[278] The word artist here should be acc_Man's descent from the gods

a very definite thing, carefully defined in the pages of my _Defence

of Aristocracy_. It does not mean every tinpot dauber or musician who

claims the title; for many of these are simply neurotic Prometheans who

haven’t the energy to enter Armstrong, Whitworth or Vickers’ workshops.

CHAPTER IX

REFLECTIONS ON THE FOREGOING

If now the reader will reflect calmly and dispassionately upon the

arguments and facts that I have advanced in the preceding chapters,

while he may find some food for thought and meditation, he cannot

possibly be cheered or comforted by the conclusions to which these

mental exercises will lead him. For if my facts are beyond question

right, and my arguments are valid, then it seems to me that his main

conclusion cannot help being very much as follows:--

That man’s zenith on earth, far from having been reached in the Recent

Period, either in historic or prehistoric and Neolithic times, was

attained during another geological epoch,--_i.e._, towards the close of

the Pleistocene, in Paleolithic times.

Thus, the curve of man’s development, instead of beginning in the

Pleistocene, as was for some time supposed, and rising steadily until

it reached its zenith in the present age, or in _our_ Age, must be

imagined as taking its rise somewhere in Pliocene or Miocene times,

a million or so years ago, reaching its maximum height in the late

Pleistocene,--having dropped the races which degenerated into the

higher apes on its way,--from 30,000 to 60,000 years ago, and then

descending again fairly rapidly towards this or the modern Age.

This would mean that at the present moment we are simply an undulation

in a rapid avalanche making speedily towards complete and utter

degeneration,[279] and that our knowledge of lofty things, great

things, precious and valuable things,--nay, our very belief that such

things can be,--is but a faint memory. It would mean that our religions

are but traditional records of a greatness and a power that was once

man’s, and of which, in his decline, he deified the possessors. It

would also mean that the persistent idea of a personal god, or of

personal gods, which has always been instinctive in men of the latest

geological epoch, is the correct, true and original idea of godship

or divinity, and that the modern vaporous substitutes known as the

“Absolute,” the “All Pervading,” the “First Cause” (whatever this

may mean) or the “All,” etc., etc., are simply signs of the enormous

distance which, increasing every year, separates us from our former

greatness. To attempt to replace the idea of a personal god by these

vaporous makeshifts, however, is to cut the last link joining us to

what was once our highest achievement.

Now although other men, among them the greatest thinker and poet

of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche, have expressed the

suspicion that we were in the midst of a decline; except for a highly

cultivated aristocrat of French extraction named Joseph de Maistre,

of the eighteenth century, no one appears to have been convinced that

all savage races of the present day were the degenerate descendants

of some higher stock which existed in the past. Joseph de Maistre may

be wrong as to this, in a general way, but the fact that he perceived

the possibility that man’s greatest Age had passed by, is certainly

immensely to his credit, as is also his belief that degeneration

from the original higher stock was the outcome of a transgression or

perversity. He calls it “_Une prévarication quelconque_.”[280]

He implies with the subtle insight of a seer, rather than with the

laboured demonstration of a scientific investigator, that if man is

degraded, ignorant and exposed to evil, it cannot be by accident, but

through perversity; hence his incessant scientific activity may be a

devious striving to return to his original lofty state, of which he

has only a faint glimmering of a recollection.[281] Like Nietzsche, de

Maistre was therefore of the opinion that the whole of modern mankind

is but a disease.[282]

All our histories, all our works of science, almost all our

philosophies, however, have hitherto taken the opposite view,--the

view that the history of mankind consists of a series of steps, leaps

and bounds, which, with certain intervals of stability or even slight

retrogression, have at last brought us to the glory of the present

Alexandrian Age of Science, Art, Culture, Beauty, Health and Prosperity.

There is no positive evidence for this,--on the contrary, as I have

shown, all the evidence points the other way; but since things change

and follow each other with time, and time does not stand still, every

one, rejecting the idea of desirable stability, believes that one of

two things must be taking place, either progression or retrogression.

Now as the latter alternative is flattering neither to mankind in

general, nor to the particular class of men--the Prometheans--who are

chiefly responsible for the sort of civilisation we now possess, the

former alternative has been so repeatedly endorsed by modern spirits,

that it has come to be regarded almost as axiomatic.

The mistake arises out of the conception that there is only one kind of

civilisation--the Promethean kind--and that all past Ages, since the

Promethean crime, have been so many imperfect attempts at realising it

in all its fulness, and, therefore, that all past Ages, though they are

in the same line of descent with the modern Age, were not so highly

civilised as the present Age.

I hope the error put in this way may become clear to the reader, as it

is important that this point should be completely grasped. The error

is so general, and at the same time receives so much authoritative

support, that it becomes every year more difficult to expose.

I will endeavour to make it even more plain. We will imagine humanity

through the Ages, simply dressing and undressing, and while so engaged,

periodically changing the colour, material, shape and beauty of its

garments. This, humanity has actually done, so the simile is perhaps as

happy a one as could be chosen.

Now I maintain that the error of the modern scientist, philosopher

and historian lies in supposing that the trousers worn by modern

man, because they appear later in point of time than the hose of

the sixteenth century, or the breeches of the eighteenth century,

are necessarily a development of both, and therefore a higher phase

of both, in which the virtues of the hose and the breeches happily

coalesce, as it were, in one final and glorious manifestation of their

combined individualities,--in short, that the hose of the sixteenth and

the breeches of the eighteenth centuries were merely blind and clumsy

attempts at realising the trousers of the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries.

Against this I suggest that the hose of the sixteenth and the

breeches of the eighteenth centuries have so little in common with

the trousers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that any one

of the three might easily have preceded the other in order of time,

provided that the excessively bad taste of the nineteenth century

could be imagined to have existed before it actually did exist. The

former are the outcome and creation of a concept of comfort, beauty

and utility, so fundamentally opposed to modern ideas that they belong

to a totally different culture and civilisation, of which the present

civilisation, so far from being a development, seems rather to be a

flat contradiction or refutation.

To suppose that everything grows by steady and gradual steps out of

everything else, is to assume a continuity which by implication is

understood to advance from the imperfect to the more perfect. It does

not sufficiently allow for the frequently complete arrest, or even

reversal of a movement or tendency, or for the initiation of entirely

fresh and unprecedented principles owing to the sudden appearance or

predominance of a new type of mind. Thus to the historian there is

only one kind of social order and arrangement, and that he calls

“Civilisation,” and the latest form of it is always the logical and

improved offspring of its preceding forms.

I hope the error is now quite plain.

It is revealed with singular ingenuousness by Tylor in the following

passage:--

“It is a mere matter of chronicle that modern civilisation is a

development of mediæval civilisation, which again is a development from

civilisation of the order presented in Greece, Assyria, Egypt. Thus the

higher [note the word ‘higher’] being clearly traced back to what may

be called the middle culture, the question which remains is, whether

this middle culture may be traced back to lower cultures, that is to

say savagery.”[283]

After all I have said the reader will see immediately that to trace

the development of modern civilisation, _viâ_ mediæval civilisation,

back to the civilisation of Greece, Assyria and Egypt, is about as

sensible as to trace the development of the swallow’s nest back through

the rabbit-warren to the ant-hill. And yet this gross error is being

perpetrated with the utmost gravity and pedantry every day, every

hour.[284]

One would not complain if the error ended there; for, after all, it

would only constitute one stupidity the more in an age coruscating

with stupidities. But the danger lies in the inference drawn from the

argument. The average reader, after having taken in the passage by

Tylor just quoted is tempted to infer that since A developed out of B,

and B developed out of C, D and E; therefore A is an advance on C, D

and E.

I suggest that A is not of the same nature as C, D and E, and has

nothing whatsoever in common with them. In fact A has only the

imperfect historical records of C, D and E, and far from being a

development of them, it may even be a contradiction of them, a reversal

of them, an unconscious parody of them, or a whole cultural league or

two behind them.

It is true that the late Dr. Creighton, Bishop of London, frankly

admits that the progressive idea in history is an assumption; but why

he believes this assumption to be compulsory, I cannot think.[285]

The fact that in most myths the beginning of a decline is distinctly

recorded; the fact, moreover, that this inception of a downward

movement is connected in two of the most important myths of European

peoples with a type of man which I call “Promethean” owing to the name

given to the chief actor in the Greek aspect of the Degeneration Drama,

points to this exceedingly interesting speculation: that survival

values are possibly of two kinds, and not of one kind, and that

civilisations differ from one another and follow one another in motley

array, according to the type of man who happens to prevail at their

inception, and subject to the kind of survival values observed by the

generations of men responsible for them.

This suggestion could long ago have been read from Herbert Spencer,

Darwin, or Nietzsche, or from any of the more enlightened philosophers

or evolutionists. The fact that it has not been read from the works

of these men shows the degree of blindness with which we are heading

towards our ignominious fate.

Let me explain what I mean when I say that survival values are of two

kinds.

In order to survive, a race must not commit suicide and it must

procreate. It must also tend and succour the young, and its male

members must not take advantage of their superior strength in order to

exterminate the females.

Consequently we arrive at these four fundamental values of survival:--

1. Suicide is bad.

2. Procreation is good.

3. Succour and care of young is good.

4. The extermination of females is bad.

If any one of these survival values be persistently disobeyed by any

race, it obviously cannot survive. These are not the only survival

values, but they are among the most vital.

Now what is immediately noticeable about these values?

Surely the feature that chiefly characterises them is that survival

alone is their object,--not a particular kind of life, but simply life

is the goal. That is why they may be accurately described as merely

vital survival values.

All values, then, which aim at a survival of life alone, and not

of a particular kind of life, we may for convenience’ sake call

“vital-survival-values.”

But there is obviously another kind of survival value. In order to

survive, alone, it may be necessary to sacrifice something desirable,

something noble, something beautiful. A desirable feature, or a noble

feature, or even a beautiful feature, may, without making survival

impossible, render it at least more difficult of achievement. It may

therefore be _easier_, in the course of ages, for a race to abandon

a desirable, a noble, or a beautiful feature, in order to simplify

the problem of survival. And if there are no severe values forbidding

such abandonment of desirable characteristics, these characteristics,

owing to the temptation to follow the line of least resistance, run a

considerable risk of being dropped on the way.

Thus as Spencer points out: “Superiority, whether in size, strength,

activity, or sagacity, is, other things equal, at the cost of

diminished fertility; and where the life led by a species does not

demand these higher attributes, the species profits by decrease of

them, and accompanying increase of fertility ... very often that which,

humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival.”[286]

This profoundly interesting passage brings out clearly what I am trying

to show. Survival may mean abandoning, for convenience’ sake, some

form of superiority.[287] That is why, in Chapter VII., I showed, in

opposition to the vulgar assumption of modernity, that success was not

by any means always a sign of superiority. It is only in an age when

ignorance and tastelessness coincide in forming opinion, that success,

which may necessitate the abandonment of a desirable quality, is always

identified with superiority.

So we come to the conclusion that there is another kind of survival

value to be considered. In other words, the question which each race of

men, and each man individually, has to answer is not merely: what must

I do to survive? but also, what must I do if I wish to survive in a

particular--a desirable--fashion?

There are æsthetic-survival-values, then, besides

vital-survival-values. If a race wish to survive as an example of

quality, it must not abandon certain æsthetic or spiritual attributes

it possesses, in order to make survival more easy, otherwise it

declines in rank, in preciousness, in worth.

In order to survive as beautiful, intelligent and well-constituted men,

a race must not indulge in occupations, practices or pursuits that

maim, deform or disfigure the contours of their bodies or of their

faces; they must not set themselves, generation after generation,

labours and problems which are beneath their standard of intelligence

and character; they must not indulge in unhealthy work or pursuits.

Consequently we arrive at these three further fundamental values of

survival:--

1. Deforming, maiming or disfiguring work is bad.

2. Mental and other occupations of a standard commensurate with the

general level of intelligence and character, and not beneath it, are

good.

3. Unhealthy occupations, practices or pursuits, are bad.

These are not the only survival values relating to the preservation

of possessions other than life itself, but they are among the more

important.

If any one of these survival values be persistently disobeyed, though

the race may find survival easier, it will decline either in beauty,

intelligence, character, or health. If all these survival values be

persistently disobeyed, degeneration will rapidly supervene.

All values, then, which aim, not at a survival of life alone, but

at a survival of a certain kind of life, we may for convenience’

sake call “æsthetic-survival-values,” to distinguish them from mere

“vital-survival-values.”

When, therefore, life has multiplied on earth to such a great extent,

that we may reckon in certain areas, as in England, Germany and Belgium

for instance, that there has been an increase of several hundreds

per cent. in the population within a century, and that concurrently

with this increase there has been a marked decline in beauty, health,

character and intelligence, we are justified in suspecting that

vital-survival-values have been obeyed and observed to the exclusion of

æsthetic-survival-values.

If, now, we enquire what influences have been active in bringing about

this exclusive observance of vital-survival-values, and we confine our

attention to Western Europe, and all tracts of country like Western

Europe, we are forced to the conclusion that the immense increase in

population which, beginning 250 years ago, reached its highest point of

speed during the last century, has occurred under the influence of a

certain very definite attitude towards life.

As I have shown elsewhere,[288] the changes ushered in by the

Reformation, and subsequently by the Puritan Rebellion in England, were

changes deliberately and consciously pursued by a perfectly definite

class of men,--a class of men, chiefly commercial and industrial, who,

with the new notion of accumulating profit, as opposed to the former

idea of procuring a competence or simple livelihood, exploited every

kind of national resource, even their fellow-countrymen, for their own

base ends. The object was to heap up ever and ever greater hoards of

material gain, either in actual cash, in solid possession, or land; and

in the general stampede to achieve this end, a stampede by no means

over yet, no one, not even the Established Church,[289] moved a finger

to protect the masses who were the victims of it.

I showed also that a curious coincidence of interests occurred between

these commercial and industrial innovators and the Puritans, owing to

the fact that each in his own way was inclined to ignore the claims of

the body. The Puritan and the commercial and industrial innovator were,

moreover, frequently one and the same person.

The Puritan with his conviction that the things of body belonged to

the Devil, was prone to discount the importance of food, drink, good

spirits, beauty and bodily contentment. Frequently he was actively

hostile both to beauty and bodily charm because both constituted a

lure to life, to the joys of life, and particularly to the joys of

sex. The commercial and industrial innovator, on the other hand,

with his ruthless determination to exploit for the purposes of gain

and “Progress” every means of production available, including his

fellow-creatures, could scarcely respect the importance of health, good

food, good spirits, beauty and bodily well-being, among the men, women

and children he used in his production, without severely complicating

and retarding the machinery by which he obtained his yield of profits.

High spirits and exuberant health were even directly opposed to his

schemes, for how could he expect human beings possessed of high spirits

and exuberant health to submit to office or factory life?

In addition, the inventing engineer, whose one thought was to supply

the eager manufacturer with ever more efficient and more rapid

methods of making a good turnover, never so much as gave a thought to

the moral, physical or æsthetic consequences of the innovations he

unscrupulously foisted upon the world. And what was worse, there was

nobody in a high place to call this smart accessory of Progress to

his senses, nobody who thought of doing so, nobody who deemed it was

necessary to do so.

Thus was formed that infernal trinity which, with its eyes

concentrated greedily upon output and returns, disregarded absolutely

the claims of humanity, and did not even know of the existence of

æsthetic-survival-values.[290]

What took place in England and later in the whole of Western Europe,

after the close of the seventeenth century, however, was only an

acute and rapid development of what had been growing and spreading

slowly but surely all over the Western World ever since the original

Promethean crime. For it is characteristic of Prometheus and all

Prometheans, that they pursue their so-called “Progress” without any

regard to æsthetic-survival-values. Their only check, their only

deterrent,--verily the only brake on their cruel, thoughtless wheel,

which always rolls downhill to degeneration and death, is the number of

Dionysians there are to oppose them.[291]

All essentially Promethean civilisations, even when their severity

is mitigated by the presence of strong Dionysian elements, have this

tendency, then, that they ignore æsthetic-survival-values altogether.

We have seen what this led to in the Greeks of the prehistoric era, and

how faithfully the disasters which supervened are recorded in the myths.

We know what it has led to in England, and all countries like England,

and how dearly we are paying now, and shall have to pay in the future,

for the deterioration of the bodies, the characters, the health and

the brains of the proletariat, as the result of the besotting and

devitalising duties to which an ultra-Promethean civilisation has

condemned them.

On September 12th, 1918, Mr. Lloyd George spoke as follows at

Manchester: “We have a Ministry of National Service and carefully

compiled statistics of the health of the people between the ages of

eighteen and forty-two. Now that is the age of fitness, the age of

strength. You have three grades, I., II., and III., and all I can tell

you is that the results of these examinations are startling, and I do

not mind using the word appalling. I hardly dare tell you the results.

The number of Grade II. and Grade III. men throughout the country is

prodigious.”[292]

Since that speech was delivered, the Ministry of National Service have

published a report giving details of the physical examination of men

of military age by National Service Medical Boards. Of about 2,500,000

men of military age examined between November, 1917, and October, 1918,

only 36 per cent. could be regarded as up to the normal standard of

health and strength for their age, and more than 10 per cent. were

judged as totally and permanently unfit for any form of military

service. “This,” as the _Daily News_ expressed it, “means that only one

man in three was found to be normally healthy, and that one man in ten

was a physical wreck.”[293]

This is bad enough, particularly as everybody has known for at least

fifty years that if we continued in early nineteenth-century errors

little else could be expected. But what really does take one’s breath

away is to find the compilers of this report referring to the

conclusions which are to be drawn from their depressing statements as

“the nature and extent of the ravages upon the health and physique

of our manhood which the progress [!] of civilisation during the

nineteenth century has brought in its train.” No better evidence could

be found for the misuse of that unfortunate word Progress.

The customary retort to this kind of argument is usually: “Oh, but you

want to set the clock back. You cannot set the clock back!”

This remark, usually uttered with the most solemn conviction by the

modern man, who regards you, while he pronounces it, with a look of

such complete triumph that it is impossible to credit him even with

sane doubts as to its wisdom, is, of course, only another sign of the

progressive stupidity which is noticeable on all sides.

Let us analyse this remark:--

To begin with, it is based entirely upon an unfounded assumption.

To argue that because a man alleges that Prometheanism is wrong,

he therefore wishes to “set the clock back,” is to assume that a

Promethean civilisation is the only civilisation. This, as we know,

however, and as we have seen, is not true. To assume that a Promethean

civilisation is the only civilisation, is equivalent to maintaining,

as I have shown, that æsthetic-survival-values are not practicable;

therefore, that degeneration is a fatality, an ineluctable destiny,

something that we cannot avert or arrest. But Dionysians stoutly deny

that degeneration is inevitable. They regard the very claim that

degeneration is inevitable only as one of the many lame apologies

advanced by the Promethean after he has thoroughly degraded the world.

Secondly, the remark is based upon ignorance of what has been achieved

in the past. To argue that because a man alleges that Prometheanism is

wrong, he therefore wishes to set the clock back, is to assume that

Prometheanism has set the clock forward,--that is to say, that there

has been something more than mere change, complication and degradation,

since Prometheanism became supreme, that there has actually been

“Progress” or “advancement.”

Advancement in what? Advancement towards what? Is humanity happier,

healthier, more pleasing to look at? Is intelligence greater: has

character become more admirable? These are the very directions in

which marked degradation is to be observed. I have shown that the

wave of man’s “advancement” reached its zenith when the gods walked

on earth. How can the Promethean claim to have set the clock forward?

The very claim that Prometheanism is wrong,--and that it is wrong is

being discovered in the greatest variety of ways by almost everybody

to-day,--may indeed amount to setting the clock forward (if the phrase

has any meaning at all, which I doubt). Forward to what?--Forward to an

era when Prometheanism will be controlled, subordinated, subjugated,

managed.

Thirdly, for some reason dishonestly withheld by him who makes it, this

remark implies that “back,” “setting the clock back,” is necessarily

something prohibited or impracticable. There is a deceitful innuendo

in the remark, the result of the false analogy between a set of wheels

constituting a piece of clockwork and a civilisation (the two, as a

matter of fact, have nothing except their initial letter and the letter

L in common)--which leads the unfortunate debater, to whom it is said,

to believe, if he be unwary, that seeing that setting the clock back

is an absolutely futile thing to do, therefore a civilisation cannot

be saved, or changed, by the revival or reimposition of some principle

or attitude to life which belongs to the past. The falseness of the

analogy is obvious at once when put in this light; but, as I have said,

the solemn modern sage who makes the remark, “You cannot set the clock

back,” pronounces it with such bland and truculent conviction, that,

unless he be on his guard, his opponent is reduced to reluctant and

rancorous silence.

Thus, it is plain that this remark does credit neither to him who makes

it, nor to him who allows it to confound him. And yet such is the low

level of intellectual development of our day, that there is scarcely

one man in a thousand in modern Europe who will not make use of this

remark in opposing a bitter, pitiless and offensive controversialist

like myself; and not one in five thousand who will not expect me to be

utterly defeated by it.

It is the suggestion that a backward movement is necessarily a useless

movement, however, which is the error involved in this remark. Setting

the clock back is known to be useless unless it be done in the case

of a clock that is fast. But all “going back” is not useless. For

instance, an invalid may get back to the health which he enjoyed in

former years. A hypochondriac may go back to the cheerfulness which was

his in adolescence. An insolvent firm may go back to the prosperity

which was its pride in a previous generation. In short, man can

_reculer pour mieux sauter_.

If a diversity of human types be admitted as a fact,--and it seems

difficult to deny that there is such a diversity,--then, according to

the conditions favouring either one type or another, a generation may

be either prosperous, healthy and wise, or indigent, unhealthy and

stupid. Going back, therefore, to the habits, outlook and virtues of a

former generation, does not necessarily constitute a retrograde step:

it may constitute a distinct advance.

When, therefore, I deny the validity of the objection contained in the

popular but foolish phrase, “You cannot set the clock back,” I merely

wish to emphasise the importance of enquiring what kind of man, what

type of man, is responsible for our present civilisation, and whether

there is not a better civilisation to which we might return, if the

supremacy of a different type could be encouraged and cultivated. And

it must not be supposed that this other type would necessarily be

hostile to science or to discovery; it would, however, promote science

and discovery in a different way, with at least a careful observance

of æsthetic-survival-values, for instance; and would never consent, as

the Prometheans have repeatedly done, to the sacrifice of humanity to

“Progress.”[294]

The necessity of enquiring earnestly into the type which is predominant

to-day, however, has become all the more pressing in view of certain

recent developments in Western civilisation, which lead one strongly

to suspect that a certain old enemy of man, feeling his power more

secure than it has ever been before, has now determined upon an extreme

venture.

From the very nature of his latest move, apart from the other signs

of his identity, we suspect the Prometheans to be behind this new

movement; for it is radically anti-Dionysian both in its intention and

its measures.

In plain English, the Prohibition campaign, both in America and this

country, is simply an attempt to fling us back into the grey misery of

a Promethean civilisation, without either the solace or the therapeutic

safeguards of the doctrine of Dionysus.

It is a further proof, if any were needed, of the undeviating

consistency with which a type pursues its object, undeterred by

considerations or thoughts alien to the class of mind with which it

is endowed; and it behoves all those who recognise the danger of the

movement, not only to fight it wholeheartedly, but also to set in

question the whole nature of the supremacy which has led to its partial

success.

If I understand aright what has taken place in America, it is this: an

inhuman calculation has been undertaken by the heads of industry and

commerce there,--for there are no other “heads” in the United States.

Sitting in solemn conclave, with their attention concentrated, as

described above, only upon output and turnover, and upon the best means

of increasing both, the human factor in their infernal processes of

production has been treated only as a cog in a machine, as a necessary

evil with which one has to reckon only on the basis of profit and loss.

No æsthetic-survival-values ever for one instant troubled the mind of

an American. Even after reading this chapter, he would not understand

what the term meant.--And then a curious phenomenon was discovered.

It amounted to this: that those human machines who were not vitiated

by poisonous modern “commercial” beers, or alcoholic beverages,

worked best. At least this was alleged; and, in view of the potency

of the poisons which profiteers, American and otherwise, do sell as

intoxicating liquor, it is not surprising. This momentous discovery

would, you might have thought, have led to a rigorous enquiry into

the reason why modern “commercial” beers and alcoholic beverages are

poisonous, or at best neither invigorating nor inspiriting. At least it

might have led to an attempt to defeat the evil at its root, which is

the corruption and inhuman profiteering on the part of the producers of

the people’s drinks.

Not a bit of it! This is indeed how men would have behaved who had

the welfare of humanity at heart, who knew the many benefits, both

spiritual and physical, which good ale and good wine could confer;

and who were conscientiously endeavouring to observe and apply

æsthetic-survival-values in their own country.

But these magnates of industry,--hence the tragic futility of a

business government,--are never concerned with humanity. Nothing and

no one ever defiled by Prometheanism, ever is concerned with humanity.

They were concerned with a very different object, an object very

remote indeed from æsthetic-survival-values: it was the result known

as business and industrial efficiency. No matter whether character,

soul, spirit, beauty or health were ultimately undermined by the

besotting labours which this greater efficiency was expected to speed

up,--what have character, soul, spirit, beauty or health to do with

output and return? The object was not that humanity should be made more

dignified, more noble, more beautiful, more worthy of its great past;

but that the majority of the workmen should have their last vestige of

remaining health and sanity preserved from the poisonous concoctions of

these magnates’ unscrupulous counterparts in the liquor trade; because

blood-poisoning would constitute an extra obstacle in the road to

efficiency.

Hence the Prohibition Laws.

What was the alternative?

Reform the liquor trade, so that the liquor absorbed by the mass

of the people might recover those invigorating, health-promoting,

health-protecting and inspiriting qualities that it once possessed?

Certainly not! This would be worse than the _status quo ante_; this,

above all things, must be avoided!

Why?

Because people who are spirited, healthy, bright, vigorous, and bold,

and confident with that inner contentment and inner warmth, created

ever since the Promethean crime only by good, wholesome, fermented

liquor,--such people are not abject, they are difficult to dragoon,

to enslave, and above all to abuse. Such people do not tolerate for

long the jading and besotting high speed of an efficient modern

factory; they too strongly resemble the old peasantry of England,

the redoubtable bowmen of England, who were the terror of the

Continent--the men who stood and conquered when they were but one to

fifteen at Poictiers and one to five at Agincourt. Such men must be

led, they will not be driven. They must be mastered by an appeal to

their imaginations and their understanding; they cannot be mustered by

the shriek of a siren.

No, this would be worse than the _status quo ante_; this above all

things must be avoided!

* * * * *

The fact that this heartless and anti-Dionysian conclusion should have

been reached in the United States of America can surprise no one. What

are the United States of America? Apart from the worthier elements

which constitute quite a small minority, I mean the non-Puritanical

colonists of Elizabeth’s and the early Stuarts’ reigns,--the backbone

of the population consists of the descendants of renegade Puritans of

the seventeenth century (who fled their country for their country’s

good) reinforced by the slave-drivers of the eighteenth and early

nineteenth centuries, and mixed with the blood of all the people

of Europe and Asia. What is their principal achievement? Is it

Art?--Letters?--Philosophy?--Learning?

No, it is Machinery! Puritanism, slave-driving and machinery,--the

three characteristic features of all late Promethean civilisations.

Verily this can be no morbid hallucination, no empty spook, this

alleged hostility of the Promethean type to mortals. I have traced it

now from prehistoric times, through the bedimmed and faded records

of the Greek myths, down to our own seventeenth, eighteenth and

particularly nineteenth centuries. The records of other civilisations,

like those of the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Hindus, the Babylonians,

the Incas of Peru, are accessible now, and the balance struck in

all these cultures, between the Promethean and the Dionysian types,

can be seen and learnt by all who wish to do so. It will be observed

that others have succeeded where we have most signally failed, in

checking, controlling, correcting and averting the worst consequences

of the Promethean type’s thoughtless clamour for complexity without

discipline, for “Progress” without order or desirability, and for mere

change without any genuine and lasting advantage; and while it may be

impossible and even inexpedient to imitate these other civilisations

in their results and actual fruits, it is always possible at least to

emulate them in their spirit and their aims, and to begin at once by

suspecting the plausible and still dazzling claims of our triumphant

Prometheans.

For Prometheanism is implacable because it is unconscious; it is

persistent, because it repeats itself not as a policy but as a type; it

is pitiless, because it believes that it is the highest manifestation

of the human species on earth in all ages, and that its predominance

cannot therefore fail to be the design of the Almighty; finally, it is

elusive, because it is too innocent in its devilry, too well-meaning in

its dangerous stupidity, and too theatrical in its result, ever to have

the whole front of its millions of victims actively opposed to it.

If the situation were hopeless, however, I should have served but

a very doubtful purpose in writing this essay. The history that I

have related contains at least two instances of the defeat of the

Prometheans’ most nefarious schemes by two mighty figures who have

come down to us under the names of Zeus and Dionysus. As I have

said, from time to time, at certain turning-points in human history,

when things have become not only too intolerable to continue, but

actually too impossible to last, it is the Dionysians who have hitherto

produced men who were called upon to set right the diabolical muddles

to which the Prometheans and their vices have always given rise. It

may be confidently expected, therefore, that the Dionysians will not

fail us when the great turning-point reappears again: but that this

turning-point does not seem as if it could be very far off, though

signs of a coming Saviour are not immediately discernible, are facts

that even the most optimistic Promethean himself could not very well

venture to deny.

“It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the

germ of his highest hope.

“His soil is still rich enough for that purpose. But that soil will one

day be too poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be

able to grow thereon.”

_Thus Spake Zarathustra._

FOOTNOTES:

[279] My friend Dr. G. T. Wrench, in a profound treatise entitled

_The Mastery of Life_, thus aptly called our present condition one of

“Gadarene Progress.”

[280] Speaking of Rousseau, whom he rightly loathed and despised, and

whom he calls “the most dangerous sophist of his century,” de Maistre

says: “Il a constamment pris le sauvage pour l’homme primitif, tandis

qu’il n’est et ne peut être que le descendant d’un homme détaché du

grand arbre de la civilisation par une prévarication quelconque, mais

d’un genre qui ne peut plus être répété, autant qu’il m’est permis d’en

juger; car je doute qu’il se forme de nouveaux sauvages.” _Les Soirées

de St. Petersbourg_ (Brussels, 1838), vol. i., p. 57.

[281] _Op. cit._, p. 60: “Si donc l’homme est sujet à l’ignorance et

au mal, ce ne peut être qu’en vertu d’une dégradation accidentelle qui

ne saurait être que la suite d’un crime. Ce besoin, cette faim de la

science, qui agite l’homme, n’est que la tendance naturelle de son être

qui le porte vers son état primitif, et l’avertit de ce qu’il est.”

[282] _Op. cit._, p. 61: “L’homme entier n’est qu’une maladie.”

[283] _Primitive Culture_, vol. i., p. 32.

[284] The only common feature I can see in all the civilisations

mentioned is the varying ease with which the Promethean type is able to

express itself in each of them. Certainly, in that respect the last, or

what Tylor calls the “higher” phase, shows the Promethean influence at

its maximum.

[285] See _Cambridge Modern History_, vol. i., p. 4: “We are bound to

assume, as the scientific hypothesis on which history is to be written,

a progress in human affairs. This progress must inevitably be towards

some end; and we find it difficult to escape from the temptation, while

we keep that end in view, of treating certain events as landmarks on

the road. A mode of historical presentation thus comes into fashion

based upon an inspiring assumption.”

[286] _Collected Essays_, vol. i., p. 379. Twelve years ago, in my

_Who is to be Master of the World?_ p. 91, I called attention to this

most important passage in Herbert Spencer’s works. It is the most

illuminating paragraph ever penned by an evolutionist.

[287] In order to survive, all commercial and industrial communities in

England, Germany and America, for instance, had to abandon the ideal of

nobility and frequently even the actual practice of honesty.

[288] See my _Defence of Aristocracy_.

[289] Until the Salvation Army gave the lead, the clergy of the Church

of England, who come from the possessing classes and are hand in glove

with them, looked on unmoved while the grossest crimes were being

committed against the men, women and children of the working masses.

It was not a Church movement, as one might have expected, but an

aristocrat who first agitated for the protection and care of women and

children in factories.

[290] The blind advocate of this unholy trinity, and one whose books

are a blot on English literature, because in this case stupidity is

criminal, was the pompous and enthusiastic nineteenth-century writer,

Samuel Smiles, who with resolute vulgarity wrote the Magnificats of

the Engineers. He was a doctor and a railway director, he was also

editor-in-chief of the _Leeds Times_; but whatever else he may have

been, he was certainly one of the most incurable old sentimentalists

the nineteenth century ever produced, and that is placing him high in

the hierarchy of nonsense.

[291] One of the chief factors in assisting the Promethean type

to attain to supremacy in Europe during the last 2,000 years has

been, of course, the ascendancy of Christian values. Provided a

man, woman or child has faith, and earnestly strives to have a pure

soul, Christianity takes no notices of their bodies. Neither does

Christianity present any check to the marriage and multiplication of

undesirable people. In fact, it resembles Prometheanism in this, that

it takes no cognisance of æsthetic-survival-values. Christianity (not

of the Protestant brand), however, does allow of certain Dionysian

principles. It was the Church, for instance, that throughout the Middle

Ages spread the culture of the vine, and the drinking of wine, all

over heathen Europe. The gardens around monasteries produced the first

vineyards in a very large number of localities.

[292] See _The Times_, September 13th, 1918.

[293] See the _Daily News_, February 28th, 1920, from whose report on

the Government publication most of these facts and figures have been

taken.

[294] This is obviously what de Maistre means in the following passage.

He also is not an anti-scientist, but he believes in a “different”

science: “Écoutez la sage antiquité,” he says, “sur le compte des

premiers hommes: elle vous dira que ce furent des hommes merveilleux,

et que des êtres d’un ordre supérieur daignaient les favoriser des plus

précieuses communications. Sur ce point il n’y a pas de dissonance;

les initiés, les philosophes, les poëtes, l’histoire, la fable,

l’Asie et l’Europe n’ont qu’une voix. Un tel accord de la raison,

de la révélation, et de toutes les traditions humaines, forme une

démonstration que la bouche seule peut contredire. Non seulement donc

les hommes ont commencé par la science, mais par une science différente

de la nôtre, et supérieure à la nôtre; parce qu’elle commençait plus

haut,” _op. cit._, p. 68. When one remembers that this was written over

a hundred years ago, the sentiment prompting it appears all the more

admirable. _Les Soirées de St. Petersbourg_, though conceived in 1806,

was published only a few days after de Maistre’s death in 1821.

INDEX

Adam: a Promethean, 218;

because he hearkened to the voice of his wife, 219

Æschylus: his _Prometheus Bound_, 27;

regarded as responsible for portraying Prometheus as a blameless

hero, 35;

the fallacy of this view, 35, 36;

only one play of his trilogy survives, 37;

knew of the vast antiquity of the gods, 173, 184

Alcohol: not bad for the human body, 150;

percentage of, in modern drinks, 151

Ale: its value in old England and ancient Egypt, 152;

thought as necessary as bread by our forefathers, 153;

kept our ancestors healthy and sexually potent, 155;

a powerful anti-scorbutic, 157;

valuable properties of, 160

America: the home of the worst cooks, 84;

abounds in Prometheans, 221;

abandoned nobility and honesty in order to survive, 231 _n._;

leaders of, interested only in output and turnover, 242;

and never concerned with humanity, 243;

the land of Puritanism, slave-driving and machinery, 245

Ancestor worship: the root of religion, 23

Aristotle: on honey and wine, 144

Arnold, Matthew: protested against nineteenth century optimism, 68

Artist: superseded by the clumsy scientist in Protestant countries, 84

Aryans: mixed with the Cro-Magnons, 183, 184, 209;

their antiquity, 183, 208;

a brachycephalic race, 182, 184;

the possible reason for the superiority of the Greek branch of, 210

_n._

Atlas: the brother of Prometheus, 25, 45;

the supporter of the heavens, 45;

came to a bad end, 49

Bacchantes: description of, 165

Belgium: marked decline in health and beauty with increase of

population, 233

Bell, Dr. Robert: on relationship of diet to cancer, 85;

on killing the vital element in food by cooking, 86;

his insistence on uncooked food, 87

Blackie, J. S.: unable to explain seeming injustice to Prometheus, 32;

his insight, 37

Brain: large size of, in Cro-Magnon race, 181, 189, 190, 191, 192;

a large, a sign of superiority, 191, 192

Broadmindedness: means degeneracy if it leads to cross-breeding, 49

Browning: his class the only one that flourished in the nineteenth

century, 68

Bushmen: did not boil food, 207

Butter: rich in vitamines, 94

Byron: worshipped Prometheus as a boy, 33;

his schoolboy conception of Prometheus, 33;

failed to grasp Greek view of Prometheus, 34;

protested against nineteenth century optimism, 68;

on the fall of man, 74

Cæsar, Julius: account of the Druids, 9

Cancer: increase of, 88 _n._;

due to cooking food, 108

Cannibalism: wrongly interpreted as a sun myth, 16;

practised by modern Eskimos, 17;

practised on account of human flesh being the best food for men, 17

Carlyle: stupidly honoured by the nineteenth century, 65

Catholic Church: her wisdom regarding food, 82;

the storehouse of mediæval and ancient wisdom, 83;

her moderate view regarding butcher meat, 88;

had certain Dionysian principles and spread culture of vine, 236

_n._

Children: their alleged innocence the foolish belief of English

Protestants and old maids, 4

Chinese: wine drinkers till the fifteenth century, 156;

their refusal to adopt new discoveries, 176;

believe their ancestors were better than themselves, 186 _n._

Christ: compared with Prometheus, 32

Christian: does not question his god’s justice in punishing the

fallen angels, 2;

his difficulty in explaining the “sons of god” and “giants,” 46;

the nineteenth-century optimists, 68

Christianity: growing indifference of proletariat to, 68;

radically Puritanical, 135, 136;

resembles Prometheanism in ignoring æsthetic-survival-values, 236

_n._

Church of England: her indifference to the degradation of the masses,

234

Civilisation: responsible for cancer, 88 _n._;

fortunately does not necessarily mean mechanical devices, disease

and female suffrage and suffering, 206;

the Promethean, erroneously supposed to be the only kind, 226;

does not necessarily develop from lower to higher, 228;

varies according to the type of man producing it, 229

Clock: “setting it back,” a fallacious argument, 238-241

Cobbett: protested against nineteenth-century optimism, 68

Coffee: a harmful drug, 158;

contains no vitamines, 159 _n._

Cooking: a process not dictated by Nature, 81;

Dr. Bell on, 86-89;

Dr. Hutchinson on, 90 _n._;

harmfulness of process when repeated often on same product, 92;

may be fatal, 93;

effect of, on vitamines, 101 _et seq._;

the easiest form of, and its relation to pottery, 112;

on the Somme, 112;

stewing the easiest form of, 113;

stone-cooking, 113 _n._;

restrictions imposed in regard to, 206-208

Cro-Magnons: probably the race from which the gods of Western and

Near Eastern religions sprang, 181, 182;

mixed with the Aryans, 183, 184;

god of the Jews and Christians probably a Cro-Magnon, 185, 219;

infinitely superior to modern man, 185;

the discovery of, a revelation to anthropologists, 188;

the superior brain of, 189, 190, 192;

probably exterminated owing to their superiority, 194;

the superiority of their art, 195, 196;

pregnant women frequent in their art, 196;

their simple life of hunting, feasting, art and love, 200;

their chivalrous and noble nature, 201;

their invention of writing, 201;

their deliberate refusal to adopt futile complications, 202, 203,

205;

exterminated by overwhelming numbers, 210;

deified by ancestors of the Greeks, 211

Cronus: mutilates Uranus, 5

Cross-breeding: effects of, 45;

destroys character, 47;

depravity resulting from, 49

Darwin: on the effects of cross-breeding, 45

Deification: instances of, 19 _n._;

of conquerors, 42

Demeter: restores Dionysus to life, 134

Devil: _see_ Satan

Dietetics: the necessary creation of Protestantism, 83

Dionysia: the first celebration of the, 164;

some unsatisfactory explanations of, 166, 167, 168;

a new explanation of, 169, 170

Dionysian type: description of, 178, 179;

all gods, saviours, angels, etc., belong to the, 179;

masters women, 214;

and makes them happy, 217;

the only check against Promethean vulgarity, 236;

stoutly denies inevitability of degeneration, 238;

can alone save mankind from Promethean muddle, 247

Dionysus: the Saviour, 118, 170;

his ancestry, 119;

his miraculous birth, 120;

torn in pieces by the Titans, 120;

came later than Prometheus, 121;

his epithets, 121, 136, 137;

the god of “vitamines,” 122;

his worship introduced from Thrace, 123;

taught the use of fermented liquor, 124;

why he was called the son of Zeus, 124;

a divinity resulting from ancestor worship, 125;

saved from fire, 126, 128;

the “twice born,” 127;

Lord of Trees, 129;

the discoverer of honey, 129;

nursed by nymphs, 130;

fed on honey, 130 _n._;

his travels, 131;

opposition to his doctrine, 132;

a beneficent deity, 133;

hostile to the Titans, 133;

and torn in pieces by them, 133;

restored to life by Rhea and Demeter, 134;

the Saviour and healer, 135;

the doctor, 141;

taught use of honey, 142;

his remedies, honey, fruit and raw meat, 142;

eater of raw meat, 146, 147;

served only by women and the reason why, 164;

necessary in a Promethean civilisation, 171;

the enemies of, the most savage enemies of mankind, 171

Diseases: of occupation, 70 _n._

Dodona: oak-forest at, 130

Druids: their cultivation of memory, 9

Drunkenness: due to adulteration of liquor, 152;

never a serious evil in old England and Greece, 153, 154

Engineers: honoured in Westminster Abbey, 69;

have no regard for the moral and æsthetic consequences of their

unscrupulous innovations, 235;

the blind advocate of, 235 _n._

England: the home of the worst cooks, 84;

abounds in Prometheans, 221;

to survive had to abandon nobility and honesty, 231 _n._;

marked decline in health and beauty with increase of population,

233;

the old peasantry of, formidable because they drank wholesome ale,

244

Epimetheus: the brother of Prometheus, 25;

marries Pandora, 28;

almost half-witted, 49

Eskimos: their cannibalism, 17;

eaters of raw meat, 106

Eve: eats of the Tree of Knowledge, 212;

the first fatal instance of woman’s tastelessness, 218

Fermented liquor: its high value as food, 149, 156;

essential to high civilisations, 157;

the valuable properties of, 159

Fire: stolen by Prometheus, 1 _et passim_;

withheld by Zeus, 55;

fetched in fennel stalk, 56;

granted by Zeus on wise terms, 57;

produced by friction, 59;

not an unmixed blessing, 75;

introduced agriculture and industry, 76;

ills resulting from, 76-80;

destroys food value, 88, 89;

destroys vitamines, 100;

date of discovery of, 173-177;

restricted use among savages, 205;

often coveted and stolen by inferior races, 208

Food: harmed by fire, 80-82;

ignorance regarding, 81;

the wisdom of the Catholic Church regarding, 82;

better uncooked, 87-90;

the poisonousness of twice-cooked, 92

Frazer, Sir James: interpretation of the mutilations, 6 _n._

Frederick the Great: restorer of order, 50

Germany: the home of the worst cooks, 84;

had to abandon nobility and honesty in order to survive, 231 _n._;

marked decline in health and beauty with increase of population,

233

Giants: mentioned in the Bible, 46;

their depravity, 48

God: the sons of, marry the daughters of men, 43

Gods: deified conquerors, 43;

were cultured strangers, 44;

probably tall, 44;

belief in personal, correct, 224

Goethe: his atheistic view of Prometheus, 33, 34;

failed to grasp Greek attitude to Prometheus, 34

Golden Age: longing for, 73;

preceded the fall of man, 74

Gorilla: and his kind possibly the degenerate descendants of men, 187

Greeks: their remote ancestors probably cannibals, 17;

and guilty of incest, 22;

regarded Prometheus as the founder of civilisation, 26;

accepted Prometheus myth humbly without understanding, 31;

their love of Zeus, 35, 36;

did not worship Prometheus, 36;

and regarded his punishment as deserved, 36;

trusted Zeus, 38;

deified superior race, 65;

did not regard Zeus as responsible for their civilisation, 69;

would have been staggered at belief that a good god was responsible

for modern civilisation, 70;

our predecessors in stupidity but wiser than ourselves, 71;

their pessimism, 198, 199;

their remote ancestors mingled with Cro-Magnons; hence their

superiority, 210

Health: appalling state of national, 237

Heaven: believed in because it is pleasant, 140 _n._

Hellenes: _see_ Greeks

Hera: her jealousy of Semele, 125, 126

Heracles: releases Prometheus, 51, 117, 118

Hesiod: his fidelity to tradition, 29;

his veneration of Zeus, 36;

on the decline of men, 72;

on the Iron Age, 72;

his pessimism, 73

Honey: use of, discovered and taught by Dionysus, 142;

used as a medicine by antiquity, 143, 144, 145;

the food of the gods, 145

Human flesh: the best food for men, 171

Human sacrifice: in time of Themistocles, 167 _n._

Influenza: a deficiency disease, 110

Iron Age: Hesiod on, 72

Jehovah: probably a Cro-Magnon, 211 _n._

Kuhn: his interpretation of the Prometheus myth, 39, 40;

Andrew Lang’s objection to his theory, 40

Lang, Andrew: does not attempt to explain Zeus’s anger against

Prometheus, 2;

regards the mutilations as too abominable to explain, 6 _n._;

shows hopeless disagreement of scholars, 6 _n._;

his objection to Kuhn’s theory, 40

Lloyd George: on appalling state of national health, 237

Luther: translates giants as tyrants, 46

Lyell, Sir Charles: an eminent Promethean, 203;

his admiration of ridiculous complications, 204

Madness: usually ascribed to creative genius, 131

Maistre, Joseph de: his belief that modern man is a disease, 225;

his belief in the superior science of antiquity, 241

Man: fall of, 74;

his “Gadarene Progress” to degeneration, 224

Margarine: deficient in vitamines, 94

Max Müller: his false interpretations of myths, 17, 18;

regards unsavoury myths as the disease overtaking religious ideas,

Mecone: the meeting at, 26, 29, 30, 54;

the meeting at, probably not religious, 53;

the dispute at, 55

Memory: modern disbelief in, 7;

bad, the feature distinguishing modern man from animals and the

ancients, 8;

bad, one of the unmistakable signs of progress, 8;

robust, of the ancients, 9;

impaired by writing, 9;

historical facts preserved by, 10;

instances of long, 11, 12;

stronger the further we recede from the age of print, 12

Menœtius: the brother of Prometheus, 25;

came to a bad end, 49

Mill, John Stuart: stupidly honoured by the nineteenth century, 65;

a henpecked Promethean, 122

Mousterians: the remote ancestors of the Cro-Magnons, 205

Murray, Gilbert: leaves the mutilation in the Uranus-Cronus myth

aside, 5, 6

Muses: the daughters of Memory, 15 _n._

Mutilation: in the Uranus-Cronus myth, 5;

its interpretation essential to understanding the myth, 6;

Sir James Frazer’s interpretation of, 6 _n._;

reason of, 50

Myths: anything obscure or obscene in them conveniently ignored by

modernity, 4;

should be approached reverently, 7;

probably records of actual occurrences, 14;

not to be interpreted as personifications of natural phenomena, 15

Napoleon: restorer of order, 50;

never heartily loved by any woman, 215

Nietzsche: on the fall of man, 74;

his belief that man is in a decline, 224

Nineteenth Century: the Alexandrian Age of Stupidity, 64;

its abuse of everything noble, 64;

enough to make working-classes atheists, 65;

honourable to depart from beliefs of, 65;

regarded gutter-smartness as superiority, 65;

misery during, 67;

its foolish belief that everything new is an improvement, 67;

its resolute optimism Christian optimism, 67;

its gross errors of diet, 92;

produced incurable old sentimentalists, 235 _n._

Noah: his immaculate pedigree, 48;

planted the vine, 142

Nomadic life: ended by discovery of fire, 76;

illness due to abandonment of, 76

Nymphs: nursed Dionysus, 130

Odin: mingling of races after his immigration, 47

Pandora: wife of Prometheus and Epimetheus, 25;

creation of, 28;

her casket of evils, 114;

the first fatal instance of woman’s tastelessness, 218

Pelmanism: reason for sudden vogue of, 8

Pessimism: due to ill-health, 198

Phallus: carried by virgins in the Dionysia, 137;

the meaning of, in the Dionysia, 161-165

Plague: the great, probably due to Puritan’s interference with ale,

149 _n._

Poets: their obtuseness with regard to Prometheus, 33

Pottery: introduced by fire, 75, 79;

its relation to the easiest and most pernicious form of cooking,

112;

date of invention of, 176

Pregnancy: depicted in Cro-Magnon art, 196;

reason of Cro-Magnon admiration of, 197, 199;

the whole of its associations loathsome to modernity, 198

Progress: bad memory one of the signs of, 8;

every kind of blackguardism regarded as, 65;

the belief in, one of the many nineteenth-century absurdities, 67;

not necessarily to something better, 227;

produces ill-health, 238

Prohibition: a Promethean conspiracy against man, 242;

designed to keep modern slaves below par, 244

Promethean Type: description of its boy-scout mind, 177, 178;

all devils and demons belong to the, 179;

judges by success, 193;

the best worshippers of women, 217;

hearken to the voice of their wives, 219;

never regards æsthetic-survival-values, 236;

sacrifices humanity to “Progress,” 241;

never concerned with humanity, 243;

strong in the innocence of its dangerous stupidity, 246

Prometheus: steals fire, 1, 36 _et passim_;

supposed to benefit mankind, 2;

Shelley’s shallow view of, 2 _n._;

his genealogy, 25;

deceives Zeus, 26, 56, 66;

the founder of civilisation, 26;

his punishment, 28;

impossible to interpret him as a phenomenon of nature, 30;

belongs to the oldest stratum of Greek mythology, 31;

compared with Christ, 32;

not worshipped by the Greeks, 36, 62;

who regarded his punishment as deserved, 36;

a perfect blend of two races, 45;

Zeus’s most powerful rival, 51;

jealous of Zeus, 52;

a revolutionary and demagogue, 57, 58;

divulges secret of fire-kindling, 58;

his torture demanded by his victims, 60, 62;

his supernatural punishment, 60, 61;

a depraved and foolish man, 65;

his theft of fire a calamity to man, 66;

comparison with Semitic story of fall of man, 74;

altar dedicated to him by Athenian potters, 79;

his invention of pottery, 112;

released by Heracles, 117;

the reason of his release, 118;

a malignant power, 133;

the antiquity of his crime, 173;

a half-bred Cro-Magnon, 209

Protestantism: its foolish abolition of fasts and feasts, 83;

dietetics the necessary creation of, 83;

breeds loathing of pregnancy, 198 _n._

Protestants: their foolish belief that children are innocent, 4

Puritanism: despises the body and censures the pleasures connected

with it, 91;

ignorance regarding food, 92

Puritans: their adulteration of ale, 152;

an unscrupulous commercial and industrial class hostile to the

body and sex, 234, 235

Raw meat: medicinal value of, 146;

eaten at the Dionysia, 164

Religions: traditional records of man’s past greatness, 224

Rhea: restores Dionysus to life, 134

Romans: allowed father to decide which children should survive, 215

Ruskin: protested against nineteenth-century optimism, 68

Satan: punished for a crime, 2;

Shelley’s shallow view of, 2 _n._;

the Archetype of Promethean men, 218

Scholars: their stupid superciliousness towards antiquity, 3;

their foolish belief that we are superior to the ancients, 4;

their hopeless disagreement, 6 _n._

Scientist: the substitution of the clumsy, for the artist, 84

Scurvy: due to absence of vitamines, 97;

symptoms of, 98;

mild forms of, 99;

the cure for, 100;

undiagnosed, very prevalent, 103, 108;

recent outbreaks of, 104, 105;

due to potato famine, 110

Semele: the mother of Dionysus, 118, 119, 120;

a simple Greek maiden afterwards regarded as half divine, 125

Sex: joys of, dependent on good health, 161;

associated with guilt only in stupid Promethean age, 213

Sexual potency: reduced by mistakes in diet, 90;

impaired by lack of vitamines, 96, 108;

restoration of, 118;

secured by drinking good ale, 155

Shelley: his shallow view of Satan and Prometheus, 2 _n._;

his schoolboy view of Prometheus, 33;

failed to grasp Greek view of Prometheus, 34;

his foolish conception of Zeus, 51

Silenus: taught Dionysus, 129

Smiles, Samuel: with resolute vulgarity wrote the Magnificat of the

Engineers, 235 _n._

Socrates: as an inveterate old moralist and Puritan has set the tone

of much in modern Europe, 5 _n._

Spencer, Herbert: regarded ancestor-worship as origin of myths, 15;

his masterly interpretation of myths, 19;

regarded ancestor-worship as the root of religion, 23;

on parasites, etc., being examples of successful adaptation, 193

Stew: the worst form of cooking, 112, 113

Success: vulgar modern belief in, 193;

erroneously identified with superiority, 232

Survival values: _vital_: enumeration of some, 230;

may mean abandoning some form of superiority, 231;

_æsthetic_: enumeration of some, 232;

disregarded by Christianity and by Prometheans, 236;

incomprehensible to Americans, 243

Tea: a harmful drug, 158;

contains no vitamines, 159

Temperance: true, should aim at producing pure drink, 154

Tennyson: stupidly honoured by the nineteenth century, 65

Titans: their descent, 44;

a mighty race, 45;

tear Dionysus to pieces, 120, 133;

hostile to Dionysus, 133;

hostile to man, 134;

half-bred Cro-Magnons, 209

Trepanning: performed by the Cro-Magnons, 200 _n._

Tylor: instances of truth of old traditions, 10, 11

Uranus: mutilated by Cronus, 5;

probably a Cro-Magnon, 184, 201

Vineyards: round monasteries, 236 _n._

Virgin-birth: the interpretation given by the Puritanical bias of

the Christian investigator, 5

Virginity: a negative ideal, 197;

admiration of, due to modern pessimism, 198

Virgins: carried the phallus in the Dionysia, 137

Vitamines: the imponderable elements in food, 93, 95;

diseases due to absence of, 96;

the anti-scorbutic, 97;

killed by modern cooking, 100, 101;

Dionysus the god of, 122

Westminster Abbey: honours many votaries of Prometheus, 69

Wine: Persian legend of origin of, 148 _n._;

[278] The word artist here should be accepted with caution. It means