But nowhere has he unmasked so Mephistophelian a countenance as in his essays on Luther and on an obscure German iconoclast named Friedrich Nietschke (Essays: Fremmede Personligheder, pp. 151-244). It is difficult to understand how a man of well-balanced brain and a logical equipment second to none, can take au sérieux a mere philosophical savage who dances a war-dance amid what he conceives to be the ruins of civilization, swings a reckless tomahawk and knocks down everybody and everything that comes in his way. There must lie a long history of disappointment and bitterness behind that endorsement of anarchy pure and simple. And it is the sadder to contemplate because it casts a sinister light upon Dr. Brandes's earlier activity and compels many an admirer of his literary art to revise his previous opinion of him. Can a man ever have been a sound thinker who at fifty practically hoists the standard of anarchy? A ship is scarcely to be trusted that flies such compromising colors.
That all development, in order to be rational, must have its roots in the past—must be in the nature of a slow organic growth—is certainly a fundamental proposition of the Spencerian sociology. It is the more to be wondered at that an evolutionist like Dr. Brandes, in his impatience at the tardiness of social progress, should lose his philosophic temper and make common cause with a crack-brained visionary. The kind of explosive radicalism which Nietschke betrays in his cynical questions and explanations is no evidence of profundity or sagacity, but is the equivalent of the dynamiter's activity, transferred to the world of thought. His pretended re-investigation of the foundations of the moral sentiments reminds one of the mud geysers of the Yellowstone, which break out periodically and envelop everything within reach in an indeterminate shower of mud. To me there is more of vanity than of philosophic acumen in his onslaught on well-nigh all human institutions. He would, like Ibsen, no doubt,
"Place 'neath the ark the torpedo most cheerfully;"
but torpedoes of his making would scarcely do the ark much harm. They have not the explosive power of Ibsen's. There are in every age men who, unable to achieve the fame of Dinocrates, who built the temple of the Ephesian Diana, aspire to that of Herostratos, who destroyed it. To admire these men is as compromising as to be admired by them.
In the essay on "Martin Luther on Celibacy and Marriage" Dr. Brandes derides with a satyr-like leer all traditional ideas of chastity, conjugal fidelity, and marital honor.
Though he pretends to fight behind Luther's shield the deftest thrusts are not the reformer's, but the essayist's own. Fundamentally, I fancy, this is an outbreak of that artistic paganism which is so prevalent among the so-called "advanced" Hebrews. The idea that obedience to law is degrading; that conformity to traditional morals is soul-crippling and unworthy of a free spirit; that only by giving sway to passion will the individual attain that joy which is his right, and that self-development which should be his highest aim, has found one of its ablest and most dangerous advocates in Georg Brandes.
ESAIAS TEGNÉR
The genius of the Scandinavian north has never found a more complete and brilliant incarnation than the Swedish poet Esaias Tegnér. Strong, cheerful, thoroughly wholesome, with a boyish delight in prowess, adventure, and daring deeds, he presents a most agreeable contrast to the moonshine singers and graveyard bards of the phosphoristic school, who were his contemporaries. To Tegnér, in his prime, life was a brisk and exhilarating sail, with a fresh breeze, over sunny waters; and he had no patience with those who described it as a painful and troublous groping through the valley of the shadow of death. There was, in other words, a certain charming juvenility in his attitude toward existence, which presented to him no riddles that a man with a strong arm and an honest heart might not solve with comparative ease. All problems were to him soluble with the sword; and Alexander, when he cut the Gordian knot, must have appeared to him wiser, as he was surely more admirable, than either Plato or Socrates. This scorn of all metaphysical subtleties, and reliance upon strength and Swedish manhood, are, perhaps (from an advanced European point of view), indicative of a little intellectual immaturity; but they are thoroughly characteristic of the Scandinavian nationalities. The love of brave words and brave deeds, the exaltation of the man of action above the man of thought, the pleasure in reckless gallantry and foolhardy adventure, are, however, not confined to Swedes and Norwegians, but are characteristic of the boyhood of every nation. In the Scotchman, Robert Louis Stevenson, this jaunty juvenility, this rich enjoyment of bloody buccaneers and profane sea-dogs, is carried to far greater lengths, and the great juvenile public of England and America, both young and old, rises up and calls him blessed.