AMONG THE MALCONTENTS
(1872)
When John came to Stockholm, he borrowed money in order to hire a
room near the Ladugärdslandet. Always under the sway of sentiment, he
chose this quarter of the town because he always used to walk there
in his childhood on the 1st of May, and the High Street especially
had something of a holiday air about it. Moreover it soon opened into
the Zoological Gardens, which became his favourite place for walks.
The barracks with their drums and trumpets had something exhilarating
about them, and there were fine views over the sea which was close at
hand. There was plenty of light and air. When he went for his morning
walk he could choose his route according to his mood. If he was sad
and depressed, he went along the Sirishofsvägen; if he was cheerful
he turned off to the level ground of Manilla, where the paradisial
rose-valley exhaled joy and delight; if he was despairing and anxious
to avoid people he went out to Ladugärdsgardet, where no one could
disturb his self-communings and his prayers to God. Sometimes, when his
soul was in a tumult, he remained standing by the cross-ways above the
bridge near the Zoological Gardens, irresolute which way to take. On
such occasion a thousand forces seemed to pull him in all directions.
His room was very simple and commanded no view. It smelt of poverty,
as the whole house did, in which the only person of standing was the
deputy-landlord, a policeman. John began his active career by painting,
out of a sense of need to give his feelings shape and to express them
in a palpable way, for the little letters huddled together on the paper
were dead and could not express his mind so plainly and simultaneously.
He did not think of being a painter in order to exhibit or sell
pictures. To step to the easel was for him just like sitting down and
singing. At the same time he renewed his acquaintance with his friend
the sculptor, who introduced him to a circle of young painters. These
were all discontent with the Academy and the antiquated methods which
could not express their vague dreams. They still preserved the Bohemian
type, so late did the waves of modern ideas beat on the far coasts of
the North. They wore long hair, slouched hats, brilliant cravats, and
lived like the birds of heaven. They read and quoted Byron and dreamt
of enormous canvases and subjects such as no studio could contain. A
sculptor and a Norwegian had conceived the idea of hewing a statue out
of the Dovre rock; a painter wished to paint the sea not merely as a
level, but with such a wide horizon as to show the convex curve of the
globe.
This took John's fancy. One should give expression to one's inner
feelings and not depict mere sticks and stones which are meaningless in
themselves till they have passed through the alembic of a percipient
mind. Therefore the artists did not make studies out of doors, but
painted at home from their memory and imagination. John always painted
the sea with a coast in the foreground, some gnarled pine-trees, a
couple of rocky islets in the distance and a white-painted buoy. The
atmosphere was generally gloomy, with a weak or strong light on the
horizon; it was always sunset or moonlight, never clear daylight.
But he was soon woken out of this dream-life partly by hunger, partly
by recollecting the reality which he had sought in order to save
himself from his dreams.
Although John knew little of contemporary politics, he knew that the
democracy or peasant-class had arrived at power, that they had declared
war on the official and middle classes, and that they were hated in
Upsala. And now he himself was to enter the ranks of the combatants
and attack the old order of things. The only item of the knowledge
which he had brought with him from Upsala which was likely to be useful
here, was the small amount of political science which he had studied.
Of what use were Astronomy, Philology, Æsthetics, Latin and Chemistry
here? He knew something about the land-laws and communal-laws, but had
no idea of political economy, finance or jurisprudence. When he now
began to look about for a suitable paper to which to attach himself,
it did not occur to him to make use of his old connection with the
_Aftonbladet_, but he wrote for a small evening paper which had lately
appeared, which was regarded as radical and was issued by the New
Liberal Union. The editor held receptions in the La Croix Café, and
here John was introduced into the society of journalists. He felt ill
at ease among them. They did not think as he did, seemed uncultivated,
as indeed they were, and rather gossiped than discussed important
matters. They certainly busied themselves with facts, but these were
rather trifles than great questions. They were full of phrases, but
did not seem to have a proper command of their material. John, though
against his will, was too much of an academic aristocrat to sympathise
with these democrats, who for the most part had not chosen their
career, but been forced into it by the pressure of circumstances. He
found the atmosphere stifling for his idealism, and came no more to the
receptions after he had done his business, and been invited to write
for the paper.
He made his début as an art-critic. His first criticism concerned
Winge's "Thor with the giants" and Rosen's "Eric XIV and Karin
Monsdotter." The young critic naturally wished to display his learning,
though all he had was what he had picked up in lectures and books.
Therefore his criticism of Winge was a mere eulogy. His remarks chiefly
regarded the subject of the picture as a Norse one and treated in the
grand style. The painters did not like this sort of criticism, as
they considered the only point to be criticised in a work of art was
the execution. "Eric the XIV" he judged from his monomaniacal point
of view, "aristocrat or democrat," and found fault with the incorrect
conception of Göran Persson, whom in his own tragedy _Eric XIV_
(subsequently burnt) he had represented as an enemy of the nobility and
friend of the people.
Descended from his own height as a promising student, author and royal
protégé to the then less regarded class of journalists, he felt himself
again one of the lower orders.
After the editor had struck out his learned flourishes, the articles
were printed. The editor told him they were piquant, but advised him
to employ a more flowing style. He had not yet caught the journalistic
knack.
Then John planned a series of articles in which, under the title
"Perspective," he treated of social and economic questions. In these he
attacked university life, the divisions of the classes, the injurious
over-reading and the unfortunate position of the students. Since the
labour-question at that time was not a burning one, he ventured on a
comparison between the prospects of a student and that of a workman,
declaring the latter to be far better off. The workman was generally
in good health, could support himself at eighteen and marry at twenty,
while the student could not think of marriage and making a livelihood
before thirty. As a remedy he recommended doing away with the final
examination as Jaabaek had already done in Norway, and the transference
of the university to Stockholm in order that the students might have
a chance of earning something during their course. As an example he
adduced the case of modern students at Athens who learn a trade while
they study. This was all clear to him as early as 1872, yet when he
made similar suggestions twelve years later, he was thought to have
conceived them on the spur of the moment.
At the same time he took an engagement on a small illustrated ladies'
paper and wrote biographical notices and novelettes. The ladies were
very kind, but let him work too hard, and gave him all kinds of
commissions to execute. After he had spent two or three days in paying
visits, dived into a publisher's place of business, read biographical
romances in three or four volumes, made researches in the library,
run to the printing-office and finally written his columns carefully,
setting each person treated of in a proper historical light, and
analysing his career, he received, for all that work, fifteen kronas.
He calculated that this was less pay per hour than a servant earned.
The bread of the literary man was certainty hardly earned, and that
this is the common lot of authors does not make matters better. But the
profession was also despised, and John felt that in social position he
stood below his brothers who were tradesmen, below the actors, yes,
even below the elementary school-teachers.
The journalists led a subterranean existence, but they styled
themselves "we" and wrote as though they were sovereigns of God's
appointment; they had men's weal or woe in their hand, since the chief
weapon in the struggle for existence in our civilised days is social
reputation. How was it that society had given these free lances such
terrible power without taking any guarantees? But when one comes
to think, what assurance is there for the capacity and insight of
the law-givers in parliament, in the ministry, on the throne? None
whatever! It is therefore the same all round. There were, however, two
classes of newspapers; the conservative, which wished to preserve the
social condition with all its defects, and the liberal, which wished
to improve it. The former enjoyed a certain respect, the latter, none
at all. John instinctively sided with the last, and at once felt that
he was regarded as every one's enemy. A liberal journalist and a
chronicler of scandals were synonymous terms. At home he had heard the
usual phrase that "no one was honourable whose name had not appeared
in the paper _Fatherland_." In the street they had pointed out to him
a man who looked like a bandit, with the mark of a dagger-stab between
his eyes, and said, "There goes the journalist X." In the Café La Croix
he felt depressed among his new colleagues, but none the less chose to
associate with this unpopular group. Did he choose really? One does not
choose one's impulses, and it is no virtue to be a democrat when one
hates the upper classes and has no pleasure in their company.
Meanwhile for social intercourse he went to the artists. It was a
strange world in which they lived. There was so much nature among
these men who busied themselves with art. They dressed badly, lived
like beggars--one of them lived in the same room with the servant--and
ate what they could get; they could hardly read, and had no knowledge
of orthography. At the same time they talked like cultivated people,
they looked at things from an independent point of view, were keenly
observant and unfettered by dogmas. One of them four years previously
had minded geese, a second had wielded the smith's hammer, a third
had been a farmer's servant and walked behind the dung-cart, and a
fourth had been a soldier. They ate with knives, used their sleeves as
napkins, had no handkerchiefs and only one coat in winter. However,
John felt at home with them, though of late years he had been
conversant only with cultivated and well-to-do young people. It was not
that he was superior to them, for that they did not acknowledge, nor
was it any use to quote books to them, for they accepted no authority.
His doubts as regards books, especially text-books, began to be
aroused, and he began to suspect that old books may injure a modern
man's thinking powers. This doubt became a certainty when he met one of
the group whom all regarded as a genius.
He was a painter about thirty years old, formerly a farmer's servant
who had come to the Academy in order to become an artist. After he
had spent some time in the painting school he came to the conclusion
that art was insufficient as a medium for expressing his thoughts,
and he lived now on nothing, while he busied himself by reflecting on
the questions of the time. Badly educated at an elementary school, he
had now flung himself on the most up-to-date books and had a start of
John, since he had begun where the latter had left off. Between John
and him there was the same difference as between a mathematician and
a pilot. The former can calculate in logarithms, the latter can turn
them to practical use. But Måns also was critically disposed and did
not believe in books blindly. He had no ready-made scheme or system
into which to fit his thoughts; he always thought freely, investigated,
sifted and only retained what he recognised as tenable. More free from
passions than John, he could draw more reckless inferences, even when
they went against his own wishes and interests, though with certain
matter-of-course limitations. He was more-over prudent, as indeed he
must have been to have worked himself up from such a low position,
and understood how to be silent as to certain conclusions, which, if
expressed tactlessly and in the wrong place, might have injured him.
As his literary adviser, he had a telegraph-assistant whose knowledge
Mans knew better how to use than its owner himself; the latter had not
a very lively intellect, although in his knowledge of languages he
possessed the key to the three great modern literatures. Passionless
and self-conscious, with a strong control over his impulses, he stood
outside everything, contemplating and smiling at the free play of
thought which he enjoyed as a work of art, with the accompanying
certainly that it was after all only an illusion.
With both of these John had many friendly disputes. When he drew up
his schemes for the future of men and society he could rouse Måns'
enthusiasm and carry him along with him, but when he had taken his
hearer a certain way with his emotional and passionate descriptions,
the latter took out his microscope, found the weak spot where to
insert his knife, and cut. On such occasions John was impatient and
motioned his opponent away. "You are a pedant," he said, "and fasten
on details." But sometimes it turned out that the "detail" was a
premise the excision of which made the whole grand fabric of inference
collapse. John was always a poet, and had he continued as such
unhindered he might have brought it to something. The poet can speak
to the point like the preacher, and that is an advantageous position.
He can rattle on without being interrupted, and therefore he can
persuade if not convince. It was through these two unlearned men that
John learned a philosophy which was not known at Upsala. In the course
of conversation, his opponents often referred to an authority whom
they called "Buckle." John rejected an authority of whom he had heard
nothing in Upsala. But the name continually recurred and worried him to
such an extent that he at last asked his friends to lend him the book.
The effect of reading it was such that John regarded his acquaintance
with the book as the vestibule of his intellectual life. Here there
was an atmosphere of pure naked truth. So it should be and so it was.
Måns, like all other organised beings, was under the control of natural
laws; all so-called spiritual qualities rest on a material basis, and
chemical affinities are as spiritual as the sympathies of souls. The
whole of speculative philosophy which wished to evolve laws from the
inner consciousness was only a better kind of theology, and what was
worse, an inquisition, which wished to confine the many-sidedness
of the world-process within the limits of an individual system. "No
system" is Buckle's motto. Doubt is the beginning of all wisdom, doubt
means investigation and stimulates intellectual progress. The truth
which one seeks is simply the discovery of natural laws. Knowledge is
the highest, morality is only an accidental form of behaviour, which
depends upon different social conventions. Only knowledge can make men
happy, and the simple-minded or ignorant with their moral strivings,
their benevolence and their philanthropy are only injurious or useless.
And now he drew the necessary conclusions. Heavenly love and its
result, marriage, is conditioned as to that result by such a prosaic
matter as the price of provisions; the rate of suicide varies with
wages, and religion is conditioned by natural scenery, climate and
soil. His mind was predisposed to receive the new doctrines, and now
they made their triumphant entry. John had always planted his feet
firmly on the earth, and neither the balloon-voyages of poetry nor the
will-o'-the-wisps of German philosophy had found a sincere adherent in
him. He had sat in despair over Kant's _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_,
and asked himself with curiosity, whether it was he who was so stupid
or Kant who was so obscure. The study of the history of philosophy,
in which he had seen how each philosopher pointed to his system as
the true one, and championed it against others, had left him amazed.
Now it was clear to him that the idealists who mingle their obscure
perceptions with dear presentations of facts were only savages or
children, and that the realists, who were alone capable of clear
perceptions, were the most highly developed in the scale of creation.
The poets and philosophers are somnambulists, and the religious who
always live in fear of the unknown are like animals in a forest who
fear every rustic in the bushes, or like primitive men who sacrificed
to the thunder instead of erecting lightning rods.
Now he had a weapon in his hand to wield against the old authorities
and against the schools and universities which were enslaved by
patronage. Buckle himself had run away from school, had never been at
a university, and hated them. Apropos of Locke he remarks, "Were this
deep thinker now alive, he would inveigh against our great universities
and schools, where countless subjects are learnt which no one needs,
and which few take the trouble to remember."
Accordingly Upsala had been wrong, and John right. He knew that there
were ignorant savants there, and that it was on account of their own
want of culture that the professors of philosophy could teach nothing
but German philosophy. They neither knew English nor French philosophy
for the simple reason that they only understood Latin and German.
Buckle's _History of Civilisation in England_ was written in 1857, but
did not reach Sweden till 1871-72. Even then the soil was not ready for
the seed. The learned critics were unfavourable to Buckle, and the seed
took root only in some young minds who had no authoritative voice.
"No literature," says Buckle himself, "can be useful to a people, if
they are not prepared to receive it." Thus it was with Buckle and
his work, which preceded that of Darwin (1858) and contained all its
inferences--a proof that evolution in the world of thought is not so
strictly conditioned as has been believed. Buckle did not know Mill or
Spencer, whose thoughts now rule the world, but he said most of what
they said subsequently.
Now, if John had had a character, _i.e_. if he had been ruled by
a single quiet purpose directed towards one object, he would have
extracted from Buckle all that answered his purpose and left out all
that told against it. But he was a truth-seeker and did not shrink from
looking into the abyss of contradictions, especially as Buckle never
asserted that he had found the truth, and because truth is relative
and it is often found on both sides. Doubt, criticism, inquiry are the
chief matter, and the only useful course to pursue, as they guarantee
liberty. Sermons, programmes, certainty, system, "truth" are various
forms of constraint and stupidity. But it is impossible to be a
consistent doubter when one is crammed full with "complete evidence,"
and when one's judgment is swayed by class-prejudice, anxiety for a
living and struggles for a position. John became calm when he learnt
that all that was wrong in the world was wrong in accordance with
necessary law, but he became furious when he made the further discovery
that our social condition, our religion and morality were absurdities.
He wished to understand and pardon his opponents, since in their
actions they were no more free than he was, but he was in duty bound
to strangle them since they hindered the evolution of society towards
universal happiness, and that was the only and greatest crime that
could be committed. But as there were no criminals, how could one get
hold of the crime?
He was rejoiced that the mistakes had now been discovered, but despair
oppressed him again when he saw that the discovery was premature.
Nothing could be done for many years to come. Social evolution was a
very slow process. Consequently he must lie at anchor in the roadstead
waiting for the tide. But this waiting was too long for him; he heard
an inner voice bidding him speak, for if one does not spread what
light one has, how can popular views be changed? Yes, but a premature
promulgation of new ideas can do no good. Thus he was tossed to and
fro. Everything round him now seemed so old and out of date that he
could not read a newspaper without getting an attack of cramp. _They_
only had regard to the present moment; no one thought of the future.
His philosophical friend comforted and calmed him, through, among other
sayings, a sentence of La Bruyère, "Don't be angry because men are
stupid and bad, or you will have to be angry because a stone falls;
both are subject to the same laws; one must be stupid and the other
fall."
"That is all very well," said John, "but think of having to be a
bird and live in a ditch! Air! light! I cannot breathe or see," he
exclaimed; "I suffocate!"
"Write!" answered his friend.
"Yes, but what?"
Where should he begin? Buckle had already written everything, and
yet it was as though it had not been written. The worst thing was
that he felt he lacked the power. Hitherto he had only felt a very
moderate degree of ambition. He did not wish to march at the head, to
be a conqueror and so on. But to go in front with an axe as a simple
pioneer, to fell trees, root up thickets, and let others build bridges
and throw up redoubts, was enough for him. It is often observable that
great ambition is only the sign of great power. John was moderately
ambitious, because he was now only conscious of moderate powers.
Formerly when he was young and strong he had great confidence in
himself. He was a fanatic, _i.e_. his will was supported by powerful
passions, but his awakened insight and healthy doubt had sobered his
self-confidence. The work before him took the form of rock-walls which
must be pulled down, but he was not so simple as to venture on the task.
Now he began to habituate himself forcibly to doubt in order to be
patient and not to explode. He entrenched himself in doubt as in a
fortress, and as a means of self-preservation he determined to depict
his struggles and doubts in a drama. The subject matter which he had
been turning over in his mind for a year he took from the history of
the Reformation in Sweden. Thus was composed the drama later on known
as _The Apostate_.