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