Before the hustling days of ice and of "cutters" rushing to and fro
between Billingsgate and our fleets of steam-trawlers on the Dogger
Bank, most sailing trawlers and long-line fishing-boats were built with
a large tank in their holds, through which the sea flowed freely. Dutch
eel-boats are built so still, and along the quays of Amsterdam and
Copenhagen you may see such tanks in fishing-boats of almost every kind.
Our East Coast fishermen kept them chiefly for cod. They hoped thus to
bring the fish fresh and good to market, for, unless they were
overcrowded, the cod lived quite as contentedly in the tanks as in the
open sea. But in one respect the fishermen were disappointed. They found
that the fish arrived slack, flabby, and limp, though well fed and in
apparent health.
Perplexity reigned (for the value of the catch was much diminished)
until some fisherman of genius conjectured that the cod lived only too
contentedly in those tanks, and suffered from the atrophy of calm. The
cod is by nature a lethargic, torpid, and plethoric creature, prone to
inactivity, content to lie in comfort, swallowing all that comes, with
cavernous mouth wide open, big enough to gulp its own body down if that
could be. In the tanks the cod rotted at ease, rapidly deteriorating in
their flesh. So, as a stimulating corrective, that genius among
fishermen inserted one catfish into each of his tanks, and found that
his cod came to market firm, brisk, and wholesome. Which result remained
a mystery until his death, when the secret was published and a strange
demand for catfish arose. For the catfish is the demon of the deep, and
keeps things lively.
This irritating but salutary stimulant in the tank (to say nothing of
the myriad catfishes in the depths of ocean!) has often reminded me of
what the Lord says to Mephistopheles in the Prologue to _Faust_. After
observing that, of all the spirits that deny, He finds a knave the least
of a bore, the Lord proceeds:
"Des Menschen Thätigkeit kann allzuleicht erschlaffen,
Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh;
Drum geb' ich ihm gern den Gesellen zu,
Der reizt und wirkt und muss als Teufel, schaffen."
Is not the parallel remarkable? Man's activity, like the cod's, turns
too readily to slumber; he is much too fond of unconditioned ease; and
so the Lord gives him a comrade like a catfish, to stimulate, rouse, and
drive to creation, as a devil may. There sprawls man, by nature
lethargic and torpid as a cod, prone to inactivity, content to lie in
comfort swallowing all that comes, with wide-open mouth, big enough to
gulp himself down, if that could be. There he sprawls, rotting at ease,
and rapidly deteriorating in body and soul, till one little demon of the
spiritual deep is inserted into his surroundings, and makes him firm,
brisk, and wholesome in a trice--"in half a jiffy," as people used to
say.
"Der reizt und wirkt"--the words necessarily recall a much older parable
than the catfish--the parable of the little leaven inserted in a piece
of dough until it leavens the whole lump by its "working," as cooks and
bakers know. Goethe may have been thinking of that. Leaven is a sour,
almost poisonous kind of stuff, working as though by magic, moving in a
mysterious way, causing the solid and impracticable dough to upheave, to
rise, expand, bubble, swell, and spout like a volcano. To all races
there has been something devilish, or at least demonic, in the action of
leaven. It is true that in the ancient parable the comparison lay
between leaven and the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven was like
a little leaven that leavens the whole lump, and Goethe says that
Mephisto, one of the Princes of Evil, also works like that. But whether
we call the leaven a good or evil thing makes little difference. The
effect of its mysterious powers of movement and upheaval is in the end
salutary. It works upon the lump just as the catfish, that demon of the
deep, preserves the lumpish cod from the apathy and degeneration of
comfort, and as Mephisto, that demon of the world, acts upon the
lethargy of mankind working within him, stimulating, driving to
production as a devil may.
"A society needs to have a ferment in it," said Professor Sumner of
Yale, in his published essays. Sometimes, he said, the ferment takes the
form of an enthusiastic delusion or an adventurous folly; sometimes
merely of economic opportunity and hope of luxury; in other ages
frequently of war. And, indeed, it was of war that he was writing,
though himself a pacific man, and in all respects a thinker of
obstinate caution. A society needs to have a ferment in it--a leaven, a
catfish, a Mephisto, the queer, unpleasant, disturbing touch of the
kingdom of heaven. Take any period of calm and rest in the life of the
world or the history of the arts. Take that period which great
historians have agreed to praise as the happiest of human ages--the age
of the Antonines. How benign and unruffled it was! What bland and
leisurely culture could be enjoyed in exquisite villas beside the
Mediterranean, or in flourishing municipalities along the Rhone! Many a
cultivated and comfortable man must have wished that reasonable peace to
last for ever. The civilised world was bathed in the element of calm,
the element of gentle acquiescence. All looked so quiet, so
imperturbable; and yet all the time the little catfish of Christianity
(or the little leaven, if you will) was at its work, irritating,
disturbing, stimulating with salutary energy to upheaval, to rebellion,
to the soul's activity that saves from bland and reasonable despair.
Like a fisherman over-anxious for the peace of the cod in his tank, the
philosophic Emperor tried to stamp the catfish down, and hoped to
preserve a philosophic quietude by the martyrdom of Christians in those
flourishing municipalities on the Rhone. Of course he failed, as even
the most humane and philosophic persecutors usually fail, but had he
succeeded, would not the soul of Europe have degenerated into a
flabbiness, lethargy, and desperate peace?
Take history where you will, when a new driving force enters the world,
it is a nuisance, a disturbing upheaval, a troubling agitation, a
plaguey fish. Think how the tiresome Reformation disturbed the artists
of Italy and Renaissance scholars; or how Cromwell disgusted the
half-way moderates, how the Revolution jogged the sentimental theorists
of France, how Kant shattered the Supreme Being of the Deists, and Byron
set the conventions of art and life tottering aghast. Take it where you
will, the approach of the soul's catfish is watched with apprehension
and violent dislike, all the more because it saves from torpor. It saves
from what Hamlet calls--
"That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat--
Of habits devil."
In the Futurist exhibition held in Sackville Street in 1912, one of the
most notable pictures was called "Rebellion." The catalogue told us that
it represented "the collision of two forces, that of the revolutionary
element made up of enthusiasm and red lyricism against the force of
inertia and the reactionary resistance of tradition." The picture showed
a crowd of scarlet figures rushing forward in a wedge. Before them went
successive wedge-shaped lines, impinging upon dull blue. They
represented, we were told, the vibratory waves of the revolutionary
element in motion. The force of inertia and the reactionary resistance
of tradition were pictured as rows on rows of commonplace streets. The
waves of the revolutionary element had knocked them all askew. Though
they still stood firmly side by side to all appearance (to keep up
appearances, as we say) they were all knocked aslant, "just as a boxer
is bent double by receiving a blow in the wind."
We may be sure that inertia in all its monotonous streets does not like
such treatment. It likes it no more than the plethoric cod likes the
catfish close behind its tail. And it is no consolation either to
inertia or cod to say that this disturbing element serves an ultimate
good, rendering it alert, firm, and wholesome of flesh. However
salutary, the catfish is far from popular among the placid residents of
the tank, and it is fortunate that neither in tanks nor streets can the
advisability of catfish or change be submitted to the referendum of the
inert. In neither case would the necessary steps for advance in health
and activity be adopted. To be sure, it is just possible to overdo the
number of catfish in one tank. At present in this country, for instance,
and, indeed, in the whole world, there seem to be more catfish than cod,
and the resulting liveliness is perhaps a little excessive, a little
"jumpy." But in the midst of all the violence, turmoil, and upheaval, it
is hopeful to remember that of the deepest and most salutary change
which Europe has known it was divinely foretold that it would bring not
peace but a sword.