x^'^ By the Same Author : A QUEENSLANDER'S TRAVEL-NOTES, illustrated from photographs ; is. OBLATION : Verses ; illustrated by Norman Lindsay ; 35. 6d, THE RED PAGAN To /. F. ARCHIBALD A. G. Stephens. THE RED PAGAN * SYDNEY: The Bulletin Newspaper Company, Limited MCMIV. The greater part of the contents is reprinted^ with some alteration, from " The Red Page'' of ''The Bulletin:' T"3-7 ^^ t ^D3 4>d a THE Red Pagan WHAT is Truth ?" said jesting Pilate — and did he jest ? — "and would not stay for an answer" — and did he not stay? The jest and the haste are Bacon's imagination merely. They led the poor Nazarene '' prophet " to the judgment- hall — led him, as one may picture, unwashed and dis- hevelled, weary for sleep, but with the fever of frenzy burning in his eyes. And the educated Roman — fresh and clean from his bed and his bath, leisurely digesting breakfast, eyeing the other with the large tolerance of the man of the world, pitying him and honouring him as one must always honour the sincere — opposed disciplined intellect to the vaguenesses of transcendental emotion. " Every one that is of the Truth heareth my voice," said Jesus. ''What is Truth?" asked Pilate, gently. And Jesus had no reply. Did it flash in upon him, gazing at the suave Go- vernor, that there is no abstract Truth which can be Jimited and defined ? that one always argues from and to one's own conception? that this man looking at The Red Pagan him, the type of another temperament, the embodi- ment of another race, another civilisation, might have a creed and canons^ of Truth which he, Jesus, did not comprehend, could never assimilate, yet none the less Truth — for Pilate ? Did he realise how slight is any man's hold upon the Universe ? how little any indivi- dual can understand of the infinite mass ? how far the problems set before it surpass the capacity of this brain of yesterday's growth ? Or was Jesus merely silent, as we all are silent — or superficial — in face of a request to reduce the Abstract to the Concrete at two seconds' notice? in face of the urbane request for " a Definition " ? In either case, Jesus was silent — as Pilate might have been silent had Jesus posed the question. Pilate waited courteously for the reply that did not come ; and, hking Jesus all the better because it did not come, tried hard to save the victim from the mob. And the mob was a ravening beast, as often. "What is Literature?'' It is an easier question, because it refers to a thing that is the creation of the human mind — that does dwell in a temple made with hands — that can be corrupted by moth and rust — that can be weighed and measured, and bought and sold, and borrowed by women who never return it. Literature is indeed not a concrete thing, but it cannot be separated entirely from the concrete. Destroy the m What is Literature books that enshrine it, and you destroy Literature until another book shall be written. With the burning of the Alexandrian library Literature was burnt, though not to death ; and every borrower's thumb-mark on a beautiful page is a defacement of the beauty of Litera- ture. Literature, then — but see what a good dictionary says — The collective body of literary productions, em- bracing the entire results of knowledge and fancy preserved in writing. That is good ; but it is not satisfactory. Again — The class of writings distinguished for beauty of style or expression, as poetry, essays, or history, in distinction from scientific treatises and works which contain positive knowledge ; belles-lettres. That is better ; but still unhelpful — for, alas ! it begs the question as a dictionary will. What is beauty of style or expression ? Will beauty of style or expres- sion by itself constitute Literature ? It will not. Close the dictionary: dive into the expanse. Literature is the human mind's effective mani- festation in written language. That is put forward as the best definition attain- able. For eifective, if you like, read forceful or for- cible. Everything is in the adjective. Artistic would be more satisfying in one sense ; but what i s artistic ? The Red Pagan — where is your criterion of art or of beauty ? No ; beauty must be construed in terms of strength — it is a mode of strength, as heat is a mode of motion. When you say e-ffective, you do not ehminate the taste- cavil, the quality-cavil, but you refer it to a quantity- standard that is more intelligible, more ponderable. How much, and how many, and for how long, does a book impress, and move, and thrill? What active energy does it disengage? What is its equi- valent in thought-rays? in emotion-volts? What is its force, its effect? Estimate that, find that, judge that, and you will know a book's universal value as Literature. This standard of force is the ultimate standard. Tastes differ with individuals, countries, and eras ; but three and two are five, and twice five are ten, every- where in the universe. The scale inevitably adjusts itself. Uncle Tom's Cabin impressed many, and much ; but for how long ? Catullus has moved much, and long ; but how many ? W^e argue that Catullus writes better Literature than Harriet Stowe — because people of " taste," people of " culture," people of " learning," prefer Catullus. Well, if it be so, in the long run Catullus's total force of achieved impressions will outweigh Harriet Stowe's. Her work dies ; his lives through the ages. His mind's " effective manifestation " surpasses hers. What is Literature Style is a requisite of Literature ; but what is style ? Merely an aid to effect. Individual taste may prefer the florid or the simple ; but florid style or simple is valuable only in so far as it impresses, gives force. Having defined Literature as the mind's effective mani- festation in written language, you can proceed to define the things that go to make effect, and style is one of them. But style, and thought, and emotion, and in- terest, and melody, and picture — these are only factors in the total. The total is force. In the last resort Literature must be judged, like everything else, by the force it develops — the quantity of latent energy which it makes active. '' Then one must wait ten thousand years to judge what is Literature T' Yes ; and longer than that. But you can make provisional judgments as you go along. If the literary effect of Mrs. Stowe is at this century- end equivalent to I0;r, and the literary effect of Catul- lus is equivalent to only Jx, you can still calculate on the future and defend your preference of Catullus — or of Mrs. Stowe. Nobody does, of course ; but that is the only way to do it which will hold logic-water. Between any human mind, as agent, and the whole multitude of human minds, as objects, the sole fixed standard of measurement possible is a standard of how much force exerted, on how many, for how long. All the other standards shift with time, and place, and individuals, and circumstances. The Red Pagan So that, for humanity, Literature is the human mind's effective manifesta- tion in written language. But, for the individual appraiser, there is a standard much more satisfactory, much more easily applied. Truth is — what you believe. Literature is — what you like. Admire the corollary: What I like is Litera- ture. IF Bacon were alive nowadays, with the wisdom at- tributed to him, he would realise that it is not worth while taking all knowledge for one's pro- vince — even if all knowledge permitted itself to be taken. We have reached a truer conception of the relation of finite to infinite than Bacon had; though our defaults and our fortunes keep life so far short of conception. Nothing profits the man who loses his own world, his only world, since we have no longer a theological soul to gain or a mythical heaven to confide in. The happy hunting-grounds are Here and Now — " Ahy make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the Dust descend ; Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie, Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and— sans end'' The Philosophic Life Relevancy ? Well, Literature is n*t Life : it is merely Life*s adjunct. And a well-spent life should get the fullest value out of every hour, every minute, every moment. I, for example, do not in the least desire to be discussing Literature just at present. It is a beautiful morning, with a zephyr-softened sun, and I want to Bask out on a Beach. With a Girl. One of Quinn's beaches and girls, for choice — " Pink feet and white ankles On beaches of gold'* (Omar's bread and wine and verses might be stowed under a shady rock, each awaitnig its mood.) But the sun-and-zephyr morning is for me dying, dying — the unreturning hours hypnotised by Habit, whose trickling stream of accumulated impressions continu- ally petrifies more and more brain-cells into reflex life- in-death; or mortgaged for bread and cheese and kisses, books and pictures, the hundred cravings that Thoreau repressed after the method of the savage who chopped his last toes to get his first boots on. Yet Thoreau tired of repression. Hermit-life at Wal- den was heroically beautiful ; — and the hermit-hero gladly came home again after a couple of years. Why? "I do not think that I can tell Per- haps I wanted change. Inhere was a little stagna- tion, it may be, about two o'clock in the afternoon!' And, maybe, in spite of the morning and the mood, 8 The Red Pagan that bask would turn out less pleasant than this task. Literature is not always as attractive as the ideal Quinn girl, but it has fewer complications. Even Goethe found his bask-task rhythm of life falling into unexpected ruts. Literature is one road to the Golden Age, one help to fix the date of the good time traditionally coming. And the object of existence on this earth is to have a good time. The only human way of having a good time is to get emotions, impressions, sensations — the most and most varied and most intense sensations that your brain can give. Every human being tries in- stinctively to live the most intensely conscious kind of life that he is capable of living, and to remain conscious for the longest possible period. If Minerva sprang full-armed from the cradle, a wise man would deliberately set himself to improve his brain and its attached body to the utmost limit of the cosmic and hereditary tether. He would get his sensations as he extended his capacity for sensations, but he would always look forward to the time when his brain would be as keen and full as he could make it by normal vital processes. Then, when his brain was full, he would start to absorb fully the world of sensations. Joy, grief, plea- sure, pain, natural beauty, artistic beauty, the satis- faction of knowledge and the satisfaction of power, The Philosophic Life love, fatherhood, peace, war, the light of dawn and the light of woman's eyes, books and friends, music and mystery ; — he would welcome them all to the limit of his power to receive them all, when considered together with his mortality, his chance of continuing to receive all in the most intense measure. Deliberately he would milk the world of sensations into the bucket of his brain. And delibera- tely, if he understood that there was an intensity of sensation that transcended the normal power of his brain, he would artificially stimulate his brain, count- ing the cost, and realising that he was giving perhaps a day of normal life for a moment of life transcendent. Deliberately, a wise man would know excess and fa- tigue, intoxication and abstinence — for the pleasure of knowledge, and for the pleasure of excess and in- toxication. And his motto would be, not " Never too much," but " Rarely too much " — " Too much " accepted with the knowledge of his power to refuse if he so willed ; " Too much " welcomed because, on a calculation of chances, " Too much " paid. Of course many philosophies contradict this phil- osophy. Yet observe that every philosopher adopts this philosophy. Disciples may swallow the uni- verse in a pill of dogma, but the teacher compounds the pill from tested sensations. Before the sheep can follow safely, the shepherd must know the path. Thus we see a long line of prophets, from Buddha to lo The Red Pagan Tolstoy, engaged in regenerating the race with the elderly morals drawn from their unregenerate youth, and urging the duty of life-renunciation upon men who have never known the pleasure of life-acceptance. That is not pretty Nature's way. " The world was made when a man was born. He must taste for himself the forbidden springs. He can never take warning from old-fashioned things. He must fight as a boy ; he must drink as a youth. He wAist kiss, he must love ; he must swear to the truth Of the friend of his soul. He must laugh to scorn The hint of deceit in a woman s eyes That are clear as the wells of Paradise. ''And so he goes on till the world grows old ; Till his tongue has grown cautious , his heart has grown cold ; Till the smile leaves his mouth and the ring leaves his laughy And he shirks the bright headache you ask him to quaff. He groivs formal with men, and with women polite, And distrustful of both when they're out of his sight. Then he eats for his palate and drinks for his head, And loves for his pleasure — and it's time he were dead,,,:' The Case of Annie Besant ii But, instead of dying, he lies down under a bo- tree or dons a peasant's smock, and distils delusive wisdom from the dregs of pomps and gaieties that he can no longer enjoy. EXPERIENCE teaches ; but only one's own experience. To gain your gospel you must earn your gospel. When Mrs. Besant visited our land Australia, I remember asking her if she could have accepted Theosophy at the outset of her public career. She reflected, and doubted, and opined No ; she had needed struggle : her life had fed a lamp to light her path. Ponder the exemplary case of Annie Besant. To many people she is a puzzle, a paradox. They contrast the creed she forsook with the creed she embraced, neo-Materialism with neo-Theo- sophy ; and they see that the two are absolutely an- tagonistic, mutually exclusive. Yet here is a woman who passes from one to the other " somewhat sud- denly," in Bradlaugh's weighed and guarded phrase ; almost without a struggle, as it appears to others. In a moment she turns her mind upside-down, astounding friends by the ease with which she quits long-cherished convictions, and becoming immediately no less ardent and obstinate a champion of her new 12 The Red Pagan faith than of her old. The fruit of twenty years of strenuous thought tumbles at a single glance from the " brilliant eyes " of Madame Blavatsky. Admitting her honesty, her sanity, how possibly account for a revolution so radical? But consider. The very vio- lence of the contradiction between Annie Besant the Materialist and Annie Besant the Theosophist implies a close bond of unity. For it is of the essence of things that likeness breeds opposition, unlikeness ap- position. Extremes meet ; complexity is nearest sim- plicity; and the universe rings with the chime of contraries. Perchance our paradox may sit on the in- most verge of harmony. This much is always certain : the factors of such a problem are simply the every-day factors of action and re-action between organism and environment. In the mental world, as in the physical, there is no escape from the scientific law of necessity. Effect every- where follows cause ; and with a sufficient knowledge of principles and conditions we can trace effect or cause for the finite distance corresponding with finite capacity. Mrs. Besant a^cted as she did act simply because, being what she was, subject to the parti- cular set of influences to which she was subject, she could not possibly act otherwise. The reasons for her conduct lie firstly in herself, secondly in her circum- stances ; and there is no room for any other reasons whatever. Study of her life should furnish the key The Case of Annie Besant 13 to her character. Now, her mental Hfe experienced two great crises : her conversion from Materialism to Theosophy, and her previous conversion from Chris- tianity to Materialism. Mrs. Besant's autobiography and other sources of information yield a wide induc- tion of facts ; and, applying deductively conclusions gained in other fields of enquiry, a theory leaps at once to light. The argument naturally takes syllo- gistic form. Here is the major. The bent of man is intellec- tual; the bent of woman is emotional. This is a familiar philosophic statement justified by a large number of special sex-observations, and supported by common experience. Exceptions are sufficiently ex- plained on the ground of hermaphroditic race-ances- try; and Weismann, one of the German naturalists whose thought and experiments are doing so much to mould current science, believes that the elements of both sexes are in every individual, the one class active, the other passive. Occasionally the predomi- nance is not marked, and primary characters of one sex accompany secondary characters of the other in the same individual. Naturally, sex-generalisations apply particularly to those individuals in whom sex is most prominent, and in a lesser degree to those gathered closer to the median line of difference. But, generally speaking, though in savagery the sexes seem almost equally superstitious, as civilisation advances 14 The Red Pagan the domain of faith becomes more and more clearly that of woman, and the domain of reason that of man. Women are everywhere the willing supporters of cleri- calism, long after men have emancipated themselves from its sway. They judge intuitively rather than rationally, arguing to what they wish to be rather than from what is. In popular language, they are ruled, not by their brains, but by their hearts. Annie Besant is essentially a womanly woman. She would not wear men's clothes, like George Sand ; or in her own person defy conventional morality, like George Eliot with Lewes. (The defence of the Knowlton pamphlet was a matter of principle that her feminine conscience justified.) Mrs. Besant's mulie- brity is shown in a hundred things which we are used to consider manifestations of sex. She has been wife and mother; she is constitutionally anabolic, with rounded contours and small bones, needing slight nourishment ; she is not above little coquetries of dress or little vanities of nature — as, for instance, her cus- tom of being photographed in full face because her face in profile is not remarkable ; '' her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low — an excellent thing in woman " ; she is tenacious of life — she suffered more and longer than Bradlaugh, yet Bradlaugh is dead and she is alive and well, probably partly because he was man and she woman ; she is an interpreter, not a creator ; she has the feminine quality of receptivity in a very The Case of Annie Besant 15 high degree, and the mascuhne quahty of originahty in a very low degree — Constance Naden, who had both, died young, and Mrs. Besant should Hve to be ninety, though nothing she has written will remain, and some things that Miss Naden wrote may be im- perishable, for of such is the law of compensations. Add to this that, throughout her life — as a school- girl, praying to a sensuous Christ ; as a mother, fight- ing with Death for her child ; as a friend, faithful to the end to Charles Bradlaugh ; as a thinker, yearning for some fixed basis of faith, some definite hope of immortality — Mrs. Besant has exemplified always the altruistic woman, a vessel of love and devotion, never the egoistic man ; and our minor premiss may fairly stand as established. The conclusion comes of itself. Mrs. Besant is ruled by her emotions, not by her intellect, keen though it be. Her sixteen years of Materialism were sixteen years of error, sixteen years of wandering from her proper path, sixteen years in which her real nature lay fettered and dormant. Only now is she on her true line, is she herself. The mystic promises of Theo- sophy satisfy her latent longings as the hard facts of Materialism never could satisfy them. Her intellect protests feebly, but is over-ruled. She has admitted that her belief in Theosophy is only partly a matter of intellectual conviction. Nevertheless, she believes wholly, because belief is a necessity of her nature. All 1 6 The Red Pagan similar emotional characters make a similar choice. No half-measures are possible to them. Cardinal Newman, confronted with the dilemma, " Absolute Rome or absolute reason," after an agonising struggle chose Rome, because his emotions dominated his in- tellect. His brother chose reason, because his in- tellect dominated his emotions. Once made, the characteristic choice is final ; and, as in both Cardinal^ Newman and Annie Besant, the intellect is set to work to justify the dogmas against which it fought. The process is curious, but perfectly intelligible ; since it is essential to the peace of the mental force-majority that the demon doubt be excluded from the citadel of the Ego. In Mrs. Besant's case, the years which the material- istic locust has eaten are easily accounted for. On the threshold of womanhood she made a most unhappy marriage with a clergyman who treated her cruelly. The consequences in mental distress and physical ill- ness that all but killed her, accentuated her previous sense of the weakness of the Christian religion, and for a time completely subverted her nature. Had she married a man whom she could have loved and esteem- ed, she would have merged her views in his, sacrificed her individuality to his welfare, and lost her cavils in the glow of a deeper, but still orthodox faith. It is directly to her misery that we owe Mrs. Besant's mag- nificent Hfe-work. The tortured heart re-acted The Case of Annie Besant 17 through the burning brain. Yet the edipse of her inner self would have been but temporary had she not met Charles Bradlaugh. His influence confirmed the new bias so decisively that long years passed be- fore it was gradually lost. Only when Mrs. Besant had passed middle age did she begin to feel lonely in her cold, unconsolatory atheism. The longing for human sympathy, besetting almost all men and women after youth has vanished, became in her an irresis- tible craving that philanthropic labour was unable to satisfy. Her heart regained its supremacy, and cried loudly for a warmer faith. Comte's " religion of hu- manity " could not suffice a character abhorrent of compromise. From unbelief she passed at a bound to belief. Yet her conversion to Theosophy, though it appeared sudden, was not the expression of a sud- den change. It was preceded by a growing conviction that tlie materialistic philosophy was insufficient ; it was preceded by the significant espousal of Socialism — as compared with Individualism, a more altruistic, more feminine, more emotional creed. And at last Annie Besant's life-stream, long diverted, took its na- tural course. Mrs. Besant has written that she wishes to deserve this epitaph : She tried to follow Truth. She has de- ^ served it. That the element of truth in Theosophy is ^ overlaid with much fantastic error matters little. It is all truth to her, and the grandeur of her nature 1 8 The Red Pagan glorifies her trivial creed. In effect, the intellectual belief of a good woman is comparatively of slight im- portance. We do not seek to know the botanical classification of a flower before enjoying its fragrance. Heroic spirits like Annie Besant, with all their frail- ties, are the salt of humanity. They are linked indis- solubly with every generous deed, with every noble aspiration. They give courage in the present, and hope for the future. And here, on this bank and shoal of time of which alone there is any certitude, we are proud to yield them honour, whether our destiny be divinity or dust. OF course there is no evidence that our destiny is divine, and little doubt that it is dusty; but that sentence finished itself with malice aforethought of Ruskin ; and though I dis- like it, I like it too well to alter. " Aforethought '' — or felt rather, as a practised poetaster feels the shadow of a coming rhyme cast athwart the line he is pen- ning. Ruskin preferred more artful assonances, in- , vented harmonies that purr through his prose like a bride's snore through a honeymoon ; and when he is ' good, he is very good indeed. But when he is bad he is horrid. * • Rhetorical Ruskin 19 By a common fallacy, the obituary notices referred to Ruskin's death in his eighty-first year as causing a loss to EngUsh letters — which it plainly did not. It is Ruskin's works that estabhsh his literary claim; and these remain uninfluenced by his death, as they would have been uninfluenced had he lagged another score of senile years — a superfluous veteran. Ruskin the man was born rich, and he made a good and unselfish use of his riches. He was a liberal patron of art, spent much in hopeless attempts to create a social Eutopia, and gave, gave, gave to hun- dreds of men and public institutions that seemed to him deserving. His head was ajways in the clouds, like his writings. The best excuse for his dithyrambs is that he lived them. He was a literary Gladstone, an aesthetic Whitefield — a vast wave of emotion that dashed suddenly upon you from a vague expanse, re- treated, and lost itself in the expanse again. The wave had no particular intellectual reason or justifi- cation ; its cause was as obscure as its consequences ; but it made a furious noise, shone with prismatic colours in the sunshine, and, in a general way of speaking, was an impressive natural object. When the wave fell back, you noticed the ground was a ^little wet. The patch of moisture left by the Ruskin wave rapidly drying. Few people nowadays pay intel- lectual attention to Ruskin. He was a fine emotional *2o The Red Pagan force in his day and generation : for emotional people he is still an emotional force. But intellectually he does not count : he rarely did count. How was it possible that Ruskin should count? He referred everything to the Glory of God. That was the end of all art, the aim of all human effort. Ruskin did not know what God is, or the Glory of God. All that he could do was to marry the Hebrew Scriptures with a Turner sunset, and decide that the Glory of God was the offspring. Then he described the offspring in an ecstasy of sonorous alliterations, and invited you to worship. You might worship ; but you were doubtfully convinced Was that the Glory of God? . . . The Glory of God was the end, and the Glorifi- cation of Beauty was a means ; but the Ruskin idea of Beauty was intellectually as incomprehensible as the Ruskin idea of God For consider: Ruskin Beauty is divided into typical beauty and vital beauty. Typi- cal beauty is that external quality of bodies which typifies 5ome divine attribute. Vital beauty is the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of function in living things. The forms of typical beauty are — (i) In- finity, the type of divine incomprehensibility. (2) Unity, the type of divine comprehensiveness. (3) Repose, the type of divine permanence. (4) Symme- try, the type of divine justice. (5) Purity, the type of divine energy. (6) Moderation, the type Rhetorical Ruskin of government by law. The forms of vital beauty are But that will do. Imaginative gibberish, it seems? Imaginative gibberish it is. As far as theories of art were concerned, Ruskin wrote little but imaginative gibberish. When his theories did not come in the way he was a shrewd critic of art, and he was for long the chief appreciator of art in England The emo- tion that he felt he could often give. His vision seems sometimes the inspired vision of a prophet : the eyes in that head-in-the-clouds saw things that or- dinary men groped all their lives without perceiving ; sometimes the angel- wing of Beauty did flash before Ruskin's eyes, and sometimes he could brilliantly describe a prismatic feather. But his mind moved in such a welter of words and images that he is always best when simplest. Ruskin's simpHcity is the high- est colour that style can take without degenerating into a rainbow poster. You must browse over his books as a horse browses over a meadow, welcoming what is succulent, and passing many an arid patch and many a patch too dangerously green and shining. y Ruskin wrote rhetorically, oratorically : his prose style is too often in the clouds where his head was. The energy of it is remarkable ; the beauty of it is sometimes remarkable ; it is frequently turgid, and its artifices are monotonous. When a thought can be ex- The Red Pagan pressed in two plain words you do not continually desiderate a glittering fifty. Every intelligent reader of Ruskin must pine for a diminished torrent and a greatly-diminished spout. When Whistler commented in 1878 on the famous lawsuit Whistler versus Ruskin, he wrote that Ruskin's writing was art, and his art was unworthy his writ- ing. Only the latter statement seemed debatable in 1878 : nowadays we should debate both. The Ruskin wave has spent itself. And if you look closely, you may perceive that the ground is a little wet. ^r RUSKIN is an example of extense genius — the mind's sheet-lightning. For an example of in- tense genius, take the forked-lightning visions of Blake, blazing into the darkness of Tom o' Bedlam. Genius, in the special sense, is not the spirit that watched over one's shoulder in ancient days. Not the individual's inborn faculty. But a type of mind associated with nervous instability, char- acterised by exceptional exaltation, capable of intellec- tual or emotional creation peculiarly high-pitched and (compared with talent's creation) dazzling. Moreau^s " neurosis " (quoted by Havelock Ellis) meets the idea. Moreau regards the genius-neurosis as the synonym of The Genealogy of Genius 23 exaltation (not trouble or perturbation) of the intellec- tual faculties. " The word ' neurosis ' would indicate a particular disposition of the faculties, a disposition still in part physiological, but overflowing those physiologi- cal limits." And Moreau presents a genealogical-tree with genius, insanity, and crime, among its branches ; the common root being " the hereditary idiosyncratic nervous state." Genius represents a fever of the brain — the brain itself being due to a localised fever or ferment of the ancestral organism. Every specialisation of function is accompanied by increased energy in the part special- ised ; and probably every physiological gain has had a pathological beginning — since a ferment in one part of the organism robs the common store of energy. Fan- cifully, therefore, life is a disease of the universe and man an evanescent pustule. Genius is a disease of the pustule. Setting aside structural and chemical causes, we can consider it in effect as resulting from an abnormal series of cerebral vibrations. The abnormality is pathological, because it is gained at the expense of the life-sustaining forces of the organism. You may construe genius-thought in terms of sound. It is known that the imperfect human ear hears only a limited class of the universe's sound- vibrations. When the sound travels too fast, or too slowly, the ear-drum will not respond to it — or will not 24 The Red Pagan respond so as to influence the brain. And it is generally known that there is a difference in the response of human ears. Some people hear low notes, and not high ; some hear high and not low. Some have an aural range in the centre of the ordinary scale, and hear neither low nor high. Anything less than about 1 6 vibrations per second, or more than about 38,000, the best of ears misses altogether. So with minds. It is common to speak of slow wits, or quick. (xA^stonishing how many deep scientific truths lie hid in common talk, familiar expressions — the condensation of humanity's 200,000-year experience.) And the slowness, or quickness, refers to nothing but the vibration of disintegrating cerebral atoms. Doubt- less an idiot's brain vibrates ; but it is slower than the normal speed — the normal mind Ccinnot hear it. Doubtless a maniac's vibrates ; but it is faster than the normal speed — the normal mind cannot hear it. From this construct your mind-measure or nouso- meter, as figured. Observe that the notation is arbi- trary — comparative, not positive ; since we cannot yet measure the speed of cerebral vibrations. Probably an exact observation of the phenomena of thought- transference will supply data. Observe that the nousometer measures only speed of cerebral vibrations. So it measures intellectual rank in relation to genius, but it does not measure intellectual achievement. A high mind may be joined The Genealogy of Genius 25 NOUSOMETEfl RABELAIS By ft- OA/ wACrJ e 15 HCC?0 A/\|l-l-(MS MAC AUL/\y Tot. ST o V W M I T