On the Seaboard: A Novel of the Baltic Islands

by August Strindberg

When the son could not refute these bitter truths with rational arguments, declaring that his feelings, yes his most sacred feelings, rose against such a dry tenet, the father declared him to be a hornet which was still thinking with ganglia, and he warned him against dissolute fancies, or conclusions on insufficient ground and want of great material, not to be mistaken for scientific quick-reasoning, where from seemingly few premises—appearing few because the middle terms were omitted—new conclusions could be drawn, when, as if by a chemical union, two older ideas enter each other and form a new thought. Ontogenism had shown how the human fœtus was developed through all the earlier stages from the amœba through the frog and up to the anthropomorphic, how then could the youth question but that the spirit of a child must pass through the history of man through the animal and the savage upward, as long as the body was growing and that consequently man stood far ahead of youth! He warned him especially not to let the lowest of all our propensities, the sexual impulse cloud his judgment, for by its power it had so long dazzled sound reason, that erudite men still bore the superstition that woman was as high a type as man, yes even higher according to the opinion of some men, whereas she really is but an intermediate form between man and child, as is shown by the fœtal development, where the male at a certain stage is female but the female never male. To warn the young man of the danger of being over-powered by sexual impulses, was the same as to cast a shadow on woman, and the son soon commenced to make what the father called ganglionic conclusions, the bearing of which was that the Lieutenant-Colonel was a woman hater. And how could he do otherwise, when always hearing his father narrating how this or that man had thrown away his future on affairs with women, and how great geniuses had wasted their talents by procreation, and sacrificed happiness and position for a wife, who had been faithless and children who died before of mature age. Propagation was only for the lesser spirits, the greater ones should live in their works, and so forth.

Under such guidance the son grew up. He was born an unusually delicate child but with a harmoniously developed body; he had finely organized senses, quick and sure perception, keen understanding and a nobility of mind which manifested itself in forbearance and approachableness to mankind. He understood early how to regulate his life, to suppress the plant and animal propensities, and when he had accumulated a vast material of observations and knowledge, he began to work it up. His brain soon showed its prolific capacity—from a couple of known quantities to find the wanted unknown, from old thoughts to produce new ones, in a word the capacity of what is called originality. He was the coming regenerator and possessed ability to see the inter-relations in disorder, to discover the invisible force behind the phenomena, and even the concealed and extremely compound motives in the actions of men. Therefore his schoolmates looked upon him with suspicion, and the teachers discerned in him a silent critic of what they communicated as unalterable facts.

His arrival at the university occurred contemporarily with the great popular movements which concerned the parliamentary reform. Borg perceived well the defects of the representation by a four-class system, while the state consists of at least twenty classes with different interests and different abilities to judge in so complicated a problem as that of the government of a people, but on the other hand he could not consent to revert to the organization of the hord or tribe where everybody had equally much or equally little to say. He perceived at once that this simplifying of the method of governing, where the multitude should do it was not a reform suited to the needs of the time, moreover he had lately seen the right of universal suffrage in France produce an Emperor and a sham representation of lawyers, merchants and army officers, with the exclusion of laborers, farmers, savants and scientific men, thus only three classes, arbitrarily selected by the Emperor, were represented. He had calculated that the most correct would be a perfect class representation with proportional rights of representation, well balanced according to the interests of the respective classes and with due consideration given to the highest interests, or the higher right of the wise to own the preponderance, as they promote progress more than the ignorant. This, to be sure, the authors of the two chamber systems had already had in mind, when they perceived the necessity of referring questions to committees and disentangling certain questions by special committees, even by committees of experts. To complete the assembly, so that all interests would be guarded and all points taken and all information of the condition of the realm made accessible, each class of people, from the highest to the lowest, should elect representatives in proportion partly to their numbers and partly to their importance for the advancement of the country as a whole. Neglecting the Royal Court, which together with the monarch ought to be assorted under the foreign department, to which they properly belong, for the monarch is only permitted to represent the nation before foreign powers, this consultative, though not a legislative, class parliament would be constructed as follows, viz., First class: land owners and renters, tenants, overseers, foremen on farms and so forth. The second class: operators of mines and quarries, manufacturers and their laborers. Third class: merchants, mariners, pilots, hotel owners, porters, hackmen, and all employed in banks, custom houses, postal service, railroads and telegraphs. Fourth class: civil and military officers, clergymen, with servants, janitors and privates. Fifth class: savants, teachers, literateurs, and artists. Sixth class: physicians, apothecaries, superintendents of poorhouses. Seventh class: house owners, capitalists and rentiers.

In what proportion to elect from each class was the question, which could not be solved off hand, but it was necessary that skillful men with knowledge in the science of government should probe the new order of representation, which would therefore only and always be provisional. Over this consultative assembly should sit a council of specialists in the science of government, who had been professionally trained for that difficult calling, so that this most complicated of all arts would not be pursued by bunglers and enterprising amateurs, as had hitherto been done, and statesmen's accession to office would be preceded by a careful investigation of their past life, their private financial and social situation. This would spur youth to self-education and heedfulness of what they were doing, and would form a body of excellent men, while so called irreproachable conduct, or negative virtue, without talents would not as hitherto be the short cut to advancement. This would constitute the new nobility which would succeed the old military and court nobility, and the fact that this nobility established itself only through a natural selection of the fittest was a guarantee that the country would be ruled in the best manner. The Reichstag by only having to vote an opinion, not any decision, would thus furnish a vast material of investigation, not a legionary army that could be bribed and wheedled to commit voting outrages.

The young man, however, was too prudent to express his opinions, at a period, when noblemen were synonymous with the degenerated, left behind and blasé, and the masses were pushing so blindly forward that the mechanics were the ones that worked mostly into the hands of their coming class enemies, the peasants; a prudent man could only smile and wait. And he waited until he saw the four-chamber system succeeded by a one-class representation, when the realm was henceforth governed by the former peasantry alone. These historical events had, however, a very great influence in directing the young man's thoughts and development. He had there seen in what terrible confusion the thought mechanism of the majority was, and when he read the protocols of the Reichstag, and noticed the speeches of the most influential and brilliant speakers, he observed that what he called ganglionic reasoning, causing valvular contraction and congestion of the heart, exerted the greatest influence on the public opinion. It seemed to him sometimes as though it was not the question of the fatherland or progress, but only the motionary's triumph to gain his own will by fallacies, gross blunders in logic and hideous distortions of facts. In him was aroused, through observation, the great suspicion that everything was intended as a struggle for power, for the enjoyment of using the power of the brain for putting other brains into consonance, of sowing seeds of thought in the brain bark of others, where they would grow as parasites like the mistletoe, while the mother tree would proudly lift her shoulders at the thought that the parasites up in the crown still were nothing but parasites. This was the foundation of his ambition, to satisfy which required knowledge and experience through study, travel and conversation with learned and illustrious men. In the midst of this eternally movable chaos of contending forces and interests, he sought a place of anchorage for his being, the center of the sphere which reality threw around him—in himself. Instead of, like weak Christians assuming an external support in God, he took the real, palpable in his own self and sought to create his personality to a perfect type of man whose life and deeds would not violate anyone's rights, convinced that the fruit of a well-nursed tree could not fail to be of use and rejoicing to others. All the confusion and awkwardness that he saw in the struggles of those who say they are living for others while in reality they only live on others, on others' gratitude, others' opinion and others' acknowledgment, he avoided, holding his own straight course convinced that a single great and strong individual could not help doing more good than these masses of thoughtless people whose numbers stand in inverse ratio to their usefulness.

By this setting of his ego he enforced a norm for his life, which led him to a high degree of morality, for, instead of relinquishing the final settlement to the uncertain hereafter, he regulated his deeds so that he had nothing left unsettled, he did not shift the blame from himself to an innocently suffering Christ, but in conscious self-responsibility he committed no acts that would awaken the need of a scapegoat.

Thereby he learned to rely only upon himself and never to take advice, always reflecting on the probable consequences of an act. This did not prevent him from suffering with nervousness like his generation, which was born and brought up during the period of steam and electricity when the vital activity was increased in speed. How could it be otherwise considering that he must destroy millions of old brain cells, storages for antiquated impressions, that every moment when he would form a judgment, he must carefully sift out superannuated axioms, which tried to come forward as premises. It was a work of total reconstruction which caused these disorders in the nervous system which are all laid to our ancestors' alcoholism and sexual excesses, but which pathological symptom was an uttering of increased vitality accompanied by extreme sensibility, like the crawfish when it shifts its shell, or the bird when molting. It was the regeneration of a genus or at least a variety of man which appeared to the old as diseased or unsound because it was in a process of development, something that they were disinclined to acknowledge as they themselves would be the norm and called themselves sound, although they were in a state of decomposition.

This nervous sensibility of the growing youth was enhanced by moderation in eating and drinking, and vigorous disciplining of the sexual desires. He found it debasing to place oneself into the ungovernable state of a lunatic or a savage through the use of fermented drinks, and his soul was far too aristocratic to play a moment's illicit love with a prostitute. With this, however, followed an increasing acuteness of the senses and a sensibility to disagreeable impressions which sometimes brought him disgust where others of a coarser nature would have found enjoyment.

Thus he felt abased for a few hours when his morning coffee was not strong enough, and a poorly painted billiard ball or a soiled cue constrained him to turn away in search of another place. A badly wiped glass raised his loathing and he felt the smell of human being on a newspaper which another had read, while he could on others' furniture see human grease deposited on the polish, and he always opened the window when the maid had arranged the room. However, if he was traveling and necessity constrained, then he could shut off, as it were, all conduits from his organs of perceptions and harden himself against all disagreeable sensations.

When he had completed his studies at the University, in natural science, that least dependent of all sciences, because opinion plays a lesser roll than a collection of material, he received a place as assistant in the Royal Academy of Science.