"It fevered his blood, it broke his rest, it drove him at times
half frantic with furious indignation, it sunk him at times in
abysses of sullen despondency, it awoke in him emotions
which in ordinary men are seldom excited save by personal
injuries."
This cruel rage over the wrongs of a people whom he did not love, and whom he repeatedly disowned, drove him to the savage denunciations in which he said of England's nominee: "It is no dishonour to submit to the lion, but who, with the figure of a man, can think with patience of being devoured alive by a rat?" It drove him also to the great principle, still too slowly struggling into recognition in this country, that "all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery." It inspired his Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures, in which the advice to "burn everything that came from England except the coals and the people," might serve as the motto of the Sinn Fein movement. And it inspired also that other "Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Ireland from being a burden to their Parents and Country, and making them beneficial to the Public. Fatten them up for the Dublin market; they will be delicious roast, baked, or boiled."
As wave after wave of indignation passed over him, his wrath at oppression extended to all mankind. In Gulliver's Travels it is the human race that lies before him, how much altered for the worse by being flayed! But it is not pity he feels for the victim now. In man he only sees the littleness, the grossness, the stupidity, or the brutal degradation of Yahoos. Unlike other satirists—unlike Juvenal or Pope or the author of Penguin Island, who comes nearest to his manner—he pours his contempt, not upon certain types of folly or examples of vice, but upon the race of man as a whole. "I heartily hate," he wrote to Pope soon after Gulliver was published, "I heartily hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth." The philanthropist will often idealise man in the abstract and hate his neighbour at the back door, but that was not Swift's way. He has been called an inverted hypocrite, as one who makes himself out worse than he is. I should rather call him an inverted idealist, for, with high hopes and generous expectations, he entered into the world, and lacerated by rage at the cruelty, foulness, and lunacy he there discovered, he poured out his denunciations upon the crawling forms of life whose filthy minds were well housed in their apelike and corrupting flesh—a bag of loathsome carrion, animated by various lusts.
"Noli aemulari," sang the cheerful Psalmist; "Fret not thyself because of evildoers." How easy for most of us it is to follow that comfortable counsel! How little strain it puts upon our popularity or our courage! And how amusing it is to watch the course of human affairs with tolerant acquiescence! Yes, but, says Swift, "amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think," and may we not say that acquiescence is the cowardice of those who dare not feel? There will always be some, at least, in the world whom savage indignation, like Swift's, will continually torment. It will eat their flesh and exhaust their spirits. They would gladly be rid of it, for, indeed, it stifles their existence, depriving them alike of pleasure, friends, and the objects of ambition—isolating them in the end as Swift was isolated. If only the causes of their indignation might cease, how gladly they would welcome the interludes of quiet! But hardly is one surmounted than another overtops them like a wave, nor have the stern victims of indignation the smallest hope of deliverance from their suffering, until they lie, as Swift has now lain for so many years, where cruel rage can tear the heart no more—"Ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit."
VII
THE CHIEF OF REBELS
"It is time that I ceased to fill the world," said the dying Victor Hugo, and we recognise the truth of the saying, though with a smile. For each generation must find its own way, nor would it be a consolation to have even the greatest of ancient prophets living still. But yet there breathes from the living a more intimate influence, for which an immortality of fame cannot compensate. When men like Tolstoy die, the world is colder as well as more empty. They have passed outside the common dangers and affections of man's warm-blooded circle, lighted by the sun and moon. Their spirit may go marching on; it may become immortal and shine with an increasing radiance, perpetual as the sweet influences of the Pleiades. But their place in the heavens is fixed. We can no longer watch how they will meet the glorious or inglorious uncertainties of the daily conflict. We can no longer make appeal for their succour against the new positions and new encroachments of the eternal adversary. The sudden splendour of action is no longer theirs, and if we would know the loss implied in that difference, let us imagine that Tolstoy had died before the summer of 1908, when he uttered his overwhelming protest against the political massacres ordained by Russia. In place of that protest, in place of the poignant indignation which appealed to Stolypin's hangmen to fix their well-soaped noose around his own old neck, since, if any were guilty, it was he—in place of the shame and wrath that cried, "I cannot be silent!" we should have had nothing but our own memory and regret, murmuring to ourselves, "If only Tolstoy had been living now! But perhaps, for his sake, it is better he is not."
And now that he is dead, and the world is chilled by the loss of its greatest and most fiery personality, the adversary may breathe more freely. As Tolstoy was crossing a city square—I suppose the "Red Square" in Moscow—on the day when the Holy Synod of Russia excommunicated him from the Church, he heard someone say, "Look! There goes the devil in human form!" And for the next few weeks he continued to receive letters clotted with anathemas, damnations, threats, and filthy abuse. It was no wonder. To all thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, to all priests of established religions, to the officials of every kind of government, to the Ministers, whether of parliaments or despots, to all naval and military officers, to all lawyers, judges, jurymen, policemen, gaolers, and executioners, to all tax-collectors, speculators, and financiers, Tolstoy was, indeed, the devil in human form. To them he was the gainsayer, the destroyer, the most shattering of existent forces. And, in themselves, how large and powerful a section of every modern State they are! They may almost be called the Church and State incarnate, and they seldom hesitate to call themselves so. But, against all their authorities, formulae, and traditions, Tolstoy stood in perpetual rebellion. To him their parchments and wigs, their cells and rods and hang-ropes, their mitres, chasubles, vestments, incense, chantings, services, bells, and books counted as so much trumpery. For him external law had no authority. If it conflicted with the law of the soul, it was the soul's right and duty to disregard or break it. Speaking of the law which ordained the flogging of peasants for taxes, he wrote: "There is but one thing to say—that no such law can exist; that no ukase, or insignia, or seals, or Imperial commands can make a law out of a crime." Similarly, the doctrines of the Church, her traditions, sacraments, rituals, and miracles—all that appeared to him to conflict with human intelligence and the law of his soul—he disregarded or denied. "I deny them all," he wrote in his answer to the Holy Synod's excommunication (1901); "I consider all the sacraments to be coarse, degrading sorcery, incompatible with the idea of God or with the Christian teaching." And, as the briefest statement of the law of his soul, he added: