Barbarian ethics proceed by general taboos. Gourmont's essays collected into various volumes, "Promenades," "Epilogues," etc., are perhaps the best introduction to the ideas of our time that any unfortunate, suddenly emerging from Peru, Peoria, Oshkosh, Iceland, Kochin, or other out-of-the-way lost continent could desire. A set of Landor's collected works will go further towards civilizing a man than any university education now on the market. Montaigne condensed Renaissance awareness. Even so small a collection as Lionel Johnson's "Post Liminium" might save a man from utter barbarity.
But if, for example, a raw graduate were contemplating a burst into intellectual company, he would be less likely to utter unutterable bêtisses, gaffes, etc., after reading Gourmont than before. One cannot of course create intelligence in a numbskull.
Needless to say, Gourmont's essays are of uneven value as the necessary subject matter is of uneven value. Taken together, proportionately placed in his work, they are a portrait of the civilized mind. I incline to think them the best portrait available, the best record that is, of the civilized mind from 1885-1915.
There are plenty of people who do not know what the civilized mind is like, just as there were plenty of mules in England who did not read Landor contemporaneously, or who did not in his day read Montaigne. Civilization is individual.
Gourmont arouses the senses of the imagination, preparing the mind for receptivities. His wisdom, if not of the senses, is at any rate via the senses. We base our "science" on perceptions, but our ethics have not yet attained this palpable basis.
In 1898, "PAYS LOINTAIN" (reprinted from magazine publication of 1892-4), de Gourmont was beginning his method:
"Douze crimes pour l'honneur de l'infini."
He treats the special case, cases as special as any of James', but segregated on different demarcative lines. His style had attained the vividness of
"Sa vocation était de paraître malheureuse, de passer dans la vie comme une ombre gémissante, d'inspirer de la pitié, du doute et de l'inquiétude. Elle avait toujours l'air de porter des fleurs vers une tombe abandonnée." La Femme en Noir.
In "HISTOIRES MAGIQUES" (1894): "La Robe Blanche," "Yeux d'eau," "Marguerite Rouge," "Sœur de Sylvie," "Danaette," are all of them special cases, already showing his perception of nevrosis, of hyperæsthesia. His mind is still running on tonal variations in "Les Litanies de la Rose."