The Growth of a Soul

by August Strindberg

The journalists led a subterranean existence, but they styled themselves "we" and wrote as though they were sovereigns of God's appointment; they had men's weal or woe in their hand, since the chief weapon in the struggle for existence in our civilised days is social reputation. How was it that society had given these free lances such terrible power without taking any guarantees? But when one comes to think, what assurance is there for the capacity and insight of the law-givers in parliament, in the ministry, on the throne? None whatever! It is therefore the same all round. There were, however, two classes of newspapers; the conservative, which wished to preserve the social condition with all its defects, and the liberal, which wished to improve it. The former enjoyed a certain respect, the latter, none at all. John instinctively sided with the last, and at once felt that he was regarded as every one's enemy. A liberal journalist and a chronicler of scandals were synonymous terms. At home he had heard the usual phrase that "no one was honourable whose name had not appeared in the paper Fatherland." In the street they had pointed out to him a man who looked like a bandit, with the mark of a dagger-stab between his eyes, and said, "There goes the journalist X." In the Café La Croix he felt depressed among his new colleagues, but none the less chose to associate with this unpopular group. Did he choose really? One does not choose one's impulses, and it is no virtue to be a democrat when one hates the upper classes and has no pleasure in their company.

Meanwhile for social intercourse he went to the artists. It was a strange world in which they lived. There was so much nature among these men who busied themselves with art. They dressed badly, lived like beggars—one of them lived in the same room with the servant—and ate what they could get; they could hardly read, and had no knowledge of orthography. At the same time they talked like cultivated people, they looked at things from an independent point of view, were keenly observant and unfettered by dogmas. One of them four years previously had minded geese, a second had wielded the smith's hammer, a third had been a farmer's servant and walked behind the dung-cart, and a fourth had been a soldier. They ate with knives, used their sleeves as napkins, had no handkerchiefs and only one coat in winter. However, John felt at home with them, though of late years he had been conversant only with cultivated and well-to-do young people. It was not that he was superior to them, for that they did not acknowledge, nor was it any use to quote books to them, for they accepted no authority. His doubts as regards books, especially text-books, began to be aroused, and he began to suspect that old books may injure a modern man's thinking powers. This doubt became a certainty when he met one of the group whom all regarded as a genius.

He was a painter about thirty years old, formerly a farmer's servant who had come to the Academy in order to become an artist. After he had spent some time in the painting school he came to the conclusion that art was insufficient as a medium for expressing his thoughts, and he lived now on nothing, while he busied himself by reflecting on the questions of the time. Badly educated at an elementary school, he had now flung himself on the most up-to-date books and had a start of John, since he had begun where the latter had left off. Between John and him there was the same difference as between a mathematician and a pilot. The former can calculate in logarithms, the latter can turn them to practical use. But Måns also was critically disposed and did not believe in books blindly. He had no ready-made scheme or system into which to fit his thoughts; he always thought freely, investigated, sifted and only retained what he recognised as tenable. More free from passions than John, he could draw more reckless inferences, even when they went against his own wishes and interests, though with certain matter-of-course limitations. He was more-over prudent, as indeed he must have been to have worked himself up from such a low position, and understood how to be silent as to certain conclusions, which, if expressed tactlessly and in the wrong place, might have injured him. As his literary adviser, he had a telegraph-assistant whose knowledge Mans knew better how to use than its owner himself; the latter had not a very lively intellect, although in his knowledge of languages he possessed the key to the three great modern literatures. Passionless and self-conscious, with a strong control over his impulses, he stood outside everything, contemplating and smiling at the free play of thought which he enjoyed as a work of art, with the accompanying certainly that it was after all only an illusion.

With both of these John had many friendly disputes. When he drew up his schemes for the future of men and society he could rouse Måns' enthusiasm and carry him along with him, but when he had taken his hearer a certain way with his emotional and passionate descriptions, the latter took out his microscope, found the weak spot where to insert his knife, and cut. On such occasions John was impatient and motioned his opponent away. "You are a pedant," he said, "and fasten on details." But sometimes it turned out that the "detail" was a premise the excision of which made the whole grand fabric of inference collapse. John was always a poet, and had he continued as such unhindered he might have brought it to something. The poet can speak to the point like the preacher, and that is an advantageous position. He can rattle on without being interrupted, and therefore he can persuade if not convince. It was through these two unlearned men that John learned a philosophy which was not known at Upsala. In the course of conversation, his opponents often referred to an authority whom they called "Buckle." John rejected an authority of whom he had heard nothing in Upsala. But the name continually recurred and worried him to such an extent that he at last asked his friends to lend him the book. The effect of reading it was such that John regarded his acquaintance with the book as the vestibule of his intellectual life. Here there was an atmosphere of pure naked truth. So it should be and so it was. Måns, like all other organised beings, was under the control of natural laws; all so-called spiritual qualities rest on a material basis, and chemical affinities are as spiritual as the sympathies of souls. The whole of speculative philosophy which wished to evolve laws from the inner consciousness was only a better kind of theology, and what was worse, an inquisition, which wished to confine the many-sidedness of the world-process within the limits of an individual system. "No system" is Buckle's motto. Doubt is the beginning of all wisdom, doubt means investigation and stimulates intellectual progress. The truth which one seeks is simply the discovery of natural laws. Knowledge is the highest, morality is only an accidental form of behaviour, which depends upon different social conventions. Only knowledge can make men happy, and the simple-minded or ignorant with their moral strivings, their benevolence and their philanthropy are only injurious or useless.

And now he drew the necessary conclusions. Heavenly love and its result, marriage, is conditioned as to that result by such a prosaic matter as the price of provisions; the rate of suicide varies with wages, and religion is conditioned by natural scenery, climate and soil. His mind was predisposed to receive the new doctrines, and now they made their triumphant entry. John had always planted his feet firmly on the earth, and neither the balloon-voyages of poetry nor the will-o'-the-wisps of German philosophy had found a sincere adherent in him. He had sat in despair over Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft, and asked himself with curiosity, whether it was he who was so stupid or Kant who was so obscure. The study of the history of philosophy, in which he had seen how each philosopher pointed to his system as the true one, and championed it against others, had left him amazed. Now it was clear to him that the idealists who mingle their obscure perceptions with dear presentations of facts were only savages or children, and that the realists, who were alone capable of clear perceptions, were the most highly developed in the scale of creation. The poets and philosophers are somnambulists, and the religious who always live in fear of the unknown are like animals in a forest who fear every rustic in the bushes, or like primitive men who sacrificed to the thunder instead of erecting lightning rods.

Now he had a weapon in his hand to wield against the old authorities and against the schools and universities which were enslaved by patronage. Buckle himself had run away from school, had never been at a university, and hated them. Apropos of Locke he remarks, "Were this deep thinker now alive, he would inveigh against our great universities and schools, where countless subjects are learnt which no one needs, and which few take the trouble to remember."

Accordingly Upsala had been wrong, and John right. He knew that there were ignorant savants there, and that it was on account of their own want of culture that the professors of philosophy could teach nothing but German philosophy. They neither knew English nor French philosophy for the simple reason that they only understood Latin and German. Buckle's History of Civilisation in England was written in 1857, but did not reach Sweden till 1871-72. Even then the soil was not ready for the seed. The learned critics were unfavourable to Buckle, and the seed took root only in some young minds who had no authoritative voice.

"No literature," says Buckle himself, "can be useful to a people, if they are not prepared to receive it." Thus it was with Buckle and his work, which preceded that of Darwin (1858) and contained all its inferences—a proof that evolution in the world of thought is not so strictly conditioned as has been believed. Buckle did not know Mill or Spencer, whose thoughts now rule the world, but he said most of what they said subsequently.

Now, if John had had a character, i.e. if he had been ruled by a single quiet purpose directed towards one object, he would have extracted from Buckle all that answered his purpose and left out all that told against it. But he was a truth-seeker and did not shrink from looking into the abyss of contradictions, especially as Buckle never asserted that he had found the truth, and because truth is relative and it is often found on both sides. Doubt, criticism, inquiry are the chief matter, and the only useful course to pursue, as they guarantee liberty. Sermons, programmes, certainty, system, "truth" are various forms of constraint and stupidity. But it is impossible to be a consistent doubter when one is crammed full with "complete evidence," and when one's judgment is swayed by class-prejudice, anxiety for a living and struggles for a position. John became calm when he learnt that all that was wrong in the world was wrong in accordance with necessary law, but he became furious when he made the further discovery that our social condition, our religion and morality were absurdities. He wished to understand and pardon his opponents, since in their actions they were no more free than he was, but he was in duty bound to strangle them since they hindered the evolution of society towards universal happiness, and that was the only and greatest crime that could be committed. But as there were no criminals, how could one get hold of the crime?

He was rejoiced that the mistakes had now been discovered, but despair oppressed him again when he saw that the discovery was premature. Nothing could be done for many years to come. Social evolution was a very slow process. Consequently he must lie at anchor in the roadstead waiting for the tide. But this waiting was too long for him; he heard an inner voice bidding him speak, for if one does not spread what light one has, how can popular views be changed? Yes, but a premature promulgation of new ideas can do no good. Thus he was tossed to and fro. Everything round him now seemed so old and out of date that he could not read a newspaper without getting an attack of cramp. They only had regard to the present moment; no one thought of the future. His philosophical friend comforted and calmed him, through, among other sayings, a sentence of La Bruyère, "Don't be angry because men are stupid and bad, or you will have to be angry because a stone falls; both are subject to the same laws; one must be stupid and the other fall."