have been at all. Speaking selfishly, as we always do when we speak
truly, I have not had a great deal of happiness, though I have had a
good deal of fun. But things seem to wear out. I like to laugh, and I
have laughed, in my time, consumedly. But I find that the laugh goes out
of the specific instances of laughability, just as grieving goes out of
grief. The thing that at the first and third time amused me enormously
leaves me sad at the fourth, or at least unmoved. You see, I can't trust
immortality to be permanently interesting. The reasonable chances are
that in the lapse of a few aeons I should find eternity hanging heavy on
my hands. But it isn't that, exactly, and it would be hard to say what
my objection to immortality exactly is. It would be simpler to say what
it _really_ is. It is personal, temperamental, congenital. I was born, I
suspect, an indifferentist, as far as this life is concerned, and as to
another life, I have an acquired antipathy."
"That is curious, but not incredible, and of course not inconceivable,"
the closest listener assented.
"I'm not so sure of that," a light skirmisher broke his silence for the
first time. "Do you mean to say," he asked of the first speaker, "that
you would not mind being found dead in your bed to-morrow morning, and
that you would rather like it if that were actually the end of you?"
The first speaker nodded his head over the glass he had just emptied,
and having swallowed its contents hastily, replied, "Precisely."
"Then you have already, at your age, evolved that 'instinct of death,'
which Metchnikoff, in his strange book, thinks the race will come to
when men begin living rightly, and go living on to a hundred and fifty
years or more, as they once did."
"Who is Metchnikoff, and what is the name of his strange book?" the
light skirmisher cut in.
"He's the successor of Pasteur in the Pasteur Institute at Paris, and
his book is called _The Nature of Man_."
"That blighting book!" One of the women who had caught on to the drift
of the talk contributed this anguished suspiration.
"Blighting? Is it blighting?" the first speaker parleyed.
"Don't you call it blighting," she returned, "to be told not only that
you are the descendant of an anthropoid ape--we had got used to
that--but of an anthropoid ape gone wrong?"
"Sort of simian degenerate," the light skirmisher formulated the case.
"We are merely apes in error."
The closest listener put this playfulness by. "What seems to me a
fundamental error of that book is its constant implication of a constant
fear of death. I can very well imagine, or I can easily allow, that we
are badly made, and that there are all sorts of 'disharmonies,' as
Metchnikoff calls them, in us; but my own experience is that we are not
all the time thinking about death and dreading it, either in earlier or
later life, and that elderly people think less about it, if anything,
than younger people. His contention for an average life four or five
times longer than the present average life seems to be based upon an
obscure sense of the right of a man to satisfy that instinct of life
here on earth which science forbids him to believe he shall satisfy
hereafter."
"Well, I suppose," the first speaker said, "that Metchnikoff may err in
his premises through a temperamental 'disharmony' of Russian nature
rather than of less specific human nature. The great Russian authors
seem to recognize that perpetual dread of death in themselves and their
readers which we don't recognize in ourselves or our Occidental friends
and neighbors. Other people don't think of death so much as he supposes,
and when they do they don't dread it so much. But I think he is still
more interestingly wrong in supposing that the young are less afraid of
death than the old because they risk their lives more readily. That is
not from indifference to death, it is from inexperience of life; they
haven't learned yet the dangers which beset it and the old have; that is
all."
"I don't know but you're right," the first speaker said. "And I couldn't
see the logic of Metchnikoff's position in regard to the 'instinct of
death' which he expects us to develop after we have lived, say, a
hundred and thirty or forty years, so that at a hundred and fifty we
shall be glad to go, and shall not want anything but death after we die.
The apparent line of his argument is that in youth we have not the
instinct of life so strongly but that we willingly risk life. Then,
until we live to a hundred and thirty or forty or so, we have the
instinct of life so strongly that we are anxious to shun death; lastly
the instinct of death grows in us and we are eager to lay down life. I
don't see how or why this should be. As a matter of fact, children dread
death far more than men who are not yet old enough to have developed the
instinct of it. Still, it's a fascinating and suggestive book."
"But not enough so to console us for the precious hope of living again
which it takes away so pitilessly," said the woman who had followed the
talk.
"Is that such a very precious hope?" the first speaker asked.
"I know you pretend not," she said, "but I don't believe you."
"Then you think that the dying, who almost universally make a good end,
are buoyed up by that hope?"
"I don't see why they shouldn't be. I know it's the custom for
scientific people to say that the resignation of the dying is merely
part of the general sinking and so is just physical; but they can't
prove that. Else why should persons who are condemned to death be just
as much resigned to it as the sick and even more exalted?"
"Ah," the light skirmisher put in, "some of the scientific people
dispose of that point very simply. They say it's self-hypnotism."
"Well, but they can't prove that, either," she retorted. Then she went
on: "Besides, the dying are not almost universally willing to die.
Sometimes they are very unwilling: and they seem to be unwilling because
they have no hope of living again. Why wouldn't it be just as reasonable
to suppose that we could evolve the instinct of death by believing in
the life hereafter as by living here a hundred and fifty years? For the
present, it's as easy to do the one as the other."
"But not for the future," the first speaker said. "As you suggest, it
may be just as reasonable to think we can evolve the instinct of death
by faith as by longevity, but it isn't as scientific."
"What M. Metchnikoff wants is the scientific certainty--which we can
have only by beginning to live a century and a half apiece--that the
coming man will not be afraid to die." This, of course, was from the
light skirmisher.
The woman contended, "The coming man may be scientifically resigned if
he prefers, but the going man, the _gone_ man, was rapturously ready to
die, in untold thousands of martyrdoms, because he believed that he
should live again."
The first speaker smiled compassionately, and perhaps also a little
patronizingly. "I'm not sure that you have met the point exactly.
Metchnikoff denies, on the basis of scientific knowledge, that it is
possible for a man, being dead, to live again. In those two extremely
interesting chapters of his, which treat of the 'Religious Remedies' and
the 'Philosophical Remedies' for the 'disharmonies of the human
constitution,' he is quite as unsparing of the sages as of the saints.
The Christians and the Buddhists fare no worse than Plato and the
Stoics; the last are no less unscientific than the first in his view,
and no less fallacious. What he asks is not that we shall be resigned or
enraptured in view of death, but that we shall physically desire it
when we are tired of living, just as we physically desire sleep when we
are tired of waking."
"And to that end," the light skirmisher said, "he asks nothing but that
we shall live a hundred and fifty years."
"No, he asks that we shall live such natural lives that we shall die
natural deaths, which are voluntary deaths. He contends that most of us
now die accidental and violent deaths."
The woman who had caught on demanded, "Why does he think we could live a
century and a half?"
"From analogies in the lives of other animals and from the facts of our
constitution. He instances the remarkable cases of longevity recorded in
the Bible."
"I think he's very inconsistent," his pursuer continued. "The Bible says
men lived anywhere from a hundred to nine hundred years, and he thinks
it quite possible. The Bible says that men live after death, and he
thinks that's impossible."
"Well, have you ever met a man who had lived after death?" the first
speaker asked.
"No. Have you ever met a man two hundred years old? If it comes to
undeniable proof there is far more proof of ghosts than of
bicentenarians."
"Very well, then, I get out of it by saying that I don't believe in
either."
"And leave Metchnikoff in the lurch!" the light skirmisher reproached
him. "You don't believe in the instinct of death! And I was just going
to begin living to a hundred and fifty and dying voluntarily by leaving
off cheese. Now I will take some of the Gorgonzola."
Everybody laughed but the first speaker and the woman who had caught on;
they both looked rather grave, and the closest listener left off
laughing soonest.
"We can't be too grateful to science for its devotion to truth. But
isn't it possible for it to overlook one kind of truth in looking for
another? Isn't it imaginable that when a certain anthropoid ape went
wrong and blundered into a man, he also blundered into a soul, and as a
slight compensation for having involuntarily degenerated from his
anthropoid ancestor, came into the birthright of eternal life?"
"It's imaginable," the first speaker granted. "But science leaves
imagining things to religion and philosophy."
"Ah, that's just where you're mistaken!" the woman who had caught on
exclaimed. "Science does nothing but imagine things!"
"Well, not quite," the light skirmisher mocked.
She persisted unheeding: "First the suggestion from the mystical
somewhere--the same _where_, probably, that music and pictures and
poetry come from; then the hypothesis; then the proof; then the
established fact. Established till some new scientist comes along and
knocks it over."
"It would be very interesting if some one would proceed hypothetically
concerning the soul and its immortality, as the scientific people do in
their inquiries concerning the origin of man, electricity, disease, and
the rest."
"Yes," the light skirmisher agreed. "Why doesn't some fellow bet himself
that he has an undying soul and then go on to accumulate the proofs?"
The others seemed now to have touched bottom in the discussion, and he
launched a random inquiry upon the general silence. "By-the-way, I
wonder why women are so much more anxious to live again than men, as a
general thing."
"Because they don't feel," one of them at table ventured, "that they
have had a fair chance here."
"Oh! I thought maybe they felt that they hadn't had their say."
"Is it quite certain," the closest listener asked, "that they _are_ more
anxious to live again than men?" He looked round at the ladies present,
and at first none of them answered; perhaps because they feared the men
would think them weak if they owned to a greater longing than themselves
for immortality.
Finally the woman who had caught on said: "I don't know whether it's so
or not; and I don't think it matters. But I don't mind saying that I
long to live again; I am not ashamed of it. I don't think very much of
myself; but I'm interested in living. Then"--she dropped her voice a
little--"there are some I should like to see again. I have known
people--characters--natures--that I can't believe are wasted. And those
that were dear to us and that we have lost--"
She stopped, and the first speaker now looked at her with a compassion
unalloyed by patronage, and did not ask, as he might, "What has all that
to do with it?"
In fact, a sympathetic silence possessed the whole company. It was
broken at last by the closest listener's saying: "After all, I don't
know that Metchnikoff's book is so very blighting. It's certainly a very
important book, and it produces a reaction which may be wholesome or
unwholesome as you choose to think. And no matter what we believe, we
must respect the honesty of the scientific attitude in regard to a
matter that has been too much abandoned to the emotions, perhaps. In all
seriousness I wish some scientific man would apply the scientific method
to finding out the soul, as you"--he turned to the light
skirmisher--"suggest. Why shouldn't it be investigated?"
Upon this invitation the light skirmisher tried to imagine some
psychological experiments which should bear a certain analogy to those
of the physicists, but he failed to keep the level of his suggestion.
"As I said," the closest listener remarked, "he produces a secondary
state of revolt which is desirable, for in that state we begin to
inquire not only where we stand, but where _he_ stands."
"And what is your conclusion as to his place in the inquiry?"
"That it isn't different from yours or mine, really. We all share the
illusion of the race from the beginning that somehow our opinion of the
matter affects its reality. I should distinguish so far as to say that
we think we believe, and he thinks he knows. For my own part, I have the
impression that he has helped my belief."
The light skirmisher made a desperate effort to retrieve himself: "Then
a few more books like his would restore the age of faith."
XXI
AROUND A RAINY-DAY FIRE
A number of the Easy Chair's friends were sitting round the fire in the
library of a country-house. The room was large and full of a soft,
flattering light. The fire was freshly kindled, and flashed and crackled
with a young vivacity, letting its rays frolic over the serried bindings
on the shelves, the glazed pictures on the walls, the cups of
after-luncheon coffee in the hands of the people, and the tall jugs and
pots in the tray left standing on the library table. It was summer, but
a cold rain was falling forbiddingly without. No one else could come,
and no one could wish to go. The conditions all favored a just
self-esteem, and a sense of providential preference in the accidental
assemblage of those people at that time and place.
The talk was rather naturally, though not necessarily, of books, and one
of the people was noting that children seemed to like short stories
because their minds had not the strength to keep the facts of a whole
book. The effort tired them, and they gave it up, not because a book did
not interest them, but because it exhausted their little powers. They
were good for a leap, or a dash, or a short flight in literature, even
very high literature, but they had not really the force for anything
covering greater time and space.
Another declared this very suggestive, and declared it in such a way
that the whole company perceived he had something behind his words, and
besought him to say what he meant. He did so, as well as he could, after
protesting that it was not very novel, or if so, perhaps not very
important, and if it was important, perhaps it was not true. They said
they would take the chances; and then he said that it was merely a
notion which had occurred to him at the moment concerning the new
reading of the new reading public, whether it might not be all juvenile
literature, adapted in mature terms to people of physical adolescence
but of undeveloped thinking and feeling: not really feeble-minded youth,
but aesthetically and intellectually children, who might presently grow
into the power of enjoying and digesting food for men. By-and-by they
might gather fortitude for pleasure in real literature, in fiction which
should not be a travesty of the old fairy-tales, or stories of
adventures among giants and robbers and pirates, or fables with human
beings speaking from the motives and passions of animals. He mentioned
fiction, he said, because the new reading of the new reading public
seemed to be nearly altogether fiction.
All this had so much the effect of philosophical analysis that those
comfortable people were lulled into self-approving assent; and putting
themselves altogether apart from the new reading public, they begged him
to say what he meant. He answered that there was nothing more phenomenal
in the modern American life; and he paid a pretty tribute to their
ignorance in owning that he was not surprised they knew nothing of that
public. He promised that he would try to define it, and he began by
remarking that it seemed to be largely composed of the kind of persons
who at the theatre audibly interpret the action to one another. The
present company must have heard them?
His listeners again assented. Was the new reading public drawn from the
theatre-going, or more definitely speaking, the matinee class?
There was something odd, there, the philosopher returned. The matinee
class was as large as ever: larger; while the new reading public,
perfectly interchangeable with it in its intellectual pleasure and
experiences, had suddenly outnumbered it a thousandfold. The popular
novel and the popular play were so entirely of one fibre and texture,
and so easily convertible, that a new novel was scarcely in every one's
bread-trough before it was on the boards of all the theatres. This led
some to believe that we were experiencing a revival of the drama, and
that if we kept on having authors who sold half a million copies we
could not help having a Shakespeare by-and-by: he must follow.
One of those listening asked, But how had these people begun so
instantaneously to form themselves into this new innumerable reading
public? If they were of that quality of mind which requires the
translation of an unmistakable meaning from the players to the
playgoers, they must find themselves helpless when grappling in solitude
with the sense of a book. Why did not they go increasingly to the
theatre instead of turning so overwhelmingly to the printed word?
The philosopher replied that they had not now begun to do this, but only
seemed to have begun, since there really was no beginning in anything.
The readers had always been in the immense majority, because they could
read anywhere, and they could see plays only in the cities and towns. If
the theatre were universal, undoubtedly they would prefer plays, because
a play makes far less draft upon the mental capacities or energies than
the silliest book; and what seemed their effort to interpret it to one
another might very well be the exchange of their delight in it. The
books they preferred were of the nature of poor plays, full of "easy
things to understand," cheap, common incidents, obvious motives, and
vulgar passions, such as had been used a thousand times over in
literature. They were fitted for the new reading public for this reason;
the constant repetition of the same characters, events, scenes, plots,
gave their infantile minds the pleasure which children find in having a
story told over and over in exactly the same terms. The new reading
public would rebel against any variance, just as children do.
The most of the company silently acquiesced, or at least were silent,
but one of them made the speaker observe that he had not told them what
this innumerable unreasoning multitude had read before the present
plague of handsome, empty, foolish duodecimos had infested everybody's
bread-trough.
The philosopher said the actual interior form of non-literary literature
was an effect of the thin spread of our literary culture, and outwardly
was the effect of the thick spread of our material prosperity. The
dollar-and-a-half novel of to-day was the dime novel of yesterday in an
avatar which left its essence unchanged. It was even worse, for it was
less sincerely and forcibly written, and it could not be so quickly worn
out and thrown away. Its beauty of paper, print, and binding gave it a
claim to regard which could not be ignored, and established for it a
sort of right to lie upon the table, and then stand upon the shelf,
where it seemed to relate itself to genuine literature, and to be of the
same race and lineage. As for this vast new reading public, it was the
vast old reading public with more means in its pocket of satisfying its
crude, childish taste. Its head was the same empty head.
There was a sort of dreadful finality in this, and for a while no one
spoke. Then some one tried in vain to turn the subject, while the
philosopher smiled upon the desolation he had made; and then one of that
sex which when satisfied of the truth likes to have its "sense of
satisfaction ache" through the increase of conviction, asked him why the
English reading public, which must be so much more cultivated than our
new reading public, seemed to like the same sort of puerile effects in
works of imagination, the stirring incidents, the well-worn plots, the
primitive passions, and the robustious incentives. He owned the fact,
but he contended that the fact, though interesting, was not so
mysterious as it appeared at first sight. It could be explained that the
English had never taken the imagination very seriously, and that in
their dense, close civilization, packed tight with social, political,
and material interests, they asked of the imagination chiefly excitement
and amusement. They had not turned to it for edification or instruction,
for that thrill of solemn joy which comes of vital truth profoundly seen
and clearly shown. For this reason when all Europe besides turned her
face to the light, some decades ago, in the pages of the great prose
poets who made the age illustrious, England preferred the smoky links
and dancing camp-fires which had pleased her immature fancy, and kept
herself well in the twilight of the old ideal of imagination as the
mother of unrealities. There could be no doubt, the philosopher thought,
that the recrudescence which her best wits recognized as the effects of
this perversity, was the origin of the preposterous fiction which we now
feed to the new reading public, and which we think must somehow be right
because it was hers and is ours, and has the sanction of race and
tradition.
It was not, he continued, a thing to shed the tear of unavailing regret
for, though it was not a transitory phase, or a state of transition, for
the condition that now existed had always existed. The new reading
public was larger than ever before not merely because there was a fresh
demand for reading, but because more people were lettered and moneyed
and leisured, and did not know what otherwise to do with themselves. It
was quite simple, and the fact was less to be regretted in itself than
for an indirect result which might be feared from it. He paused at this,
in order to be asked what this result was, and being promptly asked he
went on.
It was, he said, the degradation of authorship as a calling, in the
popular regard. He owned that in the past authorship had enjoyed too
much honor in the reverence and affection of the world: not always,
indeed, but at certain times. As long as authors were the clients and
dependents of the great, they could not have been the objects of a
general interest or honor. They had then passed the stage when the
simple poet or story-teller was wont to
--sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the deaths of kings,