KUMAMOTO, February, 1893.
DEAR HENDRICK,--This is not going to be a pleasant letter,--though it
may have interest for you. I don't hesitate to tell my friends about
shadows as well as lights, and I rather think the latter alone would
cease to be interesting. Besides, we are all most interested in what
most closely relates to the realities of life; and the realities of life
are ugly to no small degree. Dreams are realities--of desire for things
out of reach; but the diet of dreams is not substantial enough for the
sense of friendship to live upon. So here goes for the lamentations,--or
as a Frenchman would say, a _jérémiade_....
I might cite a fourth, a fifth;--but happily there are lights. I made
one delightful friend here, Professor Chamberlain, and I told you about
Major McDonald....
I am perfectly conscious that to a thorough man of the world I must be
only a contemptible fool. Even to a friend like you who are not spoiled
and cannot be spoiled by your _milieu_, I must seem something of a fool.
Be that as it may,--here I am. Now what is this fool to do?...
Suppose I should seek a place as teacher of English literature.
Everybody thinks he can teach English literature, and the public doesn't
care particularly: it takes its pabulum largely on trust. On whose
trust? Oh! the trust of the trustees,--and the respectable people.
Now I am not respectable. I am under the _odium theologicum_ of every
Christian faith. Small and mean as I am, I am spotted. Don't imagine
this is vanity! It doesn't require any greatness to be spotted. It is
just like a prostitute trying to become an honest woman, or a convicted
thief endeavouring to get employment. There is nothing great about it.
If I had any position worth hunting up, the cry would be raised that
an atheist, a debauchee, a disreputable ex-reporter was corrupting the
morals of the young under pretence of teaching literature. That is
position No. 3. As Fiske says, the heretic is not now burned at the
stake; but there is an organized policy to starve him by injuring his
reputation and lying about him. And even Fiske (because he is poor)
dares not take the whole position of Spencer.
But I don't want to pretend myself a martyr for any worthy cause. I
am not. I am _not respectable_: that is the whole matter,--and the
pardoning influence of women would never be exerted for me, because I
am physically disagreeable,--and what I could win by my own merit I
could not keep, because I have no aggressiveness and no cunning. And I
am only now learning all this,--with my hair grey. There is no chance
of becoming independent, as I will never be allowed to hold a position
that pays well. I shall never be able to do my best in literary matters;
for I shall never have the leisure, the means, or the opportunities of
travel I want....
To all this _jérémiade_, then, you must think for reply, in the words
of Herbert Spencer: "My dear friend, the first necessity for success in
life is to be a good animal. As an animal you don't work well at all.
Furthermore you are out of harmony mentally and morally with the life
of society: you represent broken-down tissue. There is some good in
the ghostly part of you, but it would never have been developed under
comfortable circumstances. Hard knocks and intellectual starvation have
brought your miserable little _animula_ into some sort of shape. It will
never have full opportunity to express itself, doubtless; but perhaps
that is better. It might otherwise make too many mistakes; and it has
not sufficient original force to move the sea of human mind to any storm
of aspiration. Perhaps, in some future state of--" But here Spencer
stops....
I think civilization is a fraud, because I don't like the hopeless
struggle. If I were very rich I should perhaps think quite
differently--or, what would be still more rational, try not to think
at all about it. Religion under an empire preaches the divinity of
autocracy; under a monarchy, the divinity of aristocracy. In this
industrial epoch it is the servant of the monster business, and is
paid to declare that religion is governed by God, and business by
religion,--"whoever says the contrary, let him be anathema!" Business
has its fixed standard of hypocrisy; everything above or below that is
to be denounced by the ministers of the gospel of God and business.
Hence the howl about Jay Gould, who, with splendid, brutal frankness,
exposed to the entire universe the real laws of business,--without any
preaching at all,--and overrode society and law and became supreme.
Wherefore I hold that a statue should be erected to him. Here we have
been having a newspaper fight. All the missionaries are down on "that
anonymous writer" as usual. I wrote an article to prove that Gould was
the grandest moral teacher of the century. Even sermons were preached
in Tōkyō denouncing the writer of that article. I was accused of
declaring that the end justified the means. I had not said so; but I
quoted American authorities to show Gould had created and made effective
the railroad-transportation system of the West; and then I quoted
English financial authorities to prove that that very transportation
system alone was now saving the United States from bankruptcy. The facts
were unanswerable (at least by the clerics); and they proved that in
order to get power to save a whole nation from ruin,--Gould had to ruin
a few thousand people. Wherefore I am called "immoral, low, beastly."
Nobody _knows_ it is I; but some suspect. I am already deemed the "moral
plague-spot" of Japan by the dear missionaries. Next week I'll try them
with an article on "The Abomination of Civilization." ...
But I have at home a little world of about eleven people, to whom I am
Love and Light and Food. It is a very gentle world. It is only happy
when I am happy. If I even look tired, it is silent, and walks on
tiptoe. It is a moral force. I dare not fret about anything when I can
help it,--for others would fret more. So I try to keep right. My little
wife and I have saved nearly 2000 Japanese dollars between us. I think
I'll be able to make her independent. When I've done that, I can let the
teaching go, and wander about awhile, and write "sketches" at $10 per
page.
Ever affectionately,
LAFCADIO HEARN.