The woman who has plenty of red blood corpuscles, a body that is a body and not a poetic wraith of the spirit, seems to be tumbling into fiction nowadays. As the new heroine she is rudely disturbing the reign of the pink and white saints, expressly made in Paris dollhouses for the heroines of English novels, who open and close their eyes and smile in every chapter.
Educate yourself to tell little lies easily and artistically, and the big ones will take care of themselves.
The trouble with the Anglo-Saxon bourgeois is they have no picturesqueness. They have an abundance of vices, but no redeeming ones.
The majority of men are Christians and pagans, Democrats and Republicans, princes and paupers, and what not, first of all, and themselves last of all—usually only in crises.
The salvation of stupidity in this world is that the instinct of self-preservation has given it an undisputed currency among the masses of men as common-sense.
Democracy is the damnation of ideals. Old John Calvin, if he were living and working out his logic in the midst of modern life, would have laid even greater distress upon total depravity and the eternal damnation of the majority. That is the only dream which can console us for the dominion of the vulgar in this life; and, unfortunately, there is no substantial logic or evidence to support it. If instead of having lived a quiet life in Geneva, in the sixteenth century, Calvin were living to-day in the heart of New York or Chicago, he would have made his theology more terrible. The kernel of his doctrines was evidently derived from the observation of human society, and a career amid the brutality of our modern cities would have left no room in his creed for any compromises. The perseverance of the saints is not in evidence in the cut-throat scramble of modern life.
This doctrine of damnation has always condoned for me many of the intolerable narrownesses in Calvinism. If it is probable that God himself cannot contemplate an invasion of the mob without trepidation, I cannot see what argument can be made in support of democracy in our social and intellectual life here below. I envy all those who hold this doctrine of damnation without any troublesome doubts. Calvin had evidently fathomed human nature, even if he did not enjoy any special revelation of the life hereafter.
About the only woman whose novels I am curious to read at this moment is Diana of the Crossways. And her “Princess Egeria” and the rest are out of reach forever.
Now here is a nice psychological point. A very clever woman, who knows men and women as only some wonderful women can, and who yet has never written a novel, came to me the other day, as to a Father Confessor of the smaller sophistries of conscience, upon which religion affords no certain light and assurance. The point she wished to know was whether she was a new woman or simply a harmless flirt of the old school. As I could not decide this momentous matter, I concluded to ventilate it in print, suppressing the name of my friend. The situation is this: She loves her husband with all her heart, but yet she sometimes lacks the moral courage to tell some men whom she meets casually that she is a married woman.
It does not seem to add to England’s glory to appoint Uriah Heep to the job of court clown. The old jesters made better sport.