By Agnes Repplier
COUNTER-CURRENTS.
AMERICANS AND OTHERS.
A HAPPY HALF-CENTURY AND OTHER ESSAYS.
IN OUR CONVENT DAYS.
COMPROMISES.
THE FIRESIDE SPHINX. With 4 full-page and 17 text Illustrations by
Miss E. BONSALL.
BOOKS AND MEN.
POINTS OF VIEW.
ESSAYS IN IDLENESS.
IN THE DOZY HOURS, AND OTHER PAPERS.
ESSAYS IN MINIATURE.
A BOOK OF FAMOUS VERSE. Selected by Agnes Repplier. In Riverside
Library for Young People.
THE SAME. _Holiday Edition._
VARIA.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
COUNTER-CURRENTS
BY
AGNES REPPLIER, LITT.D.
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1916
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY AGNES REPPLIER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published April 1916_
THIRD IMPRESSION, AUGUST 1916
Note
These nine essays, in their original form, were published in the
_Atlantic Monthly_ during the past three years.
Contents
The Cost of Modern Sentiment 1
Our Loss of Nerve 33
Christianity and War 63
Women and War 98
The Repeal of Reticence 136
Popular Education 165
The Modest Immigrant 197
Waiting 233
Americanism 260
COUNTER-CURRENTS
The Cost of Modern Sentiment
We are rising dizzily and fearlessly on the crest of a great wave of
sentiment. When the wave breaks, we may find ourselves submerged, and
in danger of drowning; but for the present we are full of hope and
high resolve. Forty years ago we stood in shallow water, and mocked
at the mid-Victorian sentiment, then ebbing slowly with the tide. We
have nothing now in common with that fine, thin, tenacious conception
of life and its responsibilities. We do not prate about valour for
men, and domesticity for women. A vague humanity is our theme. We do
not feel the fastidious distaste for repulsive details which made our
grandparents culpably negligent. All knowledge, apart from its quality,
and apart from our requirements, now seems to us desirable. Taste is no
longer a controlling force. We do not, if we can help it, look “that
jade, Duty,”--I use Sir Walter Scott’s phrase, and he knew the lady in
question better than do most men,--squarely in the face; but we speak
well of her behind her back, which is more than Sir Walter did. To hear
us talk, one would imagine that she never cost a pang.
The sentiment of to-day is social and philanthropic. It has no
affiliations with art, which stands aloof from it,--a new experience
for the world. It dominates periodical literature, minor fiction, and
serious verse; but it has so far given nothing of permanent value to
letters. It is in high favour with politicians, and is echoed loudly
from all party platforms. It has unduly influenced our attitude toward
the war in Europe, and toward our defences at home. It is a force
to be reckoned with, and to be controlled. It is capable of raising
us to a better and clearer vision, or of weakening our judgment and
shattering our common sense. If we value our safety, we must forever
bear in mind that sentiment is subjective, and a personal thing.
However exalted and however ardent, it cannot be accepted as a scale
for justice, or as a test for truth.
The issues with which our modern sentiment chiefly concerns itself
are the conditions of labour, the progress of women, the social evil,
and--for the past two years--the overwhelming question of peace and
war. Sometimes these issues are commingled. Always they have a bearing
upon one another. There is also a distinct and perilous tendency
toward sentiment in matters political and judicial; while an excess of
emotionalism is the stumbling-block of those noble associations which
work for the protection of animals. It is profoundly discouraging to
read in the accredited organ of an American humane society an angry
protest against Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s being permitted the use of
Eskimo dogs on his Arctic explorations, because, forsooth, when he went
hungry, the dogs went hungry too, and because their feet were hurt by
the ice. The writer (a woman) reminds us that these dogs (like all
other animals) are not “free agents”; and she calls upon public opinion
and law to rescue them. We hear about the “long arm of the law,” but it
would be a giant stretch that could reach Stefansson in his ice-fields.
“Men who do such things,” she affirms, “are not heroes of the highest
type; and, anyway, when you have found or explored the North Pole or
the South Pole, what can you do with it?”
This query is hard to answer. Perhaps no explorer wants to do anything
with the Poles; but just leave them as they are, uncolonized for the
present. They are not the only things in the world which have no
commercial value. But if Stefansson is not a hero, of what stuff are
heroes made, and where shall we look to find one? And with all Europe
crying out in its agony of pain, is it worth our while to worry over
a few dogs, who are doing, under hard conditions, the work they are
fitted to do?
The same journal insults the intelligence of its readers by printing
a wild rhapsody of Mrs. Annie Besant’s, apparently under the illusion
that it can be accepted as an argument for vegetarianism. I venture
to quote one particularly mad paragraph as an illustration of the
unplumbed depths to which emotional humanitarianism can descend:--
“The killing of animals in order to devour their flesh is so obviously
an outrage on all humane feelings, that one is almost ashamed to
mention it in a paper that is regarding man as a director of evolution.
If any one who eats flesh could be taken to the shambles, to watch the
agonized struggles of the terrified victims as they are dragged to the
spot where knife or mallet slays them; if he could be made to stand
with the odours of the blood reeking in his nostrils; if there his
astral vision could be opened so that he might see the filthy creatures
that flock round to feast on the loathsome exhalations, and see also
the fear and horror of the slaughtered beasts as they arrive in the
astral world, and send back thence currents of dread and hatred that
flow between men and animals in constantly re-fed streams; if a man
could pass through these experiences, he would be cured of meat-eating
forever.”
Now, when one has belonged for many years to the society which printed
this precious paragraph, when one has believed all one’s life that to
be sentient is to possess rights, and that, not kindness only, but
justice to the brute creation is an essential element of decent living,
it is hard to be confronted with unutterable nonsense about astral
currents and astral visions. It is harder still to be held indirectly
responsible for the publication of such nonsense, and to entertain for
the thousandth time the weary conviction that common sense is not a
determining factor in humanity.
Mr. Chesterton, upon whom the delight of startling his readers never
seems to pall, has declared that men are more sentimental than
women, “whose only fault is their excessive sense.” Also that the
apparent absorption of the modern world in social service is not
the comprehensive thing it seems. The general public still remains
indifferent. This may or may not be true. It is as hard for Mr.
Chesterton as for the rest of us to know much about that remnant of
the public which is not writing, or lecturing, or collecting data, or
collecting funds, or working for clubs and societies. But no one can
say that the social reformer is the slighted creature that he was a
half-century ago. He meets with the most distinguished consideration,
and he is always accorded the first hearing in print and on the
platform. He commands our respect when he deals soberly with sober
facts in sober language, when his conclusions are just, his statements
irrefutable. He is less praiseworthy when he flies to fiction,
an agreeable but unconvincing medium; or to verse, which, as the
theologian said of “Paradise Lost,” “proves nothing.” It is very good
verse sometimes, and its grace of sentiment, its note of appeal, find
an easy echo in the reader’s heart.
A little poem called “The Factories,” published in “McClure’s Magazine”
for September, 1912, gives an almost perfect example of the modern
point of view, of the emotional treatment of an economic question, and
of the mental confusion which arises from the substitution of sympathy
for exactness.
“I have shut my little sister in from life and light
(For a rose, for a ribbon, for a wreath across my hair),
I have made her restless feet still until the night,
Locked from sweets of summer, and from wild spring air:
I who ranged the meadow-lands, free from sun to sun,
Free to sing, and pull the buds, and watch the far wings fly,
I have bound my sister till her playing-time is done,--
Oh, my little sister, was it I?--was it I?
“I have robbed my sister of her day of maidenhood
(For a robe, for a feather, for a trinket’s restless spark),
Shut from Love till dusk shall fall, how shall she know good,
How shall she pass scatheless through the sin-lit dark?
I who could be innocent, I who could be gay,
I who could have love and mirth before the light went by,
I have put my sister in her mating-time away,--
Sister, my young sister, was it I?--was it I?
“I have robbed my sister of the lips against her breast
(For a coin, for the weaving of my children’s lace and lawn),
Feet that pace beside the loom, hands that cannot rest:
How can she know motherhood, whose strength is gone?
I who took no heed of her, starved and labor worn,
I against whose placid heart my sleepy gold-heads lie,
Round my path they cry to me, little souls unborn,--
God of Life--Creator! It was I! It was I.”
Now if by “I” is meant the average woman who wears the “robe,” the
“ribbon,” the “feather,” and possibly--though rarely--the “wreath
across my hair,” “I” must protest distinctly against assuming a
guilt which is none of mine. I have not shut my little sister in a
factory, any more than I have ranged the meadow-lands, “free from sun
to sun.” What I probably am doing is trying to persuade my sister to
cook my dinner, and sweep my house, and help me to take care of my
“gold-heads,” who are not always so sleepy as I could desire. If my
sister declines to do this at a wage equal to her factory earnings, and
with board and lodging included, she is well within her rights, and I
have no business, as is sometimes my habit, weakly to complain of her
decision. If I made my household arrangements acceptable to her, she
would come. As this is difficult or distasteful to me, she goes to a
factory instead. The right of every man and woman to do the work he or
she chooses to do, and can do, at what wages, and under what conditions
he or she can command, is the fruit of centuries of struggle. It is now
so well established that only the trade unions venture to deny it.
In that vivid and sad study of New York factory life, published some
years ago by the Century Company, under the title of “The Long Day,”
a girl who is out of work, and who has lost her few possessions in
a lodging-house fire, seeks counsel of a wealthy stranger who has
befriended her.
“The lady looked at me a moment out of fine, clear eyes.
“‘You would not go into service, I suppose?’ she asked slowly.
“I had never thought of such an alternative before, but I met it
without a moment’s hesitation. ‘No, I would not care to go into
service,’ I replied; and, as I did so, the lady’s face showed mingled
disappointment and disgust.
“‘That is too bad,’ she answered, ‘for, in that case, I’m afraid I can
do nothing for you.’ And she went out of the room, leaving me, I must
confess, not sorry for having thus bluntly decided against wearing the
definite badge of servitude.”
Here at least is a refreshingly plain statement of facts. The girl
in question bore the servitude imposed upon her by the foremen of
half a dozen factories; she slept for many months in quarters which
no domestic servant would consent to occupy; she ate food which no
servant would be asked to eat; she associated with young women whom
no servant would accept as equals and companions. But, as she had
voluntarily relinquished comfort, protection, and the grace of human
relations between employer and employed, she accepted her chosen
conditions, and tried successfully to better them along her chosen
lines. The reader is made to understand that it was as unreasonable
for the benevolent lady--who had visions of a trim and white-capped
parlor-maid dancing before her eyes--to show “disappointment and
disgust” because her overtures were rejected, as it would have been to
charge the same lady with robbing the girl of her “day of maidenhood,”
and her “little souls unborn,” by shutting her up in a factory. If we
will blow our minds clear of generous illusions, we shall understand
that an emotional verdict has no validity when offered as a criterion
of facts.
The excess of sentiment, which is misleading in philanthropy and
economics, grows acutely dangerous when it interferes with legislation,
or with the ordinary rulings of morality. The substitution of a
sentimental principle of authority for the impersonal processes of law
confuses our understanding, and undermines our sense of justice. It
is a painful truth that most laws have had their origin in a profound
mistrust of human nature (even Mr. Olney admits that the Constitution,
although framed in the interests of freedom, is not strictly
altruistic); but the time is hardly ripe for brushing aside this
ungenerous mistrust, and establishing the social order on a basis of
pure enthusiasm. The reformers who light-heartedly announce that people
are “tired of the old Constitution anyway,” voice the buoyant creed of
ignorance. I once heard a popular lecturer say of a popular idol that
he “preferred making precedents to following them,” and the remark
evoked a storm of applause. It was plain that the audience considered
following a precedent to be a timorous and unworthy thing for a strong
man to do; and it was equally plain that nobody had given the matter
the benefit of a serious thought. Believers in political faith-healing
enjoy a supreme immunity from doubt.
This growing contempt for paltry but not unuseful restrictions, this
excess of sentiment, combined with paucity of humour and a melodramatic
attitude toward crime, has had some discouraging results. It is ill
putting the strong man, or the avenging angel, or the sinned-against
woman above the law, which is a sacred trust for the preservation
of life and liberty. It is ill so to soften our hearts with a
psychological interest in the lawbreaker that no criminal is safe
from popularity. The “Nation” performed a well-timed duty when it
commented grimly on the message sent to the public by a murderer, and
a singularly cold-blooded murderer, through the minister who attended
him on the scaffold: “Mr. Beattie desired to thank his many friends for
kind letters and expressions of interest, and the public for whatever
sympathy was felt or expressed.”
It sounds like a cabinet minister who has lost an honoured and beloved
wife; not like an assassin who has lured _his_ wife to a lonely
spot, and there pitilessly killed her. One fails to see why “kind
letters” and “expressions of interest” should have poured in upon this
malefactor, just as one fails to see why a young woman who shot her
lover a few months later in Columbus, Ohio, should have received an
ovation in the court-room. It was not even her first lover (it seldom
is); but when a gallant jury had acquitted her of all blame in the
trifling matter of manslaughter, “the crowd shouted its approval”;
“scores of women rushed up to her, and insisted upon kissing her”;
and an intrepid suitor, stimulated by circumstances which might have
daunted a less mettlesome man, announced his intention of marrying the
heroine on the spot.
In New York a woman murdered her lover because he refused his aid--a
dastardly refusal--when her husband had cast her off. She was not
only acquitted by a jury,--which was to be expected; but the husband,
pleased with the turn affairs had taken, restored her to his home and
his affections; and a sympathetic newspaper offered this explanation to
a highly gratified public: “They are Sicilians, and in Sicily a woman
may retrieve her own honour and avenge her husband’s, only by doing as
this woman had done.”
Perhaps. But New York is not Sicily, our civilization is not Sicilian
civilization, and our courts of law are not modelled on a Sicilian
vendetta. The reporter described with all the eloquence of his craft
the young wife reconciled and joyous in her husband’s arms, laughing
and singing to her baby, happier than she had been at any time since
her honeymoon. A pretty picture, if the shadow of a murdered man did
not intrude upon it.
Our revolt from the old callous cruelty--the heart-sickening cruelty of
the eighteenth century--has made us tender to criminals, and strangely
lenient to their derelictions. It inspires genial visitors at Sing Sing
to write about the “fine type” of men, sentenced for the foulest of
crimes. It fills us all with concern lest detention prove irksome to
the detained, lest baseball and well-appointed vaudeville should not
sufficiently beguile the tedium of their leisure hours.
“Imprisonment alone is not
A thing of which we would complain,
And ill-conwenience is our lot,
But do not give the convick pain.”
Sentiment has been defined as a revolt from the despotism of facts.
It is often a revolt from authority, which, to the sentimentalist,
seems forever despotic; and this revolt, or rather this easy disregard
of authority, is fatal to the noblest efforts of the humanitarian.
The women of wealth and position who from time to time fling
themselves with ardour into the cause of striking shirt-waist-makers
and garment-makers are always well intentioned, but not always well
advised. In so far as they uphold the strikers in what are often just
and reasonable demands, they do good work; and the substantial aid they
give is sweetened by the spirit in which it is given,--the sense of
fellow feeling with their kind. But there is no doubt that one of the
lessons taught at such times to our foreign-born population is that the
laws of our country may be disregarded with impunity. The picketers who
attack the “scab” workers, and are arrested for disorderly conduct,
are swiftly released, to become the heroines of the hour. I once
remonstrated with a friend who had given bail for a dozen of these
young lawbreakers, and she answered reproachfully: “But they are so
ignorant and helpless. There were two poor bewildered girls in court
yesterday who did not know enough English to understand the charge made
against them. You could not conceive of anything more pathetic.”
I said that a young woman who bowled over another young woman into the
gutter understood perfectly the charge made against her, whether she
spoke English or not. One does not have to study French or Spanish
to know that one may not knock down a Frenchman or a Spaniard. No
civilized country permits this robust line of argument. But reason
is powerless when sentiment takes the helm. It would be as easy to
argue with a conflagration as with unbalanced zeal. The vision of a
good cause debauched by intemperance is familiar to all students of
sociology; but it is no less melancholy for being both recognizable and
ridiculous.
A moderate knowledge of history--which, though discouraging, is also
enlightening--might prove serviceable to all the enthusiasts who are
engaged in making over the world. Many of them (in this country, at
least) talk and write as if nothing in particular had happened between
the Deluge and the Civil War. That they sometimes know as little of the
Civil War as of the Deluge is proven by the lament of an ardent and
oratorical pacifist that this great struggle should be spoken of in
school histories as a war for the preservation of the Union, instead of
a war for the abolishment of slavery. A lady lecturer, very prominent
in social work, has made the gratifying announcement that “the greatest
discovery of the nineteenth century is woman’s discovery of herself.
It is only within the last fifty years that it has come to be realized
that a woman is human, and has a right to think and act for herself.”
Now, after all, the past cannot be a closed page, even to one so
exclusively concerned with the present. A little less talking, a little
more reading, and such baseless generalizations would be impossible,
even on that stronghold of ignorance, the platform. If women failed
to discover themselves a hundred, or five hundred years ago, it was
because they had never been lost; it was because their important
activities left them no leisure for self-contemplation. Yet Miss Jane
Addams, who has toiled so long and so nobly for the bettering of social
conditions, and whose work lends weight to her words, displays in “A
New Conscience and an Ancient Evil” the same placid indifference to all
that history has to tell. What can we say or think when confronted by
such an astounding passage as this?
“Formerly all that the best woman possessed was a negative chastity,
which had been carefully guarded by her parents and duennas. The
chastity of the modern woman of self-directed activity and of a
varied circle of interests, which give her an acquaintance with many
men as well as women, has therefore a new value and importance in the
establishment of social standards.”
“Negative chastity!” “Parents and duennas!” Was there ever such a
maiden outlook upon life! It was the chastity of the married woman
upon which rested the security of the civilized world;--that chastity
which all men prized, and most men assailed, which was preserved in the
midst of temptations unknown in our decorous age, and held inviolate by
women whose “acquaintance with many men” was at least as intimate and
potent as anything experienced to-day. Committees and congresses are
not the only meeting-grounds for the sexes. “Remember,” says M. Taine,
writing of a time which was not so long ago that it need be forgotten,
“remember that during all these years women were paramount. They set
the social tone, led society, and thereby guided public opinion. When
they appeared in the vanguard of political progress, we may be sure
that the men were following.”
We might be sure of the same thing to-day, were it not for the tendency
of the modern woman to sever her rights and wrongs from the rights and
wrongs of men; thereby resembling the disputant who, being content to
receive half the severed baby, was adjudged by the wise Solomon to be
unworthy of any baby at all. Half a baby is every whit as valuable
as the half-measure of reform which fails to take into impartial
consideration the inseparable claims of men and women. Even in that
most vital of all reforms, the crusade against social evils, the
welfare of both sexes unifies the subject. Here again we are swayed by
our anger at the indifference of an earlier generation, at the hard and
healthy attitude of men like Huxley, who had not imagination enough to
identify the possible saint with the certain sinner, and who habitually
confined their labours to fields which promised sure results. “In my
judgment,” wrote Huxley, “a domestic servant, who is perhaps giving
half her wages to support her old parents, is more worthy of help than
half a dozen Magdalens.”
If we are forced to choose between them,--yes. But our esteem for
the servant’s self-respecting life, with its decent restraints and
its purely normal activities, need not necessarily harden our hearts
against the women whom Mr. Huxley called “Magdalens,” nor against those
whom we luridly designate as “white slaves.” No work under Heaven is
more imperative than the rescue of young and innocent girls; no crime
is more dastardly than the sale of their youth and innocence; no
charity is greater than that which lifts the sinner from her sin. But
the fact that we habitually apply the term “white slave” to the wilful
prostitute as well as to the entrapped child shows that a powerful and
popular sentiment is absolved from the shackles of accuracy. Also that
this absolution confuses the minds of men. The sentimentalist pities
the prostitute as a victim; the sociologist abhors her as a menace.
The sentimentalist conceives that men prey, and women are preyed upon;
the sociologist, aware that evil men and women prey upon one another
ceaselessly and ravenously, has no measure of mercy for sin. The
sentimentalist clings tenaciously to the association of youth with
innocence; the sociologist knows that even the age-limit which the law
fixes as a boundary-line of innocence has no corresponding restriction
in fact. It is inconceivable that so many books and pamphlets dealing
with this subject--books and pamphlets now to be found on every library
shelf, and in the hands of young and old--should dare to ignore the
balance of depravity, the swaying of the pendulum of vice.
A new and painful instance of the cost of modern sentiment is afforded
by the statement of Miss Addams and other pacifists that middle-aged
men are in favour of strengthened defences, and that young men oppose
them, as savouring of militarism; that middle-aged men cling to the
belief that war may be just and righteous, and that young men reject
it, as unreservedly and inevitably evil. I am loath to accept this
statement, as I am loath to accept all unpleasant statements; but if it
be--as I presume it is--based upon data, or upon careful observation,
it fits closely with my argument. The men under thirty are the men who
have done their thinking in an era of undiluted sentiment. The men
over forty were trained in a simpler, sterner creed. The call to duty
embraced for them the call to arms.
“A country’s a thing men should die for at need.”
Some of them remember the days when Americans died for their country,
and it is a recollection good for the soul. Again, the men over forty
were taught by men; the men under thirty were taught by women; and
the most dangerous economy practised by our extravagant Republic is
the eliminating of the male teacher from our public schools. It is no
insult to femininity to say that the feminization of boys is not a
desirable development.
It was thought and said a few years ago that the substitution of
organized charities for the somewhat haphazard benevolence of our
youth would exclude sentiment, just as it excluded human and personal
relations with the poor. It was thought and said that the steady
advance of women in commercial and civic life would correct the
sentimental bias which only Mr. Chesterton has failed to observe
in the sex. No one who reads books and newspapers, or listens to
speeches, or indulges in the pleasures of conversation can any longer
cherish these illusions. No one can fail to see that sentiment is
the motor power which drives us to intemperate words and actions;
which weakens our judgment, and destroys our sense of proportion. The
current phraseology, the current criticisms, the current enthusiasms
of the day, all betray an excess of emotionalism. I pick up a table
of statistics, furnishing economic data, and this is what I read:
“Case 3. Two children under five. Mother shortly expecting the supreme
trial of womanhood.” That is the way to write stories, and, possibly,
sermons; but it is not the way to write reports. I pick up a newspaper,
and learn that an Englishman visiting the United States has made the
interesting announcement that he is a reincarnation of one of the
Pharaohs, and that an attentive and credulous band of disciples are
gathering wisdom from his lips. I pick up a very serious and very
well-written book on the Brontë sisters, and am told that if I would
“touch the very heart of the mystery that was Charlotte Brontë” (I had
never been aware that there was anything mysterious about this famous
lady), I will find it--save the mark!--in her passionate love for
children.
“We are face to face here, not with a want, but with an abyss, depth
beyond depth of tenderness, and longing, and frustration; with a
passion that found no clear voice in her works because it was one with
the elemental nature in her, undefined, unuttered, unutterable!”
It was certainly unuttered. It was not even hinted at in Miss Brontë’s
novels, nor in her voluminous correspondence. Her attitude toward
children--so far as it found expression--was the arid but pardonable
attitude of one who had been their reluctant caretaker and teacher. If,
as we are now told, “there were moments when it was pain for Charlotte
to see the children born of and possessed by other women,” there were
certainly hours--so much she makes clear to us--in which the business
of looking after them wearied her beyond her powers of endurance. It
is true that Miss Brontë said a few, a very few friendly words about
these little people. She did not, like Swift, propose that babies
should be cooked and eaten. But this temperate regard, this restricted
benevolence, gives us no excuse for wallowing in sentiment at her
expense.
“If some virtues are new, all vices are old.” We can reckon the cost
of misdirected emotions by the price which the past has paid for them.
We know the full significance of that irresponsible sympathy which
grows hysterical over animals it should soberly protect; which accuses
the consumer of strange cruelties to the producer; which condones
lawbreaking and vindicates the lawbreaker; which admits no difference
between attack and resistance, between a war of aggression and a
war of defence; which confuses moral issues, ignores experience, and
insults the intelligence of mankind.
The reformer whose heart is in the right place, but whose head is
elsewhere, represents a waste of force; and we cannot afford any waste
in the conservation of honour and goodness. We cannot afford errors of
judgment, or errors of taste. The business of leading lives morally
worthy of men is neither simple nor easy. And there are moments when,
with the ageing Fontenelle, we sigh and say, “I am beginning to see
things as they are. It is surely time for me to die.”
Our Loss of Nerve
If any lover of Hogarth will look at the series of pictures which tell
the story of the Idle and the Industrious Apprentice, he will feel
that while the industrious apprentice fitted admirably into his time
and place, the idle apprentice had the misfortune to be born out of
date. In what a different spirit would his tragic tale be told to-day,
and what different emotions it would awaken. A poor tired boy, who
ought to be at school or at play, sleeping for very exhaustion at
his loom. A cruel boss daring to strike the worn-out lad. No better
playground given him in the scant leisure which Sunday brings than a
loathsome grave-yard. No healthier sport provided for him than gaming.
And, in the end, a lack of living wage forcing him to steal. Unhappy
apprentice, to have lived and sinned nearly two centuries too soon!
And as if this were not a fate bitter enough for tears, he must needs
have contrasted with him at every step an industrious companion, whom
that unenlightened age permitted to work as hard as he pleased, even
for the benefit of a master, and to build up his own fortunes on the
foundation of his own worth. Hogarth’s simple conception of personal
responsibility and of personal equation is as obsolete as the clumsy
looms at which his apprentices sit, and the full-skirted coats they
wear.
Yet the softening of the hard old rules, the rigid old standards, has
not tended to strengthen the fibre of our race. Nobody supposes that
the industrious apprentice had an enjoyable boyhood. As far as we
can see, going to church was his sole recreation, as it was probably
the principal recreation of his master’s daughter, whose hymn-book
he shares, and whom he duly marries. _Her_ home-life doubtless bore
a strong resemblance to the home-life of the tumultuous heroine of
“Fanny’s First Play,” who tells us with a heaving breast that she
never knew what a glorious thing life was until she had knocked out
a policeman’s tooth. Hogarth’s young lady would probably have cared
little for this form of exercise, even had the London policemen of 1748
been the chivalrous sufferers they were in 1911. She is a buxom, demure
damsel; and in her, as in the lad by her side, there is a suggestion
of reserve power. They are citizens in the making, prepared to accept
soberly the restrictions and responsibilities of citizenship, and to
follow with relish the star of their own destinies.
And all things considered, what can be better than to make a good
job out of a given piece of work? “That intricate web of normal
expectation,” which Mr. Gilbert Murray tells us is the very essence
of human society, provides incentives for reasonable men and women,
and provides also compensations for courage. What Mr. Murray calls
a “failure of nerve” in Greek philosophy and Greek religion is the
relaxing of effort, the letting down of obligation. With the asceticism
imposed, or at least induced, by Christianity, “the sacrifice of one
part of human nature to another, that it may live in what survives the
more completely,” he has but scant and narrow sympathy; but he explains
with characteristic clearness that the ideals of Greek citizenship
withered and died, because of a weakening of faith in normal human
resistance. “All the last manifestations of Hellenistic religion betray
a lack of nerve.”
It is with the best intentions in the world that we Americans are now
engaged in letting down the walls of human resistance, in lessening
personal obligation; and already the failure of nerve is apparent
on every side. We begin our kindly ministrations with the little
kindergarten scholar, to whom work is presented as play, and who is
expected to absorb the elements of education without conscious effort,
and certainly without compulsion. We encourage him to feel that the
business of his teacher is to keep him interested in his task, and that
he is justified in stopping short as soon as any mental process becomes
irksome or difficult. Indeed, I do not know why I permit myself the
use of the word “task,” since by common consent it is banished from
the vocabulary of school. Professor Gilman said it was a word which
should never be spoken by teacher, never heard by pupil, and no doubt a
kind-hearted public cordially agreed with him.
The firm old belief that the task is a valuable asset in education,
that the making of a good job out of a given piece of work is about
the highest thing on earth, has lost its hold upon the world. The firm
old disbelief in a royal road to learning has vanished long ago. All
knowledge, we are told, can be made so attractive that school-children
will absorb it with delight. If they are not absorbing it, the teacher
is to blame. Professor Wiener tells us that when his precocious little
son failed to acquire the multiplication tables, he took him away
from school, and let him study advanced mathematics. Whereupon the
child discovered the tables for himself. Mrs. John Macy, well known to
the community as the friend and instructor of Miss Helen Keller, has
informed a listening world that she does not see why a child should
study _anything_ in which he is not interested. “It is a waste of
energy.”
Naturally, it is hard to convince parents--who have the illusions
common to their estate--that while exceptional methods may answer for
exceptional cases (little William Pitt, for instance, was trained from
early boyhood to be a prime minister), common methods have their value
for the rank and file. It is harder still to make them understand
that enjoyment cannot with safety be accepted as a determining factor
in education, and that the mental and moral discipline which comes of
hard and perhaps unwilling study is worth a mine of pleasantly acquired
information. It is not, after all, a smattering of chemistry, or an
acquaintance with the habits of bees, which will carry our children
through life; but a capacity for doing what they do not want to do,
if it be a thing which needs to be done. They will have to do many
things they do not want to do later on, if their lives are going to be
worth the living, and the sooner they learn to stand to their guns,
the better for them, and for all those whose welfare will lie in their
hands.
The assumption that children should never be coerced into self-control,
and never confronted with difficulties, makes for failure of nerve.
The assumption that young people should never be burdened with
responsibilities, and never, under any stress of circumstances,
be deprived of the pleasures which are no longer a privilege, but
their sacred and inalienable right, makes for failure of nerve. The
assumption that married women are justified in abandoning their
domestic duties, because they cannot stand the strain of home-life
and housekeeping, makes for failure of nerve. The assumption that
invalids must yield to invalidism, must isolate themselves from common
currents of life, and from strong and stern incentives to recovery,
makes for failure of nerve. The assumption that religion should content
itself with persuasiveness, and that morality should be sparing in its
demands, makes for failure of nerve. The assumption that a denial of
civic rights constitutes a release from moral obligations makes for
such a shattering failure of nerve that it brings insanity in its wake.
And the assumption that poverty justifies prostitution, or exonerates
the prostitute, lets down the last walls of human resistance. It
is easier to find a royal road to learning than a royal road to
self-mastery and self-respect.
A student of Mr. Whistler’s once said to him that she did not want to
paint in the low tones he recommended; she wanted to keep her colours
clear and bright. “Then,” replied Mr. Whistler, “you must keep them
in your tubes. It is the only way.” If we want bright colours and
easy methods, we must stay in our tubes, and avoid the inevitable
complications of life by careful and consistent uselessness. We may
nurse our nerves in comfortable seclusion at home, or we may brace
them with travel and change of scene. It does not matter; we are
tube-dwellers under any skies. We may be so dependent upon amusements
that we never call them anything but duties; or we may be as devout as
La Fontaine’s rat, which piously retired from the society of other rats
into the heart of a Dutch cheese. We may be so rich that the world
forgives us, or so poor that the world exonerates us. In each and every
case we destroy life at the roots by a denial of its obligations, a
fear of its difficulties, an indifference to its common rewards.
The seriousness of our age expresses itself in eloquent demands for
gayety. The gospel of cheerfulness, I had almost said the gospel of
amusement, is preached by people who lack experience to people who
lack vitality. There is a vague impression that the world would be
a good world if it were only happy, that it would be happy if it
were amused, and that it would be amused if plenty of artificial
recreation--that recreation for which we are now told every community
stands responsible--were provided for its entertainment.
A few years ago an English clergyman made an eloquent appeal to
the public, affirming that London’s crying need was a score of
“Pleasure-Palaces,” supported by taxpayers, and free as the Roman
games. Gladiators being, indeed, out of date, lions costly, and martyrs
very scarce, some milder and simpler form of diversion was to be
substituted for the vigorous sports of Rome. Comic songs and acrobats
were, in the reverend gentleman’s opinion, the appointed agents for the
regeneration of the London poor. It is worthy of note that the drama
did not occur to him as a bigger and broader pastime. It is worthy of
note that the drama is fast losing ground with the proletariat, once
its staunch upholders. A very hard-thinking English writer, Mr. J. G.
Leigh, sees in the substitution of cheap vaudeville for cheap melodrama
an indication of what he calls loss of stamina, and of what Mr. Murray
calls loss of nerve. “When the sturdy melodrama, with its foiled
villainy and triumphant virtue, ceases to allure, and people want in
its place the vulgar vapidities of the vaudeville, we may be sure
there is a spirit of sluggish impotence in the air.”
To-day the moving pictures present the most triumphant form of cheap
entertainment. They are good of their kind, and there is a visible
effort to make them better; but the “special features” by which they
are accompanied in the ten-and fifteen-cent shows,--the shrill songs,
the dull jokes, the clumsy clog-dances,--are all of an incredible
badness. Compared with them, the worst of plays seems good, and the
ill-paid actors who storm and sob through “Alone in a Great City,” or
“No Wedding Bells for Her,” assume heroic proportions, as ministering
to the emotions of the heart.
The question of amusement is one with which all classes are deeply
concerned. _Le Monde où l’on s’amuse_ is no longer the narrow world
of fashion. It has extended its border lines to embrace humanity.
It is no longer an exclusively adult world. The pleasures of youth
have become something too important for interference, too sacred for
denial. Whatever may be happening to parents, whatever their cares and
anxieties, the sons and daughters must lose none of the gayeties now
held essential to their happiness. They are trained to a selfishness
which is foreign to their natures, and which does them grievous wrong.
A few years ago I asked an acquaintance about her mother, with whom she
lived, and who was, I knew, incurably ill. “She is no better,” said the
lady disconsolately, “and I must say it is very hard on my children.
They cannot have any of their young friends in the house. They cannot
entertain. They have been cut off from all social pleasures this
winter.”
I said it was a matter of regret, and I forbore to add that the poor
invalid would probably have been glad to die a little sooner, had she
been given the chance. It was not the mere selfishness of old age which
kept her so long about it. Yet neither was my acquaintance the callous
creature that she seemed. Left to herself, she would not have begrudged
her mother the time to die; but she had been deeply imbued with the
conviction that young people in general, and her own children in
particular, should never be saddened, or depressed, or asked to assume
responsibilities, or be called upon for self-denial. She was preparing
them carefully for that failure of nerve which would make them impotent
in the stress of life.
The desire of the modern philanthropist to provide amusement for the
working-classes is based upon the determination of the working classes
to be amused. He is as keen that the poor shall have their fill of
dancing, as Dickens, in his less enlightened age, was keen that the
poor should have their fill of beer. He knows that it is natural for
young men and women to crave diversion, and that it is right for them
to have it. What he does not clearly understand, what Dickens did
not clearly understand, is that to crave either amusement or drink so
weakly that we cannot conquer our craving, is to be worthless in a
work-a-day world.
And worse than worthless in a world which is called upon for heroism
and high resolve. A cruel lesson taught by the war is the degeneracy
of the British workman, who, in the hour of his country’s need, has
clung basely to his ease and his sottishness. What does it avail that
English gentlemen fling away their lives with unshrinking courage,
when the common people, from whose sturdy spirit England was wont to
draw her strength, have shrivelled into a craven apathy. The contempt
of the British soldier for the British artisan is not the contempt of
the fighting man for the man of peace. It is the loathing of the man
who has accepted his trust for the man who can do and bear nothing;
who cries out if his drink is touched, who cries out if his work is
heavy, who cries out if his hours are lengthened, who has parted with
his manhood, and does not want it back. Whatever England has needed for
the regeneration of her sons, it was certainly not “pleasure-palaces”
and cheap amusements. The “sluggish impotence” which Mr. Leigh observed
four years ago, did not call, and does not call, for relaxation. The
only cure will be so stern that no one cares to prophesy its coming.
And Americans! Well, thousands of people bearing that name assembled
in New York on the 13th of November, 1915, under the auspices of
the Woman’s Peace Party, and amused themselves by denouncing the
Administration, howling down all mention of national defence, and
jeering every time the word patriotism (which we used to think a noble
word) was spoken in their hearing. Men endeared themselves to the
audience by declaring that they would not risk their all too precious
lives to fight for any cause, and women intelligently asked why a
foreign rule would not be just as good as a home one. They did not seem
aware that Brussels was having a less enviable time than Boston or
Milwaukee. Profound foolishness swayed the audience, abysmal ignorance
soothed it. There was an abundant showing of childish irrationality;
there was the apathy which befits old age; but of intelligence or of
virility there was nothing.
This loss of nerve, this “weakening of faith in normal human
resistance,” means the disintegration of citizenship. It is the sudden
call to manhood which shows us where manhood is not to be found. We
Americans, begirt by sentiment, mindful of our ease, and spared for
more than half-a-century from ennobling self-sacrifice, have been
seeking smooth and facile methods of reform. The world, grown old
in ill-doing, responds nimbly to our offers of amusement, but balks
at the austere virtues which no cajolery can disguise. The more it
is amused, the more it assumes amusement to be its due; and this
assumption receives the support and encouragement of those whose
experience must have taught them its perils.
Miss Jane Addams, in her careful study of the Chicago streets, speaks
of the “pleasure-loving girl who demands that each evening shall bring
her some measure of recreation.” Miss Addams admits that such a girl is
beset by nightly dangers, but does not appear to think her attitude an
unnatural or an unreasonable one. A very able and intelligent woman who
has worked hard for the establishment of decently conducted dance-halls
in New York,--dance-halls sorely needed to supplant the vicious places
of entertainment where drink and degradation walk hand in hand,--was
asked at a public meeting whether the girls for whose welfare she was
pleading never stayed at home. “Never,” was the firm reply, “and
will you pardon me for saying, Neither do you.” The retort provoked
laughter, because the young married woman who had put the question
probably never did spend a night at home, unless she were entertaining.
She represented a social summit,--a combination of health, wealth,
beauty, charm and high spirits. But there were scores of girls and
women in the audience who spent many nights at home. There are hundreds
of girls and women in what are called fashionable circles who spend
many nights at home. There are thousands of girls and women in more
modest circumstances who spend many nights at home. If this were not
the case, our cities would soon present a spectacle of demoralization.
They would be chaotic on the surface, and rotten at the core.