something beyond
and above you, me, and those about us.

Fear God-Barebones could do great good among us now.

We are, in truth, face to face with the old problem of the many
and the one, the need of the single, the perfect, the one to strain
toward. Unless we take heed, in our content with present achieve-
ments and present ideas, we shall lose the challenge of the forever
unsatisfied within us, the sense of something, in every aspect oi
thought and conduct, yet to be attained. We must not forget, for
no aspect of modern development can compensate for this loss, the
search of the religious instinct out of the worship of many gods
toward the One; the search of the philosopher for the secret, the
one, that will explain the manifold, that which the Greek Plate
conceived as the Idea of Perfect Beauty, the Hebrew in his
reverential thought of the Lord our God.

OUR FEAR OF EXCELLENCE 393

To tell the truth, we are in the throes of a new polytheism,
forgetting the conception of oneness, which is the fundamental basis
of belief of religious teacher, prophet, and philosopher. It is a
new and dangerous polytheism, this worship of Brown, Jones, and
Robinson; one misses in it something of the spirituality of one's
father's faith ; Brown, Jones, and Robinson after all go only so far.

The young say that the spiritual sense is as strong as ever, that
it has gone into good works, the desire to serve. This is undoubt-
edly good, yet we need something to cut through our present com-
placency in our own good works, our tendency to look the country
over and congratulate the age on having arrived, now when every-
thing is being done for everybody who suffers, as if we all, in
devoting ourselves to some measure or other of physical relief, had
wholly met our eternal obligations. Yet surely we need something
beyond; the manifold ideas and ideals regarding service, — this too
a polytheism, — cannot fill the human heart and soul, direct and
hold the human spirit, any more than the many gods of Greece
could permanently hold the human spirit. In all their beauty,
their manifold beauty, they failed.

This ethical polytheism, though it goes a bit farther than the
worship of our contemporaries, is too many-sided to afford the
necessary knitting up and centralizing of human thought and
aspiration. Nor can self-engendered and self-directed ideas of duty,
of service, fine, high, admirable though they may be, ever content
us. There is that within the human soul which yearns for some-
thing beyond; only the Infinite can satisfy. For the true fulfill-
ment of life we must find something better to worship than our
own immediate neighbors, or our own Good Deeds.

SIX-CYLINDER ETHICS1

STUART CHASE

IT is recorded that a certain advertising agency offered a reward
of five hundred dollars to anyone on its staff who could secure the
name of a very great lady in New York society as an indorser of a
toilet preparation which the agency was handling. A young woman
after several gallant attempts received the prize, amid the applause
of her colleagues. The bait that she offered the matron was five
thousand dollars ; and her argument was to the effect that while the
great lady did not need the money herself, the five thousand dollars
would be very useful to help meet the constant appeals for charity
with which all great ladies are deluged. What was a name and a
picture against a Lady Bountiful helping as never before to bind up
the broken hearted? The lady signed on the dotted line, and a
million lesser ladies shortly learned the happy news that an idol of
Fifth Avenue used daily the compound that was to be purchased
in any drug store. As a matter of fact, she never used it, and
never intended to.

In the winter of 1925 there was held a fashion show in New York
City. Across the brilliantly lighted hall passed mannikin after
mannikin, gowned and hatted to the second. Particularly hatted,
as the milliners were underwriting the exhibit. A committee of dis-
tinguished artists watched the mannikins and scored them according
to the beauty of their hats, their faces, their figures, and the rest of
their costumes, if any. The winners were to be found in roto-
gravure sections the country over, the following Sunday. A com-
mittee of distinguished society women, headed by the Duchess of
Richelieu, sponsored the occasion. The whole enterprise was the
creation of an astute counsel on public relations who had been
called in by desperate milliners to avert a tragedy. The tragedy
lay in the fact that American women were buying cheap and de-
plorably durable felt hats, instead of the feathers and laces and

1From The Forum, January, 1928. Reprinted by permission of the
author and the publishers.

394

SIX-CYLINDER ETHICS 395

ribbons dictated at once by fashion and duty. So the distinguished
artists and the distinguished society women recalled them to their
duty, the milliners began to sell more ribbons, the counsel on public
relations received his honorarium, and everybody was happy. Save
possibly a few millions of women who could ill afford the higher
priced hats.

These cases can be duplicated with a hundred variations in a
score of fields. They are so common that they may be regarded as
normal behavior. Only an antediluvian would raise any question
of ethics in respect to them. A woman sells her name, her picture,
and a lie for five thousand dollars; a group of artists sell their
professional integrity to help milliners stamp out felt hats — well,
what of it? For Gawd's sake, what of it? This is a free country,
isn't it? They got away with it, didn't they? Apple-sauce! You
ought to be ridin in a herdic.

Perhaps one ought. For the last speaker has all the weight of the
ruling folkways behind him. His is the authentic voice of the herd,
which, throughout all the records of anthropology, decrees that
what is, is right. Before that sovereign law, one bows one's head.
But it may not be altogether unprofitable to describe this new code
of ethics which has won its way rather suddenly as such things go,
and almost without our conscious knowledge, and to compare it
with other codes which have been displaced.

In the last generation, the technical arts have built an industrial
plant capable of producing goods a great deal faster than purchas-
ing power has been released to absorb them. As an inevitable result,
the world of business has shifted its accent from producing to sell-
ing. The great and pressing problem has been how to dispose of the
volume of articles which mass production has made possible. Hence
the higher salesmanship, advertising, sales quotas, the shattering of
sales resistance, go-getters, the discovery of Jesus of Nazareth as
the first advertising man, courses on the development of personality,
pie charts, maps with red, orange, and violet pins, closing men,
contact men, sucker lists, full line forcing, direct mail appeals,
trade association drives, Paint Up Week, the conversion of real
estate men into realtors, the conversion of advertising Men into
counsels on public relations, the conversion of undertakers into
morticians. (One awaits expectantly the inauguration of a Get
Buried Oftener Week.)

396 STUART CHASE

High speed selling has been so essential (with no fundamental
change in the money and credit structure) and so universal, that
it has profoundly affected both related and distant fields. Thus the
clergy have taken over the technique in great numbers, and urge
us to church with posters, sky signs, dodgers, and even veiled hints
of sermons garnished with sex appeal. The charity organizations,
the colleges, and the Y. M. C. A. yield to none in the consummate
skill with which they sell the public their plans for new buildings,
endowments, and the wherewithal to appease bigger and better
breadlines. No politician worthy of the name is to be found with-
out his publicity agent, endlessly busy on the job of selling the
statesman to his customers. No respectable captain of industry
fails to retain a counsel on public relations to sell his personality,
his shiny new dimes, his marvelous whiskers, his throbbing brain,
his great open heart, to the free citizens of the greatest republic ever
heard of. Giant corporations sell at once the hind quarters of beef
and a special brand of good will, as evidenced by full page spreads
describing their worthy plans for the distribution of stock to their
employees, or a glimpse at their welfare departments, or a modest
appraisal of their secure niche upon the great scrolls of science.
While the managers of tabloid newspapers will sell their movables,
their shirts, their wives, their honor, and the immortal souls of them-
selves and their employees, for another fifty thousand circulation.

For better or for worse, we have entered the Age of the Sales-
man. The final objective of the salesman is to put it across, to get
away with it, to secure the order. The signature on the dotted line
becomes the Supreme Good. It follows that any methods involved
in this consummation, are, ipso facto, good methods. The new
ethics is thus built on the ability to get away with it, by whatever
means.

Perhaps another reason for the change is to be found in the in-
creasing interdependence and specialization of the means of liveli-
hood. It is all very well for a self-supporting farmer to tell his
tempters to get behind him, but how about a clerk in a bank, or a
machine hand in a cotton factory? To such the doctrine of the
main chance is part and parcel of the law of economic survival. To
voice sturdy and independent opinions is tantamount to losing
one's job. Where is one to find another? The most elementary
common sense accordingly forces the taking of the cowl of the yes
man. And for a yes man to have a sense of honor is unthinkable.

SIX-CYLINDER ETHICS 397

Finally, the sheer multiplication of the means of communication,
particularly the telephone, the press, and the radio, has raised to
the nth power both the demands made upon persons in the public
eye, and the facilities for amplifying their pronouncements. The
sense of speaking to 20,000,000 breakfast tables, to 4,000,000 sub-
way riders, or into 10,000,000 receiving sets, is more than human
nature, guided by the old ethics, can stand. There remains nothing
golden about silence, figuratively, or practically, in the face of such
unparalleled opportunities to inflate the ego.

By way of contrast let us glance briefly at some of the articles
of the code which salesmanship and the doctrine of getting away
with it, displaces. For want of a better title, it might be termed
the code of the freeman and the gentleman. Among its major
tenets are, or were :

To stand on one's own feet — without the aid of spokesmen, official
or otherwise.

To hold one's honor unpurchasable, whether the bribe be fame,
advancement, or cold cash. As between dishonor and starvation, to
starve.

To make one's word as good as one's bond.

To build friendships on the basis of love and affection, rather
than on the basis of what one can get out of it.

To shake hands, to greet, to wish Godspeed, and to speak kindly,
without an ulterior motive based on cash considerations.

To criticize forcibly, directly, and passionately, if need be, with-
out let or hindrance based on cash considerations or any considera-
tions whatsoever.

To make honest goods and honestly to describe them — with no
higher duties toward sales resistance at all.

To be modest, both in respect to one's achievements and one's
goods, on the sound psychological premise that no reliability can
attach to one's judgment of one's self. It has taken, at a conserva-
tive estimate, ten billion dollars' worth of advertising to uproot
and utterly to destroy that premise in the public mind, but the job
has been done. It is now, if you please, our duty to pat — nay,
thwack — ourselves upon the back, as noisily, as frequently, and as
expensively as possible.

Even to recite this ancient code, is to invite an odor of lavender
and musk. It brings a tear, but it is quite, quite dead. Yet these
are the imperatives which the generation that is now entering middle

398 STUART CHASE

age took in with its mother's milk. While still courtesied to in
theory, it is as extinct as the dodo in the tangible practice of the
great majority of adult, male Americans. A few white haired old
gentlemen in the Back Bay, in Richmond, in Charleston, a very
substantial, but declining, body of independent farmers, a handful
of kindly faced country storekeepers still revere the ancient code
and honestly try to act upon it. But no living specimens survive in
either New York or Chicago, and for practical purposes it is un-
known in any up and coming urban center. Floral Heights will
have none of it; Main Street is shifting to six-cylinder ethics with
incredible rapidity.

"Sell thyself" rather than "Know thyself" is the categorical im-
perative of the age. And the end of that selling is always and for-
ever to be reckoned in thirty pieces of silver or its multiples.

The ethics of the merchant have been under suspicion since time
out of mind. In many civilized communities down the ages, the
business man has been placed rather below than above the house
servant, when grading the professions. Never, until the industrial
revolution, did he reach the top of the heap. That his dubious
notions of what constitutes honorable conduct should ever come
to dominate a great nation would have been frankly inconceivable
to any philosopher before 1900. Even such a doubtful moralist as
Napoleon, rather than calling them pigs, went even lower and
called the English shopkeepers.

In an atmosphere of well-nigh universal opprobrium, one cannot
blame the merchants and the manufacturers of the nineteenth cen-
tury for seeking to get out of the ruck. In England, many of them
succeeded, and in the finest conceivable way — by introducing the
code of the gentleman into their business transactions. Closely they
dealt, but honorably. A generation ago, no small number of Ameri-
can business houses were aware of the Forsyte method, and took
pride in a service honorably performed, a house honorably built,
a sound article honorably sold — and did not vent that pride to all
the world, at space rates.

But it has been difficult for honor and decency to subsist against
both the age-long tradition of commerce and the terrific pressure
engendered by mass production and a failing purchasing power. The
philosophy of the main chance is thus still paramount in business,
but instead of receiving the shrugs of the citizenry as heretofore, it

SIX-CYLINDER ETHICS 399

now receives their shouts and applause; while every walk of life,
from hod carrier to President, asks no more of God than the ability
to emulate it. And so we have great ladies and great artists selling
lies, counterfeit opinions, dishonorable indorsements, hack prose,
hack pictures, or what have you, to any huckster that comes along
whose words are sweet, whose check is large, and whose promise of
publicity is unlimited. There is no sense of dishonor, we repeat, for
everybody is doing it. It has been welded into the custom of the
times.

They are doing it in so many ways that to describe the opera-
tions of the new ethics in any detail would fill a library. We can
but observe briefly a few of the more outstanding exhibits.

Take for instance the rapid development of the phenomenon
known to the trade as "ghost writing." This art, as practiced by
a horde of bright young men and women, consists in the prepara-
tion of books, magazine articles, statements, speeches, and broad-
sides for the signature or delivery of dignitaries and celebrities —
real and bogus — who employ the bright young persons. Thus cap-
tains of industry, moving picture sirens, famous murderesses, depart-
ment store magnates, Mrs. Peaches Browning, elder statesmen,
rush into print, or out upon platforms, with autobiographies, diaries,
reminiscences, current comment, warnings, prophecies, and portents,
not a word of which has come from their own pens, and Heaven
and their secretaries alone know how much from their own brains.
In this manner the personalities of both men of genuine talent and
of stuffed shirts are lubricated in a common stream of standardized
publicity, buttered with secondhand phrases, and made as mon-
strous and alien as any Mayan idol buried in the forests of Yuca-
tan. They cease to be fallible human beings, susceptible to intelli-
gent appraisal, and become corporate entities, with a good will
valuation based on the publicity investment, and issues of preferred,
common, and management shares, just around the corner. Who
would not subscribe to a few shares in Charles M. Schwab, Inc.,
at no and accrued interest?

It took Mr. Ivy Lee hardly five short years to transform Mr.
John D. Rockefeller, Senior, from an agent of Mephisto, to a
kindly old gentleman, showering his caddies with dimes. Name
your mask, and a reliable agent can be found to sell it to the country,
doubtless on installment payments if you so desire.

Furthermore, a curious theory is held to apply to the whole

400 STUART CHASE

phenomenon. It is universally held that the cardinal requirement
is to keep one's name in the headlines, regardless of whether the
comment be favorable or unfavorable. No opportunity for free
publicity, whatever its nature, is to be disregarded. This is
axiomatic.

Consider the fundamental technique of advertising goods. (The
word "goods" is euphonious, a quaint survival of the ancient code.)
A manufacturer of God knows what retains an agency to market
his product. Short of opium and the more deadly varieties of
arsenic, the agency accepts the mandate with enthusiasm. Com-
petition being what it is, clients are not to be found behind every
bush. The problem is to break down consumer resistance to the
product. The common citizen, by hook or by crook, must be made
to want it, demand it, wake up at night and cry for it. In the
struggle, all the sometime considerations of ordinary decency and
humanity are thrown to the winds. The assault is founded upon
the latest clinical and laboratory findings of psychology. No up-to-
date advertising agency would think of doing business without the
assistance of a staff of psychologists of the highest scientific attain-
ments.

The product is considered, and the agency and its experts run
down the table of available chords upon which to play. Shall it be
snob copy, keeping up with the Joneses, an appeal to class prejudice,
vanity, shame (halitosis), the accusing finger of scorn, the dear old
flag, flattery, envy, fear (four-out-of-five), home and mother, greed,
the pathetic desire for cultural advancement, or sex appeal? (The
last type of copy is selling goods faster than any other technique at
the present time.) These carefully prepared and doctored impulses,
in the hands of trained canvassers and agents, and on a million
printed advertisements, billboards, and letters, are frequently no
fairer to the consumer than had the seller hit him over the head
with a club, left a bottle of colored tap water beside him, and picked
his pocket. The nearer the patient approaches a state of complete
hypnosis, the more signal the honor to the advertiser.

Here are the instructions of an advertising manager to Mrs.
Helen Woodward when she was preparing to write copy for an
infants' food, as recounted in her recent book (she wrote it herself)
Through Many Windows:

As for this baby-food, for God's sake put some sob-stuff
in it. You know. And make it beautiful, too. Make it

SIX-CYLINDER ETHICS 401

beautiful, make the words sing. Heavens! There isn't a
woman that cares about facts. That kind of stuff you wr'te
for the Woman's Home Companion, that's what gets 'en.
Tears! Make 'em weep!

That this technique sells goods is not to be denied. Often, in-
deed, it sells goods of excellent quality, reasonably priced. But
caught in this net of primitive stimulus and response, the consumer
is stripped of all standards of judgment, his native sense is over-
whelmed with psychological reactions which reduce him almost to
an automatic idiot, and he never knows whether the thing he buys
is worth the money he pays for it, whether it is a good product
ridiculously overpriced, or whether it is just so much junk. The
advertising agency applies the same laws in selling the sound with
the shoddy, and in the hurly-burly there is no court of appeal.
How many manufacturers have gone cascading to eternity because
their goods were better than their advertising? And how many jerry-
builders taken up residence on Park Avenue?

A concern manufacturing roofing paper accumulated large stocks
during the War hoping to sell the material to the government. The
Bureau of Standards tested the product and found it far below qual-
ity requirements. Nothing daunted, the concern dumped the whole
inventory on the general public by means of a well-engineered ad-
vertising campaign. They put it over. Good for them. Who is
there to raise a word of criticism or objection — save possibly the
vendees of the condemned roofing paper?

The significant fact, furthermore, is not the plight of the con-
sumer upon whom is unloaded a misrepresented product, but the
calm, nay cheerful acceptance by the advertising copy writer, of the
chance to further the unloading. Instead of avoiding the oppor-
tunity as the ethics of the professional man have heretofore dictated,
he accepts it eagerly, almost reverently, as a challenge to his ability
to put it across. There is no higher crown than the simple motto:
"P. S. He got the job."

Consider the million tangled trails girdling the country with in-
direct impulses to buy. How much did the florists have to do with
the establishing of Mothers' Day? How much did the paint manu-
facturers have to do with the establishment of Clean Up Week?

Can you identify a "contact man" when he stands you a drink
in your club or turns up at a week-end party or joins a theatre
party of your friends? Do you know who is paying for his clothes

402 STUART CHASE

and his Harvard accent, and what he is trying to sell? Do you
know what sucker lists you are on, and how much your name is
worth on the open market to buyers of sucker lists ? Do you know
what private arrangements are behind the ostensibly fearless and
independent book reviews you scan, and the number of drops of
perspiration lost by publishers in consummating those arrangements?
Do you know if the entertaining and instructive articles you read
in the popular magazines are the honest opinions of their authors,
or made to order merchandise, guaranteed to offend no advertiser,
at so much a word ?

Do you know by what means, and for what end, a certain tabloid
newspaper forced the sovereign state of New Jersey to reopen the
Hall-Mills case ? Do you know what the selection of college presi-
dents, skilled in the snaring of endowments, is doing to education?
Do you know — if you live in New York — that the surgeon who
takes out your appendix probably splits the fee with the doctor who
recommended the operation? Do you know who engineers the
changes in the style of clothes that you buy and the relentless prin-
ciples upon which that engineering is based?

Do you know the "Mothers' Club" game in selling children's
books from door to door? Do you know how many trade associa-
tions are organized at the present time to make you anything from
halitosis to sauerkraut conscious? Do you know a tithe of the
hidden forces allied to somebody's balance sheet which lie back of
the publicity you scan, the news that you read, the pictures that you
see ? Do you know a gold digger when you meet one ?

Business principles, having become the higher good, are em-
braced by all the world of labor. If there is a wageworker left
alive who does not operate on the sovereign rule of all the traffic
will bear, he should be put in a museum and preserved for posterity
to boggle at. Giving the boss the minimum of work which will get
by is exactly what the boss gives to his customers, and is so under-
standable, and perhaps not altogether deplorable. What is deplora-
ble— yea, tragic — from the standpoint of the older ethics, is the
collapse of the standards of workmanship which so frequently ac-
companies this wholesale adoption of businesslike principles. Again,
it is not so much the effect on the wood or the metal — though the
sheer waste of good, raw material runs into staggering totals — but
the effect on the man who has lost all pride in the work of his
hands. To tear from one's inner motivation the spirit of craftsman-

SIX-CYLINDER ETHICS 403

ship and the pride of work, is almost to destroy the very fabr'c of
character, the very meaning of life itself.

A girl swims the English channel, a boy flies from New York to
Paris, another becomes the greatest half-back ever known. Is there
any limit to the callous proposals for capitalizing: the achievement
and so dragging these children into the dirt? Under the auddy
boots of hucksters, the carved beauty of their deeds is trampled and
disfigured. A brave and gallant spirit is flung into a sideshow and
made to grimace and clown; to act when he is no actor; to write
when he is no writer; to indorse cheeses and soaps and cigarettes
that he has never touched ; to play the fool for all the world to gape
and titter at. And for this bottomless indignity, a bag of gold is
universally held to balance the account in full. He, and the pro-
curers who have exposed him for sale, have cleaned up big, and
every requirement of the six-cylinder code has been met.

Have you looked into the eyes of the young men with the old
faces who droop, smoking, from every doorway along Times Square
and Broadway on a summer evening? Is there one of them, poor
devil, who has not his price, in three figures? They only follow in
miniature the Hon. Albert B. Fall, whose only fault lay in the fact
that he did not quite get away with it.

And on all fours with this behavior is the conscious and deliberate
fostering of arrested mental development, the writing down to the
moron level, of the business men who run the tabloids, the movies,
the true confession magazines, the radio. Such entrepreneurs rec-
ognize no responsibility whatever for trying to raise the level of
popular education through the stupendous and unparalleled forces
at their disposal. If more money is to be made by promoting the
mass production of imbeciles, their mandate under the new ethics
is clear. Make it.

Finally we have to record what is perhaps the most curious and
the most significant item in the whole phenomenon of changing
ethics — the ever growing number of barrels of holy water with
which business is being sprinkled — nay, drenched. Commerce is
taking upon itself all the sanctions of the church, and so slowly but
surely transforming its common street behavior into a semisacred
cult whose rituals are not to be profaned.

Witness for instance the pious historical labors of Mr. Bruce
Barton and the phenomenal sale of his book, The Man Nobody

404 STUART CHASE

Knows. He discovers the welcome fact that the founder of Chris-
tianity was also the founder of the arts of selling and advertising.
Here was the first man who knew how To Put It Across Big.
Sober citizens the nation over read this book by the hundreds of
thousands and nod their heads in approval. To them there is no
longer any distinction between the ringing call of a prophet and the
ringing call of a soap factory. The ringing is all that counts.

We note the Ten Commandments for Retail Dealers, widely dis-
tributed among shopkeepers. Commandment the first begins :

"Thou shalt love thy business, and it only shalt thou serve."

The identification of God with the cash register could hardly
be more complete. So instant was the success of this new decalogue
that other merchants' associations have followed suit. Indeed, on
our desk lies the Ten Commandments for Philatelic Wholesalers.

The whole gospel of "Service" is an attempt to identify religion
with commercial enterprise. Instead of a normal, profit-seeking
individual with an eye single to all the traffic will bear, the business
man becomes, under the sanctions of this gospel, a Servant to the
People, a Washer of Feet at the Banquet, a Benefactor of Hu-
manity, or what have you.

The Hon. Charles D. Marckles welcomes the Northwestern
Lumbermen's Association into the everlasting arms with these
words :

As I sometimes wonder about the problem of life, and the
reason we lumbermen are permitted to enjoy the blessings
of this earth, the thought has come to me that we are ex-
pected to do something more than accumulate wealth for our-
selves. ... I sometimes think that our real purpose is to
build, and create the desire to build, homes for the people.
. . . When we stand before the Great Judge he will say,
"Well done, thou good and faithful servants. As you have
provided homes on earth for my children, even so I have
provided a home for you where everlasting happiness and
eternal peace shall be your reward in Heaven."

In the same strain is the speech of the Hon. Carl Weeks before
the Rotary Club of Waterloo, Iowa:

Men have sought to define what Rotary is — what is the
secret of its hold upon man. I say Rotary is a manifestation
of the divine.

SIX-CYLINDER ETHICS 405

While the chief editorial writer of the Chicago Tribute con-
tributes the following:

Just as Liberty Bonds, which have intrinsic value, arc
essential to the saving of the nation and of personal advan-
tage to everyone who purchases them — but must nevertheless
be urged upon the people; so the Bible must have bad of
it a group of men and women who will devote themselves to
its general circulation.

In other words, sell the Bible as you sell Liberty Bonds, oil
stock, or wall board.

To the older ethics this alliance between business and religion
appears as cant and hypocrisy, but to the new it is accepted as
sound and self-evident doctrine. The unbridgeable chasm between
behavior animated by selfishness, however enlightened, and behavior
animated by the true spirit of unselfish service — is utterly ignored.

To complete the picture, while business becomes more divine, the
divines, following the dictum of the Chicago Tribune, become more
businesslike, thus cementing the sacred bond. Here, for example,
is the notice of a forthcoming sermon as announced by a pastor of
New Kensington, Pennsylvania:

Listen Girls!

A BEAUTY SECRET THAT NEVER FAILS

This is the Sermon Topic

Sunday 7:45 P. M., First Baptist Church

Luxurious Hair — How to have it!

Keep that School-Girl Complexion!

Good Song Service Full Orchestra

The Rev. J. W. Ham speaking before the Roanoke, Virginia,
Real Estate Board says, in part:

Moses was a real estate man. He saw wonderful possi-
bilities in Canaan. Quicker returns would come by developing
Canaan than by fooling around in the deserts of Egypt.

The Rev. S. P. Weaver of West Bridgewater, Connecticut, offers
five gallons of gasoline to the man or woman who brings the most
people to church on Sunday. The title of his sermon is "Signs for

406 STUART CHASE

the Autoist." Not to be outdone, the pastor of the Methodist
Church in Lauder, Pennsylvania, preaches on, "God's Selected
Chauffeur." While the Rev. B. G. Hodge of Owensboro, Ken-
tucky, takes the pulpit to speak on "Solomon, a Six-Cylinder Sport."
All lit up with this inner glow, the business man proceeds upon his
way, confident that whatever methods he employs to ease the cus-
tomer of his money are, as it were, anointed methods. He serves.
Furthermore, to do him no unwarranted injustice, it should be
pointed out that the customer usually is also a disciple of the new
ethics, equally intent on getting away with it, through whatever
means may come to hand. Thus, as one big family, we cheerfully
take whatever is not nailed down, on the highest moral grounds.

Enough of this speculative anthropology. The laws which gov-
ern the changes in the folkways are inscrutable, and no single com-
mentator may hope to follow them with any accuracy. A tendency
only has been recorded, and that with dubious verihood. It is more
than time to get back to business.

A person whom the author knows as well as he knows himself
goes to review a book which gives indirect stimulus to a young but
aspiring industry. He is, this person, an accountant of sorts, as well
as a writer. The review editor believes him independent, and de-
sirous of describing the book. As a matter of fact he loathes the
book, but a client (connected with the industry aforesaid), with his
eye full of meaning, has asked him to review it favorably. The
philosophy of putting it across demands it, the wife and kiddies
expect it, his duty is clear.

And under the weight of the granite of a thousand churches, the
iron of a million printing presses, the pulpwood of a billion news-
papers bury the man who wrote :

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

THE ROOTS OF HONOR1

JOHN RUSKIN

I HAVE already alluded to the difference hitherto existing between
regiments of men associated for purposes of violence, and for pur-
poses of manufacture; in that the former appear capable of self-
sacrifice — the latter, not; which singular fact is the real reason of
the general lowness of estimate in which the profession of commerce
is held, as compared with that of arms. Philosophically, it does not,
at first sight, appear reasonable (many writers have endeavored to
prove it unreasonable) that a peaceable and rational person, whose
trade is buying and selling, should be held in less honor than an
unpeaceable and often irrational person, whose trade is slaying.
Nevertheless, the consent of mankind has always, in spite of the
philosophers, given precedence to the soldier.

And this is right.

For the soldier's trade, verily and essentially, is not slaying, but
being slain. This, without well knowing its own meaning, the world
honors it for. A bravo's trade is slaying; but the world has never
respected bravos more than merchants: the reason it honors the
soldier is because he holds his life at the service of the State. Reck-
less he may be — fond of pleasure or of adventure — all kinds of bye-
motives and mean impulses may have determined the choice of his
profession, and may affect (to all appearance exclusively) his daily
conduct in it ; but our estimate of him is based on this ultimate fact —
of which we are well assured — that, put him in a fortress breach,
with all the pleasures of the world behind him, and only death and
his duty in front of him, he will keep his face to the front; and he
knows that this choice may be put to him at any moment, and has
beforehand taken his part — virtually takes such part continually —
does, in reality, die daily.

Not less is the respect we pay to the lawyer and physician, founded
ultimately on their self-sacrifice. Whatever the learning cr acute-

1 From Unto This Last, 1862. The selection here used comprises the last
third of the chapter, with the omission of the closing paragraph.

407

4o8 JOHN RUSKIN

ness of a great lawyer, our chief respect for him depends on our
belief that, set in a judge's seat, he will strive to judge justly, come
of it what may. Could we suppose that he would take bribes, and
use his acuteness and legal knowledge to give plausibility to iniqui-
tous decisions, no degree of intellect would win for him our respect.
Nothing will win it, short of our tacit conviction, that in all im-
portant acts of his life justice is first with him; his own interest,
second.

In the case of a physician, the ground of the honor we render
him is clearer still. Whatever his science, we should shrink from
him in horror if we found him regard his patients merely as subjects
to experiment upon; much more, if we found that, receiving bribes
from persons interested in their deaths, he was using his best skill
to give poison in the mask of medicine.

Finally, the principle holds with utmost clearness as it respects
clergymen. No goodness of disposition will excuse want of science
in a physician or of shrewdness in an advocate ; but a clergyman, even
though his power of intellect be small, is respected on the presumed
ground of his unselfishness and serviceableness.

Now there can be no question but that the tact, foresight, deci-
sion, and other mental powers, required for the successful manage-
ment of a large mercantile concern, if not such as could be com-
pared with those of a great lawyer, general, or divine, would at
least match the general conditions of mind required in the subordi-
nate officers of a ship, or of a regiment, or in the curate of a country
parish. If, therefore, all the efficient members of the so-called liberal
professions are still, somehow, in public estimate of honor, preferred
before the head of a commercial firm, the reason must lie deeper
than in the measurement of their several powers of mind.

And the essential reason for such preference will be found to
lie in the fact that the merchant is presumed to act always selfishly.
His work may be very necessary to the community ; but the motive
of it is understood to be wholly personal. The merchant's first
object in all his dealings must be (the public believe) to get as much
for himself, and leave as little to his neighbor (or customer) as
possible. Enforcing this upon him, by political statute, as the
necessary principle of his action; recommending it to him on all
occasions, and themselves reciprocally adopting it; proclaiming vo-
ciferously, for law of the universe, that a buyer's function is to
cheapen, and a seller's to cheat, — the public, nevertheless, involun-

THE ROOTS OF HONOR 409

tarily condemn the man of commerce for his compliance with their
own statement, and stamp him for ever as belonging to an inferior
grade of human personality.

This they will find, eventually, they must give up doing. They
must not cease to condemn selfishness; but they will have to dis-
cover a kind of commerce which is not exclusively selfish. Or,
rather, they will have to discover that there never was, or can be,
any other kind of commerce ; that this which they have called com-
merce was not commerce at all, but cozening; and that a true mer-
chant differs as much from a merchant according to laws of mod-
ern political economy, as the hero of the Excursion from Autolycus.
They will find that commerce is an occupation which gentlemen
will every day see more need to engage in, rather than in the busi-
nesses of talking to men, or slaying them: that, in true commerce,
as in true preaching, or true fighting, it is necessary to admit the
idea of occasional voluntary loss; — that sixpences have to be lost,
as well as lives, under a sense of duty; that the market may have
its martyrdoms as well as the pulpit; and trade its heroisms, as
well as war.

May have — in the final issue, must have — and only has not had
yet, because men of heroic temper have always been misguided in
their youth into other fields, not recognizing what is in our days,
perhaps, the most important of all fields; so that, while many a
zealous person loses his life in trying to teach the form of a gospel,
very few will lose a hundred pounds in showing the practice of one.

The fact is, that people never have had clearly explained to them
the true functions of a merchant with respect to other people. I
should like the reader to be very clear about this.

Five great intellectual professions, relating to daily necessities of
life, have hitherto existed — three exist necessarily, in every civilized
nation :

The Soldier's profession is to defend it.

The Pastor's, to teach it.

The Physician's, to keep it in health.

The Lawyer's, to enforce justice in it.

The Merchant's, to provide for it.

And the duty of all these men is, on due occasion, to dl. for it.

"On due occasion," namely: —

The Soldier, rather than leave his post in battle.

The Physician, rather than leave his post in plague.

4io JOHN RUSKIN

The Pastor, rather than teach Falsehood.

The Lawyer, rather than countenance Injustice.

The Merchant — What is his "due occasion" of death?

It is the main question for the merchant, as for all of us. For,
truly, the man who does not know when to die, does not know how
to live.

Observe, the merchant's function (or manufacturer's, for in the
broad sense in which it is here used the word must be understood
to include both) is to provide for the nation. It is no more his
function to get profit for himself out of that provision than it is
a clergyman's function to get his stipend. The stipend is a due and
necessary adjunct, but not the object, of his life, if he be a true
clergyman, any more than his fee (or honorarium) is the object of
life to a true physician. Neither is his fee the object of life to a
true merchant. All three, if true men, have a work to be done irre-
spective of fee — to be done even at any cost, or for quite the contrary
of fee ; the pastor's function being to teach, the physician's to heal,
and the merchant's, as I have said, to provide. That is to say, he
has to understand to their very root the qualities of the thing he
deals in, and the means of obtaining or producing it; and he has
to apply all his sagacity and energy to the producing or obtaining
it in perfect state, and distributing it at the cheapest possible price
where it is most needed.

And because the production or obtaining of any commodity in-
volves necessarily the agency of many lives and hands, the mer-
chant becomes in the course of his business the master and governor
of large masses of men in a more direct, though less confessed way,
than a military officer or pastor ; so that on him falls, in great part,
the responsibility for the kind of life they lead : and it becomes his
duty, not only to be always considering how to produce what he
sells in the purest and cheapest forms, but how to make the various
employments involved in the production, or transference of it, most
beneficial to the men employed.

And as into these two functions, requiring for their right exer-
cise the highest intelligence, as well as patience, kindness, and tact,
the merchant is bound to put all his energy, so for their just discharge
he is bound, as soldier or physician is bound, to give up, if need
be, his life, in such way as it may be demanded of him. Two main
points he has in his providing function to maintain : first, his engage-
ments (faithfulness to engagements being the real root of all possi-

THE ROOTS OF HONOR 411

bilities in commerce) ; and, secondly, the perfectness and purity
of the thing provided ; so that, rather than fail in any engagement,
or consent to any deterioration, adulteration, or unjust and ex-
orbitant price of that which he provides, he is bound to meet fear-
lessly any form of distress, poverty, or labor, which may, through
maintenance of these points, come upon him.

Again: in his office as governor of the men employed by him,
the merchant or manufacturer is invested with a distinctly paternal
authority and responsibility. In most cases, a youth entering a com-
mercial establishment is withdrawn altogether from home influence ;
his master must become his father, else he has, for practical and
constant help, no father at hand : in all cases the master's authority,
together with the general tone and atmosphere of his business, and
the character of the men with whom the youth is compelled in the
course of it to associate, have more immediate and pressing weight
than the home influence, and will usually neutralize it either for
good or evil ; so that the only means which the master has of doing
justice to the men employed by him is to ask himself sternly whether
he is dealing with such subordinate as he would with his own son,
if compelled by circumstances to take such a position.

Supposing the captain of a frigate saw it right, or were by any
chance obliged, to place his own son in the position of a common
sailor; as he would then treat his son, he is bound always to treat
every one of the men under him. So, also, supposing the master of
a manufactory saw it right, or were by any chance obliged, to place
his own son in the position of an ordinary workman ; as he would
then treat his son, he is bound always to treat every one of his
men. This is the only effective, true, or practical RULE which
can be given on this point of political economy.

And as the captain of a ship is bound to be the last man to leave
his ship in case of wreck, and to share his last crust with the sailors
in case of famine, so the manufacturer, in any commercial crisis or
distress, is bound to take the suffering of it with his men, and even
to take more of it for himself than he allows his men to feel ; as a
father would in a famine, shipwreck, or battle, sacrifice himself for
his son.

THE CHINESE CHARACTER1

BERTRAND RUSSELL

THERE is a theory among Occidentals that the Chinaman is
inscrutable, full of secret thoughts and impossible for us to under-
stand. It may be that a greater experience of China would have
brought me to share this opinion ; but I could see nothing to support
it during the time when I was working in that country. I talked
to the Chinese as I should have talked to the English people, and
they answered me much as English people would have answered a
Chinese whom they considered educated and not wholly unintelli-
gent. I do not believe in the myth of the "subtle Oriental": I am
convinced that in a game of mutual deception an Englishman or an
American can beat a Chinaman nine times out of ten. But, as
many comparatively poor Chinese have dealings with rich white
men, the game is often played only on one side. Then, no doubt,
the white man is deceived and swindled; but not more than a
Chinese mandarin would be in London.

One of the most remarkable things about Chinese is their power
of securing the affections of foreigners. Almost all Europeans like
China, both those who come only as tourists and those who live
there for many years. In spite of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, I
can recall hardly a single Englishman in the Far East who liked
the Japanese as well as the Chinese. Those who have lived among
them tend to acquire their outlook and their standards. New
arrivals are struck by obvious evils : the beggars, the terrible poverty,
the prevalence of disease, the anarchy and corruption in politics.
Every energetic Westerner feels at first a strong desire to reform
these evils, and of course they ought to be reformed.

But the Chinese, even those who are the victims of preventable
misfortunes, show a vast passive indifference to the excitement of

*From The Problem of China, 1922, by Bertrand Russell. By per-
mission of D. Appleton-Century Company, New York.

412

THE CHINESE CHARACTER 413

the foreigners ; they wait for it to go off, like the effervescence of
soda-water. And gradually strange hesitations creep into the mind
of the bewildered traveler ; after a period of indignation, he begins
to doubt all the maxims he has hitherto accepted without question.
Is it really wise to be always guarding against future misfortune?
Is it prudent to lose all enjoyment of the present through thinking
of the disasters that may come at some future date? Should our
lives be passed in building a mansion that we shall never have
leisure to inhabit?

The Chinese answer these questions in the negative, and there-
fore have to put up with poverty, disease, and anarchy. But, to
compensate for these evils, they have retained, as industrial nations
have not, the capacity for civilized enjoyment, for leisure and
laughter, for pleasure in sunshine, and philosophical discourse. The
Chinese, of all classes, are more laughter-loving than any other race
with which I am acquainted; they find amusement in everything,
and a dispute can always be softened by a joke.

I remember one hot day when a party of us were crossing the
hills in chairs — the way was rough and very steep, the work for the
coolies very severe. At the highest point of our journey, we stopped
for ten minutes to let the men rest. Instantly they all sat in a
row, brought out their pipes, and began to laugh among themselves
as if they had not a care in the world. In any country that has
learned the virtue of forethought, they would have devoted the
moments to complaining of the heat, in order to increase their tip.
We, being Europeans, spent the time worrying whether the auto-
mobile would be waiting for us at the right place. Well-to-do
Chinese would have started a discussion as to whether the universe
moves in cycles or progresses by a rectilinear motion or they might
have set to work to consider whether the truly virtuous man shows
complete self-abnegation, or may, on occasion, consider his own
interest.

One comes across white men occasionally who suffer under the
delusion that China is not a civilized country. Such men have
quite forgotten what constitutes civilization. It is true that there
are no trams in Peking, and that the electric light is poor. It is
true that there are places full of beauty, which Europeans itch to
make hideous by digging up coal. It is true that the educated

414 BERTRAND RUSSELL

Chinaman is better at writing poetry than at remembering the sort
of facts which can be looked up in Whitaker's Almanac. A
European, in recommending a place of residence, will tell you that
it has a good train service ; the best quality he can conceive in any
place is that it should be easy to get away from. But a Chinaman
will tell you nothing about the trains; if you ask, he will tell you
wrong. What he tells you is that there is a palace built by an
ancient emperor, and a retreat in a lake for scholars weary of the
world, founded by a famous poet of the Tang dynasty. It is this
outlook that strikes the Westerner as barbaric.

The Chinese, from the highest to the lowest, have an imperturb-
able quiet dignity, which is usually not destroyed even by a Euro-
pean education. They are not self-assertive, either individually or
nationally; their pride is too profound for self-assertion. They
admit China's military weakness in comparison with foreign powers,
but they do not consider efficiency in homicide the most important
quality in a man or a nation. I think that, at bottom, they almost
all believe that China is the greatest nation in the world, and has
the finest civilization. A Westerner cannot be expected to accept
this view, because it is based on traditions utterly different from
his own. But gradually one comes to feel that it is, at any rate,
not an absurd view ; that it is, in fact, the logical outcome of a self-
consistent standard of values. The typical Westerner wishes to be
the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment; the
typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as
possible. This difference is at the bottom of most of the contrast
between China and the English-speaking world.

We in the West make a fetish of "progress," which is the ethical
camouflage of the desire to be the cause of change. If we are
asked, for instance, whether machinery has really improved the
world, the question strikes us as foolish: it has brought great
changes and therefore great "progress." What we believe to be a
love of progress is really, in nine cases out of ten, a love of power,
an enjoyment of the feeling that by our fiat we can make things
different. For the sake of this pleasure, a young American will
work so hard that, by the time he has acquired his millions, he has
become a victim of dyspepsia, compelled to live on toast and water,
and to be a mere spectator of the feasts that he offers his guests.
But he consoles himself with the thought that he can control poli-
tics, and provoke or prevent wars as may suit his investments. It

THE CHINESE CHARACTER 415

is this temperament that makes Western nations "progressive."
There are, of course, ambitious men in China, but they are less
common than among ourselves. And their ambition takes a differ-
ent form — not a better form, but one produced by the preference of
enjoyment to power. It is a natural result of this preference that
avarice is a wide-spread failing of the Chinese. Money brings the
means of enjoyment ; therefore money is passionately desired. With
us, money is desired chiefly as a means to power; politicians, who can
acquire power without much money, are often content to remain
poor. In China the tuchuns (military governors), who have the
real power, almost always use it for the sole purpose of amassing
a fortune. Their object is to escape to Japan at a suitable moment,
with sufficient plunder to enable them to enjoy life quietly for the
rest of their days. The fact that in escaping they lose power does
not trouble them in the least. It is, of course, obvious that such
politicians, who spread devastation only in the provinces committed
to their care, are far less harmful to the world than our own, who
ruin whole continents in order to win an election campaign.

The corruption and anarchy in Chinese politics do much less
harm than one would be inclined to expect. But for the predatory
desires of the great powers — especially Japan — the harm would be
much less than is done by our own "efficient" governments. Nine-
tenths of the activities of a modern government are harmful ; there-
fore the worse they are performed, the better. In China, where
the government is lazy, corrupt, and stupid, there is a degree of
individual liberty which has been wholly lost in the rest of the world.
The laws are just as bad elsewhere; occasionally, under foreign
pressure, a man is imprisoned for Bolshevist propaganda, just as he
might be in England or America. But this is quite exceptional;
as a rule, in practice, there is very little interference with free speech
and a free press.2 The individual does not feel obliged to follow
the herd as he has in Europe since 1914, and America since 1917.
Men still think for themselves, are not afraid to announce the con-
clusions at which they arrive. Individualism has perished in the
West, but in China it survives, for good as well as for evil. Self-
respect and a personal dignity are possible for every coolie in China,

'This vexes the foreigners, who are attempting to establish a very
•erere press censorship in Shanghai. See "The Shanghai Printed Matter
Bye-law," Hollington K. Tong, Review of the Far East, April 15, 1922.

4i6 BERTRAND RUSSELL

to a degree which is, among ourselves, possible for a few leading
financiers.

The business of "saving face," which often strikes foreigners in
China as ludicrous, is only the carrying-out of respect for personal
dignity in the sphere of social manners. Everybody has "face,"
even the humblest beggar ; there are humiliations that you must not
inflict upon him, if you are not to outrage the Chinese ethical code.
If you speak to a Chinaman in a way that transgresses the code, he
will laugh, because your words must be taken as spoken in jest if
they are not to constitute an offense.

. Once I thought that the students to whom I was lecturing were
not as industrious as they might be and I told them so in just the
same words that I should have used to English students in the same
circumstances. But soon I found I was making a mistake. They
all laughed uneasily, which surprised me until I saw the reason.
Chinese life, even among the most modernized, is far more polite
than anything to which we are accustomed. This, of course, inter-
feres with efficiency, and also (which is more serious) with sincerity
and truth in personal relations. If I were Chinese, I should wish to
see it mitigated. But, to those who suffer from the brutalities of
the West, Chinese urbanity is very restful. Whether on the balance
it is better or worse than our frankness, I shall not venture to
decide.

The Chinese remind one of the English in their love of com-
promise and in their habit of bowing to public opinion. Seldom is
a conflict pushed to its ultimate brutal issue. The treatment of the
Manchu emperor may be taken as a case in point. When a West-
ern country becomes a republic, it is customary to cut off the head
of the deposed monarch, or at least to cause him to fly the country.
But the Chinese have left the emperor his title, his beautiful palace,
his troops »of eunuchs, and an income of several million dollars a
year. He is a boy of sixteen, living peaceably in the Forbidden City.
Once, in the course of a civil war, he was nominally restored to
power a few days ; but he was deposed again, without being in any
way punished for the use to which he had been put.

Public opinion is a very real force in China, when it can be
roused. It was, by all accounts, mainly responsible for the down-
fall of the An Fu party in the summer of 1920. This party was
pro- Japanese and was accepting loans from Japan. Hatred of

THE CHINESE CHARACTER 417

Japan is the strongest and most wide-spread of political passions in
China, and it was stirred up by the students in fiery orations. The
An Fu party had, at first, a great preponderance of military
strength ; but their soldiers melted away when they came to under-
stand the cause for which they were expected to fight. In the end,
the opponents of the An Fu party were able to enter Peking and
change the government almost without firing a shot.

The same influence of public opinion was decisive in the teachers'
strike, which was on the point of being settled when I left Peking.
The government, which is always impecunious, owing to corrup-
tion, had left its teachers unpaid for many months. At last they
struck to enforce payment, and went on a peaceful deputation to
the government, accompanied by many students. There was a clash
with the soldiers and police, and many teachers and students were
more or less severely wounded. This led to a terrific outcry, be-
cause the love of education in China is profound and wide-spread.
The newspapers clamored for revolution. The government had
just spent nine million dollars in corrupt payments to three tuchuns
who had descended upon the capital to extort blackmail. It could
not find any colorable pretext for refusing the few hundred thou-
sands required by the teachers, and it capitulated in panic. I do
not think there is any Anglo-Saxon country where the interests of
teachers would have roused the same degree of public feeling.

Nothing astonishes a European more in the Chinese than their
patience. The educated Chinese are well aware of the foreign
menace. They realize acutely what the Japanese have done in
Manchuria and Shantung. They are aware that the English in
Hong-Kong are doing their utmost to bring to naught the Canton
attempt to introduce good government in the South. They know
that all the great powers, without exception, look with greedy eyes
upon the undeveloped resources of their country, especially its iron
and coal. They have before them the example of Japan, which, by
developing a brutal militarism, a cast-iron discipline, and a new
reactionary religion, has succeeded in holding at bay the fierce lusts
of "civilized" industrialists. Yet they neither copy Japan nor sub-
mit tamely to foreign domination. They think not in decades, but
in centuries. They have been conquered before, first by the Tartars
and then by the Manchus; but in both cases they absorb jd their
conquerors. Chinese civilization persisted unchanged; and after a

4i8 BERTRAND RUSSELL

few generations the invaders became more Chinese than their
subjects.

Manchuria is a rather empty country, with abundant room for
colonization. The Japanese need colonies for their surplus popula-
tion, yet the Chinese immigrants into Manchuria exceed the Japanese
a hundredfold. Whatever may be the temporary political status
of Manchuria, it will remain a part of Chinese civilization, and
can be recovered whenever Japan happens to be in difficulties. The
Chinese derive such strength from their four hundred millions, the
toughness of their national customs, their power of passive resist-
ance, and their unrivaled national cohesiveness — in spite of the civil
wars, which merely ruffle the surface — that they can afford to
despise military methods, and to wait till the feverish energy of
their oppressors shall have exhausted itself in internecine combats.

China is much less a political entity than a civilization — the only
one that has survived from ancient times. Since the days of Con-
fucius, the Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman
empires have perished ; but China has persisted through a continuous
evolution. There have been foreign influences — first Buddhism,
and now Western science. But Buddhism did not turn the Chinese
into Indians, and Western science will not turn them into Euro-
peans. I have met men in China who knew as much of Western
learning as any professor among ourselves ; yet they had not been
thrown off their balance, nor lost touch with their own people.
What is bad in the West — its brutality, its restlessness, its readi-
ness to oppress the weak, its preoccupation with purely material
aims — they see to be bad, and do not wish to adopt. What is good,
especially its science, they do wish to adopt.

The old indigenous culture of China has become rather dead ; its
art and literature are not what they were, and Confucius does not
satisfy the spiritual needs of a modern man even if he is Chinese.
The Chinese who have had a European or American education
realize that a new element is needed to vitalize native traditions,
and they look to our civilization to supply it. But they do not wish
to construct a civilization just like ours; and it is precisely in this
that the best hope lies. If they are not goaded into militarism, they
may produce a genuinely new civilization, better than any that we
in the West have been able to create.

So far, I have spoken chiefly of the good sides of the Chinese

THE CHINESE CHARACTER 419

character ; but of course China, like every other nation, has its bad
sides also. It is disagreeable to me to speak of these, as I expe-
rienced so much courtesy and real kindness from the Chinese that I
should prefer to say only nice things about them. But for the sake
of China, as well as for the sake of truth, it would be a mistake to
conceal what is less admirable. I will only ask the reader to re-
member that, on the balance, I think the Chinese one of the best
nations I have come across, am prepared to draw up a graver
indictment against every one of the great powers. Shortly before I
left China, an eminent Chinese writer pressed me to say what I
considered the chief defects of the Chinese. With some reluctance,
I mentioned three: avarice, cowardice, and callousness. Strange to
say, my interlocutor, instead of getting angry, admitted the justice
of my criticism, and proceeded to discuss possible remedies. This
is a sample of the intellectual integrity which is one of China's
greatest virtues.

The callousness of the Chinese is bound to strike every Anglo-
Saxon. They have none of that humanitarian impulse which leads
us to devote I per cent of our energy to mitigating the evils wrought
by the other 99 per cent. For instance, we have been forbidding
the Austrians to join with Germany, to emigrate, or to obtain the
raw materials of industry. Therefore the Viennese have starved,
except those whom it has pleased us to keep alive from philanthropy.
The Chinese would not have had the energy to starve the Vien-
nese, nor the philanthropy to keep some of them alive. While I
was in China, millions were dying of famine; men sold their chil-
dren into slavery for a few dollars, and killed them if this sum was
unobtainable. Much was done by white men to relieve the famine,
but very little by the Chinese, and that little vitiated by corruption.
It must be said, however, that the efforts of the white men were
more effective in soothing their own consciences than in helping the
Chinese. So long as the present birth-rate and the present methods
of agriculture persist, famines are bound to occur periodically; and
those whom philanthropy keeps alive through one famine are only
too likely to perish in the next.

Famines in China can be permanently cured only by better meth-
ods of agriculture combined with emigration or birth-control on a
large scale. Educated Chinese realize this, and it makes them in-
different to efforts to keep the present victims alive. A great deal

420 BERTRAND RUSSELL

of Chinese callousness has a similar explanation, and is due to per-
ception of the vastness of the problems involved. But there remains
a residue which cannot be so explained. If a dog is run over by an
automobile and seriously hurt, nine out of ten passers-by will stop
to laugh at the poor brute's howls. The spectacle of suffering does
not of itself rouse any sympathetic pain in the average Chinaman;
in fact, he seems to find it mildly agreeable. Their history, and
their penal code before the revolution of 1911, show that they are
by no means destitute of the impulse of active cruelty; but of this
I did not myself come across any instances. And it must be said
that active cruelty is practised by all the great nations, to an extent
concealed from us only by our hypocrisy.

Cowardice is prima facie a fault of the Chinese; but I am not
sure that they are really lacking in courage. It is true that, in bat-
tles between rival tuchuns, both sides run away, and victory rests
with the side that first discovers the flight of the other. But this
proves only that the Chinese soldier is a rational man. No cause of
any importance is involved, and the armies consist of mere merce-
naries. When there is a serious issue, as, for instance, in the Tai-
Ping Rebellion, the Chinese are said to fight well, particularly if
they have good officers. Nevertheless, I do not think that, in com-
parison with the Anglo-Saxons, the French, or the Germans, the
Chinese can be considered a courageous people, except in the mat-
ter of passive endurance. They will endure torture, and even
death, for motives which men of more pugnacious races would find
insufficient — for example, to conceal the hiding-place of stolen
plunder. In spite of their comparative lack of active courage, they
have less fear of death than we have, as is shown by their readiness
to commit suicide.

Avarice is, I should say, the greatest defect of the Chinese. Life
is hard, and money is not easily obtained. For the sake of money,
all except a very few foreign-educated Chinese will be guilty of
corruption. For the sake of a few pence, almost any coolie will
run an imminent risk of death. The difficulty of combating Japan ,
has arisen mainly from the fact that hardly any Chinese politician
can resist Japanese bribes. I think this defect is probably due to
the fact that, for many ages, an honest living has been hard to get ;
in which case it will be lessened as economic conditions improve. I
doubt if it is any worse now in China than it was in Europe in the

THE CHINESE CHARACTER 421

eighteenth century. I have not heard of any Chinese general more
corrupt than Marlborough or of any politician more corrupt^than
Cardinal Dubois. It is, therefore, quite likely that changed indus-
trial conditions will make the Chinese as honest as we are — which
is not saying much.

I have been speaking of the Chinese as they are in ordinary life,
when they appear as men of active and skeptical intelligence, but
of somewhat sluggish passions. There is, however, another side to
them: they are capable of wild excitement, often of a collective
kind. I saw little of this myself, but there can be no doubt of the
fact. The Boxer rising was a case in point, and one which par-
ticularly affected Europeans. But their history is full of more or
less analogous disturbances. It is this element in their character
that makes them incalculable, and makes it impossible even to guess
at their future. One can imagine a section of them becoming
fanatically Bolshevist, or anti- Japanese, or Christian, or devoted to
some leader who would ultimately declare himself emperor. I
suppose it is this element in their character that makes them, in
spite of their habitual caution, the most reckless gamblers in the
world. And many emperors have lost their thrones through the
force of romantic love, although romantic love is far more despised
than it is in the West.

To sum up the Chinese character is not easy. Much of what
strikes the foreigner is due merely to the fact that they have pre-
served an ancient civilization which is not industrial. All this is
likely to pass away, under the pressure of the Japanese, and of
European and American financiers. Their art is already perishing,
and being replaced by crude imitations of second-rate European
pictures. Most of the Chinese who have had a European education
are quite incapable of seeing any beauty in native painting, and
merely observe contemptuously that it does not obey the laws of
perspective.

The obvious charm which the tourist finds in China cannot be
preserved; it must perish at the touch of industrialism. But per-
haps something may be preserved, something of the ethical qualities
in which China is supreme, and which the modern world most
desperately needs. Among these qualities I place first the pacific
temper, which seeks to settle disputes on grounds of justice rather
than by force. It remains to be seen whether the West will allow

422 BERTRAND RUSSELL

this temper to persist, or will force it to give place, in self-defense,
to a frantic militarism like that to which Japan has been driven.

POOLED SELF-ESTEEM1
A. CLUTTON-BROCK

I AM, I confess, astonished at the lack of curiosity which even
psychologists, and they more than most men, discover about the
most familiar, yet most surprising, facts of the human mind. They
have their formulae, as that the human mind is unconsciously
always subject to the sexual instinct; and these formulae, while
they make psychology easier for those who accept them, utterly fail
to explain the most familiar, yet most surprising facts.

There is, for instance, self-esteem, — egotism, — we have no pre-
cise scientific name for it ; if we go by our own experience, it seems
to be far more powerful and constant than the sexual instinct,
far more difficult to control, and far more troublesome. The sexual
instinct gets much of its power from this egotism, or self-esteem,
and would be manageable without it; but self-esteem is, for many
of us, unmanageable. Often we suppress it, but still it is our
chief obstacle to happiness or any kind of excellence; and, how-
ever strong or persistent it may be in us, we never value it. In
others we dislike it intensely, and no less intensely in ourselves
when we become aware of it ; and, if a man can lose it in a passion
for something else, then we admire that self -surrender above all
things. In spite of the psychologists, we know that the sexual
instinct is not the tyrant or the chief source of those delusions to
which we are all subject. It is because we are in love with our-
selves, not because we are in love with other people, that we make
such a mess of our lives.

Now, what we ask of psychology, if it is to be a true science,
is that it shall help us to manage ourselves so that we may achieve
our deepest, most permanent desires. Between us and those de-
sires there is always this obstacle of self-esteem, and if psychology
will help us to get rid of that, then, indeed, we will take it seri-
ously, more seriously than politics, or machinery, or drains, or
any other science. For all of these, however necessary, are sub-

1From the Atlantic Monthly, December, 1921. Reprinted by permission
of the publishers.

423

424 A. GLUTTON-BROCK

sidiary to the management of the self; and all would be a thou-
sand times better managed by a race of beings who knew how to
manage themselves. There is not a science, or an art, that is not
hampered by the self-esteem of those who practise it; for it blinds
us both to truth and to beauty, and most of us are far more uncon-
scious of its workings than we are of the workings of our sexual
instinct. The Greeks were right when they said, "Know thyself" ;
but we have not tried to follow their advice. The self, in spite of
all our attempts to analyze it away in physical terms, remains un-
known, uncontrolled, and seldom the object of scientific curiosity
or observation. . . .

Civilization means the acquirement of all the techniques needed
for the full exercise of faculties and capacities, and, thereby, the
release of the self from its own tyranny. Where men are vainest,
there they are least civilized ; and no amount of mechanical efficiency
or complication will deliver them from the suppression of faculties
and the tyranny of the self, or will give them civilization. But
at present we are not aware how we are kept back in barbarism
by the suppression of our faculties and the tyranny of our exorbitant
selves. We shall discover that clearly and fully only when
psychology becomes really psychology; when it concerns itself
with the practical problems which most need solving; when it no
longer tries to satisfy us with dogmas and formulae taken from
other sciences.

And now I come to the practical part of this article. I, like
everyone else, am aware that we are kept back in barbarism and
cheated of civilization by war; but behind war there is something
in the mind of man that consents to war, in spite of the fact that
both conscience and self-interest are against it; and it seems to me
that a real, a practical science of psychology would concern itself
with this something, just as the science of medicine concerns itself
with pestilence. And a real, a practical science of psychology
would not be content to talk about the herd-instinct, which is not
a psychological, but a biological hypothesis, and only a hypothesis.
It would not say, "Man is a herd animal; therefore it is natural
for herds of men to fight each other." In the first place, it would
remember that herds of animals do not necessarily fight other herds ;

POOLED SELF-ESTEEM 425

in the second, that we do not know that man, in his remote animal
past, was a herd animal ; and, in the third place, that, as psychology,
it is concerned with the mind of man as it is, not with what other
sciences may conjecture about the past history of man.

Now, if psychology asks itself what it is in the present mind
of man, of the peoples we call civilized, that consents to war, it
will at once have its attention drawn to the fact that wars occur
between nations, and that men have a curious habit of thinking
of nations apart from the individuals who compose them ; and of be-
lieving all good of their own nation and all evil of any other which
may, at the moment, be opposed to it. This is commonplace, of
course ; but, having stated the commonplace, I wish to discover the
reason of it. And I cannot content myself with the formula that
man is a herd animal, not only because it is not proved, but also
because there is no promise of a remedy in it. There is something
in me, in all men, which rebels against this blind belief that all is
good in my nation, and evil in some other; and what I desire is
something to confirm and strengthen this rebellion. When we can
explain the baser, sillier part of ourselves, then it begins to lose its
power over us; but the hypothesis of the herd-instinct is not an ex-
planation— it says, merely, that we are fools in the very nature of
things, which is not helpful or altogether true. We are fools, no
doubt, but we wish not to be fools; it is possible for us to perceive
our folly, to discern the causes of it, and by that very discernment
to detach ourselves from it, to make it no longer a part of our
minds, but something from which they have suffered and begin to
recover. Then it is as if we had stimulated our own mental
phagocytes against bacilli that have infected the mind from outside ;
we no longer submit ourselves to the disease as if it were health;
but, knowing it to be disease, we begin to recover from it.

The habit of believing all good of our own nation and all evil
of another is a kind of national egotism, having all the symptoms
and absurdities and dangers of personal egotism, or self-esteem ; yet
it does not seem to us to be egotism, because the object of our
esteem appears to be, not ourselves, but the nation. Most of us
have no conviction of sin about it, such as we have about our own
egotism; nor does boasting of our country seem to us vulgar, like
boasting of ourselves. Yet we do boast about it because it is our
country, and we feel a warm conviction of its virtues which we do
not feel about the virtues of any other country. But, when we

426 A. CLUTTON-BROCK

boast and are warmed by this conviction, we separate ourselves from
the idea of the country, so that our boasting and warmth may not
seem to us egotistical; we persuade ourselves that our feeling for
our country is noble and disinterested, although the peculiar delight
we take in admiring it could not be if it were not our country.
Thus we get the best of both worlds, the pleasures of egotism
without any sense of its vulgarity, the mental intoxication without
the mental headaches.

But I will give an example of the process which, I hope, will
convince better than any description of it. Most Englishmen and,
no doubt, most Americans, would sooner die than boast of their
own goods. Yet, if someone says — some Englishman in an English
newspaper — that the English are a handsome race, unlike the Ger-
mans, who are plain, an Englishman, reading it, will say to himself,
"That is true," and will be gratified by his conviction that it is
true. He will not rush into the street uttering the syllogism:
"The English are a handsome race; I am an Englishman; there-
fore I am handsome"; but, unconsciously and unexpressed, the
syllogism will complete itself in his mind; and, though he says
nothing of his good looks even to himself, he will feel handsomer.
Then, if he sees a plain German, he will say to himself, or will
feel without saying it, "That poor German belongs to a plain
race, whereas I belong to a handsome one." Americans may be
different, but I doubt it.

So, if we read the accounts of our great feats of arms in the
past, we ourselves feel braver and more victorious. We teach
children in our schools about these feats, and that they are char-
acteristic of Englishmen, or Americans, or Portuguese, as the case
may be; and we never warn them, because we never warn our-
selves, that there is egotism in their pride and in their belief that
such braveries are peculiarly characteristic of their own country.
Yet every country feels the same pride and delight in its own
peculiar virtues and its own preeminence ; and it is not possible that
every country should be superior to all others.

Further, we see the absurdity of the claims of any other country
clearly enough, and the vulgarity of its boasting. Look at the
comic papers of another country and their patriotic cartoons; as
Americans, look at Punch, and especially at the cartoons in which
it expresses its sense of the peculiar virtues, the sturdy wisdom, the
bluff honesty, of John Bull, or the lofty aims and ideal beauty of

POOLED SELF-ESTEEM 427

Britannia; or those other, less frequent, cartoons, in which ,
criticizes or patronizes the behavior of Jonathan and the idea's
of Columbia. Does it not seem to you incredible, as Americans,
that any Englishmen should be so stupid as to be tickled by such
gross flattery, or so ignorant as to be deceived by such glaring mis-
representations? Have you never itched to write something sar-
castic to the editor of Punch, something that would convince < ven
him that he was talking nonsense? Well, Englishmen ha\e just
the same feelings about the cartoons in American papers; and just
the same blindness about their own. Disraeli said that everyone
likes flattery, but with royalty you lay it on with a trowel; and
nations are like royalty, only more so: they will swallow anything
about themselves while wondering at the credulity of other nations.

What is the cause of this blindness? You and I, as individuals,
have learned at least to conceal our self-esteem ; we are made uneasy
by gross flattery; we are like the Duke of Wellington, who, when
grossly flattered by Samuel Warren, said to him: "I am glad there
is nobody here to hear you say that."

"Why, your Grace?" asked Warren.

"Because," answered the duke, "they might think I was damned
fool enough to believe you."

But when our country is flattered, and by one of our country-
men, we do not feel this uneasiness; at least, such flattery is a
matter of course in the newspapers and at public meetings in all
countries; there is such a large and constant supply of it, that there
must be an equally large and constant demand. Yet no one can
doubt that it is absurd and dangerous, if not in his own country,
in others. Believe, if you will, that all the praises of your own
country are deserved, and all the more because of that belief, you
will see that the praises of other countries are not deserved. If
America is superior to all other countries in all essential virtues,
then, clearly, all the other countries cannot be superior, and there
must be some cause for their blind belief in their superiority. Eng-
lishmen, for instance, however bad their manners, do not proclaim,
or even believe, that they are individually superior to all other men
— indeed, you hold that the bad manners of Englishmen come from
their belief, not in their individual superiority, but in the superiority
of England; if they could be rid of that, they might be ahnost as
well-mannered as yourselves. It is a national vanity, a national
blindness, that makes fools of them.

428 A. CLUTTON-BROCK

But what is the cause of a folly so empty of either moral, or
aesthetic, or even biological value, so dangerous indeed, not only to
the rest of the world, but even to themselves? For the danger of
this folly, its biological uselessness, has been proved to us in the
most signal and fearful manner lately by the Germans. They cul-
tivated national vanity until it became madness; and we are all
aware of the results. But, if we suppose that they behaved so be-
cause they were Germans and therefore born mad or wicked, we
shall learn nothing from their disaster. They were, like ourselves,
human beings. There, but for the grace of God, goes England,
goes America even ; and whence comes this madness from which the
Grace of God may not always save us? Because it exists every-
where, and is not only tolerated but encouraged, it must satisfy
some need of the mind, however dangerously and perversely.
Where there is a great demand for dangerous drugs, it is not enough
to talk indignantly of the drug-habit. That habit is but a symptom
of some deeper evil, something wrong with the lives of the drug-
takers, for which the drug is their mistaken remedy ; and the right
remedy must be found if the habit is to be extirpated.

National egotism, I believe, is a kind of mental drug, which we
take because of some unsatisfied need of our minds; and we shall
not cure ourselves of it until we discover what causes our craving
for national flattery and also our dislike and contempt of other
countries. Somewhere, as in the case of all drug-taking, there is
suppression of some kind ; and the suppression, I suggest, is of indi-
vidual egotism. We are trained by the manners and conventions of
what we call our civilization to suppress our egotism; good man-
ners consist, for the most part, in the suppression of it. However
much we should like to talk of ourselves, our own achievements
and deserts, we do not wish to hear others talking about theirs.
The open egotist is shunned as a bore by all of us; and only the
man who, for some reason, is unable to suppress his egotism, re-
mains an open egotist and a bore, persists in the I — I — I of child-
hood, and provokes the impatience caused by the persistence of all
childish habits in the grown-up.

But this suppression of egotism is not necessarily the destruction
of it, any more than the suppression of the sexual instinct is the
destruction of that. And, in fact, our modern society is full of
people whose egotism is all the more exorbitant and unconsciously
troublesome to themselves, because it is suppressed. Their hunger

POOLED SELF-ESTEEM 429

for praise is starved, but not removed; for they dare not even praise
themselves. Ask yourself, for instance, whether you have ever been
praised as much as you would like to be? Are you not aware <-f a
profound desert in yourself which no one, even in your own family
has ever fully recognized ? True, you have your faults, but, unlike
the faults of so many other people, they are the defects of your
qualities. And then there is in you a sensitiveness, a delicacy of
perception, a baffled creative faculty even, in fact, an unrealized
genius, which might any day realize itself to the surprise of a
stupid world. Of all this you never speak ; and in that you are like
everyone else in the stupid world ; for all mankind shares with you,
dumbly, this sense of their own profound desert and unexpressed
genius; and if, by some ring of Solomon or other talisman, we
were suddenly forced to speak out the truth, we should all pro-
claim our genius without listening to each other.

I, for my part, believe in it, believe that it does exist, not only
in myself, but in all men, and the men of acknowledged genius are
those who have found a technique for realizing it. I say realizing,
because, until it is expressed in some kind of action, it does not fully
exist ; and the egos of most of us are exorbitant, however much we
may suppress their outward manifestations, because they do not
succeed in getting themselves born. The word in us is never made
flesh; we stammer and bluster with it, we seethe and simmer
within; and, though we may submit to a life of routine and sup-
pression, the submission is not of the whole self: it is imposed on
us by the struggle for life and for business purposes: and, unknown
to ourselves, the exorbitant, because unexpressed, unsatisfied ego
finds a vent somehow and somewhere.

Ill

Self-esteem is the consolation we offer to the self because it can-
not, by full expression, win esteem from others. Each one of us is
to the self like a fond mother to her least gifted son: we make up
to it for the indifference of the world; but not consciously, for in
conscious self-esteem there is no consolation. If I said to myself,
"No one else esteems me; therefore I will practise self-esteem," —
the very statement would make the practice impossible. It must be
done unconsciously and indirectly, if it is to be done at all and to
give us any satisfaction. Most of us have now enough psychology

430 A. CLUTTON-BROCK

to detect ourselves in the practice of self-esteem, unless it is very
cunningly disguised : and, what is more, we are quick to detect each
other. It is, indeed, a convention of our society, and a point of
good manners, to conceal our self-esteem from others, and even
from ourselves, by a number of instinctive devices. One of the
chief of these is our humor, much of which consists of self-deprecia-
tion, expressed or implied; and we delight in it in spite of the
subtle warning of Doctor Johnson, who said, "Never believe a man
when he runs himself down ; he only does it to show how much he
has to spare."

By all these devices we persuade ourselves that we have got rid
of the exorbitant ego, that we live in a happy, free, civilized, de-
egotized world. We are not troubled by the contrast between our
personal modesty and our national boasting, because we are not
aware of the connection between them. But the connection, I be-
lieve, exists; the national boasting proves that we have not got rid
of our self-esteem, but only pooled it, so that we may still enjoy
and express it, if only in an indirect and not fully satisfying man-
ner. The pooling is a pis-aller, like the floating of a limited com-
pany when you have not enough capital to finance some enterprise
of your own ; but it is the best we can do with an egotism that is
only suppressed and disguised, not transmuted.

If I have an exorbitant opinion of myself, it is continually criti-
cized and thwarted by external criticism ; I learn, therefore, not to
express it, and even to deny that I have it; but all the while I
am seeking, unconsciously, for some means by which I can give it
satisfaction. It becomes impossible for me to believe that I am a
wonder in the face of surrounding incredulity; so I seek for some-
thing, seeming not to be myself, that I can believe to be a wonder,
without arousing criticism or incredulity ; in fact, something which
others also believe to be a wonder, because it seems to them not to
be themselves.

There are many such things, but the largest, the most convincing,
and the most generally believed in, is Our Country. A man may,
to some extent, pool his self-esteem in his family; but the moment
he goes out into the world, he is subject to external criticism and
incredulity. Or he may pool it in his town ; but, as I have heard,
the Bostonian-born is subject to the criticism and incredulity of
the inhabitants of other towns. What, therefore, we need, and
what we get, is a something which at the same time distinguishes us

POOLED SELF-ESTEEM 431

from a great part of the human race, and yet is shared by nearly
all those with whom we come in contact. That we find in our
country; and in our country we do most successfully and uncon-
sciously pool our self-esteem. True, there are other countries also
pooling their self-esteem in the same way, and apt to criticize us
and to question our preeminence; but they are far away and we
can think of them as an absurd, degenerate horde or rabble; we
can look at their newspapers and cartoons in our own atmosphere,
and laugh at them securely. They have, indeed, a useful function
in the heightening of our own pooled self-esteem ; for we are able,
from a distance, to compare ourselves, en masse, with them, and to
feel how fortunate we are, with a kind of hereditary merit, to be
born different from them —

When Britain first, at Heaven's command,
Arose from out the azure main,

then also it was the command of Heaven that we should in due
course be born Britons, and share in the glory of the mariners of
England who guard our native seas ; and there is not one of us who,
crossing from Dover to Calais for the first time, does not feel that
he is more at home on his native seas than any seasick Frenchman.
All this is amusing enough to Americans in an Englishman, or
to Englishmen in an American; but it is also very dangerous. In
fact, it is the chief danger that threatens our civilization, that pre-
vents it from being civilized, and so, secure. We are all aware of
private vices, even of individual self-esteem and its dangers; but
this great common vice, this pooled self-esteem, we still consider a
virtue and encourage it by all means in our power. And this we
do because we are not aware of its true nature and causes. We
think that it is disinterested, when it is only the starved ego, con-
soling itself with a pis-aller] we suppose that it is necessary to the
national existence, when the Germans have just proved to us that
it may ruin a most prosperous nation. Still we confuse it with
real patriotism, which is love of something not ourselves, of our
own people and city and our native fields, and which, being love,
does not in the least insist that that which is loved is superior to
other things, or people, unloved because unknown. We know that
where there is real affection, there is not this rivalry or enmity; no
man, because he loves his wife, makes domestically patriotic songs
about her, proclaiming that she is superior to all other wives; nor

432 A. GLUTTON-BROCK

does he hate or despise the wives of other men. In true love there
is no self-esteem, pooled or latent, but rather it increases the ca-
pacity for love; it makes the loving husband see the good in all
women ; and he would as soon boast of his own wife as a religious
man would boast of his God.

So the true love of country may be clearly distinguished from
the patriotism that is pooled self-esteem, by many symptoms. For
the patriotism that is pooled self-esteem, though it make a man
boast of his country, does not make him love his countrymen. Ger-
mans, for instance, before the war, showed no great love of other
Germans, however much they might sing "Deutschland iiber Alles" ;
and in England, the extreme Jingoes, or nationalists, are always
reviling their countrymen for not making themselves enough of a
nuisance to the rest of the world. To them the British Empire is
an abstraction, something to be boasted about and intrigued for;
but real, living Englishmen are, for the most part, unworthy of it.
Their patriotism, because it is pooled self-esteem, manifests itself in
hatred rather than in love ; just because it cannot declare itself for
what it is, because it is suppressed and diverted, its symptoms are
always negative rather than positive. For, being suppressed and di-
verted, it can never find full satisfaction like the positive passion of
love. So it turns from one object of hate to another, and from one
destructive aim to another. Germany was the enemy and Germany
is vanquished; another enemy must be found, another danger
scented; and there are always enough patriots in every country,
suffering from pooled self-esteem, to hail each other as enemies, and
to play the game of mutual provocation.

So no league of nations, no polite speeches of kings and presidents,
prime ministers and ambassadors, will keep us from hating each
other and feeling good when we do so, unless we can attain to
enough self-knowledge to understand why it is that we hate each
other, and to see that this mutual hate and boasting are but a sup-
pressed and far more dangerous form of that vanity which we have
learned, at least, not to betray in our personal relations. In fact,
the only thing that can end war is psychology applied to its proper
purpose of self-knowledge and self-control. If once it can con-
vince us that, when we boast of our country, we are suffering from
pooled self-esteem, then we shall think it as vulgar and dangerous
to boast of our country as to boast of ourselves. And, further, we
shall be ashamed of such boasting, as a symptom of failure in our-

POOLED SELF-ESTEEM 433

selves. For pooled self-esteem is self-esteem afraid to declare itself
and it exists because the self has not found a scope for the exercis<
of its own faculties.

Why did the Germans suffer so much from pooled self-esteem
before the war? Because they were a suppressed and thwarted
people. The ordinary German was wounded in his personal seh-
esteem by all the social conventions of his country ; he was b ,rn
and bred to a life of submission; and, though consciously he con-
sented to it, unconsciously his self-esteem sought a vent and found
it in the belief that, being a German, he was in all things superior
to those who were not Germans. The more submissive he was as
a human being, the more arrogant he became as a German; and,
with unconscious cunning, his rulers reconciled him to a life of
inferiority by encouraging him in his collective pride. So, even
while he behaved as if he were the member of an inferior, almost
conquered, race, to his military caste, he told himself that this was
the price he gladly paid for national preeminence.

Before and during the war the Germans were always saying
that they had found a new way of freedom through discipline and
obedience; unlike the vulgar, anarchical, democracies of the West,
they stooped to conquer; and, since they did it willingly, it was
freedom, not servitude. But their psychology was as primitive as
it was dangerous. That willingness of theirs was but making the
best of a bad job. If only they had known it, they were not con-
tent with their submission; no people so intelligent in some things,
so industrious and so self-conscious, could be content. There was
in them a dangerous, unsatisfied stock of self-esteem, which, since
they dared not express it in their ordinary behavior, found expres-
sion at last in a collective national madness. It seems to us now
that the German people suffered from persecution mania; but that
mania was the vent by which every German eased his sense of indi-
vidual wrong and soothed his wounded personal pride. By a kind
of substitution, he took revenge for the sins of his own Junkers upon
all rival nations; and hence the outbreak which seemed to us in-
credible even while it was happening.

I speak of this now only because it is a lesson to all of us, Ameri-
cans and English. We too are thwarted, not so systematically as
the Germans, but still constantly, in our self-esteem; and we too
are constantly tempted to console ourselves by pooling it. In all
industrial societies, the vast majority never find a scope for the full

434 A. GLUTTON-BROCK

exercise of their faculties, and are aware of their inferiority to the
successful few. This inferiority may not be expressed politically
or in social conventions; in America, and even in England, the
successful may have the wit not to insist in any open or offensive
manner upon their success ; but, all the same, it gives them a power,
freedom, and celebrity which others lack. And this difference is
felt far more than in the past, because now the poor live more in
cities and know better what the rich are doing. Unconsciously,
they are wounded in their self-esteem by all that they read in the
papers of the doings of the rich ; they have become spectators of an
endless feast, which they do not share, with the result that they
pool their wounded self-esteem either in revolutionary exaspera-
tion or in national pride. But, since national pride seems far less
dangerous to the rich and successful than revolutionary exaspera-
tion, with the profound, unconscious cunning of instinct, they en-
courage national pride by all means in their power.

There, I think, they are wrong. I believe that national pride,
and the hatred of other nations, is a more dangerous vent for pooled
self-esteem even than revolutionary exasperation; for, sooner or
later, it will, as in Russia, produce a revolutionary exasperation all
the more desperate because it has been deferred and deceived. If we
have another world war, — and we shall have one unless we dis-
cover and prevent the causes of war in our own minds, — there will
be revolutionary exasperation everywhere; and it will be vain to
tell starving mobs that it is all the fault of the enemy. The
chauvinism of the disinherited mob is but a drug, which increases
the evil it pretends to heal. Behind revolutionary exasperation,
and behind chauvinism, there is the same evil at work, namely, the
thwarting of faculties, the sense of inferiority, the disappointed
ego; and we must clearly understand the disease if we are to find
the remedy.

The remedy, of course, is a society in which faculties will no
longer be suppressed, in which men will cure themselves of their
self-esteem, not by pooling it, but by caring for something not them-
selves more than for themselves. To dream of such a society is as
easy as to accomplish it is difficult ; but we shall have taken the first
step toward the accomplishment of it when we see clearly that we
have no alternative except a relapse into barbarism. Suppression,
good manners, discipline, will never rid us of our self-esteem ; still
it will find a vent in some collective, and so more dangerous, form,

POOLED SELF-ESTEEM 435

unless we can, as the psychologists say, sublimate it into a passion
for something not ourselves. If we believe that our country is not
ourselves, we deceive ourselves; we may give our lives for it, but
it is still the idol in which we pool our self-esteem; and the only
way to escape from the worship of idols is to find the true God.

I am not now talking religion; I am talking psychology, though
I am forced to use religious terms. The true God is to be found
by every man only through the discovery of his deepest, most perma-
nent desires ; and these he can discover only through the exercise of
his highest faculties. So that is the problem for all of us, and, as
we now know, it is a collective problem, one which we can solve
only all together. So long as other men are thwarted in the exer-
cise of their highest faculties, you are thwarted also; you are kept
always from happiness by the unhappiness of others.

You may be rich, brilliant, and a lover of peace; but, so long as
the mass of men can do nothing with their self-esteem but pool it,
you will live in a world of wars and rumors of wars. You may be
an artist, a philosopher, a man of science ; but, so long as the mass
of men are set by division of labor to tasks in which they cannot
satisfy the higher demands of the self, any demagogue may tempt
them to destroy all that you value. Until they also enjoy and so
value it, it is not secure for you or for the world.

In the past religion has failed because the problem of release
from self-esteem has been for it a private and personal one. That
is where psychology can now come to its aid. When once we
understand that our self-esteem, if suppressed, is pooled, not de-
stroyed, and that we can escape from it only by the exercise of our
higher faculties, we shall see also that the problem of release is
collective. We are, indeed, all members one of another, as the
masters of religion have always said; but only now is it possible
for us to see the full truth of their saying. In the past there often
seemed to be some incompatibility between religion and civilization ;
but now we are learning that they are one, and have the same
enemy. Once men sought for God alone, and in the wilderness;
now we may be sure that they will not find Him unless they search
all together. Salvation itself is not a private making of our peace
with God: it is a common making of our peace with each other;
and that we shall never do until, by self-knowledge, we remove the
causes of war from our own minds.

LABOUR1
THOMAS CARLYLE

THERE is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in Work.
Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is
always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works : in Idleness
alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish,
mean, is in communication with Nature; the real desire to get
Work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature's
appointments and regulations which are truth.

The latest Gospel in this world is, Know thy work and do it.
"Know thyself ": long enough has that poor "self" of thine tor-
mented thee ; thou wilt never get to "know" it, I believe ! Think it
not thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable
individual: know what thou canst work at; and work at it, like
Hercules! That will be thy better plan.

It has been written, "an endless significance lies in Work"; a
man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away,
fair seedflelds rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man
is composed into a kind of real harmony, the instant he sets himself
to work! Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair
itself, all these like helldogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor
dayworker, as of every man: but he bends himself with free valour
against his task, and all these are stilled, all these shrink murmur-
ing far off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed
glow of Labour in him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all poison
is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made bright blessed
flame 1

Destiny, on the whole, has no other way of cultivating us. A
formless Chaos, once set it revolving, grows round and ever rounder ;
ranges itself, by mere force of gravity, into strata, spherical courses ;
is no longer a Chaos, but a round compacted World. What would
become of the Earth, did she cease to revolve? In the poor old
Earth, so long as she revolves, all inequalities, irregularities dis-

xFrom Past and Present, 1843.

436

LABOUR 437

perse themselves; all irregularities are incessantly becoming regular.
Hast thou looked on the Potter's wheel, — one of the venerablest
objects; old as the Prophet Ezekiel and far older? Rude lumps
of clay, how they spin themselves up, by mere quick whirling, into
beautiful circular dishes. And fancy the most assiduous Potter,
but without his wheel ; reduced to make dishes, or rather amorphous
botches, by mere kneading and baking! Even such a Potter were
Destiny, with a human soul that would rest and lie at ease, that
would not work and spin ! Of an idle unrevolving man the kindest
Destiny, like the most assiduous Potter without wheel, can bake
and knead nothing other than a botch; let her spend on him what
expensive colouring, what gilding and enamelling she will, he is but
a botch. Not a dish; no, a bulging, kneaded, crooked, shambling,
squint-cornered, amorphous botch, — a mere enamelled vessel of dis-
honour! Let the idle think of this.

Blessed is he who has found his work, let him ask no other blessed-
ness. He has a work, a life-purpose ; he has found it, and will follow
it! How, as a free-flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force
through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an ever-deepen-
ing river there, it runs and flows; — draining off the sour festering
water gradually from the root of the remotest grass-blade ; making,
instead of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear-
flowing stream. How blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream
and its value be great or small ! Labour is Life : from the inmost
heart of the Worker rises his God-given Force, the sacred celestial
Life-essence breathed into him by Almighty God; from his inmost
heart awakens him to all nobleness, — to all knowledge, "self-
knowledge" and much else, so soon as Work fitly begins. Knowl-
edge? The knowledge that will hold good in working, cleave thou
to that; for Nature herself accredits that, says Yea to that. Prop-
erly thou hast no other knowledge but what thou hast got by work-
ing; the rest is yet all a hypothesis of knowledge; a thing to be
argued of in schools, a thing floating in the clouds, in endless logic-
vortices, till we try it and fix it, "Doubt, of whatever kind, can be
ended by Action alone."

And again, hast thou valued Patience, Courage, Perseverance,
Openness to light; readiness to own thyself mistaken, to do better
next time? All these, all virtues, in wrestling with the dim brute
Powers of Fact, in ordering of thy fellows in such wrestle, there
and elsewhere not at all, thou wilt continually learn. Set down a

438 THOMAS CARLYLE

brave Sir Christopher in the middle of black ruined Stone-heaps,
of foolish unarchitectural Bishops, redtape Officials, idle Neli-Gwyn
Defenders of the Faith and see whether he will ever raise a Paul's
Cathedral out of all that, yea or no! Rough, rude, contradictory
are all things and persons, from the mutinous masons and Irish
hodmen, up to the idle Nell-Gwyn Defenders, to blustering redtape
Officials, foolish unarchitectural Bishops. All these things and
persons are there not for Christopher's sake and his Cathedral's;
they are there for their own sake mainly ! Christopher will have to
conquer and constrain all these, — if he be able. All these are
against him. Equitable Nature herself, who carries her mathe-
matics and architectonics herself, but deep in the hidden heart of
her, — Nature strains her not! His very money, where is it to
come from? The pious munificence of England lies far-scattered,
distant, unable to speak, and say, "I am here"; — must be spoken
to before it can speak. Pious munificence, and all help, is so silent,
invisible like the gods; impediment, contradictions manifold are so
loud and near! O brave Sir Christopher, trust thou in those, not-
withstanding, and front all these; understand all these; by valiant
patience, noble effort, insight, by man's-strength, vanquish and
compel all these, — and, on the whole, strike down victoriously
the last topstone of that Paul's Edifice; thy monument for certain
centuries, the stamp "Great Man" impressed very legibly on Port-
land stone there ! —

Yes, all manner of help, and pious response from Men or Nature,
is always what we call silent; cannot speak or come to light, till
it be seen, till it be spoken to. Every noble work is at first "im-
possible." In very truth, for every noble work the possibilities will
lie diffused through Immensity; inarticulate, undiscoverable except
to faith. Like Gideon thou shalt spread out thy fleece at the door
of thy tent ; see whether under the wide arch of Heaven there be
any bounteous moisture, or none. Thy heart and life-purpose shall
be as a miraculous Gideon's fleece, spread out in silent appeal to
Heaven ; and from the kind Immensities, what from the poor un-
kind Localities and town and country Parishes there never could,
blessed dew-moisture to suffice thee shall have fallen!

Work is of a religious nature : — work is of a brave nature ; which
it is the aim of all religion to be. All work of man is as the swim-
mer's: a waste ocean threatens to devour him; if he front it not
bravely, it will keep its word. By incessant wise defiance of it,

LABOUR 439

lusty rebuke and buffet of it, behold how it loyally supports him,
bears him as its conqueror along. "It is so," says Goethe, "with all
things that man undertakes in this world."

Brave Sea-captain, Norse Sea-king, — Columbus, my hero royallest
Sea-king of all ! it is no friendly environment this of thine, in th> :
waste deep waters; around thoe mutinous discouraged souls, be-
hind thee disgrace and ruin, before thee the unpenetrated veil of
Night. Brother, these wild water-mountains, bounding from their
deep bases (ten miles deep, I am told), are not entirely there on thy
behalf! Meseems they have other work than floating thee for-
ward:— and the huge Winds, that sweep from Ursa Major to the
Tropics and Equators, dancing their giant-waltz through the king-
doms of Chaos and Immensity, they care little about filling rightly
or filling wrongly the small shoulder-of-mutton sails in this cockle-
skiff of thine! Thou art not among articulate-speaking friends,
my brother; thou art among immeasurable dumb monsters, tum-
bling, howling wide as the world here. Secret, far off, invisible to
all hearts but thine, there lies a help in them: see how thou wilt
get at that. Patiently thou wilt wait till the mad South-wester
spend itself, saving thyself by dexterous science of defence, the
while: valiantly, with swift decision, wilt thou strike in, when
the favouring East, the Possible, springs up. Mutiny of men thou
wilt sternly repress; weakness, despondency, thou wilt cheerily
encourage: thou wilt swallow down complaint, unreason, weari-
ness, weakness of others and thyself; — how much wilt thou swal-
low down! There shall be a depth of Silence in thee, deeper than
this Sea, which is but ten miles deep : a Silence unsoundable ; known
to God only. Thou shalt be a Great Man. Yes, my World-
Soldier, thou of the World Marine-service, — thou wilt have to be
greater than this tumultuous unmeasured World here round thee
is: thou, in thy strong soul, as with wrestler's arms, shalt embrace
it, harness it down; and make it bear thee on, — to new Americas,
or whither God wills !

AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS1
ROBERT Louis STEVENSON

"BOSWELL: We grow weary when idle."

"JOHNSON : That is, sir, because others being busy, we want
company; but if we were idle, there would be no growing
weary; we should all entertain one another."

JUST now, when every one is bound, under pain of a decree in
absence convicting them of /^-respectability, to enter on some
lucrative profession, and labor therein with something not far short
of enthusiasm, a cry from the opposite party who are content when
they have enough, and like to look on and enjoy in the meanwhile,
savors a little of bravado and gasconade. And yet this should not
be. Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but
in doing a great deal not recognized in dogmatic formularies of
the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry
itself. It is admitted that the presence of people who refuse to
enter in the great handicap race for sixpenny pieces, is at once an
insult and a disenchantment for those who do. A fine fellow (as
we see so many) takes his determination, votes for the sixpences,
and in the emphatic Americanism, "goes for" them. And while
such an one is plowing distressfully up the road, it is not hard to
understand his resentment, when he perceives cool persons in the
meadows by the wayside, lying with a handkerchief over their ears
and a glass at their elbow. Alexander is touched in a very delicate
place by the disregard of Diogenes. Where was the glory of hav-
ing taken Rome for these tumultuous barbarians, who poured into
the Senate house, and found the Fathers sitting silent and unmoved
by their success? It is a sore thing to have labored along and scaled
the arduous hilltops, and when all is done, find humanity indiffer-
ent to your achievement. Hence physicists condemn the unphysi-
cal ; financiers have only a superficial toleration for those who know

Virginibus Puerisque. Reprinted by permission of Charles
Scribner's Sons.

440

AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS 441

little of stocks; literary persons despise the unlettered; and people
of all pursuits combine to disparage those who have none.

But though this is one difficulty of the subject, it is not the
greatest. You could not be put in prison for speaking against in-
dustry, but you can be sent to Coventry fc,r speaking like a fool.
The greatest difficulty with most subjects is to do them well ; there-
fore, please to remember this is an apology. It is certain that
much may be judiciously argued in favor of diligence ; only there is
something to be said against it, and that is what, on the present
occasion, I have to say. To state one argument is not necessarily
to be deaf to all others, and that a man has written a book of
travels in Montenegro, is no reason why he should never have been
to Richmond.

It is surely beyond a doubt that people should be a good deal idle
in youth. For though here and there a Lord Macaulay may
escape from school honors with all his wits about him, most boys
pay so dear for their medals that they never afterwards have a shot
in their locker, and begin the world bankrupt. And the same holds
true during all the time a lad is educating himself, or suffering
others to educate him. It must have been a very foolish old gentle-
man who addressed Johnson at Oxford in these words: "Young
man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowl-
edge; for when years come upon you, you will find that poring
upon books will be but an irksome task." The old gentleman
seems to have been unaware that many other things besides reading
grow irksome, and not a few become impossible, by the time a man
has to use spectacles and cannot walk without a stick. Books are
good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless
substitute for life. It seems a pity to sit, like the Lady of Shalott,
peering into a mirror, with your back turned on all the bustle and
glamor of reality. And if a man reads very hard, as the old
anecdote reminds us, he will have little time for thoughts.

If you look back on your own education, I am sure it will not be
the full, vivid, instructive hours of truantry that you regret; you
would rather cancel some lack-lustre periods between sleep and
waking in the class. For my own part, I have attended a good
many lectures in my time. I still remember that the spinning jf a
top is a case of Kinetic Stability. I still remember that Emphyteusia
is not a disease nor Stillicide a crime. But though I would not
willingly part with such scraps of science, I do not set the same

442 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

store by them as by certain other odds and ends that I came by in
the open street while I was playing truant. This is not the moment
to dilate on that mighty place of education, which was the favorite
school of Dickens and of Balzac, and turns out yearly many in-
glorious masters in the Science of the Aspects of Life. Suffice it to
say this: if a lad does not learn in the streets, it is because he has
no faculty of learning. Nor is the truant always in the streets, for
if he prefers, he may go out by the gardened suburbs into1 the coun-
try. He may pitch on some tuft of lilacs over a burn, and smoke
innumerable pipes to the tune of the water on the stones. A bird
will sing in the thicket. And there he may fall into a vein of
kindly thought, and see things in a new perspective. Why, if this
be not education, what is? We may conceive Mr. Worldly Wise-
man accosting such an one, and the conversation that should there-
upon ensue: —

"How, now, young fellow, what dost thou here?"

"Truly, sir, I take mine ease."

"Is this not the hour of the class? and should'st thou not be
plying thy Book with diligence, to the end thou mayest obtain
knowledge ?"

"Nay, but thus also I follow after Learning, by your leave,"

"Learning, quotha! After what fashion, I pray thee? Is it
mathematics?"

"No, to be sure."

"Is it metaphysics?"

"Nor that."

"Is it some language?"

"Nay, it is no language."

"Is it a trade?"

"Nor a trade neither."

"Why, then, what is't?"

"Indeed, sir, as a time may soon come for me to go upon Pil-
grimage, I am desirous to note what is commonly done by persons
in my case, and where are the ugliest Sloughs and Thickets on the
Road ; as also, what manner of Staff is of the best service. More-
over, I lie here, by this water, to learn by root-of-heart a lesson
which my master teaches me to call Peace, or Contentment."

Hereupon Mr. Worldly Wiseman was much commoved with
passion, and shaking his cane with a very threatful countenance,

AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS 443

broke forth upon this wise: "Learning, quotha!" said he; "I would
have all such rogues scourged by the Hangman I"

And so he would go his way, ruffling out his cravat with a crackle
of starch, like a turkey when it spread its feathers.

Now this, of Mr. Wiseman's, is the common opinion. A fact is
not called a fact, but a piece of gossip, if it does not fall into one of
your scholastic categories. An inquiry must be in some acknowl-
edged direction, with a name to go by; or else you are not inquiring
at all, only lounging; and the workhouse is too good for you. It is
supposed that all knowledge is at the bottom of a well, or the far
end of a telescope. Sainte-Beuve, as he grew older, came to regard
all experience as a single great book, in which to study for a few
years ere we go hence; and it seemed all one to him whether you
should read in Chapter xx., which is the differential calculus, or
in Chapter xxxix., which is hearing the band play in the gar-
dens. As a matter of fact, an intelligent person, looking out of his
eyes and hearkening in his ears, with a smile on his face all the
time, will get more true education than many another in a life of
heroic vigils. There is certainly some chill and arid knowledge to
be found upon the summits of formal and laborious science ; but it
is all round about you, and for the trouble of looking, that you will
acquire the warm and palpitating facts of life. While others are
filling their memory with a lumber of words, one-half of which
they will forget before the week be out, your truant may learn
some really useful art : to play the fiddle, to know a good cigar, or
to speak with ease and opportunity to all varieties of men. Many
who have "plied their book diligently," and know all about some
one branch or another of accepted lore, come out of the study with
an ancient and owl-like demeanor, and prove dry, stockish, and
dyspeptic in all the better and brighter parts of life. Many make a
large fortune, who remain underbred and pathetically stupid to the
last. And meantime there goes the idler, who began life along
with them — by your leave, a different picture. He has had time to
take care of his health and his spirits; he has been a great deal in
the open air, which is the most salutary of all things for both body
and mind ; and if he has never read the great Book in very recondite
places, he has dipped into it and skimmed it over to excellent pur-
pose. Might not the student afford some Hebrew roots, and the
business man some of his half-crowns, for a share of the idler's
knowledge of life at large, and Art of Living? Nay, and the idler

444 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

has another and more important quality than these. I mean his
wisdom. He who has much looked on at the childish satisfaction
of other people in their hobbies, will regard his own with only a
very ironical indulgence. He will not be heard among the dog-
matists. He will have a great and cool allowance for all sorts of
people and opinions. If he finds no out-of-the-way truths, he will
identify himself with no very burning falsehood. His way takes
him along a by-road, not much frequented, but very even and
pleasant, which is called Commonplace Lane, and leads to the
Belvedere of Common-sense. Thence he shall command an agree-
able, if no very noble prospect; and while others behold the East
and West, the Devil and the Sunrise, he will be contentedly aware
of a sort of morning hour upon all sublunary things, with an army
of shadows running speedily and in many different directions into
the great daylight of Eternity. The shadows and the generations,
the shrill doctors and the plangent wars, go by into ultimate silence
and emptiness; but underneath all this, a man may see, out of the
Belvedere windows, much green and peaceful landscape; many fire-
lit parlors; good people laughing, drinking, and making love as
they did before the Flood or the French Revolution; and the old
shepherd telling his tale under the hawthorn.

Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market,
is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies
a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There
is a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely
conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional oc-
cupation. Bring these fellows into the country, or set them aboard
ship, and you will see how they pine for their desk or their study.
They have no curiosity; they cannot give themselves over to ran-
dom provocations ; they do not take pleasure in the exercise of their
faculties for its own sake; and unless Necessity lays about them
with a stick, they will even stand still. It is no good speaking to
such folk: they cannot be idle, their nature is not generous enough;
and they pass those hours in a sort of coma, which are not dedi-
cated to furious moiling in the gold-mill. When they do not re-
quire to go to the office, when they are not hungry and have no
mind to drink, the whole breathing world is a blank to them. If
they have to wait an hour or so for a train, they fall into a stupid
trance with their eyes open. To see them, you would suppose there
was nothing to look at and no one to speak with ; you would imagine

AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS 445

they were paralyzed or alienated, and yet very possibly they are
hard workers in their own way, and have good eyesight for a flaw
in a deed or a turn of the market. They have been to school and
college, but all the time they had their eye on the medal ; they have
gone about in the world and mixed with clever people, but all the
time they were thinking of their own affairs. As if a man's soul
were not too small to begin with, they have dwarfed and narrowed
theirs by a life of all work and no play ; until here they are at forty,
with a listless attention, a mind vacant of all material of amuse-
ment, and not one thought to rub against another while they wait
for the train. Before he was breeched, he might have clambered on
the boxes ; when he was twenty, he would have stared at the girls ;
but now the pipe is smoked out, the snuffbox empty, and my gentle-
man sits bolt upright upon a bench, with lamentable eyes. This
does not appeal to me as being Success in Life.

But it is not only the person himself who suffers from his busy
habits, but his wife and children, his friends and relations, and
down to the very people he sits with in a railway carriage or an
omnibus. Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is
only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
And it is not by any means certain that a man's business is the
most important thing he has to do. To an impartial estimate it
will seem clear that many of the wisest, most virtuous, and most
beneficent parts that are to be played upon the Theater of Life
are filled by gratuitous performers, and pass, among the world at
large, as phases of idleness. For in that Theater, not only the
walking gentlemen, singing chambermaids, and diligent fiddlers in
the orchestra, but those who look on and clap their hands from
the benches, do really play a part and fulfill important offices
towards the general result. You are no doubt very dependent on
the care of your lawyer and stockbroker, of the guards and signal-
men who convey you rapidly from place to place, and the policemen
who walk the streets for your protection ; but is there not a thought
of gratitude in your heart for certain other benefactors who set
you smiling when they fall in your way, or season your dinner with
good company? Colonel Newcome helped to lose his friend's
money; Fred Bayham had an ugly trick of borrowing shirts; and
yet they were better people to fall among than Mr. Barnes. And
though Falstaff was neither sober nor very honest, I think I could
name one or two long-faced Barabbases whom the world could

446 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

better have done without. Hazlitt mentions that he was more
sensible of obligation to Northcote, who had never done him any-
thing he could call a service, than to his whole circle of ostentatious
friends; for he thought a good companion emphatically the great-
est benefactor. I know there are people in the world who cannot
feel grateful unless the favor has been done them at the cost of pain
and difficulty. But this is a churlish disposition. A man may send
you six sheets of letter-paper covered with the most entertaining
gossip, or you may pass half an hour pleasantly, perhaps profitably,
over an article of his ; do you think the service would be greater, if
he had made the manuscript in his heart's blood, like a compact
with the devil ? Do you really fancy you should be more beholden
to your correspondent, if he had been damning you all the while
for your importunity? Pleasures are more beneficial than duties
because, like the quality of mercy, they are not strained, and they
are twice blest. There must always be two to a kiss, and there
may be a score in a jest ; but wherever there is an element of sacri-
fice, the favor is conferred with pain, and, among generous people,
received with confusion. There is no duty we so much underrate
as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous
benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves,
or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the bene-
factor. The other day, a ragged, barefoot boy ran down the
street after a marble, with so jolly an air that he set every one he
passed into a good humor; one of these persons, who had been
delivered from more than usually black thoughts, stopped the little
fellow and gave him some money with this remark: "You see what
sometimes comes of looking pleased." If he had looked pleased be-
fore, he had now to look both pleased and mystified. For my part,
I justify this encouragement of smiling rather than tearful chil-
dren ; I do not wish to pay for tears anywhere but upon the stage ;
but I am prepared to deal largely in the opposite commodity. A
happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound
note. He or she is a radiating focus of good-will; and their
entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted.
We need not care whether they could prove the forty-seventh prop-
osition; they do a better thing than that, they practically demon-
strate the great Theorem of the Liveableness of Life. Conse-
quently, if a person cannot be happy without remaining idle, idle
he should remain. It is a revolutionary precept; but thanks to

AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS 447

hunger and the workhouse, one not easily to be abused ; and within
practical limits, it is one of the most incontestable truths in the
whole Body of Morality. Look at one of your industrious fellows
for a moment, I beseech you. He sows hurry and reaps indiges-
tion; he puts a vast deal of activity out to interest, and receives
a large measure of nervous derangement in return. Either he
absents himself entirely from all fellowship, and lives a recluse in
a garret, with carpet slippers and a leaden inkpot; or he comes
among people swiftly and bitterly, in a contraction of his whole
nervous system, to discharge some temper before he returns to work.
I do not care how much or how well he works, this fellow is an
evil feature in other people's lives. They would be happier if he
were dead. They could easier do without his services in the Cir-
cumlocution Office, than they can tolerate his fractious spirits. He
poisons life at the well-head. It is better to be beggared out of
hand by a scapegrace nephew, than daily hag-ridden by a peevish
uncle.

And what, in God's name, is all this pother about? For what
cause do they embitter their own and other people's lives ? That a
man should publish three or thirty articles a year, that he should
finish or not finish his great allegorical picture, are questions of
little interest to the world. The ranks of life are full; and al-
though a thousand fall, there are always some to go into the breach.
When they told Joan of Arc she should be at home minding women's
work, she answered there were plenty to spin and wash. And so,
even with your own rare gifts! When nature is "so careless of the
single life," why should we coddle ourselves into the fancy that
our own is of exceptional importance? Suppose Shakespeare had
been knocked on the head some dark night in Sir Thomas Lucy's
preserves, the world would have wagged on better or worse, the
pitcher gone to the well, the scythe to the corn, and the student to
his book ; and no one been any the wiser of the loss. There are not
many works extant, if you look the alternative all over, which are
worth the price of a pound of tobacco to a man of limited means.
This is a sobering reflection for the proudest of our earthly vanities.
Even a tobacconist may, upon consideration, find no great cause for
personal vainglory in the phrase, for although tobacco is an ad-
mirable sedative, the qualities necessary for retailing it are neither
rare nor precious in themselves. Alas and alas! you may take it
how you will, but the services of no single individual are indis-

448 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

pensable. Atlas was just a gentleman with a protracted nightmare !
And yet you see merchants who go and labor themselves into a
great fortune and thence into the bankruptcy court; scribblers
who keep scribbling at little articles until their temper is a cross to
all who come about them, as though Pharaoh should set the Israel-
ites to make a pin instead of a pyramid; and fine young men who
work themselves into a decline, and are driven off in a hearse with
white plumes upon it. Would you not suppose these persons had
been whispered, by the Master of the Ceremonies, the promise of
some momentous destiny? and that this lukewarm bullet on which
they play their farces was the bull's-eye and centrepoint of all the
universe? And yet it is not so. The ends for which they give
away their priceless youth, for all they know, may be chimerical
or hurtful; the glory and riches they expect may never come, or
may find them indifferent; and they and the world they inhabit are
so inconsiderable that the mind freezes at the thought.

LABOR AND LEISURE1
L. P. JACKS

IN THE last lecture I suggested that the idea of civilization as
diseased is getting a dangerous hold. The dangers are: (i) that
the mind of society becomes unwholesomely inverted upon itself,
like that of a valetudinarian who is constantly feeling his pulse and
taking his temperature with a clinical thermometer; (2) that we
come to rely upon remedies, upon legislative drugs, and so contract
the social drug-habit; (3) that we suffer ourselves to be exploited
by quacks, who make a living out of our fears.

While admitting that functional disorders of a grave kind exist,
I cannot accept the theory of organic disease. In evidence that this
theory is not sound I cited the extraordinary powers of endurance
which the nations of the world displayed in the late disastrous War,
and are still displaying in the disastrous peace which followed it.
Believing that man is made as much for the endurance of pain as
for the avoidance of it, I submitted that our civilization, under a
test of pain as severe as any we can conceive, has come bravely off
and proved its mettle, which a diseased civilization could hardly
have done. I then went on to argue that the theory of a diseased
civilization has its origin in certain paltry notions about happiness,
and about man's right to be happy, which have held their ground in
popular thought in spite of discredit in the high places of philosophy.
A human being, I said, is not to be thought of as created for the
small-scale manufacture of happiness, nor society as created for
mass production of that ambiguous article.

At the end of all this, I was left with a formidable question. If
man is not created for the production of happiness what, in heaven's
name, is he created for? To this question I now address myself.

No originality in this matter is now possible. The question be-
fore us was answered some twenty-three centuries ago, in a per-
fectly intelligible and profoundly significant manner, by Aristotle.

1From Responsibility and Culture. Yale University Press, 1924. Re-
printed by permission of the publishers.

449

450 L,. r. JAUKb

The business of philosophy is not so much to explain things as to
find the things that explain themselves. This last is by far the
more difficult operation of the two — at least it demands a higher
order of genius. In our time we have grown so accustomed to
approaching our problems through a fog of abstractions — such as
"mind" and "matter," for example — that the thing which explains
itself has become impossible to find. In many cases, indeed, the fog
has reached such a point of density that philosophy, stuck fast in the
midst of it, has come to the conclusion that the fog itself is the
reality we are in search of. In Aristotle's time it was different.
The fog-bank of abstractions was then no more than a light and
transparent mist, through which the things that explain themselves
could be readily seen — though even then, no doubt, the eye of genius
was needed to see them. That it is that makes Greek philosophy,
especially that of Plato and Aristotle, so profitable an exercise for
our modern minds. It enables us to see through the fog of abstrac-
tions, of empty phraseology, in which the modern habit of thought
has wrapped almost everything we think about.

Aristotle's philosophy of man is a notable case in point. It is a
vision of man seen in a light in which he explains himself. Like
all things which explain themselves it is, of course, difficult to under-
stand— difficult, I mean, to us moderns, who have been trained to
reach our conclusions by circuitous reasonings, and have lost the
faculty, which marks the deepest philosophy, of looking into the
heart of a fact. This faculty Aristotle possessed in a high degree,
and he exercised it, very beautifully, in his doctrine of man.

It was something like this. Aristotle placed before his mind's
eye the figure of a living man, in all the plenitude of his manhood.
He saw him there, standing erect, alert and ready, with the fire of
life radiating from his person, with all his powers, aptitudes, ca-
pacities, and versatilities imprinted on his body and expressed on
his countenance. Aristotle looked him up and down ; examined the
attitudes and parts of him one by one ; his upright carriage, his eye
gazing into the distance, his lips breaking out into speech and
above all his hands, his wonderful hands with their five mysterious
fingers. Then, putting the parts together, he took in the vision as
a whole, deeply meditating on the subject before him ; and finally,
with a directness rare in philosophy, he asked himself this question —
What is that fine creature for ? What does the cut of him suggest ?
Happiness? Smooth-flowing enjoyment? Not at all! That fine

LABOR AND LEISURE 451

creature is for action. With that keen eye of his, looking out into
the distance for opportunities, with that alert figure ready to ->tart
forward, with those five mysterious fingers eager for occupation,
and with all the rest of him, who can doubt for a moment that this
creature was meant for action — for undertaking difficult enter-
prises, for embarking on long expeditions by sea and by land, for
achieving the highest excellence on a thousand roads, for enduring
tremendous strains and protracted vigils, for sweeping and majestic
operations, for standing hard knocks from fate and from circum-
stance— aye, and for giving hard knocks in return ? Action the end
of him! Action the meaning of him! Action is what the fine
creature is for I It came in a flash, and down went the first prin-
ciple of Aristotle's anthropology — the end of man is an action.

Compare that with the "paltry speculation" about happiness
which arose in England about the time of that disreputable monarch
Charles II and afterwards spread like a poisonous miasma over both
sides of the Atlantic — "happiness our being's end and aim." Com-
pare it, you young men, and make your choice. Take it with you
into the abodes of luxury and idleness and tell it out to the people
there who are bored to death. Arm yourselves with it when the
quack doctors come along with their remedies for "unhappiness."
Remember it when you are unhappy yourselves, as no power on
earth can prevent you from being sometimes, and let it silence your
complaints, whether they be against the universe or against your
fellow men. The end of man is an action!

When Aristotle had finished with the individual he turned to the
state. Or rather, he began discoursing about the state, for he had
been thinking about it all the time he had been looking on the indi-
vidual and asking himself what the fine creature was for. He had
seen the state prefigured in that individual — another fine creature,
growing out of the first and again entering into him as the principle
of his action, and helping his action to keep true to its appointed
path — which is the pursuit of excellence in everything that his hand
or his brain finds to do. The state, for Aristotle, is, in essence, an
educational enterprise, just as it was for Plato. What else can it
be when he defines it as "a means to the good life," as a principle
entering into the lifeblood of the citizen and helping him not to
live only, but to live well — a different thing from the happiness
factory which the social doctors of today expect the state to be, and
condemn it as diseased for not being?

452 L. P. JACKS

I have sometimes wondered what Aristotle would say if he were
to come to life again and inspect the modern state as we are trying
to run it in these days. What form would his "diagnosis" take?
"The trouble of your state, of your social system," he would say,
"comes from the fact that for a long time past you have been trying
to run it as a happiness factory, which it can never be and was
never meant to be. But there is nothing fundamentally wrong
with it — no fatal disease. The part which helps you to live the
good life is still there, the principle is still at work. Develop that
part of it, the educational part, the humanistic part, cease thinking
of the state as a physic shop for providing you with remedies for
your unhappiness, and you will find in a generation or two that you
have better states and better relations between states than have ever
existed before."

There is only one thing more I have to say about Aristotle, and
it is by way of answering a possible criticism. "Aristotle," the critic
will say, "is not so indifferent to happiness as you make out. Is
there not a thing called euSaifuwa2 which he promises to those who
live the good life? And what, pray is cuSat/xovta but happiness —
smooth-flowing enjoyment?"

I answer, it is nothing of the kind. EuSat/Jtowa means "good
demonship." And the matter is just this: that if you live a good
life you will have a good demon; you will be a well-demoned or
cbSaifjLvv man. And what will your good demon do for you?
Well, he will open your eyes. He will teach you to look into the
heart of the fact. He will give you those flashes of intuition which
reveal the reality of things. He will guide you in hitting the mark.
Your good demon will correct you; he will correct the distortions
of your vision, and you will be "happy" in the sense that the man
is "happy" whom the Lord correcteth. You will find reality. You
will hit the mark. Live the good life, then, and this cvSat/novta,
this good demonship, this constant correction by the Lord, shall
most assuredly be yours. The man blessed with a good demon, said
the pagan ; the man blessed with the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
said the Christian.

With this doctrine before us, this ancient doctrine of man as a
being made for activity, and of society as a means to improving the
quality of his actions, let us now translate it into terms appropriate
to the industrial civilization of our time. That can be done in a
a, eudaimonia.

LABOR AND LEISURE 453

sentence. The activity through which men and nations are now to
realize themselves is the thing we call labor, the actual contribution
which each of them is making, by the work of the body or the
work of the mind, to the value of the common life. Man, a
creator of values; labor as the activity through which those values
are to be created ; the state as a means of educating and organizing
his labors so that real values may come out at the end of them;
this is the conception of man, and of the state, that I now commend
to you in place of that other and debased conception — of man as
made for happiness, and of the state as a contrivance for the mass
production of that article.

If you accept the substitution, what follows? It follows that
your responsibilities as a citizen will focus on the duty of making
your life, through your labor, productive of real value, and of
helping your fellow citizens to use their lives in the same manner.
How that may be done best I shall explain more fully in my lecture
on education — for it is obviously an educational enterprise that is
here involved. Enough for the moment if we are clear on the
general principle, and see the immense expansion of social duty, and
feel the deeper sense of responsibility that follows from it. Social
duty is no longer a mere question of making the right use of your
vote for the promotion of happiness. It becomes the question of
making the right use of your whole personality, of your whole life,
and of helping others to do the same, for the creation of real value.
Your vocation, whatever it may be, is now the great field of social
service, in which, through the labor that has fallen to you, you
make your contribution of excellent performance. The well doing
of everything that needs to be done is now your motto, and the
motto of the entire community of which you are a member.

I offer you that as the translation into terms appropriate to our
highly complex industrial civilization of Aristotle's doctrine that
the end of man is activity — the well doing of everything that needs
to be done, on the great field of human labor. I offer it as indi-
cating the only possible line on which industrial civilization can
advance to better things. When its significance has been fully
grasped, and when all that botheration about "happiness" has been
finally got rid of, we shall be in the way to a renaissance, to a great
revival — a revival of the arts, to begin with — for art is nothing
else than the well doing of what needs to be done ; then a revival
of morality — for there can be no sound morality while men are

454 L. P. JACKS

scamping their jobs; and, lastly, a revival of religion — because there
can be no religion which is not in its essence a religion of work — a
dedication of one's life to the pursuit of excellence in all the labors
belonging to our place in the social complex.

It is not the labor of any particular class, such as the manual
workers, that we are here concerned with, but the labor of the whole
community in the endless variety of occupations, from the simplest
to the most highly specialized, from digging in the ground to gov-
erning the state, from the bench of the carpenter to the operating
table of the surgeon, from the stokehold of the ship, where men are
shoveling coals into a furnace, to the studio of the artist, where
things of beauty are being created. We need to think of all that as
though it were a single whole, but a whole made up of an immense
number of functions, which are not really separate, but all connected
and mutually dependent, all united and woven together with the
general task of carrying on the life of society from year to year and
from century to century. The whole community may be considered
as though it were a single laboring unit, with ten thousand different
tasks distributed among its members, all linked together into the
one common task which we call civilization. Looking at labor in
that synoptic manner, one may say, in homely language, that society
has only one job to offer to its members. The name of it is civiliza-
tion, or if you prefer, progress. We may be farmers or statesmen,
carpenters, or surgeons, stokers or artists, teachers, lawyers, shop-
keepers, clergymen — what you will; but these vocations are only
the different names we have for our different contributions to the
one task we all share in common, that of carrying forward the
work of civilization, which is the work of the ages, and which some
call the Kingdom of God.

It is a fruitful way of looking at the matter. For certain pur-
poses, of course, we have to look at labor piecemeal, to consider its
different varieties one by one. But when we have done that, when
we have analyzed labor into the various trades and callings, and
considered what is due to each, then we need to bring them all
together again, and see them combining with one another into the
unitary task which society as a whole has to accomplish, the vision
of the world's labor as a unitary operation. In that way we shall
see what a tremendous task we are confronted with in these days —
that, namely, of keeping the good which civilization has won al-
ready and then carrying it on to something better ; we shall see this

LABOR AND LEISURE 455

task demanding from each of us the uttermost of his strength and
his courage; each separate function will be ennobled by this vision
of the great whole to which it contributes; we shall be more
anxious to make our own work a real contribution to it, and not a
sham one; and above all we shall be more ready to value the con-
tributions which other men and other nations are making, and with-
out which our own would not be possible. The more that view of
the matter sinks into our minds the more unwilling we shall be to
waste our energies in mutual quarrels and in wars, and the more
eager we shall become to devise means of cooperation, of pulling
together.

Conceiving labor, then, as the "action" through which industrial
civilization is to realize whatever higher possibilities are hidden
within it, let us now ask what leisure is, and how it stands related
to the general responsibilities of the citizen.

Leisure is commonly thought of in terms which represent it as
the opposite of labor, as a state when responsibility approaches the
vanishing point, when exertion ceases, and the worker gives himself
up to rest and enjoyment. In the hours of labor we do our duty;
in the hours of leisure we have no duty but abandon ourselves to
impulse and inclination.

There is an element of truth in this conception, especially in the
emphasis it lays on the necessity of rest. But if taken as the whole
truth about leisure it leads to conclusions which are absurd and
disastrous.

So far as leisure means the state of having nothing to do, of hav-
ing no duties to perform but only inclinations to follow, there is no
prospect that leisure will ever become the general lot of mankind.
. . . The higher our civilization becomes, the more it will demand
of us all in the way of vigor, industry, skill, and forethought. The
challenge of labor is an increasing challenge ; the higher powers are
not going to make things easier at that point. They will continue
in the future as in the past to give society a task proportioned to its
powers. As intelligence increases, as science becomes more efficient,
as organization becomes more perfect, as liberty becomes more real,
we may look out for a corresponding increase in the derrand for
industry, for courage, for loyalty. To each man according to his
several ability. To each age according to its several ability. I see
no prospect of a workless civilization — of a state of things when

456 L. P. JACKS

unemployment will be abolished through the abolition of employ-
ment, as a wag recently suggested it might be.

What then is leisure? Well, if you look into it you will find
this : that our leisure, especially when we are actively following our
impulses, is the time when we are making the greatest demands on
the services of our fellow men. It has been said, with a great deal
of truth, that one man's leisure is another man's labor. Our enjoy-
ments, even our refined enjoyments, are possible only because a host
of silent workers are providing us with the means for enjoying our-
selves. Behind your leisure and mine lies the toil of the silent multi-
tudes. We do well to remember it.

In Mr. Bertrand Russell's book3 to which I referred in my last
lecture, he draws a distinction between labor and leisure of the type
I am now criticizing. He treats them as opposites of one another.
Labor stands for that part of our life where we are the servants of
society, acting under orders. Leisure is that other and better part
where we are free men and doing what we please. The object at
which we should aim, thinks Mr. Russell, is to reduce the labor, or
servant part, to the minimum, and to increase the leisure, or free
part, to a maximum. Mr. Russell's view of labor strikes me as
somewhat aristocratic, though the book itself, like all his books, is
very far from being written in the aristocratic interest. He looks
upon labor, on the hammering, and plowing, and machine-minding,
as a necessary nuisance, as so much boredom — he uses that word
several times — which nevertheless has to be put up with in order
that society may be provided with the necessaries of life. The very
opposite, you will observe, to the view taken by Carlyle, who de-
fined labor as the honor and glory of man and the passport to
everything that makes life worth living. Mr. Russell thinks fur-
ther that if science, our great ally, were properly applied to the
industrial process, the amount of this drudgery or boredom might
be reduced to four hours a day for every man, all the rest becoming
leisure in which the worker would be under no man's orders and
free to enjoy himself according to his tastes.

Among the leisure occupations which Mr. Russell thinks will be-
come possible when work has been reduced to four hours a day, I
note the following — art, science, thought, contemplation of the uni-
verse, enjoyment of the beauties of nature, friendship, and love. Let

8 The Prospects of Industrial Civilization.

LABOR AND LEISURE 457

us look at a few of these leisure occupations and see what they
involve.

Art, science, and thought are the most strenuous occupations of
man. If you would make good in any of these you must scorn de-
lights and live laborious days! To produce a masterpiece in art,
you must go lean for many days, and the passers-by will say of you
as they said of Dante, "This man surely has been in hell." In the
sweat of thy brow, in the sweat of thy brain, shalt thou think,
shalt thou achieve the great discoveries of science, the great creations
of art !

Then as to the enjoyment of natural beauty. Would you enjoy a
mountain? You must climb it. Would you enjoy the loveliness of
the dawn ? You must be wide awake and stirring betimes. Would
you watch the wild animals at play in the jungle? You must run
the risk of being eaten by a lion. Would you behold the majesty
of darkness — those mighty apparitions that march across the heavens
with the star-diadems on their brows? Then you must watch far
into the night, with all your faculties at the stretch, till the glow-
worm pales his ineffectual fire. There is no laziness in leisure of
this kind.

And what shall we say of love, as an occupation for our leisure
time ? Well ! Is not the abode of the beloved mostly guarded by
a dragon? Your sword must be sharp, your hand steady, and your
heart valiant. Is Hero keeping her lonely vigil on the further shore ?
You must swim the Hellespont to get there. Is Beatrice waiting
your arrival in the earthly Paradise? You must go through hell,
and there is no other way. If you are out for the leisure which
consists in following your impulses you had better keep clear of all
that. "The end of man is an action." Here also the antithesis
between labor and leisure completely breaks down.

It comes to this, then. The principle that man's end is an action
meets us on every level of life. Met on one level we find that
man's life is labor, met on another we find that it is art, science,
thought, beauty, human fellowship, and love — the occupations of
his so-called leisure. All is of one piece. Leisure is not inaction,
but a higher kind of activity. And the problem of our civilization,
as I conceive it, is not to reduce labor in favor of leisure — Mr.
Russell's method — but to raise labor to those levels of excellence
which make it worthy of a man. The transfiguration of labor —
the transfiguration of it from a burden that crushes him into a cul-

458 L. P. JACKS

ture that ennobles him; to start labor from the beginning toward
those higher activities in which it should end, so that art, science,
love, and religion instead of standing aloof from it and apart from
it, may come down into it and make it their own. A tremendous
problem — a task for giants ! But that fine creature whose measure
was taken by Aristotle can tackle it — a being not made for the
paltry business of hunting after happiness and whining because he
cannot find it, but for undertaking distant enterprises, and bearing
heavy strains, and embarking on operations of great scope and
majesty.

MUSIC AND THE DANCE IN ANCIENT
GREECE1

G. LOWES DICKINSON

"Music," as the Greeks used the term, was the center of Greek
education, and its moral character thus became a matter of primary
importance. By it were formed, it was supposed, the mind and
temper of the citizens, and so the whole constitution of the state.
"The introduction of a new kind of music," says Plato, "must be
shunned as imperilling the whole state, since styles of music are
never disturbed without affecting the most important political in-
stitutions." "The new style," he goes on, "gradually gaining a lodg-
ment, quietly insinuates itself into manners and customs; and from
these it issues in greater force, and makes its way into mutual com-
pacts ; and from compacts it goes on to attack laws and constitutions,
displaying the utmost impudence, until it ends by overturning every-
thing, both in public and in private."2 And as in his Republic he
had defined the character of the poetry that should be admitted into
his ideal state, so in the "Laws" he specially defines the character
of the melodies and dances, regarding them as the most important
factor in determining and preserving the manners and institutions
of the citizens.

Nothing, at first sight, to a modern mind, could be stranger than
this point of view. That poetry has a bearing on conduct we can
indeed understand, though we do not make poetry the center of
our system of education ; but that moral effects should be attributed
to music and to dancing, and that these should be regarded as of
such importance as to influence profoundly the whole constitution
of a state, will appear to the majority of modern men an unintel-
ligible paradox.

Yet no opinion of the Greeks is more profoundly characteristic
than this of their whole way of regarding life, and none would

1From The Greek Fiew of Life, by G. Lowes Dickinson, reprinted by
permission from Doubled ay, Doran & Company, Inc.
"Plato, Rep. IV., 434 c. — Translated by Davies and Vaughan.

459

460 G. LOWES DICKINSON

better repay a careful study. That moral character should be at-
tributed to the influence of music is only one and perhaps the most
striking illustration of that general identification by the Greeks of
the ethical and the aesthetic standards on which we have so fre-
quently had occasion to insist. Virtue, in their conception, was
not a hard conformity to a law felt as alien to the natural character ;
it was the free expression of a beautiful and harmonious soul. And
this very metaphor "harmonious," which they so constantly employ,
involves the idea of a close connection between music and morals.
Character, in the Greek view, is a certain proportion of the various
elements of the soul, and the right character is the right proportion.
But the relation in which these elements stand to one another could
be directly affected, it was found, by means of music ; not only could
the different emotions be excited or assuaged in various degrees,
but the whole relation of the emotional to the rational element
could be regulated and controlled by the appropriate melody and
measure. That this connection between music and morals really
does exist is recognized, in a rough and general way, by most people
who have any musical sense. There are rhythms and tunes, for
example, that are felt to be vulgar and base, and others that are
felt to be ennobling; some music, Wagner's, for instance, is fre-
quently called immoral; Gounod is described as enervating, Bee-
thoven as bracing, and the like ; and however absurd such comments
may often appear to be in detail, underlying them is the undoubtedly
well-grounded sense that various kinds of music have various ethical
qualities. But it is just this side of music, which has been neglected
in modern times, that was the one on which the Greeks laid most
stress. Infinitely inferior to the moderns in the mechanical re-
sources of the art, they had made, it appears, a far finer and closer
analysis of its relation to emotional states ; with the result that even
in music, which we describe as the purest of the arts, congratulating
ourselves on its absolute dissociation from all definite intellectual
conceptions'—even here the standard of the Greeks was as much
ethical as aesthetic, and the style of music was distinguished and its
value appraised, not only by the pleasure to be derived from it, but
also by the effect it tended to produce on character.

Of this position we have a clear and definite statement in Aristotle.
Virtue, he says, consists in loving and hating in the proper way, and
implies, therefore, a delight in the proper emotions ; but emotions of
any kind are produced by melody and rhythm ; therefore by music a

MUSIC IN ANCIENT GREECE 461

man becomes accustomed to feeling the right emotions. Music has
thus the power to form character; and the various kinds of music,
based on the various modes, may be distinguished by their effects on
character — one, for example, working in the direction of melan-
choly, another of effeminacy ; one encouraging abandonment, another
self-control, another enthusiasm, and so on through the series. It
follows that music may be judged not merely by the pleasure it gives,
but by the character of its moral influence; pleasure, indeed, is
essential or there would be no art ; but the different kinds of pleasure
given by different kinds of music are to be distinguished not merely
by quantity, but by quality. One will produce a right pleasure of
which the good man will approve, and which will have a good effect
on character, another will be in exactly the opposite case. Or, as
Plato puts it, "the excellence of music is to be measured by pleasure.
But the pleasure must not be that of chance persons ; the fairest music
is that which delights the best and best educated, and especially
that which delights the one man who is preeminent in virtue and
education."3

We see then that even pure music, to the Greeks, had a distinct
and definite ethical bearing. But this ethical influence was further
emphasized by the fact that it was not their custom to enjoy their
music pure. What they called "music," as has been already pointed
out, was an intimate union of melody, verse and dance, so that the
particular emotional meaning of the rhythm and tune employed was
brought out into perfect lucidity by the accompanying words and
gestures. Thus we find, for example, that Plato characterizes a
tendency in his own time to the separation of melody and verse as a
sign of a want of true artistic taste; for, he says, it is very hard, in
the absence of words, to distinguish the exact character of the mood
which the rhythm and tune is supposed to represent. In this con-
nection it may be interesting to refer to the use of the "leitmotiv" in
modern music. Here too a particular idea, if not a particular set
of words, is associated with the particular musical phrase ; the inten-
tion of the practice being clearly the same as that which is indicated
in the passage just quoted, namely to add precision and definiteness
to the vague emotional content of pure music.

And this determining effect of words was further enhanced, in
the music of the Greeks, by the additional accompaniment of the
dance. The emotional character conveyed to the mind by the words

'Plato, Laws, II. 658 E.— Translated by Jowett.

462 G. LOWES DICKINSON

and to the ear by the tune, was further explained to the eye by ges-
ture, pose, and beat of foot; the combination of the three modes
of expression forming thus in the Greek sense a single "imitative"
art. The dance as well as the melody came thus to have a definite
ethical significance ; "it imitates," says Aristotle, "character, emotion,
and action." And Plato in his ideal republic would regulate by law
the dances no less than the melodies to be employed, distinguishing
them too as morally good or morally bad, and encouraging the one
while he forbids the other.

The general Greek view of music which has thus been briefly
expounded, the union of melody and rhythm with poetry and the
dance in view of a definite and consciously intended ethical character,
may be illustrated by the following passage of Plutarch, in which
he describes the music in vogue at Sparta. The whole system, it will
be observed, is designed with a view to that military courage which
was the virtue most prized in the Spartan state, and the one
about which all their institutions centered. Music at Sparta actually
was, what Plato would have had it in his ideal republic, a public
and state-regulated function ; and even that vigorous race which of
all the Greeks came nearest to being Philistines of virtue, thought
fit to lay a foundation purely aesthetic for their severe and soldierly
ideal.

"Their instruction in music and verse," says Plutarch, "was not
less carefully attended to than their habits of grace and good-
breeding in conversation. And their very songs had a life and spirit
in them that inflamed and possessed men's minds with an enthusi-
asm and ardor for action ; the style of them was plain and without
affectation; the subject always serious and moral; most usually, it
was in praise of such men as had died in defense of their country,
or in derision of those that had been cowards; the former they de-
clared happy and glorified; the life of the latter they described as
most miserable and abject. There were also vaunts of what they
would do and boasts of what they had done, varying with the various
ages ; as, for example, they had three choirs in their solemn festivals,
the first of the old men, the second of the young men, and the last
of the children; the old men began thus:

"'We once were young and brave and strong;'
the young men answering them, singing:

MUSIC IN ANCIENT GREECE 463

" 'And we're so now, come on and try* :
the children came last and said :

" 'But we'll be strongest by-and-by.'

"Indeed, if we will take the pains to consider their compositions,
and the airs on the flute to which they marched when going to
battle, we shall find that Terpander and Pindar had reason to say
that music and valour were allied."4

The way of regarding music which is illustrated in this passage,
and in all that is said on the subject by Greek writers, is so typical
of the whole point of view of the Greeks, that we may be par-
doned for insisting once again on the attitude of mind which it im-
plies. Music, as we saw, had an ethical value to the Greeks ; but that
is not to say that they put the ethics first, and the music second,
using the one as a mere tool of the other. Rather an ethical state of
mind was also, in their view, a musical one. In a sense something
more than metaphorical, virtue was a harmony of the soul. The
musical end was thus identical with the ethical one. The most beauti-
ful music was also the morally best, and vice versa ; virtue was not
prior to beauty, nor beauty to virtue ; they were two aspects of the
same reality, two ways of regarding a single fact; and if aesthetic ef-
fects were supposed to be amenable to ethical judgment, it was only
because ethical judgments at bottom were aesthetic. The "good" and
the "beautiful" were one and the same thing; that is the first and
last word of the Greek ideal.

And while thus, on the one hand, virtue was invested with the
spontaneity and delight of art, on the other, art derived from its as-
sociation with ethics emotional precision. In modern times the end
of music is commonly conceived to be simply and without more ado
the excitement of feeling. Its value is measured by the intensity
rather than the quality of the emotion which it is capable of arous-
ing; and the auditor abandons himself to a casual succession of
highly wrought moods as bewildering in the actual experience as it
is exhausting in the after-effects. In Greek music, on the other hand,
if we may trust our accounts, while the intensity of the feeling ex-
cited must have been far less than that which it is in the power of
modern instrumentation to evoke, its character was perfectly simple
and definite. Melody, rhythm, gesture and words, were all con-

* Plutarch, "Lycurgus," ch. 21 (dough's Edition).

464 G. LOWES DICKINSON

sciously adapted to the production of a single precisely conceived
emotional effect ; the listener was in a position clearly to understand
and appraise the value of the mood excited in him ; instead of being
exhausted and confused by a chaos of vague and conflicting emotion,
he had the sense of relief which accompanies the deliverance of a
definite passion, and returned to his ordinary business "purged," as
they said, and tranquillized, by a process which he understood, di-
rected to an end of which he approved.

THE IDEA OF TRAGEDY1
EDITH HAMILTON

THE great tragic artists of the world are four, and three of
them are Greek. It is in tragedy that the pre-eminence of the Greeks
can be seen most clearly. Except for Shakespeare, the great three,
./Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, stand alone. Tragedy is an achieve-
ment peculiarly Greek. They were the first to perceive it and they
lifted it to its supreme height. Nor is it a matter that directly
touches only the great artists who wrote tragedies; it concerns the
entire people as well, who felt the appeal of the tragic to such a
degree that they would gather thirty thousand strong to see a
performance. In tragedy the Greek genius penetrated farthest and
it is the revelation of what was most profound in them.

The special characteristic of the Greeks was their power to see
the world clearly and at the same time as beautiful. Because they
were able to do this, they produced art distinguished from all other
art by an absence of struggle, marked by a calm and serenity which
is theirs alone. There is, it seems to assure us, a region where beauty
is truth, truth beauty. To it their artists would lead us, illumining
life's dark confusions by gleams fitful indeed and wavering com-
pared with the fixed light of religious faith, but by some magic of
their own, satisfying, affording a vision of something inconclusive
and yet of incalculable significance. Of all the great poets this is
true, but truest of the tragic poets, for the reason that in them the
power of poetry confronts the inexplicable.

Tragedy was a Greek creation because in Greece thought was free.
Men were thinking more and more deeply about human life, and
beginning to perceive more and more clearly that it was bound up
with evil and that injustice was of the nature of things. And then,
one day, this knowledge of something irremediably wrong in the
world came to a poet with his poet's power to see beauty in the
truth of human life, and the first tragedy was written. As the author

1From The Greek Way, W. W. Norton & Company, 1930. Reprinted
by permission of the publishers.

465

466 EDITH HAMILTON

of a most distinguished book on the subject says: "The spirit of in-
quiry meets the spirit of poetry and tragedy is born.1' Make it con-
crete : early Greece with her god-like heroes and hero gods fighting
far on the ringing plains of windy Troy ; with her lyric world, where
every common thing is touched with beauty — her two-fold world
of poetic creation. Then a new age dawns, not satisfied with beauty
of song and story, an age that must try to know and to explain.
And for the first time tragedy appears. A poet of surpassing magni-
tude, not content with the old sacred conventions, and of a soul
great enough to bear new and intolerable truth — that is /Eschylus,
the first writer of tragedy.

Tragedy belongs to the poets. Only they have "trod the sunlit
heights and from life's dissonance struck one clear chord." None
but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than
pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry, and if
poetry is true knowledge and the great poets guides safe to follow,
this transmutation has arresting implications.

Pain changed into, or, let us say, charged with, exaltation. It
would seem that tragedy is a strange matter. There is indeed none
stranger. A tragedy shows us pain and gives us pleasure thereby.
The greater the suffering depicted, the more terrible the events, the
more intense our pleasure. The most monstrous and appalling deeds
life can show are those the tragedian chooses, and by the spectacle
he thus offers us, we are moved to a very passion of enjoyment.
There is food for wonder here, not to be passed over, as the super-
ficial have done, by pointing out that the Romans made a holiday
of a gladiator's slaughter, and that even today fierce instincts, sav-
age survivals, stir in the most civilized. Grant all that, and we
are not a step advanced on the way to explaining the mystery of
tragic pleasure. It has no kinship with cruelty or the lust for blood.

On this point it is illuminating to consider our every-day use of
the words tragedy and tragic. Pain, sorrow, disaster, are always
spoken of as depressing, as dragging down — the dark abyss of pain,
a crushing sorrow, an overwhelming disaster. But speak of tragedy
and extraordinarily the metaphor changes. Lift us to tragic heights,
we say, and never anything else. The depths of pathos but never
of tragedy. Always the height of tragedy. A word is no light matter.
Words have with truth been called fossil poetry, each, that is, a
symbol of creative thought. The whole philosophy of human nature
is implicit in human speech. It is a matter to pause over, that the

THE IDEA OF TRAGEDY 467

instinct of mankind has perceived a difference, not of degree but
of kind, between tragic pain and all other pain. There is something
in tragedy which marks it off from other disasters so sharply that
in our common speech we bear witness to the difference.

All those whose attention has been caught by the strange contra-
diction of pleasure through pain agree with this instinctive witness,
and some of the most brilliant minds the world has known have
concerned themselves with it. Tragic pleasure, they tell us, is in
a class by itself. "Pity and awe," Aristotle called it, "and a sense
of emotion purged and purified thereby." "Reconciliation," said
Hegel, which we may understand in the sense of life's temporary
dissonance resolved into eternal harmony. "Acceptance," said Scho-
penhauer, the temper of mind that says, "Thy will be done." "The
reaffirmation of the will to live in the face of death," said Nietzsche,
"and the joy of its inexhaustibility when so reaffirmed."

Pity, awe, reconciliation, exaltation — these are the elements that
make up tragic pleasure. No play is a tragedy that does not call
them forth. So the philosophers say, all in agreement with the com-
mon judgment of mankind, that tragedy is something above and
beyond the dissonance of pain. But what it is that causes a play to
call forth these feelings, what is the essential element in tragedy,
Hegel alone seeks to define. In a notable passage he says that the
only tragic subject is a spiritual struggle in which each side has
a claim upon our sympathy. But, as his critics have pointed out, he
would thus exclude the tragedy of the suffering of the innocent,
and a definition which does not include the death of Cordelia or
of Deianira cannot be taken as final.

The suffering of the innocent, indeed, can itself be so differently
treated as to necessitate completely different categories. In one of
the greatest tragedies, the Prometheus of /Eschylus, the main actor
is an innocent sufferer, but, beyond this purely formal connection,
that passionate rebel, defying God and all the powers of the uni-
verse, has no relationship whatever to the lovely, loving Cordelia.
An inclusive definition of tragedy must cover cases as diverse in
circumstance and in the character of the protagonist as the whole
range of life and letters can afford it. It must include such opposites
as Antigone, the high-souled maiden who goes with open eyes to
her death rather than leave her brother's body unburied, and Mac-
beth, the ambition-mad, the murderer of his king and guest. These
two plays, seemingly so totally unliket call forth the same response.

468 EDITH HAMILTON

Tragic pleasure of the greatest intensity is caused by them both.
They have something in common, but the philosophers do not tell
us what it is. Their concern is with what a tragedy makes us feel,
not with what makes a tragedy.

Only twice in literary history has there been a great period of
tragedy, in the Athens of Pericles and in Elizabethan England.
What these two periods had in common, two thousand years and
more apart in time, that they expressed themselves in the same
fashion, may give us some hint of the nature of tragedy, for far
from being periods of darkness and defeat, each was a time when
life was seen exalted, a time of thrilling and unfathomable possi-
bilities. They held their heads high, those men who conquered at
Marathon and Salamis, and those who fought Spain and saw the
Great Armada sink. The world was a place of wonder; mankind
was beauteous ; life was lived on the crest of the wave. More than
all, the poignant joy of heroism had stirred men's hearts. Not stuff
for tragedy, would you say. But on the crest of the wave^one must
feel either tragically or joyously; one cannot feel tamely. The
temper of mind that sees tragedy in life has not for its opposite the
temper that sees joy. The opposite pole to the tragic view of life is
the sordid view. When humanity is seen as devoid of dignity and
significance, trivial, mean, and sunk in dreary hopelessness, then
the spirit of tragedy departs. "Sometime let gorgeous tragedy in
sceptred pall come sweeping by." At the opposite pole stands Gorki
with The Lower Depths.

Other poets may, the tragedian must, seek for the significance of
life. An error strangely common is that this significance for tragic
purposes depends, in some sort, upon outward circumstance, on

pomp and feast and revelry,
With mask, and antique pageantry —

Nothing of all that touches tragedy. The surface of life is comedy's
concern; tragedy is indifferent to it. We do not, to be sure, go to
Main Street or to Zenith for tragedy, but the reason has nothing
to do with their dull familiarity. There is no reason inherent in
the house itself why Babbitt's home in Zenith should not be the
scene of a tragedy quite as well as the Castle of Elsinore. The only
reason it is not is Babbitt himself. "That singular swing toward
elevation" which Schopenhauer discerned in tragedy, does not take
any of its impetus from outside things.

THE IDEA OF TRAGEDY 469

The dignity and the significance of human life — of these, and of
:hese alone, tragedy will never let go. Without them there is no
:ragedy. To answer the question, what makes a tragedy, is to answer
:he question wherein lies the essential significance of life, what the
lignity of humanity depends upon in the last analysis. Here the
:ragedians speak to us with no uncertain voice. The great tragedies
:hemselves offer the solution to the problem they propound. It is
)y our power to suffer, above all, that we are of more value than
:he sparrows. Endow them with a greater or as great a potentiality of
)ain and our foremost place in the world would no longer be un-
lisputed. Deep down, when we search out the reason for our con-
fiction of the transcendent worth of each human being, we know
:hat it is because of the possibility that each can suffer so terribly.
IVhat do outside trappings matter, Zenith or Elsinore? Tragedy's
>reoccupation is with suffering.

But, it is to be well noted, not with all suffering. There are de-
grees in our high estate of pain. It is not given to all to suffer alike.
We differ in nothing more than in our power to feel. There are
souls of little and of great degree, and upon that degree the dignity
ind significance of each life depend. There is no dignity like the
lignity of a soul in agony.

Here I and sorrows sit;
Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.

Tragedy is enthroned, and to her realm those alone are admitted
vho belong to the only true aristocracy, that of all passionate souls.
Tragedy's one essential is a soul that can feel greatly. Given such a
)ne and any catastrophe may be tragic. But the earth may be re-
noved and the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, and
f only the small and shallow are confounded, tragedy is absent.

One dark page of Roman history tells of a little seven-year-old
jirl, daughter of a man judged guilty of death and so herself con-
lemned to die, and how she passed through the staring crowds sob-
)ing and asking, "What had she done wrong? If they would tell
her, she would never do it again" and so on to the black prison and
he executioner. That breaks the heart, but is not tragedy, it is
>athos. No heights are there for the soul to mount to, but only the
lark depths where there are tears for things. Undeserved suffering
s not in itself tragic. Death is not tragic in itself, not the death of
he beautiful and the young, the lovely and beloved. Death felt and

470 EDITH HAMILTON

suffered as Macbeth feels and suffers is tragic. Death felt as Lear
feels Cordelia's death is tragic. Ophelia's death is not a tragedy. She
being what she is, it could be so only if Hamlet's and Laertes* grief
were tragic grief. The conflicting claims of the law of God and the
law of man are not what make the tragedy of the Antigone. It is
Antigone herself, so great, so tortured. Hamlet's hesitation to kill
his uncle is not tragic. The tragedy is his power to feel. Change all
the circumstances of the drama and Hamlet in the grip of any
calamity would be tragic, just as Polonius would never be, how-
ever awful the catastrope. The suffering of a soul that can suffer
greatly — that and only that, is tragedy.

It follows, then, that tragedy has nothing to do with the distinc-
tion between Realism and Romanticism. The contrary has always
been maintained. The Greeks went to the myths for their subjects,
we are told, to insure remoteness from real life which does not ad-
mit of high tragedy. "Realism is the ruin of tragedy," says the latest
writer on the subject. It is not true. If indeed Realism were con-
ceived of as dealing only with the usual, tragedy would be ruled out,
for the soul capable of a great passion is not usual. But if nothing
human is alien to Realism, then tragedy is of her domain, for the
unusual is as real as the usual. When the Moscow Art Players pre-
sented the Brothers Karamazoff there was seen on the stage an ab-
surd little man in dirty clothes who waved his arms about and
shuffled and sobbed, the farthest possible remove from the traditional
figures of tragedy, and yet tragedy was there in his person, stripped
of her gorgeous pall, but sceptred truly, speaking the authentic
voice of human agony in a struggle past the power of the human
heart to bear. A drearier setting, a more typically realistic setting,
it would be hard to find, but to see the play was to feel pity and
awe before a man dignified by one thing only, made great by what
he could suffer. Ibsen's plays are not tragedies. Whether Ibsen is a
realist or not — the Realism of one generation is apt to be the Ro-
manticism of the next — small souls are his dramatis personae and his
plays are dramas with an unhappy ending. The end of Ghosts leaves
us with a sense of shuddering horror and cold anger against a so-
ciety where such things can be, and these are not tragic feelings.

The greatest realistic works of fiction have been written by the
French and the Russians. To read one of the great Frenchmen's
books is to feel mingled despair and loathing for mankind, so base,
so trivial and so wretched. But to read a great Russian novel is to

THE IDEA OF TRAGEDY 471

lave an altogether different experience. The baseness, the beast in
us, the misery of life, are there as plain to see as in the French
3ook, but what we are left with is not despair and not loathing,
3ut a sense of pity and wonder before mankind that can so suffer.
The Russian sees life in that way because the Russian genius is pri-
narily poetical; the French genius is not. Anna Karenina is a
tragedy ; Madame Bovary is not. Realism and Romanticism, or com-
parative degrees of Realism, have nothing to do with the matter.
It is a case of the small soul against the great soul and the power
;)f a writer whose special endowment is ffvoir clalr dans ce qui est"
against the intuition of a poet.

If the Greeks had left no tragedies behind for us, the highest reach
:>f their power would be unknown. The three poets who were able
to sound the depths of human agony were able also to recognize
ind reveal it as tragedy. The mystery of evil, they said, curtains that
:>f which "every man whose soul is not a clod hath visions." Pain
:ould exalt and in tragedy for a moment men could have sight of
i meaning beyond their grasp. "Yet had God not turned us in his
tand and cast to earth our greatness," Euripides makes the old
Trojan queen say in her extremity, "we would have passed away
giving nothing to men. They would have found no theme for song
in us nor made great poems from our sorrows."

Why is the death of the ordinary man a wretched, chilling thing
which we turn from, while the death of the hero, always tragic,
warms us with a sense of quickened life? Answer this question and
the enigma of tragic pleasure is solved. "Never let me hear that
brave blood has been shed in vain," said Sir Walter Scott ; "it sends
in imperious challenge down through all the generations." So the
»nd of a tragedy challenges us. The great soul in pain and in
ieath transforms pain and death. Through it we catch a glimpse
>f the Stoic Emperor's Dear City of God, of a deeper and more
altimate reality than that in which our lives are lived.

LEONARDO DA VINCI1

THOMAS CRAVEN

LEONARDO DA VINCI is perhaps the most resplendent figure in
the history of the human race. In person, distinguished and strong ;
in bearing, generous and gentle; in intellect, a giant; in art, the
most perfect painter who ever held a brush, he stands so far above
the ordinary mortal that his name, for centuries, has signified less
a man than a legend, less an artist than a magician. During his
lifetime his presence stirred people to wonder and admiration, and
to uncomfortable conjectures on his marvellous powers. When he
walked through the streets of Milan, his long fair hair crowned
with a black cap, and his blond beard flowing down over his favorite
rose-colored tunic, passers-by drew aside, and whispered to one an-
other, "There he goes to paint The Last Supper*" He would
travel from his house across the whole length of the city to work
on the picture, mount the scaffold, add two or three touches of
color, and then go away; at other times he would paint in the
deepest concentration from morning till night, without food or
drink. Kings and cities bid for him, as if he were, himself, a work
of art; commissions were thrust upon him by public opinion; and
when one of his cartoons was exhibited at Florence "a vast crowd
of men and women, old and young — a concourse such as one sees
flocking to the most solemn festivals — hastened to behold the won-
ders produced by Leonardo." The loveliest woman in Italy, a
duchess whose habit it was to dictate to artists the pictures she
fancied, implored him again and again to paint for her a little
twelve-year-old Christ, or "at least a little picture of the Madonna,
devout and sweet." The picture was never painted. Leonardo was
also an artist in warfare, and pressed by all sorts of demands,
entered the service of Cesare Borgia as chief military engineer. It
is no wonder that such a figure should have passed so swiftly into
legend.

1 From Men of Art, Simon and Schuster, 1931. Reprinted by permission
of the publishers.

472

LEONARDO DA VINCI 473

The legend was not of Leonardo's making. No man ever la-
bored so steadfastly and scientifically to destroy mysteries and to
enlighten the world by discoveries proceeding from observation and
experiment. Profoundly religious, he was the enemy of superstition
and magic; disillusioned and skeptical, ceaselessly inquiring into
the operations of all phenomena, he was at the same time, a poet
who loved all outward shapes and forms — children, stern old men,
enchanting women, horses, flowers, mountains and moving waters —
and who tracked every outward manifestation of life down to the
secret source of its energy. "O marvellous necessity," he declared,
"thou with supreme reason constrainest all effects to issue from
their causes in the briefest possible way I" This law burned in his
mind, colored his ambitions, provided him with k scientific basis for
his investigations, determined the nature of all his performances.
He saw no essential difference between art and science; his mind
was serene, strikingly deliberate, realistic, and endlessly experi-
mental, and yet filled with the artist's delight in the making of new
things. Whatever he applied himself to — and we shall see that he
attempted everything under the sun — he considered as a problem in
construction. He put no trust in inspiration or momentary im-
pulses ; he was a master of calculations, a thoroughly modern man,
superbly conscious in his methods and perfectly balanced in his pro-
cedures. He believed with Blake that "if the doors of perception
were cleansed, everything would appear to man, as it is, infinite" ;
and to the end that he might understand the connection of all
things, he trained his faculties consciously and with the utmost
rigor, and with immense toil and no small amount of pain. He
believed that all the laws of structure are within the scope of the
human mind, and that once these laws have been grasped, then all
things become of equal importance, and man can create spontane-
ously, like God himself. It scarcely needs to be said that his pas-
sion for omniscience was not realized. After all, he was mortal, a
Florentine susceptible to human influences and predisposed to cer-
tain forms, gestures and scenes. And he was never able to create
spontaneously. He painted but few pictures, and those after infinite
reflections and readjustments. He struggled for sixteen years with
an equestrian statue that was never finished. But in the complete-
ness of his knowledge and in his conception of the world and the
whole celestial system as one vast design, he came closer to uni-
versality than any other man. . . .

474 THOMAS CRAVEN

During Leonardo's first residence at Florence his mind was enor-
mously active. He was continually experimenting — striving to per-
fect new methods of expression. Art absorbed only a part of his
attention, or, as he would have said, he encompassed the union of
art and science, analyzing natural forces and phenomena empirically
and co-ordinating them with creative vision. It was not, of course,
a new thing for an artist to concern himself with scientific prob-
lems: his master was a mathematician and an engineer, and most
of his distinguished predecessors had studied anatomy, perspective
and light and shade — but only so far as such matters had a practical
bearing upon art. Leonardo was the first modern man of science.
He observed life minutely and patiently, testing his theories by
laboratory methods-; he was the founder of the science of geology;
he was a botanist with a classified herbarium; he formulated the
law of the parallelogram of forces and invented deadly engines of
warfare; he dissected corpses to ascertain the relation between func-
tion and structure and ascribed the deaths of persons of advanced
age to hardening of the arteries. And he went further. He be-
lieved that all substances are inherently connected, mutually de-
pendent, and in the final analysis, as modern chemistry insists,
interchangeable. Hence he regarded every fact as sacred and every
form as a symbol of universal significance. He conceived the world
as a living organism warmed by the sun and nourished by the cir-
culation of rivers just as the human body is maintained by the
movement of the blood. But his view did not lead him into quack
metaphysics or astrology. He conceded the supernatural but did
not invoke it, confining himself to observable issues. His universe,
as Paul Valery has aptly pointed out, was entered by a well-devised
perspective.

Applying his ideas to art, he scorned the specialists, avowing that
no man is so big a fool that he cannot succeed in one thing, if he
persists in it, and calling attention to the infinite diversity of na-
ture, "the various kinds of animals there are, the different trees,
herbs, and flowers, mountains and plains, springs, rivers, and towns."
Occasionally, when he felt he was ripe for the task, he painted a
picture, and his pictures are, structurally, so perfectly put together
that every part takes its position in space with scientific inevita-
bility. And all the components — the rocks, trees, fingers and faces
— are painted with equal tenderness and care, with the devotion of

LEONARDO DA VINCI 475

one who said, "we have no right to love or hate anything unless we
have full knowledge of it." . . .

The notebooks of Leonardo constitute a repository of incalculable
scientific research and speculative inquiry. From boyhood it was his
habit to record his theories and observations; the habit grew with
years, and at the age of thirty-seven, in Milan, he began to revise
and collate his papers, and to keep his notes on a more extended
scale with a view to complete formulation. But other duties con-
tinually interfered; his experiments multiplied; his writings piled
up, and he was never able to give them anything like systematic
arrangement. As a consequence, we have today, dispersed in Eu-
ropean libraries, 5000 manuscript pages of unclassified reflections
set down in reversed, or mirror writing, and embellished with
drawings of the highest value. Let us make no mistake about the
notebooks. They are not the maunderings of a metaphysician nor
the pompous effusions of the professional hemlock-drinker. In
method and in terminology, in magnitude and limpidity, they reveal
one of the finest brains ever put in a human head, the brain of the
artist-scientist, or shall we say, the universal artist? Havelock
Ellis, examining these documents from a scientific point of view,
credits Leonardo with being the founder of engineering and the
study of anatomy and geology, a biologist in every field of mech-
anism, an hydrographer, geometrician, master of optics, and inventor
of innumerable varieties of ballistic machines and ordnance. And
these were only a fraction of the man! But unfortunately he did
not give many of his discoveries to the world. Possibly he feared
the Church and "the timid friends of God," as he called them, his
ideas being so greatly at variance from orthodox Christianity, and
including the belief that the soul, though divine, does not exist
apart from the body. For whatever cause, the manuscripts lay
concealed for centuries, and science in the meantime had produced
Bacon, Newton, and Watt, In geology he established the laws of
petrifaction; he was aware of the circulation of the blood; he in-
vented the military tank, hydrophonic devices for communication
among ships, roller bearings, and the wheel barrow; he described
the flight of birds and made drawings of a "bird-man" and of aero-
planes driven by a propeller attached to a spring motor ; he worked
out every possible type of domed architecture and designed a cupola
for St. Peter's sixty years before Michael Angelo; he planned
hygienic cities with underground avenues flushed by canals and,

476 THOMAS CRAVEN

houses limited in height to the width of the streets, complaining
that "people should not be packed together like goats and pollute
the air for one another" ; he had a cure for sea-sickness — the list is
endless. . . *

In the section devoted to painting, Leonardo deals with the
fundamental values of art, presenting the subject both scientifically
and in the universal terms of God and man. He defines painting
technically as modelling, "the task of giving corporeal shape to the
three dimensions on a flat surface," spiritually as the rendering of
emotions, or states of the soul, by means of appropriate postures and
movements. He advises the artist to acquaint himself with all
phases of life and to subject its details to the severest criticism — to
go directly to nature and experience for his materials and not to
make pictures out of other pictures. On the other hand, he counsels
against imitation, emphasizing repeatedly the necessity for synthesis
and organization. "The painter," he points out, "who draws
merely by practice and by eye, without any vision, is like a mirror
which copies all the objects placed before it, without being conscious
of their existence." The treatise contains, besides directions for
depicting everything imaginable from draperies to deluges, an in-
tricate and exhaustive analysis of optical phenomena accompanied
by illustrations of the most searching and portentous character. It
is not too much to say that Leonardo's knowledge of light and
atmospheric effects is equal to that of the modern Impressionists, or
even superior. He describes at length the division of tones, the
color of shadows — particularly the variable blues and violets — and
the vivid illumination obtained by the use of complementaries, but
he rejects the methods of the Impressionists on the ground that they
dissolve form and wreck design. Though he said that "the eye is
the window of the soul," he could not think of art as a chromatic
formula or the mechanical imitation of visual appearances.

The illustrations to the notebooks afford us beautiful proof of
the difference between artistic drawing and photography. Here we
have sketches of scientific apparatus, interiors of gun foundries,
cannon, hydraulic engines, median sections of the skull, muscles,
bones, fossils, leaves, trees, and cloud formations, all of which are
a joy to behold. None but Leonardo could have made these draw-
ings. They are separated from the photograph by a gulf as wide
as that which separates the poetry of Shelley from the tabulated
reports of the New York Stock Exchange. Did he, as a scientist,

LEONARDO DA VINCI 477

merely attempt to represent and describe with cold-blooded ac-
curacy the object before him? Obviously not. The artistic im-
pulse, co-existent and predominant, incited him to reconstruct his
materials, to add himself to them, to make infinitesimal alterations
of contour, to introduce light and shade and subtle variations of
natural appearances for the sake of harmony. Thus a dead skull
or a cogwheel becomes a living organism — a creature of Leonardo's
brain, a dynamic part of the world remade.

With such a brain a man should be capable of anything. But
there is, let me explain, an idea that will not down, a superstition
widespread, mischievous and nonsensical, that a painter should not
have any brains, that he is, when really artistic, a sensitive instru-
ment through which God's will automatically functions, a gilded
harp upon which the winds of life play tremulously, plucking out
divine melodies. And if, perchance, a painter does possess a brain,
the sensitive numskulls who faint before a shapely bosom or a bowl
of fruit, snuffle with fear and sigh contemptuously, "He thinks too
much!" They cry "He has no feeling, no inspiration! He works
by formula!" Now if ever a man were able to paint by formula,
surely Leonardo would be the man. But the more he studied, the
deeper his wisdom, the sharper his experiences, the more trouble-
some did the making of pictures become. Each new undertaking
implied a new and unique design. Inspiration meant nothing to
him except the choice of subject-matter which he could mould to
his own ends. In the popular sense, he was not sensitive at all : he
was calculating, penetrative, and rational. It took him three years
to paint The Last Supper.

This masterpiece was finished in the year 1497. It was painted
in the damp refectory of Saint Mary of the Graces, at the command
of the Duke of Milan who wished to erect a memorial to his
deceased wife in the church that had been her favorite place of wor-
ship. The theme was common property and had been convention-
alized by many treatments. It had been in Leonardo's mind for
years, and long before he received the commission he had made
provisional studies for the work. It was a challenge to his highest
powers, a stimulus to perfection. The painting immediately lifted
him above his contemporaries, and throughout the ages has remained
not only the most famous picture in the world but the supreme
exemplification of monumental design. Of the grandeur of the
undamaged original we can only guess. Leonardo, impatient of

478 THOMAS CRAVEN

fresco, painted in tempera on a ground prepared to resist the
clamminess of the wall. The medium was a disastrous choice. The
ground began to contract and flake, and within fifty years the pic-
ture was covered with spots; deterioration went ahead slowly;
dreadful restorations were made by heavy-handed meddlers; some
imbecile Dominican monks cut a door through the lower central
part; Napoleon's dragoons stabled their horses in the refectory and
threw their boots at Judas Iscariot; more restorations and more
disfigurements. About twenty years ago an Italian of genius com-
pletely removed the unsightly smears laid on by alien retouchers
and found a way to prevent further decay. Today The Last
Supper is in fair condition. What we see is genuine Leonardo, and
it is enough to warrant an appraisal based on the fact itself and not
on historical panegyrics or misleading copies. The popularity of
the picture may be attributed, in a large measure, to the engraving
made by Raphael Morghen in 1800, an engraving that resembles a
Sunday School chromo. Morghen copied, not the original, but a
drawing executed by a nondescript Florentine, diluted Leonardo's
stern conception into pervasive sentimentality, and substituted for
the noble figure of Christ, a nice lymphatic gentleman, sleepy and a
little sad.

The greatness of a work is not an indeterminate quality. With-
out reciting the theories propounded in behalf of a pure aesthetic,
or talking the language of abstractions, it is possible, I think, to
specify one or two things which those who have trained themselves
to look at pictures acknowledge to be implicit in a great painting.
In the first place, the conception must not be mawkish, sentimental
or eccentric. It must be apparent that what the artist has to say
is worthy of his best efforts. He must show us that he has good
reason for the selection of his theme, that he knows vastly more
about it than we do, and he must illuminate it with the sympathy
born of closest intimacy and the gusto that comes from exceptional
wisdom. If the idea is old — and what idea is not ? — he must bring
to it new evaluations and fresh considerations. Second, the purpose
must be transcend en tly certain and definite. The artist must ex-
press his meaning with clarity and power, throwing aside all need-
less accessories, disturbing flourishes, and exhibitions of virtuosity.
What we experience vaguely and with mixed emotions he must
present with singleness and undivided emphasis. Third, the pic-
ture must give us something to think about; it must have many

LEONARDO DA VINCI 479

avenues of interest, many sources of appeal. Avoiding merely physi-
cal seductiveness, it must ask for the cooperation of our noblest
faculties, emancipating our emotions and stimulating us to feel and
live deeply and liberally. In short, it must act upon the spirit and
lift us out of our daily round of mean preoccupations into a realm
of purging tragedy, exhilarating joy, profound human pity, dramatic
power.

Does The Last Supper fulfil these requirements? We may say
that it does, without question and without reserve. The picture is
too well known to call for description. The subject was consum-
mately suited to test his theory that in painting the "facial expres-
sions must vary according to the emotional state of the person, and
that the attitudes of the figures must correspond to the emotions
reflected in the faces." He prepared his studies with extraordinary
care, giving minute attention to detailed characterizations — to
hands, beards, and costumes — roving the Ghetto for a model to
serve as Judas, and experimenting with the design. He has left us,
in his notebooks, an eloquent account of the psychological action
which he regarded as the mainspring of the drama. At first he
adhered to the conventional arrangement, with St. John asleep by
the side of Christ, and Judas by himself in the foreground, but the
actual work of construction changed his plans. At last, with a
stroke of genius, he found the one and only way to tell the story.
Christ sits in the middle of the table with the apostles in groups of
three on either side: He has said, "One among you shall betray
me." The utterance is a proclamation of tragedy, and to reveal the
tragedy, Leonardo portrays the effects of the word as it pierces the
souls of the twelve men. Everything in the picture conspires to this
end: the lighting; the architecture; the bare walls stripped of dis-
tracting ornament and converging to carry us directly into the
scene; the perspective plan; the heads, gestures and faces. Never
was a painting so perfectly put together. Structurally, all the lines
focus in the right eye of Christ, the movement beginning slowly in
the distant figures and increasing in agitation as it approaches the
center; emotionally, the prophetic word of the Lord reverberates
among the two groups of His followers, provoking horror, con-
sternation and curiosity, and binding the groups together by the
force of spiritual tension.

It is an undeniable fact that every one comes to a picture of
The Last Supper in a peculiarly receptive mood, with a mind

480 THOMAS CRAVEN

preattuned to the tragic situation and eager to participate in the
religious sentiment. Hence the subject, if only tolerably presented,
is more moving and impressive to the average person than the
magnificent mythological compositions of Rubens, which as illus-
trations have lost their significance. Theoretically one art should
not be dependent upon another; it should express itself fully in
its own language. Painting should be self -re veal ing and not rely
upon literature to complete its meaning. Acting on this premise,
certain critics advocate a "pure approach" to art, that is to say,
they tell us, in all seriousness, that when they look at a picture
they judge it as the only thing of its kind in existence, suppressing
all associatory elements, and responding like infants with eyes and
souls but no experiences, to the emotional appeal of lines, colors
and volumes. Perhaps they are able to behave in this fashion when
looking at the utterly negative and empty nudes and still-lifes —
pictures done by artists who seem to have no connection with life
whatever — comprising most exhibitions, but when confronted with
Leonardo's The Last Supper they cannot overlook the subject-
matter. Despite their anaesthetic theories, something irritatingly
human and eternally sad gets under their skins. So they say, "It is
not art. It is exaggerated illustration." . . .

Leonardo did not consider it vulgar to tell a story in paint.
Nor did he imagine that to create a spiritual type one had merely
to represent an effeminate figure with the traditional blond beard
and label it Christ. The Last Supper is illustration in that it brings
before us with convincing reality a situation first described in the
medium of words. But we cannot say that it is the counterpart of
the Biblical story. It is Leonardo's The Last Supper, a part of his
mind, containing his science, his understanding, and his preferences.
It is more than illustration: on one side of a table large enough
to accommodate only six or seven guests he has placed thirteen
figures, but we are not conscious of any crowding ; the disciples are
Italians, and no one seems to notice that they have no legs; his
Christ is beardless; there is, in truth, nothing oriental in the con-
ception. The psychological import is conveyed with such absolute
precision and dramatic force that the meaning of the picture would
not, I think, be lost on any one ignorant of the Christian legend.
Into these excited and gesticulating apostles Leonardo has infused
his immense fund of human experiences ; he has indeed so thoroughly
filled his characters with their appropriate emotions that they be-

LEONARDO DA VINCI 481

come, not Italians posing as vehement Jews, but living symbols of
grief, terror, bewilderment, and woe. And the Christ has tLfi
granaeur, the imperturbable grace and tranquillity characteristic
of Leonardo himself in his noblest moods.

I have watched painters go into ecstasies over this picture— over
the plastic form, the marvellous composition, the distribution of
the figures, apparently so simply ordered yet, on analysis, so com-
plexly balanced and inextricably united; the rushing, involute
rhythms, the expressive hands, et cet. — and I have wondered what
Leonardo would have done, had he wished to represent, not a group
of men bound together by a community of tragic purpose, but
merely an assemblage of plastic forms. He would, I fancy, have
produced something analogous to those compositions of Picasso, so
astonishing and yet so meaningless; for Picasso is a man who has
tried to learn the secrets of art from other art and not from
life. It was the subject that released Leonardo's creative activity
and inspired him to incorporate a great idea into a great design.
And I have also fancied, in moments when I permit myself a little
indulgence in the more esoteric meanings of art, that Leonardo,
having finished The Last Supper, must have surveyed the work
with a smile of satisfaction seeing that he had represented once
and for all time how men of ordinary clay are appalled by the
presence of supreme intelligence. . . •

The Mona Lisa shines out among the portraits of the world
like a star. Though time has appreciably impaired the color of
the picture, the glory of it increases with the passing years. The
canvas hangs in the Louvre, a veritable shrine attracting pilgrims
from every land, all of whom gaze upon it with a liquid reverence
not accorded to any of the more essentially sacred pieces in that
gigantic morgue. Fable and gossip have made the famous lady a
strange and uncanny charmer, a sphinx whose smile entrapped the
soul of a great artist and impelled him, bit by bit, to build up an
image of unfathomable mystery. The image lives on, but the
legend also endures — and the soul of the artist is buried in the
mystery of a woman's smile!

The story is that in the year 1502, Leonardo looked upon Mona
Lisa, the third wife of Francesco del Giocondo, and found her
fascinating, for she was, according to contemporary opinion, "ex-
ceedingly beautiful," and he was by no means insensitive to feminine
charms. She was young and her husband was old and impotent

482 THOMAS CRAVEN

and unkind. He had pawned her jewels and forced her to put
on mourning so that the absence of personal ornaments might not
be suspected. When Leonardo desired to paint her portrait, she
assented eagerly, cast a spell upon him, and became his mistress.
She had lost her only daughter and was chronically sad, and it is
told that he hired an orchestra to lighten her melancholy and
jesters to make her smile. And it was the smile that held him
in her toils and called up the secrets of his soul.

The legend is damaged by several inconsistencies. Leonardo was
not a youth at this time : he was in his fifties and fearfully venerable,
appearing indeed in a portrait sketch made three years later, an
octogenarian. He worked on the picture for four years, but not
merely to preserve the features of a striking woman — likenesses
came easy to him and he had no use for them as such. Nor was
much of the period devoted to Mona Lisa. Florentine artists did
not paint directly from models but from black-and-white studies.
Furthermore, we know that Mona Lisa posed for the head alone —
the torso and hands were drawn from other sitters, a fact which
may account for the rather stiff joining of the neck and shoulders —
and that Leonardo, the most painstaking of painters, in solitude,
undisturbed by music and a beautiful woman, slowly created a figure
of imperishable vitality. Whatever he may have thought of the
sitter, he prized the picture more, as an artist should, keeping it
in his possession to the end of his days. All things considered, it
would seem that his interest in the model was neither protracted nor
sentimental, and that he found in nature a face which helped him
to realize in paint an ideal type towards which he had constantly
moved from his earliest efforts. His concessions to portraiture only
served to enhance this ideal: Mona Lisa was a lady and he gave
her the sensitive hands of an aristocrat; he observed the mourner's
costume but turned it into living drapery; the high forehead and
the plucked eyebrows, current marks of distinction, facilitated the
modelling of the features. But Mona Lisa, the woman, the mis-
tress, the Neapolitan, has vanished from the picture forever. It
may fairly be questioned whether the work is a portrait at all,
that is, as we understand the term today. Certainly the head re-
sembles all the other heads that he painted, male or female, and
might be substituted for any one of his madonnas. Mona Lisa
is the sister to his other forms, only more exquisitely embodied.

She is purely a devotional creation, devotional in the largest

LEONARDO DA VINCI 483

sense; the incarnation of Leonardo's love for life, and women, and
all perfect forms, the nexus between the world of memories, ex-
periments and disappointments, and the flawlessly appointed world
of his imagination. Into this picture he has projected all of him-
self and all his arts — his subtlety, his elaborate and dazzling refine-
ment, his scientific perfection, his psychological penetration, his
puzzling serenity, his infallible knowledge of structure. In z< .n-
parison most of the paintings of the world seem flat and lifeless.
Like it you may not, but you cannot escape its reality. It stops
you and holds you with confounding directness. Many other
canvases are perhaps corporeally as substantial and convincing ; other
figures are even more truthful representations of flesh and blood,
but this, you feel, is more than flesh and blood. The face is that
of a more sentient being, a more highly organized intelligence. You
are not conscious of paint, of color, or of canvas. Lifeless material
has been shaped into a human face, and the face, as Leonardo said
and intended, becomes "the mirror of the soul." Your spirit is
somehow touched by another spirit, and for a moment you may be
repelled — repelled by a figure that is made in the form of a
human being and yet made without weaknesses or imperfections.
To apprehend the Mona Lisa, you must remain with the picture,
see it again and again, for it contains, like all works of art, the his-
tory of its creator, and you cannot, at a single glance, enter into
the mind of Leonardo da Vinci.

The figure is as solid and as permanently established as the rocks
behind it, yet plastic, and free to bend and breathe and move, and
brought into fullest relief by the purposely strange background of
dwindling rivers and shadowy peaks; the landscape, wrought out
with as much affection as the face of the woman, is a living thing ;
the smile is achieved by imperceptible variations in the lines of the
eyes and mouth — so delicately modelled, in fact, that it is lost in
coarsely screened reproductions. The smile is not peculiar to
Mona Lisa; it was not original with Leonardo. It is written in
the faces of the archaic goddesses of Greece; we find it in the
sculptures of his master, Verrocchio, and, in other paintings of the
time. If Leonardo was prepossessed with it, then so is every artist
with certain expressions and attitudes. Why he so loved the smile
we cannot say, but we do know that by means of it he made his faces
conclusively real and emblematic of the deepest emotional states.
The mystery of the Mona Lisa arises from the romantic gossip

484 THOMAS CRAVEN

attaching to the model and to repeated misconceptions of the artist's
purpose. The emotional life of art is, in the final analysis, like
all life, insoluble. We can no more explain it than we can ex-
plain a tree or a woman or any organic thing, and when we at-
tempt to do so, we are driven into dreams and mysteries. Leonardo's
aim was to dispel mysteries, not to create them. His purpose was
to create a form which should be neither vague nor enigmatical —
not a stimulus to reveries, but actually and in all its parts, an
articulate and convincing expression of the spirit. He succeeded,
and that, I think, is enough. . . .

THE GLORY OF ENGLISH PROSE1
WILLIAM JOHN TUCKER

"By THE literature of a nation," says Newman, "is meant its
classics." If this view of literature be correct, it is no exaggeration
to say that the vast majority of our English-speaking brethren care
little or nothing about the literature of their race. They do not
completely ignore it, they are not quite indifferent to it, but their
interest in it is of a very faint kind; or, if their interest happens
to be enthusiastic, it is certainly not lasting. This is simply because
they have not taken the trouble to cultivate for themselves a sound
literary taste, on which they could rely as a means of permanent
pleasure. They do not see the wisdom of Bacon's advice when he
bids us read, not to contradict and refute, not to believe and take
for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and con-
sider. And so they readily fall into a ruinous habit of hasty and
superficial reading, a vice which accompanies them when they turn
to serious subjects, so that anything in the shape of a critical appreci-
ation of what they read is rendered practically impossible.

Every one who puts a business value on his time slips naturally
into this trick of shorthand reading. It is more, even, by the effort
and tension of mind required than by the mere loss of time that
most people are repelled from the habit of careful reading. Every
reader gradually learns an art of catching at the leading words, and
the cardinal or hinge-joints of transition, which proclaim the gen-
eral course of a writer's thought. It is doubtless true, and is
sure to be objected, that where so much is certain to prove mere
iteration and teasing tautology, little can be lost by this or any other
process of abridgement. And certainly, as regards the particular
subject-matter concerned, there may be no reason to apprehend a
serious injury. But it is not in that particular interest, but in a far
larger interest that the reader suffers a permanent injury. He ac-

aFrom the Catholic World of March, 1934. Reprinted by the courtesy
of the author and the publishers. This essay will form a chapter in a
forthcoming book by the author.

485

486 WILLIAM JOHN TUCKER

quires an incorrigible habit of careless reading. To say of a man's
knowledge that it will be shallow is to say little of such a habit;
it is by reaction upon a man's faculties, it is by the effects reflected
on his powers of judgment and reasoning, that loose habits of read-
ing eventually tell. And these are lasting effects. Even as regards
the minor purpose of information, it is surely better, by a thousand-
fold, to have read but three score of books (chosen judiciously)
with severe attention, and a critical attitude of mind, than to have
raced through a whole library at a newspaper pace. Yet such is the
method of reading adopted by the ordinary run of men.

This being so, the question is pertinently asked: What, then,
is the explanation of the enduring fame of our classical authors?
The answer is, that the fame of our great writers is quite inde-
pendent of the opinions of the majority. It is not by the apathetic
multitude, but by the select few who are intensely and permanently
interested in literature, that the renown of genius is kept alive from
one generation to another. The classics are not "banal" enough
for the vulgar herd ; they are too delicate and refined for the ground-
lings; they are, as Hamlet would say, "caviare to the general,"
but they are nectar to those who are capable of appreciating them.

It is a pity that the names of our great authors should be merely
names, and nothing more, to the average reader. Even among those
who profess to be lovers of literature, really genuine appreciation
is singularly rare. They may see the beauty of an author's style,
but not the whole of it; they may feel it, but not with all their
heart. They cannot realize in how many different ways of varying
faultiness everything may be said, or how difficult it is to say any-
thing even reasonably well, and so they cannot adequately prize
the skill which finds the one perfect form of utterance. Lacking
penetrative insight, they fail of full sympathy, and without this there
can never be complete appreciation.

If we appeal to the works of our great writers, we shall see that
what has just been said is only too true. Take, for instance, the
case of Ruskin. Few men in the history of our literature have been
so highly praised. Some of his enthusiastic admirers have even
tried to do for him what he undertook to do for his idol, Turner.
Ruskin wrote Modern Painters in justification of the art of Turner
— to show, namely, that in landscape painting Turner was by far
the greatest and most inspired artist of his day. In like manner,
one disciple of Ruskin will tell you that he is "one of the greatest

THE GLORY OF ENGLISH PROSE 487

of great men of all ages," while another will speak of him as "an
acknowledged chief among the chiefs of literature, the foremost man
in modern English literature, strictly so-called"; and yet another
will consider him "the resuscitator of the art of the fourteenth
century, the precursor of social democracy, the Shakespeare of the
nineteenth century."

One wonders whether all this praise is sincere. Is it not more
nearly or more literally true than many of Ruskin's readers would
be ready to admit? Is not the name of Ruskin, in short, merely
vox et praeterea nihiP for the majority of his alleged admirers?
Do they really appreciate him, or are they not rather at pains to
convince themselves that Ruskin must be a great writer because
Frederic Harrison says so? To be sure, no educated man will deny
that John Ruskin was great in literature and art. After twenty
years of patient labor, he had established himself as the prince of
art critics, and the chief exponent of painting and architecture. He
had created a department of literature all his own, and had adorned
it with works of wondrous splendor and beauty. He had enriched
the art of England with examples of a new and beautiful kind,
and the language of his country with passages of poetic description
and eloquent declamation quite, in their way, unsurpassed. All
this (and more) the fervent worshiper at the shrine of Ruskin will
readily admit. But yet one wonders how many of his most enthusi-
astic disciples can say with truth that they have caught all the rare
and subtle music of his speech, his rigid analytical clearness, his
exquisite choice of words and turn of thought, his astonishing
versatility, his delicate play of wit and sarcasm and fancy, his gor-
geous imagery, so rich and exhaustless, yet, like the ornament of his
own beloved Gothic art, never added for its own sake, but re-
strained and deepened in a wonderful manner. And yet, no one
who does not read Ruskin in this way can be said to appreciate him
in the proper sense of the word.

It is this lack of appreciation which accounts, in a large measure,
for the popular prejudice against our classics. Perhaps the com-
monest objection to the works of our great authors is that they are
dull, heavy, dry-as-dust — anything, in fact, but what is commonly
called "light literature." The force of this objection rests obvi-
ously on the meaning of the term "lightness." If to interest the
reader be really the chief point of lightness, even newspapers may
9 A voice and nothing more.

488 WILLIAM JOHN TUCKER

be spoken of as light literature. And since what interests us to-day
may not interest us tomorrow, and may be entirely forgotten the
third day, the lightness is undeniable in one sense, that the interest
is ephemeral or for the hour. Yet the higher sense of lightness
must certainly involve benefit to the spirit, the intellect, the fancy.

To say that the works of our great authors do not possess this
higher kind of lightness is simply to say what is not true. To take
one of many examples: Macaulay's History, in spite of its faults,
is really the very ideal of light reading, because it is both delightful
and satisfying. Indeed, for lightness in the purest sense of the
word — lightness which imparts profit with serenity — we have only
to go to such exquisite examples as the writings of Addison, of
Lamb, of Goldsmith. It is true that there are other writers, like
Sterne and Swift, who are also considered light, but then these
gentlemen do not respect our refinement. Of all our great writers,
Charles Lamb is the least offensive in this respect, while he is prob-
ably the most charming. Nothing can be more delightful than
Lamb's humor. He can make us laugh with most joyous appreci-
ation, while making us feel innocent as little children. Sterne and
Swift can make us laugh as loudly as Lamb, but there is a laughter
which is health, and which produces health from a sense of its purity,
and even sweetness. Charles Lamb is the king of such laughter.
His Essays are the most graceful absurdities in the language. Dull
indeed must he be of soul who can take up these Elian master-
pieces and lay them down without recognizing their pure drollery,
their gentle irony, and their delicate charm. The reader who does
not feel the charm of "Dream Children: A Reverie," "Mrs. Battle's
Opinion on Whist," "A Dissertation upon Roast Pig," and "The
Praise of Chimney-Sweepers" must be possessed" of a devil of obtuse-
ness no power of pen can expel.

The art of prose depends for its beauty upon the same qualities as
we demand from the art of poetry. A choice of words, determined
not merely by the argument enforced or the facts related, but by the
suavity of the consonants and the music of the vowels which com-
pose these words, a variety of cadence, obtained by a delicate inter-
change of one syllable and many syllables, a harmony, balanced or
unexpected, — these are some of the elements of noble prose. In
other words, according to Aristotle, prose should "neither possess
meter nor be destitute of rhythm."

The English Bible is the chief glory of English prose. Through

THE GLORY OF ENGLISH PROSE 489

three centuries no other work has had a comparable influence on
our speech and literature. We are accustomed to think this pre-
eminence due to the intrinsic and sacred character of its contents,
to the fact that it brings man his knowledge of God. This is
obviously true. Also it is true, and perhaps less obvious, that the
Bible might have held the same message, have translated the origi-
nals with equal faithfulness, yet never have gained a like place in
people's hearts. For it might have been done with ample care and
learning, yet in such a way as to lack charm. How possible this is
grows clear when we pass to other renderings. We can applaud
the exact precision of some modern versions. But they leave us
cold. It is the charm of the Authorized Version that has endeared
it through centuries to all sorts and conditions of men. And if
charm be a quality eluding final analysis, we may be sure that here,
among its contributing parts, are simplicity, and unmatched happi-
ness of diction, rhythms changing in exquisite accord with the sense,
lucid reverence, and tender gentleness.

Consider the Psalms in the incomparable beauty and majesty of
the Prayer Book Version. What poem of rime and meter, still less
of blank verse, can come near this:

Whither shall I go then from Thy Spirit, and whither shall
I go from Thy presence? If I climb up into heaven Thou art
there ; if I go down to hell Thou art there also. If I take the
wings of the morning and remain in the uttermost parts of the
sea, even there shall Thy. hand lead me, and Thy right hand
shall hold me. If I say peradventure the darkness shall cover
me, then shall my night be turned into day. Yea, the darkness
is no darkness with Thee, but the night is as clear as the day,
the darkness and light to Thee are both alike.

Here is no effort, but a spontaneous perfection of language; no
turmoil, but a calm.
Or, again

They that go down to the sea in ships and occupy their busi-
ness in great waters; these men see the works of the Lord
and His wonders in the deep. For at His word the stormy
wind ariseth, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They are
carried up to the heaven and down again to the deep; their
soul melteth away because of the trouble. They reel to and
fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits'
end. So when they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, He

490 WILLIAM JOHN TUCKER

delivereth them out of their distress. For He maketh the
storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are
they glad, because they are at rest, so He bringeth them into
the haven where they would be.

Great poetic prose of this quality appears to be drawn from the
poet's mind by some object or idea which moves him profoundly.
It is spontaneous, unbidden, it comes unsought.

Man himself, his greatness and his littleness, the transitory char-
acter of his passage through this world, is, of course, the chief of
the spectacles with power to evoke an intense emotion spontaneously
clothing itself in a perfectly rhythmical form. It is the ever-
repeated burden of the Psalms: "When I consider the heavens,
the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars that Thou hast
ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the Son
of Man that Thou visitest him?" or "Man is like a thing of nought,
his time passeth away like a shadow." The whole passage in the
English Burial Office, "Man that is born of a woman" is a mag-
nificent piece of imaginative prose.

When we consider these passages, we find that they have a par-
ticular appeal to the ear. And, in fact, we may take it that the first
and most prominent characteristic is a special rhythm. It is of a
simple type, but as the least study will show, it is handled with
extraordinary art. It is neither too fluent nor too slow, but it is
smooth and weighty. It is carefully balanced in the complementary
members of a sentence, yet it never degenerates into meter. The
rhythm of many English writers tends to be either dissipated among
polysyllables or emphasized to monotony. But the rhythm of the
Bible, though built of the same elements as the verse of Shakespeare
and Milton, is specifically a prose, not a verse, rhythm. The per-
fection of its technique is infallible. This rhythm is unique in Eng-
lish literature, and to it the Bible owes the greater part of its lit-
erary appeal.

The Authorized Version made easy the triumph of what has been
called the ornate style. And how superbly ornate this style was
Jeremy Taylor, Milton and Sir Thomas Browne prove in patches
of their richest purple. Raleigh also makes good his claim in at
least one splendid passage, which, often cited, still endures citation:

O, eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could
advise, thou hast persuaded ; what none hath dared ; thou hast
done; and whom all the world has flattered, thou only hast

THE GLORY OF ENGLISH PROSE 491

cast out of the world and despised. Thou hast drawn together
all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and am-
bition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow
words, Hie jacet.

This is not the work of one who has nothing to do with words,
who is intent only to conduct an argument or to relate facts; it is
prose nevertheless, prose, triumphant and ornate. But, sound as
Raleigh's claim may be to flamboyance, we cannot but reject Bacon's.
The author of the Essays had a closed and parsimonious style. He
shut up in a few words as much sense as he might, and it is the
greatest of human follies that this lawyer should have been elected
to the post of the one and only poet and prose writer who flourished
in the reigns of Elizabeth and James. To compare Bacon and
Shakespeare is like comparing a stately portico with the free-flowing
river. The one is severe, immovable, the other is all light and mo-
tion. Frankly, I do not see how any man with an ear for literature
could ever be a Baconian.

A little attention directed to the excellences of the Bible would
make these excellences a standard of what English should be. No
doubt, differences of taste will still prevail. There is no one form
of style that is in itself the best. The English of De Quincey or
Macaulay is as good as the English of Southey or Addison. For
most purposes a quiet style, only brilliant or pointed because it is
the vehicle of lively thought, is the most effective. But this is all
that can be said. Ornate, elevated, and sonorous English is splen-
did in its way and in its proper place; and nothing could be more
undesirable than to instill a pedantic notion that there was some
great idol of style to whom all should bow down. If people are
made acquainted with the best models of different styles, they will
choose for their own favorite reading the one with which their
native tastes have most affinity.

It is sometimes laid down as an axiom that poets do not write
good prose. One can hardly imagine a statement more entirely
untrue. Even if by good prose is meant merely plain, work-a-day
prose, the clear statement of fact, I would back Coleridge or Southey
against the most hard-headed practical man to put a thing down
in black and white, to set it concisely and lucidly before the reader.
Many of the most prosaic people are devoted to all sorts of pom-
posities and formalities, and strangely addicted to verbiage. Good
prose is, no doubt, first and foremost plain prose ; it is putting down

492 WILLIAM JOHN TUCKER

the thing, putting down the fact, getting at its essence. When
beautiful or awful things are thus truly and worthily reflected in
words, we get imaginative prose. Prose of this kind it takes a
poet to write; its highest masters are great poets, though they may
never have penned a line of verse in their lives.

Such thoughts — that "we are such stuff as dreams are made on ;
and our little life is rounded with a sleep," that "all our yesterdays
have lighted fools the way to dusty death," that "the great globe
itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and, like this insub-
stantial pageant faded, leave not a wrack behind," — profoundly
moved Shakespeare. They called forth from him his greatest poetry.
But the prose passage in Hamlet, "What a piece of work is man,"
is worthy to rank with the greatest poetry he ever wrote.

It is strange that so few of our great modern prose writers should
have learnt the laws of prose from Swift and the masters of the
eighteenth century. Those laws were still observed by Cobbett
with all his willfulness, and by Lamb with all his whims. They
were constantly disobeyed by De Quincey and Ruskin, and often by
Carlyle. De Quincey is already suffering for his disobedience, and
who can tell how much the other two, for all their genius, will
suffer? Even now the authority of Ruskin is undermined by his
perversity. The eloquent reasoning of one-half of Unto This Last,
and of the great chapter on the nature of Gothic in the Stones of
Venice, is forgotten before we have done with the irrational elo-
quence of the rest ; and if we are impatient of it, what patience can
be expected of a posterity troubled with different problems and ac-
customed to different methods of address?

The case of Carlyle differs from the case of Ruskin because he
was on his guard against diffuse eloquence and appeals to sentiment.
But he, too, was not content to write mere prose, although con-
temptuous of poetry. With all his professed worship of facts he
was impatient of stating them. He would not trust to the true
prose writer's art of logical arrangement or let the facts, even when
they were most eloquent, speak for themselves. He was always
aiming at the concentration of poetry and in the process losing the
continuity of prose. In his histories he tries like a poet to force
his narrative into lyrical moments; and, not being a poet, at such
moments he is apt to become almost inarticulate. Take, for instance,
his treatment of the trial of Marie Antoinette. It is a case for
simple narrative, if ever there was one. But Carlyle will not trust

THE GLORY OF ENGLISH PROSE 493

to the facts to move the emotions of his readers. He must express
those emotions himself, as if he were a poet instead of an histoiian
and a lyrical rather than an epic poet. The passage lacks both the
logic of prose and the beauty of poetry ; and a man so great as Carlyle
could not have written it if he had not had a wrong theory of
prose, if he had not been discontented with its proper appeal and
wished to strain it beyond its proper functions.

In marked contrast to Carlyle stands a writer who never tried
thus to strain his prose, who was never discontented with its proper
appeal, and who yet by obeying its laws made it the obedient instru-
ment of his emotions no less than of his reason. In that exquisite
meditation upon Paradise, Newman's eloquence is kindled by the
natural process of his thought. He begins with quiet statements
in which he seems to be thinking rather than speaking ; or, if speak-
ing, talking to himself. The sentences move slowly with no em-
phasis and little rhythm. From the nature of the subject we expect
appeals to the emotion ; but the writer, though he quotes beautiful
texts, does so for the sake of his argument rather than to move us,
and that argument is never interrupted either by his quotations or
by the few images which he employs. But gradually and, as it
seems, inevitably his mind is uplifted and quickened by its progress ;
and as his thoughts work upon him, so they work upon his readers,
and they are wrought into sympathy as he reasons himself into elo-
quence. Quotations will not show the nature of that eloquence,
for its effect is cumulative, and all the sentences are linked together
by the other harmony of prose, the harmony of reason. That per-
sists from beginning to end, and so controls the language that it
could never be mistaken for the language of poetry. The rhythm,
the structure of the sentences, many of the very words are peculiar
to prose ; and yet how much more moving is this prose, content with
its own proper methods and obedient to its own laws, than any
prose which attempts to move us with the methods of poetry. New-
man had the perfect prose temper, and it is expressed in the per-
fection of his method. He does not strive or cry or put on any
airs of inspiration. He addresses his auditors as if he expected them
to make no allowances for him, as if he were one of themselves. He
is more anxious to make his meaning clear, and to say exactly what
he means, than to astonish or delight. Truth is his first object, and
even beauty only a secondary consideration. But since the pursuit
of truth fills him with a noble ardor, that ardor expresses itself,

494 WILLIAM JOHN TUCKER

as it always must, in terms of beauty that delight us the more be-
cause they seem to come unsought.

Newman is unquestionably one of the great glories of English
prose. The English of his works is simple, clear and refreshing;
answering to every changing thought of the writer's mind. The
charm of Newman's style baffles description; as well might one
seek to analyze the fragrance of a flower. Whatever work we take
up, we are at once infected with what has been called "Newmania."
Newman possesses a matchless and incomparable power of expres-
sion. Everything he wrote was saturated with personality. He had
a power, which he alone expressed among the writers of the nine-
teenth century, of thinking aloud in the most exquisite form; his
artistry was his supreme gift. Light, life, color and movement are
the notes of Newman's style. The perfect lucidity and the total
absence of straining after effect with a beauty and dignity all its
own; the utmost simplicity of distinction, is perhaps a fair de-
scription of his voluminous writings and sermons. There is all the
scholar's severity in his choice of words and in the construction of
his sentences; nothing loud, nothing exaggerated nor importunate.
We are told by those who listened to his conversation that they
were impressed by a sense of a force kept under severe restraint;
and this impression is conveyed also by his writings. In the main,
he is representative of that plain style which has been more than
once indicated as the best for all purposes in English. His works
sink and rise apparently without effort, for his art was perfectly
concealed.

In his Idea of a University, Newman tells us that a great style
draws men to copy it, for its fascination appeals to them. "For
myself," he says, "when I was fourteen or fifteen I copied Addison ;
when I was seventeen, I wrote in the style of Johnson; about the
same time I fell in with the twelfth volume of Gibbon, and my
ears rang with the cadence of his sentences and I dreamed of it
for a night or two." Later in life he confessed his obligations to
one of the greatest men of letters of all time: "The only master
of style I have ever had (which is strange considering the differences
of the languages) is Cicero. I think I owe a great deal to him, but
as far as I know, to no one else. His great mastery of Latin is
shown especially in his clearness."

Style — like beauty and genius — is one of those mysterious quali-
ties which can be immediately perceived, but which cannot be de-

THE GLORY OF ENGLISH PROSE 495

fined. Pages of analysis and description will fail to convey the
notion, which becomes obvious at once from a paragraph by Swift
or Newman. If we examine the paragraph, if we split it up into
its component parts — the sense, the sound, the rhythm, the balance,
the arrangement — we shall find that the informing spirit of the
whole, the style itself, has somehow or other slipped through our
fingers and disappeared. Thus there is no receipt for style; one
has it or one has it not; and though, if one has it there are aids
towards the improvement of it, yet there can be no doubt that its
essence is a gift inborn. Some writers — Walter Pater was one of
them — seek through a lifetime, with all the laborious refinements of
scholarship and taste, to achieve style, and in the end achieve only
the imitation of it; while a Bunyan, tinkering in the highways, flows
at will with the very perfection of language. Nor is the gift con-
fined to those whose fame rests on their mastery of words. Nothing
is more interesting than to watch the magic of style springing out
unexpectedly from the utterances of great men of action. The sen-
tences of these natural stylists, thrown off amid the hazards and
labors of administration or of arms, possess often enough a distinc-
tive quality of their own, — a racy flavor of actual life which is rarely
caught save by the greatest or least literary man of letters. It
would have needed a Shakespeare or a Browning at the height of
inspiration to coin such a phrase as Cromwell's memorable injunc-
tion, "Put your trust in God and keep your powder dry!" The
mere writer who must, like a silkworm, spin out his precious mate-
rial from inside him can hardly hope to rival the man of genius
whose imagination has been quickened and whose tongue has been
loosened by what Burke calls the "overmastering necessities" of
events.

Great hammer-strokes of speech can only come, we feel, from a
man who has gone scatheless through the depths, who has looked on
tempests and has never been shaken. Such an impression is pro-
duced by the writing of Abraham Lincoln. Here is an original
literary artist who never did any deliberate literary work, who
enriched English style in spite of himself under pressure of circum-
stances. With an instinct for the use of words which is truly
astonishing, he knew how to combine the charm of decoration with
the most direct force. We do not ordinarily think of Lincoln as
a literarv man, but as a wise statesman and leader, a clear thinker,

496 WILLIAM JOHN TUCKER

and a forceful debater. But in the critical and distressing period
through which he was called to lead the American people, the events
all seemed to converge to a focus in the dramatic moment when he
delivered the supremely great literary utterance of his life, the
celebrated Gettysburg speech. The simplicity and directness of
style, the compact and logical structure, the sincerity and power of
the emotional appeal of this brief address have rarely been equaled
and have never been surpassed in American prose.

Another man of action and master of prose was Robert Clive.
His style is remarkable for its straightforwardness, its vigor, and
its passion; the diction is always plain, the construction always
simple, and yet a feeling of intensity and excitement vibrates in
what he writes* Clive certainly possessed the quality which, ac-
cording to Hazlitt, marks the supreme prose-writer, — that of losing
"no particle of the exact, characteristic, extreme, impression of the
thing he writes about." And the same may be said of the greatest
of dive's successors — Warren Hastings, whose vast elaborate sen-
tences, with their Latin words and balanced structure, produce, at
their best, a sense of the mystery and grandeur of the East. It is
interesting to compare the splendid trenchancy of Clive with the
swelling and romantic utterance of Hastings, who was able no less
to infuse the prof oundest passion into what he wrote :

"The valor of others acquired, I enlarged and gave shape and
consistency to the dominion which you hold there — Bengal ; I pre-
served it; I sent forth its armies with an effectual, but economical
hand, through unknown and hostile regions to the support of your
other possessions; to the retrieval of Bombay from degradation and
dishonor ; and of Madras from utter loss and ruin ... I gave you
all, and you have rewarded me with confiscation, disgrace, and a
life of impeachment."

What would not the mere man of letters give to be able to write
like that? The glowing diction, the inimitable rhythm, the superb
and awful close, — :by what magic intuition have these things been
brought into existence ? by what mysterious and unconscious art ?

Almost all that can be laid down as law about style is contained
in a sentence of Madame de Sevigne in a letter to her daughter.
"Never forsake what is natural," she writes; "you have moulded
yourself in that vein, and this produces a perfect style." There
is nothing more to be said. Be natural, be simple, be yourself; shun

THE GLORY OF ENGLISH PROSE 497

artifices, tricks, fashions. Gain the tone of ease, plainness, self-
respect. To thine own self be true. Speak out frankly that which
you have thought out in your brain and have felt within your own
soul. This, and this alone, creates a perfect style, as she says who
wrote some of the most exquisite letters the world has ever known.

A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY1
JOHN GALSWORTHY

ONCE upon a time the Prince of Felicitas had occasion to set
forth on a journey. It was a late autumn evening with few pale
stars and a moon no larger than the paring of a finger-nail. And
as he rode through the purlieus of his city, the white mane of his
amber-colored steed was all that he could clearly see in the dusk
of the high streets. His way led through a quarter but little known
to him, and he was surprised to find that his horse, instead of
ambling forward with his customary gentle vigour, stepped care-
fully from side to side, stopping now and then to curve his neck
and prick his ears — as though at some thing of fear unseen in the
darkness; while on either hand creatures could be heard rustling
and scuttling, and little cold draughts as of wings fanned the rider's
cheeks.

The Prince at last turned in his saddle, but so great was the
darkness that he could not even see his escort.

"What is the name of this street?" he said.

"Sire, it is called the Vita Publica."

"It is very dark." Even as he spoke his horse staggered, but,
recovering its foothold with an effort, stood trembling violently.
Nor could all the incitements of its master induce the beast again
to move forward.

"Is there no one with a lanthorn in this street?" asked the Prince.

His attendants began forthwith to call out loudly for any one
who had a lanthorn. Now, it chanced that an old man sleeping in
a hovel on a pallet of straw was awakened by these cries. When
he heard that it was the Prince of Felicitas himself, he came
hastily, carrying his lanthorn, and stood trembling beside the
Prince's horse. It was so dark that the Prince could not see him.

"Light your lanthorn, old man," he said.

The old man laboriously lit his lanthorn. Its pale rays fled out

1From The Inn of Tranquillity, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912. Re-
printed by permission of the publishers.

498

A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY 499

on either hand; beautiful but grim was the vision they disclosed.
Tall houses, fair court-yards, and a palm-grown garden ; in front of
the Prince's horse a deep cesspool, on whose jagged edges the good
beast's hoofs were planted; and, as far as the glimmer of the
lanthorn stretched, both ways down the rutted street, paving stones
displaced, and smooth tesselated marble; pools of mud, the hanging
fruit of an orange-tree, and dark, scurrying shapes of monstrous
rats bolting across from house to house. The old man held the
lanthorn higher; and instantly bats flying against it would have
beaten out the light but for the thin protection of its horn sides.

The Prince sat still upon his horse, looking first at the rutted
space that he had traversed and then at the rutted space before him.

"Without a light," he said, "this thoroughfare is dangerous.
What is your name, old man ?"

"My name is Cethru," replied the aged churl.

"Cethru !" said the Prince. "Let it be your duty henceforth to
walk with your lanthorn up and down this street all night and
every night," — and he looked at Cethru: "Do you understand, old
man, what it is you have to do ?"

The old man answered in a voice that trembled like a rusty flute :

"Aye, aye ! — to walk up and down and hold my lanthorn so that
folk can see where they be goin'."

The Prince gathered up his reins; but the old man, lurching for-
ward, touched his stirrup.

"How long be I to go on wi' thiccy job?"

"Until you die!"

Cethru held up his lanthorn, and they could see his long, thin
face, like a sandwich of dried leather, jerk and quiver, and his thin
grey hairs flutter in the draught of the bats' wings circling round
the light.

"'Twill be main hard!" he groaned; "an* my lanthorn's nowt
but a poor thing."

With a high look, the Prince of Felicitas bent and touched the
old man's forehead.

"Until you die, old man," he repeated ; and bidding his followers
to light torches from Cethru's lanthorn, he rode on down the
twisting street. The clatter of the horses' hoofs died out in the
night, and the scuttling and the rustling of the rats and the whispers
of the bats' wings were heard again.

Cethru, left alone in the dark thoroughfare, sighed heavily ; then,

Soo JOHN GALSWORTHY

spitting on his hands, he tightened the old girdle round his loins, and
slinging the lanthorn on his staff, held it up to the level of his
waist, and began to make his way along the street. His progress
was but slow, for he had many times to stop and rekindle the flame
within his lanthorn, which the bats' wings, his own stumbles, and
the jostlings of footpads or of revellers returning home, were for
ever extinguishing. In traversing that long street he spent half the
night, and half the night in traversing it back again. The saffron
swan of dawn, slow swimming up the sky-river between the high
roof-banks, bent her neck down through the dark air-water to look
at him staggering below her, with his still smoking wick. No
sooner did Cethru see that sunlit bird, than with a great sigh of joy
he sat him down, and at once fell asleep.

Now when the dwellers in the houses of the Vita Publica first
gained knowledge that this old man passed every night with his
lanthorn up and down their street, and when they marked those
pallid gleams gliding over the motley prospect of cesspools and
garden gates, over the sightless hovels and the rich-carved frontages
of their palaces; or saw them stay their journey and remain sus-
pended like a handful of daffodils held up against the black stuffs
of secrecy — they said :

"It is good that the old man should pass like this — we shall see
better where we're going; and if the Watch have any job on hand,
or want to put the pavements in order, his lanthorn will serve their
purpose well enough." And they would call out of their doors and
windows to him passing:

"Hola! old man Cethru! All's well with our house, and with
the street before it?"

But, for answer, the old man only held his lanthorn up, so that
in the ring of its pale light they saw some sight or other in the
street. And his silence troubled them, one by one, for each had
expected that he would reply:

"Aye, aye! All's well with your house, Sirs, and with the street
before it!"

Thus they grew irritated with this old man who did not seem
able to do anything but just hold his lanthorn up. And gradually
they began to dislike his passing by their doors with his pale light,
by which they could not fail to see, not only the rich-carved front-
ages and scrolled gates of courtyards and fair gardens, but things
that were not pleasing to the eye. And they murmured amongst

A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY

themselves: "What is the good of this old man and his sil y
lanthorn ? We can see all we want to see without him ; in fact, v r
got on very well before he came."

So, as he passed, rich folk who were supping would pelt him
with orange-peel and empty jhe dregs of their wine over his head ;
and poor folk, sleeping in their hutches, turned ovc., as the riys of
the lanthorn fell on them, and cursed him for that disturKnce.
Nor did revellers or footpads tieat the old man civilly, but lied him
to the wall, where he was constrained to stay till a kind passer-by
released him. And ever the bats darkened his lanthorn with their
wings and tried to beat the flame out. And the old man thought:
"This be a terrible hard job; I don't seem to please nobody." But
because the Prince of Felicitas had so commanded him, he continued
nightly to pass with his lanthorn up and down the street ; and every
morning as the saffron swan came swimming overhead, to fall
asleep. But his sleep did not last long, for he was compelled to
pass many hours each day in gathering rushes and melting down
tallow for his lanthorn ; so that his lean face grew more than ever
like a sandwich of dried leather.

Now it came to pass that the Town Watch having had certain
complaints made to them that persons had been bitten in the Vita
Pubiica by rats, doubted of their duty to destroy these ferocious
creatures ; and they held investigation, summoning the persons bitten
and inquiring of them how it was that in so dark a street they could
tell that the animals which had bitten them were indeed rats.
Howbeit for some time no one could be found who could say more
than what he had been told, and since this was not evidence, the
Town Watch had good hopes that they would not after all be
forced to undertake this tedious enterprise. But presently there
came before them one who said that he had himself seen the rat
which had bitten him, by the light of an old man's lanthorn. When
the Town Watch heard this they were vexed, for they knew that
if this were true they would now be forced to prosecute the arduous
undertaking, and they said:

"Bring in this old man!"

Cethru was brought before them trembling.

"What is this we hear, old man, about your lanthorn and the
rat? And in the first place, what were you doing in the Vita
Pubiica at that time of night?"

Cethru answered: "I were just passin' with my lanthorn!"

502 JOHN GALSWORTHY

"Tell us— did you see the rat?"

Cethru shook his head: "My lanthorn seed the rat, maybe!" he
muttered.

"Old owl!" said the Captain of the Watch: "Be careful what
you say! If you saw the rat, why did you then not aid this un-
happy citizen who was bitten by it — first, to avoid that rodent, and
subsequently to slay it, thereby relieving the public of a pestilential
danger?"

Cethru looked at him, and for some seconds did not reply; then
he said slowly: "I were just passin' with my lanthorn."

"That you have already told us," said the Captain of the Watch ;
"it is no answer."

Cethru's leathern cheeks became wine-coloured, so desirous was
he to speak, and so unable. And the Watch sneered and laughed,
saying: "This is a fine witness."

But of a sudden Cethru spoke :

"What would I be duin' — killin* rats ; tidden my business to kill
rats."

The Captain of the Watch caressed his beard, and looking at the
old man with contempt, said :

"It seems to me, brothers, that this is an idle old vagabond, who
does no good to any one. We should be well advised, I think, to
prosecute him for vagrancy. But that is not at this moment the
matter in hand. Owing to the accident — scarcely fortunate— of
this old man's passing with his lanthorn, it would certainly appear
that citizens have been bitten by rodents. It is then, I fear, our
duty to institute proceedings against those poisonous and violent
animals."

And amidst the sighing of the Watch, it was so resolved.

Cethru was glad to shuffle away, unnoticed, from the Court, and
sitting down under a camel-date tree outside the City Wall, he
thus reflected:

"They were rough with me ! I done nothing so f ar's I can see !"

And a long time he sat there with the bunches of the camel-
dates above him, golden as the sunlight. Then, as the scent of the
lyrio flowers, released by evening, warned him of the night drop-
ping like a flight of dark birds on the plain, he rose stiffly, and
made his way as usual toward the Vita Publica.

He had traversed but little of that black thoroughfare, holding
his lanthorn at the level of his breast, when the sound of a splash

A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY 503

and cries for help smote his long, thin ears. Remembering how
the Captain of the Watch had admonished him, he stopped and
peered about, but owing to his proximity to the light of his own
lanthorn he saw nothing. Presently he heard another splash and the
sound of blowings and of puffings, but still unable to see clearly
whence they came, he was forced in bewilderment to resume his
march. But he had no sooner entered the next bend of that obscure
and winding avenue than the most lamentable, lusty cries assailed
him. Again he stood still, blinded by his own light. Somewhere
at hand a citizen was being beaten, for vague, quick-moving forms
emerged into the radiance of his lanthorn out of the deep violet of
the night air. The cries swelled, and died away, and swelled ; and
the mazed Cethru moved forward on his way. But very near the
end of his first traversage, the sound of a long, deep sighing, as of
a fat man in spiritual pain, once more arrested him.

"Drat me !" he thought, "this time I will see what 'tis," and he
spun round and round, holding his lanthorn now high, now low,
and to both sides. "The devil an' all's in it to-night," he murmured
to himself ; "there's some 'at here fetchin' of its breath awful loud."
But for his life he could see nothing, only that the higher he held
his lanthorn the more painful grew the sound of the fat but spiritual
sighing. And desperately, he at last resumed his progress.
\ On the morrow, while he still slept stretched on his straw pallet,
t :re came to him a member of the Watch.

"Old man, you are wanted at the Court House; rouse up, and
bring your lanthorn."

Stiffly Cethru rose.

"What be they wantin' me fur now, mester?"

"Ah!" replied the Watchman, "they are about to see if they
can't put an end to your goings-on."

Cethru shivered, and was silent.

Now when they reached the Court House it was patent that a
great affair was forward ; for the Judges were in their robes, and a
crowd of advocates, burgesses, and common folk thronged the
carven, lofty hall of justice.

When Cethru saw that all eyes were turned on him, he shivered
still more violently, fixing his fascinated gaze on the three Judges
in their emerald robes.

"This then is the prisoner," said the oldest of the Judges; "pro-
ceed with the indictment !"

504 JOHN GALSWORTHY

A little advocate in snuff-colored clothes rose on little legs, and
commenced to read:

"Forasmuch as on the seventeenth night of August fifteen hundred
years since the Messiah's death, one Celestine, a maiden of this city,
fell into a cesspool in the Vita Publica, and while being quietly
drowned, was espied of the burgess Pardonix by the light of a
lanthorn held by the old man Cethru ; and, forasmuch as, plunging
in, the said Pardonix rescued her, not without grave risk of life
and the ruin of his clothes, and to-day lies ill of fever; and foras-
much as the old man Cethru was the cause of these misfortunes to
the burgess Pardonix, by reason of his wandering lanthorn's show-
ing the drowning maiden, the Watch do hereby indict, accuse, and
otherwise place charge upon this Cethru of 'Vagabondage without
serious occupation/

"And, forasmuch as on this same night the Watchman Filepo,
made aware, by the light of this said Cethru Js lanthorn, of three
sturdy footpads, went to arrest them, and was set on by the rogues
and wellnigh slain, the Watch do hereby indict, accuse, and other-
wise charge upon Cethru complicity in this assault, by reasons,
namely, first, that he discovered the footpads to the Watchman and
the Watchman to the footpads by the light of his lanthorn; and,
second, that, having thus discovered them, he stood idly by and gave
no assistance to the law.

"And, forasmuch as on this same night the wealthy burgess
Pranzo, who, having prepared a banquet, was standing in his door-
way awaiting the arrival of his guests, did see, by the light of the
said Cethru's lanthorn, a beggar woman and her children grovelling
in the gutter for garbage, whereby his appetite was lost completely;
and, forasmuch as he, Pranzo, has lodged a complaint against the
Constitution for permitting women and children to go starved, the
Watch do hereby indict, accuse, and otherwise make charge on
Cethru of rebellion and of anarchy, in that wilfully he doth disturb
good citizens by showing to them without provocation disagreeable
sights, and doth moreover endanger the laws by causing persons to
desire to change them.

"These be the charges, reverend Judges, so please you I"

And having thus spoken, the little advocate resumed his seat.

Then said the oldest of the Judges:

"Cethru, you have heard ; what answer do you make ?"

But no word, only the chattering of teeth, came from Cethru.

A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY 505

"Have you no defence ?" said the Judge : "these are grave accusa-
tions!"

Then Cethru spoke.

"So please your Highnesses," he said, "can I help what my
lanthorn sees?"

And having spoken these words, to all further questions he re-
mained more silent than a headless man.

The Judges took counsel of each other, and the oldest of them
thus addressed himself to Cethru:

"If you have no defence, old man, and there is no one will say
a word for you, we can but proceed to judgment."

Then in the main aisle of the Court there rose a youthful ad-
vocate.

"Most reverend Judges," he said in a mellifluous voice, clearer
than the fluting of a bell-bird, "it is useless to look for words from
this old man, for it is manifest that he himself is nothing, and that
his lanthorn is alone concerned in this affair. But, reverend Judges,
bethink you well: Would you have a lanthorn ply a trade or be
concerned with a profession, or do aught indeed but pervade the
streets at night, shedding its light, which, if you will, is vaga-
bondage? And, Sirs, upon the second count of this indictment:
Would you have a lanthorn dive into cesspools to rescue maidens?
Would you have a lanthorn to beat footpads? Or, indeed, to be
any sort of partisan either of the Law or of them that break the
Law? Sure, Sirs, I think not. And as to this third charge of
fostering anarchy — let me but describe the trick of this lanthorn's
flame. It is distilled, most reverend Judges, of oil and wick, to-
gether with that sweet secret heat of whose birth no words of mine
can tell. And when, Sirs, this pale flame has sprung into the air
swaying to every wind, it brings vision to the human eye. And, if
it be charged on this old man Cethru that he and his lanthorn by
reason of their showing not only the good but the evil bring no
pleasure into the world, I ask, Sirs, what in the world is so dear as
this power to see — whether it be the beautiful or the foul that is
disclosed? Need I, indeed, tell you of the way this flame spreads
its feelers, and delicately darts and hovers in the darkness, conjur-
ing things from nothing? This mechanical summoning, Sirs, of
visions out of blackness is benign, by no means of malevolent intent ;
no more than if a man, passing two donkeys in the road, one lean
and the other fat, could justly be arraigned for malignancy because

So6 JOHN GALSWORTHY

they were not both fat. This, reverend Judges, is the essence of the
matter concerning the rich burgess, Pranzo, who, on account of the
sight he saw by Cethru's lanthorn, has lost the equilibrium of his
stomach. For, Sirs, the lanthorn did but show that which was there,
both fair and foul, no more, no less; and though it is indeed true
that Pranzo is upset, it was not because the lanthorn maliciously
produced distorted images, but merely caused to be seen, in due
proportions, things which Pranzo had not seen before. And surely,
reverend Judges, being just men, you would not have this lanthorn
turn its light away from what is ragged and ugly because there are
also fair things on which its light may fall; how, indeed, being a
lanthorn, could it, if it would? And I would have you note this,
Sirs, that by this impartial discovery of the proportions of one
thing to another, this lanthorn must indeed perpetually seem to
cloud and sadden those things which are fair, because of the deep
instincts of harmony and justice planted in the human breast.
However unfair and cruel, then, this lanthorn may seem to those
who, deficient in these instincts, desire all their lives to see naught
but what is pleasant, lest they, like Pranzo, should lose their appe-
tites— it is not consonant with equity that this lanthorn should, even
if it could, be prevented from thus mechanically buffeting the holi-
day cheek of life. I would think, Sirs, that you should rather
blame the queazy state of Pranzo 's stomach. The old man has said
that he cannot help what his lanthorn sees. This is a just saying.
But if, reverend Judges, you deem this equipoised, indifferent
lanthorn to be indeed blameworthy for having shown in the same
moment, side by side, the skull and the fair face, the burdock and
tiger-lily, the butterfly and toad, then, most reverend Judges, pun-
ish it, but do not punish this old man, for he himself is but a flume
of smoke, thistle down dispersed — nothing!"

So saying, the young advocate ceased.

Again the three Judges took counsel of each other, and after
much talk had passed between them, the oldest spoke :

"What this young advocate has said seems to us to be the truth.
We cannot punish a lanthorn. Let the old man go!"

And Cethru went out into the sunshine. . . .

Now it came to pass that the Prince of Felicitas, returning from
his journey, rode once more on his amber-coloured steed down the
Vita Publica.

A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY 507

The night was dark as a rook's wing, but far away down the
street burned a little light, like a red star truant from heaven.

The Prince riding by descried it for a lanthorn, with an old
man sleeping beside it.

"How is this, Friend?" said the Prince. "You are not walking
as I bade you, carrying your lanthorn."

But Cethru neither moved nor answered.

"Lift him up!" said the Prince.

They lifted up his head and held the lanthorn to his closed eyes.
So lean was that brown face that the beams from the lanthorn
would not rest on it, but slipped past on either side into the night.
His eyes did not open. He was dead.

And the Prince touched him, saying: "Farewell, old man! The
lanthorn is still alight. Go, fetch me another one, and let him
carry it!" . . .

MR. ARLISS MAKES A SPEECH1
GEORGE ARLISS

IF IN the past anyone had told me that I was likely to be awarded
a gold medal for diction, I should probably have first screamed with
terror and then retired to my study to find out what was the
matter with my method of speaking.

This I suppose is because I always imagined that people who
got medals for diction were those who spoke beautifully. It used
to be so in my early days. When I was a very obscure member
of an elocution class the students who got medals for diction spoke
wonderfully. Their diction was so unmistakable that you could
almost see the medal moving towards them of its own volition ; and
before they were halfway through "The Dream of Eugene Aram"
the medal was firmly between their teeth. It is hard to eradicate
these early impressions. But I am bound to conclude, and I do
so with great satisfaction, that those Directors of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, this world-famed institution, who
are responsible for this award have a far different appreciation of
the art of the actor from the judges of my student days. When I
reflect that amongst those who have already been similarly honored
by this Academy are Otis Skinner, Walter Hampden, Julia Mar-
lowe, and Wynne Matthison, I realize how vastly public taste and
judgment have changed. These actors and actresses speak so easily
and naturally that I doubt whether any of the judges of the past
would have dared to grant them an award for diction.

It is difficult to overestimate the service that the honorable
judges of this Academy have done to the stage in acknowledging
the splendid diction of those ladies and gentlemen I have named,
I don't believe that any ordinary theatregoer listening to Otis
Skinner would say, "Isn't his diction perfect!" He would be far
more likely to say, "Gee! Ain't Skinner great!" And that is pre-
cisely the reaction we want.

1From the Atlantic Monthly, February, 1931. A speech delivered by
Mr. Arliss before the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Reprinted
by permission of the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly.

508

MR. ARLISS MAKES A SPEECH 509

If an actor speaks particularly well, and knows it, he should
at any rate conceal from his audience the fact that he does know
it. Indeed, it is part of his art to render them if possible entirely
unconscious of it. There are actors of whom we say, "He has a
beautiful voice, but he is always listening to it." That means that
he is not only conscious of this superior quality, but wishes the
audience to be aware of it also. It is, in my opinion, a great mis-
take for an actor ever to appear to rise superior to his audience.
Such an attitude annoys them and distracts their attention from
the subject matter.

When I am rehearsing a part and meet a word about which
there may be some difference of opinion as to pronunciation, I do
not consult a dictionary in order to find out which is right; I en-
deavor to discover which is the most general way of pronouncing it,
and I adopt that way. I always try to avoid teaching an audience
anything — or at any rate I make a great effort not to be found out.
For it is well known in my business that the public will run a mile
from a theatre if they think there is going to be any attempt made
to teach them anything.

That is why plays written as propaganda are always failures.
An audience resents being corrected or coerced or in any way "done
good to." If, for instance, the American Academy of Arts and
Letters said, "We arc interested in a campaign for better spoken
English, and, regardless of expense, we will form a company of
actors which shall comprise all our gold-medalists for diction" ; and
suppose they did it, and sent the company round the country, with
such advertisements as "Come and hear how English should be
spoken" or "Listen to the silver-tongued gold-medalists" — do you
think the people would come near the theatre? I assure you I
should be very sorry to be on sharing terms.

There is no doubt that good diction is far too rare. By "diction"
I mean the speaking of words correctly and easily. That is what
we are concerned with at the moment, although I suppose the word
"diction" means a good deal more than that.

Of course we are handicapped, because English is the language
of a diversity of people scattered in many parts of the globe. But
there are only three kinds of English that I am familiar with —
the English of England, the English of America, and the English
of the telephone operator. This last I do not propose to consider,
because it is almost a language of its own, and is, moreover, spoken
more or less in confidence. But the difference between the English

5io GEORGE ARLISS

of England and the English of America is mainly one of diction.
It is futile to assert that the English of the two countries is not
one language. There are some differences in pronunciation of cer-
tain words and occasionally a given word will have a different
meaning. But as a rule it is only the difference between the Eng-
lish of England of to-day and that of one hundred and fifty years
ago. America has frequently maintained the purity of the language
which in course of years has become vitiated in England. We all
know that many Old English words and phrases are now regarded
in England as Americanisms.

The chief fault in speech in America I should describe as slop*
piness, and the outstanding defect in England as snippiness. The
English of England has been distorted by people who really ought
to know better. Oxford University, for instance, rather prides
itself on the fact that you can always tell an Oxford man. It re-
minds me of those "Distinctive Styles for Men" which the tailors
advertise and which the well-dressed man tries so steadfastly to
avoid. The only reason why one can always tell an Oxford man
is that his diction is not absolutely pure. It is by no means bad,
but it has certain distortions for which there is no excuse. Un-
fortunately the less educated class, particularly in the suburbs of
London, in an attempt to ape their betters become so refined that
at times they are hardly understandable.

The American is never guilty of this straining after superiority.
But in my opinion he errs on the other side. He is so afraid of
being meticulous in his speech that he allows himself to become
careless. I have noticed amongst the youth of to-day that there
is frequently a decided objection to speaking well, a feeling that
there is something unhealthy in good articulation. I know nice
parents — well-spoken parents — with children who speak vilely.
Frequently when a boy speaks very badly the mother looks at him
with pride and says, "Isn't he a little man!" I can see no good in
this. There is nothing clever in speaking badly — anybody could
do it with a little practice. One can speak well and still be a
little man — or a big man.

I say nothing against slang. I rather admire it; it enriches the
language. But I can see no excuse for a lazy and careless delivery
of words. Laziness in diction leads to laziness in phraseology — to
the perpetual use of the words "fine" and "grand" and "sure" —
monosyllables which can hardly be said to be a healthy stimulus to
conversation. If we are going to have better spoken English we

MR. ARLISS MAKES A SPEECH 511

have to work from the bottom. Schools and colleges and parents
have to take a hand. Where bad diction is a matter of ignorance
it is excusable, but in the case of people who have all the advan-
tages of education and decent environment it is little more than
culpable negligence and laziness.

I have said that actors must never appear to be making an :ffort
to teach anything. But what we should do is to set ; worthy
example which the youth of to-day may be inspired to follow. And
with the advent of the talking pictures our responsibility becomes
far greater than ever it was before. For every person who sees
an actor in the regular theatre, a thousand see him when he appears
in a "talky." I worked for thirty years and more as an actor and
remained practically unknown to a very large section of the public;
now that I have made two or three talking pictures I can seldom
walk many blocks without someone coming up to me and saying,
"Excuse me, ain't I seen you in the movies?" I recently opened a
new cinema in London, "in person," and when I appeared a young
lady looked me up and down and then turned to her friend and said,
"Isn't he like him?" I mention these facts to point out how much
more far-reaching is the influence of the talking pictures than that
of the stage.

In my opinion the value of the talking screen in the improvement
of the diction of the masses cannot be overestimated. Not that the
masses would go to the movies to learn how to speak; but young
people are inclined to be very imitative, particularly of those actors
and actresses whom they especially admire.

I am not familiar with the working of other studios, but it may
interest you to hear of the care which is taken in recording the voice
in my own studio — that is, the Warner Brothers — during the
making of one of my pictures; and I have no reason to suppose
that the same serious attention is not devoted to the work by others.

A scene in the studio seldom lasts more than six or seven minutes
without a break — sometimes it is longer, but not often. Immedi-
ately after we have finished acting one of the scenes before the
camera I go to what is called the "play-back" room. With me
come the director, the recording mechanics, and the actors who are
concerned in the scene. We cannot, of course, see the picture of
the scene we have just done, — that takes many hours to develop
and print, — but we can hear the "play-back," which is the record
of our voices precisely as it will be heard in the theatres when the
picture is finally exhibited. We sit in perfect quiet; the lights

5i2 GEORGE ARLISS

are put out, in order that our sense of hearing shall be more acute ;
there is a grinding sound, and then out of the darkness come our
voices reproducing the entire scene which we spoke only a few
minutes before.

When it is finished the lights are put up and the director says
to me, "Well, what do you think?" If I think I was particularly
good I say modestly, "Not so bad. What do you think?" "Well,"
says the director, "it seemed to me great, except — you know where
you say, 'I heard him mutter' ?" "Yes." "Well, it sounded to me
like 'butter.' " "Did it? I didn't notice it. Did you notice it, Miss
So-and-So?" "Well, it didn't sound to me like 'butter,' but I
thought it a little muffled."

And then, after some further criticism, we say, "We'll hear it
again." If at the end of the second hearing there is the slightest
difference of opinion, we all troop out and do the whole scene over
again — which of course has to include photography as well as voice
in order to get perfect synchronization.

This same inquest is held after every scene throughout the entire
picture. Nothing is ever hurried or left to chance. Unfortunately,
when the picture goes through the country we are in the hands
of mechanics who can do to one's voice what the passport photog-
rapher can do to one's face. But there is no doubt that it is quite
possible to reproduce, almost perfectly, the voice and diction of an
actor, and it would be a great satisfaction to me if the stage and
screen could be so far improved that they could be regarded as
the recognized standard of pure English.

It is unfortunate, in this respect, that most of the plays to-day
are concerned with characters which compel the actors to repro-
duce in their speech the worst faults of the average man. But I
have reason to hope that the time is approaching when we shall
have more and more classical plays. I believe that the detective
play has about had its day, and that we shall have plays that will
at any rate give the actors an opportunity to speak better English.

Although I have said that I do not think it would be a com-
mercially sound venture to send a company on the road with the
object of teaching the masses, I can see no reason why some talk-
ing pictures should not be made with the object of using them in
schools and universities as examples of perfect English and de-
sirable diction. I commend the idea to your directors as being
perhaps worthy of their consideration.

PAINTING SINCE CEZANNE1
RALPH M. PEARSON

PAINTING since Cezanne divides into two schools which are dia-
metrically opposite in attitude of mind and procedure. One school
is called the Academic or Naturalistic, the other the Post-Impres-
sionist or "Modern." What is the difference between the two
and what meaning and value has each to you and me who look at
pictures? These two questions I shall try to answer in this booklet,
believing that such answers will become a more effective explana-
tion of the developments of the past twenty-five years than can any
discussion of specific works.

WHAT IS ACADEMIC PAINTING?

Academic painting is our cultural inheritance from the igth
century. It assumes that the function of painting is to reflect or
describe nature by skillfully copying a beautiful or picturesque
subject. The artist's job is to produce in paint a substitute for
nature. He must first find a pleasing subject, then paint it essen-
tially as he sees it before him. Prior to 1870 the prevailing painter's
ideal was to paint exact and minute truth even to the last detail of
every wrinkle, button or blood-vessel. But a growing familiarity
with the camera made men realize that such a process was only rival-
ling a machine. Whistler revolted violently from this slavish copy-
ing and "flung a pot of paint in the public's face" with his splashy
nocturnes. He did more than any other one painter to stop the
long development toward naturalism which had culminated in this
handmade photography. But it was only the literalness of the
copying he put a stop to — not the process of copying itself. His
nocturnes were generalized emotional impressions rather than literal
transcriptions, yet essentially they were emotional copies of the

1 Booklet in the Enjoy Your Museum series published by the Esto Pub-
lishing Company, Pasadena, California, 1933. Reprinted by permission
of the author and the publishers.

513

514 RALPH M. PEARSON

blurred semi-obscurity which he actually saw in the night. Since
Whistler's day the copying of nature has become freer, more sketchy
and more interpretative. Painting is now defined by the academic
critic as "nature seen through a personality." This freer handling
has made painting more interesting than color photography could
ever be, because it opened the way to a more creative play of mind.
But in spite of this greater freedom for personal interpretation,
the academic or naturalistic school still continues the process of
copying what is actually seen in nature, essentially as it appears.

The attitude of mind back of this process of copying or recording
nature has become so ingrained into the very fiber of our thought
that it is a fixed habit for us to think of a picture as "looking like"
something. We say, "That looks exactly like a storm, a high school
girl, a tomato can," or else, "It doesn't look like this or that" before
we think of, or see, any other aspect of the picture. We read a
picture story exactly as the ancient Egyptians or the American In-
dians did, except that instead of reading it, as they did, from sym-
bols which made some demand on the imagination, we read from
exact replicas of a subject which leave no margin for imagination.
In other words, the picture has come to be almost as practical and
prosaic as an inventory of shoes. In the strictly naturalistic pic-
ture there is practically no chance for adventure, surprise or new
experience. It does offer certain compensations for these defects,
but I shall leave their interpretation to other contributors to this
series and pass to the other type of painting.

WHAT is "MODERN" PAINTING?

"Modern" painting is the exact opposite of naturalistic painting.2
Since we adults have not been brought up on it, the modern work
is unfamiliar, different, surprising, and therefore under suspicion.
In some cases, because of its strangeness, it seems actually offensive.
Those whom it offends call it ugly, crude, distorted and even sacri-
legious. The Cubists, when their works were first exhibited, were
called "les fauves," the wild beasts. And yet modern art, in spite
of the violent abuse and opposition of the conservative minds which
have failed to understand it over a period of the past twenty-five

aThe word "modern" is put in quotation marks to indicate the acquired
meaning added to it by the characteristics of the modern movement dating
roughly from Cezanne. The quotations will be assumed hereafter.

PAINTING SINCE CEZANNE 515

years, has gradually dominated the art expression of western civil-
ization and has brought contemporary painting back into the grand
tradition of the old masters and the classic and primitive art of
the ages. Why is modern art the opposite of academic? Why does
it belong within the grand tradition? What is the mental attitude
back of its production ?

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ACADEMIC AND MODERN

The modern painter, instead of copying what he actually sees
in front of him, observes nature continually, studies, and perhaps
makes drawings of, all manner of incidents and details. When he
comes to the painting of a picture, a conception, born of his own
experience, has already taken form in his mind. From all the data
he has previously studied, or from that which he may observe at
the moment, he selects what is pertinent to his conception, reorgan-
izes it, and proceeds to create that conception in paint. Instead of
serving as a mirror to reflect on paper or canvas the scene in front
of him, he recreates it in a symbolic language of his own. Instead
of copying nature he expresses, as best he can, his own reaction to it.
He, like the little boy who explained how he drew, "thinks, then
draws a line around his think." He, instead of nature, is the source
of the experience offered by the picture.

In the copying process the only faculties brought into play are
a keen eye for the subtleties of nature and a skill of hand to record
adequately what the eyes perceive. In a strictly naturalistic picture
no other abilities are called on — except a rudimentary sense of
balance and proportion which directs the selection and omission of
certain details and their effective placing within the frame of the
picture. This arranging is called composition. Once having com-
posed his picture, the naturalistic painter can proceed to copy his
selected and well-placed material with no further demands on his
creative powers. In fact the process is almost purely technical; it
can be called creative only in the limited, craft sense that a picture
is being produced which did not exist before.

In the creative type of painting, on the other hand, the creative
powers of mind and hand are actively functioning in every stroke
of brush or pencil. Mind is jerked alive in every crania1 nook. It
is challenged by the demand from the hand for continual direction.
Memory, vision, knowledge and feeling, are all called upon strenu-

516 RALPH M. PEARSON

ously to help in this creative art of building a new edifice that has
never before existed. Man partakes of the function of God in that
he in his turn becomes a Creator, not of the physically living organ-
isms that God creates, but of the plastically living organism of the
picture which is a creation with a life of its own to serve a very
different purpose from that of physical life. This creative aliveness
is the typical attitude of mind behind the production of the truly
modern work.

It is because the great bulk of all pictures produced by man
from the earliest known scratchings on the walls of prehistoric caves,
up through the primitives of countless regions and races to the
classic pinnacles of man's creative achievements, has been the out-
growth of this creating, symbolizing mind, that we can say works
of this type belong in the grand tradition of the ages. And that
copying, which has existed only at relatively infrequent periods such
as that of the late Greek and Roman and our own recent past, is
outside that tradition and within another which, if remote enough
in time, we are quite willing to call decadent. The modern move-
ment, by rehabilitating this creative attitude of mind, and the
design of the picture which is always a co-product of the creative
procedure, has bridged the decadence of the last century and rees-
tablished our contact with that grand tradition.

SOME CREATIVE PICTURES ARE DISTORTED

The fact that a picture is a creation does not mean it has to be
wild, crazy or distorted, or that in technic it must be crude, or that
the subject need be ugly. The liberation of creative powers made
possible by this new approach may occasionally find expression in a
grand spree of color and form that jumps all bounds, blows off all
lids and riotously explodes all over the canvas with a complete
ignoring of all facts and proprieties. This letting off steam may
be, for the painter, the healthiest possible safety valve for the usual
inhibitions of our normal humdrum life. Our emotions in this
commercial age are under-nourished ; often they are actually starved.
Hence the health and happiness of the releasing operation to any-
one, from the professional to the rankest amateur, who indulges in
it. But this is not the only way to creative art. Mind can control
emotions instead of giving them free rein; it can produce a calm
and realistic creation of a beautiful or of an ugly subject. The

PAINTING SINCE CEZANNE 517

important point to remember is that this can be done without copy-
ing. Creative mind can produce a beautiful picture of a beautiful
woman that is a re-creation in every aspect, but does not copy a
single detail.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A NATURALISTIC AND A
REALISTIC PICTURE

The best way to understand this point is to compare a Sargent
portrait to one by an old master, for instance, Botticelli, El Greco
or Raphael. Sargent copied actual shadows as he saw them on
actual forms and materials. He also copied actualities of dress,
hair, accessories, with no fundamental change except omission, se-
lection and effective placing. This process produces the naturalistic
picture. The old masters, on the other hand, ignored all actual
shadows; they controlled light and shade to make it reveal form
clearly and dramatically. Also they reorganized every element of
their subject — folds in clothing, hair, features — to rebuild all such
data into their conception of their sitter. In doing this they may
actually gain in effectiveness; the picture may, and in the hands
of a great artist, always does, become more real to the observer
than would the living person as he appears to the casual eye.
This reorganizing way of working produces the real or realistic
picture. Beyond this the old masters brought to bear on their
subject a whole world of experience that was almost totally un-
known to Sargent and the academic school, the world of visual
music, the orchestration of every line, space, color, texture, and
form of subject into a synthesis called pictorial design. Almost any
example of the works of the great masters of the Renaissance, if
carefully studied, will reveal this fundamental difference between
naturalism and a realism that is sensitively designed.

It was only after the Renaissance that the creative vision and
the knowledge of how to design a picture gradually died out as
the new interest in scientific fact and in the skill to reproduce actu-
ality began to direct the public mind and the interest of artists
toward the craft of copying. The modern movement is a reaction
against this degradation of art into craft, this substitution of skill
for designed creation. It is a rediscovery of the art of the picture.
It reestablishes the broken kinship with the creative art of the ages.
The fact that the exuberance of feeling which the moderns imme-

5i8 RALPH M. PEARSON

diately following Cezanne felt in their rediscovery of their own
creative powers and of this almost forgotten play with the harmonic
relationship of line, space, color and form, resulted in "crazy" pic-
tures, is relatively unimportant. It is the value of the experience of
creating and designing which is of such vast importance to the
artist, to society in general, and to each of us who looks at pictures.
The door to that new world of experience, the modern movement
in art has again opened. It is for each to decide whether he will
accept the chance for new adventure and roam far afield with the
adventuring minds of modern artists, or whether he will remain
content within the old fenced-in pasture of familiar and limited
experience.

DESIGN IS VISUAL MUSIC

Design in pictures is similar to design in music. Imagine music
without design — i. e., with no melody, no structure, no counter-
point, no rhythm, no orchestration. Chaos would be the result.
You would have the noises of nature — of the barnyard, the work-
shop, the kitchen, the street, copied by a naturalistic composer and
set down in notes which, when played by the orchestra, would
reveal sounds you already know with no .hint therein of new ex-
perience. Would you be thrilled by this recognition of the famil-
iar? No, you would laugh at such a joke or stop your ears in dis-
gust. But in pictures? Do we laugh at the naturalistic copy of
barnyards, kitchens and streets or turn away in disgust? No, we
still give prizes to, and buy, such pictures and laugh at those which
offer visual music. Why this inconsistency? Because, my dear
reader, we are blind, deaf and dumb in this great field. We have
never been taught to see visual music. From long habit we think
of colors and forms in paint as proxies for color and forms in nature
instead of seeing them for their harmonic relationships. The de-
sign of the picture is outside the range of our everyday experience.

There is no space here to describe pictorial design in detail. This
will be done in later booklets in the series. Here we can make only
a few broad generalizations.

In the designed picture every line is in a controlled relationship
to every other line, and to the frame of the picture. The same is
true of every bit of space, texture, light-dark, color and form. If
the picture is a complete abstraction with no subject or idea, then

PAINTING SINCE CEZANNE 519

these controlled relationships constitute the whole picture. They
are free from external restraints; there is no dependence on tech-
nical skill. The painter merely follows his own sensitive feeling.
This liberation from subject offers a great opportunity to enjoy
design for its own sake. It gives the amateur his one great chance
to dab paint on paper recklessly, and to learn, unhandicapped by
lack of skill, what this play with relationship means. And it gives
him, likewise, a chance to see in the work of a master artist, great
design free from the distraction of subject interest which an ama-
teur always finds it hard to overlook and to forget. On these
grounds an abstract picture should always be welcomed. When
lines, spaces, etc., have the double task of portraying a subject
and forming harmonic relationships with each other, the work of
the picture-maker becomes much more complex and technically
difficult. The problem of portraying the subject must always be
subordinated to, or at least integrated with, the demands of the
design. This is the crucial point that must be realized before the
new work can be understood. The wrinkles in a coat sleeve must
be seen as part of an arm covered by cloth ; and this arm must then
be expressed in lines, forms, and colors which are related to all
the other lines, forms and colors about it. This fusing and welding
process automatically demands the re-creation of all the material
in the picture. The arm copied from nature is not and cannot
be designed. Oil and water do not mix. Design is a process of
reorganization. The degree of reorganization, ranging from com-
plete abstraction to the realism of a Botticelli, is less important
than the fact of its existence. Is the picture designed or is it not?
That distinction is the first step in intelligent observation. To
recognize and experience the music of visual relationships is to
experience the art in a work of art.

VALUE OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS

As a nation our creative powers are starved almost to actual
death. What little chance they have to function in the more
progressive schools is largely nullified later by the pressure of a
way of life that in general is passive and vicarious, or physically
active, as in sports and travel. En masse, as a nation, we listen to
the radio, to lectures, and to plays instead of ourselves performing;
we read instead of write, look at pictures instead of producing them.

520 RALPH M. PEARSON

We take advice about furnishing our homes from a profession versed
in assembling dead arts of the past, instead of making our own de-
cisions; we accept original antiques or the corrupt copies produced
by commerce instead of demanding contemporary creations in the
merchandise we use. Because we have not the self-confidence that
grows out of creative practice we are afraid to judge, afraid to buy
the new and different, afraid to take the lead in discarding the
past and building in the present. Creative practice with any medium
is the best effective antidote to these vicarious habits. The "modern
artist," including the amateur who plays at creative painting, mod-
elling or drawing, is experiencing this value of self-realization and
self-expression — one of the most thrilling of all human adventures.
This constructive, regenerative value I should say, is the most direct
and immediate of the values inherent in modern painting for the
one who produces, and vicariously, for the one who looks at or
buys the picture. This way of working and observing is high per-
sonal adventure. Don't be content with looking at pictures in a
museum. Buy some paints, go home and make pictures of your
own. It is the one sure way to learn to experience pictures.

Another high value which accrues to the producer, whether ama-
teur or professional, and in much less degree to the passive on-
looker, grows out of the way in which an idea or object is expressed.
It seems to be a law of the universe that once the human mind is
released from the confinement of copying, vision begins to go deeper
than the surface of forms which the eye actually sees. It begins
to perceive universal truths beneath obvious ones — to see the arm
within the coat sleeve, the body under the clothes, the intention in
the movement of the limbs. Knowledge about a thing supple-
ments the physical seeing of the thing. Imagination is unchained;
fancy is free to soar. It is when this occurs that a capacity inherent
in man since the dawn of history, but often obscured by other
interests, automatically comes into play, — I mean his capacity to
sense the order and relationships which constitute the rudimentary
foundation of all design. The creative mind normally and intuitively
designs.

The person who can perceive this visual music of line, space,
color, form, and who knows the release of mental and emotional
creation, finds the door unlocked that admits him to participation
in the creative arts of all ages. Participation is a much deeper
experience than appreciation. Appreciation can be, and usually is,

PAINTING SINCE CEZANNE 521

an intellectual, a literary, an external process. External, th .r is
to say, as far as any contact with the art of the picture is concern jd.
We can appreciate a snowscape in paint because we like winter or
because we admire the skill of the painter. It is a very different
thing to dig down beneath subject and skill and discover the new
surprising harmonies which happen in one particular pic ure that
incidentally portrays winter. The modern artist has ^iwn us the
chance for this deeper adventure.

If we sum up the values in modern painting, adventure should
come first on the list. Next will come vision — the stretching of per-
ceptive powers to see new and more universal aspects of the things
and the scenes about us and the different expressions of these things
in the works of different periods and artists. Then the grand spree
(or the restrained building process) of creation, supreme experience
of man. And finally the whole new world of visual music with all
the thrills and satisfactions in the field of vision that we already
know in the field of hearing. All these lively adventures, lacking in
any but their most rudimentary manifestations in academic or nat-
uralistic art, and more or less lost as part of our esthetic equipment
by the misdirected training we have inherited from the igth cen-
tury, are rediscovered and again made available for use by the mod-
ern painter. Painting since Cezanne, along with other arts in
which there has been a similar rebirth of the creative spirit, is the
source of these adventures. A new spirit has been born in our day.
So alive is this spirit, so catching, so lifting, so regenerating are its
effects once they are understood, that already it and its effects have
penetrated to all corners of our western civilization. It is too virile
to be downed by the condemnations of ignorance or self-defense.
It will continue its growth and its penetration. To participate in
this new spirit makes historical events and trends in art, as well as
specific artists and their work, understandable. For that reason I
have tried to explain meanings rather than individual men or works
in discussing this very significant contemporary period in the long
and eventful history of visual art.

BEAUTY AS A LIFE-PRINCIPLE1

H. A. OVERSTREET

THERE is an incontestability about beauty which makes argu-
ment in its defence almost an impertinence. "I, too, will set my
face to the wind and throw my handful of seed on high," cries
Deirdre, in Deirdre and the Sons of Usna. "For beauty is the
most unforgettable thing in the world, and though of it a few
perish, and the myriads die unknowing and uncaring, beneath it
the nations of men move as beneath their pilgrim star. Therefore
he who adds to the beauty of the world is of the sons of God. He
who destroys or debases beauty is of the darkness, and shall have
darkness for his reward.

"To live in beauty — which is to put into four words all the
dream and spiritual effort of man." 2

One would have to go far indeed to find anyone so thoroughly
consistent in his pessimism as to say no to the above. Beauty, by
all of us, is accepted as an undeniable good; perhaps the most
undeniable of all.

What, however, is beauty ? The question should not be difficult
to answer. And yet one suspects that beauty is like many another
experience with which we are very familiar. We know it so well
that we hardly know it at all.

We call a woman beautiful, a child, a garment, a deed, a sym-
phony. Let us suppose for a moment that each of these were
not beautiful but ugly. What would we mean by applying such a
term? Obviously the word would express a kind of aversion on
our part. In the presence of the ugliness we should feel like draw-
ing away. In this ugly woman, for example, we should find noth-
ing which gave us a warm sense of wishing to approach, of desiring
to remain as closely and as continuously as possible in her presence.
The same would be true if the ugliness were in the child. We should

1From The Enduring Quest, W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. 1931.
Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the author.
8 Fiona Macleod (Mosher).

522

BEAUTY AS A LIFE-PRINCIPLE 523

wish the child removed. If the ugliness were in the music, we
should stop our ears or desire to stop them.

Obviously, where there is ugliness, there is between the beholder
and the object a sense of not rightly fitting together. There is a
clash, a disharmony. Where, on the other hand, there is beauty,
there is an instant sense of fitting together. This may be so strong
that one is filled with a passionate desire to possess the beautiful
object.

In order that there may be this feeling between beholder and
object, there must be within the object itself a fittingness. If there
is something in the object that "mars" the beauty, we mean by that
that there is an element within it which does not belong with the
rest. It is out of place. Thus music is beautiful to us when
there is no dissonance that remains finally unresolved. A garment
is beautiful when no line or color is discordant, a deed when no
part of it goes counter to the essential unity.3 "Beauty/* writes
de Gourmont, "is a logic which is perceived as a pleasure." 4 When
we have said that, however, are we not saying that the most funda-
mental of all our desires is the desire for that integrated order
which is the opposite of irrelevancy, clash, conflict, confusion?

THE COSMIC BASIS

However much we may now smile at the simple Hebrew folk-
talk of creation, there was in it a very real insight. The first
act of creation, according to that tale, lay in bringing order out of
chaos. When chaos was banished and a world brought into being,
the Creator looked upon his handiwork with a joyous emotion and
pronounced it good. It was beautiful to him, because, somehow,
it fitted together.

The central and most unshakable insight of philosophers and
scientists, poets, moralists and religionists tells them that significant
reality is order.

Order is a lovely thing;

On disarray it lays its wing,

Teaching simplicity to sing.5

8 See an illuminating discussion of this in Wilkinson, Bonaro, The Poetic
Way of Release, Chap. XVI (Knopf).

4 DeGourmont, Remy, Decadence, p. 28 (Harcourt Brace & Company).

BAnna Hempstead Branch, "The Monk in the Kitchen," Rose of the
Wind and Other Poems, p. 136 (Houghton Mifflin).

524 H. A. OVERSTREET

Pythagoras caught the vision of it. Strumming his instruments,
he noted that music is not helter-skelter, but a phenomenon of
measurable relationships. Every tone is in mathematical relation
to every other tone. Harmony is right mathematical relations;
discord is wrong relations. He watched the movements of heav-
enly bodies. The planets moved in their orbits. They were re-
lated to each other with a precision that bespoke a cosmic regu-
larity. He made a leap in thought and conceived the whole of
reality as Number. The Number that is in music, he said, is the
same Number that is in the heavens, in life, in human behavior, in
everything. The universe is Number, and had human beings the
power they might even hear the harmony of the spheres.

It was perhaps too swift a leap. A good deal of disharmony
forces itself upon our attention, and we are less ready to ascribe a
perfection of beauty to the universe. But the central idea still
holds. Science approaches its ideal in the degree that it can ex-
press its data in number relationships. Science, in other words,
makes the assumption that order is fundamental and that significance
is achieved only as the world about us is seen in its measurable
processes. Every atom is a computable process. Every flash of
light is such, every drop of water or pressure of atmosphere.

For the scientist, the deepest wisdom lies in the pursuit of the
order that is nature and in the adjustment to it and within it of
our own life processes. If we are to do anything with atoms,
or drops of water, or pressures of atmosphere, it is only in the
degree that we discover the relationships involved.

For the scientist, as for the philosopher, these processes of nature
have a profound and stirring beauty. The heavens show forth an
integration so far transcending anything of human fashioning that
they lift our emotions to another plane. The microscopic entities
show niceties of design that thrill us with their beauty.

Plato was caught up in like fashion. He saw a helter-skelter
world about him — the world of sense-impressions: innumerable
things unrelated, impermanent, corning into existence and passing
away, clashing with each other — sights, sounds, emotions. But
these things to him were not the real world. The really significant
world was order. For him it was found in the great patterns.
Among all the diverse creatures that were men, he conceived that
there was Man. Among all the diverse, more or less imperfect
efforts to achieve just judgment, there was Justice. In the midst

BEAUTY AS A LIFE-PRINCIPLE 525

of all the more or less beautiful things, there was Beauty. Above
all and comprehending all, there was the trinity of the Good, the
True, and the Beautiful. The Good was the True, and the True
was the Good. And always the Good and the True \\cre the
Beautiful.

For Plato, as for Pythagoras, and for all the scientists through-
out history, the deepest reality was the beauty that is 01 Jer. And
likewise for the moralist. For what is goodness but the beauty
of a fitting together in behavior? To steal is to insert an incom-
patibility. It is to bring disaffection, anger, bitterness, retaliation.
To lie, kill, be brutal, to be overweening in pride — all these are
confusion-breeding behaviors. They drive us back toward chaos.
Happiness, said Plato, is a harmony — within oneself and in rela-
tion to fellow-beings. When, later, Kant laid down the rule that
one should treat humanity, whether in oneself or in others, as an
end and not simply as a means, he was indicating the same funda-
mental principle of a goodness that is at the same time a beauty.
For to use a human being simply as a means to one's own ends is
to arouse resentments. It is to pull life apart into dissentient op-
posites. It is to bring ugliness. On the other hand, to use each
human being as an end in himself is to generate a functioning
integration. The Good, therefore, in so far, is the Beautiful,
because whatever is beautiful fits essentially together.

BEAUTY AS A TRIUMPH OF LIFE

Here, then, we conclude something fundamental about reality.
The least adequate form of existence — complete frustration — is
chaos, confusion ; the acme of existence is a perfect fitting together.

Within our human experience, beauty is a triumph, for wherever
there is beauty, chaos has been banished, the impotence of con-
fusion has been overcome, and a vital integration has been
achieved.

That is why ugliness is a depressant. For the essential character
of ugliness is to impede and diminish the life-process. The pres-
ence of ugliness, as we have seen, makes us shrink. We cannot go
out to it joyously, identifying ourselves with it ; we cannot continue
our life out into it. "At the sight of ugliness she frowns and
contracts and has a sense of pain and turns away and shrivels up,
and not without a pang refrains from conception.'* 6

e Plato, Symposium.

526 H. A. OVERSTREET

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ARTS

This will enable us to give a place of significance to certain
creations of man that have not always been rightly estimated. In
education we lay stress upon the practical tools of life — arith-
metic, spelling, grammar, economics, language. These are essen-
tial, but it may be seriously questioned whether they are sufficient.
No one of them gives the individual the peculiar emotion of a
fitting together, a vital wholeness of existence (although a deeper
study of them might induce this emotion). But in each of the
fine arts this is precisely the kind of emotion we experience. Con-
sider, for example, a symphony. In the first place, it has an in-
tegration which life, on the average, seldom achieves. It is not
made up of irrelevant parts. It is not a miscellany of accidents.
It moves with a fine unity of design and with a rhythmic flow that
carries it on to its conclusion. This is precisely how we should
like life itself to move. But life, on the average, is quite different.
We are constantly being forced to adjust ourselves to irrelevancies.
We try with difficulty to hold to the unity of the design, the
rhythmic flow of our life, but the exigencies of existence have a
way of breaking in upon that unity and rhythm.

Music, then, is the way we should like life to be. When we hear
music — or create it — we are achieving unity of experience. We
are for the moment living into a wholeness of design. This is
why music can be a powerful civilizer. As we live successively
into such unities, we grow the habit of experiencing the beauty
of their integration. Life emerges from its fragmentariness and
frustration ; it senses the beauty of a wholeness, which, in its every-
day processes, it does not achieve.

Every fine art, in greater or less degree, has this effect upon us.
A great piece of sculpture is the organization of matter out of
relative formlessness into significant form. It is a unity that has
no distracting irrelevancies, a whole that animates all its parts and
in which all the parts together animate the whole. It gives us an
experience which, in its rhythmic unity and faultless ordering of
parts, is what we should like the rest of our life to be.

There is a real psychological importance in this. These arts —
when we experience them — are not a mere idle addition to life.
That is how they are frequently conceived. They are themselves
ways of life. That is, when one hears music or stands before a

BEAUTY AS A LIFE-PRINCIPLE 527

noble structure, one is living just as truly as when one does the
routine things that are necessary to one's existence. In ruth, one
is living in some of the most essential ways in which one can live.
An individual might eschew all the arts, confining himself only to
the needful things. What he would actually do, in that case,
would be to fail to live in certain ways that are perhaps the most
nearly perfect that human beings can achieve.

It is curious how persistently we regard the routine activities to
be "life/1 while we regard listening to music or creating it, seeing
pictures or painting them, listening to poetry or writing it, as ex-
periences that are, somehow, a kind of irrelevant addendum tu
life. Take the example of the reading of a great novel. Let the
reader select the last one that deeply stirred him. Let us say that
he began it at eight o'clock at night and read absorbedly into the
small hours of the morning. Suppose now that he compares this
experience with the dictating of a number of routine letters in his
office on the previous morning. Was the experience any less living ?
While he was dictating his batch of letters, he may have been inter-
rupted a dozen times by telephone calls; several of his subordinates
may have come in on one mission or another ; he may have had some
minutes of irritated search for a notation he had misplaced. A
morning's work. That was "life." And now, at midnight he is
at chapter eighteen. He scarcely knows what has been happening
around him. He is far away from his room. He has been con-
versing for four hours with interesting people. He has been looking
at their problems, following their eager expectancies, sympathizing
with some of them, detesting others, watching the whole magic
thing called life unroll itself before him.

At midnight has he really lived four hours of as vital life as he
lived in the routine hours of his office? How does one measure
this curious thing called life? According to our foolish conven-
tions, this man was actually living when he was in his office, but
only incidentally living when he was reading. Is not that a false
valuation? Life is what takes place in one. The only question,
therefore, is whether anything of transforming moment was taking
place between eight in the evening and twelve o'clock midnight.
And we know that that is what actually happens in such cases.
Emotions are generated that are not usual in the routine hours,
ideas and possibilities are opened that are normally closed.

That, one may suspect, is the essential truth in regard to all

528 H. A. OVERSTREET

these ways of life which we call the fine arts. When we listen to a
symphony or see a drama, we are living a life; when we read a
poem which affects us deeply we are doing likewise. And by far
the most significant fact is that in the music or drama or poem we
are living life on the level of beauty — the level, that is, on which
life becomes in profound measure a vital unity.

We might say, then, that beauty is as essential to life as anything
that life needs. Without beauty we can indeed live — as animals
or as mediocre human beings; but with beauty we enter into those
triumphant integrations that are life at its highest.

NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS

FREDERICK LEWIS ALLEN (1890- ) is associate editor of Har-
per's Magazine. He is the author of Only Yesterday, 1931, a pan-
oramic review of the abnormal decade that began with the peace of
Versailles and ended with the panic of 1929. With his wife he
published American Life Since 1860, 1933, a history in photographs
with a running comment. This was followed by Metropolis, 1934,
a similar description of present-day city life showing its complexity.
The article "The Goon and His Style" was written while Mr.
Allen was secretary to the Harvard University Corporation.

A famous satire on the goonish style is the lecture by Sir Arthur
Quiller-Couch "On Jargon" to be found in his book On the Art
of Writing. The ponderous language that so often hides absence
of thought is made fun of also in Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt, a book
which, like Are You a Bromide? by Gelett Burgess, people read
so that they will not unwittingly be guilty of the faults satirized.

GEORGE ARLISS (1868- ) had had a long and distinguished
stage career in London and New York when he entered the motion
pictures in 1920. Among some of his memorable performances are
those in Old English, Disraeli, Voltaire, and The House of Roths-
child. In Up the Years from Bloomsbury, 1927, he has written
the story of his own life.

FRANK AYDELOTTE (1880- ), president of Swarthmore Col-
lege, is a former Rhodes scholar who since his return to America
has done much to fulfill the purpose of Cecil Rhodes in establishing
the scholarships, i. e., to further the harmony among English-speak-
ing people by encouraging in the students from the United States
"an attachment to the country from which they have sprung but
without withdrawing them or their sympathies from the land of
their adoption or birth." Dr. Aydelotte's collection of essays The
Oxford Stamp, 1917, and Oxford of Today (with L. A. Crosby)

529

530 NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS

reveal the spirit of Oxford and of British culture to the American
student.

JOSEPH E. BAKER, formerly of Northwestern University, is now
a member of the English faculty at the University of Iowa.

PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM (1886- ) is professor of English at
Duke University. His American education he supplemented with
studies abroad at the universities of Munich, Vienna, and Lausanne,
and at the Sorbonne in Paris.

The classic discussion of prose rhythm is the essay by Robert Louis
Stevenson "On Some Technical Elements in Style/' in which this
conscious artist sets forth the principles he himself followed. It is
to be found in his Essays in the Art of Writing. The great variety
possible in prose rhythms can be seen from a comparison of the
essays by Carlyle, Newman, Ruskin, Stevenson, Tunis, and Wells
in this book.

THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881) was a Scotch historian, satirist,
and social philosopher. Carlyle believed that the man makes the
age rather than that the age makes the man. Most of his books
are therefore studies of great men who have influenced their times,
which accounts for the bracing effect they have upon readers, even
upon those who find their style difficult.

Beginning with the Life of Schiller, published when the author
was thirty years old, Carlyle wrote for half a century, volume upon
volume. The most important of his works include The French
Revolution, Heroes and Hero-Worship, History of Frederick the
Great, Sartor Resartus, and Past and Present.

Carlyle's style is vigorous and manly, but often rough and tor-
tuous. The coined words, the unusual phrasing, and the emphatic
inversions combine to make the "Carlylese" of his later work.

The short essay reprinted here epitomizes the stern doctrine of
Carlyle's "Gospel of Work."

ZECHARIAH CHAFEE, JR. (1885- ) is professor of law at Har-
vard University. Besides technical works on law, Professor Chafee
has written Freedom of Speech, 1920, and The Inquiring Mind,

NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS 531

1928. His interpretations of current judicial questions are fre-
quently to be found in the general magazines.

STUART CHASE (1888- ), well-known writer on current eco-
nomic problems, was educated at Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology and at Harvard. He was a certified public accountant, be-
came associated with the Federal Trade Commission in 191 7, and
has been with the Labor Bureau, Inc., since 1922. Among his
most popular books are Men and Machines, 1929, Prosperity — Fact
or Myth, 1930, and Mexico — A Study of Two Americas, 1931.
Mr. Chase collaborated with F. J. Schlink on a clever expose of
modern advertising, Your Money's Worth, published in 1927. By
his happy faculty of finding clear and familiar examples he has
proved to the ordinary reader that economic discussions may be as
dramatic as any front-page baseball news.

AUSTIN HOBART CLARK (1880- ) is a biologist and member
of the staff of the Smithsonian Institution. He is the author of
Animals of Land and Sea, 1925; Nature Narratives, 2 volumes,

1929, 1931 ; and The New Evolution, 1930.

The student is doubtless already familiar with the books by
William Beebe and Paul de Kruif, two men of science who have
written popular books in their special fields. William Beebe, who
was at first a student of birds, has in recent years turned to the in-
vestigation of deep-sea life. He has written more than a dozen
books on these two subjects. Paul de Kruif at one time taught
bacteriology at the University of Michigan but is now known as
a writer of short biographies showing the romance to be found in
the life of the scientist, as in Hunger Fighters and Men Against
Death. Readers of Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith, a novel about an
average college boy who caught the spirit of science, will remember
that Mr. Lewis secured his technical information from Dr. de Kruif.

ARTHUR CLUTTON-BROCK (1868-1924) was art critic of the Lon-
don Times until his death. Before going into journalism he had
been a practicing lawyer. His interests were wide, and besides art
he also discussed religious, philosophical, and literary subjects. He
was the author of several books, among which are the studies Shelley,

532 NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS

the, Man and Poet, 1909, William Morris, 1914, in the Home Uni-
versity Library, and Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1922.

W. H. COWLEY is a member of the faculty in Education at the
Ohio State University. He is a frequent contributor to educational
and other publications.

THOMAS CRAVEN* (1889- ) is a critic and historian of art
who takes the larger view of artists, seeing in them the expression
of the age in which they lived. In his Men of Art, 1931, he has
written of the famous artists of the past who have interpreted their
age in art. The account of Leonardo da Vinci has been chosen be-
cause it portrays not only a great intellect but also a great age, the
Italian Renaissance. Mr. Craven has also written Modern Art,
1934, on account of recent artistic activities, much of which he
finds unhealthy.

Another picture of Leonardo da Vinci is to be found in Dmitri
Merejskowsky's fine historical novel, the Romance of Leonardo da
Vinci. The earliest account of Renaissance authors, rich in anec-
dote, is Vasari's Lives of the Painters, written by one of their im-
mediate followers. All later writers about the Italian painters of
the Renaissance have drawn upon this work.

GOLDSWORTHY LOWES DICKINSON (1862-1932), at the time of
his death a fellow at King's College, Cambridge University, was
international in his sympathies. His Letters from a Chinese Of-
ficial, 1903, (published in England as Letters from John Chinaman)
shows that kind of imagination that enables us to see ourselves as
others see us, as well as a knowledge of the Chinese mind and
point of view gained from his extended residence in the Orient.
(William Jennings Bryan, who was misled by the title and took
the book to be of Chinese authorship, answered it in Letters to a
Chinese Official)

Other books by Dickinson that students might enjoy are The
Greek View of Life, from which the excerpt in this book is taken ;
War: Its Nature, Cause and Cure; Religion: A Criticism and a
Forecast; The Meaning of Good; and A Modern Symposium,
which sets forth various attitudes toward modern civilization
through thirteen speakers representing as many different schools
of thought.

NQTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS 533

WILL DURANT (1885- ) was at one time a teacher of Latin
and French in a private school. He is still a teacher, though he
does his work by means of the printed page instead of the classroom
lecture. Upon receiving the doctor's degree in philosophy from
Columbia University in 1917, he set out to do for that subject what
H. G. Wells had done for history in The Outline of History, and
John Drinkwater had done for literature in The Outline of Liter-
ature. The result was The Story of Philosophy, published in 1926,
which is an entertaining and non-technical introduction to the
subject of philosophy for the average reader.

It is written in a fleet and sprightly style which appears to its
greatest advantage in the chapter on Voltaire. Possibly, as has
been observed, the title of the book ought really to be "Stories
about Philosophers," for it sometimes gives more space to enter-
taining anecdotes about the philosophers themselves than it does
to an explanation of their thought. Nevertheless the book has
shown many people the way to the most rewarding study of all:
the best thought of the best minds on questions that puzzle all men.

JOHN ERSKINE (1879- ), critic, essayist, novelist, and concert
musician, was for many years a member of the English faculty of
Columbia University. Since 1928 he has been president of the Juil-
liard School of Music in New York.

Mr. Erskine has published several books that reinterpret char-
acters of old legend and myth in the light of modern psychology.
The Private Life of Helen of Troy was the first and most popular
of a series of books in which old wine is poured into new bottles.

The Delight of Great Books, from which the appreciation of
Huckleberry Finn is taken, contains also discussions of Moby Dick,
Romeo and Juliet, and The Canterbury Tales, among others. "The
Moral Obligation to be Intelligent" is one of his best-known essays
and gives its title to a collection.

Books about books are not always interesting to read. There
are some books of criticism, however, which not only help the
reader to enjoy great masterpieces but give pleasure because they
are themselves well written. Such are the appreciations by John
Erskine, and such are the books composed of Lafcadio Ream's lec-
tures to his Japanese students which Dr. Erskine has edited, among
them Appreciations of Poetry, 1916, Interpretations of Literature,
1915, Talks to Writers, 1920, and Books and Habits, 1921.

534 NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS

JOHN GALSWORTHY (1867-1932) won the Nobel prize in litera-
ture in 1932 for The Forsyte Saga, a series of novels of the upper
middle class in modern English society, presenting the contrasting
goals of wealth and beauty. Galsworthy was primarily a novelist,
but he was also a short story writer, a dramatist, an essayist and
critic, and something of a poet. The volume Caravan, 1927, con-
tains the author's own selection of his best short stories, and Can-
delabra^ 1933, his best essays. Among his well-known plays are
Strife, 1909, Justice, 1910, and The Mob, 1914, which treat of
the relation between capital and labor and other social problems.

Although Galsworthy himself belonged to the "gentry," he was
always fair in his interpretation of the different social classes in his
novels and plays, with an obvious sympathy for the underdog. He
was always too great an artist, however, to be merely a propagandist.

The essay printed in this collection is one of his revealing utter-
ances on the relation of art to life. His creed as a human being
he expressed in an address delivered at Columbia University in
1919: "To do our jobs really well and to be brotherly. To seek
health and ensue Beauty! . . . Shall man, the highest product of
creation, be content to pass his little day in a house like unto
Bedlam?"

JAMES BRADSTREET GREENOUGH (1833-1901) was a philologist
and teacher of Latin at Harvard, and the first to teach Sanskrit
and comparative philology in that university. Students accounted
him a brilliant teacher.

Among his translations was a rendering of Theodore Roosevelt's
The Strenuous Life into Ciceronian Latin.

EDITH HAMILTON was for many years head-mistress of the Bryn
Mawr School for Girls in Baltimore. She began the study of the
ancient languages as a child and learned to appreciate the excellence
of classical civilization with an enthusiasm that eventually led to
the writing of The Greek Way, 1930, and The Roman Way, 1932,
two books which succeed in touching the reader with the same en-
thusiasm. It would be a dull reader who would fail to enjoy the
chapter "Aristophanes and the Old Comedy" in the first-named
book, with its comparisons between the Greek comedy and the Gil-
bert and Sullivan operas. Her translations of Agamemnon and

NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS 535

Prometheus of Aeschylus, and The Trojan Women of Euripides
are as readable as any twentieth-century dramas.

SIR ARTHUR HELPS (1813-1875) served the British government
in various capacities, eventually as clerk of the Privy Council. By
way of recreation he was a man of letters as well, and his Friends
in Council, 1847-1859, is a series of essays and dialogues treating
social and ethical questions. Upon the death of Prince Albert, he
was requested by Queen Victoria to edit the correspondence and
addresses of the Prince Consort.

JULIAN HUXLEY (1887- ), is director of the London Zoo.
From 1912 to 1916 he was in America as a member of the faculty
of Rice Institute, Houston, Texas. He was biological editor of
the 1 4th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Like Thomas Huxley, his famous grandfather, Julian Huxley
writes in a clear and logical style with the ease of pleasant talk.
Like his grandfather, too, he is interested in science for its philo-
sophical implications.

His Stream of Life, Essays of a Biologist, and Religion without
Revelation should interest the student who has an inquiring mind.
Mr. Huxley has collaborated with J. B. S. Haldane of Cambridge
in Animal Biology, 1927, and with H. G. Wells in The Science
of Life, 1929.

Those who are interested in the relation of science and religion
will find other essays on the subject expressing various points of
view in the symposium Science and Religion published by Scribner's
in 1931. Another symposium, Living Philosophies (Simon and
Schuster, 1931) will appeal to students who are philosophically in-
clined. It is a collection of essays in which well-known scientists,
men of letters, and other public men explain their theories of life.
The series first appeared in the Forum under the title "What I
Believe/'

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY (1825-1895) was one of the great lead-
ers of the scientific movement of the nineteenth century which af-
fected the twentieth century in religious, social, and educational
as well as scientific thought. He served as surgeon in the British
navy, and was professor of natural history at the Royal School of
Mines for thirty-two years.

536 NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Huxley's point of view and clear exposition of it has had much
to do with the present emphasis on science in the curricula ot public
schools and universities. His educational credo is summarized in
the brief selection printed in this book. Huxley's advocacy of a
scientific education led him into controversy with another great
thinker of his day, Matthew Arnold, who defended the classics in
his essay, Literature and Science.

Although Huxley admitted that science could not explain every-
thing, he renounced all traditional theology and invented the word
"agnostic" to describe his own point of view.

LAWRENCE PEARSALL JACKS (1860- ) was at one time a Uni-
tarian minister. In 1903 he became professor of philosophy at Man-
chester College, Oxford, and in 1915 he became principal of the
same college. From the latter position he retired in 1931. He has
been editor of the Hibbert Journal since its foundation in 1902,
and is recognized as the leader of the adult education movement in
England.

Dr. Jacks has been a welcome visitor in America and has received
honorary degrees from American universities. He has set forth his
thoughtful comments about life and human needs in many well-
written books, of which the most recent are The Education of the
Whole Man, 1931, Education through Recreation, 1932, and My
American Friends, 1933. His four lectures delivered at Brown
University in 1933 have been published in book form as Ethical
Factors of the Present Crisis, 1934. Dr. Jacks believes that the
world depression is ultimately due not to economic but to ethical
causes and points out in what respects the private individual is him-
self partly to blame.

GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE (1860- ), professor at Harvard
since 1894, *s one °f tne leading scholars in English language and
literature in America. Words and Their Ways in English Speech,
1901, written in collaboration with the late Professor J. B. Green-
ough, still remains the most interesting and readable treatment of
the subject. An Advanced English Grammar, 1913, and the briefer
A Concise English Grammar, 1918, both written in collaboration
with Professor F. E. Farley, are authoritative discussions of a sub-
ject more often expounded by rule than by reason. They are, inci-
dentally, also examples of what good printing will contribute to
the clearness of books on language.

NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS 537

Most of Professor Kittredge's own books deal with different as-
pects of literature, and his former students refer their friends espe-
cially to his little book on Shakespeare, 1916, an exposition of the
great powers of the dramatist.

ROBERT LITTELL ( 1896- ) comes from a family of writers. His
father is Philip Littell, newspaperman and author. His great-
grandfather, Eliakim Littell, was the founder of the Living Age.
The author of "Robin Redbreast" has been on the staffs of the New
York World, the New York Evening Post, and the New Republic.
He has contributed many highly readable articles to magazines,
among them "Pigskin Preferred," a satirical essay on college foot-
ball which appeared in the New Republic for October 28, 1925,
and "Canine Primary," a burlesque on progressive schools, in the
New Republic for December 7, 1932. A collection of his essays
was published in 1926 under the title Read America First. He has
also written a novel, Candles in the Storm, 1932, about life in a
New England artists' colony.

CHARLES ALLEN LLOYD teaches French in Biltmore College, Ashe-
ville, North Carolina, and English in the Asheville Summer School
conducted by the Asheville Normal and Teachers College. He is
also a radio lecturer on the subject of good English.

HENRY Louis MENCKEN (1880- ) was the idol of college
undergraduates in the days when he was literary critic and co-editor
of the Smart Set and later when he was editor of the American
Mercury. Many writers who have since become established in
public esteem owe their rise to the first hospitable encouragement
given by Mr. Mencken.

Mr. Mencken's journalistic strategy consists of a direct frontal
attack which provokes heated retorts, wide discussions, — and an in-
creased demand for his product. The gusto with which he charges
upon outworn ideas is matched by the reckless energy of his style.
As the sworn enemy of musty stupidity there are few writers as
formidable as Mr. Mencken. He is outspoken in his likes (music
and science, especially physiology) and his dislikes (poetry, college
professors of English, and democracy).

The little volume Selected Prejudices will give the student an
idea of Mr. Mencken's journalistic manner. Quite different from

538 NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS

anything else that he has done is his book The American Language ',
1918, from which the selection used in this volume has been taken.
It is a solid piece of work written to inform rather than to entertain.

JOHN STUART MILL (1806-1873) wrote the famous treatise On
Liberty ', 1859, the classic exposition of the ideals of freedom which
stirred the world a century ago. Some of the chapters in Mill's book
have been invalidated by later experience with economic laws, but
the one on "Liberty of Thought and Discussion" is as thought-
provoking now as it was when it was first published. His long essay
"On the Subjection of Women," which has been one of the most
powerful documents in the long struggle for the right of women
to make use of their abilities, was in part inspired by his respect
for his wife's intelligence and social ideals.

The best account of Mill's life is that written by himself, which
ranks among the great autobiographies of the world. With simplic-
ity and entire absence of egotism he tells the story of his early educa-
tion, his work for social reform, and his devotion to his wife who, be-
cause she gave him the sympathy and companionship that his nature
craved, became almost the object of his worship. The crisis de-
scribed in Chapter V of the Autobiography occurred after a child-
hood and youth spent in almost unbelievable intellectual concen-
tration. His father, who was his teacher, set out to develop the
boy's mind for later usefulness to the world and started him on
the study of Greek when he was three years old. Before he was
eight, Mill had been put through a course of reading in history that
few college seniors have compassed, and the pace continued. Small
wonder that at twenty his normal emotions asserted themselves as
described in the selection reproduced here.

John Stuart Mill's style is intellectual and abstract, and is there-
fore not easily read by those who demand the concrete type of
writing which presents a series of pictures before the imagination ;
yet nowhere is it difficult to understand.

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE (1533-1592) is usually held to be the
inventor of the personal or familiar essay. It was he who first gave
to it the name essay > though whether he used the word in the sense
of "assay," i. e., weighing, or "essay," i. e., attempt, is not clear. In
any event, he originated a new literary form quite unlike the stately
classical dissertations such as Cicero's On Friendship.

NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS 539

Montaigne's essays are informal both in language and in struc-
ture. They have been likened to the fireside conversation of a
cultivated gentleman. Like conversation they have no predeter-
mined goal but play with the subject, approaching it from many
sides and wandering off into any sidepaths that may invite explora-
tion. Montaigne had read widely, as his many citations from earlier
authors show. He himself has been much quoted, largely because
of his many pithy observations. Such epigrams as "A man seldom
speaks of himself except at a loss" abound in his writings, and stu-
dents will enjoy looking for them in his other essays.

A new translation of Montaigne is being made by Professor Jacob
Zeitlin of the University of Illinois, one volume of which has ap-
peared. The translations usually found in libraries are those by
John Florio, a contemporary of Shakespeare's, and by John Cotton,
who lived a century later. The Cotton translation as revised by
William Hazlitt and edited by O. W. Wight is still one of the
most readable.

JOHN RAYMOND MURLIN (1874- ) is professor of physiology
at the University of Rochester. He has written numerous articles
on his subject and is editor of the Journal of Nutrition. The essay
"Science and Culture" was first delivered as a dedicatory address at
Ursinus College, Collegeville, Pa., upon the opening of a new
science building.

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN (1801-1890), author of the hymn "Lead,
Kindly Light," became famous as the leader of Catholicism in Eng-
land after he had become converted to that faith in middle life.
For the last twenty years of his life he was a cardinal of the church.
When in 1852 he became rector of the newly established Irish Cath-
olic University in Dublin, he delivered the seven lectures later
published in book form under the title The Idea of a University.

In the slow development of English prose style Cardinal Newman
is one of the masters. Readers accustomed to the short, sharp sen-
tences of today will not at first appreciate the quiet style of Newman
and his contemporaries. The excellence of these writers reveals
itself only to those who are willing to give them close attention.
It consists in careful reasoning and accuracy of statement, without
resort to clever devices for stimulating interest. He himself defined

540 NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS

writing as a "thinking out into language." Newman's style is nota-
ble for its coherence. He cements his thoughts to one another with
connectives, now and then summarizing in a short statement what
has been said, and forecasting what is to come.

In argument Newman is always urbane, illustrating his own defi-
nition of a gentleman: "one who never inflicts pain." The gentle-
man, Newman goes on, "never speaks of himself except when com-
pelled, never defends himself by mere retort, . . . never mistakes
personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which
he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudence, he observes
the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct our-
selves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend."

HARRY ALLEN OVERSTREET (1875- ) is head of the depart-
ment of philosophy at the College of the City of New York. Pro-
fessor Overstreet is a well-known public speaker, whose lectures at
the New School for Social Research are notable for their simplicity
of statement. Many of these lectures Professor Overstreet has pub-
lished in book form. The reason why he has been so successful in
presenting difficult subjects to the average man can be discovered
upon reading his book Influencing Human Behavior, 1925, a useful
volume for teachers and writers.

Others of his books that give information simply and clearly are
About Ourselves: Psychology for Normal People, 1927, and The
Enduring Quest, 1931, an excellent introduction to philosophy, and
more recently, A Guide to Civilized Loafing, 1934.

RALPH M. PEARSON (1883- ) is an etcher of note, whose work
is to be found in many of the larger museums of the country. He
is also well known as a writer on art, and his books How to See
Modern Pictures, 1925, and Experiencing Pictures, 1932, have
opened the way to new pleasures for many people.

The essay by Mr. Pearson is reproduced by the courtesy of the
Esto Publishing Company of Pasadena, California, an educational
enterprise which aims to help the public find greater enjoyment in
works of art by explaining wherein their excellence lies. Distin-
guished artists and critics have written the Enjoy Your Museum
series of ten-cent booklets discussing for the benefit of the layman
a variety of topics ranging from Greek vases to Apache baskets.

NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS 541

SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH (1863- ) had an established
reputation as a popular novelist before he was appointed professor
of English literature at Cambridge University. His books On the
Art of Writing, 1916, On the Art of Reading, IQ2O, and Studies
in Literature in several volumes, all of which are made up of lec-
tures to his classes, are written with a novelists feeling for what
will interest people. So are his introductory essays written for
the various volumes of the New Cambridge edition of Shakespeare's
plays edited in collaboration with J. Dover Wilson. His lecture
"An Interlude on Jargon" in On the Art of Writing has amused
thousands of students and helped them to make their own writing
more forceful.

ABRAHAM MITRIE RIHBANY (1869- ) is pastor of the Church
of Disciples in Boston. He was born in Lebanon, Syria, and came
to the United States as a young man, where he was eventually or-
dained a Unitarian minister. The article included in this anthology
appears in a book published under the same title.

Students who are interested in the literary study of the Bible will
find such books as J. G. Frazer, Folklore in the Old Testament
and J. H. Gardiner, The Bible as English Literature helpful. Pro-
fessor Moulton's Modern Reader's Bible, an adaptation of the King
James version arranged according to literary forms, makes the book
easier to read as literature.

JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON (1863- ) was for twenty-five years
professor of history at Columbia University and is the author of
many textbooks on history used in schools and colleges. He has
also written such books of general interest as The Mind in the
Making, 1921, and The Humanizing of Knowledge, 1923, from
which the selections included in this volume have been taken. All
Professor Robinson's books are distinguished by the same direct
straightforwardness of statement and clear thinking that mark these
excerpts.

JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900), a lover of art, literature, and nature,
devoted seventeen years of authorship to the fine arts before he
turned his attention to social and economic problems. Then for
about forty years he gave his energies and most of his fortune to

542 NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS

reducing the suffering brought about by the industrial revolution.
In particular he attacked the theory of laissez faire and thus antici-
pated by three quarters of a century the social attitudes of our
own day.

The style of his essays collected in Unto This Last, 1862, and of
the "letters" in Fors Clavigera, 1871-1884, is simple and energetic,
whereas that of his early writings is akin to painting in its rich use
of imagery.

BERTRAND RUSSELL (1872- ), since 1931 Lord Russell, is
ranked by many competent judges as the foremost philosopher of
our day, a distinction which has also been vehemently disputed.
Whatever his rank in the history of thought, the fact remains that
few men of today have stimulated so many people to re-examine
habitual beliefs in the light of reason and established facts. His
influence is wide not only because of the acuteness of his reasoning
but also because of the clarity and incisiveness of his style.

Mr. Russell believes that there is enough knowledge in the world
today to cure the great diseases of civilization — poverty, crime, and
war — and that the cure is delayed only because the knowledge is
as yet the property of comparatively few. He has, therefore, set
for himself the task of helping to spread the newer social knowledge
and to this end has cultivated the simple and direct style of his
later writings.

Mr. Russell comes from a family long known for its public spirit.
His own opposition to war cost him his lecturership at Trinity Col-
lege, Cambridge, during the World War ; and when he was invited
to lecture at Harvard University, the British government refused
him a passport. In 1918 he was sentenced to six months in prison
for having published his views on pacifism.

Among the books by Bertrand Russell that are of general interest
are: Why Men Fight, 1917, Proposed Roads to Freedom, 1919,
Education and the Good Life, 1926, Sceptical Essays, 1928, Con-
quest of Happiness, 1930, The Scientific Outlook, 1931, Education
and the Modern World, 1932. An excellent introduction to his
work is the little volume Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell in
the Modern Library.

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860) was a German philosopher
of pessimism whose ideas have colored modern literature not only

NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS 543

in Germany but in other countries as well. His wide influence is
due as much as anything to the lucidity of his style, which unfortu-
nately does not appear at its best in translation.

HARLOW SHAPLEY (1885- )> professor of astronomy at Har-
vard University and director of the Harvard Observatory, is one
of the leading astronomers of America. In addition to his author-
ship of technical books on astronomy, he has written Starlight, 1926,
a discussion of the subject written for the layman. Through clearly
written magazine articles he reports to the public from time to time
the findings of recent researches in his field and interprets their
significance for human life.

Professor Shapley's essay forms a part of the pamphlet on Astron-
omy in the Reading with a Purpose series published by the American
Library Association. Each one of these admirable little introduc-
tions to the various fields of art, literature, and science, is written
by an acknowledged authority, who after first sketching a general
outline of the subject suggests further lines of reading. They are
to be found in all public libraries, and are excellent guides to private
reading by all who wish to use books profitably.

Two British astronomers who have also found the way of making
a difficult science comprehensible to the ordinary reader are Sir
James H. Jeans and Sir Arthur S. Eddington. The former is the
author of The Mysterious Universe, 1930, and The New Back-
ground of Science, 1933. The latter has written The Nature of
the Physical World, 1928; Science and the Unseen World, 1929;
and New Pathways in Science, 1935, the last-named an analysis of
modern scientific theories.

ODELL SHEPARD (1884- ) is well known as an essayist, a
scholar, and a compiler and editor. In Contemporary Essays (in
Scribner's Modern Student's Library) he has brought together es-
says by various present-day writers, all centering about the theme
of excellence in various aspects of living. His own esfays may be
found in such volumes as The Joys of Forgetting, 1928, and The
Harvest of the Quiet Eye, 1927, the latter a group of reflections
inspired by walks along the countryside of Connecticut.

544 NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS

MARGARET POLLOCK SHERWOOD (1864- ) has had a long con-
nection, first as student and later as teacher, with colleges where
high standards of excellence prevail. After graduating from Vassar
College she studied abroad at Zurich and Oxford universities. For
more than forty years she taught English literature at Wellesley
College. The fruit of her long study of the English romantic poets
has recently been published under the title Undercurrents of Influ-
ence in English Romantic Poetry -, 1934. At various times in the
past she has contributed essays to the Atlantic, Scribner's, and the
North American Review.

EDWIN EMERY SLOSSON (1865-1929) was at one time professor of
chemistry in the University of Wyoming, but his interest in writing
led to his removal to New York to become editor of the Independent,
a post he held for seventeen years, during the last eight of which
he lectured at the Columbia School of Journalism.

Mr. Slosson was one of the first to urge that scientific news
should be reported by scientists themselves and not by sensational
feature writers in the Sunday supplements. In 1920 he became
director of Science Service, an organization for making scientific
knowledge available to the public.

HENRY JUSTIN SMITH (1875- ) is managing editor of the
Chicago Daily News, and, by way of recreation, a novelist.

Shortly after graduating from the University of Chicago Mr.
Smith won the first prize in the Century's competition for college
graduates of 1898 by an essay on the poetry of William Blake which
was printed in the Century for June, 1900.

A book by Mr. Smith that has been a favorite, especially with
students of journalism, is Deadlines, a realistic novel of the news
room. His histories Chicago : A Portrait and Chicago 's Great Cen-
tury have won him the title of Chicago's biographer.

ROBERT Louis STEVENSON (1850-1894) was not many years ago
the beloved favorite among all classes of readers. He is best known
for his tales of adventure — Treasure Island, 1883, which brings
together all the glorious hokum about pirates and buried treasures;
Kidnapped, 1 886, with a bit of historical background — and for his
psychological allegory, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde.

NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS 545

Stevenson was a master of the art of the short story. Among
his best productions in this form are The Sire de Maletroit's Door,
A Lodging for the Night, O Hallo > and Markheim. A number of
fantastic tales with a modern background are published under the
title of The New Arabian Nights.

The essays reflect Stevenson's theory of art as well as of life.
Here his buoyant and valiant spirit and his charming and cour-
ageous personality are revealed in a careful literary manner. "It
is not what scares and pains us, but what delights and emancipates
us that is good in art" — so he stated his artistic creed ; and though
his life was a long but losing battle against tuberculosis, he delighted
and emancipated himself as he delighted and emancipated others
through his writings.

Critics have objected that his style "smelled of the lamp." It
is true that Stevenson deliberately developed and perfected his style
and was a conscious artist, but for that reason he makes delightful
reading.

GILES LYTTON STRACHEY (1880-1932), better known by his later
signature, Lytton Strachey, set the style for the modern type of
biography, written to make interesting reading rather than to be
a storehouse of information. His way of being interesting was to
select only what served his purpose, whether that purpose was to
disillusion as in his first biographical work, Eminent Victorians,
1918, which presents such revered figures as Thomas Arnold of
Rugby and Florence Nightingale in a new, hard light, or to elabo-
rate only one phase of a character's life as in Elizabeth and Essex,
1928. Unlike many "debunking" biographers who imitated him,
however, Lytton Strachey set out to tell the truth — not the whole
truth, but the neglected truth.

The same careful process of selection is also at the bottom of his
brisk and sometimes ironic style. By writing slowly, and carefully
revising, excising all unnecessary words, he made his thought race
forward. He spent freely of his own time, and therefore saved the
time of his readers. He admired the clear, strong style of the
French writers of the past, notably that of Pascal, the man who,
when he had once lapsed from his usual conciseness, end.d a letter
to a friend with the explanation, "I have made this letter so long
because I have not had time to make it shorter." The wit of
Strachey is often simply a matter of brevity.

546 NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Landmarks in French Literature, 1912, written for the Home
University Library, is one of the most entertaining books of infor-
mation ever written. The student who reads its brief two hundred
and fifty pages will not only be introduced to some of the world's
most skillful writers, but he will ever after be a better writer
himself.

The Home University Library, which now consists of some one
hundred and fifty titles, is a series of brief and interestingly written
books on history, literature, art, natural science, philosophy, and
religion. They are written by recognized authorities as a means
of self-education for the thousands of people who want to supple-
ment their formal training by independent reading.

RUTH SUCKOW (1892- ), in private life Mrs. Ferner Nuhn,
is the author of The Odyssey of a Nice Girl, 1925, and The Folks,
1934, a Literary Guild selection. The setting of her stories is in
Iowa, her native state. Unlike the creator of "Elsie Dinsmore"
she wrote the truthful story of people as she saw them. Working
as waitress, bank clerk, beekeeper, and college teacher of English,
she learned to know her people from many sides before she put
them into her books. Recognition of her literary work came when
H. L. Mencken directed attention to her stories.

Several million copies of the "Elsie Dinsmore" books have been
sold since the appearance of the first volume in 1868, and the pub-
lishers report that they are still in demand. Twenty-five thousand
copies of "Elsie" books were sold in the year 1933 alone.

ERNEST FREMONT TITTLE (1885- ) is pastor of the First
Methodist Episcopal Church of Evanston, Illinois. Through his
public addresses, his magazine articles, and his books he has empha-
sized the service of Christianity in encouraging humanitarianism
and recognition of the dignity of every human life. Among his
books may be mentioned What Must the Church Do to Be Saved?
1921; The Religion of the Spirit, 1928, and We Need Religion,
1931. He is a frequent contributor to the Christian Century.

SIR GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN (1838-1928) was a nephew of the
famous English essayist, Thomas Babington Macaulay, whose Life
and Letters he published.

NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS 547

Trevelyan was a member of Parliament, a secretary in Glad-
stone's cabinet, and author of a number of books on history, among
them one entitled The American Revolution.

WILLIAM JOHN TUCKER (1888- ) is professor of English at
the University of Arizona. He is the author of College Shakes-
pear e, 1932, and has contributed a number of stimulating articles
on literature to the Catholic World.

JOHN R. TUNIS (1889- ) was a member of the track and tennis
teams while he attended Harvard. Later he won international
championships in tennis. For many years he has been a professional
sports writer for American and foreign publications. In "Eddie
Stands for Good Clean Sport" in Harper 's of November, 1933, and
"Maguire, Builder of Men" in the same magazine for December,
1931, he has thrown the white light of common sense on some ab-
surdities behind collegiate athletics. Recently he has turned his
attention to general subjects and to education. In articles written
for Scribner's in 1934 he made available to the public the results of
investigations made by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advance-
ment of Teaching.

SIGRID UNDSET (1882- ), the well-known Norwegian novelist,
won the Nobel prize in literature in 1928, the third woman to be
so honored (Selma Lagerlof and Grazia Deledda having previously
received the same award). Mrs. Undset, who began to write while
she was an office worker in the Norwegian capital, first won atten-
tion in Norway by a series of short novels of contemporary middle-
class life, but her world-wide fame rests upon her great novels
about medieval life, Kristin Lavransdatter and Olav Audunsson.
In these books Mrs. Undset holds up the ideals of the Middle Ages
and of the Catholic Church before the modern world as a way out
from the irresponsible egoism of recent times against which she
has frequently protested. Her characters find peace only after they
have given up their private desires and see themselves in their rela-
tions with other men — when they think of their duties rather than
of their rights.

In 1925 Mrs. Undset formally became a Roman Catholic, and
in recent years her novels, once more set in modern times, have been
primarily an expression of her religious enthusiasm as a convert.

548 NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS

The trilogy of Kristin Lavransdatter is a powerful novel which
will not only make the everyday living of the Middle Ages come
to life for the student but will present to him a positive philosophy
as well, no matter what his own religious belief may be. The
article included in this selection consists of paragraphs from Mrs.
Undset's Catholic Propaganda, a pamphlet published in Oslo in
1927.

ROBERT PALFREY UTTER (1875- ) is professor of English at
the University of California. From time to time he has contributed
familiar essays to the magazines, some of which have been reprinted
in a volume, Pearls and Pepper, 1924. He has also written three
practical little books of advice about good English: A Guide to
Good English, 1914, Everyday Words and Their Uses, 1916, and
Everyday Pronunciation, 1918.

BARRETT WENDELL (1855-1921) was a famous teacher of compo-
sition and literature at Harvard University until he retired in 1917.
Former students under Professor Wendell, an astonishing number
of whom have since made names for themselves as writers, delight
in relating anecdotes that reveal his wit and originality. As a
teacher of composition he led his students to take pride in writing
a finished daily theme. As a teacher of literature he roused their
interest, and in the words of Walter Pritchard Eaton, he knew
how to "put a piece of literature into the structure of their living."
Barrett Wendell's English Composition, 1891, is still one of the
best books on the subject; and his Literary History of America,
1900, remained the standard history of American literature until
the appearance of Vernon L. Parrington's Main Currents in Amer-
ican Thought in 1927. In 1904-1905 Barrett Wendell lectured at
the Sorbonne and other French universities, and after his return he
published his sympathetic interpretation of French civilization, The
France of To-day, 1907, which is still of interest despite the changes
wrought by the war.

HERBERT GEORGE WELLS (1866- ) is one of the most prolific
of modern British writers. He was first known as a novelist and
writer of scientific romances. Then he became interested in the
problems of contemporary civilization. As a wholehearted believer
in progress, Mr. Wells hopefully looks ahead to a time when human

NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS 549

intelligence will eliminate war, poverty and other evils of society.
His authorship of recent years has been devoted mainly to pointing
out means by which mankind can eventually arrange to live together
in peace, security, and comfort.

Wells, who was once a teacher of biology, was one of the first to
"popularize" knowledge. His Outline of History, 1920, though not
acceptable in all its details to the scholarly historian, has neverthe-
less given thousands of readers a bird's-eye view, showing the rela-
tion of our own little moment of civilization to the long sweep
of time behind us and ahead of us.

The great virtue of H. G. Wells's style is its journalistic clear-
ness and vigor. Some of his books which the student may enjoy
are the Outline of History; The Story of a Great Schoolmaster,
1924; The Science of Life (with his son G. P. Wells and Julian
Huxley), 1929; The Work, Wealth, and Happiness of Mankind,
1932; The Shape of Things to Comey 1933, and Experiment in
Autobiography, 1934.

EDNA YOST was once a teacher in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, but
soon gave up teaching for writing. She has contributed a number
of articles to magazines in recent years on educational and general
subjects.

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