The New Spirit / Third Edition

by Havelock Ellis

One naturally turns first to literature to see the reflection of the life of a period. The man who seems in the eyes of all Englishmen, so far as one can make out, to have represented during this century the claims of humanity, of dignity, of what is called the spiritual side of life, was Carlyle; and Carlyle has been likened again and again to the Joels and Jeremiahs of that most material Hebrew race. The whole of his long day was spent in crying out to a faithless and perverse generation. Therefore Carlyle never attained the serenity and hilarity of those two great spirits, Goethe and Emerson, between whom he stood midway. Nor is it surprising that he was often blinded by the smoke and heat of a land that had become one huge Black Country, and that he fought against freedom, and sometimes mistook his friends for enemies. Nor again is it surprising that of the two great poets who occupy the centre of the century, one found inspiration in the blunders of a Crimean war and the royal representative of respectable middle-class chivalry, while the other gave himself up to marvellous feats of psychological gymnastic. Matthew Arnold, for his part, resolved the discords of his time in the austere calm of Stoicism; the calm of souls

“who weigh

Life well and find it wanting, nor deplore;

But in disdainful silence turn away,

Stand mute, self-centred, stern, and dream no more:”

practically, however, Arnold found it necessary neither to turn away nor to be silent. There was yet another solution for sensitive souls: to hide the heart in a nest of roses away from the world, just as Schopenhauer, who in Germany represented in more philosophic vesture this same vague unrest, resolved it by the aid of his profound religious sense in refined and æsthetic joy. That is the solution sought in what seems to me one of the most exquisite and significant books of the century, “Marius the Epicurean.” For Marius, life is made up of a few rare and lovely visions. All the rough sorrow and gladness of the world, its Dantesque bitterness or its Rabelaisian joy, only reaches him through a long succession of mirrors, and every strong human impulse as an attenuated echo. This serious, sweet, and thoughtful book is the summary of the “sensations and ideas” of the finest natures of an era; as in certain of the distinguished opium-eaters of the beginning of the century, Coleridge or De Quincey, we see a refined development of the passive sensory sides of the human organism with corresponding atrophy of the motor sides. It is clearly impossible to go any farther on that road.

There is no renascence of the human spirit unless some mighty leverage has been at work long previously. Such forces work underground, slowly and coarsely and patiently, during barren periods, and they meet with much contempt as destructive of man’s finer and higher nature; but, in the end, it is by these that the finer and higher is lifted to new levels. No great spiritual eruption can take place without the aid of such levers. What forces have been at work during the century that is now drawing to a close? Three, I think, stand clearly forth.

At the end of the sixteenth century, it was above all the sudden expansion of the world that inspired human effort and aspiration. In later days science has carried on the same movement by revealing world within world. A chief element in the spirit of the French Revolution was, as Taine pointed out, that scientific activity which centred around Newton. In our own time the impulse has come from scientific discoveries much more revolutionary, far-reaching and relative to life, than any of Newton’s. The conception of evolution has penetrated every department of organic science, especially where it touches man. Darwin personally, to whom belongs the chief place of honour in the triumph of a movement which began with Aristotle, has been a transforming power by virtue of his method and spirit, his immense patience, his keen observation, his modesty and allegiance to truth; no one has done so much to make science—that is to say, all inquiry into the traceable causes or relations of things—so attractive. The great and growing sciences of to-day are the sciences of man—anthropology, sociology, whatever we like to call them, including also that special and older development, now become a new thing, though still retaining its antiquated name of Political Economy. It is difficult for us to-day to enter into the state of mind of those who once termed this the dismal science; if the question of a man’s right to a foothold on the earth is not interesting, what things are interesting? Our hopes for the evolution of man, and our most indispensable guide, are bound up with all that we can learn of man’s past and all that we can measure of his present. It was by a significant coincidence that that great modern science which has man himself for its subject was created by Broca, when he founded the Société d’Anthropologie of Paris in the same memorable year of 1859 which first saw “The Origin of Species.” Man has been brought into a line with the rest of life; a mysterious chasm has been filled up; a few fruitful hints have been received which help to make the development of all life more intelligible. This has, on the one hand, given a mighty impulse to the patient study of nature and to the accumulation of facts now seen to bear such infinite possibilities of farther advance; just as the discovery of America in the sixteenth century produced a like spirit of adventure which led men to all parts of the globe. On the other hand, this devotion to truth, this instinctive search after the causes of things, has become what may be called a new faith. The fruits of this scientific spirit are sincerity, patience, humility, the love of nature and the love of man. “Wisdom is to speak truth and consciously to act according to nature.” So spake the old Ephesian, Heraclitus, to whom, rather than to Socrates, men are now beginning to look back as the exponent of the true Greek spirit; and so also speaks modern science. It is a faith that has become a living reality to many; Clifford, for instance, as revealed in his “Lectures and Essays,” has long been a brilliant and inspiring member, often called typical, of the company of those who are filled with the scientific spirit. Huxley, one of the most militant and indefatigable exponents of the scientific spirit during the past half century, has lately set forth its aim, which has been that of his own life:—“To promote the increase of natural knowledge and to forward the application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems of life to the best of my ability, in the conviction, which has grown with my growth and strengthened with my strength, that there is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is, when the garment of make-believe, by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features, is stripped off.” It is important to note that this spirit is becoming widely diffused; it would be easy to point to manifestations in various departments of this open-eyed, sensitive observation, not pretending to know prematurely, ready to throw away all prepossessions and to follow Nature whithersoever her caprices lead, without crying “Out upon her!” It is impossible to forecast the magnitude of the results that will flow from this growing willingness to search out the facts of things, and to found life upon them, broadly and simply, rather than to shape it to the form of unreasoned and traditional ideals. There was long abroad in the world a curious dread of all attempts to face simply and sincerely the facts of life. This audacious frankness and scarcely less audacious humility aroused horror and suspicion; and those who marched at the front heard with considerable pain many members of the rear black-guard hurling “Materialist!” and other such terms of scorn at their backs. The sting has now died out of these terms. We know that wherever science goes the purifying breath of spring has passed and all things are re-created. We realize that it is, above all, by following the light that is shed by the low and neglected things—the “survivals”—of the world, that the reasonable path of progress becomes clear. We cried for the moon for so many thousand years before we conquered the world. We know at last that it must be among our chief ethical rules to see that we build the lofty structure of human society on the sure and simple foundations of man’s organism.

These three great movements are clearly allied, and certainly the practical applications of this scientific spirit, of which there is more to say immediately, will rest very largely in the hands of women. The great wave of emancipation which is now sweeping across the civilized world means nominally nothing more than that women should have the right to education, freedom to work, and political enfranchisement—nothing in short but the bare ordinary rights of an adult human creature in a civilized democratic state. But many other changes will follow in the train of these very simple and matter-of-fact changes, and it is no wonder that many worthy people look with dread upon the slow invasion by women of all the concerns of life—which are, after all, as much their own concerns as anyone’s—as nothing less than a new irruption of barbarians. These good people are unquestionably right. The development of women means a reinvigoration as complete as any brought by barbarians to an effete and degenerating civilization. When we turn to those early societies, which are as lamps to us in our social progress, we find that the arts of life are in the possession of women. Therefore when the torch of science is placed in the hands of women we must expect them to use it as a guide with audacious simplicity and directness, because of those instincts for practical life which they have inherited.

The rise of women—who form the majority of the race in most civilized countries—to their fair share of power, is certain. Whether one looks at it with hope or with despair one has to recognize it. For my own part I find it an unfailing source of hope. One cannot help feeling that along the purely masculine line no striking social advance is likely to be made. Men are idealists, in search of wealth usually, sometimes of artistic visions; they have little capacity for social organization. It is sometimes said that the fundamental inferiority of women is shown by the very few surpassing women of genius in the world’s history. In their anxiety to combat this argument women have even enlisted Semiramis and Dido into their ranks. But it is a fact. For all great solitary and artistic achievements—the writing of Divine Comedies, the painting of Transfigurations, the construction of systems of metaphysic, the inauguration of new religions—men are without rivals; the more abstract and unsocial an art is, the easier it is for men to attain eminence in it; in music and in the art of erecting philosophies men have had, least of all, any occasion to fear the rivalry of women. Such things are precious, although it may be that what we call “genius” is something abnormal and distorted, like those centres of irritation which result in the pearls we likewise count so precious. Women are comparatively free from “genius.” Yet it might probably be maintained that the average level of women’s intelligence is fully equal to that of men’s. Compare the men and women among settlers in the Australian bush, or wherever else men and women have been set side by side to construct their social life as best they may, and it will often be to the disadvantage of the men. In practical and social life—even perhaps, though this is yet doubtful, in science—women will have nothing to fear. The most important mental sexual difference lies in the relative and absolute preponderance in women of the lower, that is, the more important and fundamental nervous centres.[1] What new forms the influence of women will give to society we cannot tell. Our most strenuous efforts will be needed to see to it that women gain the wider experience of life, the larger education in the full sense of the word, the entire freedom of development, without which their vast power of interference in social organization might have disastrous as well as happy results.