now charged Hermes to fetch some of the masterpieces from the room
called the _Tribuna_ at the Uffizi in Florence. Hermes, aided by a
number of nymphs, fetched them and, placing them in the midst of the
Assembly, exhibited their perfect beauty to the gods and heroes. This
refreshed their souls sickened with the story of the serfdom of modern
over-specialism.
THE SECOND NIGHT
DIOGENES AND PLATO ON TOLSTOY, IBSEN, SHAW, ETC.
On the second night the Olympians assembled at Pompeii. It was a balmy,
starry night. The ruins of the old town, white in their marble dresses,
shone with a spectral brightness against the mountains, bays, and
meadows surrounding them. From Stabiæ and Gragnano opposite one could
hear the pipe of Pan and the laughter of his nymphs, and on the dark
water there were magic boats carrying Circe and her maids to their blue
grotto in Capri. Selene sent her mildest rays over the scene, and grass
and stone were as if steeped in silvery dreams. The place selected for
the meeting was the amphitheatre. At a move of Zeus' right hand the
seats and alleys, which had long since disappeared under the pressure
of the ugly lava, rose from the ground. The orchestra and stage took
up their old shape, and the whole graceful space with its incomparable
view was again full of beauty, comfort, and pleasurableness. Zeus, and
his wife Juno, sat down on the central seat, and around them the other
gods and heroes. When everyone had found his or her seat, Zeus spake:
"We have heard with much contentment the experiences of Aristotle in
the country which the little ones below call England. We should now
like to hear something about the theatres in that strange land. If
life itself is so uncommon and funny in that part of the non-Grecian
world, their theatre, reflecting life, must be unusually entertaining.
Perhaps you Aristotle, as the most renowned critic of poetry and the
drama, will be good enough to give us an idea of the thing they call
drama in England."
Whereupon Aristotle rose from his seat, and treated the immortals to
a sight which no one had as yet enjoyed: he smiled. And smilingly he
said to the almighty son of Kronos, ruler of the world: "O Zeus, your
wish is a behest, and if you insist I will of course obey. But pray,
kindly consider that I have, with your consent, withheld from these
people, who call themselves moderns, and who might better be called
_afterlings_, the second book of my 'Poetics,' in which I treat of
the comedy, the farce, the burlesque, and similar _phlyakes_, as we
term them. If now I should reveal my thoughts on the _phlyakes_ of
the English, several of their sophists, whom they call University
professors, might still add to the lava which my commentators have
spurted out upon my works, just as we see here the lava of angry
Vesuvius cover the beauteous fields in and around Pompeii.
"May I propose the proper person to entertain us about that sort of
comedy of the English which, at present, is more or less generally
considered to be their most valuable dramatic output? If so," Aristotle
continued at a sign from Zeus, "I propose him who over there at the
right entrance of the stage lies carelessly on the ground and seems
to heed us as little as in his time he heeded the Athenians and the
Corinthians." Aristotle, raising his hand, pointed to the shabby,
untidy figure of Diogenes. When the gods and heroes heard the name
and looked at the person of the Cynic, they all burst out in immortal
laughter, and the sea, catching the gay ripple, laughed as far as
Sorrento.
* * * * *
Diogenes, without moving from his position, and putting one of his
legs comfortably on one of the low statues of a satyr, turned his head
towards Zeus and exclaimed: "Verily, I tell you, you only confirm me in
my old belief, that there is nothing sadder than laughter. Why should
you laugh? Are we not here to enjoy ourselves? Is not this lovely spot
one where even we might and ought to feel perfectly happy? Why, then,
laugh? I mean, of course, laugh at me.
"I _do_ pooh-pooh all your glories. Olympus to me is not a whit more
agreeable than my tub at Corinth. This is, you understand, the reason
of my predilection for the English. They, alone of all these Europeans,
live at least for five seconds each day in a tub.
"I also pooh-pooh your feasts, your ambrosia and nectar. For having
passed a few months in a large village they call London, I have so
completely lost my palate and taste, that for the next two thousand
years, at anyrate, I shall not be able to distinguish nectar from stale
ale, nor ambrosia from cabbage.
"Yes, I still pooh-pooh, disdain and neglect most of the things that
you and your worshippers hold in great esteem. Alcibiades raved about
the beauty of women now limping about in the various cities of the
barbarians, and more particularly in the towns of the English. A woman!
A mere woman! What is the good of a woman unless one is rid of her? I
still think what I used to teach, that between a man and a woman there
is only a slight difference, one that is scarcely worth considering.
"You may laugh until Vesuvius again vomits scorn upon you, but I tell
you here, at Pompeii, what I used to tell everybody at Corinth: your
glories are all gone, or ought to go. Just look at Venus. There she
sits displaying to eager-looking Pans and Sileni the loveliness of her
head and neck and figure. But what does it mean after all? Repentance
and wormwood. Look at Ares--(Mars). Does he not look as if he ruled
the world? Does he not behave as if all great things were achieved
through and by him? And what is it in reality? Mere butchery--cowardly
butchery. You laugh; of course, you do. But I mean to show you that all
that I have ever taught is nothing less than strictly true; the only
truth; truth the one.
"Aristotle, in pointing me out as the person who can best tell you
what this new Shavian drama of England really is; Aristotle, I say,
may have acted with malice. He has, nevertheless, acted with great
wisdom. I am indeed the only man out of the world (there is none in
it), who does clearly and fully understand my little disciple who calls
himself Bernard Shaw. Of the other friends and admirers of his, he
might very well say what that great German philosopher Hegel said in
his last moments: 'One man alone has understood me well,--and even he
misunderstood me entirely.' He might with reference to my Cynic lady
friend Hipparchia also say: 'One man alone understood me well,--and she
was a woman.'
"The fact is, Shaw, the son of Pooh-Pooh, is simply a goody disciple
of my school, of the Cynics. When I was still within that mortal
coil which men call skin and flesh, I did take all my sputterings
and utterings very seriously, or as they say in cultured Mayfair:
'_Oh grant serio_.' I really thought, as undoubtedly thinks my brave
disciple in London, that my criticism of social, political, or
religious things went deep into the essence of all that maintains
Society, the State, and the Temples. Good old Plato, it is true, hinted
at my vanity and conceit more than once, and I still feel the sting of
his remark when once, soaked all through by the rain, I was surrounded
by pitying folk: 'If you want to feel pity for Diogenes,' Plato said,
'then leave him alone.'
"But I then did not heed any satire directed against me, being fully
occupied with satirising others all day long. However, since that time,
and since I have been given a corner in the palace of the immortals,
lying on one of the steps like a dog, as that Italian dauber, whom they
call Raphael, painted me in his 'School of Athens' (--a fresco which
might be much better had Raphael wisely chosen his age and appeared as
a Præ-Raphaelite--); ever since I have learnt a great deal, not only
about others, but also about myself.
"While you superior people drink nectar and partake of ambrosia, I
enjoy with infinite zest the malicious pleasure of studying the capers,
antics, and poses of my posthumous selfs, the Diogeneses of that
speck on the mirror of eternity which the little ones below call 'our
time.' Could anything be more amusing to a Cynic of about twenty-two
centuries' standing like myself, who has heard and taught all the most
nerve-rasping eccentricities imaginable, than to hear Tolstoy, Shaw,
Ibsen, and _tutti quanti_, teach with thunderous ponderosity, and
with penurious fulguration their doctrines as the latest and hitherto
unheard-of delivery of the human or inhuman mind? I beg to assure you
it is excruciatingly funny. But I feel I must tell you the whole story
in due order. It happened thus.
"I learnt from Momus that another posthumous self of mine had arisen
and, accordingly, I forthwith repaired to the place called London.
(By the way, it is a queer place. It is neither a village, nor a
town; neither a country, nor a desert; it is something of all, and
much of neither.) In one of the streets I saw an inscription over a
door--'Agency for amusements, theatres, blue bands, green bands, etc.'
I did not quite understand what blue bands had to do with amusement,
but I entered.
"Behind the counter was a middle-aged man working busily at papers. I
addressed him: 'Be cheerful!'
"He looked at me in a curious fashion, evidently doubting the sanity
of my mind. As a matter of fact, after a little while I could not help
seeing that he was right. How _could_ I imagine him to be cheerful?
"I asked him for the means of seeing a theatrical piece by Shaw. He
offered a ticket, and wanted to know my name. I said 'Diogenes.'
"He became impatient, and said: 'Diogenes--which? I mean, your family
name?'
"'I have no other name,' I said; 'don't you know, I am Diogenes who cut
Alexander the Great?'
"'Alexander the Great?' he said--'Why, I only know of a tailor, called
Alexander the Great. Do you mean to tell me you cut him?'
"'No,' I said; 'I do not. I mean Alexander, King of Macedon.'
"Whereupon he contemptuously said: 'I never heard of the gentleman,
and if he was a king of Macedon he has made a jolly fine mess of his
country--just read about the Macedonian question in to-day's _Daily
Telegraph_.' I wanted to ask him whether he was perchance Professor of
History, but other people came in, and so I left.
* * * * *
"On the same evening I was shown the way to a theatre, and I understood
that the piece given was _Arms and the Man_. I enjoyed myself immensely.
"It is all very well to share the pleasures of Olympus with the gods.
Yet, by all the Graces, whenever I hear or read reminiscences of my
early youth, those unforgettable events and ideas of the time when
I walked in the streets of Athens in the wake of my revered master
Antisthenes, it gives me a thrill of pleasure,--I might almost say, a
new shiver.
"Just fancy, here I was sitting in far-off Britannia, over two
thousand years after my mortal existence, listening to an oration--of
Antisthenes, my master, which we used to call 'Kyros.' I see very well,
O Ares, you remember the famous oration directed against you, against
all the glories of War, because even now you frown on me, and I must
ask Venus to keep you in check. I have received too many a whipping
while I was at Athens and Corinth--pray let me in peace here in our
temporary Olympus.
"At present, as you well know, I have quite changed my ideas about war,
and much as I may have disliked you before, at present I know that
Apollo, Venus, you Ares, and Dionysus keep all mortal things agoing.
But let us amuse ourselves with the contemplation of an oration of
Antisthenes in modern Britannic.
"Antisthenes hated war so much that he attacked the greatest and least
doubted military glory of the Athenians, their victories over the
Persians. He attacked it with serious arguments, he sneered at it, he
tried to reduce it to a mere sham. Did Antisthenes not say, that the
victory of the Athenians over the Persians at Salamis would have been
something admirable, had the Persians excelled the Athenians in point
of virtue and capability? For in that case the Athenians would have
proved even more virtuous and more capable. However, the Persians,
Antisthenes elaborately proves, were altogether inferior. Nor did they
have a true king, Xerxes being a mere sham king with a high and richly
jewelled cap on his head, sitting on a golden throne, like a doll.
Had Xerxes not to whip his soldiers into battle? What, then, is the
glory of the Athenians? None! Salamis, like all battles, was a mere
butchery, and soldiers are mere cowards, beating inferiors and running
away from superiors. So far Antisthenes.
"The Britannic version of Antisthenes' sally against war, soldiers, and
the whole of the military spirit, I found comical in the extreme. 'Well
done' I repeatedly exclaimed within myself, when I saw the old capers
of the Cynics of my mortal time brought up again for the consumption of
people who had never heard of Cynics. That man Shaw out-Cynics many a
Cynic. He brings upon the stage a number of persons, each of whom is,
in turn, a good soul first, and then a viper; an enthusiast, and then a
liar; a virtue, and then vice itself.
"Take the girl Raina. She begins by being ideal and enthusiastic;
ideal, because she is pure, young, and in love with her own _fiancé_;
enthusiastic, because she is in raptures over the military glory of
her _fiancé_, as would be in all truth and reality a hundred out of
each hundred girls in most countries of the sub-Shavian world. Not the
slightest inkling or fact is indicated that she is not pure, ideal,
or genuinely enthusiastic. In the next scene she is suddenly made out
to be a vicious girl, a coldly calculating minx, and we are given to
understand that she has had no end of general and particular adventures
behind her, as she hopes to have a good many in front of her.
"Why? Why are we now to assume or believe that Raina of yesterday is
not Raina of to-day? Where is the motive, I asked myself with grim
satisfaction with the brave Cynicism of the author. Why? Simply, for
nothing. The comedy as such does not require it; no fact alleged to
have happened, substantiates it; no situation growing out of the piece
makes it a dramatic necessity. It is done simply and exclusively, in
true Cynic fashion, for the sake of ridiculing a person that began by
being enthusiastic for War.
"It is the old story of the ugly sorceress in the child's book of
fables. 'If you praise the beauty of yonder little girl in the garden,
I will transform you into a guinea-pig; and if you still continue
doing so, I will make an old cock of you.' Even so Raina is changed
into a viper, a liar, a dissimulator, a senseless changer of lovers,
an--anything, without the slightest inner coherence, or what the
philosophers call, psychological connection.
"The same old witch's wand is used, with the freedom of a clown, with
regard to the _fiancé_ of Raina, the young military hero. He had by a
bold cavalry charge captured a battery or two of the enemy's artillery.
How can he be forgiven such an execrable deed? How dare he succeed?
Out with the old sauce of Antisthenes! It is, of course, exceedingly
stale by this time. But the English, it appears, are so thoroughly
used to stale sauces. They will not notice it at all. And thus all the
threadbare arguments of Antisthenes are dished up again. I jubilated in
my pride.
"The _fiancé_, Sergius, took the batteries of cannon because, we are
told, by a mistake of their commander, they were--not charged. How
witty! How clever! Antisthenes merely said that the Persians were much
inferior to the Athenians, so the latter easily got the better of the
former. But this twentieth-century dapper little Cynic goes one better.
He says, as it were, the Persians had no weapons to strike with. Who
would have thought of such an ingenious satire?
"Please, Hermes (Mercury), do not interrupt me! I know very well what
you mean to say. In all actions of men, victory depends more on the
shortcomings of their rivals and competitors than on their own genius.
It is no special feature of military victories. Of two grocers in the
same street, one succeeds mainly because the other is neglectful and
unbusinesslike. Of two dramatists in the same country, one succeeds
because he gives the people what _they_ want, and not, as does the
other, what dramatic Art wants. And so forth _ad infinitum_.
"But my Cynical Shavian does not heed these inconsistencies; he knows
the public will not notice them. He wants simply to ridicule War, and
the whole military spirit. Accordingly out with the witch's wand, and
let us change the hero first into a whimpering calf, and then suddenly
into a lewd he-goat, and then, for no reason whatever, into the most
mendacious magpie flying about, and finally into a little mouse caught
in a trap laid by a kitchen-maid. For this is precisely what happens to
the hero Sergius.
"Returning from war, he is sick of it with a nauseating sea-sickness.
Why? Unknown; or, as Herbert Spencer, the next best replica of
Antisthenes in Britannia, would have said, _unknowable_.
"Sergius is sentimentally idiotic about the nullity of his military
glory. A few moments later he cannot resist the rustic beauties of a
kitchen-maid, one minute after he had disentangled himself out of the
embraces of his beautiful, young, and worshipped _fiancé_. The he-goat
is upon him. Why? Unknown, unknowable.
"Here in our fourth dimension we know very well (do we not, Ares?) that
soldiers have done similar _escapades_? But have barristers done less?
Have all solicitors proved bosom-proof? Has no dramatist ever been
sorely tempted by buxomness and vigorous development of youthful flesh?
One wonders.
"Why then bring up such stuff, without the slightest reason, without
the slightest need, internal or external? But the soldier, do you not
see, must be run down. He must be ridiculed. It must be shown that he
is only a cowardly mouse caught in the trap laid for him by that very
kitchen-maid whom at first he treats merely as a well-ordered mass of
tempting flesh, and whom in the end he--marries.
"This trait is delicious. I have frequently been in Mysia, or what
these people now call Bulgaria, where Shaw's scene is laid. The idea of
a Bulgarian gentleman of the highest standing marrying a kitchen-maid
gave me a fit of laughter. In eccentric England a high-born gentleman
may very well marry a barmaid. In Bulgaria a nobleman will no more
marry a servant-girl than his own mother. He has known too many of
them; he can study her carefully, encyclopædically, without marrying
her in the least. For, _she_ will never love _him_.
"Of course, my acolyte full well knows that the English are not at all
conversant with any nation south of Dover Straits, and that one may
tell them anything one pleases about nations other than themselves,
They will believe it. And so Sergius marries the girl by the same
necessity that a mouse may be said to have married the trap into which
it drops.
"Is not this fun indeed? To call marrying what simple people call
getting morally insane? How clever! How bright!
"This is precisely what we Cynics used to do in ancient Greece. We
turned humanity inside out, and then I walked in day-time in the
streets with a lamp in my hand in search of a normal man, of a human
being. If you vitriole a person's face or character first, how can you
expect him to have unscathed features? But that is precisely the point
with us Cynics. We take human nature; we then vitriole it out of all
shape, and afterwards cry out in sheer indignation, 'How awful!' 'How
absurd!' This reminds me of my lawyer pupil who once, in the defence of
a fellow who had murdered his parents, pathetically exclaimed to the
jury: 'And finally, gentlemen, have pity on this poor, orphaned boy!'
"Not content with Sergius, another 'type' of soldier is dragged up to
the stage; a Swiss. Now I do not here mean to repeat our old Greek
jokes about people similar to the Swiss, such as the Paphlagonians or
Cilicians. I will only remark that the French, who have for over four
hundred years had intimate knowledge of the Swiss, put the whole of
Swiss character into the famous _mot_: 'Which animal resembles a human
being most?' Answer: 'A Swiss.'
"From a Swiss you may expect anything. He talks three languages; all in
vile German. He is to his beautiful country like a wart on a perfect
face. In the midst of paradise he is worse than a Prussian yokel born
in the dreary heaths of North Germany. He is a Swiss. He has been a
mercenary soldier to Popes and Lutheran princes alike. His aim was
money; is money; will always be nothing but money. He sells his blood
as he does the milk of his cows, by the _litre_ or the _decilitre_;
preferably by the latter. He likes war well enough; but he prefers
truces and cessation of arms. He thinks the best part of death is the
avoidance thereof. He is, when a mercenary, a military Cynic.
"I like him dearly; he does me honour. Whenever I see him on the grand
staircase in the Vatican, I grin 'way down in my heart. Here is a Cynic
dressed up like a parrot in gorgeous plumage. Diogenes in Rococo-dress!
It is intensely amusing.
"Now this Swiss is made by Shaw a 'type' of a soldier. This is quite
in accordance with the procedure of the Cynical School. First, all
real soldierly qualities are vitrioled out of the man by making
him a Swiss mercenary; and then he is shown up in all his callous
indifference to Right, Love, or Justice; which is tantamount to saying
'a distinguished Belgian lady patrolling Piccadilly after midnight.'
That Swiss mercenary proves no more against the worth of soldiers,
than that Belgian woman proves anything in disgrace of the women of
Belgium. If Shaw's figure proves anything, it proves the worthlessness
of mercenaries in general, and of Swiss mercenaries in particular. That
is, it proves something quite different from what it means to prove.
This too is arch-Cynical. Why, who knows it better than I, that we
Cynics were not infrequently instrumental in bringing about the very
reverse of what we were aiming at? But the more perverse, the better
the fun.
"And the fun is excellent beyond words. It is, in fact, as grim as the
grimmest Welshman. On my way home from the theatre I thought of it,
and started laughing in the street with such violence that a policeman
wanted to take me to the station. The grimness of the fun was this:
inquiring about the author, I learnt that he was an Irishman. I had
no sooner made sure of the truth of this statement than I could not
control myself for laughter.
"An Irishman reviling war, and soldiers, and the military spirit! How
unutterably grim,--how unspeakably grimy! The Irish, endowed by nature
with gifts of the body as well as the mind incomparably superior to
those of the English, have made the most atrocious failure of their
history, of their possibilities, of their chances, for that one and
only reason, that they never found means of character and endurance
to fight for their rights and hopes in bitter and unrelenting wars.
Not having made a single effort in any way comparable to the sustained
armed resistance of the Scotch, the Dutch, the Hungarians, or the
Boers, in the course of over three hundred years, they have fallen
under the yoke of a nation whom they detest. This naturally demoralised
them, as it demoralises a mere husband when he is yoked to a hated
wife. Being demoralised, they have never, oh never, reached that
balance of internal powers without which nothing great can be achieved.
The English with lesser powers, being undemoralised, got their powers
into far greater balance. So did the Scot through sustained, reckless
fighting for their ideals. Hence the misery of the Irish, who are
like their fairies, enchanting, but fatal to themselves and to others;
unbalanced, unsteady in mind and resolution to a sickening degree;
fickle, and resembling altogether sweet kisses from one's lady-love
intermingled with knocks in the face from one's vilest creditors.
"Their recoiling from making resolute war on the enemy being the great
cause of the failure of the Irish, what can be more grimly Cynical than
an Irishman's indignation at all that appertains to war? We Cynics
always do that. Moderation having been the soul of all things Hellenic,
we Cynics told the Greeks that the one fatal excess that man can commit
is moderation. Of music we taught that its only beauties are in the
pauses; and of man we held that he is perfect only by making himself
into a beast.