and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes--their
commonplace daily halos make the saints' diadems look like imitation
jewels.
January 1, 1900.
The Zeitgeist.
Back from the gates of the City of Life there runs a great highway,
whose beginning is in the land--east of the sun and west of the
moon--where the unborn dwell. It is a broad and well-trodden road;
beaten smooth by the feet of the hurrying generations that tread sharp
upon one another's heels as they press forward out of grey and airless
nothingness into the warm atmosphere of existence.
By the side of this road lies a chimæra, with woman's breasts couched
upon lion's paws. It is the old direful Questioner of Thebes; the
Propounder of Riddles; the prodigious Asker of Enigmas. Before entering
the gates of the City the jostling multitude must pause in their
furious haste towards life and listen to her as she propounds to each
generation her problem. Every generation guesses at the riddle with
fear or hope, with timidity or courage, as its nature may be, and then
rushes on within the gates, not knowing if it has guessed aright, but
with the task laid upon it of living out its life by the light of that
answer, let the result be what it will.
The Sphinx lies watching the generations whirled past her into
existence. She listens to the cries, the turmoil, the bitter plaints of
those within the walls who believed that they had solved her problem a
century ago, and as she listens she smiles her cold, incredulous smile.
Not yet have they divined her secret, if one may judge from their loud
protests, and this new generation pouring in among them has but small
patience with their failure. The newcomers are quite sure that they at
last have answered the immortal conundrum correctly. They have found it
quite easy, and they mean to show their silly predecessors how simple
it is to find happiness if one has only the correct formula.
All the preceding guesses have been wrong?--well, but it is just
because they were wrong that the application failed. Here is the right
one at last, triumphantly evolved by the new heir of all the ages, and
it will be soon seen how criminally, how almost incredibly mistaken the
previous generations have been in their foolish attempts to live by
such palpably absurd theories of existence.
Make way!--you silly old folk--make way for the young lords of life who
come bearing truth and wisdom to the world! Who come to inaugurate a
reign of peace and plenty and delight!
The old generation, nearing the City's lower gate,--beyond which lies
another road, equally broad and well-travelled, but gloomier and more
airless than the one by which they came,--shake their heads doubtingly
at these assertions. They were quite as confident in their time, and
yet, somehow, things did not work out as they expected. No doubt
their own guess was quite right; they are almost sure of it; but many
unforeseen exigencies interfered. People were obstinate. The formula
was perfect, but people were so very wrong-headed that it never had
a proper opportunity of proving how infallible it really was. And so
difficulties in the application arose, and--But the young newcomers
push them, still babbling and explaining, out of the further gate, and
set at once about regenerating the unfortunate city which has been
forced to wait such a weary while for this the perfect solution of all
problems.
And the old Questioner lying without the gates stares with her long,
calm eyes into the white mist from which yet more generations are to
come, and she smiles her fixed and scornful smile.
It was after this fashion our century, nineteenth of the era, came
in--flushed, happy, confident. It came an army with banners, every
standard blazoned in letters of gold with its magic device--"Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity."
How it hustled the poor painted, formal, withered, old eighteenth
century out at the nether gate! Smashing its idols, toppling over
its altars, tearing down its tarnished hangings of royalty from the
walls, and bundling its poor antiquated furniture of authority out of
windows. All doors were flung wide; the barriers of caste, class, sex,
religion, race, were burst open and light poured in. The gloomy Ghettos
were emptied of their silent, stubborn, cringing population; forged by
the hammer of Christian hate through two thousand years into a race
as keen, compact, and flexible as steel. The slave stood up free of
bonds; half exultant, half frightened at the liberty that brought with
it responsibilities heavier and more inexorable than the old shackles.
Woman caught her breath and lifted up her arms. The old superstitious
Asiatic curse fixed upon her by the church was laughed scornfully into
nothingness. She was as free as the Roman woman again. Free to be proud
of her sex, free to wed where she chose, free to claim as her own the
child for whom she had travailed to give life.
A vast bonfire was made of the stake, the wheel, the gyve; of crowns,
of orders, of robes of state. All wrongs were to be righted, all
oppressions redressed; all inequalities levelled, all cruelties
forbidden. Men shuddered when they thought of the crimes of the past,
when they talked of Calas. Such a crime would never be possible in this
new golden age. Only of oppression and cruelty was vice bred. Given
perfect liberty and perfect justice the warring world would become
Arcadia once more. Lions if not hunted, and if judiciously trained by
the constant instilling of virtuous maxims, would acquire a perfect
disgust for mutton, and lambs would consequently lie down beside them
and would grow as courageous and self-reliant as wolves.
What a beautiful time it was, those first thrilling days of the new
era! How the spirit dilates in contemplating it, even now. The heart
beat with the noble new emotions, the cheek flushed, the eyes glistened
with sensibility's ready tear. It was so pleasant to be good, to be
kind, to be just; to feel that even the bonds of nationality were
cast aside, and that all mankind were brothers striving only for
pre-eminence in virtue. It was a new chivalry, a new crusade. Only,
instead of lovely princesses to be succoured, or sepulchres to be
saved, it was the rescue of all the humble and suffering, a crusade
against the paganism of the strong. The heart could hardly hold without
delicious pain this broad flood of universal kindness.
It was then that Anarcharsis Clootz presented to the National Assembly
his famous "deputation of mankind."...
"On the 19th evening of June, 1790, the sun's slant rays lighted a
spectacle such as our foolish little planet has not often to show.
Anarcharsis Clootz entering the august _Salle de Manège_ with the human
species at his heels. Swedes, Spaniards, Polacks, Turks, Chaldeans,
Greeks, dwellers in Mesopotamia come to claim place in the grand
Federation, having an undoubted interest in it.... In the meantime we
invite them to the honours of the sitting, _honneur de la séance_. A
long-flowing Turk, for rejoinder, bows with Eastern solemnity, and
utters articulate sounds; but owing to his imperfect knowledge of the
French dialect, his words are like spilt water; the thought he had in
him remains conjectural to this day.... To such things does the august
National Assembly ever and anon cheerfully listen, suspending its
regenerative labours."
It was at this time the big words beginning with capitals made their
appearance and were taken very seriously. One talked of the Good, the
True, the Beautiful, and the Ideal, and felt one's bosom splendidly
inflated by these capitalized mouthfuls. There were other nice phrases
much affected at the time--the Parliament of Man, the Federation
of the World, _la Republique de Genre Humain_. The new generation
was intoxicated with its new theory of life, with its own admirable
sentiments.
Discrepancies existed, no doubt. The fine theories were not always put
into complete practice. While the glittering phrases of the Declaration
of Independence were declaring all men free and equal, some million
of slaves were helping to develop the new country with their enforced
labour. The original owners of the soil were being mercilessly hunted
like vermin, and the women of America had scarcely more legal claim to
their property, their children, or to their own persons than had the
negro slaves. Nor did the framers of the Declaration show any undue
haste in setting about abolishing these anomalies.
The National Assembly of France decreed liberty, equality, and
fraternity to all men, and hurried to cut off the heads and confiscate
the property of all those equal brothers who took the liberty of
differing with them.
But it was a poor nature that would boggle at a few inconsistencies,
would quench this fresh enthusiasm with criticism. After all, mere
facts were unimportant. Given the proper emotion, the lofty sentiment
of liberty and good-will, the rest would come right of itself.
A new heaven and new earth, so it seemed, was to be created by this
virile young generation who had rid themselves of the useless lumber of
the past. The period was one of universal emotion, exhibiting itself in
every form: in iconoclastic rages against wrong--rages that could only
be exhausted by the destruction of all the customs, laws, and religions
that had bound the western world for two thousand years; it showed
itself in sanguinary furies against oppression--furies which could be
satiated only by seas of blood; in floods of sympathy for the weak that
ofttimes swept away both strong and weak in one general ruin. It was
displayed in convulsions of philanthropy so violent that a man might
not refuse the offered brotherhood and kindness save at the price of
his life. The cold dictates of the head were ignored. The heart was
the only guide. Is it any wonder that driven by the wind of feeling
and with the rudder thrown overboard the ship pursued an erratic and
contradictory course. Seen in this way one is no longer surprised at
the lack of consistency of the _Declaration des Droits de l'Homme_,
that declared "All men are born and continue free and equal in
rights"--that "Society is an association of men to preserve the rights
of man"--that "freedom of speech is one of the most precious rights,"
and yet that France, crying aloud these fine phrases, slaughtered
even the most silent and humble who were supposed to maintain secret
thoughts opposed to the opinions of the majority. It is no longer
astonishing to read the generous sentiments of our own Declaration and
to remember the persecutions, confiscations, and burnings that drove
thirty thousand of those not in sympathy with the Revolution over the
borders of the New England States into Canada, and hunted a multitude
from the South into Spanish Louisiana. One is no longer amazed to
hear de Tocqueville declare that in no place had he found so little
independence of thought as in this country during the early years
of the Republic. By liberty--his adored liberty--the revolutionary
sentimentalist meant only liberty to think as he himself did, and the
whole history of man records that there is nothing crueller than a
tender heart ungoverned by a cooler head. It is in this same spirit
that the inquisitor, yearning in noble anguish over souls, burns the
recalcitrant. It is plain to him that such as are so gross and vicious
as to refuse to fall in with his admirable intentions for their eternal
welfare can be worthy of nothing gentler than fire.
But whatever the discrepancies might be, the whole state of feeling
was vastly more wholesome, more promising, than the dry formalism,
the frivolous cynicism which it had annihilated and out of which it
had been bred. The delicate, fastidious, selfish formalists of the
eighteenth century were naturally aghast at the generation to which
they had given birth. It was as if an elderly dainty cat had been
delivered of a blundering, slobbering, mastiff puppy, a beast which
was to tear its disgusted and terrified parent in pieces. No doubt
they asked themselves in horror, "When did we generate this wild
animal that sheds ridiculous tears even while drinking our blood?" Not
seeing it was the natural child and natural reaction from the selfish
short-sightedness of "_Que ne mangent ils de la brioche?_" from the
frigid sneer of "_Apres nous le deluge_."
This torrent of emotionalism to which the nineteenth century gave
itself up is amazing to our colder time. It manifested itself not only
in its public policy, in its schemes for universal regeneration, but it
completely saturated all the thought of the time, was visible in its
whole attitude toward life. Madame Necker could not bear the thought
of her friend Moulton's departure after a short visit, so that he was
obliged to leave secretly without a farewell. She fainted when she
learned the truth and says, "I gave myself up to all the bitterness
of grief. The most gloomy ideas presented themselves to my desolate
heart, and torrents of tears could not diminish the weight that seemed
to suffocate me"--and all this about the departure of an amiable old
gentleman from Paris to Geneva!
They had no reserves. The most secret sentiments of the heart were
openly discussed. Tears were always flowing. Nothing was too sacred for
verbal expression. They wrote out their prayers, formal compositions
of chaste sentiments, and handed them about among their friends as
Italian gentlemen did sonnets in the Quattro Cento. On anniversaries or
special occasion they penned long epistles full of elegant phrases and
invocations to friends living under the same roof, who received these
letters next morning with the breakfast tray, and shed delicious tears
over them into their chocolate.
"A delicate female" was a creature so finely constituted that the
slightest shock caused hysterics or a swoon, and it was useless to
hope for her recovery until the person guilty of the blow to her
sensitiveness had shed the salt moisture of repentance upon her cold
and lifeless hand and had wildly adjured her to "_live_"--after which
her friends of the same sex, themselves tremulous and much shaken by
the mere sight of such sensibility, "recovered her with an exhibition
of lavender-water" or with some of those cordials which they all
carried in their capacious pockets for just such exigencies. Nor did
the delicate female monopolize all the delicacy and emotionalism. The
Man of Feeling was her fitting mate, and the manly tear was as fluent
and frequent as the drop in Beauty's eye. Swooning was not so much in
his line; there was less competition, perhaps, for the privilege of
supporting his languishing frame, but a mortal paleness was no stranger
to his sensitive countenance, his features contracted in agony over
the smallest annoyance, and he had an ominous fashion of rushing madly
from the presence of the fair one in a way that left all his female
relatives panting with apprehension, though long experience might have
taught them that nothing serious ever came of it.
Thus the Nineteenth Century entered upon its experiment with the
verities, beginning gloriously; palpitating with generous emotion;
ready with its "blazing ubiquities" to light the way to the millennium.
The truth had been discovered, and needed but to be thoroughly applied
to ensure perfect happiness. By 1840 the tide of democracy and
liberalism had risen to flood. The minority were overawed and dumb.
To suggest doubts of the impeccable ideals of democracy was to awaken
only contempt; as if one should dispute the theory of gravity. It was
_chose jugée_. It did not admit of question. The experiment was in full
practice and the new theory, having swept away all opposition, had free
play for the creation of Arcadias.
Alas! Thus in the eighteenth period of our era had Authority cleared
the ground. It had burned, hanged, shut up in the Bastille all
cavillers, and just as the scheme had a chance to work it crumbled
suddenly to pieces in the blood and smoke of revolutions. Democracy
had no fear of tragedy from the very nature of its principles, but
it had decreed liberty, and liberty began to be taken to doubt its
conclusions. There began to arise voices bewailing the flesh-pots and
the lentils of the ruined House of Bondage. Democracy had brought
much good: that was not denied, but alas, what of the old dear things
it had swept away, the sweet loyalties, the ties between server and
served. The enormous social and political edifice reared by feudalism
had had black dungeons, noisome cloacæ, no doubt, but what of its
rich carvings, of its dim, tender lights filtered through flowered
traceries? Where was its romance, its pageants and revels? The
rectangular, ugly, wholesome building, which democracy had substituted
as a dwelling for the soul of man, with its crude, broad light flooding
every corner, failed to satisfy many who forgot all the bitter
inconvenience of the ancient castle, remembering in homesick longing
only its ruined beauties and hoary charm.
Science in its hard unsentimental fashion commenced to demonstrate
the fallacy of the heart's ardent reasoning. She stripped the lovely
veil from nature's face, and showed the tender springing grass of the
fields, the flushed orchard blossoms, the nesting bird, the painted
insect floating in the breeze,--all, all engaged in a ferocious battle
for life--trampling on the weak, snatching the best food, always
either devouring or devoured. It had been decreed with thunderous
finality that the feeble should be by law placed on equality with the
strong, and this was announced as the evident intention of beneficent
nature. Science, however, relentlessly demonstrated that nature was
not beneficent; that in fact she was a heartless snob, and that to
"Nature's darling, the Strong," she ruthlessly sacrificed multitudes
of the helpless. Democracy had made itself the champion of the humble,
had cursed the greedy and powerful; science proved that the humble and
unaggressive were doomed, as was proved by their not surviving in the
terrible struggle for life that was raging in all forms of nature,
and of which the human mélee was but an articulate expression. The
conviction that humanity had once known perfect equality, and that
freedom had been filched by the unscrupulous, was shown to be quite
unfounded. Rousseau's Contrat Social was made absurd by Darwin's
Descent of Man. All research tended to prove that from the earliest
Pliocene it was not the weak or the humble, but he who
"Stole the steadiest canoe,
Eat the quarry others slew,
Died, and took the finest grave,"
who had founded families, developed races, brought order out of chaos,
had made civilizations possible, had ordained peace and security, and
had been the force of upward evolution.
It was thus that the freedom which the heart had given to the head was
used to prove how fallible that generous heart was.
Then out of all of this groping regret, out of this new knowledge,
there arose, with excursions and alarums, Carlyle; the first who dared
frankly impeach the new theory and decry its results. Through all
his vociferousness, through all his droning tautology, his buzzing,
banging, and butting among phrases like an angry cock-chafer, through
the general egregiousness of his intolerable style, there rang out
clear once again the pæon of the strong. Here was no talk of the rights
of man. His right as of old was to do his duty and walk in the fear of
the Lord.
... "A king or leader in all bodies of men there must be," he says.
"Be their work what it may, there is one man here who by character,
faculty, and position is fittest of all to do it."
For the aggregate wisdom of the multitude, to which Democracy pinned
its faith, he had only scorn.
... "To find a Parliament more and more the expression of the people,
could, unless the people chanced to be wise, give no satisfaction....
But to find some sort of King made in the image of God, who could a
little achieve for the people, if not their spoken wishes yet their
dumb wants, and what they would at last find to be their instinctive
will--which is a far different matter usually in this babbling world
of ours" ... _that_ was the thing to be desired. "He who is to be my
ruler, whose will is higher than my will, was chosen for me by heaven.
Neither, except in obedience to the heaven-chosen, is freedom so much
as conceivable."
Here was the old doctrine of the divine right of the strong man to
rule, come to life again, and masquerading in democratic garments.
No revolution resulted. Democracy did not fall in ruins even at the
blast of his stertorous trumpet, but the serious-minded of his day
were deeply stirred by his words, more especially as that comfortable
middle-class prosperity and content, to which the democrat pointed as
the best testimony to the virtue of his doctrines, was being attacked
at the same time from another quarter. Not only did Carlyle scornfully
declare that this bourgeois prosperity was a thing unimportant, almost
contemptible, but the proletariat--a new factor in the argument--began
to mutter and growl that he had not been given his proper share in it,
and he found it as oppressive and unjust as we had found the arrogant
prosperity of the nobles intolerable.
That old man vociferous has passed now to where beyond these voices
there is peace, but the obscure mutterings of the man in the street,
which was then but a vague undertone, has grown to an open menace.
The Sphinx smiles as she hears once more the same cries, the same
accusations. We of the middle classes, who threw off the yoke of the
aristocracy, clamoured just such impeachments a century back. We are
amazed now to hear them turned against ourselves. To us this seems an
admirable world that we have made; orderly, peaceable, prosperous. We
find no fault in it. It has not worked out, perhaps, on as generous
lines as we had planned, but on the whole each man gets, we think, his
deserts.
We ask ourselves wonderingly if the aristocrat of the eighteenth
century did not, perhaps, see his world in the same way. He paid no
taxes, but he thought he did his just share of work for the body
politic; he fought, he legislated, he administered. Perhaps it seemed
also a good world to him; well arranged. Perhaps he was as indignant
at our protests as we are at those of to-day. We thought ourselves
intolerably oppressed by his expenditures of the money we earned, by
his monopoly of place and power; but we argue in our behalf, that as
we pay the taxes we should decide upon the methods of the money's use
and have all the consequent privileges. What, we ask ourselves angrily,
do these mad creatures, who are very well treated, mean by their talk
of slavery--of wage-slavery? How can there be right or reason in their
contention that the labourer rather than the capitalist should have the
profit of labour? Does not the capitalist govern, administer, defend?
Attacked, abused, execrated, we begin to sympathize with those dead
nobles, who were perhaps as honest, as well-meaning, as we feel
ourselves to be; who were as disgusted, as scornful, as little
convinced by our arguments as we by those who accuse us in our turn of
being greedy, idle feeders upon the sweat of others. Perhaps to him the
established order of things seemed as just and eternal as it does to
us. We begin to have more comprehension of that dead aristocrat.
For a hundred years now democracy has had a free hand for testing
its faiths and ideals. Let us reckon up the results of this reign of
liberty, equality, fraternity.
Out of the triumphant bourgeoisie has grown a class proud and dominant
as the nobles of old days. They have wealth, luxury, and power, such
as those nobles never dreamed of. Capital is organized into vast,
incredibly potent aggregations. Labour in its turn has organized for
itself a despotism far-reaching, unescapable, which the old régime
would never at its haughtiest have ventured upon. The two are arrayed
against one another in struggles of ever-increasing intensity.