helping Life in its struggle upward. Think of how it wastes and scatters
itself, how it raises up obstacles to itself and destroys itself in its
ignorance and blindness. It needs a brain, this irresistible force, lest
in its ignorance it should resist itself. What a piece of work is man!
says the poet. Yes: but what a blunderer! Here is the highest miracle of
organization yet attained by life, the most intensely alive thing that
exists, the most conscious of all the organisms; and yet, how wretched
are his brains! Stupidity made sordid and cruel by the realities learnt
from toil and poverty: Imagination resolved to starve sooner than face
these realities, piling up illusions to hide them, and calling itself
cleverness, genius! And each accusing the other of its own defect:
Stupidity accusing Imagination of folly, and Imagination accusing
Stupidity of ignorance: whereas, alas! Stupidity has all the knowledge,
and Imagination all the intelligence.
THE DEVIL. And a pretty kettle of fish they make of it between them. Did
I not say, when I was arranging that affair of Faust's, that all Man's
reason has done for him is to make him beastlier than any beast. One
splendid body is worth the brains of a hundred dyspeptic, flatulent
philosophers.
DON JUAN. You forget that brainless magnificence of body has been tried.
Things immeasurably greater than man in every respect but brain have
existed and perished. The megatherium, the icthyosaurus have paced the
earth with seven-league steps and hidden the day with cloud vast wings.
Where are they now? Fossils in museums, and so few and imperfect at
that, that a knuckle bone or a tooth of one of them is prized beyond the
lives of a thousand soldiers. These things lived and wanted to live; but
for lack of brains they did not know how to carry out their purpose, and
so destroyed themselves.
THE DEVIL. And is Man any the less destroying himself for all this
boasted brain of his? Have you walked up and down upon the earth lately?
I have; and I have examined Man's wonderful inventions. And I tell you
that in the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death
he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all
the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine. The peasant I tempt
to-day eats and drinks what was eaten and drunk by the peasants of ten
thousand years ago; and the house he lives in has not altered as much
in a thousand centuries as the fashion of a lady's bonnet in a score of
weeks. But when he goes out to slay, he carries a marvel of mechanism
that lets loose at the touch of his finger all the hidden molecular
energies, and leaves the javelin, the arrow, the blowpipe of his fathers
far behind. In the arts of peace Man is a bungler. I have seen his
cotton factories and the like, with machinery that a greedy dog could
have invented if it had wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy
typewriters and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys
compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing
in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in
his weapons. This marvellous force of Life of which you boast is a force
of Death: Man measures his strength by his destructiveness. What is
his religion? An excuse for hating ME. What is his law? An excuse for
hanging YOU. What is his morality? Gentility! an excuse for consuming
without producing. What is his art? An excuse for gloating over pictures
of slaughter. What are his politics? Either the worship of a despot
because a despot can kill, or parliamentary cockfighting. I spent an
evening lately in a certain celebrated legislature, and heard the
pot lecturing the kettle for its blackness, and ministers answering
questions. When I left I chalked up on the door the old nursery
saying--"Ask no questions and you will be told no lies." I bought a
sixpenny family magazine, and found it full of pictures of young men
shooting and stabbing one another. I saw a man die: he was a London
bricklayer's laborer with seven children. He left seventeen pounds
club money; and his wife spent it all on his funeral and went into
the workhouse with the children next day. She would not have spent
sevenpence on her children's schooling: the law had to force her to let
them be taught gratuitously; but on death she spent all she had. Their
imagination glows, their energies rise up at the idea of death, these
people: they love it; and the more horrible it is the more they enjoy
it. Hell is a place far above their comprehension: they derive their
notion of it from two of the greatest fools that ever lived, an Italian
and an Englishman. The Italian described it as a place of mud, frost,
filth, fire, and venomous serpents: all torture. This ass, when he was
not lying about me, was maundering about some woman whom he saw once in
the street. The Englishman described me as being expelled from Heaven
by cannons and gunpowder; and to this day every Briton believes that
the whole of his silly story is in the Bible. What else he says I do not
know; for it is all in a long poem which neither I nor anyone else ever
succeeded in wading through. It is the same in everything. The highest
form of literature is the tragedy, a play in which everybody is
murdered at the end. In the old chronicles you read of earthquakes and
pestilences, and are told that these showed the power and majesty of God
and the littleness of Man. Nowadays the chronicles describe battles.
In a battle two bodies of men shoot at one another with bullets and
explosive shells until one body runs away, when the others chase the
fugitives on horseback and cut them to pieces as they fly. And this, the
chronicle concludes, shows the greatness and majesty of empires, and the
littleness of the vanquished. Over such battles the people run about
the streets yelling with delight, and egg their Governments on to spend
hundreds of millions of money in the slaughter, whilst the strongest
Ministers dare not spend an extra penny in the pound against the poverty
and pestilence through which they themselves daily walk. I could give
you a thousand instances; but they all come to the same thing: the power
that governs the earth is not the power of Life but of Death; and the
inner need that has nerved Life to the effort of organizing itself into
the human being is not the need for higher life but for a more efficient
engine of destruction. The plague, the famine, the earthquake, the
tempest were too spasmodic in their action; the tiger and crocodile were
too easily satiated and not cruel enough: something more constantly,
more ruthlessly, more ingeniously destructive was needed; and that
something was Man, the inventor of the rack, the stake, the gallows,
and the electrocutor; of the sword and gun; above all, of justice, duty,
patriotism and all the other isms by which even those who are clever
enough to be humanely disposed are persuaded to become the most
destructive of all the destroyers.
DON JUAN. Pshaw! all this is old. Your weak side, my diabolic friend,
is that you have always been a gull: you take Man at his own valuation.
Nothing would flatter him more than your opinion of him. He loves to
think of himself as bold and bad. He is neither one nor the other: he
is only a coward. Call him tyrant, murderer, pirate, bully; and he will
adore you, and swagger about with the consciousness of having the blood
of the old sea kings in his veins. Call him liar and thief; and he will
only take an action against you for libel. But call him coward; and
he will go mad with rage: he will face death to outface that stinging
truth. Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for
his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is
his cowardice. Yet all his civilization is founded on his cowardice, on
his abject tameness, which he calls his respectability. There are limits
to what a mule or an ass will stand; but Man will suffer himself to be
degraded until his vileness becomes so loathsome to his oppressors that
they themselves are forced to reform it.
THE DEVIL. Precisely. And these are the creatures in whom you discover
what you call a Life Force!
DON JUAN. Yes; for now comes the most surprising part of the whole
business.
THE STATUE. What's that?
DON JUAN. Why, that you can make any of these cowards brave by simply
putting an idea into his head.
THE STATUE. Stuff! As an old soldier I admit the cowardice: it's as
universal as sea sickness, and matters just as little. But that about
putting an idea into a man's head is stuff and nonsense. In a battle all
you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that
it's more dangerous to lose than to win.
DON JUAN. That is perhaps why battles are so useless. But men never
really overcome fear until they imagine they are fighting to further a
universal purpose--fighting for an idea, as they call it. Why was the
Crusader braver than the pirate? Because he fought, not for himself, but
for the Cross. What force was it that met him with a valor as reckless
as his own? The force of men who fought, not for themselves, but for
Islam. They took Spain from us, though we were fighting for our very
hearths and homes; but when we, too, fought for that mighty idea, a
Catholic Church, we swept them back to Africa.
THE DEVIL. [ironically] What! you a Catholic, Senor Don Juan! A devotee!
My congratulations.
THE STATUE. [seriously] Come come! as a soldier, I can listen to nothing
against the Church.
DON JUAN. Have no fear, Commander: this idea of a Catholic Church will
survive Islam, will survive the Cross, will survive even that vulgar
pageant of incompetent schoolboyish gladiators which you call the Army.
THE STATUE. Juan: you will force me to call you to account for this.
DON JUAN. Useless: I cannot fence. Every idea for which Man will die
will be a Catholic idea. When the Spaniard learns at last that he is no
better than the Saracen, and his prophet no better than Mahomet, he will
arise, more Catholic than ever, and die on a barricade across the filthy
slum he starves in, for universal liberty and equality.
THE STATUE. Bosh!
DON JUAN. What you call bosh is the only thing men dare die for.
Later on, Liberty will not be Catholic enough: men will die for human
perfection, to which they will sacrifice all their liberty gladly.
THE DEVIL. Ay: they will never be at a loss for an excuse for killing
one another.
DON JUAN. What of that? It is not death that matters, but the fear of
death. It is not killing and dying that degrade us, but base living, and
accepting the wages and profits of degradation. Better ten dead men than
one live slave or his master. Men shall yet rise up, father against son
and brother against brother, and kill one another for the great Catholic
idea of abolishing slavery.
THE DEVIL. Yes, when the Liberty and Equality of which you prate shall
have made free white Christians cheaper in the labor market than by
auction at the block.
DON JUAN. Never fear! the white laborer shall have his turn too. But
I am not now defending the illusory forms the great ideas take. I am
giving you examples of the fact that this creature Man, who in his own
selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like
a hero. He may be abject as a citizen; but he is dangerous as a fanatic.
He can only be enslaved whilst he is spiritually weak enough to listen
to reason. I tell you, gentlemen, if you can show a man a piece of what
he now calls God's work to do, and what he will later on call by many
new names, you can make him entirely reckless of the consequences to
himself personally.
ANA. Yes: he shirks all his responsibilities, and leaves his wife to
grapple with them.
THE STATUE. Well said, daughter. Do not let him talk you out of your
common sense.
THE DEVIL. Alas! Senor Commander, now that we have got on to the subject
of Woman, he will talk more than ever. However, I confess it is for me
the one supremely interesting subject.
DON JUAN. To a woman, Senora, man's duties and responsibilities begin
and end with the task of getting bread for her children. To her, Man is
only a means to the end of getting children and rearing them.
ANA. Is that your idea of a woman's mind? I call it cynical and
disgusting materialism.
DON JUAN. Pardon me, Ana: I said nothing about a woman's whole mind. I
spoke of her view of Man as a separate sex. It is no more cynical than
her view of herself as above all things a Mother. Sexually, Woman is
Nature's contrivance for perpetuating its highest achievement. Sexually,
Man is Woman's contrivance for fulfilling Nature's behest in the most
economical way. She knows by instinct that far back in the evolutional
process she invented him, differentiated him, created him in order to
produce something better than the single-sexed process can produce.
Whilst he fulfils the purpose for which she made him, he is welcome to
his dreams, his follies, his ideals, his heroisms, provided that the
keystone of them all is the worship of woman, of motherhood, of the
family, of the hearth. But how rash and dangerous it was to invent a
separate creature whose sole function was her own impregnation! For mark
what has happened. First, Man has multiplied on her hands until there
are as many men as women; so that she has been unable to employ for her
purposes more than a fraction of the immense energy she has left at
his disposal by saving him the exhausting labor of gestation. This
superfluous energy has gone to his brain and to his muscle. He has
become too strong to be controlled by her bodily, and too imaginative
and mentally vigorous to be content with mere self-reproduction. He has
created civilization without consulting her, taking her domestic labor
for granted as the foundation of it.
ANA. THAT is true, at all events.
THE DEVIL. Yes; and this civilization! what is it, after all?
DON JUAN. After all, an excellent peg to hang your cynical commonplaces
on; but BEFORE all, it is an attempt on Man's part to make himself
something more than the mere instrument of Woman's purpose. So far, the
result of Life's continual effort not only to maintain itself, but to
achieve higher and higher organization and completer self-consciousness,
is only, at best, a doubtful campaign between its forces and those of
Death and Degeneration. The battles in this campaign are mere blunders,
mostly won, like actual military battles, in spite of the commanders.
THE STATUE. That is a dig at me. No matter: go on, go on.
DON JUAN. It is a dig at a much higher power than you, Commander. Still,
you must have noticed in your profession that even a stupid general can
win battles when the enemy's general is a little stupider.
THE STATUE. [very seriously] Most true, Juan, most true. Some donkeys
have amazing luck.
DON JUAN. Well, the Life Force is stupid; but it is not so stupid as the
forces of Death and Degeneration. Besides, these are in its pay all
the time. And so Life wins, after a fashion. What mere copiousness of
fecundity can supply and mere greed preserve, we possess. The survival
of whatever form of civilization can produce the best rifle and the best
fed riflemen is assured.
THE DEVIL. Exactly! the survival, not of the most effective means of
Life but of the most effective means of Death. You always come back to
my point, in spite of your wrigglings and evasions and sophistries, not
to mention the intolerable length of your speeches.
DON JUAN. Oh come! who began making long speeches? However, if I overtax
your intellect, you can leave us and seek the society of love and beauty
and the rest of your favorite boredoms.
THE DEVIL. [much offended] This is not fair, Don Juan, and not civil. I
am also on the intellectual plane. Nobody can appreciate it more than
I do. I am arguing fairly with you, and, I think, utterly refuting you.
Let us go on for another hour if you like.
DON JUAN. Good: let us.
THE STATUE. Not that I see any prospect of your coming to any point in
particular, Juan. Still, since in this place, instead of merely killing
time we have to kill eternity, go ahead by all means.
DON JUAN. [somewhat impatiently] My point, you marbleheaded old
masterpiece, is only a step ahead of you. Are we agreed that Life is a
force which has made innumerable experiments in organizing itself; that
the mammoth and the man, the mouse and the megatherium, the flies and
the fleas and the Fathers of the Church, are all more or less successful
attempts to build up that raw force into higher and higher individuals,
the ideal individual being omnipotent, omniscient, infallible, and
withal completely, unilludedly self-conscious: in short, a god?
THE DEVIL. I agree, for the sake of argument.
THE STATUE. I agree, for the sake of avoiding argument.
ANA. I most emphatically disagree as regards the Fathers of the Church;
and I must beg you not to drag them into the argument.
DON JUAN. I did so purely for the sake of alliteration, Ana; and I
shall make no further allusion to them. And now, since we are, with that
exception, agreed so far, will you not agree with me further that Life
has not measured the success of its attempts at godhead by the beauty or
bodily perfection of the result, since in both these respects the birds,
as our friend Aristophanes long ago pointed out, are so extraordinarily
superior, with their power of flight and their lovely plumage, and,
may I add, the touching poetry of their loves and nestings, that it is
inconceivable that Life, having once produced them, should, if love
and beauty were her object, start off on another line and labor at the
clumsy elephant and the hideous ape, whose grandchildren we are?
ANA. Aristophanes was a heathen; and you, Juan, I am afraid, are very
little better.
THE DEVIL. You conclude, then, that Life was driving at clumsiness and
ugliness?
DON JUAN. No, perverse devil that you are, a thousand times no. Life
was driving at brains--at its darling object: an organ by which it can
attain not only self-consciousness but self-understanding.
THE STATUE. This is metaphysics, Juan. Why the devil should--[to the
Devil] I BEG your pardon.
THE DEVIL. Pray don't mention it. I have always regarded the use of my
name to secure additional emphasis as a high compliment to me. It is
quite at your service, Commander.
THE STATUE. Thank you: that's very good of you. Even in heaven, I never
quite got out of my old military habits of speech. What I was going to
ask Juan was why Life should bother itself about getting a brain. Why
should it want to understand itself? Why not be content to enjoy itself?
DON JUAN. Without a brain, Commander, you would enjoy yourself without
knowing it, and so lose all the fun.
THE STATUE. True, most true. But I am quite content with brain enough to
know that I'm enjoying myself. I don't want to understand why. In
fact, I'd rather not. My experience is that one's pleasures don't bear
thinking about.
DON JUAN. That is why intellect is so unpopular. But to Life, the force
behind the Man, intellect is a necessity, because without it he blunders
into death. Just as Life, after ages of struggle, evolved that wonderful
bodily organ the eye, so that the living organism could see where it
was going and what was coming to help or threaten it, and thus avoid
a thousand dangers that formerly slew it, so it is evolving to-day a
mind's eye that shall see, not the physical world, but the purpose of
Life, and thereby enable the individual to work for that purpose instead
of thwarting and baffling it by setting up shortsighted personal aims as
at present. Even as it is, only one sort of man has ever been happy, has
ever been universally respected among all the conflicts of interests and
illusions.
THE STATUE. You mean the military man.
DON JUAN. Commander: I do not mean the military man. When the military
man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs off its
womankind. No: I sing, not arms and the hero, but the philosophic man:
he who seeks in contemplation to discover the inner will of the world,
in invention to discover the means of fulfilling that will, and in
action to do that will by the so-discovered means. Of all other sorts
of men I declare myself tired. They're tedious failures. When I was on
earth, professors of all sorts prowled round me feeling for an unhealthy
spot in me on which they could fasten. The doctors of medicine bade me
consider what I must do to save my body, and offered me quack cures for
imaginary diseases. I replied that I was not a hypochondriac; so they
called me Ignoramus and went their way. The doctors of divinity bade
me consider what I must do to save my soul; but I was not a spiritual
hypochondriac any more than a bodily one, and would not trouble myself
about that either; so they called me Atheist and went their way. After
them came the politician, who said there was only one purpose in Nature,
and that was to get him into parliament. I told him I did not care
whether he got into parliament or not; so he called me Mugwump and went
his way. Then came the romantic man, the Artist, with his love songs and
his paintings and his poems; and with him I had great delight for many
years, and some profit; for I cultivated my senses for his sake; and
his songs taught me to hear better, his paintings to see better, and
his poems to feel more deeply. But he led me at last into the worship of
Woman.
ANA. Juan!
DON JUAN. Yes: I came to believe that in her voice was all the music of
the song, in her face all the beauty of the painting, and in her soul
all the emotion of the poem.
ANA. And you were disappointed, I suppose. Well, was it her fault that
you attributed all these perfections to her?
DON JUAN. Yes, partly. For with a wonderful instinctive cunning, she
kept silent and allowed me to glorify her; to mistake my own visions,
thoughts, and feelings for hers. Now my friend the romantic man was
often too poor or too timid to approach those women who were beautiful
or refined enough to seem to realize his ideal; and so he went to his
grave believing in his dream. But I was more favored by nature and
circumstance. I was of noble birth and rich; and when my person did
not please, my conversation flattered, though I generally found myself
fortunate in both.
THE STATUE. Coxcomb!
DON JUAN. Yes; but even my coxcombry pleased. Well, I found that when I
had touched a woman's imagination, she would allow me to persuade myself
that she loved me; but when my suit was granted she never said "I am
happy: my love is satisfied": she always said, first, "At last, the
barriers are down," and second, "When will you come again?"
ANA. That is exactly what men say.
DON JUAN. I protest I never said it. But all women say it. Well, these
two speeches always alarmed me; for the first meant that the lady's
impulse had been solely to throw down my fortifications and gain my
citadel; and the second openly announced that henceforth she regarded me
as her property, and counted my time as already wholly at her disposal.
THE DEVIL. That is where your want of heart came in.
THE STATUE. [shaking his head] You shouldn't repeat what a woman says,
Juan.
ANA. [severely] It should be sacred to you.
THE STATUE. Still, they certainly do always say it. I never minded the
barriers; but there was always a slight shock about the other, unless
one was very hard hit indeed.
DON JUAN. Then the lady, who had been happy and idle enough before,
became anxious, preoccupied with me, always intriguing, conspiring,
pursuing, watching, waiting, bent wholly on making sure of her prey--I
being the prey, you understand. Now this was not what I had bargained
for. It may have been very proper and very natural; but it was not
music, painting, poetry and joy incarnated in a beautiful woman. I ran
away from it. I ran away from it very often: in fact I became famous for
running away from it.
ANA. Infamous, you mean.
DON JUAN. I did not run away from you. Do you blame me for running away
from the others?
ANA. Nonsense, man. You are talking to a woman of 77 now. If you had had
the chance, you would have run away from me too--if I had let you. You
would not have found it so easy with me as with some of the others. If
men will not be faithful to their home and their duties, they must be
made to be. I daresay you all want to marry lovely incarnations of music
and painting and poetry. Well, you can't have them, because they
don't exist. If flesh and blood is not good enough for you you must
go without: that's all. Women have to put up with flesh-and-blood
husbands--and little enough of that too, sometimes; and you will have to
put up with flesh-and-blood wives. The Devil looks dubious. The Statue
makes a wry face. I see you don't like that, any of you; but it's true,
for all that; so if you don't like it you can lump it.
DON JUAN. My dear lady, you have put my whole case against romance into
a few sentences. That is just why I turned my back on the romantic man
with the artist nature, as he called his infatuation. I thanked him
for teaching me to use my eyes and ears; but I told him that his beauty
worshipping and happiness hunting and woman idealizing was not worth a
dump as a philosophy of life; so he called me Philistine and went his
way.
ANA. It seems that Woman taught you something, too, with all her
defects.
DON JUAN. She did more: she interpreted all the other teaching for me.
Ah, my friends, when the barriers were down for the first time, what
an astounding illumination! I had been prepared for infatuation, for
intoxication, for all the illusions of love's young dream; and lo! never
was my perception clearer, nor my criticism more ruthless. The most
jealous rival of my mistress never saw every blemish in her more keenly
than I. I was not duped: I took her without chloroform.
ANA. But you did take her.
DON JUAN. That was the revelation. Up to that moment I had never lost
the sense of being my own master; never consciously taken a single step
until my reason had examined and approved it. I had come to believe that
I was a purely rational creature: a thinker! I said, with the foolish
philosopher, "I think; therefore I am." It was Woman who taught me to
say "I am; therefore I think." And also "I would think more; therefore I
must be more."
THE STATUE. This is extremely abstract and metaphysical, Juan. If you
would stick to the concrete, and put your discoveries in the form
of entertaining anecdotes about your adventures with women, your
conversation would be easier to follow.
DON JUAN. Bah! what need I add? Do you not understand that when I stood
face to face with Woman, every fibre in my clear critical brain warned
me to spare her and save myself. My morals said No. My conscience said
No. My chivalry and pity for her said No. My prudent regard for myself
said No. My ear, practised on a thousand songs and symphonies; my eye,
exercised on a thousand paintings; tore her voice, her features, her
color to shreds. I caught all those tell-tale resemblances to her father
and mother by which I knew what she would be like in thirty years time.
I noted the gleam of gold from a dead tooth in the laughing mouth: I
made curious observations of the strange odors of the chemistry of the
nerves. The visions of my romantic reveries, in which I had trod the
plains of heaven with a deathless, ageless creature of coral and ivory,
deserted me in that supreme hour. I remembered them and desperately
strove to recover their illusion; but they now seemed the emptiest of
inventions: my judgment was not to be corrupted: my brain still said No
on every issue. And whilst I was in the act of framing my excuse to the
lady, Life seized me and threw me into her arms as a sailor throws a
scrap of fish into the mouth of a seabird.
THE STATUE. You might as well have gone without thinking such a lot
about it, Juan. You are like all the clever men: you have more brains
than is good for you.
THE DEVIL. And were you not the happier for the experience, Senor Don
Juan?
DON JUAN. The happier, no: the wiser, yes. That moment introduced me for
the first time to myself, and, through myself, to the world. I saw then
how useless it is to attempt to impose conditions on the irresistible
force of Life; to preach prudence, careful selection, virtue, honor,
chastity--
ANA. Don Juan: a word against chastity is an insult to me.
DON JUAN. I say nothing against your chastity, Senora, since it took the
form of a husband and twelve children. What more could you have done had
you been the most abandoned of women?
ANA. I could have had twelve husbands and no children that's what I
could have done, Juan. And let me tell you that that would have made all
the difference to the earth which I replenished.
THE STATUE. Bravo Ana! Juan: you are floored, quelled, annihilated.
DON JUAN. No; for though that difference is the true essential
difference--Dona Ana has, I admit, gone straight to the real point--yet
it is not a difference of love or chastity, or even constancy; for
twelve children by twelve different husbands would have replenished the
earth perhaps more effectively. Suppose my friend Ottavio had died when
you were thirty, you would never have remained a widow: you were too
beautiful. Suppose the successor of Ottavio had died when you were
forty, you would still have been irresistible; and a woman who marries
twice marries three times if she becomes free to do so. Twelve lawful
children borne by one highly respectable lady to three different fathers
is not impossible nor condemned by public opinion. That such a lady may
be more law abiding than the poor girl whom we used to spurn into the
gutter for bearing one unlawful infant is no doubt true; but dare you
say she is less self-indulgent?
ANA. She is less virtuous: that is enough for me.
DON JUAN. In that case, what is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the
married? Let us face the facts, dear Ana. The Life Force respects
marriage only because marriage is a contrivance of its own to secure
the greatest number of children and the closest care of them. For honor,
chastity and all the rest of your moral figments it cares not a rap.
Marriage is the most licentious of human institutions--
ANA. Juan!
THE STATUE. [protesting] Really!--
DON JUAN. [determinedly] I say the most licentious of human
institutions: that is the secret of its popularity. And a woman seeking
a husband is the most unscrupulous of all the beasts of prey. The
confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the
conscience of the human race than any other single error. Come, Ana!
do not look shocked: you know better than any of us that marriage is
a mantrap baited with simulated accomplishments and delusive
idealizations. When your sainted mother, by dint of scoldings and
punishments, forced you to learn how to play half a dozen pieces on the
spinet which she hated as much as you did--had she any other purpose
than to delude your suitors into the belief that your husband would have
in his home an angel who would fill it with melody, or at least play him
to sleep after dinner? You married my friend Ottavio: well, did you ever
open the spinet from the hour when the Church united him to you?
ANA. You are a fool, Juan. A young married woman has something else to
do than sit at the spinet without any support for her back; so she gets
out of the habit of playing.
DON JUAN. Not if she loves music. No: believe me, she only throws away
the bait when the bird is in the net.
ANA. [bitterly] And men, I suppose, never throw off the mask when
their bird is in the net. The husband never becomes negligent, selfish,
brutal--oh never!
DON JUAN. What do these recriminations prove, Ana? Only that the hero is
as gross an imposture as the heroine.
ANA. It is all nonsense: most marriages are perfectly comfortable.
DON JUAN. "Perfectly" is a strong expression, Ana. What you mean is that
sensible people make the best of one another. Send me to the galleys and
chain me to the felon whose number happens to be next before mine; and I
must accept the inevitable and make the best of the companionship. Many
such companionships, they tell me, are touchingly affectionate; and
most are at least tolerably friendly. But that does not make a chain
a desirable ornament nor the galleys an abode of bliss. Those who talk
most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows
are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and
the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly
asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is
happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
ANA. At all events, let me take an old woman's privilege again, and tell
you flatly that marriage peoples the world and debauchery does not.
DON JUAN. How if a time comes when this shall cease to be true? Do you
not know that where there is a will there is a way--that whatever Man
really wishes to do he will finally discover a means of doing? Well,
you have done your best, you virtuous ladies, and others of your way
of thinking, to bend Man's mind wholly towards honorable love as the
highest good, and to understand by honorable love romance and beauty
and happiness in the possession of beautiful, refined, delicate,
affectionate women. You have taught women to value their own youth,
health, shapeliness, and refinement above all things. Well, what place
have squalling babies and household cares in this exquisite paradise of
the senses and emotions? Is it not the inevitable end of it all that the
human will shall say to the human brain: Invent me a means by which I
can have love, beauty, romance, emotion, passion without their wretched
penalties, their expenses, their worries, their trials, their illnesses
and agonies and risks of death, their retinue of servants and nurses and
doctors and schoolmasters.
THE DEVIL. All this, Senor Don Juan, is realized here in my realm.
DON JUAN. Yes, at the cost of death. Man will not take it at that price:
he demands the romantic delights of your hell whilst he is still on
earth. Well, the means will be found: the brain will not fail when the
will is in earnest. The day is coming when great nations will find their
numbers dwindling from census to census; when the six roomed villa will
rise in price above the family mansion; when the viciously reckless poor
and the stupidly pious rich will delay the extinction of the race only
by degrading it; whilst the boldly prudent, the thriftily selfish and
ambitious, the imaginative and poetic, the lovers of money and solid
comfort, the worshippers of success, art, and of love, will all oppose
to the Force of Life the device of sterility.
THE STATUE. That is all very eloquent, my young friend; but if you had
lived to Ana's age, or even to mine, you would have learned that the
people who get rid of the fear of poverty and children and all the other
family troubles, and devote themselves to having a good time of it,
only leave their minds free for the fear of old age and ugliness and
impotence and death. The childless laborer is more tormented by his
wife's idleness and her constant demands for amusement and distraction
than he could be by twenty children; and his wife is more wretched than
he. I have had my share of vanity; for as a young man I was admired by
women; and as a statue I am praised by art critics. But I confess that
had I found nothing to do in the world but wallow in these delights I
should have cut my throat. When I married Ana's mother--or perhaps,
to be strictly correct, I should rather say when I at last gave in and
allowed Ana's mother to marry me--I knew that I was planting thorns
in my pillow, and that marriage for me, a swaggering young officer
thitherto unvanquished, meant defeat and capture.
ANA. [scandalized] Father!
THE STATUE. I am sorry to shock you, my love; but since Juan has
stripped every rag of decency from the discussion I may as well tell the
frozen truth.
ANA. Hmf! I suppose I was one of the thorns.
THE STATUE. By no means: you were often a rose. You see, your mother had
most of the trouble you gave.
DON JUAN. Then may I ask, Commander, why you have left Heaven to come
here and wallow, as you express it, in sentimental beatitudes which you
confess would once have driven you to cut your throat?
THE STATUE. [struck by this] Egad, that's true.
THE DEVIL. [alarmed] What! You are going back from your word. [To
Don Juan] And all your philosophizing has been nothing but a mask for
proselytizing! [To the Statue] Have you forgotten already the hideous
dulness from which I am offering you a refuge here? [To Don Juan] And
does your demonstration of the approaching sterilization and extinction
of mankind lead to anything better than making the most of those
pleasures of art and love which you yourself admit refined you, elevated
you, developed you?
DON JUAN. I never demonstrated the extinction of mankind. Life cannot
will its own extinction either in its blind amorphous state or in any
of the forms into which it has organized itself. I had not finished when
His Excellency interrupted me.
THE STATUE. I begin to doubt whether you ever will finish, my friend.
You are extremely fond of hearing yourself talk.
DON JUAN. True; but since you have endured so much you may as well
endure to the end. Long before this sterilization which I described
becomes more than a clearly foreseen possibility, the reaction will
begin. The great central purpose of breeding the race, ay, breeding it
to heights now deemed superhuman: that purpose which is now hidden in a
mephitic cloud of love and romance and prudery and fastidiousness, will
break through into clear sunlight as a purpose no longer to be confused
with the gratification of personal fancies, the impossible realization
of boys' and girls' dreams of bliss, or the need of older people for
companionship or money. The plain-spoken marriage services of the
vernacular Churches will no longer be abbreviated and half suppressed
as indelicate. The sober decency, earnestness and authority of their
declaration of the real purpose of marriage will be honored
and accepted, whilst their romantic vowings and pledgings and
until-death-do-us-partings and the like will be expunged as unbearable
frivolities. Do my sex the justice to admit, Senora, that we have always
recognized that the sex relation is not a personal or friendly relation
at all.
ANA. Not a personal or friendly relation! What relation is more
personal? more sacred? more holy?
DON JUAN. Sacred and holy, if you like, Ana, but not personally
friendly. Your relation to God is sacred and holy: dare you call it
personally friendly? In the sex relation the universal creative energy,
of which the parties are both the helpless agents, over-rides and
sweeps away all personal considerations and dispenses with all personal
relations. The pair may be utter strangers to one another, speaking
different languages, differing in race and color, in age and
disposition, with no bond between them but a possibility of that
fecundity for the sake of which the Life Force throws them into one
another's arms at the exchange of a glance. Do we not recognize this by
allowing marriages to be made by parents without consulting the woman?
Have you not often expressed your disgust at the immorality of the
English nation, in which women and men of noble birth become acquainted
and court each other like peasants? And how much does even the peasant
know of his bride or she of him before he engages himself? Why, you
would not make a man your lawyer or your family doctor on so slight an
acquaintance as you would fall in love with and marry him!
ANA. Yes, Juan: we know the libertine's philosophy. Always ignore the
consequences to the woman.
DON JUAN. The consequences, yes: they justify her fierce grip of the
man. But surely you do not call that attachment a sentimental one. As
well call the policeman's attachment to his prisoner a love relation.
ANA. You see you have to confess that marriage is necessary, though,
according to you, love is the slightest of all the relations.
DON JUAN. How do you know that it is not the greatest of all the
relations? far too great to be a personal matter. Could your father have
served his country if he had refused to kill any enemy of Spain unless
he personally hated him? Can a woman serve her country if she refuses to
marry any man she does not personally love? You know it is not so:
the woman of noble birth marries as the man of noble birth fights, on
political and family grounds, not on personal ones.
THE STATUE. [impressed] A very clever point that, Juan: I must think it
over. You are really full of ideas. How did you come to think of this
one?
DON JUAN. I learnt it by experience. When I was on earth, and made those
proposals to ladies which, though universally condemned, have made me
so interesting a hero of legend, I was not infrequently met in some such
way as this. The lady would say that she would countenance my advances,
provided they were honorable. On inquiring what that proviso meant, I
found that it meant that I proposed to get possession of her property if
she had any, or to undertake her support for life if she had not; that I
desired her continual companionship, counsel and conversation to the
end of my days, and would bind myself under penalties to be always
enraptured by them; and, above all, that I would turn my back on all
other women for ever for her sake. I did not object to these conditions
because they were exorbitant and inhuman: it was their extraordinary
irrelevance that prostrated me. I invariably replied with perfect
frankness that I had never dreamt of any of these things; that unless
the lady's character and intellect were equal or superior to my own, her
conversation must degrade and her counsel mislead me; that her constant
companionship might, for all I knew, become intolerably tedious to me;
that I could not answer for my feelings for a week in advance, much
less to the end of my life; that to cut me off from all natural and
unconstrained relations with the rest of my fellow creatures would
narrow and warp me if I submitted to it, and, if not, would bring me
under the curse of clandestinity; that, finally, my proposals to her
were wholly unconnected with any of these matters, and were the outcome
of a perfectly simple impulse of my manhood towards her womanhood.
ANA. You mean that it was an immoral impulse.
DON JUAN. Nature, my dear lady, is what you call immoral. I blush for
it; but I cannot help it. Nature is a pandar, Time a wrecker, and Death
a murderer. I have always preferred to stand up to those facts and build
institutions on their recognition. You prefer to propitiate the three
devils by proclaiming their chastity, their thrift, and their loving
kindness; and to base your institutions on these flatteries. Is it any
wonder that the institutions do not work smoothly?
THE STATUE. What used the ladies to say, Juan?
DON JUAN. Oh, come! Confidence for confidence. First tell me what you
used to say to the ladies.
THE STATUE. I! Oh, I swore that I would be faithful to the death; that
I should die if they refused me; that no woman could ever be to me what
she was--
ANA. She? Who?
THE STATUE. Whoever it happened to be at the time, my dear. I had
certain things I always said. One of them was that even when I was
eighty, one white hair of the woman I loved would make me tremble more
than the thickest gold tress from the most beautiful young head. Another
was that I could not bear the thought of anyone else being the mother of
my children.
DON JUAN. [revolted] You old rascal!
THE STATUE. [Stoutly] Not a bit; for I really believed it with all
my soul at the moment. I had a heart: not like you. And it was this
sincerity that made me successful.
DON JUAN. Sincerity! To be fool enough to believe a ramping, stamping,
thumping lie: that is what you call sincerity! To be so greedy for
a woman that you deceive yourself in your eagerness to deceive her:
sincerity, you call it!
THE STATUE. Oh, damn your sophistries! I was a man in love, not a
lawyer. And the women loved me for it, bless them!
DON JUAN. They made you think so. What will you say when I tell you that
though I played the lawyer so callously, they made me think so too?
I also had my moments of infatuation in which I gushed nonsense and
believed it. Sometimes the desire to give pleasure by saying beautiful
things so rose in me on the flood of emotion that I said them
recklessly. At other times I argued against myself with a devilish
coldness that drew tears. But I found it just as hard to escape in the
one case as in the others. When the lady's instinct was set on me, there
was nothing for it but lifelong servitude or flight.
ANA. You dare boast, before me and my father, that every woman found you
irresistible.
DON JUAN. Am I boasting? It seems to me that I cut the most pitiable of
figures. Besides, I said "when the lady's instinct was set on me."
It was not always so; and then, heavens! what transports of virtuous
indignation! what overwhelming defiance to the dastardly seducer! what
scenes of Imogen and Iachimo!
ANA. I made no scenes. I simply called my father.
DON JUAN. And he came, sword in hand, to vindicate outraged honor and
morality by murdering me.
THE STATUE. Murdering! What do you mean? Did I kill you or did you kill
me?
DON JUAN. Which of us was the better fencer?
THE STATUE. I was.
DON JUAN. Of course you were. And yet you, the hero of those scandalous
adventures you have just been relating to us, you had the effrontery to
pose as the avenger of outraged morality and condemn me to death! You
would have slain me but for an accident.
THE STATUE. I was expected to, Juan. That is how things were arranged
on earth. I was not a social reformer; and I always did what it was
customary for a gentleman to do.
DON JUAN. That may account for your attacking me, but not for the
revolting hypocrisy of your subsequent proceedings as a statue.
THE STATUE. That all came of my going to Heaven.
THE DEVIL. I still fail to see, Senor Don Juan, that these episodes
in your earthly career and in that of the Senor Commander in any way
discredit my view of life. Here, I repeat, you have all that you sought
without anything that you shrank from.
DON JUAN. On the contrary, here I have everything that disappointed me
without anything that I have not already tried and found wanting. I tell
you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot
be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the
way for it. That is the law of my life. That is the working within me
of Life's incessant aspiration to higher organization, wider, deeper,
intenser self-consciousness, and clearer self-understanding. It was the
supremacy of this purpose that reduced love for me to the mere pleasure
of a moment, art for me to the mere schooling of my faculties, religion
for me to a mere excuse for laziness, since it had set up a God who
looked at the world and saw that it was good, against the instinct in
me that looked through my eyes at the world and saw that it could be
improved. I tell you that in the pursuit of my own pleasure, my own
health, my own fortune, I have never known happiness. It was not love
for Woman that delivered me into her hands: it was fatigue, exhaustion.
When I was a child, and bruised my head against a stone, I ran to the
nearest woman and cried away my pain against her apron. When I grew up,
and bruised my soul against the brutalities and stupidities with which
I had to strive, I did again just what I had done as a child. I have
enjoyed, too, my rests, my recuperations, my breathing times, my very
prostrations after strife; but rather would I be dragged through all the
circles of the foolish Italian's Inferno than through the pleasures of
Europe. That is what has made this place of eternal pleasures so deadly
to me. It is the absence of this instinct in you that makes you that
strange monster called a Devil. It is the success with which you have
diverted the attention of men from their real purpose, which in one
degree or another is the same as mine, to yours, that has earned you the
name of The Tempter. It is the fact that they are doing your will, or
rather drifting with your want of will, instead of doing their own, that
makes them the uncomfortable, false, restless, artificial, petulant,
wretched creatures they are.
THE DEVIL. [mortified] Senor Don Juan: you are uncivil to my friends.
DON JUAN. Pooh! why should I be civil to them or to you? In this Palace
of Lies a truth or two will not hurt you. Your friends are all the
dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they are only decorated.
They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched. They are not
dignified: they are only fashionably dressed. They are not educated
they are only college passmen. They are not religious: they are only
pewrenters. They are not moral: they are only conventional. They are not
virtuous: they are only cowardly. They are not even vicious: they are
only "frail." They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They are
not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they are
only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public spirited, only
patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not determined, only
obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not self-controlled, only
obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain; not kind, only sentimental; not
social, only gregarious; not considerate, only polite; not intelligent,
only opinionated; not progressive, only factious; not imaginative,
only superstitious; not just, only vindictive; not generous, only
propitiatory; not disciplined, only cowed; and not truthful at
all--liars every one of them, to the very backbone of their souls.
THE STATUE. Your flow of words is simply amazing, Juan. How I wish I
could have talked like that to my soldiers.
THE DEVIL. It is mere talk, though. It has all been said before; but
what change has it ever made? What notice has the world ever taken of
it?
DON JUAN. Yes, it is mere talk. But why is it mere talk? Because,
my friend, beauty, purity, respectability, religion, morality, art,
patriotism, bravery and the rest are nothing but words which I or anyone
else can turn inside out like a glove. Were they realities, you
would have to plead guilty to my indictment; but fortunately for your
self-respect, my diabolical friend, they are not realities. As you
say, they are mere words, useful for duping barbarians into adopting
civilization, or the civilized poor into submitting to be robbed and
enslaved. That is the family secret of the governing caste; and if we
who are of that caste aimed at more Life for the world instead of at
more power and luxury for our miserable selves, that secret would make
us great. Now, since I, being a nobleman, am in the secret too, think
how tedious to me must be your unending cant about all these moralistic
figments, and how squalidly disastrous your sacrifice of your lives to
them! If you even believed in your moral game enough to play it fairly,
it would be interesting to watch; but you don't: you cheat at every
trick; and if your opponent outcheats you, you upset the table and try
to murder him.
THE DEVIL. On earth there may be some truth in this, because the people
are uneducated and cannot appreciate my religion of love and beauty; but
here--
DON JUAN. Oh yes: I know. Here there is nothing but love and beauty.
Ugh! it is like sitting for all eternity at the first act of a
fashionable play, before the complications begin. Never in my worst
moments of superstitious terror on earth did I dream that Hell was so
horrible. I live, like a hairdresser, in the continual contemplation
of beauty, toying with silken tresses. I breathe an atmosphere of
sweetness, like a confectioner's shopboy. Commander: are there any
beautiful women in Heaven?
THE STATUE. None. Absolutely none. All dowdies. Not two pennorth of
jewellery among a dozen of them. They might be men of fifty.
DON JUAN. I am impatient to get there. Is the word beauty ever
mentioned; and are there any artistic people?
THE STATUE. I give you my word they won't admire a fine statue even when
it walks past them.
DON JUAN. I go.
THE DEVIL. Don Juan: shall I be frank with you?
DON JUAN. Were you not so before?
THE DEVIL. As far as I went, yes. But I will now go further, and confess
to you that men get tired of everything, of heaven no less than of hell;
and that all history is nothing but a record of the oscillations of
the world between these two extremes. An epoch is but a swing of the
pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because
it is always moving. But when you are as old as I am; when you have a
thousand times wearied of heaven, like myself and the Commander, and
a thousand times wearied of hell, as you are wearied now, you will no
longer imagine that every swing from heaven to hell is an emancipation,
every swing from hell to heaven an evolution. Where you now see reform,
progress, fulfilment of upward tendency, continual ascent by Man on
the stepping stones of his dead selves to higher things, you will
see nothing but an infinite comedy of illusion. You will discover
the profound truth of the saying of my friend Koheleth, that there is
nothing new under the sun. Vanitas vanitatum--
DON JUAN. [out of all patience] By Heaven, this is worse than your cant
about love and beauty. Clever dolt that you are, is a man no better than
a worm, or a dog than a wolf, because he gets tired of everything?
Shall he give up eating because he destroys his appetite in the act
of gratifying it? Is a field idle when it is fallow? Can the Commander
expend his hellish energy here without accumulating heavenly energy for
his next term of blessedness? Granted that the great Life Force has hit
on the device of the clockmaker's pendulum, and uses the earth for its
bob; that the history of each oscillation, which seems so novel to us
the actors, is but the history of the last oscillation repeated; nay
more, that in the unthinkable infinitude of time the sun throws off the
earth and catches it again a thousand times as a circus rider throws up
a ball, and that the total of all our epochs is but the moment between
the toss and the catch, has the colossal mechanism no purpose?
THE DEVIL. None, my friend. You think, because you have a purpose,
Nature must have one. You might as well expect it to have fingers and
toes because you have them.
DON JUAN. But I should not have them if they served no purpose. And I,
my friend, am as much a part of Nature as my own finger is a part of me.
If my finger is the organ by which I grasp the sword and the mandoline,
my brain is the organ by which Nature strives to understand itself.
My dog's brain serves only my dog's purposes; but my brain labors at a
knowledge which does nothing for me personally but make my body bitter
to me and my decay and death a calamity. Were I not possessed with a
purpose beyond my own I had better be a ploughman than a philosopher;
for the ploughman lives as long as the philosopher, eats more, sleeps
better, and rejoices in the wife of his bosom with less misgiving. This
is because the philosopher is in the grip of the Life Force. This Life
Force says to him "I have done a thousand wonderful things unconsciously
by merely willing to live and following the line of least resistance:
now I want to know myself and my destination, and choose my path; so
I have made a special brain--a philosopher's brain--to grasp this
knowledge for me as the husbandman's hand grasps the plough for me. And
this" says the Life Force to the philosopher "must thou strive to do
for me until thou diest, when I will make another brain and another
philosopher to carry on the work."
THE DEVIL. What is the use of knowing?
DON JUAN. Why, to be able to choose the line of greatest advantage
instead of yielding in the direction of the least resistance. Does a
ship sail to its destination no better than a log drifts nowhither? The
philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be
in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.
THE DEVIL. On the rocks, most likely.
DON JUAN. Pooh! which ship goes oftenest on the rocks or to the
bottom--the drifting ship or the ship with a pilot on board?
THE DEVIL. Well, well, go your way, Senor Don Juan. I prefer to be my
own master and not the tool of any blundering universal force. I know
that beauty is good to look at; that music is good to hear; that love is
good to feel; and that they are all good to think about and talk about.
I know that to be well exercised in these sensations, emotions, and
studies is to be a refined and cultivated being. Whatever they may say
of me in churches on earth, I know that it is universally admitted in
good society that the prince of Darkness is a gentleman; and that is
enough for me. As to your Life Force, which you think irresistible, it
is the most resistible thing in the world for a person of any character.
But if you are naturally vulgar and credulous, as all reformers are, it
will thrust you first into religion, where you will sprinkle water on
babies to save their souls from me; then it will drive you from religion
into science, where you will snatch the babies from the water
sprinkling and inoculate them with disease to save them from catching it
accidentally; then you will take to politics, where you will become the
catspaw of corrupt functionaries and the henchman of ambitious humbugs;
and the end will be despair and decrepitude, broken nerve and
shattered hopes, vain regrets for that worst and silliest of wastes
and sacrifices, the waste and sacrifice of the power of enjoyment: in
a word, the punishment of the fool who pursues the better before he has
secured the good.
DON JUAN. But at least I shall not be bored. The service of the Life
Force has that advantage, at all events. So fare you well, Senor Satan.
THE DEVIL. [amiably] Fare you well, Don Juan. I shall often think of our
interesting chats about things in general. I wish you every happiness:
Heaven, as I said before, suits some people. But if you should change
your mind, do not forget that the gates are always open here to the
repentant prodigal. If you feel at any time that warmth of heart,
sincere unforced affection, innocent enjoyment, and warm, breathing,
palpitating reality--
DON JUAN. Why not say flesh and blood at once, though we have left those
two greasy commonplaces behind us?
THE DEVIL. [angrily] You throw my friendly farewell back in my teeth,
then, Don Juan?
DON JUAN. By no means. But though there is much to be learnt from a
cynical devil, I really cannot stand a sentimental one. Senor Commander:
you know the way to the frontier of hell and heaven. Be good enough to
direct me.
THE STATUE. Oh, the frontier is only the difference between two ways of
looking at things. Any road will take you across it if you really want
to get there.
DON JUAN. Good. [saluting Dona Ana] Senora: your servant.
ANA. But I am going with you.
DON JUAN. I can find my own way to heaven, Ana; but I cannot find yours
[he vanishes].
ANA. How annoying!
THE STATUE. [calling after him] Bon voyage, Juan! [He wafts a final
blast of his great rolling chords after him as a parting salute. A faint
echo of the first ghostly melody comes back in acknowledgment]. Ah!
there he goes. [Puffing a long breath out through his lips] Whew! How he
does talk! They'll never stand it in heaven.
THE DEVIL. [gloomily] His going is a political defeat. I cannot keep
these Life Worshippers: they all go. This is the greatest loss I have
had since that Dutch painter went--a fellow who would paint a hag of 70
with as much enjoyment as a Venus of 20.
THE STATUE. I remember: he came to heaven. Rembrandt.
THE DEVIL. Ay, Rembrandt. There a something unnatural about these
fellows. Do not listen to their gospel, Senor Commander: it is
dangerous. Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman: it leads to an
indiscriminate contempt for the Human. To a man, horses and dogs and
cats are mere species, outside the moral world. Well, to the Superman,
men and women are a mere species too, also outside the moral world. This
Don Juan was kind to women and courteous to men as your daughter here
was kind to her pet cats and dogs; but such kindness is a denial of the
exclusively human character of the soul.
THE STATUE. And who the deuce is the Superman?
THE DEVIL. Oh, the latest fashion among the Life Force fanatics. Did
you not meet in Heaven, among the new arrivals, that German Polish
madman--what was his name? Nietzsche?
THE STATUE. Never heard of him.
THE DEVIL. Well, he came here first, before he recovered his wits. I had
some hopes of him; but he was a confirmed Life Force worshipper. It was
he who raked up the Superman, who is as old as Prometheus; and the 20th
century will run after this newest of the old crazes when it gets tired
of the world, the flesh, and your humble servant.
THE STATUE. Superman is a good cry; and a good cry is half the battle. I
should like to see this Nietzsche.
THE DEVIL. Unfortunately he met Wagner here, and had a quarrel with him.
THE STATUE. Quite right, too. Mozart for me!
THE DEVIL. Oh, it was not about music. Wagner once drifted into Life
Force worship, and invented a Superman called Siegfried. But he came to
his senses afterwards. So when they met here, Nietzsche denounced him
as a renegade; and Wagner wrote a pamphlet to prove that Nietzsche was
a Jew; and it ended in Nietzsche's going to heaven in a huff. And a
good riddance too. And now, my friend, let us hasten to my palace and
celebrate your arrival with a grand musical service.
THE STATUE. With pleasure: you're most kind.
THE DEVIL. This way, Commander. We go down the old trap [he places
himself on the grave trap].
THE STATUE. Good. [Reflectively] All the same, the Superman is a fine
conception. There is something statuesque about it. [He places himself
on the grave trap beside The Devil. It begins to descend slowly. Red
glow from the abyss]. Ah, this reminds me of old times.
THE DEVIL. And me also.
ANA. Stop! [The trap stops].
THE DEVIL. You, Senora, cannot come this way. You will have an
apotheosis. But you will be at the palace before us.
ANA. That is not what I stopped you for. Tell me where can I find the
Superman?
THE DEVIL. He is not yet created, Senora.
THE STATUE. And never will be, probably. Let us proceed: the red fire
will make me sneeze. [They descend].
ANA. Not yet created! Then my work is not yet done. [Crossing herself
devoutly] I believe in the Life to Come. [Crying to the universe] A
father--a father for the Superman!
She vanishes into the void; and again there is nothing: all existence
seems suspended infinitely. Then, vaguely, there is a live human voice
crying somewhere. One sees, with a shock, a mountain peak showing
faintly against a lighter background. The sky has returned from afar;
and we suddenly remember where we were. The cry becomes distinct and
urgent: it says Automobile, Automobile. The complete reality comes
back with a rush: in a moment it is full morning in the Sierra; and the
brigands are scrambling to their feet and making for the road as the
goatherd runs down from the hill, warning them of the approach of
another motor. Tanner and Mendoza rise amazedly and stare at one another
with scattered wits. Straker sits up to yawn for a moment before he gets
on his feet, making it a point of honor not to show any undue interest
in the excitement of the bandits. Mendoza gives a quick look to see that
his followers are attending to the alarm; then exchanges a private word
with Tanner.
MENDOZA. Did you dream?
TANNER. Damnably. Did you?
MENDOZA. Yes. I forget what. You were in it.
TANNER. So were you. Amazing
MENDOZA. I warned you. [a shot is heard from the road]. Dolts! they will
play with that gun. [The brigands come running back scared]. Who fired
that shot? [to Duval] Was it you?
DUVAL. [breathless] I have not shoot. Dey shoot first.
ANARCHIST. I told you to begin by abolishing the State. Now we are all
lost.
THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [stampeding across the amphitheatre] Run,
everybody.
MENDOZA. [collaring him; throwing him on his back; and drawing a knife]
I stab the man who stirs. [He blocks the way. The stampede it checked].
What has happened?
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT, A motor--
THE ANARCHIST. Three men--
DUVAL. Deux femmes--
MENDOZA. Three men and two women! Why have you not brought them here?
Are you afraid of them?
THE ROWDY ONE. [getting up] Thyve a hescort. Ow, de-ooh lut's ook it,
Mendowza.
THE SULKY ONE. Two armored cars full o soldiers at the end o the valley.
ANARCHIST. The shot was fired in the air. It was a signal.
Straker whistles his favorite air, which falls on the ears of the
brigands like a funeral march.
TANNER. It is not an escort, but an expedition to capture you. We were
advised to wait for it; but I was in a hurry.
THE ROWDY ONE. [in an agony of apprehension] And Ow my good Lord, ere we
are, wytin for em! Lut's tike to the mahntns.
MENDOZA. Idiot, what do you know about the mountains? Are you a
Spaniard? You would be given up by the first shepherd you met. Besides,
we are already within range of their rifles.
THE ROWDY ONE. Bat--
MENDOZA. Silence. Leave this to me. [To Tanner] Comrade: you will not
betray us.
STRAKER. Oo are you callin comrade?
MENDOZA. Last night the advantage was with me. The robber of the poor
was at the mercy of the robber of the rich. You offered your hand: I
took it.
TANNER. I bring no charge against you, comrade. We have spent a pleasant
evening with you: that is all.
STRAKER. I gev my and to nobody, see?
MENDOZA. [turning on him impressively] Young man, if I am tried, I shall
plead guilty, and explain what drove me from England, home and duty. Do
you wish to have the respectable name of Straker dragged through the mud
of a Spanish criminal court? The police will search me. They will find
Louisa's portrait. It will be published in the illustrated papers. You
blench. It will be your doing, remember.
STRAKER. [with baffled rage] I don't care about the court. It's avin our
name mixed up with yours that I object to, you blackmailin swine, you.
MENDOZA. Language unworthy of Louisa's brother! But no matter: you are
muzzled: that is enough for us. [He turns to face his own men, who back
uneasily across the amphitheatre towards the cave to take refuge behind
him, as a fresh party, muffled for motoring, comes from the road in
riotous spirits. Ann, who makes straight for Tanner, comes first; then
Violet, helped over the rough ground by Hector holding her right hand
and Ramsden her left. Mendoza goes to his presidential block and seats
himself calmly with his rank and file grouped behind him, and his
Staff, consisting of Duval and the Anarchist on his right and the two
Social-Democrats on his left, supporting him in flank].
ANN. It's Jack!
TANNER. Caught!
HECTOR. Why, certainly it is. I said it was you, Tanner, We've just been
stopped by a puncture: the road is full of nails.
VIOLET. What are you doing here with all these men?
ANN. Why did you leave us without a word of warning?
HECTOR. I want that bunch of roses, Miss Whitefield. [To Tanner] When
we found you were gone, Miss Whitefield bet me a bunch of roses my car
would not overtake yours before you reached Monte Carlo.
TANNER. But this is not the road to Monte Carlo.
HECTOR. No matter. Miss Whitefield tracked you at every stopping place:
she is a regular Sherlock Holmes.
TANNER. The Life Force! I am lost.
OCTAVIUS. [Bounding gaily down from the road into the amphitheatre, and
coming between Tanner and Straker] I am so glad you are safe, old chap.
We were afraid you had been captured by brigands.
RAMSDEN. [who has been staring at Mendoza] I seem to remember the face
of your friend here. [Mendoza rises politely and advances with a smile
between Ann and Ramsden].
HECTOR. Why, so do I.
OCTAVIUS. I know you perfectly well, Sir; but I can't think where I have
met you.
MENDOZA. [to Violet] Do YOU remember me, madam?
VIOLET. Oh, quite well; but I am so stupid about names.
MENDOZA. It was at the Savoy Hotel. [To Hector] You, sir, used to come
with this lady [Violet] to lunch. [To Octavius] You, sir, often brought
this lady [Ann] and her mother to dinner on your way to the Lyceum
Theatre. [To Ramsden] You, sir, used to come to supper, with [dropping
his voice to a confidential but perfectly audible whisper] several
different ladies.
RAMSDEN. [angrily] Well, what is that to you, pray?
OCTAVIUS. Why, Violet, I thought you hardly knew one another before this
trip, you and Malone!
VIOLET. [vexed] I suppose this person was the manager.
MENDOZA. The waiter, madam. I have a grateful recollection of you all.
I gathered from the bountiful way in which you treated me that you all
enjoyed your visits very much.
VIOLET. What impertinence! [She turns her back on him, and goes up the
hill with Hector].
RAMSDEN. That will do, my friend. You do not expect these ladies to
treat you as an acquaintance, I suppose, because you have waited on them
at table.
MENDOZA. Pardon me: it was you who claimed my acquaintance. The ladies
followed your example. However, this display of the unfortunate manners
of your class closes the incident. For the future, you will please
address me with the respect due to a stranger and fellow traveller. [He
turns haughtily away and resumes his presidential seat].
TANNER. There! I have found one man on my journey capable of reasonable
conversation; and you all instinctively insult him. Even the New Man
is as bad as any of you. Enry: you have behaved just like a miserable
gentleman.
STRAKER. Gentleman! Not me.
RAMSDEN. Really, Tanner, this tone--
ANN. Don't mind him, Granny: you ought to know him by this time [she
takes his arm and coaxes him away to the hill to join Violet and Hector.
Octavius follows her, doglike].
VIOLET. [calling from the hill] Here are the soldiers. They are getting
out of their motors.
DUVAL. [panicstricken] Oh, nom de Dieu!
THE ANARCHIST. Fools: the State is about to crush you because you spared
it at the prompting of the political hangers-on of the bourgeoisie.
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [argumentative to the last] On the contrary,
only by capturing the State machine--
THE ANARCHIST. It is going to capture you.
THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [his anguish culminating] Ow, chock it. Wot
are we ere for? WOT are we wytin for?
MENDOZA. [between his teeth] Goon. Talk politics, you idiots: nothing
sounds more respectable. Keep it up, I tell you.
The soldiers line the road, commanding the amphitheatre with their
rifles. The brigands, struggling with an over-whelming impulse to hide
behind one another, look as unconcerned as they can. Mendoza rises
superbly, with undaunted front. The officer in command steps down from
the road in to the amphitheatre; looks hard at the brigands; and then
inquiringly at Tanner.
THE OFFICER. Who are these men, Senor Ingles?
TANNER. My escort.
Mendoza, with a Mephistophelean smile, bows profoundly. An irrepressible
grin runs from face to face among the brigands. They touch their hats,
except the Anarchist, who defies the State with folded arms.