of having been born Jews. Incredible! In Vienna I have seen St.
Stefan’s Cathedral crowded at the 11 o’clock high mass by most fervent
worshippers, the majority of whom seemed Semitic, which prompted me to
propound the riddle: When is a Jew not a Jew? Answer: When he is a Roman
Catholic in Vienna. But you never can tell. As Joseffy used to say when
some musician with a nose like the Ten Commandments was introduced, as,
for example, Monsieur Fontaine, “He means Brunnen, or, in Hebrew, Pischa.
He is not a Jew, but his grandmother wore a ‘scheitel’” (the wig still
worn by orthodox Jewish women). The truth is that among the virtuosi,
singers, actors, the Jew holds first place. Liszt and Paganini are the
exceptions, and Paganini could easily pass in an east side crowd as
Jehudah. As to the Wagner controversy, not started by Nietzsche, but by
Rossini and Meyerbeer, who referred to Wagner as Jewish, that was settled
by O. G. Sonneck in his little book, Was Wagner a Jew? but only after I
had introduced to the columns of the _New York Times Sunday Magazine_ in
1913, a book by Otto Bournot, entitled Ludwig Geyer. Geyer was, as you
may remember, the stepfather of Richard Wagner. Bournot had access to the
Baireuth archives and delved into the newspapers of Geyer’s days. August
Böttiger’s Necrology had hitherto been the chief source. Mary Burrell’s
Life of Wagner was the first to give the true spelling of the name of
Wagner’s mother, which was Bertz, which may be Jewish or German, as you
like.
The Geyers as far back as 1700 were pious folk. The first of the
family mentioned in local history was a certain Benjamin Geyer, who
about 1700 was a trombone player and organist. Indeed, the Geyers were
largely connected with the evangelical church. Ludwig Geyer, virtually
acknowledged by Baireuth as the real father of Richard Wagner, looked
Jewish (which proves nothing, as I have seen dark, Semitic fisher-folk on
the coast of Galway) and displayed Jewish versatility. For that matter
the composer von Weber looked like a Jew, as does Camille Saint-Saëns.
When I ventured to write of this racial trait—much more marked in his
youth—the French composer sent me a denial, sarcastically asking how
a man with such a “holy” name as “Saint-Saëns” could be Jewish. But
Leopold Godowsky, who was intimate with him, has told me that he took
his mother’s name. As to Wagner, a little story may suffice. In 1896 I
attended the Wagner festival at Baireuth. Between performances I tramped
the Franconian hills. My toes hurt me. Looking for a corn-cutter, I
found one not far from the Wagner house. The old chap seated me in his
doorway, probably to get better light, and as he crouched over my feet
in the street I asked him if he had known Richard Wagner. “Know Wagner!”
he irascibly replied. “He passed my shop every day. Many the times I
cut his corns. Oh, no! not here; over yonder”—he jerked his head in the
direction of Wahnfried. I inquired what kind of a looking man was Wagner.
“He was a little bow-legged Jew, and he always wore a long cloak to hide
his crooked legs.” Enfin! the truth from the mouth of babes. This beats
Nietzsche and his “Vulture” Geyer.
Not religion, not nationality, but race, counts in the individual. Wagner
looked like a Jew. And there are many red-haired Jews with pug noses
and light blue eyes. Renan in Le Judaisme has shown us how non-Jewish
elements were in the course of time incorporated within the race. The
Chazars of eastern Europe are Jews, only a thousand years old. Dr.
Brandes in a confession of his views on the subject has said—in _The
Journal for Jewish History and Literature_, published at Stockholm
(_Teldscript for Judisk Historia_), and quoted by Bernard G. Richards in
a capital study of Brandes—“from the fifteenth to the sixteenth year of
my life I regarded Judaism purely as a religion.” But when he was abused
as a Jew then Georg Brandes felt himself a genuine Jew. Many a man has
found himself in a similar position. Atavistic impulses, submerged in
subconsciousness, may explain why certain men, Gentiles, scholars, by
nature noncombatants, have left their peaceful study, jeopardized their
life, ruined their reputation, to battle for an obscure Jew Dreyfus.
Zola, of Greek-Levantine origin, perhaps Italian and Jew, was one of
those valiant souls who fought for the truth. Anatole France, born
Thibault, another. Count Thibault, at the time of the Dreyfus uproar,
challenged the great writer who signs himself Anatole France to prove
his right to that distinguished Roman Catholic name. That the gentle
Anatole is the very spit and spawn of a Jew, so far as appearance goes;
that since Heine (baptized a Christian) no such union of mocking irony
and tender, poetic emotion can be noted in the work of any writer, are
alike valueless as testimony. Nevertheless, many believe in this Hebraic
strain; just as they feel it in the subtlety of Cardinal Newman’s
writing—he was of Dutch stock—and in the humor of Charles Lamb. Both
Englishmen are credited with the “precious quintessence,” as Du Maurier
would say.
I have had to stand a lot of good-natured fun poked at me for my Jewish
propensity. I can stand it, as I have a solid substratum of history for
my speculations. Some years ago _The Contemporary Review_ printed an
article entitled “The Jew in Music,” with this motto from Oscar Wilde’s
Salome: “The Jews believe only in what they cannot see.” The writer’s
name was signed: A. E. Keeton. Not even the assertion that Beethoven was
a Belgian is half so iconoclastic as some of the assumptions made in
this study. When Mozart first appeared as a prodigy before the future
Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, she announced that ‘a genius must not
be a Jew.’ The original name, Ozart, was changed. Mozart was baptized!
Which anecdote makes the scalp to freeze, though not because of its
verisimilitude. Beethoven and Rubinstein looked alike; ergo! But then
they didn’t. In the case of Chopin he was certainly Jewish-looking,
especially in the Winterhalter and Kwiatowski portraits. His father came
from Nancy, in Lorraine, thickly populated by Jews. The original name,
Szopen, or Szop, is Jewish. His music, especially the first Scherzo in
B minor, has a Heine-like irony, and irony is a prime characteristic of
the Chosen (or Choosing as Zangwill puts it) race! But all this is in the
key of wildest surmise. Wagner was born in the ghetto at Leipsic; yet
that didn’t make him Jewish, any more than the baptism of Mendelssohn
made him Christian. Georges Bizet was of Jewish origin, he looked Jewish;
but the fact that he married the daughter of Halévy (Ha-Levi), the
composer of La Juive, didn’t make the composer of Carmen a Jew. Neither
religion nor nationality are any more than superficial factors in the
nature of men and women. Race alone counts.
Once upon a time I wrote a Jewish story, The Shofar Blew at Sunset.
Maggie Cline liked it; so did Israel Zangwill. I preserve a letter from
Mr. Zangwill telling me of his liking. The story appeared in M’lle New
York, now defunct. It was afterward translated into Yiddish, though it
did not give general satisfaction in either camp, Jewish or Christian.
It revelled in the cantillations and employed as leading motive the
Shofar, or ram’s-horn blown in the synagogues on Yom Kippur or the Day of
Atonement. The scroll of the Torah also appeared. But these liturgical
references didn’t offend; it was my surprising denunciation of Jewish
materialism in New York that was the rock of offence. I say surprising,
for what is a Christian-born doing in another field and finding fault?
I’m sure I can’t say why, unless that in writing the tale I unconsciously
dramatized myself as a reproaching voice. There was much in my strictures
of that son of Hanan who prowled through the streets of the Holy
City in the year A. D. 62, crying aloud: “Woe, woe upon Jerusalem!” I
remember that I predicted because of the luxury of the American Jew the
lofty Jewish idealism might be submerged in a flood of indifference and
disbelief. Prosperity would prove the snag. In the heart of the Jew is
the true Zion, not in success nor in some far-away land. Naturally, that
didn’t please the Zionists. One professional Jewish publication, no
longer in existence, said that I preached like a Rabbi (Reb), but thought
like a goi. The word “Chutzpah” was also used. Yet, wasn’t I right? It
is the spiritual Ark of the Covenant, the spirit of the law, and not the
letter that killeth, which should be enshrined in the heart of the Jew.
He may dream of Palestine, of its skies of the “few large stars,” a land
overflowing with milk and honey; but in the depths of his soul it is the
living God to whom he must go for spiritual sustenance. God the eternal
reservoir of our earthly certitudes! Schma’ Ysroel!
SOCIALISM AND MEDIOCRITY
In these piping times of peace when the body politic is afflicted with
socialism, bolshevism, and other cutaneous disorders, it is a pleasing
and a profitable task to reread Socialistic Fallacies, by M. Yves
Guyot, who for years has been a determined and consistent opponent of
the bleak and dismal “science” and the author of a number of books
on the subject. Luckily for those who can’t read French, Socialistic
Fallacies has been translated and should prove a manual to combat and
confute the sophistries of socialism with the writer’s arsenal of
arguments. M. Guyot has been a deputy, a municipal councillor, minister
of public works. He advocated the revision of the Dreyfus case, and he
was political editor of _Le Siècle_ (1892-1903). He is also editor of
_Journal des Economistes_ (since 1909) and editor of _L’Agence Economique
et Financières_ (since 1911). He has written much about the great war
and its causes (also translated) and kindred themes. Therefore a man who
knows what he is talking about.
In his drastic attack on socialistic fallacies he thus concludes: “There
are three words which socialism must erase from the façades of our public
buildings, the three words of the republican motto: Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity. Liberty, because socialism is a rule of tyranny; equality,
because it is a rule of class; fraternity, because its policy is that of
class war.” M. Guyot might have quoted Napoleon, a realist, a cynic in
politics, for he knew its seamy side, who said: “Tell men they are equal
and they won’t bother about liberty.” And in this matter men may change,
mankind never.
Socialism, that word of so many meanings, has itself become meaningless.
Guyot shows us each variety, analyzes its particular fallacy, and though
not a victim to the craze for statistics, he furnishes many pages of
figures to match those of his adversaries. He attacks Karl Marx on
his weakest flank, and, incidentally, proves him not to have been a
proletarian, but the son-in-law of a Prussian Junker. The selfishness of
Marx, his tyrannical behavior, his unphilosophical wrath when opposed
by two such intellectual giants as Bakunine and Lassalle; his jealous
attitude toward Ferdinand Lassalle, especially after his tragic death,
are all well known. These traits do not reveal a man overflowing with
true brotherly love. Able, but frequently unscrupulous, men amuse the
idle and attract the multitude—such are the leaders of the cause which
has made such headway in Germany, adds Guyot, whose words in the light
of contemporaneous history are positively prophetic. These leaders
are plagiarists, with some variations, of all the communist romances
originally inspired by Plato. Their greatest pundits, Marx and Engels,
have built up their theories upon a sentence of Saint-Simon and three
phrases of Ricardo’s. Our author gives these examples: “German socialism
is derived from two sources: (1) The French doctrine of Saint-Simon, ‘The
way to grow rich is to make others work for one,’ which in Proudhon’s
mouth becomes ‘the exploitation of man by man.’ (2) Three formulas of
Ricardo, viz.: (_a_) labor is the measure of value; (_b_) the price of
labor is that which provides the laborer in general with the means of
subsistence, and of perpetuating his species without either increase or
diminution; (_c_) profits decrease in proportion as wages increase.”
Formula (_b_) became the “iron law of wages” enunciated by Lassalle.
Inverted dogmatism all these stale subterfuges.
The French doctrines and Ricardo’s three formulas were transformed into
the theory of Rodbertus, “the normal time of labor,” and the “surplus
labor” theory of Karl Marx and Engels. Guyot calmly demonstrates the
fallacies of these sonorous assumptions. He asks the whereabouts of the
Utopias of Fourier, of Cabet, of Louis Blanc’s organization of labor, or
of Proudhon’s bank of exchange—that Proudhon who has been permanently
saddled with Brissot’s famous phrase: “Property is theft.” (Philosophical
Examination of Property and Theft, 1780.) No Socialist has succeeded
in explaining the conditions for the production, the remuneration, and
the distribution of capital in a collectivist system. No Socialist has
succeeded in determining the motives for action which an individual would
obey. When pressed for an answer, they allege that human nature shall be
metamorphosed, but that the individual remains a constant quantity! Rank
materialism all this, and absolutely without vision.
Socialism is a hierarchy on a military basis imported from Germany. Karl
Marx did not concern himself with the incentives to action which are to
be placed before men in communistic society, and his followers carefully
evade the question. When they do attempt to deal with it, they fall into
grotesque errors, as did the late French leader, Jaurès. Kautsky asks
how the workman is to be made to take an interest in his work, and he
can find no incentive other than the force of habit. Like mechanical
toys, men will do the same thing every day because they did it the day
before. This is merely teaching tricks to animals, the organization
of reflex action causing the individual mechanically to do to-morrow
what he did yesterday. Nor is this a discovery of scientific socialism;
the organizers of churches, of armies, discovered the trait long ago,
employing it as a means of discipline under the sanctions of allurement
and coercion; allurement, by preferments, decorations, and honorary
distinction; coercion, by means of more or less cruel and rigorous
punishments. Bebel declared that “a man who will not work has not the
right to eat.” This is being condemned to death by starvation; and a man
who does less work than, in the opinion of the executive, he ought to
do, shall be put upon a restricted diet; so, after all, the collectivist
ideal ends in servile labor. To replace a king or a president there will
be an “executive,” which means several instead of one tyrant. Good old
King Log is always a better ruler than King Stork. For one thing, he is
not so voracious as the ferociously hungry feathered biped. Socialism,
then, is only one more strait-jacket to torture the individual.
It may be said that man is ready for every form of sacrifice save one:
nowhere and at no time has he been found to labor voluntarily and
constantly from a disinterested love for others. Man is only compelled
to productive labor by necessity, by the fear of punishment, or by
suitable remuneration. The Socialists of to-day, like those of former
times, constantly denounce the waste of competition. Competition involves
losses, but biological evolution, as well as humanity, proves that they
are largely compensated by gain. Furthermore, there is no question of
abolishing competition in socialistic conceptions; the question is
merely one of the substitution of political for economic competition. If
economic competition leads to waste, and claims its victims, it is none
the less productive. Political competition has secured enormous plunder
to great conquerors, such as Alexander, Cæsar, Tamerlane, and Napoleon;
it always destroys more wealth than it confers upon the victor. The
Socialist formulates a theory of robbery and calls it “restitution to
the disinherited.” Disinherited by whom? Disinherited of what? Let them
produce their title-deeds! They call it expropriation, but that is a
misnomer; what they set out to practise is confiscation. Georges Bernard
says that “socialism will be a régime of authority.” On this point
Guyot grimly agrees with him. In reality it will be the most oppressive
spiritual and material system ever invented by man.
Socialist action has a depressing effect on all fixed capital, and, he
continues, “in order to carry on a policy of preserving the political
equilibrium, of giving a few bones to the demagogues to gnaw, concessions
are made to the policy of spoliation.” What, then, remains of socialism
when we come to close quarters with it? And what are the prospects of
this spoliation and tyranny? The socialistic party cannot balance up a
governmental majority without destroying government itself, for it cannot
admit that government fulfils the minimum of its duties (this was written
before 1914). When a strike breaks out the intention of the strikers is
that security of person and property shall not be guaranteed. Socialist
policy represents contempt for law, and all men, whether rich or poor,
have an interest in liberty, security, and justice, as the private
interest of each individual is bound up with these common blessings. But
Socialists despise them all. “The socialism of Karl Marx’s disciples
betrays a long apprenticeship to servitude,” declares M. Reinach.
A law, the object of which is to protect each man’s property, is
supported by all who possess anything, and where is the man in advanced
societies who is incapable of being robbed because he possesses nothing?
A law of spoliation may be passed and carried into effect, but in the
event of its results becoming permanent it runs the risk of destroying
the government which has assumed the responsibility of it. Socialist
policy is a permanent menace to the liberty and security of citizens,
and, therefore, cannot be the policy of any government, the primary duty
of which is to exact respect for internal and external security. If it
fail therein it dissolves and is replaced by anarchy; and, inasmuch as
every one has a horror of that condition, which betrays itself by the
oppression of violent men banded together solely by their appetites,
an appeal is made to a strong government and to a man with a strong
grip, and then the risk is incurred of relapsing into all the disgraces
and disasters of Cæsarism. In several sections of this admirable work,
M. Guyot scrutinizes the various Utopias from Plato to Proudhon: Sir
Thomas More, the Kingdom of the Incas, Campanella, the Jesuits in
Paraguay, Moselly, Robert Owen, Fourier, the American Phalanx, the Oneida
Community, Cabet, the Icarians, and other unsuccessful experimenters.
Utopia is always within sight, but never reached. It is, in the charming
parlance of the hour, a pipe-dream; these Utopias always cut their
throats to spite their thirst. And precisely where socialism was expected
to be a buffer against world wars, it dismally failed.
From time to time the everlasting busybody asks himself why a plea for
mediocrity is not a fitting theme to interest ambitious essayists.
Supermen and supper-rogues have been done to the death in print, yet few
words are accorded to the garden variety of the human plant. Instead we
are keyed to the loftiest pitch; exaggeration is a national neurosis. We
are all professional altruists, and, as every one knows, altruism is the
art of making our neighbor unhappy because of our oppressive happiness.
And yet not a word for mediocrity, which is the backbone of our nation,
the staple of its political, artistic, and literary productions. Not a
word for the man in the street, whose collective opinion—King Opinion,
the most despotic of tyrants—rules us, whose vote counts heavier than the
vote of the “exceptional” being perched on the house-top. (A majority of
exalted souls would turn America into a wilderness.) And all because the
excellent word “mediocrity” is become debased in meaning. At one time it
stood for the golden mean, for a happy equilibrium of forces, moral and
physical. It spelled happiness to its possessor—we refer to the mediocre
temperament—and if a man had enough money to keep the wolf from the
door he was content. That is the precise word—content; to be contented
is a gift of the gods. But to us nowadays it means that you are merely
commonplace, without social ambitions, without intellectual eminence. And
this is not well.
Notwithstanding the fact that we are a united nation of over one hundred
millions of people, we are each in his own fashion endeavoring to escape
the imputation of mediocrity. Alas! in vain. Number is mediocrity.
We think and drink to order, vote as we are bidden by our wives, and
wear the clothes given us by destroyers of sartorial taste. Wherefore,
then, this mad desire to be exceptional? Whence this optimism that
shudders in the presence of genuine art and espouses the vulgar because
it better agrees with fat nerves? Let us acknowledge the truth. It is
because, happily for us, we are all mediocre; because genius is not a
normal condition of humanity, and that talent is much less rare than
our national vanity admits. However, let us pluck up courage. The
future—which is said by some to belong to socialism—will work out the
problem of mediocrity, especially if socialism is involved; mediocrity
and socialism are not poles asunder. Concrete houses filled with people
who will eat, drink, and think alike will cover the land. Everything will
be of concrete, even our political opinions. In his concrete Capitol a
concrete President will devise concrete laws. Art, music, and literature
will be so concrete that our native Gradgrinds, hungry for hard facts,
will be ravished into the seventh concrete heaven. Made a law, mediocrity
will do away with our present mortifying doubts, deceptions, and
pretensions. O Happy Time! And this coming age of concrete, wherein all
must walk and look alike, is it not a dream compared with which Dante’s
Inferno would be a Garden of Armida?
Said a great poet-philosopher: “And many a man has gone into the desert
and suffered from thirst with the camels rather than sit about the
cistern with dirty camel drivers.” No wonder William James wrote that
“the whole atmosphere of present-day Utopian literature tastes mawkish
and dish-watery to people who still keep a sense of life’s more bitter
flavors.” And how much more that is insipid and mawkish will follow
under socialistic regimentation! “Is it not the chief disgrace in the
world not to be a unit; to be reckoned one character; not to yield that
peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in
the gross, in the hundreds of thousands, of the party, of the section to
which we belong, and our opinion predicted geographically as the North or
the South?” These words were not uttered by a Socialist; they emanated
from the crystal-clear intellect of our greatest Individualist, Ralph
Waldo Emerson.
CHOPIN OR THE CIRCUS?
Rather hotly I argued the question with my editor: “After all, music
critics are men and brethren,” I said. “Except when they are sisters,”
he ironically interposed. I sternly resisted a temptation to blush,
and continued: “Because I love Chopin must I forever write of his
music—toujours perdrix! It’s an indigestion of strawberries, clotted
cream, and green-eyes. I’m suffering from spring-fever. Let me write a
story about the circus.” “Why not Ibsen?” interposed my editor, who is
subtle or nothing. “He was a grand man,” I assented, “but in the present
case he is only a red-herring across the trail. Suppose I mix up Chopin
with sawdust merely for the sake of the mélange?” My chief assented,
wearily. There are more important problems on the carpet than Chopin.
Had I ever been to the circus? What a singular question! Yet, yet—!
No, I confessed to myself, I had not been to the circus for at least
three decades. Critics are tame cats away from their regular guests.
In the concert room or at the play, armed with our little hammers, we
are as brave as plumbers; but on a roof garden, in church, at a circus,
or innocently slumbering, we are the mildest gang of pirates that ever
scuttled an American sonata or forced ambitious leading ladies to walk
the plank. We may go alone to the theatre with impunity and another
fellow’s girl, but at the circus we need a nurse to show us the ropes and
keep us from falling under the elephants’ hoofs. I know, because I went
one Sunday night to the Hippodrome and liked John McCormack’s singing
immensely; so much indeed that I forgot to criticise and nearly fell over
the edge of the box, so uncritically did I applaud. A private nurse—not
necessarily old—say I is the only safety for a critic out of his element;
otherwise a sense of the dignity of our calling is not maintained.