In his own heart Nietzsche was much more of a mediaeval saint than a predatory "higher man," but the natural human instinct of any sane and sun-loving pagan may well shrink back dismayed from any contact with this savage "will to power," which, while destroying the quiet cloistered gardens of monastic seclusion, hurls us into the path of these new tyrants. The less rigorous "religious orders" of the faith of Christendom would seem to offer to these poor dismayed "revenants" from the ancient world a much quieter and happier habitation than the mountain tops where blows the frozen wind of "Eternal Recurrence," or the smouldering desert sands where stalk the tawny lions of the "higher morality." The "Rule of Benedict" would in this sense be a refuge for the timorous unbaptised, and the "Weeds of Dominic" a protection for the gentle infidel.
After reading Remy de Gourmont, with his wise, friendly ironic interest in every kind of human emotion, one is inclined to feel that, after all, in the large and tolerant courts of some less zealous traditional "order" there might be more pleasant air to breathe, more peaceful sunshine, more fresh and dewy rose-gardens, than in a world dominated by the Eagle and the Serpent of the Zarathustrian Overman.
Remy de Gourmont would free us from the rule of dogmatist and moralist, but he would free us from these without plunging us into a yet sterner ascesis. The tone and temper advocated by him is one eminently sane, peaceful, quiet, friendly and gay. He does not free us from a dark responsibility to God to plunge us under the yoke of a darker responsibility to posterity. He would free us from every kind of responsibility. He would reduce our life to a beautiful unrestricted "Abbey of Thelema," over the gates of which the great Pantagruelian motto "Fay ce que vouldray" would be written in letters of gold.
What one is brought to feel in reading Remy de Gourmont is that the liberty of the individual to follow his intellectual and psychological tastes unimpeded by any sort of external authority is much more important for civilisation at large and much more conducive to the interests of posterity than any inflexible rules, whether they be laid upon us by ecclesiastical tradition, by puritanical heretics or by prophetic supermen.
It is really liberty—first and last—in the full beautiful meaning of that great human word, that Remy de Gourmont claims for us; though he is perfectly aware that such liberty can never be enjoyed except by those whose genuine intellectual emancipation renders them fit to enjoy it. It is always for the liberty of man as an individual, never for men as a herd, that he contends; as his favourite phrase, "subjective idealism," constantly insists.
And, above all, it is perfect and untrammelled liberty for the artist that he demands. One of his most suggestive and interesting essays is upon the topic of the influence of the "young girl" upon contemporary literature.
This is indeed carrying the war into the enemy's camp; for if the "young girl" has interfered with the freedom of the artist in France, what has she done in England and America? "What are they doing here?" cried Goethe once, teased and fretted by the presence of this restricting influence. "Why don't they keep them in their convents?"
And it is this very cry, the cry of the impatient artist longing to deal freely and largely with every mortal aspect of human life, that Remy de Gourmont echoes.
It is indeed a serious and difficult problem; and it is one of the problems thrust inevitably upon us by the spread of education and the consequent cheapening and vulgarising of education under the influence of democracy.
But it can have only one answer, the great and memorable answer given to all scrupulous protectors of virtue by John Milton in his "Areopagitica." It is better that this or the other person should come to harm by the bad use of a good book than that the life-blood of an immortal spirit, embalmed in any beautiful work of art, should be wasted upon the dust and never reach the verdict of posterity.