X. SONG OF A VERY SMALL DEVIL
He who looks in golden state
Down from ramparts of high heaven,
Knows he any turn of fate,
It must be of evil given—
He perhaps shall wander late
Downward through the luminous gate.
He who makes himself a gay
Dear familiar of things evil,—
In some deepest tarn astray,
Close-companioned of the Devil,—
He can nowhere turn his way
Save up brighter slopes of day.
Plight it is, yet clear to see.
Hence take solace of your sinning.
As ye sink unfathomably,
Heaven grows ever easier winning.
Therefore ye who saved would be,
Come and shake a leg with me!
A New Standard of Art Criticism and a Significant Artist
Huntley Carter
It has been clear to me for some time that a new standard of art criticism is needed to assist the present-day revaluation of Art. A constant examination of advanced pictures has shown me that the key to revaluation resides in the ultimate effect attained by the new “masters.” In studying this effect I have become aware of certain facts. (1) The effect is one of solid motion at a greater intensity than is found in actuality. It is solid motion actually exaggerated. (By solid motion, I mean motion expressed by actual forms.) (2) The greater the intensity the more it tends to obliterate actuality. (3) There is a fluid motion behind phenomena. This motion informs phenomena but loses its intensity when it becomes phenomenalized. It changes its character from fluid motion to solid motion, as though undergoing a process of conversion similar to that by which water is frozen into ice. (4) The meaning of the attainment of the said effect would therefore seem to be that solid motion, as expressed by artists, is being melted into fluid motion, as ice is melted into water, and water is, in turn, converted into steam. Moreover, the solid motion is being melted by the higher intensity of the fluid motion. In other words fluid motion is converting solid motion into its own flow, or that from whence solid motion came. The conclusion is that the quest for intensity is a sign that artists are awakening to a feeling for fluid motion behind solids.
Perhaps artists are becoming purer mediums. It is conceivable that the revolt against academic formulae and the consequent movement towards neo-primitivism, have had a refining influence. In ridding artists of certain forms of culture and convention, they have removed inner obstacles to the intense stream-line flow or fluid motion, and have made them accessible to the motion itself. Hence the present-day pursuit of abstraction in painting and the tendency of representative forms (i. e.: solids) to disappear from the canvas and to be replaced by non-representative forms (i. e.: fluids). As an example I may point to the shadowy forms pursued by Kandinsky. It is true that many of Kandinsky’s studies do not contain evidence of fluid motion working freely through the artist and tracing its own designs on his canvas. In his earlier studies he certainly expresses solids. He puts down forms which the conventional memory recognizes as having a relation to the known, and thereby defeats his own object. But his recent studies exhibit a refining away of solids and a larger feeling for fluidity, that leads one to believe the artist is striving for a true dream-like state in which the fluid motion is left to express itself at its own degree of intensity. Whether he will ever attain this state is uncertain as yet, especially in view of the intellectual attitude of his writings. In Spiritual Harmony, for instance, he is seen working out a scheme of color thus showing he hopes to produce an effect upon the spectator by the use of a mathematical formula. He has evidently conceived the theory that certain colors are equivalent to certain emotions and by adding or subtracting color he can add or subtract an emotion to or from the spectator. Thus yellow equals joy, but add red to the yellow and the effect will be joy tinged with passion. In this way the fluid motion actuating Kandinsky is bound to be subjected to theoretical treatment instead of being left free to do its own work. The emotion of joy in passing through the painter on its way to the spectator will be subjected to mental checks, with the result that it will be deprived of its greatest value in its original intensity.
The study of the aforementioned facts led me in turn to new views on Art, (a) as to the origin and nature of Art, (b) as to the order, intelligibility, and coherence that exist in the natural manifestations of Art, (c) as to the law of growth and progression to be applied to art forms, (d) as to the illumination of this law by a proper standard of criticism. Accordingly I came to see that Art is a potential creative movement in space. It first exists in the fluid motions of the universe and ultimately in a work of art only as the inevitable and efficient expression of itself through a specially adapted medium called the artist. In a metaphysical sense, Art may be said to be a spiritual experience capable of assuming visibility. But it becomes visible only by a process of debasement. Apparently, as I have said, the fluid motion in which Art expresses itself loses its intensity and becomes solid motion in the process of conversion into a work of art, as applied by all civilized artists (as far as we know) up to the present day. In fact, it is only recent years that have witnessed the discovery by the artist of the fluid motion potential in solid motion. Cezanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh were among the first of the moderns to arrive at the point of realizing this potential character. All three were actively engaged in the refining of solids and suggesting their potential ultimate fluidity. What they actually did was this. They demonstrated that Art is a fluid motion seeking to produce an ultimate creative effect upon the spectator through efficient application, and that fluid motion can only produce its creative effect as fluid motion. Now, largely owing to blindness or wrong direction, artists, with rare exceptions, have hitherto concerned themselves with converting fluid motion into various forms of solid motion. They have in fact stopped at the expression of representative forms of nature and human life, apparently unconscious that in doing so they were not completing the expression of the art flow, but were stopping at a half-way house, so to speak, where of course the maximum creative effect could not be produced. Before this effect can be produced it is necessary to complete the journey by reconverting the solids into fluid motion. It cannot be said that either Cezanne, Van Gogh, or Gauguin completed the magic journey. But if they did not refine away the solids in their canvases and set them going as fluid motion, if they put down forms recognizable as houses, men, trees, and so on, they certainly exhibited such forms undergoing a process of melting. In Van Gogh’s canvases the forms are simply being melted by the fierce internal intensity to which the artist is subjecting them. Van Gogh, perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, shows us known forms in the act of being converted into their original fluid motion. And it is for this reason, I think, Van Gogh’s pictures produce a greater creative effect upon the spectator than any merely representative forms of art. We experience in them a rush of liberated energy due to the change from solidity to fluidity.
So much for the new conception of the origin and nature of Art. With regard to the principles by which Art moves towards its ultimate effect, I believe they are analogous to those by which an unseen agency assumes visibility in natural forms. There is the same order, intelligibility, and coherence throughout. Corresponding to the invariable order of growth and progression in a plant as represented by the seed (enclosing the life and unifying principle) stem, branches, leaves and fruit, is the order of ascent, or perhaps it should be descent, by which Art takes concrete form. First there is the initial flow, then the root-point answering to the seed or unifying principle, then follow in turn, lines, planes, and solids. The fruit and the solids appear to be the culmination of the initial flow, but really they contain a potential power of growth in a realizable fluid motion. This abstract motion has ever since the start been descending and slackening into solid motion, and its forms have become more and more concrete as they attained actuality. Behind these actual forms, it is clear, there is the potentiality of further movement and growth which in our limited state of intelligence we conceive of as realisable only on the original lines. If there is an infinite growth and development inherent in actual forms very few persons are aware of it. Indeed most persons are aware only of particular growth. To them growth begins with the seed and stops with the fruit or its art expression as fruit, and the only form of continuation is to be found in repetition. The old process must be repeated from seed to fruit. According to this view the phenomena of growth as expressed by art-forms is manifested in a succession of parallel movements and not in one continuous and ever-expanding movement. Generally speaking, things are transferred to canvas as they appear, particular solids, not infinite fluids as they are. If they have a life principle in them it is carefully concealed, for they suggest no power of infinite growth. It would seem indeed as though art-expression, during civilized times, has reached a deadlock. For it is noticeable that throughout all the great periods of art-expression, artists have expressed the same things. In the canvases of the old masters a flow of solids manifests itself with depressing regularity. Time, one might think, would have lifted the soul of the artist out of solid space. But, as we know, the feverish desire to express a too solid world has not grown less till of recent years. It may be due to this deadlock that art criticism has seldom risen above mediocrity. How indeed could it reach the highest creative achievement of the critical mind if works of art lack the creative principle to be judged? The creative critic cannot possibly build his house of illumination without the essential fundamental materials. And these the artist must provide. He cannot illuminate the non-existent. And if there are no creative elements to work upon criticism is bound to fall and remain far below the creative standard. It will be uncertain and chaotic in its judgments. History says it is so, and not without proof. It shows us that the art judgment of one age has been sufficient to reverse the art judgment of a previous age. Yet Art itself does not change. If it is badly expressed at any time it is badly expressed for all time. Therefore the said fluctuating judgment has but one interpretation. It means that the judgment itself is at fault, and much of the art criticism to which art critics have given utterance is worthless. The reason is apparent. Art criticism is not based upon a fundamental principle. There is no established law of art criticism.
Of course I shall be told there is no such law to establish, because it does not exist and never will exist. The art critic has been and will continue to be guided by his conscious experience. And as such experience varies from age to age, so judgment founded upon it varies also. But a statement so independent of common sense is plainly nonsense. The law to which I refer is within the critic just as it is within the artist. It does not always operate because it is not allowed to do so. It is hindered by conscious experience. Actually the law is the artist, and if left to itself it would make an efficient application of itself to produce the highest creative effect of which fluid motion is capable. Such is the unconscious method of using the law. The artist uses it not because he can or will but because he must. His picture producing is a work that can only be done in one way, not by thought and reason, not by compulsions and restraints, but through the livingness of free energies left free to find their own expressions through their own channels. His starting point, representing the seed of unity, is sensibility, and feeling if left alone will do everything to unite all parts of his vision, to bind and cement them together. The result would remain as an example of organic growth not limited to solid space but extended to a higher space as far as the emotional impulse in the artist can be expressed by the limited means at his disposal. The question of how far the artist can use solid (that is, dead) materials, paint brushes, and canvas, to reach a transcendental effect (effect of livingness) is one that I must leave for future consideration.
In such a result would be found evidence not only that there is a great principle or law by which art operates and reaches its highest mark humanly possible, but that it remains constant and true in the sensible artist and can be traced running through all he does. If further evidence of the existence of the law is needed I can point to the conscious use of it today by painters who are seeking to give the facts of ordinary experience a non-representative character, as though belonging to a world of abstraction. We know that Picasso is busy converting everyday forms of his own contemporary surroundings into rhythmic shape from which all clichés have been carefully eliminated. We know too that other painters following the epoch-making example of John D. Fergusson are boldly rhythmising the people and affairs of everyday life as though convinced that the big unified rhythmic design is symbolic of the intense movement by which Art moves and expresses itself. We see in their canvases an obvious attempt to give the widest expansion to the fundamental rhythm of each subject treated. At first sight it appears to be a step in the right direction, one leading away from the fallacy or blindness, which led the old masters to turn out wonderful patchworks by giving each object in their canvases a structural unity of its own. Indeed it looks as though these painters have mastered the secret of binding a composition together by a unified design springing from a central note that expands by spontaneous motion till it not only fills the canvas but passes out of it on a very wide sweep, and having order, intelligibility, and coherence in all its parts. It looks as though they have discovered the great law of creative organic unity of which I speak. Closer examination of their work, however, reveals it is not so. For one thing their pictures are not growths from small beginnings to great ends, each the successive sweep of one curve expanding in oneness from a root-point. It is true that the starting point in them may be feeling, as with the work of the unconscious artist. But as soon as feeling has decided the start, knowledge and reason decide the rest. They decide what shapes and colors are to be selected and carefully related to the central shape and color. If the character of the subject is zigzag then the composition will take a zigzag course. If a sharp curve, then sharp curves will be gathered from objects surrounding the central one and related to it. In fact the law of association is called in and kept busy throughout. Everything in a picture is consciously associated just as a builder associates the materials of a house. Intuition is checked by reason.
So we find one principle being applied alike by conscious and unconscious methods. With this difference, that whereas the movement, growth and unity attained by the unconscious method is organic that reached by the conscious method is mechanical. It is the difference between the natural growth of a plant and the artificial manufacture of one. The first is a process whereby the life flow organizes itself. The second a process of eliminating the life flow. The one is mediumistic and spontaneous, the other is volitional and mechanical.
What, it may be asked, is this principle or law? Briefly it is the law of spiral growth and progression traceable in all natural phenomena. It is a law which actuates human nature at its best and which shapes all work done in the finer way. If we wish to see how it operates we cannot do better than symbolize it in the form of a motion-curve starting from a point in space and expanding in ever-widening curves. Thus:
This law may be found completely applied to one picture or it may be traced running through a succession of pictures, each a part of a creative unity, the whole manifesting the growth and development curve of the artist. In the first case the picture would have an organic unity of its own. In it the fluid motion would be seen coming to fruition from the initial point of feeling to its fullest statement as vision at the highest pressure of fluid expression. Thus:
In the second case, each period of the artist’s work represent a section of the development-curve. By placing the sections together it is possible to view his work as a whole and to construct the course of development which he has undergone. And we can tell by the widest sweep of the curve precisely where he stands and how much he has detached himself from the world of solids. Thus:
Needless to say, this motion-curve may be applied as a standard of art-criticism. Indeed it is the business of art critics to experience this curve in themselves and to apply it to all works of art. So far as I know it has never been applied. When it is it will transform art criticism. For it will enable the critic to judge whether a work is an inevitable growth of a movement inherent in the artist,—and to value it rightly and fully in its relation to this movement,—or whether it is merely a bit of clever brain juggling.
I have not time nor space to illustrate in minute detail the truth and importance of the application of this law to art-forms. But I may take one concrete instance of its existence and inevitableness, and of the growth and progress that result whenever the artist happens to work under its guidance. I have within recent months seen the existence of this law and traced the course of its working in the studies of a new and comparatively unknown comer in the world of painting. Here is a painter, Clarence E. King by name, who is undoubtedly working out his high destiny in terms of Art, at the bidding of a force to whose direction he is willing to surrender himself. And he surrenders himself not because he has no judgment, no discriminating sense of his own, but because he believes that the true artist works without volition. I know very little about Mr. King’s first experiences, but I can quite imagine that art-expression came to him as a bewildered dream. Perhaps he felt instinctively it was but an imaginary magician’s wand and the effect it ever sought to produce was far above the limited measure of the artist’s dead materials. It was an effect that could only be attained in one way, not by stone, wood, or canvas, but by direct surrender to its livingness. I remember once receiving a letter from Mr. King in which he hinted at some such transcendental vision of Art and indicated its difficulties—both aesthetic and economic. The latter will be seen to be very real when I say that Mr. King is a poor man, that he has to engage in a mechanical form of occupation which constantly opposes him with the dread of losing guidance and his real purpose, and of falling under the subjection of aims and methods entirely opposed to his own. From the letter I learned that he began with a longing to attain the maximum intensity of expression and he has ever since been impelled irresistibly towards this end. But the path was not easy, for it seems he became aware at an early period of the small measure of expression in the painter’s dead materials. He relates how one day he took his colors into the sun so that they should rival its livingness. But when he looked at them (in the light of the sun) they were dead. Then he bought the most expensive paint, he kept his palette clean, he slept in the open, watched the sunrise, absorbed its magic, and prepared himself and his materials in every way, as he thought, to express the fluid character of the experience flowing through him. He grappled with powerful feelings and sought to fix them in form. To no purpose. Apparently there was a point beyond which paint, like words, could not go. The fault, however, was not altogether in the materials. The artist too was to blame. He was a boy strenuously striving to transcend representative forms. But in doing so he neglected one thing. He made no attempt to escape from the illusion of volume and solidity contained in solid space. In other words he tried to transcend solids by the process of merely copying solids. He tried to express the eternal livingness of a tree by painting an ephemeral tree. This is the meaning underlying the earliest example of his work. It accounts for the expression of representative forms very slightly raised above actuality. In the second example the next upward sweep of the curve is apparent. The pursuit of the maximum intensity of expression is maintained, with the result that there is a further escape into fluid motion. And actuality becomes very much exaggerated as by a hand that feels the stimulating impulse which the steadily increasing growth of an unknown power brings with it. Perhaps the most noticeable characteristic of the second example is the attainment of a greater freedom of expression. There is in consequence an increase of intensity, and as intensity is the source of rhythm,—rhythm being but the natural characteristic of what we call intensity—a greater manifestation of rhythm. This rhythmic ascent, if I may call it so, marking the growth and development of intense expression, is continued in the third example. The illusion of volume and solidity to be found in the other two examples is still noticeable. But the flow is at a far higher pressure than in actuality, and if the painter is not yet fully afloat on fluid motion, he is certainly moving in the desired direction. He is in fact true to his widening curve.
It is too early to predict what degree of intensity of effect Mr. King will ultimately attain. He is still a young man with an enviable future before him. And he approximates more and more towards an unconscious method of expression. He applies the natural law of growth and progression because he must. A time may come when he will take up his pencil and trace a picture as in a trance simply at the bidding of the inner flow called inner necessity. It is certainly hopeful that he has remained up to the present a fairly pure medium, having escaped the pollution of conventional art education. He turned to painting at the urge of inner necessity and expressed himself in intense form and color because such form and color were in him to express. The technical characteristics of his work are really a part of himself. He expresses everything with simplicity and freedom because they are characteristics of his own nature. It should be said that he does not aim to produce the so-called automatic work of art. There is nothing automatic in a fluid force organizing itself by uniting itself to a medium that is really a part of its own livingness. If the artist’s hands are guided by a mysterious agency it is not a mechanical process any more than the guiding of a plant into leaves, blossom, and fruit is one. The artist is really guided by that which is a part of his higher self. He surrenders himself to the guidance of a spirit which is his own, the spirit of Art. And in doing so he achieves his highest destiny. For in the complete surrender to Art lies the affirmation of Art.
My Friend The Incurable
V.
War Hallucinations
An interview with Mme. Truth
I found her in an obscure corner of a wein-stube which bore the legend: In vino veritas. She beckoned to me appealingly. “Mr. Incurable, will you come and sit at my table? They all shun me nowadays; to associate with me is considered mauvais ton. But you, I am sure, need not fear for your reputation....” To be sure, my reputation could not suffer any more, even if I committed patricide; so I went bravely to Madame’s table, and ordered Rhine-wine and a neutrality sandwich à la Wilson (caviar and Limburger dressed in petals of French roses); to complete the expression of my loyalty to the President, I requested the national hymns of all the belligerents, after which conscience-clearing ordeal I turned to my companion. Her appearance was shocking; not even the clumsy robe of Censor O’Connor’s cut could conceal her bruises and many-colored insignia. “Madame,” I gallantly inquired, “whence these atrocities?”
“These are love-tokens from the special war correspondents. Ah, dear, since the death of Tolstoy I have had no true lover. You say, how about Shaw? Well, George Bernard has championed me daringly, I admit; but I can never tell whether he is in earnest or whether he makes use of me for his clever jugglery. G. B. S. has made it his profession to say unpopular things; how could he have overlooked such a rare stunt as telling the truth in time of war? He is so very skilful in the gentle art of making himself unpleasant to the majority that I am inclined to believe he would readily betray me for my rival, Mlle. Lie, as soon as she had lost her popularity. As for Maximilian Harden, you see, I am an old flame of his; he has suffered prison and persecution for my sake, the dear; do you remember the Eilenburg affair, when Maxie removed the figments from Wilhelm’s bosom friends, and demonstrated that the “crime” punishable in England with two years of Reading Gaol was freely practiced by the august princes of Germany? O, he is a darling, Monsieur; but, between us, he handles me too roughly, the bulldog. Think of Bismarckian hugs and Kruppesque caresses! You see how hard it is to please me as a lover: I am such a frail sweetheart.”
I protested that I have never had the ambition of becoming her lover, consequently I was in no need of her warning. Mme. Truth felt offended.
“I shall get you yet. Wait till you grow older, when you will declare from the house-tops your devotion for me. You do not think objectively, Mr. Incurable, hence your numerous offences against me. With all your endeavor to appear neutral, your anti-German feelings are transparent. Why don’t you give ear to me occasionally? Think of a people generally hated and envied, yet strong, successful, defiant. How can you help admiring their wonderful achievements in the present war?”
I rejoined that I could admire war as an art; that there was art in Napoleon’s warfare, no matter whether he won or lost, no matter whether it was St. Bernard or Waterloo; while the Germans are merely good mathematicians, clever technicians; but I prefer Zimbalist’s artistic flaws to the perfect technique of Albert Spalding, the craftsman.
“You are hopelessly incurable, sir. Do you perceive that Germany has won already? Whatever the outcome of the war, the Germans are the victors. To be hated by all one must accomplish something meritorious. Surely the Germans will emerge from the struggle forged with self-respect, self-assurance, and contempt for the rest of the world. Surely they will be spared the demoralizing influence of universal sympathy, which is so atrociously showered upon poor Belgium. In their splendid isolation the Teutons will achieve gigantic things; they may become a race of supermen....”
I hastened to order Moselwine and sauer-kraut.
Shmah Yisroel
There is an inmate in one of the Russian insane asylums at present, a Jewish soldier who paces up and down his cell, continually groaning: “Shmah Yisroel.” His story is simple. One night lying in the trenches on the Prussian frontier, he observed an approaching grey figure, obviously that of a German soldier. When the figure came close to the trenches, the Jew leaped upon his foe and pierced him with the bayonet. The German fell, moaning in agony: “Shmah Yisroel.” The two words have been haunting the Russian since, until, they say, he lost his reason.
It is a grave symptom for the Jews, when they begin to lose their reason under the stress of tragedy; their very existence as a people is imperiled, as soon as they show signs of normality, and fail to endure grief and suffering. For what has kept the Eternal Ahasver so wonderfully alive these two thousand years but his philosophical defiance of seeming reality? “Shmah Yisroel,” “Hear, o Israel, the Eternal is our God, the Lord is one,” has been the motto of the nation through the long centuries of persecution, the pillar of fire on its historical Golgotha; it has become the symbol of Judaism, the coat-of-arms of the “Chosen People” who were destined to wander among gentiles, to teach them the living word, and to be rewarded for the instruction with hatred and contempt.
“Shmah Yisroel” were the last defiant words of the Palestinian martyrs, when tortured to death by the Syrian Hellenizers of the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, who attempted the apparently easy task of annihilating Judaism by the force of his mighty legions. “Shmah Yisroel” cheerfully cried the Rabbis enwrapped in the scrolls of the Law, set afire by the order of Emperor Adrian, “and their souls returned in purity to their Creator,” relates the Agadah. “Shmah Yisroel” was the cry that thundered amidst the blaze of the Auto-da-Fe set up by the Spanish Inquisition ad maiorem Dei gloriam. Throughout the ages, humiliated and offended, but inwardly proud, despising and forgiving those “who knew not what they were doing,” the Jew marched his endless road with his Motto as a talisman, as an invulnerable shield. Recently, during the first decade of the twentieth century, the world heard once more the cries of “Shmah Yisroel” piercing the air of Russia from end to end, when Jewish men, women and children were slaughtered by governmental hooligans in order to quench with the blood of Israel the Revolution.
Neither is the present great trial new for the indestructible people: many battles have been fought, with Jews taking part on both sides. There is a popular print in Germany, presenting the Jews of the Kronprinz’s regiment praying on the day of Atonement before Sedan; a grotesque mass of warriors entreating the Lord of peace to grant the world eternal peace. What greater incongruity can be imagined than Jews exterminating one another; what more terrible absurdity, than the descendants of the prophets waging war, the descendants of Isaiah who was the first to preach to the nations “to beat their swords into ploughshares”! Yet the life of Israel in the last two thousand years has been a continuous incongruity, an anomaly, a miracle; will this nation collapse under the tragicness of the present situation?
The Russian-Jewish soldier who lost his reason, because he failed to understand the “Why” of his having killed his brother, a German-Jewish soldier, is a grave symptom for the abnormal, supernormal people. Has “Shmah Yisroel” ceased to serve as the all-answering formula, as the justification of the impossible reality, as the invincible watch-word, as the great stimulus to live on, to march on, ever forward, into the unknown future?
Bestialization
The other day I received a deserved blow. A letter from the war-zone reached me. Nothing but the handwriting told me that it was written by an old friend of mine, a poet of exquisite sonnets—so rude was the style, so dry and matter-of-fact the tone of my erstwhile elegant correspondent. She cynically derided my glorification of the war as Europe’s healthful purgatory, and spoke of death and want, cruel prosaic want. Do we ever realize the actual stultifying, bestializing conditions of the non-combatants under whizzing shells and roving aeroplanes? We, the calm philosophizers, the curious spectators and speculators? Do we, neutrals, envisage Death and Murder raging in a bacchanale over the embroiled lands? Of all the war poems and sermons it was only Eunice Tietjens who perceived the trans-Atlantic horrors in her prophetic Children of War; the rest are cold, labored writings. Perhaps our American diplomats, who are anything but diplomatic, will innocently involve this country in the world mess, and our authors will be given a fair test.
Ibn Gabinol.
New York Letter
George Soule
Now that the New York legislature has decided to submit the question of woman suffrage to popular vote, we are being bored and sometimes horrified by the revelations of a battle which most of us get into the habit of thinking was fought and won long ago. That is the trouble with many radicals. The investigation of new causes comes to mean with them merely a process of personal salvation. A belief attained is taken as a matter of course, as if there were nothing more to be done about it. Even to mention it seems in bad taste—there are so many more important things, so many more ecstatic attitudes. And then the world rumbles along to it like some prehistoric monster, and we are caught unaware in the midst of quarreling which seems to us beside the point. Have we not discarded fighting machinery? Have we not thrown our siege guns on the scrap heap? How rude of the unintelligent to disturb us! We are like the pacificists who thought that war could be abolished by the mere act of willing. We forget that mankind never wills all at once. We forget that it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice our energy in the battle for a distressingly old cause. Or else we never see the necessity, and damn the naive volunteers with a supercilious smile of superior enlightenment while we cuddle ourselves in the cotton wool of private emotions. We offer them a new word as a reagent for all their difficulties.
Who, for instance, could have imagined that The New York Times, mental yokel though it is, could come out with a two-column editorial article against suffrage on the ground that women are not fitted to vote because they do not share men’s economic burdens? It must have been six months ago at least that The Times published a census report on its back page showing that 30.6 per cent of all the females in New York over ten years of age are engaged in gainful occupations. You would think census statistics would be just the thing to attract the eye of that editorial writer. But here the editorial is, like an unbelievable fossil come to life. If it represented merely a Tory minority we could afford to laugh and wait for its partisans to die. It represents, however, the astute judgment of The Times as to what several hundred thousand people in New York city really think. The big newspaper cannot afford to try leading public opinion. It must agree with as many people of buying capacity as possible. And here we are again, face to face with a blind, stupid majority.
One begins to speculate on what possibility there is for a democracy except running about in circles. Everything is apparently arranged so that the majority can enforce its immediate will, and its immediate will is always several generations behind the wisdom of its best citizens. An enthroned tyrant can be dynamited, but a hydra-headed tyrant in the election booth must be educated. What a wearisome, unromantic task that is! Many a man who would exultingly give his life in the adventure of assassination retires to his study before the labor of training a mob. He has neither the strength of imagination nor the strength of heart necessary to fight his way inch by inch. Here is a real sacrifice to be made for the future. Here is a chance for modern heroes with stuff in them. Here is an opportunity to substitute soul-testing labor for amateur theatricals. To leaven stupidity, to work with raw and shouting enthusiasts, to be humble enough to accept each partial victory, each compromise, and still to fight for the next one—this is the challenge of faith which proves to us there is still iron in mankind. There is satisfaction in the thought that victories have not become easier. Many a Launcelot would go insane in the trenches.
Everyone is looking for the supremacy of his own pet reform or reaction as a result of the war, and it is banal to indulge in prophecies. Yet it seems to me there will be a great gain in our understanding if we approach the monster with humility. It has, to be sure, shown us the brutality lurking in modern civilization. We can easily use it as a text for denouncing politics, commercialism, militarism, and all the other abstractions which represent to us the sum of present human failings. Yet why not go a little farther, and blame as well an intellectualism which slides about on the surface of things, a species of reform and enthusiasm which does not bite into the substance of humanity? Do not our philosophies now appear as futile as the pedantic dreaming of mediaeval schoolmen and alchemists? Does not our separation of the ideal from the material now seem as vicious as Christian asceticism? What business have we to toy with perfectionist theories when to do so we must ignore what is to-day and what will be to-morrow in the blood and brain of nearly all human beings? We must make human breeding the test of effort. We must admit that the will is powerless without the hands. We must create our social tools to accomplish our social ends. We must forget the false distinctions between emotion and intellect, and use both for their common purpose. Let us not repudiate machinery because it has not yet been consciously directed to an end that is worth gaining. Modern civilization has spent its force developing in opposite directions—toward the brute and toward the god—and now we are amazed at the contradiction. Our task is to make a synthesis and arrive at man. It will be a task to engage the highest qualities of the poet and the scientist—this job of putting man’s will in control of his overgrown body. And it will be more fascinating than any other work man has ever set himself.