SIX MAJOR 
 
 EDWIN E.SLOSSON
 
 ARY 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
 $ ounfceD in /Bbemocg of IRobert a. ffrencb. 
 CHURCH DOOR LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 FIRST UNITARIAN SOCIETY 
 
 DAVENPORT, IOWA. 
 
 PRESENTED BY
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS
 
 Whoever dies without recognizing the prophet of 
 his time dies the death of a pagan. 
 
 Mohammedan proverb.
 
 SIX MAJOR 
 PROPHETS 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN E. SLOSSON, M.S., Pn.D. 
 
 LITERARY EDITOR OF "THE INDEPENDENT" 
 
 ASSOCIATE IN THE COLUMBIA SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM 
 
 AUTHOR OF "MAJOR PROPHETS OF TO-DAY," ETC. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 1917
 
 Copyright, 1917, 
 BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 Published, April, 1917 
 
 Norfaooti $Kga 
 
 Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Gushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 TO MY SON 
 
 PRESTON WILLIAM SLOSSON 
 
 WHOSE THOUGHTS AND PHRASES 
 
 I HAVE MORE FREELY INCORPORATED 
 
 THAN I AM WILLING TO ACKNOWLEDGE 
 
 ELSEWHERE THAN ON THIS PAGE, 
 
 THIS VOLUME 
 IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED
 
 PREFACE 
 
 A FEW years ago it occurred to me that there were 
 living on the same planet and at the same time as my- 
 self some interesting people whom I had never seen and 
 did not know so much about as I should. Since they 
 or I might die at any moment, I determined not to 
 delay longer. So I prepared a list of twelve men who 
 seemed to me most worth knowing, and then I set 
 out to see them ; not with the hope of becoming 
 personally acquainted with them or even with the 
 object of interviewing them, but chiefly to satisfy 
 myself that they really existed. One does not go to 
 Switzerland to find out how high the Alps are or how 
 they look. The traveler can get their altitude from 
 Baedeker and their appearance from photographs, 
 but if he is to talk about them with any sense of 
 self-confidence he must have come within hailing 
 distance of the mountains themselves. It is sufficient 
 
 [vii]
 
 PREFACE 
 
 to say that I got close enough to the Alps I had 
 chosen to be able to vouch for their actuality. 
 
 The men I selected for study were those who, 
 whether they called themselves philosophers or not, 
 seemed to me to have a definite philosophy of life, 
 those who had a message for their own times of 
 sufficient importance and distinctiveness to merit 
 public attention. It is my purpose in these 
 sketches to show the trend and importance of these 
 diverse theories, so that a reader who had not had 
 the opportunity to range over the complete works of 
 a dozen authors might find which of them was best 
 adapted to serve him as "guide, philosopher, and 
 friend." In a word, my part is merely to act as 
 the host at a reception who introduces his guests 
 and then leaves them to follow up such acquaintance- 
 ships as seem profitable. My aim is exposition 
 rather than criticism. Although I have not thought 
 it necessary absolutely to suppress my own opinions, 
 I trust this has not prevented me from giving a fair 
 and sufficiently sympathetic presentation of each 
 man's views in turn. 
 
 My list of the "Twelve Major Prophets of To- 
 day" consisted of the following names : Maurice 
 Maeterlinck, Henri Bergson, Henri Poincare, Elie 
 Metchnikoff, Wilhelm Ostwald, Ernst Haeckel, 
 
 [ viii ]
 
 PREFACE 
 
 George Bernard Shaw, Herbert George Wells, 
 Gilbert Keith Chesterton, F. C. S. Schiller, John 
 Dewey, and Rudolf Eucken. I had not taken 
 nationality into consideration, but I found that I 
 had chosen four from England, three from Germany, 
 two from France, and one each from Belgium, Russia, 
 and the United States of America. Four of the 
 twelve were professors of philosophy ; four were men 
 of science, one of these a mathematician, one a 
 physician, one a zoologist, one a chemist ; and four 
 were men of letters, authors of novels, dramas, or 
 essays. The twelve sketches appeared in The 
 Independent during the last few years, but they 
 have been considerably extended for book publica- 
 tion. The first six named above were published in 
 the volume "Major Prophets of To-day." The 
 other six are given in the following pages. 
 
 EDWIN E. SLOSSON 
 
 fix]
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PACK 
 
 PREFACE ........ vii 
 
 I GEORGE BERNARD SHAW ..... I 
 
 II H. G. WELLS 56 
 
 III G. K. CHESTERTON . . . . . .129 
 
 IV F. C. S. SCHILLER . . . . . .190 
 
 V JOHN DEWEY ....... 234 
 
 VI RUDOLF EUCKEN . ...... 276 
 
 xi]
 
 LIST OF PORTRAITS 
 
 George Bernard Shaw ..... Frontispiece 
 
 H. G. Wells Page 98 
 
 G. K. Chesterton "174 
 
 F. C. S. Schiller "196 
 
 John Dewey . . . . . . " 252 
 
 Rudolf Eucken ......" 290 
 
 xiii]
 
 To write a book about a man who has written books 
 about himself is an impertinence which only an irresist- 
 ible charm of manner can carry off. The unpardonable 
 way of doing it, and the commonest, is to undertake to 
 tell the public what a writer has already told them him- 
 self, and tell it worse or tell it wrong. 
 
 G. B. SHAW.
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 DRAMATIC CRITIC OF LIFE 
 
 I am a journalist, proud of it, deliberately cutting 
 out of my works all that is not journalism, convinced 
 that nothing that is not journalism will live long as 
 literature, or be of any use whilst it does live. I deal 
 with all periods, but I never study any period but the 
 present; and as a dramatist I have no clue to any 
 historical or other personage save that part of him 
 which is also myself. . . . The man who writes 
 about himself and his own time is the only man who 
 writes about all people and about all time. G. B. S., 
 in "The Sanity of Art." 
 
 AUGUST 4, 1914, cuts time in two like a knife. 
 The continuity of human progress in science, arts, 
 letters, commerce, philosophy, everything, was 
 broken off at that point to be taken up again, 
 who knows when ? Nothing in the world can re- 
 main quite the same as before. Everything is seen 
 
 [I]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 in a new light. All our old ideas, even the most 
 ancient and most reverenced, will have to be taken 
 out and looked over to see how many of them remain 
 intact and useful, just as after an earthquake one 
 overhauls the china closet. "The transvaluation of 
 all values", which Nietzsche looked for, has come 
 to pass sooner than he expected, although the re- 
 sults of this reestimation are not likely to be what 
 he anticipated. It is not merely that the geographies 
 will have to be revised and the histories rewritten, 
 but all books will be classified as antebellum or 
 postbellum literature. It will, however, not be 
 necessary to mark them A. B. or P. B., for they will 
 by their style of thought and language bear an in- 
 delible though invisible date with reference to this 
 line of demarcation. 
 
 We are already beginning to look back upon the 
 antebellum days as a closed period, and those who 
 were conspicuous in it are being seen in an historical 
 perspective such as the lapse of a generation of or- 
 dinary times is needed to produce. Some reputa- 
 tions are shrinking, others are rising, as mountains 
 seem from a departing train to rearrange themselves 
 according to their true height. The true prophets 
 are becoming distinguishable from the false. 
 
 Among those who have taken the test and stand
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 higher than before is George Bernard Shaw. 
 Whether he will write better plays than before re- 
 mains to be seen. Perhaps he will write no more 
 of any kind. But those he has written will be 
 regarded with more respect because we can see 
 their essential truth, whereas before we feared lest 
 we might be merely fascinated by their glitter. 
 Warnings which the world took for jokes because 
 of their fantastic guise now turn out too terribly 
 real, and advice which the world ignored would 
 better have been heeded. 
 
 Few writers have as little to take back on account 
 of the war as Shaw, although few have expressed 
 such decided opinions in such extreme language on 
 so many topics. For instance, Kipling's " The 
 Bear that Walks Like a Man" makes queer read- 
 ing now that England is fighting to give Russia 
 what then she was ready to fight to prevent her 
 getting. But the full significance of Shaw's fable 
 farce of "Androcles and the Lion" is now for the 
 first time being realized. The philosophy of this, 
 his most frivolous and serious play, is summed up 
 by Ferrovius, a converted giant of the Ursus type, 
 who finds it impossible to keep to his Christian 
 principle of nonresistance when brought into the 
 arena. The natural man rises in him and he slays 
 
 [3]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 six gladiators single-handed. This delights the 
 emperor, who thereupon offers him a post in the 
 Pretorian Guards which he had formerly refused. 
 The fallen and victorious Ferrovius accepts, saying : 
 
 In my youth I worshiped Mars, the god of war. 
 I turned from him to serve the Christian God ; but 
 to-day the Christian God forsook me; and Mars 
 overcame me and took back his own. The Chris- 
 tian God is not yet. He will come when Mars and 
 I are dust; but meanwhile I must serve the gods 
 that are, not the God that will be. Until then I 
 accept service in the Guard, Caesar. 
 
 The great cataclysm does not seem to have changed 
 Shaw's opinions one iota, but all England is changed, 
 and so he appears in a different light. More of his 
 countrymen agree with what he used to preach to 
 them than ever before, yet he was never so disliked 
 as he is to-day which is saying a great deal. The 
 British press has boycotted him. His letters, once 
 so sought after by the most dignified journals, now 
 no longer appear except in The New Statesman. 
 His speeches, be they never so witty and timely, 
 are not reported or even announced. 
 
 Consequently those who wish to hear him have 
 to resort to the advertising expedients of the era 
 before printing. A friend of mine just back from 
 London tells me that he saw chalked on the side- 
 
 [4]
 
 walk a notice of a meeting to be addressed by Shaw 
 in some out-of-the-way hall. Going there, he found 
 it packed with an enthusiastic crowd gathered to 
 hear Shaw discuss the questions of the day. The 
 anti-Shavian press said that he had to keep to his 
 house, that he was afraid to stir abroad for fear of 
 a mob, that his career was over, that he was exploded, 
 repudiated, disgraced, boycotted, dead and done for. 
 At the very time when we were reading things like 
 this, he was, as we since have learned, addressing 
 weekly meetings in one of the largest halls in Lon- 
 don. Reporters who were sent to see him hounded 
 off the platform witnessed an ovation instead. 
 The audience at his invitation asked him many 
 questions, but not of a hostile character. 
 
 Shaw thrives on unpopularity or at least on public 
 disapproval, which is not quite the same thing. It 
 is not only that Shaw would rather be right than 
 Prime Minister; he would rather be leader of the 
 Opposition than Prime Minister. He would be 
 "in the right with two or three"; in fact, if his fol- 
 lowers increased much beyond the poet's minimum, 
 he would begin to feel uneasy and suspect that he 
 was wrong. 
 
 When Shaw sees a lonely mistreated kitten or a 
 lonely mistreated theory, his tender heart yearns 
 
 (5\
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 over it. For instance, when all his set started 
 sneering at "natural rights" as eighteenth-century 
 pedantry, he appeared as their champion, and, 
 practically alone among modern radicals and art 
 lovers, he has dared to commend the Puritans. 
 The iconoclastic views which he expressed as 
 dramatic and musical critic in the nineties have 
 been vindicated by events, and now when a young 
 reader opens for the first time "The Quintessence 
 of Ibsenism", "The Perfect Wagnerite", and the 
 collection of "Dramatic Opinions and Essays", he 
 wonders only why Shaw should get so excited about 
 such conventional and undisputed things. It is no 
 wonder Shaw is "the most hated man in England." 
 Nothing is more irritating than to say "I told you 
 so", and he can and does say it oftener than 
 anybody else, unless it is Doctor Dillon. 
 
 Shaw's brain secretes automatically the particu- 
 lar antitoxin needed to counteract whatever disease 
 may be epidemic in the community at the time. 
 This injected with some vigor into the veins of 
 thought may not effect a cure, but always excites 
 a feverish state in the organism. It is his habit of 
 seeing that there is another side to a question and 
 calling attention to it at inconvenient times that 
 makes him so irritating to the public. His oppo- 
 
 [6]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 nents tried to intern him in Coventry as a pro- 
 German on account of his pamphlet, "Common- 
 sense about the War." But this is almost the only 
 thing produced in England during the first weeks 
 of the war that reads well now. Compare it with 
 its numerous replies and see which seems absurd. 
 Doubtless it was not tactful, it might have been 
 called treasonable, but it certainly was sensible. 
 Shaw kept his head level when others lost theirs. 
 That was because he had thought out things in ad- 
 vance and so did not have to make up his mind in 
 a hurry with the great probability of making it up 
 wrong. In that pamphlet he presented the case for 
 the Allies in a way much more convincing to the 
 American mind than many that came to us in the 
 early days of the war, and his arguments have been 
 strengthened by the course of events, while others 
 advanced at that time have been weakened. Shaw 
 was arguing before a neutral and international jury, 
 and so he did not rest his case on the specious and 
 patriotic pleas that passed muster at that time with 
 the British public. 
 
 As for the charge of pro-Germanism, that may 
 best be met by quoting from a letter written by him 
 to a friend in Vienna early in 1915. The language 
 is evidently not pure Shavian. It has been trans- 
 
 [7]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 lated into Austrian-German and thence retranslated 
 into British journalese. 
 
 As regards myself, I am not what is called a pro- 
 German. The Germans would not respect me, were 
 I at such a time as this, when all thoughts of culture 
 have vanished, not to stand by my people. But 
 also, I am not an anti-German. The war brings us 
 all on to the same plane of savagery. Every. London 
 coster can stick his bayonet deeper into the stomach 
 of Richard Strauss than Richard Strauss would care 
 to do to him. 
 
 Militarism has just now compelled me to pay a 
 thousand pounds war taxation in order that some 
 "brave little Servian" may be facilitated in cutting 
 your throat or, that a Russian mujik may cleave 
 your skull in twain, although I would gladly pay twice 
 that sum to save your life, or to buy some beautiful 
 picture in Vienna for our National Gallery. 
 
 Shaw has always condemned militarism because 
 of the type of mind it engenders in officers and men. 
 But he has never been opposed to preparedness 
 or to the use of force. In the London Daily News 
 of January I, 1914, note the date, he said : 
 
 I like courage (like most constitutionally timid 
 civilians) and the active use of strength for the salva- 
 tion of the world. It is good to have a giant's 
 strength and it is not at all tyrannous to use it like 
 a giant provided you are a decent sort of giant. 
 What on earth is strength for but to be used and will 
 any reasonable man tell me that we are using our 
 strength now to any purpose ? 
 
 [8]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 Let us get the value of our money in strength 
 and influence instead of casting every new cannon 
 in an ecstasy of terror and then being afraid to aim 
 it at anybody. 
 
 At that time, seven months before the storm 
 burst, he not only anticipated the war, but said 
 that it might be averted, 
 
 By politely announcing that war between France 
 and Germany would be so inconvenient to England 
 that the latter country is prepared to pledge 
 herself to defend either country if attacked by 
 the other. 
 
 If we are asked how we are to decide which nation 
 is really the aggressor we can reply that we shall 
 take our choice, or when the problem is unsolvable 
 we shall toss up, but that we will take a hand in the 
 war anyhow. 
 
 International warfare is an unmitigated nuisance. 
 Have as much character-building civil war as you 
 like, but there must be no sowing of dragon's teeth 
 like the Franco-Prussian War. England can put 
 a stop to such a crime single-handed easily enough 
 if she can keep her knees from knocking together in 
 her present militarist fashion. 
 
 Of course Shaw may have been wrong in sup- 
 posing that an open announcement of Great Brit- 
 ain's determination to enter the war would have 
 deterred Germany, but as we now know from the 
 White Paper this same opinion was held by the 
 governments of both France and Russia. On 
 
 [9]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 July 30 the President of France said to the British 
 Ambassador at Paris that 
 
 If His Majesty's Government announced that 
 England would come to the aid of France in the 
 event of a conflict between France and Germany as 
 a result of the present differences between Austria 
 and Servia, there would be no war, for Germany 
 would at once modify her attitude. 
 
 And on July 25, M. Sazonof, the Russian Foreign 
 Minister, said to the British Ambassador at Petro- 
 grad that 
 
 He did not believe that Germany really wanted 
 war, but her attitude was decided by ours. If we 
 took our stand firmly with France and Russia, there 
 would be no war. If we failed her now, rivers of 
 blood would flow, and we would in the end be dragged 
 into war. 
 
 Shaw now gives the same advice to the United 
 States that he gave to his own country before the 
 war, that is, to increase its armament and not be 
 afraid to use it. In a recent letter to the American 
 Intercollegiate Socialist he said : 
 
 I should strenuously recommend the United States 
 to build thirty-two new dreadnoughts instead of 
 sixteen, and to spend two billion dollars on its arma- 
 ment program instead of one. This would cost 
 only a fraction of the money you are wasting every 
 year in demoralizing luxury, a good deal of it having 
 been in the past scattered over the continental 
 
 [10]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 countries which are now using what they saved out 
 of it to slaughter one another. 
 
 If the United States wishes to stop war as an in- 
 stitution, that is, to undertake the policing of the 
 world, it will need a very big club for the purpose. 
 
 If I were an American statesman I should tell the 
 country flatly that it should maintain a Pacific navy 
 capable of resisting an attack from Japan and an 
 Atlantic navy capable of resisting an attack from 
 England, with Zeppelins on the same scale, a propor- 
 tionate land equipment of siege guns, and so forth. 
 And until the nations see the suicidal folly of staking 
 everything in the last instance on the ordeal of battle, 
 no other advice will be honest advice. 
 
 In "Major Barbara" Cusins abandons the teach- 
 ing of Greek to take up the manufacture of muni- 
 tions because he has the courage "to make war on 
 war." It is in this play that is expounded the 
 theory on which President Wilson based his policy. 
 Lady Britomart tells Cusins: "You must simply 
 sell cannons and weapons to people whose cause 
 is right and just, and refuse them to foreigners and 
 criminals." But Undershaft, the munition-maker, 
 replies: "No; none of that. You must keep the 
 true faith of an Armorer, or you don't come in here." 
 And when Cusins asks: "What on earth is the 
 true faith of an Armorer?" he answers: 
 
 To give arms to all men who offer an honest price 
 for them, without respect of persons or principles; 
 
 In]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 to aristocrat and republican, to Nihilist and Tsar, to 
 burglar and policeman, to black man, white man 
 and yellow man, to all sorts and conditions, all 
 nationalities, all faiths, all follies, all causes and all 
 crimes. ... I will take an order from a good man 
 as cheerfully as from a bad one. If you good people 
 prefer preaching and shirking to buying my weapons 
 and fighting the rascals, don't blame me. I can make 
 cannons ; I cannot make courage and conviction. 
 
 In this same conversation Shaw also gives a hint 
 of his theology, when Cusins says to Undershaft : 
 "You have no power. You do not drive this place; 
 it drives you. And what drives this place?" Un- 
 dershaft answers, enigmatically, "A will of which 
 I am a part." This doctrine of an immanent God 
 working through nature and man to higher things 
 was developed more definitely in an address which 
 Mr. Shaw delivered some years ago in the City 
 Temple at the invitation of the Reverend R. J. 
 Campbell. Here he argued that God created hu- 
 man beings to be "his helpers and servers, not his 
 sycophants and apologists." Shaw continues : 
 
 If my actions are God's nobody can fairly hold 
 me responsible for them; my conscience is mere 
 lunacy. . . . But if I am a part of God, if my eyes 
 are God's eyes, my hands God's hands, and my con- 
 science God's conscience then also I share his re- 
 sponsibility for the world ; and wo is me if the world 
 goes wrong ! 
 
 [12]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 This position enables him to explain evil on evolu- 
 tionary principles as "the Method of Trial and 
 Error." When Blake asks of the tiger, "Did he 
 who made the lamb make thee?" Shaw conceives 
 the Life-Force as replying : 
 
 Yes, it was the best I could devise at the time ; but 
 now that I have evolved something better, part of the 
 work of that something better, Man, to wit, is to kill 
 out my earlier attempt. And in due time I hope 
 to evolve Superman, who will in his turn kill out and 
 supersede Man, whose abominable cruelties, stupid- 
 ities and follies have utterly disappointed me. 
 
 In the unactable third act of his "Man and 
 Superman", 1 this theology is put into the mouths 
 of two most unpromising preachers, Don Juan and 
 the Devil. Here is found one of the most eloquent 
 arraignments of war in all literature. It is, remem- 
 ber, the Devil who is speaking : 
 
 I tell you that in the arts of life Man invests noth- 
 ing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature 
 herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery 
 all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine. 
 The peasant I tempt to-day eats and drinks what 
 was eaten and drunk by the peasants of ten thousand 
 years ago ; and the house he lives in has not altered 
 as much in a thousand centuries as the fashion of a 
 lady's bonnet in a score of weeks. But when he goes 
 out to slay, he carries a marvel of mechanism that 
 
 1 Published by Brentano's, 1904.
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 lets loose at the touch of his finger all the hidden 
 molecular energies, and leaves the javelin, the arrow, 
 the blowpipe of his fathers far behind. In the arts 
 of peace Man is a bungler. I have seen his cotton 
 factories and the like, with machinery that a greedy 
 dog could have invented if it had wanted money in- 
 stead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters and 
 bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles ; they are 
 toys compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine 
 torpedo boat. There is nothing in Man's industrial 
 machinery but his greed and sloth. His heart is in 
 his weapons. . . . Man measures his force by his 
 destructiveness. ... In the old chronicles you 
 read of earthquakes and pestilences, and are told 
 that these showed the power and majesty of God 
 and the littleness of Man. Nowadays the chronicles 
 describe battles. In a battle two bodies of men 
 shoot at one another with bullets and explosive 
 shells until one body runs away, when the others 
 chase the fugitives on horseback and cut them to 
 pieces as they fly. And this, the chronicle concludes, 
 shows the greatness and majesty of empires, and the 
 littleness of the vanquished. Over such battles 
 the people run about the streets yelling with delight, 
 and egg their Governments on to spend hundreds 
 of millions of money in the slaughter, whilst the 
 strongest ministers dare not spend an extra penny 
 in the pound against the poverty and pestilence in 
 which they themselves daily walk. . . . The plague, 
 the famine, the earthquake, the tempest were too 
 spasmodic in their action ; the tiger and the crocodile 
 were too easily satiated and not cruel enough ; some- 
 thing more constantly, more ruthlessly, more in- 
 geniously destructive was needed ; and that some- 
 thing was Man, the inventor of the rack, the stake, 
 
 [Hi
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 the gallows and the executioner ; of the sword and 
 gun ; above all, of justice, duty, patriotism, and all 
 the other isms by which even those clever enough to 
 be humanely disposed are persuaded to become the 
 most destructive of all destroyers. 
 
 Three years before the war Shaw wrote a little 
 satirical skit, "Press Cuttings", 1 which was deemed 
 so dangerous to both Britain and Germany that the 
 censors of both countries agreed in prohibiting its 
 production on the stage. Since the British censor 
 seemed to fear that the principal characters, "Bals- 
 quith" and "Mitchener", might be taken by the 
 public as referring to certain well-known statesmen, 
 Shaw offered to change the names to "Bones" and 
 "Johnson." But even that concession would not 
 satisfy the censor's scruples, so the play was never 
 publicly put on the stage, though, since there was 
 then no censorship of literature, it was published 
 as a book. Here is a bit of the dialogue : 
 
 Balsquith The Germans have laid down four 
 more Dreadnoughts. 
 
 Mitchener --Then you must lay down twelve. 
 
 Balsquith Oh, yes ; it's easy to say that ; but 
 think of what theyll cost. 
 
 Mitchener Think of what it would cost to be 
 invaded by Germany and forced to pay an indemnity 
 of five hundred millions. . . . 
 
 1 Published by Brentano's, 1909. 
 [IS]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 Balsquith After all, why should the Germans 
 invade us ? 
 
 Mitchener Why shouldnt they ? What else 
 have their army to do ? What else are they building 
 a navy for ? 
 
 Balsquith Well, we never think of invading 
 Germany. 
 
 Mitchener Yes, we do. I have thought of 
 nothing else for the last ten years. Say what 
 you will, Balsquith, the Germans have never rec- 
 ognized, and until they get a stern lesson, they 
 never will recognize, the plain fact that the in- 
 terests of the British Empire are paramount, and 
 that the command of the sea belongs by nature 
 to England. 
 
 Balsquith But if they wont recognize it, what 
 can I do ? 
 
 Mitchener Shoot them down. 
 
 Balsquith I cant shoot them down. 
 
 Mitchener Yes, you can. You dont realize it ; 
 but if you fire a rifle into a German he drops just as 
 surely as a rabbit does. 
 
 Balsquith But dash it all, man, a rabbit hasnt 
 got a rifle and a German has. Suppose he shoots 
 you down. 
 
 Mitchener Excuse me, Balsquith ; but that con- 
 sideration is what we call cowardice in the army. A 
 soldier always assumes that he is going to shoot, not 
 to be shot. 
 
 Balsquith Oh, come ! I like to hear you military 
 people talking of cowardice. Why, you spend your 
 lives in an ecstasy of terror of imaginary invasions. 
 I don't believe you ever go to bed without looking 
 under it for a burglar. 
 
 Mitchener A very sensible precaution, Bals- 
 
 [16]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 quith. I always take it. And in consequence Ive 
 never been burgled. 
 
 Balsquith Neither have I. Anyhow dont you 
 taunt me with cowardice. I never look under my 
 bed for a burglar. Im not always looking under 
 the nation's bed for an invader. And if it comes to 
 fighting, Im quite willing to fight without being 
 three to one. 
 
 Mitchener These are the romantic ravings of 
 a Jingo civilian, Balsquith. At least youll not 
 deny that the absolute command of the sea is essen- 
 tial to our security. 
 
 Balsquith - The absolute command of the sea 
 is essential to the security of the principality of 
 Monaco. But Monaco isnt going to get it. 
 
 Mitchener And consequently Monaco enjoys 
 no security. What a frightful thing ! How do 
 the inhabitants sleep with the possibility of in- 
 vasion, of bombardment, continually present to 
 their minds ? Would you have our English slum- 
 bers broken in this way ? Are we also to live 
 without security ? 
 
 Balsquith Yes. Theres no such thing as se- 
 curity in the world ; and there never can be as long 
 as men are mortal. England will be secure when 
 England is dead, just as the streets of London will 
 be safe when there is no longer a man in her streets 
 to be run over, or a vehicle to run over him. When 
 you military chaps ask for security you are crying 
 for the moon. 
 
 Mitchener Let me tell you, Balsquith, that in 
 these days of aeroplanes and Zeppelin airships, the 
 question of the moon is becoming one of the greatest 
 importance. It will be reached at no very distant 
 date. Can you as an Englishman tamely contem- 
 
 [17]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 plate the possibility of having to live under a Ger- 
 man moon ? The British flag must be planted there 
 at all hazards. 
 
 The play ends with the establishment of uni- 
 versal military training and equal suffrage, thus 
 doing away with a militarism that was both tim- 
 orous and tyrannical, snobbish and inefficient, and 
 at the same time making the nation truly democratic. 
 It is characteristic of Shaw that recently, when the 
 papers were discussing what sort of a monument 
 should commemorate Edith Cavell, he interjected 
 the unwelcome suggestion that the country could 
 honor her best by enfranchising her sex. 
 
 There is ever something in Bernard Shaw that 
 suggests the eighteenth century, the age of Swift 
 and Voltaire and Doctor Johnson. On the credit 
 side we must reckon lucidity, incisive wit, clear- 
 eyed logic, unashamed common sense, love of dis- 
 cussion and openness to new ideas, freedom from 
 prejudice of race or class, humanitarian aspiration 
 in a word the Aufkldrung. On the debit side 
 some items must unhappily be listed also : doc- 
 trinaire intellectualism, inability to see either the 
 limits of one's own doctrines or the point in other 
 people's, .inadequate appreciation of historic in- 
 stitutions and popular sentiments, contempt for 
 
 [18]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 romance, intolerance for science, and incapacity 
 for poetry. 
 
 Shaw seems to have inherited the famous saeva 
 indignatio of his great countryman, Swift. For all 
 his simple diet he is not so eupeptic as Chesterton. 
 Chesterton is most closely akin to Dickens, as may 
 be seen from his sympathetic appreciations of 
 Dickens's works. If I may be permitted to express 
 the relationship of the four in a mathematical 
 formula, I should put it : 
 
 Shaw : Chesterton = Swift : Dickens. 
 
 The mordant wit of the two Irishmen is a very 
 different thing from the genial humor of the two 
 Englishmen. Chesterton as usual makes a theo- 
 logical issue out of it. He says of Shaw : 
 
 He is not a humorist, but a great wit, almost as great 
 as Voltaire. Humor is akin to agnosticism, which 
 is only the negative side of mysticism. But pure 
 wit is akin to Puritanism ; to the perfect and painful 
 consciousness of the final fact in the universe. Very 
 briefly, the man who sees consistency in things is a 
 wit and a Calvinist. The man who sees incon- 
 sistency in things is a humorist and a Catholic. 
 However this may be, Bernard Shaw exhibits all 
 that is purest in the Puritan ; the desire to see truth 
 face to face even if it slay us, the high impatience 
 with irrelevant sentiment or obstructive symbol; 
 the constant effort to keep the soul at its highest 
 pressure and speed. His instincts upon all social
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 customs and questions are Puritan. His favorite 
 author is Bunyan. But along with what was in- 
 spiring and direct in Puritanism, Bernard Shaw has 
 inherited also some of the things that were cumber- 
 some and traditional. If ever Shaw exhibits a 
 prejudice it is a Puritan prejudice. 
 
 When Shaw in the preface of his "Plays for Puri- 
 tans" declared himself "a Puritan in art" it was 
 regarded as one of his jokes. So it was, but, as the 
 world has found out since, his jokes are not non- 
 sense. The main reason why the assumption and 
 ascription of the term "Puritan" to Shaw was 
 thought absurd was because of the prevalent mis- 
 conception of what sort of people the Puritans 
 were. The word in its common acceptance implies 
 orthodoxy, conventionality, prudishness, asceticism. 
 Now the real Puritan was a revolutionary of the 
 most radical type. Of all the socialists, anarchists, 
 and extremists of various views with whom I am 
 acquainted, there is not one who lives in antagonism 
 to his conventional contemporaries on so many 
 points as did the Puritan in his day. Milton's 
 pamphlets in favor of republicanism, free speech, 
 divorce, and new theology were as scandalous to the 
 seventeenth century as Shaw's "Revolutionist's 
 Handbook" to the nineteenth. The Puritans in- 
 sisted that marriage was a purely civil contract to 
 
 [20]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 be made and annulled by the State, and they even 
 forbade ministers to perform the ceremony, while 
 Catholics, Roman and Anglican, hold the contrary 
 theory, that marriage is a religious rite, only per- 
 formed by priests and indissoluble. The Pilgrim 
 Fathers who had a dozen children and two or three 
 wives apiece consecutive, of course are not to 
 be classed as ascetics ; and if any one thinks them 
 prudish, he has not read their literature. 
 
 Of course Shaw's opinions are different from those 
 of the Puritans, indeed quite the opposite on some 
 points. The Puritans, for example, were not averse 
 to blood, either in their food, their politics, or their 
 theology, while Shaw is almost Buddhistic in his 
 tender-heartedness. Androcles is his caricature of 
 himself. But still we may say that Shaw is puri- 
 tanical in his type of mind, his attitude toward the 
 established institutions and moral codes of his time, 
 and even in his faults. 
 
 Consider for instance his intolerance. No, I do 
 not mean dogmatism. That he comes to emphatic 
 conclusions is much to his credit and differentiates 
 him from the colloidal-minded mass of modern 
 writers who hold no convictions to have the courage 
 of. But he does not, for instance, content himself 
 with the attitude: "For the life of me I can't see 
 
 [21]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 what you find to admire in that absurd, romantic, 
 weak-minded, sentimental, butcherly Scott." He 
 would be quite justified in expressing his opinion 
 thus-wise. He must add : "There's nothing to 
 him and if you say there is, you are deceiving me 
 or what is wickeder yourself. In either case 
 you are an Idealist, which in my unique vocabulary 
 means liar." To which we might return an answer 
 of the Quaker sort : "Friend, thee has two eyes and 
 the usual number of brains and so a right to thine 
 opinion. But it need not follow that because thee 
 sees not a merit in a writer that it does in nowise 
 exist." Every one of Shaw's early heroes and hero- 
 ines, from the Unsocial Socialist and the daughter 
 of Mrs. Warren to Undershaft and Larry Doyle, 
 admires himself or herself immensely for saying to 
 every upholder of supposedly current morality : 
 "Bah! Humbug! Hypocrite!" To which again 
 the gentle reply should come: "Friend, I be not 
 an Humbug, nor yet an Hypocrite, nor even a Bah. 
 A man may differ from thee and yet be sincere in 
 his views, although this fact be dreamed not in thy 
 philosophy. I may be right or I may be wrong, 
 but if thee call me an Idealist yet again, lo, I will 
 lift this brick and cast it at thee." 
 
 Wells and Shaw are quite commonly bracketed 
 
 [22]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 like Scylla and Charybdis, Dickens and Thackeray, 
 Tennyson and Browning, and the Royal Blood- 
 sweating Chesterbelloc of Holy Writ. These coup- 
 lings are often absurd but rarely arbitrary. Some 
 likeness of thought or mood or some contrast of 
 viewpoint usually accounts for if not justifies such 
 literary mesalliances. Wells and Shaw are both 
 socialists, but this is not the tie, for, as the English 
 aristocrat said: "We are all socialists now." The 
 real likeness is that each is an intellectual anarchist, 
 although a political Socialist. Shaw is an isolated, 
 not to say eccentric, figure even for a Socialist. 
 Wells has gone further yet in his self-isolation by 
 leaving the Fabian movement. But the unlikeness 
 between the two men lies in the motive driving them 
 to their respective hermitages. Shaw may often 
 change his point of view, but at any given moment 
 it is almost brutally clear and detailed, and he in- 
 sists upon the fullest conformity on the part of his 
 would-be followers. If they fall a step short of his 
 iron boundary they are mere Philistines and bour- 
 geois, if they go a step beyond they are inefficient 
 and contemptible sentimental revolutionists. Shaw 
 always has "doots o' Jamie's orthodoxy." But 
 Wells seeks a Socialism without boundaries. Marx- 
 ian Socialism, Fabian Socialism, State Socialism are 
 
 [23]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 all too narrow and dogmatic for his taste as he has 
 said time and time again. Finding no true all- 
 inclusive, universe-wide Socialism he erects his own 
 banner for the nations to rally to and as a result 
 suffers the universal fate of those who try to found 
 Churches of Humanity and World Languages, that 
 is, merely succeeding in founding a new sect and a 
 new dialect. 
 
 Shaw has two defects which militate against his 
 popularity ; first, he is too conventional, and, second, 
 his conventions are peculiarly his own. "There is," 
 says his Undershaft, "only one true morality for 
 every man, but not every man has the same moral- 
 ity." Shaw is easily shocked, but never by the 
 same things that shock other people. 
 
 He himself ascribes his inability to see the same 
 as others to his sight being abnormally normal. 
 The oculist who examined them said they were the 
 only pair of absolutely correct eyes he had ever come 
 across. 
 
 Of course this illusion of possessing perfect mental 
 vision is common to everybody. All the opinions 
 I hold at this moment are, I believe, absolutely 
 correct; otherwise I should change them instanter, 
 though I must admit, seeing how often I have erred 
 in the past, that a priori the chances are against my 
 
 [24]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 being altogether right now. But what Shaw means 
 by his normality of vision is not merely common 
 confidence in one's own orthodoxy, but has reference 
 to his fanatical efforts to tear away all the illusions 
 of life and see things as they are. I do not think 
 that he often succeeds. Isis has many veils, and 
 those who have torn away the first and the second 
 are all the more likely to be deceived in mistaking 
 the third for the naked truth. 
 
 There is no doubting Shaw's intent to undeceive 
 the world or his willingness to undeceive himself. 
 "My way of joking is to tell the truth," says his 
 Father Keegan in "John Bull's Other Island." But 
 when he strains his eyes to see something clearly 
 he sees only that one thing. By following consis- 
 tently one line of logic instead of several as he 
 should he gets tangled up in illogicalities. His 
 mode of reasoning is often the reductio ad absurdum 
 of his own theories, and this is not a persuasive 
 way of argumentation. 
 
 By temperament Shaw is a mystic, but his con- 
 science compels him to assume the method of cold 
 intellectualism. He is an artist in the disguise of 
 a scientist, not an uncommon thing to see in this 
 so-called age of science. 
 
 Probably Shaw is not more inconsistent than any 
 [25]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 man of agile mind who is capable of seeing in suc- 
 cession different sides of a thing, but he is franker 
 in expressing the point of view he holds at the time. 
 Consequently he has many admirers but few fol- 
 lowers. They can't keep up. The only possible 
 Shavian is Shaw. 
 
 As somebody has remarked there are two ways 
 of saying a thing; there are writers who provoke 
 thought and writers who provoke thinkers. Shaw 
 does both. This is intentional, and he defends it 
 on the ground that; "If you don't say a thing in 
 an irritating way, you may just as well not say it 
 at all since nobody will trouble themselves about 
 anything that does not trouble them." In short 
 Shaw first got the ear of the public by pulling it, 
 and he does not know how to let go. Shaw's 
 argument is a wedge, but it is driven in blunt end 
 first. A startling statement, some monstrous para- 
 dox, is presented to the reader and rouses his an- 
 tagonism, then it is gradually qualified and whittled 
 down, or wittily diverted, so that it seems, in con- 
 trast to its first form, quite innocuous and acceptable, 
 and the reader is so relieved at not having to swallow 
 the dose first presented to him that he willingly 
 takes more than he otherwise would. Shaw has not 
 the judicial mind and does not want to have. "The 
 
 [26]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 way to get at the merits of a case," he says "is not to 
 listen to a fool who imagines himself impartial, but to 
 get it argued with reckless bias for and against." Put 
 this on your bookmark when you read Shaw. 
 
 George Bernard Shaw's collection of opinions is 
 unique. Perhaps no single view of his is quite 
 original, but the combination certainly is. He 
 belongs to no type and has founded no school. 
 This makes Shaw an exasperating person for some 
 people to read and causes them to set him down 
 as frivolous or inconsistent. They find, for in- 
 stance, from "The Revolutionist's Handbook" that 
 Shaw believes in eugenics and the importance of 
 natural science. "Good!" people say, "now we 
 can classify him." They read "The Doctor's 
 Dilemma" and find him a rabid antivivisectionist 
 and filled with a profound contempt for modern 
 medicine in general. Or they find out that he is a 
 vegetarian, a teetotaler, and a Puritan, and classify 
 him as some nonconformist minister of a pallid and 
 overconscientious type. When they read what he 
 actually has to say about marriage in "Misalli- 
 ance", about popular religion and salvation by 
 money and gunpowder in "Major Barbara", they 
 rush to the opposite conclusion that he is constitu- 
 tionally an unconstitutional rebel with a fondness 
 
 [27]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 for aimless violence such as appears in "Fanny's 
 First Play." Reading "The Conversion of Blanco 
 Bosnet" they discover that he is a devout Theist. 
 Reading the preface to "Androcles" they find him 
 a higher critic. As a Fabian pamphleteer he is in 
 favor of abolishing all individual property of a pro- 
 ductive sort and has no use for laissez faire. But 
 when it comes to children (see "Misalliance") there 
 cannot be too much laissez faire. He appears as an 
 ultramodernist, a universal cynic, a disillusioned 
 Ibsenite, and a disbeliever in the very existence 
 of progress. (Preface to "Man and Superman".) 
 He offended half the radicals by his "Impossibilities 
 of Anarchism" and the other half by his "Illusions 
 of Socialism", and the conservatives by both. 
 
 But those who will take the trouble to compare 
 these apparent antinomies will find that the con- 
 tradictions are not so great as they seem from their 
 paradoxical and partisan form, and that Shaw has 
 preserved his intellectual consistency to a remark- 
 able degree. 
 
 When Shaw first burst into London, a young, 
 red-haired Irishman, he announced himself as an 
 atheist, an anarchist, and a vegetarian, these heresies 
 being arranged in crescendo fashion, putting last 
 what was most calculated to shock the British 
 
 [28]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 public. Now when we look back over his career we 
 find that he has not been any more successful in 
 sticking to his youthful heresy than others are in 
 sticking to their youthful orthodoxy. Whether 
 he has ever violated his vegetarian faith by eating 
 a beefsteak on the sly I do not know, but he has 
 drifted far from orthodox anarchism, for Socialism 
 is, in theory at least, at the opposite pole from 
 anarchy. Once when Shaw was talking Socialism 
 in Hyde Park, he was much annoyed by the anar- 
 chists who circulated through the crowd, selling 
 copies of an early pamphlet of his on "The Illu- 
 sions of Socialism." As for his atheism he seems 
 to have left that still farther behind, for his present 
 theological views, if expressed in less provocative 
 language, would pass muster in many a pulpit 
 to-day. In fact, they have as it is. 
 
 In a recent letter to me, Mr. Shaw refers to the 
 cordial reception he always received when Reverend 
 Reginald Campbell invited him to occupy the pulpit 
 of City Temple, 1 and adds : 
 
 My greatest and surest successes as a public 
 speaker have been on religious subjects to religious 
 
 l Mr. McCabe, in his life of Shaw, gives an interesting account of 
 one of these addresses, that on " Christian Economics " at the City 
 Temple in 1913. But Shaw is too much of a Christian still to suit 
 McCabe. 
 
 [2 9 ]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 audiences ; but this is the common experience of all 
 speakers. People are still more concerned about 
 religion than anything else, and any reasonably 
 good preacher can easily leave the best political 
 spellbinder behind. 
 
 Shaw as a Socialist differs from others who bear 
 that name. He is too intense an individualist to 
 be a good party man. He puts no faith in Marx 
 as the prophet of the millennium, and he has no 
 Utopian vision of his own. But what chiefly dis- 
 tinguishes him as a reformer is his power of pene- 
 trating through shams to fundamental realities 
 and his ability to do original constructive thinking. 1 
 All of us can find fault with the existing order of 
 things, and most of us do. But to point out just 
 "what's wrong with the world" and to suggest a 
 practical line of improvement is not so easy. The 
 Fabian Society has done more than set off fire- 
 works and stir up mud. The Minority Report on 
 the reform of the Poor Law is a fine piece of con- 
 structive statesmanship. This Minority Report was 
 largely the work of the Fabian Society, though how 
 much Shaw had to do with it personally I do not 
 know. We now know, however, that he was the 
 
 1 See for instance Shaw's book on " The Common Sense of Municipal 
 Trading ", based upon his experience as Vestryman and Borough 
 Councillor. 
 
 [30]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 author of Fabian Tract Number 2 of 1884 that 
 startled the conservative classes of England, in- 
 cluding the orthodox Marxians. Here are a few 
 of the "Opinions Held by the Fabians" set forth 
 in this famous tract : 
 
 That since competition among producers ad- 
 mittedly secures to the public the most satisfactory 
 products, the state should compete with all its 
 might in every department of production. 
 
 That no branch of industry should be carried on 
 at a profit by the central administration. 
 
 That men no longer need special political privi- 
 leges to protect them against women, and that the 
 sexes should henceforth enjoy equal political rights. 
 
 That the established government has no more 
 right to call itself the State than the smoke of Lon- 
 don has to call itself the weather. 
 
 Shaw also wrote Fabian Tract Number 45 on 
 "The Impossibilities of Anarchism", in which he 
 pointed out what was not so clear in 1888 as it is 
 to-day, that society was rapidly becoming commu- 
 nistic through the efforts of those who were most 
 opposed to communism as a theory : 
 
 Most people will tell you that communism is known 
 in this country only as a visionary project advocated 
 by a handful of amiable cranks. Then they will 
 stroll across a common bridge, along the common 
 embankment, by the light of the common street 
 lamp shining alike on the just and the unjust, up
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 the common street and into the common Trafalgar 
 Square where on the smallest hint that communism 
 is to be tolerated for an instant in a civilized country, 
 they will be handily bludgeoned by a common police- 
 man and hauled off to the common gaol. 
 
 Shaw's latest contribution to Fabian literature, 
 the appendix to Pease's "History of the Fabian 
 Society", seems to me one of the most important, 
 for in the final paragraphs he points out clearly a 
 defect in our democracy that is rarely recognized 
 and altogether unremedied : 
 
 Another subject which has hardly yet been 
 touched, and which also must begin with deductive 
 treatment, is what may be called the democratiza- 
 tion of democracy, and its extension from mere 
 negative and very uncertain check on tyranny to a 
 positive organizing force. No experienced Fabian 
 believes that society can be reconstructed (or rather 
 constructed, for the difficulty is that society is as 
 yet only half removed from chaos) by men of the 
 type produced by popular election under existing 
 circumstances likely to be achieved before the re- 
 construction. The fact that a hawker cannot ply 
 his trade without a license whilst a man may sit in 
 Parliament without any relevant qualifications is a 
 typical and significant anomaly which will certainly 
 not be removed by allowing everybody to be a 
 hawker at will. Sooner or later, unless democracy 
 is to be discarded in a reaction of disgust such as 
 killed it in ancient Athens, democracy will demand 
 that only such men should be presented to its choice 
 
 [32]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 as have proved themselves qualified for more serious 
 and disinterested work than "stoking up" election 
 meetings to momentary and foolish excitement. 
 Without qualified rulers a Socialist State is im- 
 possible ; and it must not be forgotten (though the 
 reminder is as old as Plato) that the qualified men 
 may be very reluctant men instead of very ambitious 
 ones. 
 
 It is this doubt, more or less clearly felt, lest a 
 genuinely democratic society will fail to secure able 
 and qualified leaders, that lies at the bottom of the 
 prevalent distrust of popular government and causes 
 many persons to cling to antiquated and irrational 
 institutions like aristocracy and even monarchy. 
 
 I sent Mr. Shaw a copy of an editorial entitled, 
 "And There Shall Be No More Kings", in The 
 Independent of March 22, 1915, and the following, 
 penned on the margin of the clipping in his careful 
 handwriting, is his comment on what he calls "a 
 wise and timely article." 
 
 This war raises in an acute form the whole ques- 
 tion of republicanism versus German dynasticism. 
 After the mischief done by Franz Josef's second 
 childhood as displayed in his launching the forty- 
 eight-hour ultimatum to Serbia before the Kaiser 
 could return from Stockholm, the world has the 
 right indeed the duty to demand that mon- 
 archies shall at least be subject to superannuation 
 as well as to constitutional limitation. 
 
 l33l
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 All recent historical research has shown that the 
 position of a king, even in a jealously limited mon- 
 archy like the British, makes him so strong that 
 George III, who was childish when he was not under 
 restraint as an admitted lunatic, was uncontrollable 
 by the strongest body of statesmen the eighteenth 
 century produced. It is undoubtedly inconvenient 
 that the head of the state should be selected at short 
 intervals ; but it does not follow that he (or she) 
 should be an unqualified person or hold office for 
 life or be a member of a dynasty. 
 
 I may add that if the policy of dismembering the 
 Central Empires by making separate national states 
 of Bohemia, Poland and Hungary, and making 
 Serbia include Bosnia and Herzegovina, is seriously 
 put forward, it would involve making them republics ; 
 for if they were kingdoms their thrones would be 
 occupied by cousins of the Hohenzollerns, Haps- 
 burgs and Romanoffs, strengthening the German 
 hegemony instead of restraining it. 
 
 Perhaps the reader will think that I am rather 
 too presumptuous in professing to know just what 
 Shaw means and believes, when most people are 
 puzzled by him. So I should explain that I have 
 the advantage of a personal acquaintance with 
 Shaw. I may say without boasting or at least 
 without lying that at one period of his life I was 
 nearer to him than any other human being. The 
 distance between us was in fact the diameter of one 
 of those round tables in the A. B. C. restaurants, 
 and the period was confined to the time it took to 
 
 [34]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 consume a penny bun and a cup of tea, both being 
 paid for by him. I resorted to thorough Fletcher- 
 ing for the purpose of prolonging the interview, 
 and I wished that either he or I had been a smoker. 
 But although a vegetarian, he eschews the weed, 
 and smoking did not seem to be in accordance with 
 Fabian tactics. 
 
 The occasion was a recess in a Fabian Society 
 conference. I did not suppose that anything could 
 shut off Socialists in the midst of debate. The 
 theme of discussion was the House of Lords, which 
 the Fabians unanimously agreed ought to be abol- 
 ished, though no two of them agreed on the sub- 
 stitute. But while they were iconoclasts as to one 
 British institution, they rendered homage to another 
 by stopping to take tea in the midst of a lovely scrap. 
 
 The Fabian Society was indirectly the fruit of 
 one of the seeds which Thomas Davidson scattered 
 in many lands. You can track this peripatetic 
 philosopher through life, as you can Johnny Apple- 
 seed, by the societies that sprung up along his path- 
 way. In the Adirondacks he founded the Glenmore 
 School of Philosophy. In the Jewish quarter of 
 New York City another of his schools still thrives 
 and is enthused with something of his zeal for learn- 
 ing. The circle of earnest young men and women 
 
 [35]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 whom he gathered about him in London were the 
 founders of the Society for Psychical Research, 
 the Fellowship of the New Life, and the Fabian 
 Society. Yet Davidson himself was neither a 
 spiritualist nor a Socialist. 1 
 
 At the Fabian Society one sees Shaw in his ele- 
 ment. Every creature, says Browning, like the 
 moon, 
 
 Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, 
 One to show a woman when he loves her. 
 
 The Fabian Society is Shaw's own true love, and 
 to her he turns a different face than to the outside 
 world. As I watched him during the afternoon 
 preceding and following the brief period of per- 
 sonal contact of which I have been bragging I 
 was struck by the tact and kindliness which he 
 showed in the course of the discussion. There was 
 in his occasional remarks no trace of the caustic 
 and dogmatic tone which one gets from his writings. 
 He has been not so much the "shining light" or 
 "presiding genius" of the society, as one of the 
 
 'Pease, in his "History of the Fabian Society", gives an interesting 
 account of these diverse movements which in their inception were 
 closely allied. See also Knight's " Memorials of Thomas Davidson : 
 the Wandering Scholar" and James' delightful sketch, "The Knight- 
 Errant of the Intellectual Life", in his posthumous volume of "Mem- 
 ories and Studies." 
 
 [36]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 "wheel horses", and devoted himself diligently to 
 the detailed and inconspicuous work of the organiza- 
 tion. He had for twenty-seven years served on the 
 Executive Committee of the society when in 1911 
 he resigned to make way for the younger generation. 
 The question under discussion was, as I have 
 said, that of the reconstruction of the House of 
 Lords. This was shortly before the war, when such 
 questions were regarded as important. Various 
 plans were proposed in order to secure the election 
 of the fittest, when Shaw took the floor in defense of 
 genuine democracy. His argument ran like this, as 
 I remember it : 
 
 Our idea is that any 670 people is as good as any 
 other for governing, just as any twelve chosen by 
 chance on the jury have our lives and property in 
 their hands. 
 
 Now if I and Mr. Sydney Webb here were sent 
 to the House of Commons it should be with un- 
 limited opportunity to talk but not to vote. To 
 give us a vote would be to permit the violation of 
 the fundamental principle of democracy that people 
 should never be governed better than they want to 
 be. If you had a government of saints and phi- 
 losophers the people would be miserable. For in- 
 stance, I would want to stop all smoking and 
 meat-eating and liquor drinking, but like all superior 
 persons now I have to convince other people because 
 I cannot compel them. 
 
 No elected body can possibly be representative, 
 
 l37l
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 because no man is elected as a normal man, but as 
 an exceptional one. The House of Lords is more 
 representative than the House of Commons, be- 
 cause a man in the House of Commons is there 
 because he has uncommon abilities, high or low. 
 Representatives ought to be, like jurymen, samples 
 of the commonalty picked at random and compelled 
 to serve. Their function is to explain where the 
 shoe pinches. But the shoe must be made by skilled 
 legislators and statesmen, and these should be 
 eligible only when they have satisfied a very high 
 standard of qualification, and should sit without 
 votes though with unlimited powers of explanation 
 and criticism. 
 
 These remarks, delivered in a musical and sym- 
 pathetic voice with frequent flashes of a broad row 
 of white teeth, sounded very different from the 
 way they read in cold type. I do hope the phono- 
 graph will be perfected before Shaw dies or his voice 
 goes cracked, so posterity can have a vocal version 
 of his plays and prefaces. Otherwise his personality 
 stands little chance of being understood. 
 
 Shaw is tall and uses his eyeglasses for gesticulat- 
 ing as an orchestra leader uses a baton. His hair 
 was once a fiery red, but is now tempered into gray. 
 His eyes are light blue. Between his brows there 
 are three perpendicular wrinkles, but not of the 
 cross and fretful type. His face is long and pointed, 
 but he looks not in the least Mephistophelian as 
 
 [38]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 the caricaturists represent him. In short, Shaw is 
 not so black as he is painted by himself and others. 
 
 It is not necessary in this chapter, as it was in 
 the case of some of my "Twelve Major Prophets 
 of To-day", for me to give biographical details at 
 any length, for these are easily accessible. Shaw has 
 not been reticent in talking about himself in various 
 books and prefaces, and he is fortunate in having in 
 Professor Henderson of the University of North 
 Carolina a biographer of the Boswell kind 
 probably the best kind there is. His big volume 
 contains as much about Shaw's life and words up 
 to the time it was published, 1911, as any one needs 
 to know. Chesterton's book on Shaw is an im- 
 pressionistic sketch rather than a portrait, giving 
 the author an opportunity of saying "what's wrong 
 with the world", including Shaw. Other lives of 
 Shaw are mentioned in the appendix of this chapter. 
 
 George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, July 
 25, 1856. His father was an Irish gentleman, 
 Protestant, improvident and respectable, a whole- 
 sale dealer in corn, with a profound contempt for 
 all retail tradesmen. His mother was a musician, 
 and it was to her that Mr. Shaw owed his own 
 moderate talent and remarkable knowledge of 
 music. When he went to London at the age of 
 
 l39l
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 twenty, with artistic, musical and literary am- 
 bitions, his mother practically supported the family 
 by teaching music there. As Shaw says in one of 
 his autobiographical fragments : 
 
 I did not throw myself into the struggle for life. 
 I threw my mother into it. I was not a staff to my 
 father's old age. I hung on to his coat tails. His 
 reward was to live just long enough to read a review 
 of one of these silly novels written in an obscure 
 journal by a personal friend of my own, prefiguring 
 me to some extent as a considerable author. I 
 think, myself, that this is a handsome reward, far 
 better worth having than a nice pension from a 
 dutiful son struggling slavishly for his parents' 
 bread in some sordid trade. 
 
 His only schooling was at Dublin, where he says 
 he learned little, and this is confirmed by the school 
 records which place him near the bottom of his class. 
 His opinion of the sort of education he got he has 
 expressed in several places, especially in the preface 
 to "Misalliance." 
 
 My school made only the thinnest pretence of 
 teaching anything but Greek and Latin. . . . To 
 this day, though I can still decline a Latin noun and 
 repeat some of the old paradigms in the old meaning- 
 less way, because their rhythm sticks to me, I have 
 never yet seen a Latin inscription on a tomb that 
 I could translate throughout. Of Greek I can 
 decipher perhaps the greater part of the Greek 
 alphabet. In short I am, as to classical education, 
 
 [40]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 another Shakespeare. I can read French as easily 
 as English ; and under pressure of necessity, I can 
 turn to account some scraps of German and a little 
 operatic Italian ; but these three were never taught 
 at school. Instead, I was taught lying, dishonor- 
 able submission to tyranny, dirty stories, a blas- 
 phemous habit of treating love and maternity as 
 obscene jokes, hopelessness, evasion, derision, cow- 
 ardice, and all the blackguard's shifts by which the 
 coward intimidates other cowards. 
 
 Why is it that British authors give us such hor- 
 rible pictures of their school days ? They usually 
 look back upon them as a most unpleasant and 
 unprofitable period of their lives, and when they 
 attempt to eulogize it they make it all the more 
 shocking. Kipling in "Stalky and Company" re- 
 veals an even more detestable state of affairs than 
 Dickens does of "Dotheboys Hall." Shaw takes 
 the American view of it and condemns with horror 
 the "flagellomania" of the British schoolmaster. It 
 is curious to observe that in Great Britain the school- 
 masters have weapons, and the policemen have 
 none. In America clubs have been given to the 
 police, and the canes taken away from the teachers. 
 The New York school-teachers are not allowed to 
 deliver even a casual box on the ear or a friendly 
 shaking, yet they are making very decent citizens 
 out of most unpromising material, and the police- 
 
 [41]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 men's clubs are mostly used on the immigrants who 
 have been trained in the flagellant schools of Europe. 
 
 It is doubtless a good thing that Shaw did not 
 go through Oxford, but he should have had a course 
 in biology under Huxley such as Wells had. This 
 would have given him an acquaintance with the 
 aims and methods of modern science and freed him 
 from such prejudice as he displayed, for instance, 
 in "The Doctor's Dilemma" and "The Philanderer." 
 
 Shaw's early efforts at authorship did not meet 
 with encouragement. If we may take his word 
 for it, he earned six pounds in nine years by his pen, 
 and five of those came from writing a patent medicine 
 advertisement. He wrote five novels in five years, 
 all at first rejected by the book publishers. Four of 
 them, "The Unsocial Socialist", "The Irrational 
 Knot", "Cashel Byron's Profession", and "Love 
 Among the Artists" have since been reprinted 
 from the short-lived Socialist periodicals in which 
 they originally appeared. The first novel he wrote, 
 "Immaturity", has never been printed. 
 
 William Archer sent these novels to Robert 
 Louis Stevenson, then trying to recover his health 
 at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks. Stevenson's 
 letters refer to them as "blooming gaseous folly", 
 "horrid fun", "a fever dream of the most feverish", 
 
 [42]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 "I say, Archer, my God, what women!" "If Mr. 
 Shaw is below five and twenty, let him go his path ; 
 if he is thirty, he had best be told that he is a ro- 
 mantic and pursue romance with his eyes opened ; 
 perhaps he knows it ; God knows ! my brain is 
 softened." 
 
 A plan to relieve struggling authors and secure 
 the earlier recognition of genius by means of an 
 endowment fund and a system of substantial prizes 
 was once proposed by Upton Sinclair, author of 
 "The Jungle", who wrote to a number of authors, 
 asking their opinion of the scheme. Among those 
 who responded were Wells, Bennett, De Morgan, 
 Philpotts, Galsworthy, London, and Shaw. 1 I quote 
 part of what Shaw said about it because of its bio- 
 graphical interest : 
 
 There is only one serious and effective way of 
 helping young men of the kind in view, and that is 
 by providing everybody with enough leisure in the 
 intervals of well-paid and not excessive work to 
 enable them to write books in their spare time and 
 pay for the printing of them. Nothing else seems 
 to me to be really hopeful. I myself seem an ex- 
 ample of a man who achieved literary eminence 
 without assistance ; but as a matter of fact certain 
 remnants of family property made all the difference. 
 For fully nine years I had to sponge shamelessly 
 
 1 Printed in The Independent, July 28, 1910. 
 [431
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 on my father and mother; but even at that we 
 only squeezed through because my mother's grand- 
 father had been a rich man. In fact, I was just the 
 man for whom Upton wants to establish his fund. 
 Yet for the life of me I cannot see how any com- 
 mittee in the world could have given me a farthing. 
 All I had to show was five big novels which nobody 
 would publish, and as the publishers' readers by 
 whose advice they were rejected included Lord 
 Morley and George Meredith, it cannot be said that 
 I was in any worse hands than those of any com- 
 mittee likely to be appointed. Of course Sinclair 
 may say to this that if Morley and Meredith, in- 
 stead of having to advise a publisher as to the pros- 
 pects of a business speculation, had only had to 
 consider how to help a struggling talent without 
 reference to commercial consideration, they might 
 have come to my rescue. Unfortunately, I have seen 
 both their verdicts ; and I can assure Sinclair that 
 I produced on both of them exactly the impression 
 that is inevitably produced in every such case : that 
 is, that I was a young man with more cleverness 
 than was good for me and that what I needed was 
 snubbing and not encouraging. No doubt there 
 are talents which are not aggressive and do not 
 smell of brimstone ; but these are precisely the 
 talents which are marketable, except, of course, 
 in the case of the highest poetry, which, however, 
 is out of the question anyhow as a means of liveli- 
 hood. William Morris, when he was at the height 
 of his fame as a poet, long after the publication of 
 his popular poem, "The Earthly Paradise", told me 
 that his income from his poems was about a hundred 
 a year ; and I happen to know that Robert Brown- 
 ing threatened to leave the country because the 
 
 [44]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 Income Tax Commissioners assessed him with a 
 modest but wholly imaginary income on the strength 
 of his reputation. Poetry is thus frankly a matter 
 of endowment, but for the rest I think a writer's 
 chance of being helped by the fund would be in 
 inverse ratio to his qualifications as conceived by 
 Upton Sinclair. 
 
 Shaw's first essays in the field where he was to 
 attain his greatest success were as discouraging as his 
 efforts at novel writing. His first play, "Widower's 
 Houses", dealing with tainted money, shocked but 
 did not attract the public. His "The Philanderer" 
 was published before a theater would accept it. 
 His third play, "Mrs. Warren's Profession", was 
 prohibited by the censor. Of the seven that fol- 
 lowed only one could be called a decided success 
 on its first presentation in London. But in book 
 form, with attractively written stage directions and 
 argumentative prefaces, they found a host of readers 
 who wanted to see them in the theater. "Candida" 
 was not presented in London till 1904, nearly ten 
 years after it was written. It was with "Candida" 
 that Arnold Daly introduced Shaw to the theater- 
 going public of America, and for the last few years 
 there have often been three Shaw plays running 
 at the same time in New York. 
 
 Shaw's plays were popular in America when they 
 [451
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 were tabooed or pooh-poohed in England. His 
 "Pygmalion" had its -premiere in the Hofburg- 
 theater in Vienna instead of London. I saw it, or 
 rather heard it, since it is a phonetic instead of a 
 spectacular play, at the Deutsches Theater of Irv- 
 ing Place, New York, in March, 1914, six months 
 before Mrs. Patrick Campbell gave it here in Eng- 
 lish. In spite of the fact that the play depends 
 upon variations in English dialects, it was given 
 better in the German than in the English. 
 
 Shaw is in fact an internationalist, much more 
 honored in America, Russia, Germany, France, 
 Scandinavia, and Japan than in his own country, 
 that is, Ireland. It must be interesting to see 
 "You Never Can Tell" or "Man and Superman" 
 on the Tokyo stage. The Kobe Herald says: "He 
 appeals to the Japanese of progressive ideas because 
 he prefers potatoes, cabbages and beans to porter- 
 house steak and lamb chops." 
 
 The reason why Shaw's prefaces read so well and 
 his plays go better on the stage than would be antici- 
 pated is because they are composed by ear. Since 
 reading aloud has gone out of fashion, there has 
 arisen a generation of young writers who do not 
 realize that language is intended to be spoken. 
 Consequently one has to read them by eye only, 
 
 [46]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 switching off for the time the internal auditory 
 apparatus so as to avoid their discords and dull 
 rhythm. A little girl who was trying to read to 
 herself a story by one of our pyrotechnic authors 
 suddenly threw down the magazine with the cry : 
 "I can't read this any more ! It dazzles my ears." 
 
 Shaw is a musician, and he writes musical prose. 
 He uses shorthand in composing, which is the next 
 best thing to dictating to a phonograph. Naturally 
 he resents the established spelling of English which 
 preserves the form of words while allowing the words 
 themselves to decay, thus sacrificing speech to 
 print. He has often argued for phonetic spelling, 1 
 and has used as much of it in his works as his pub- 
 lisher would permit. The point he makes in the 
 following passage is undeniably proving true : 
 
 All that the conventional spelling has done is to 
 conceal the one change that a phonetic spelling 
 might have checked ; namely, the changes in pro- 
 nunciation, including the waves of debasement 
 that produced the half-rural cockney of Sam Weller 
 and the modern metropolitan cockney of Drink- 
 water in "Captain Brassbound's Conversion." . . . 
 Refuse to teach the Board School legions your pro- 
 nunciation, and they will force theirs on you by mere 
 force of numbers. And serve you right. 
 
 'For Shaw's opinions on phonetics see "Pygmalion", "Captain 
 Brassbound's Conversion", and Henderson's biography, p. 326. 
 
 [471
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 Shaw's treatment of the Salvation Army in 
 "Major Barbara" showed that he knew more about 
 religion than some of his churchly critics. So, too, 
 his defense of the Salvation Army music in the 
 London Standard in 1905 proved that he knew more 
 about music than those who sneered at the Army 
 bands. The Germans, who are now fond of analyz- 
 ing the English character, have discussed at length 
 the question of why such an unmusical people 
 should have good music in the Salvation Army. 1 
 
 The 125-page preface to "Androcles and the 
 Lion" is devoted to a rereading of the Gospels and 
 a rewriting of the life of Christ. Shaw interprets 
 the New Testament like a higher critic but applies 
 it like an early Christian. He rejects the resurrecr 
 tion but accepts the communism. He believes in 
 the Life Force and Its Superman as others do in 
 God and His Messiah. Shaw's Superman obviously 
 belongs to another genus from Nietzsche's Ueber- 
 mensch. He says in the preface to "Misalliance": 
 
 The precise formula for the Superman, ci-devant 
 The Just Made Perfect, has not yet been discovered. 
 Until it is, every birth is an experiment in a Great 
 Research which is being conducted by the Life 
 Force to discover that formula. 
 
 1 Von unmusikalischen England und seiner musikalischen Heilsarmee. 
 Deutscher Wille, February, 1916. 
 
 [483
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 This eugenical and well meaning, but far from 
 omnipotent creator, bears a strong resemblance to 
 Bergson's Elan vital, but Shaw was writing about 
 the Life Force long before Bergson wrote his "Cre- 
 ative Evolution." If there was any borrowing 
 about it, both borrowed from Schopenhauer. But 
 Shaw and Bergson, being kindly men and no pessi- 
 mists, have put a kind heart into Schopenhauer's 
 ruthless Will. 
 
 If I were to sum up Shaw in two words it would 
 be that his distinguishing characteristics are courage 
 and kind-heartedness. The sight of suffering and 
 injustice drives him mad, and then he runs amuck, 
 slashing right and left, without much regard to whom 
 he hits and no regard at all as to who hits him. He 
 is, like Swift, a cruel satirist through excess of 
 sympathy. If Ibsen is right, that "the strongest 
 man in the world is he who stands most alone", 
 then George Bernard Shaw is not to be ignored. 
 
 How TO READ SHAW 
 
 It does not matter much which of Shaw's books 
 you read first, for after reading it, whichever it is, 
 you will probably read all the others that you can 
 get your hands on. If I must be more specific in 
 recommending a book to begin on, I would suggest 
 that "Major Barbara", "Man and Superman", 
 and "Androcles and the Lion" will give you an idea 
 
 [49]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 of what Shaw is like ; then, if you are interested, 
 you can pick out others from the following chron- 
 ological list in which I have indicated by a few 
 words the theme, scene, or argument of the play 
 and its preface. All Shaw's works are published 
 by Brentano's, New York, three plays in one 
 volume, or separately. 
 
 "Widowers' Houses", 1892 (tainted money). 
 "The Philanderer", 1893 (Ibsenites and esthetes). 
 "Mrs. Warren's Profession", 1893 (prostitution). 
 "Arms and the Man", 1894 (Serbian and Bulgarian 
 
 war; anti-militarism). 
 "Candida", 1894 (triangle). 
 "You Never Can Tell", 1895 (farce comedy; the 
 
 most popular of Shaw's plays on the stage). 
 "The Man of Destiny", 1895 (one act, Napoleon 
 
 in an unconventional aspect). 
 
 "The Devil's Disciple", 1896 (American revolu- 
 tion). 
 
 "Caesar and Cleopatra", 1898 (Egypt Anglicized). 
 "Captain Brassbound's Conversion", 1899 (Mo- 
 rocco ; Raisuli, Perdicaris, et aL). 
 "The Admirable Bashville or Constancy Unre- 
 warded", 1902 (His novel: "Cashel Byron's 
 Profession" put into blank verse "because it 
 is easier to write than prose"). 
 
 "Man and Superman", 1903 (romance topsy- 
 turvey ; marriage by conquest on the part of 
 the woman ; containing "The Revolutionist's 
 Handbook" and interlude on heaven and hell). 
 "John Bull's Other Island", 1904 (Irish and Eng- 
 lish temperament contrasted, Home Rule ques- 
 tion). 
 
 "Passion, Poison and Petrification ", 1905 (burlesque 
 extravaganza). 
 
 [50]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 "Major Barbara", 1905 (Salvation Army and muni- 
 tion manufacture; problem of poverty). 
 
 "How He Lied to her Husband", 1905 (parody on 
 "Candida"). 
 
 "The Doctor's Dilemma", 1906 (satire on medical 
 professor and attack on vivisection). 
 
 "Getting Married", 1908 (absurdities of marriage 
 laws). 
 
 "The Showing-up of Blanco Bosnet", 1909 (Wild 
 West ; psychology of conversion ; prohibited by 
 censor). 
 
 "Press Cuttings", 1909 (anti-militarism). 
 
 "Misalliance", 1909 ("a debate in one sitting"; 
 preface on parents and children). 
 
 "The Dark Lady of the Sonnets", 1910 (showing 
 how Shakespeare got his phrases). 
 
 "Fanny's First Play", 1911 (satire of dramatic 
 critics and middle-class morality). 
 
 "Androcles and the Lion", 1911 (early Christians; 
 lion from Oz; disquisition on the canon of the 
 New Testament and the possibility of living 
 Christianity). 
 
 "Overruled", 1912 (philandering again). 
 
 "Pygmalion", 1913 (phonetics and class prejudice, 
 with a postscript proving that you never can 
 tell how a Shaw play will come out). 
 
 "Great Catherine", 1913 (boisterous farce of 
 Catherine II ; contrast of Russian and British 
 temperament). 
 
 "The Music Cure", 1914 (Marconi scandal; used 
 as curtain raiser for Chesterton's "Magic", 
 unpublished). 
 
 "Three Plays by Brieux", (Brentano's, 1911; con- 
 tain "Damaged Goods" and other plays in 
 which the French playwright attacks social
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 evils as vigorously and outspokenly though not 
 so wittily as Shaw. They are translated by Mrs. 
 Bernard Shaw, and Mr. Shaw provides a preface). 
 
 Two farcical plays of the war, "The Inca of Peru- 
 salem" and "Augustus does his Bit", produced by 
 the London Stage Society and the former also in 
 New York, are ascribed to Shaw though unacknowl- 
 edged by him. 
 
 Of Shaw's critical work we have in book form 
 "The Perfect Wagnerite", 1895, and "The Quintes- 
 sence of Ibsen", 1890, which championed two un- 
 popular causes; "The Sanity of Art", 1908, attack- 
 ing Nordau's theory of the degeneracy of artists ; 
 and two volumes of "Dramatic Opinions and 
 Essays", which, although reviews of current plays 
 of the nineties, retain a permanent value. Shaw's 
 four early novels "Cashel Byron's Profession", 
 "An Unsocial Socialist", "Love Among the Artists", 
 and "The Irrational Knot" are of less interest than 
 his plays. 
 
 His socialism has found expression in "The Com- 
 mon Sense of Municipal Trading" and "Fabian 
 Essays in Socialism", and numerous other tracts 
 and articles as well as most of his plays and prefaces. 
 
 Shaw's fugitive contributions to journalism are 
 too numerous and scattered to be cited here, but I 
 will mention a few of them that are of special interest : 
 "The Case Against Chesterton" (Metropolitan, 
 1916); "The Case for Equality" (Metropolitan, 
 1913); "The German Case Against Germany" 
 (New York Times, April 16, 1916). 
 
 More has been written about Shaw's personality 
 than about all the rest of my "Twelve Major 
 Prophets" put together. The chief and authorized 
 biography is "George Bernard Shaw: His Life and 
 
 [52]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 Work" by Professor Archibald Henderson of the 
 University of North Carolina. (Cincinnati : Stewart 
 and Kidd, 1911.) It contains a full bibliography 
 up to its date and some twenty portraits as well as 
 much inaccessible and unpublished material. Be- 
 sides this we have : 
 
 "George Bernard Shaw: A Critical Study" by 
 Joseph McCabe (London : Paul, French, Trubner, 
 1914); "Bernard Shaw: A Critical Study" by 
 Percival P. Howe (Dodd, Mead, 1915); "George 
 Bernard Shaw" by G. K. Chesterton (John Lane, 
 1909); "Bernard Shaw as Artist-Philosopher", an 
 exposition of Shavianism, by Renee M. Deacon 
 (John Lane, 1910); "George Bernard Shaw: His 
 Plays" by H. L. Mencken (Luce, 1909); "Bernard 
 Shaw" by Holbrook Jackson (Jacobs, 1907) ; and 
 "The Innocence of Bernard Shaw" by D. Scott 
 (Doran, 1914). 
 
 Latest of all is "Bernard Shaw: The Man and 
 the Mask" by Richard Burton, a study of his 
 plays in chronological order by the ex-president 
 of the Drama League of America (Henry Holt, 
 November, 1916). 
 
 "Bernard Shaw: An Epitaph" by John Palmer 
 (London: Richards, 1915), "Harlequin or Patriot" 
 (Century). Mr. Palmer comes to bury Shaw, not 
 to praise him, yet gives him more credit than many 
 of his admirers. 
 
 Biographical data and criticism are also to be 
 found in Archibald Henderson's "European Dram- 
 atists" (Stewart and Kidd) and his "Interpreters 
 of Life and the Modern Spirit" (Kennerley) ; Ford 
 Madox HuefFer's "Memories and Impressions"; 
 R. A. Scott-James's "Personality in Literature" 
 which also contains sketches of Wells and Chester- 
 
 l53l
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 ton (London: Seeker, 1913); E. E. Hale's "Dram- 
 atists of To-day" (Holt, 1911); J. G. Huneker's 
 "Iconoclasts" (Scribner, 1905); Cyril Maude's 
 "The Haymarket Theater"; Edward Pease's "His- 
 tory of the Fabian Society" (London, 1916); Her- 
 man Bernstein's "With Master Minds" (Universal 
 Series Co., New York, 1913); and "Bernard Shaw 
 et son ceuvre" by Professor Cestre of the University 
 of Bordeaux (Mercure de France, 1912). 
 
 Augustine F. Hamon, who has translated many 
 of Shaw's plays into French, has published the 
 lectures he gave on them at the Sorbonne in the 
 volume "Le Moliere du XX e siecle" (Paris : Figuiere, 
 1913) which has been translated "The Twentieth 
 Century Moliere" (Stokes, 1915), and a separate 
 chapter of it as "The Technique of Bernard Shaw's 
 Plays" (London: Daniel, 1912). 
 
 The following articles on Shaw are noteworthy 
 for one reason or another : 
 
 "Shaw Contra Mundum" by C. B. Chilton in 
 The Independent, March 8, 1906, with a sharp re- 
 tort by Shaw; Personal reminiscences by Frank 
 Harris in Pearson's, 1916; Controversies of Shaw 
 with Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton in The 
 New Witness, 1916; "Bernard Shaw, Musician" 
 by Florence Boylston Pelo in The Bookman, March, 
 1916; "Shaw in Portrait and Caricature" by H. 
 Jackson in The Idler, 1908; "Shavian Religion" 
 by the Rev. P. Gavan Duffy in The Century, vol. 87, 
 p. 908; "Mr. Bernard Shaw's Philosophy" by 
 A. K. Rogers in Hibbert Journal, 1910; "George 
 Bernard Shaw" by D. A. Lord in Catholic World, 
 March and April, 1916; "Bernard Shaw et la guerre" 
 by Christabel Pankhurst in La Revue, 1915; "The 
 Philosophy of Shaw" by Archibald Henderson in 
 
 [54]
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 
 
 Atlantic, vol. 103, p. 227; "Die Quintessenz des 
 Shawismus" by Helena Richter (Leipzig, 1913); 
 "Bernard Shaw" by Julius Bab (Berlin: Fischer). 
 
 The ingenious Allen Upward has written a futur- 
 istic satire on Shaw in the form of a play : "Paradise 
 Found or the Superman Found Out" (Houghton 
 Mifflin, 1915). In Act I The Sleeper Wakes, a la 
 Wells, two hundred years hence, finding himself in 
 the Shaw Memorial Hall in the custody of the Most 
 Noble Order of Hereditary Fabians, chief of whom 
 are the Lady Wells and the Lord Keir-Hardie. The 
 second act is set in the Headquarters of the Anti- 
 Shavian League, which the awakened and dis- 
 illusionized Shaw joins. The third act is in the 
 Cabinet of H. V. M. Maharajah Sri Singh Bahadar, 
 for of course India outvoted England as soon as 
 universal suffrage was introduced into the British 
 Empire. 
 
 [551
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 SCIENTIFIC FUTURIST 
 
 We are in the beginning of the greatest change that 
 humanity has ever undergone. There is no shock, no 
 epoch-making incident but then there is no shock 
 at a cloudy daybreak. At no point can we say, 
 "Here it commences, now; last minute was night 
 and this is morning." But insensibly we are in the 
 day. If we care to look, we can foresee growing 
 knowledge, growing order, and presently a deliberate 
 improvement of the blood and character of the race. 
 And what we can see and imagine gives us a measure 
 and gives us faith for what surpasses the imagination. 
 
 It is possible to believe that all the past is but the 
 beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has 
 been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible 
 to believe that all that the human mind has ever ac- 
 complished is but the dream before the awakening. 
 We cannot see, there is no need for us to see, what 
 this world will be like when the day has fully come. 
 We are creatures of the twilight. But it is out of our 
 race and lineage that minds will spring that will reach 
 back to us in our littleness to know us better than we 
 know ourselves, and that will reach forward fearlessly 
 to comprehend this future that defeats our eyes. 
 
 [56]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 All this world is heavy with the promise of greater 
 things, and a day will come, one day in the unending 
 succession of days, when beings, beings who are now 
 latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall 
 stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, 
 and shall laugh and reach out their hands amid the 
 stars. "The Discovery of the Future" (1902). 
 
 Is Wells also among the prophets ? Surely, and 
 none with better right, even though we use the 
 word "prophet" in its narrowest and most ordinary 
 sense as one who foretells the future. He has fore- 
 told many futures for us, some utterly abhorrent, 
 others more or less attractive. If we shudder at the 
 thought of humanity on a freezing world fighting a 
 losing battle with gigantic crustaceans as in "The 
 Time Machine", or being suffocated on a blazing 
 world as in "The Star", or being crushed under 
 the tyranny of an omnipotent trust as in "When 
 the Sleeper Wakes" -if none of these please us, 
 then we have the option of a businesslike and effi- 
 cient organization of society under the domination 
 of the engineer as in "Anticipations", or a socialistic 
 state under the beneficent sway of the Samurai as 
 in "A Modern Utopia," or an instantaneous ameliora- 
 tion of human nature as " In the Days of the Comet." 
 In thus presenting various solutions to the world 
 problem Wells is not inconsistent. Every com- 
 
 [57]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 plicated equation has several roots, some of them 
 imaginary. In solving a physical problem the 
 scientist begins by disentangling the forces involved 
 and then, taking them one at a time, calculates 
 what would be the effect if the other forces did 
 not act. So Wells is applying the scientific method 
 to sociology when he attempts to isolate social forces 
 and deal with them singly. If nothing intervenes 
 to divert it, says the hydraulic engineer, the water of 
 this mountain stream will develop such a momentum 
 on reaching the valley. If no limitations are placed 
 upon the consolidation of capital, says Mr. Wells, 
 we may have a handful of directors ruling the world, 
 as' depicted in "When the Sleeper Wakes." 
 
 In its power to forecast the future science finds 
 both its validation and justification. By this alone 
 it tests its conclusions and demonstrates its use- 
 fulness. In fact, the sole object of science is proph- 
 ecy, as Ostwald and Poincare make plain. The 
 mind of the scientific man is directed forward and 
 he has no use for history except as it gives him data 
 by which to draw a curve that he may project into 
 the future. It is, therefore, not a chance direction 
 of his fancy that so many of Wells's books, both 
 romances and studies, deal with the future. It is 
 the natural result of his scientific training, which 
 
 [58]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 not only led him to a rich unworked field of fictional 
 motives, but made him consider the problems of 
 life from a novel and very illuminative point of 
 view. He gave definite expression to this philosophy 
 in a remarkable address on "The Discovery of the 
 Future", delivered at the Royal Institution of Lon- 
 don, January 24, 1902. Here he shows that there 
 is a growing tendency in modern times to shift the 
 center of gravity from the past to the future and 
 to determine the moral value of an act by its con- 
 sequences rather than by its relation to some prece- 
 dent. The justification of a war, for instance, may 
 either be by reference to the past or to the future ; 
 that is, it may be based either upon some supposi- 
 titious claim and violated treaty, or upon the as- 
 sumed advantage to one or both parties. This 
 idea, that in the moral evaluation of an act its 
 results should be taken into consideration, has been 
 popularly ascribed to the Jesuits, but since they 
 have repeatedly and indignantly denied that it 
 ever formed part of their teaching, it is questionable 
 whether they could claim it now when it is becom- 
 ing fashionable. At any rate, it is interesting to 
 note that Wells gave very clear expression to this 
 pragmatic principle five years before the publication 
 of "Pragmatism" by James. 
 
 159]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 I hope that Mr. Wells will work out in detail his 
 theory of prevision as a motive for morality. We 
 cannot have too many such motives, and it is quite 
 possible that this factor has not been fully recog- 
 nized in our ethical systems, though I have no 
 doubt that, as is usually the case with discoveries, 
 especially in ethics, the theory is not quite so novel 
 as it seems to him. In the meantime, I would 
 call his attention to two weak points in argument, as 
 he has sketched it in this lecture. He gives as an 
 example of the two ways of looking at a problem 
 the old question of whether a bad promise is better 
 broken or kept. The "legal mind" would regard 
 the promise as inviolable; the "creative mind" 
 would say that in view of future consequences it 
 should be disregarded. But I would suggest that, if 
 morality is, as he defines it, "an overriding of im- 
 mediate and personal considerations out of regard 
 to something to be attained in the future", the 
 one who viewed the act most clearly in the light 
 of the future would keep the promise even at the 
 cost of some suffering to himself and others rather 
 than bring the lack of confidence which results 
 from a violated oath. 
 
 I would also point out that the followers of dogma 
 are not to be classed so positively with those who 
 
 [60]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 look only on the past. Certainly those whose 
 morality is based on the hope of heaven and the 
 fear of hell and this is too numerous a class to 
 be ignored are as truly guided by their ideas 
 of the future as are those who are working for the 
 prosperity of the "Beyond-Man" some thousand 
 years hence. Jonathan Edwards's first resolution 
 was typical. It reads : 
 
 I. Resolved, That I will do whatsoever I think to 
 be most to God's glory and my own good, profit and 
 pleasure, ON THE WHOLE ; without any consideration 
 of the time, whether now, or never so many myriads 
 of ages hence ; to do whatever I think to be my duty, 
 and most for the good and advantage of mankind in 
 general whatever difficulties I meet with, how 
 many and how great soever. 
 
 The highest morality is attained, in my opinion, 
 by the class which Mr. Wells despises namely, 
 those who disregard neither causes nor effects, but 
 consider every act in the light of both the past and 
 the future. For this reason we are grateful to Mr. 
 Wells for the light he is giving us on the future by 
 his efforts in scientific prophecy. 
 
 Wells defines two divergent types of mind by 
 the relative importance they attach to things past 
 or things to come. The former type he calls the 
 legal or submissive mind, "because the business, 
 
 [61]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 the practice and the training of a lawyer dispose 
 him toward it ; he of all men must most constantly 
 refer to the law made, the right established, the 
 precedent set, and most consistently ignore or con- 
 demn the thing that is only seeking to establish it- 
 self." In opposition to this is "the legislative, 
 creative, organizing, masterful type", which is 
 perpetually attacking and altering the established 
 order of things; it is constructive and "interprets 
 the present and gives value to this or that entirely 
 in relation to things designed or foreseen." The 
 use of the term "legislative" for this latter type is 
 confusing, at least to an American, because un- 
 fortunately most of our legislators are lawyers and 
 have minds of the legal or conventional type. 
 "Scientific" would be a better term than "legis- 
 lative", because most of our real revolutions in 
 thought and industry originate in the laboratory. 
 
 In his "Modern Utopia" Wells introduces a 
 more complete classification of mankind into (i) the 
 Poietic, that is, the creative and original genius, 
 often erratic or abnormal ; (2) the Kinetic, that 
 is, the efficient, energetic, "business man" type; 
 (3) the Dull, "the people who never seem to learn 
 thoroughly or hear distinctly or think clearly", 
 and (4) the Base, those deficient in moral sense. 
 
 [62]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 The first two categories of Wells, the Poietic and 
 Kinetic, correspond roughly to Ostwald's Roman- 
 ticist and Classicist types of scientific men. 1 I 
 have laid stress upon Wells's point of view and 
 classification of temperaments because it seems to 
 me that it gives the clue to his literary work. This 
 is voluminous and remarkably varied, yet through 
 all its forms can be traced certain simple leading 
 motives. Indeed I am unable to resist the tempta- 
 tion to formulate his favorite theme as : The reaction 
 of society against a disturbing force. 
 
 This certainly is the basic idea of much of his 
 work and most of the best of it. He hit upon it 
 early and he has repeated it in endless variations 
 since. The disturbing force may be an individual 
 of the creative or poietic type, an overpowering 
 passion, a new idea, a social organization or a 
 material change in the conditions of life. Whatever 
 it may be, the natural inertia of society causes it 
 to resist the foreign influence, to enforce compliance 
 upon the aberrant individual, or to meet the new 
 conditions by as little readjustment as possible. 
 Usually the social organism is successful in over- 
 powering the intruder or rebel, and on the whole 
 we must .admit that this is advantageous, even 
 
 1 See "Major Prophets of To-day", p. 232. 
 [6 3 ]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 though it sometimes does involve the sacrifice of 
 genius and the retardation of progress. Certainly 
 no one is good enough or wise enough to be trusted 
 with irresponsible power. 
 
 This is the lesson of "The Invisible Man." We 
 all have been struck, probably, by a thought of 
 the advantages which personal invisibility would 
 confer. It is one of the most valued of fairy gifts. 
 But perhaps only Wells has thought of the disad- 
 vantages of invisibility, how demoralizing such a 
 condition would be to the individual, and yet how 
 powerless he would be against the mass of ordinary 
 people. Assuming that a man had discovered a 
 way to become invisible by altering the refractive 
 power of his body, as broken glass becomes invisible 
 in water, in what situation would he be ? He 
 would be naked, of course, and he could not carry 
 anything in his hands or eat in public. If it were 
 winter he would leave tracks and would catch 
 cold and sneeze. So the invisible man who starts 
 to rob and murder at his own sweet will is soon 
 run down by boys, dogs, and villagers as ignomini- 
 ously as any common thief. 
 
 A more artistic expression to the same theme is 
 given in "The Country of the Blind." A young 
 man tumbled into an isolated valley of the Andes 
 
 [64]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 where lived a community which had through some 
 hereditary disease lost many generations ago the 
 power of sight. The stranger first thought of the 
 proverb, "In the country of the blind the one- 
 eyed man is king", but when he tried to demon- 
 strate his superiority he found it impossible. His 
 talk about "seeing" the natives held to be the 
 ravings of a madman and his clumsiness in their 
 dark houses as proof of defective senses. He was 
 as much at a disadvantage in a community where 
 everything is adapted to the sightless as a blind 
 man is in ours. He falls in love with a girl, but 
 before he is allowed to marry her he must be cured 
 of his hallucinations ; a simple surgical operation, 
 the removal of the two irritable bodies protuberant 
 from his brain, will restore him to normality, say 
 the blind surgeons, and make a sane and useful 
 citizen of him. The entreaties of his lady love are 
 added to the coercion of public opinion to induce 
 him to consent. The exceptional man is beaten, 
 he must either conform to the community or leave 
 it. No matter how the story ends. The true 
 novelist and dramatist, like the true mathematician, 
 finds his satisfaction in correctly stating a problem, 
 not in working it out. 
 
 The theme of these parables, the comparative 
 [6 5 ]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 powerlessness of the individual, however exception- 
 ally endowed, against the coercive force of environ- 
 ment, Wells has developed at length in his novels; 
 in "The New Machiavelli", for instance, where a 
 statesman at the height of his public usefulness 
 is overthrown and banished because he had suc- 
 cumbed to selfish passion and violated the moral 
 code. Parnell is popularly supposed to be the 
 model for this character rather more than the 
 original Machiavelli, but it is, unfortunately, a 
 type not rare either in history or fiction. Indeed 
 this may be called the common plot of tragedy 
 from the time when it began to be written, the 
 vulnerable heel of Achilles, the little defect of 
 character or ability that precipitates the catastrophe. 
 In Wells's hands this motive takes most fantastic 
 forms. There was, for example, "The Man Who 
 Could Work Miracles " ; " his name was George 
 McW r hirter Fotheringay not the sort of name 
 by any means to lead to any expectation of miracles 
 and he was clerk at Gomshott's" ; "he was a 
 little man and had eyes of a hot brown, very erect 
 red hair, a mustache with ends he twisted up, and 
 freckles." This unpromising looking individual, 
 and he was a blatant skeptic, too, becomes sud- 
 denly possessed of the power to make anything 
 
 [66]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 happen that he wills, but he finds the use of this 
 mysterious gift by no means to his advantage. 
 It brings him and others into all sorts of trouble, 
 and only his renunciation of it saves the world from 
 destruction. Mr. Fotheringay lived in Church 
 Row, and since Mr. Wells lives in the same street 
 he perhaps knew him personally. 
 
 In "The War of Worlds" the earth is invaded 
 by Martians, who are not in the least like those of 
 Du Maurier or Professor Flournoy, but octopus- 
 like creatures as far above mankind in intellect 
 and command of machinery as we are above the 
 animals, supermen surpassing the imagination of 
 Nietzsche. They stride over the earth in machines 
 of impregnable armor and devastate town and 
 country with searchlights projecting rays more 
 destructive than those of radium and much like 
 Bulwer-Lytton's "vril." They feed on human 
 blood and, if humanity is not to perish or become 
 as sheep to these invaders, men and women must 
 take to sewers and such like hiding places and wage 
 incessant warfare against overwhelming odds. 
 
 In a passage that is to me the most gripping of 
 anything Wells has written, a few unconquerable 
 spirits plan the life that mankind must lead under 
 these terrible conditions, but they are relieved from 
 
 [6 7 ]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 the necessity of putting it into execution by the 
 interposition of an unexpected ally in the form 
 of the most minute of creatures, the microbe. The 
 men from Mars, not being immune to terrestrial 
 diseases, are annihilated by one of them. 
 
 The formula remains the same although condi- 
 tions are reversed in "The First Men in the Moon", 
 for men, being naturally larger than the lunar 
 people, might be supposed to dominate them, but, 
 on the contrary, the ant-like inhabitants of the 
 moon conquer the earthly invaders. 
 
 In "The Wonderful Visit" a curate goes out 
 hunting for rare birds and shoots an angel on the 
 wing. But the heavenly visitant does not play the 
 role of the angel in Jerome's "The Passing of the 
 Third Floor Back" and transform the character of 
 all he meets. Wells's angel does not fit into the 
 parish life, and everybody is relieved when he dis- 
 appears. The same idea, the reaction of conven- 
 tional society toward the unusual, is illustrated by 
 "The Sea-Lady", where, instead of an angel from 
 the sky, we have a mermaid from the ocean brought 
 into the circle of a summer resort. Mr. Wells 
 has said that by the sea-lady he meant to symbolize 
 "love as a disturbing passion", the same theme 
 as "The New Machiavelli." It may be taken to 
 
 [68]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 mean that, of course, or half a dozen other things 
 as well. We are at liberty to disregard Mr. Wells's 
 interpretation if we like. It is not an author's 
 business to explain what his works mean. In fact 
 it seems a bit officious and impertinent for him to 
 attempt it. How little would there be left of the 
 great literature of the world if it were reduced to 
 what the author literally and consciously had in 
 mind when he wrote. The value of any work of 
 art depends upon what may be got out of it, not 
 what was put into it. 
 
 "The Food of the Gods" is a case in point. These 
 children who are fed on " boom-food" (presumably 
 an extract from the pituitary body of the brain) 
 and grow to gianthood may be taken to represent 
 any new transforming force. If the story was 
 conceived in Wells's earlier days he may have 
 meant by it the power of science. If in the days 
 of "Anticipations" he more likely had in mind 
 efficiency or "scientific management." If when he 
 was a member of the Fabian Society it doubtless 
 stood for Socialism. Such questions may well be 
 left to the future biographer who will take an in- 
 terest in tracing out the genesis of his thought. 
 Really it makes no difference to the reader, for the 
 essential thing is to note that the reaction of society 
 
 [69]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 toward any unprecedented factor is the same. That 
 in various parts of the country a new and gigantic 
 race was growing up aroused at first a certain sen- 
 sational interest, but this soon died down. People 
 became accustomed to seeing the giant boys and 
 girls and even set them at work. Later as it was 
 realized that the giants could not be adapted to 
 the existing social structure, but meant its over- 
 throw, the government attempted to segregate 
 and limit them, and at length, finding no com- 
 promise possible, determined to exterminate them. 
 This brings about a duel to the death between the 
 little race and the big, and there could be no doubt 
 as to the issue. 
 Chesterton says * : 
 
 "The Food of the Gods" is the tale of "Jack the 
 Giant-Killer" told from the point of view of the 
 giant. This has not, I think, been done before in 
 literature ; but I have little doubt that the psycho- 
 logical substance of it existed in fact. I have little 
 doubt that the giant whom Jack killed did regard 
 himself as the Superman. It is likely enough that he 
 considered Jack a narrow and parochial person who 
 wished to frustrate a great forward movement of the 
 life-force. If (as not infrequently was the case) he 
 happened to have two heads, he would point out the 
 elementary maxim which declares them to be better 
 than one. He would enlarge on the subtle modernity 
 
 1 "Heretics", by G. K. Chesterton, p. 85. 
 [70]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 of such an equipment, enabling a giant to look at a 
 subject from two points of view, or to correct him- 
 self with promptitude. But Jack was the champion 
 of the enduring human standards, of the principle of 
 one man one head, and one man one conscience, of 
 the single head and the single heart and the single 
 eye. Jack was quite unimpressed by the question of 
 whether the giant was a particularly gigantic giant. 
 All he wished to know was whether he was a good 
 giant that is, a giant who was any good to us. 
 What were the giant's religious views ; what his 
 views on politics and the duties of the citizen ? Was 
 he fond of children or fond of them only in a dark 
 and sinister sense ? To use a fine phrase for emo- 
 tional sanity, was his heart in the right place ? Jack 
 had sometimes to cut him up with a sword in order 
 to find out. 
 
 Nothing could better illustrate the difference in 
 standpoint between Chesterton and Wells than 
 this. The sympathies of Wells are undoubtedly 
 with the giants, with the new forces that aim to 
 transform the world, though he is not always con- 
 fident of their ultimate triumph. Being a man of 
 scientific training, he is a determinist but not a 
 fatalist. All his prophecies are conditional. If the 
 gulf between industrial and parasitic classes keeps 
 on widening there will eventually be two races, 
 and the former will be master; this is the lesson 
 of "The Time Machine." If the engineer and 
 business manager get control we shall have the
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 well ordered prosperity of "Anticipations." If 
 Socialism prevails we shall have the Great State. 
 His stories of the future are about equally divided 
 between optimistic and pessimistic prophecy, be- 
 tween allurements and warnings. 
 
 "In the Days of the Comet" 1 he uses again 
 the mechanism of the most artistic of his earlier 
 short stories, "The Star", which is a little gem 
 in its way without a superfluous word or a false 
 tone. But those were the days when Mr. Wells 
 was writing for pleasure ; now he writes for a pur- 
 pose, so the two stories resemble each other only 
 in their common theme, the swishing across the 
 earth of a comet's tail. In the former tale the 
 event was viewed by a man in Mars who reported 
 to his fellow scientists that the earth was little 
 damaged, for the destruction of all life on it was 
 too insignificant an event to be noticed at that 
 distance. In the present book the earth was de- 
 cidedly benefited, and the history is told by a man 
 more foreign to us than the Martian, for he is a 
 citizen of the new civilization that followed the 
 "Great Change." A wonderful transformation had 
 been effected in our atmosphere by its mingling 
 
 "In the Days of the Comet", by H. G. Wells. New York: The 
 Century Company. 
 
 [72]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 with the cometary gases. The inert nitrogen of 
 the air had been changed to some life-giving, clarify- 
 ing, and stimulating gas ; it would be unfair to the 
 author to infer that this was nitrous oxid, more 
 familiarly known as "laughing gas." Under its 
 influence the inhabitants of the earth perceive the 
 evils of our present regime and realize that they 
 are mostly avoidable if everybody had good inten- 
 tions and good sense. . As an argument for Socialism 
 it is a very weak one, for it gives away the case by 
 conceding, at the outset, the main objection of the 
 conservative, that you will have to change human 
 nature before Socialism becomes possible. Of course, 
 if all men were well-meaning and wise Socialism 
 would be practical. It would also be unnecessary, 
 because any social machinery, or, indeed, none at 
 all, would work well enough under these conditions. 
 The difficulty is to devise any changes that will 
 make it work better with people as they are. That 
 better people than we would be able to make for 
 themselves better ways of living, nobody denies. 
 That social institutions influence the character of 
 individuals, and that individuals influence the 
 character of institutions, are correlative truths, 
 but it is difficult for most people to keep them 
 both in mind. Mr. Wells's collectivist conversion 
 
 l73l
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 by a "green gas" is much the same thing as individ- 
 ualist conversion by religious influence, but we 
 know of instances of the latter, while the former 
 is purely hypothetical. 
 
 But, of course, the object of the book is not to 
 show how Socialism can come about, but to assist 
 in making it come about by acting on readers as a 
 dose of the "green gas" and opening our eyes to 
 the vulgarity, silliness, squalor, and wastefulness 
 of our daily life. Mr. Wells is an artist by nature 
 and a scientist by training, and ugliness and stupid- 
 ity worry him more than wickedness and injustice. 
 In fact, he would probably class all the evils of 
 civilization under stupidity. But long ago it was 
 said that against stupidity even the gods fight in 
 vain, and it remains to be seen whether Socialists 
 will succeed better. 
 
 The most attractive pages of the book to me are 
 those that describe "the festival of the rubbish 
 burnings", though Wells does not improve upon 
 Washington Irving' s treatment of the same theme. 
 There are several things owned by our neighbors, 
 even by relatives, which we should like to cast 
 upon the flames. But we are afraid to light the 
 bonfire lest the neighbors should burn up some 
 of our treasures. That war is also an example of 
 
 [74]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 human stupidity, we agree, but just how to prevent 
 it altogether until the rest of the world comes to 
 our opinion, we do not understand. It takes two 
 to stop a quarrel. The fleets of England and Ger- 
 many were engaged in bombarding each other 
 when the renovating comet struck the earth, but 
 as soon as the eyes of the combatants and the 
 "statesmen" who had instigated it were opened, 
 and their anger quenched, it seemed incredible to 
 them that they should have sought to kill each 
 other for such trivial and remote causes. Jules 
 Verne has a similar scene in "Dr. Ox's Experi- 
 ment", but in that case the gas acts in the opposite 
 way to excite the sluggish inhabitants of a peaceful 
 Flemish village to make war against the neighbor- 
 ing village, and as soon as they are out of the con- 
 taminated atmosphere they look in bewilderment 
 at the deadly weapons in their hands. Eight 
 years later Wells's worst forebodings came to pass, 
 but no "green gas" came to clear the air of hate. 
 
 But the particular passion that Wells would 
 sweep away by the breath of his comet is one which, 
 in the opinion of most people, is necessary to the 
 maintenance of morality, that is, jealousy. The 
 young English workingman who tells the story is 
 infuriated against the young aristocrat who had 
 
 [75]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 seduced his sweetheart and is pursuing them with 
 a revolver when the "Great Change" comes. Then 
 he is content to share her affections with his former 
 rival, and they all lived together happily ever after. 
 In his works on Socialism Wells gives his reasons 
 for thinking that, whether we wish it or not, the 
 family is disintegrating, and that only under Social- 
 ism, which will insure a support sufficient for in- 
 dependence to both men and women, can better 
 relations be established. 
 
 We might have known that as soon as science 
 discovered the new world inside the atom the 
 story-writer would follow close behind. We might 
 also have known that H. G. Wells would be the 
 first to exploit this new territory annexed to human 
 knowledge, for he has always kept an eye on scien- 
 tific progress even while seemingly engrossed in 
 British politics and marriage problems. So he 
 wrote a romance of the atom, "The World Set 
 Free", describing the Great War months before 
 it happened. 
 
 Our sleepy earth has been caught napping by 
 every great change that has thus far reached human- 
 ity, and probably Mr. Wells is quite right in sup- 
 posing that a sudden release of the vast stores of 
 energy hidden in the atom would find civilization 
 
 [76]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 as unprepared for the social, economic, political, and 
 intellectual results of the new energies in industry 
 as it was for the effects of the great industrial revolu- 
 tion which followed the introduction of steam power 
 not much more than a century ago. 
 
 But Mr. Wells has the alertest literary imagina- 
 tion of any modern writer; the significance of the 
 new physics has not escaped him as it has the com- 
 mon run of novelists intently searching for good 
 plots and neglecting entirely the rich ore awaiting 
 any writer who happened to have an elementary 
 knowledge of modern science. Many short stories 
 and one or two novels have introduced more or less 
 accurate accounts of radium as a side-show to a 
 love story or an incident in a detective tale. But 
 it required the boldness of Mr. Wells to throw over- 
 board entirely the conventional novel plot and 
 make a hero of the cosmic energies. "The World 
 Set Free" resembles "The War in the Air" in its 
 vivid account of world-wide war, nations armed 
 with novel weapons and forces, appalling power 
 for destruction and attack in the hands of every 
 nation, together with complete incapacity for de- 
 fense by any nation, the resulting collapse of credit, 
 panic, starvation, anarchy and a general social 
 debacle. But while the "war in the air" meant the 
 
 l77l
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 end of civilization, the war with "atomic bombs" 
 in the present book results in a general treaty of 
 peace, the foundation of a world state under a 
 provisional government, and a successful reorganiza- 
 tion of society in which the forces which had been 
 used by nations and empires to conquer each other 
 are directed to the task of subduing nature to 
 human aims. 
 
 Like the reconstructed world of "In the Days of 
 the Comet" the future state is very faintly depicted, 
 hinted at rather than described, in "The World Set 
 Free." It differs from the numerous other Utopias 
 of Mr. Wells in that, whereas the world states of 
 "Anticipations", "A Modern Utopia", "In the 
 Days of the Comet", etc., could be brought about 
 by nothing more than taking the author's advice 
 on politics, law, economics, and social customs, 
 "The World Set Free" depends upon scientific 
 discovery. A new hypothesis, in short, has given 
 the inhabitants of this Utopia an advantage over 
 all previous Utopias. They have energy at their 
 command almost as freely accessible as water or 
 air, and so the labor question is annihilated, the 
 whole world becomes a leisure class, and everybody 
 is free to devote his life to gardening, artistic decora- 
 tion, and scientific research. Country life becomes 
 
 [78]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 a constant delight. The agriculturist shrinks to 
 less than one per cent of the population. The 
 lawyer follows the warrior into extinction. "Con- 
 tentious professions cease to be an honorable em- 
 ployment for men." 
 
 The Parliament of the World, which came into 
 existence after the atomic explosions of 1950, was 
 simple and sensible ; fifty new representatives 
 elected every five years ; proportional representa- 
 tion ; every man and woman with an equal vote ; 
 election for life subject to recall ; each voter putting 
 on his ballot the names of those he wishes elected 
 and those he wishes recalled ; a representative re- 
 callable by as many votes as the quota that elected 
 him. But political machinery does not count for 
 much in this most modern of Utopias. A scrap of 
 the conversation between the President of the 
 United States and King Egbert, "the young king 
 of the most venerable kingdom in Europe", will 
 illustrate the point of view : 
 
 "Science," the King cried presently, "is the new 
 king of the world." 
 
 "Our view," said the President, "is that sover- 
 eignty resides with the people." 
 
 "No," said the King, "the sovereign is a being 
 more subtle than that, and less arithmetical ; neither 
 my family nor your emancipated people. It is some- 
 
 [79]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 thing that floats about us and above us and through 
 us. It is that common impersonal will and sense of 
 necessity of which science is the best understood and 
 most typical aspect. It is the mind of the race. It 
 is that which has brought us here, which has bowed 
 us all to its demands." 
 
 The agency which effects this transformation is 
 the discovery of how to release the internal energy 
 of the atom, which we now know exists, although 
 we do not know how to get at it. Since wealth is 
 essentially nothing but energy this means that we 
 have within reach enough to make multi-million- 
 aires of all of us ; a tantalizing thought. The new 
 disintegrating element, according to Mr. Wells, 
 is carolinum, an element that Professor Baskerville 
 also discovered on paper a few years ago. This 
 exhaustless supply of energy being utilized in ma- 
 chinery sets free the laborer and swells the army 
 of the unemployed ; and since, incidentally, one 
 of the by-products of its decomposition is gold, 
 the financial systems of the world go to smash. 
 But naturally carolinum finds speedy employment 
 in war. A bomb of it buried in the soil becomes 
 a perpetual volcano, half of it exploding every 
 seventeen days. A few bombs of this radioactive 
 element dropped from aeroplanes demolish Paris 
 and Berlin and throw the world into a chaos of 
 
 [80]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 confusion, which Wells's characteristic style, with 
 its flashlight visions, its tumultuous phrases, and 
 its shifting points of view, its alternations of general- 
 ization and detail, is particularly adapted to depict. 
 The value of this romance, aside from its in- 
 terest, lies in the emphatic way in which it teaches 
 the lesson that civilization is primarily a matter of 
 the utilization of natural energy and is measurable 
 in horse power. Unfortunately we have to depend 
 upon the sunshine, either that of the present or of 
 the carboniferous era ; we have no key to the treas- 
 ure-house of the atom. Radium gives out its 
 energy without haste or rest, just as fast at the 
 temperature of liquid air as at the temperature of 
 liquid iron, always keeping itself a little hotter 
 than its surroundings, however hot these may 
 be. If only we could get at this source of ex- 
 haustless energy but let Wells say what that 
 would mean : 
 
 Not only should we have a source of power so 
 potent that a man might carry in his hand the 
 energy to light a city for a year, fight a fleet of 
 battleships or drive one of our giant liners across 
 the Atlantic ; but we should also have a clue that 
 would enable us at last to quicken the process of 
 disintegration in all the other elements, where 
 decay is still so slow as to escape our finest meas- 
 urements. Every scrap of solid matter in the 
 
 [81]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 world would become an available reservoir of con- 
 centrated force. 
 
 It would mean a change in human conditions 
 that I can only compare to the discovery of fire, 
 that first discovery that lifted man above the brute. 
 We stand to-day toward radio-activity exactly as 
 our ancestor stood toward fire before he had learnt 
 to make it. . He knew it then only as a strange thing 
 utterly beyond his control, a flare on the crest of 
 the volcano, a red destruction that poured through 
 the forest. So it is that we know radio-activity 
 to-day. This this is the dawn of a new day in 
 human living. At the climax of that civilization 
 which had its beginning in the hammered flint and 
 the fire-stick of the savage, just when it is becoming 
 apparent that our ever-increasing needs cannot be 
 borne indefinitely by our present sources of energy, 
 we discover suddenly the possibility of an entirely 
 new civilization. The energy we need for our very 
 existence, and with which Nature supplies us still 
 so grudgingly, is in reality locked up in inconceivable 
 quantities all about us. We cannot pick that lock 
 at present, but 
 
 Then that perpetual struggle for existence, that 
 perpetual struggle to live on the bare surplus of 
 Nature's energies will cease to be the lot of Man. 
 Man will step from the pinnacle of this civilization 
 to the beginning of the next. 1 
 
 Wells is a futurist in the true sense of the word, 
 appraising all things by what shall come out of them. 
 This led him to a realization of the importance of 
 eugenics long before the fad came in. In "Mankind 
 
 1 The World Set Free." 
 [82]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 in the Making" he formulated his test of civili- 
 zation in these words : 
 
 Any collective human enterprise, institution, 
 party, or state, is to be judged as a whole and com- 
 pletely, as it conduces more or less to wholesome and 
 hopeful births and according to the qualitative and 
 quantitative advance due to its influence toward a 
 higher and ampler standard of life. 
 
 But when it comes to practical measures for se- 
 curing these advantages, Wells shows a charac- 
 teristic timidity. He condemns certain obvious 
 dysgenic measures, such as the action of school 
 boards in imposing celibacy upon women teachers, 
 but in several respects legislation in America has 
 already gone beyond what he ten years ago con- 
 sidered possible. So, too, in his "Anticipations" 
 he suggested as future possibilities inventions and 
 practices that were then familiar to us in this coun- 
 try. It is hard for a man nowadays to be a prophet. 
 If he doesn't look sharp he will find himself an his- 
 torian instead. 
 
 When H. G. Wells in 1902 essayed the role of 
 prophet and in his volume entitled "Anticipations" 
 tried to forecast the future of the world on scientific 
 principles, he excited the same popular interest 
 that any guess at coming events arouses, but there 
 
 [8 3 ]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 were few who took him seriously. Now, however, 
 "Anticipations" makes very interesting reading. 
 Much of it has already come to pass, and we see 
 that Wells's chief mistake lay in putting his forecast 
 too far ahead ; for instance, when he says that he 
 is "inclined to believe . . . that very probably 
 before 1950 a successful aeroplane will have soared 
 and come home safe and sound." 
 
 The chapter on war in "Anticipations" shows 
 astonishing power of prescience in what he says of 
 the use of the submarine and armored automobile, 
 the development of trench warfare, the substitution 
 of the machine gun for the rifle, and the abolition 
 of the distinction between military and civilian 
 parts of a nation. His discussion of the new forms 
 of warfare and the inadequacy of the old methods 
 of management and training is full of warnings 
 which it were well for his country to have heeded. 
 This is shown if we compare that feeling passage in 
 which he describes a future British army setting 
 out to meet a scientifically organized foe with an 
 actual battle on the Artois field as seen from the 
 German side. The first column is quoted from 
 "Anticipations", published fifteen years ago. The 
 second column is taken from Kellermann's picture 
 of the battle of Loos, September 22, 1915, pub- 
 
 [84]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 lished in the Continental Times of Berlin. Bernard 
 Kellermann, one of the most brilliant of the younger 
 writers of Germany, is well known in America 
 through his novel, "The Tunnel", dealing with a 
 submarine passage to Europe. 
 
 THE PROPHECY, 1902 THE FULFILLMENT, 1915 
 
 I seem to see, almost as if 
 he were symbolic, the gray 
 old general the general who 
 learned his art of war away in 
 the vanished nineteenth cen- 
 tury, the altogether too elderly 
 general with his epaulettes 
 and decorations, his uniform 
 that has still its historical 
 value, his spurs and his sword 
 riding along on his obsolete 
 horse, by the side of his 
 doomed column. Above all 
 things he is a gentleman. And 
 the column looks at him lov- 
 ingly with its countless boys' 
 faces, and the boys' eyes are 
 infinitely trustful, for he has 
 won battles in the old time. 
 They will believe in him to the 
 end. They have been brought 
 up in their schools to believe 
 in him and his class, their 
 mothers have mingled respect 
 for the gentlefolk with the 
 simple doctrines of their faith, 
 their first lesson on entering 
 the army was the salute. The 
 "smart" helmets His Majesty, 
 or some such unqualified per- 
 son, chose for them lie hotly 
 on their young brows, and 
 
 They made the essay with 
 absolutely new, absolutely an- 
 tiquated tactics tactics 
 which are no longer recognized 
 in this war. 
 
 It was something really un- 
 heard of! Our staff officers 
 stood and regarded it their 
 mouths open in astonishment. 
 It was observed, shortly be- 
 fore noon, that the English 
 were advancing toward our 
 positions in dense masses, 
 eight lines deep in echelon 
 from Loos. A hail of shells 
 that churned up the ground 
 was supposed to smooth the 
 way for the storming columns. 
 At the same time, to the east 
 of Loos (there is a bit of rising 
 ground there scarcely notice- 
 able as you drive over it in a 
 wagon, called Hill 70), we saw 
 English artillery come riding 
 up quite open in the 
 broad of day under the 
 naked heavens ! These bat- 
 teries carried bridge materials 
 with them for the crossing of 
 trenches and natural obstacles. 
 The English general we caught 
 describes this action as one 
 
 [8 5 ]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 over their shoulders slope 
 their obsolete, carelessly- 
 sighted guns. Tramp, tramp, 
 they march, doing what they 
 have been told to do, incapable 
 of doing anything they have 
 not been told to do, trustful 
 and pitiful, marching to 
 wounds and disease, hunger, 
 hardship, and death. They 
 know nothing of what they 
 are going to meet, nothing of 
 what they will have to do; 
 religion and the rate-payer 
 and the rights of the parent 
 working through the instru- 
 mentality of the best club in 
 the world have kept their souls 
 and minds, if not untainted, 
 at least only harmlessly ve- 
 neered with the thinnest sham 
 of training or knowledge. 
 Tramp, tramp, they go, boys 
 who will never be men, re- 
 joicing patriotically in the 
 nation that has thus sent 
 them forth, badly armed, 
 badly clothed, badly led, to 
 be killed in some avoidable 
 quarrel by men unseen. And 
 beside them, an absolute 
 stranger to them, a stranger 
 even in habits of speech and 
 thought, and at any rate to 
 be shot with them fairly and 
 squarely, marches the sub- 
 altern the son of the school- 
 burking, share-holding class 
 a slightly taller sort of boy, 
 as ill-taught as they are in all 
 that concerns the realities of 
 life, ignorant of how to get 
 food, how to get water, how 
 
 that was especially "sport- 
 ing." There can be no doubt 
 about its dashing quality. 
 But there was more to come. 
 In the distance, on the level 
 plain, one or two English 
 cavalry regiments were visible 
 Dragoons of the Guard. 
 
 Eight lines of infantry ? 
 Artillery driving across the 
 open ? Cavalry in the back- 
 ground ? It was really un- 
 believable ! It was the plan 
 of a veritable pitched battle 
 from a forgotten age, the mas- 
 terly idea of a senile brain, 
 which had come limping along 
 fifty years behind the times ! 
 Generals in our day grow ob- 
 solete as rapidly as inventions 
 and sciences. The war has 
 taught us that the blood of 
 nations, the incalculably pre- 
 cious blood, is to be entrusted 
 only to the freshest, the most 
 elastic, the most gifted of 
 military spirits, the very cream 
 of the crop. Those old celeb- 
 rities of theirs, staggering 
 under their orders, should 
 have been consigned to relay 
 stations by the English. 
 
 The English troops carried 
 out their attack with a splen- 
 did gesture, with admirable 
 bravoure. They were young 
 and they bore no orders on 
 their uniforms. They carried 
 out the commands of their 
 celebrated and senile authori- 
 ties, carried them out with a 
 blind courage in this day of 
 mortars, telephones and ma- 
 
 [86]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 to keep fever down and 
 strength up, ignorant of his 
 practical equality with the 
 men beside him, carefully 
 trained under a clerical head- 
 master to use a crib, play 
 cricket rather nicely, look all 
 right whatever happens, be- 
 lieve in his gentility, and avoid 
 talking "shop." 
 
 So the gentlemanly old 
 general the polished drover 
 to the shambles rides, and 
 his doomed column march by, 
 in this vision that haunts my 
 mind. 
 
 I cannot foresee what such 
 a force will even attempt to 
 do against modern weapons. 
 Nothing can happen but the 
 needless and most wasteful 
 and pitiful killing of these 
 poor lads, who make up the 
 infantry battalions, the main 
 mass of all the European 
 armies of to-day, whenever 
 they come against a sanely 
 organized army. There is 
 nowhere they can come in; 
 there is nothing they can do. 
 The scattered, invisible marks- 
 men with their supporting 
 guns will shatter their masses, 
 pick them off individually, 
 cover their line of retreat and 
 force them into wholesale 
 surrenders. It will be more 
 like herding sheep than actual 
 fighting. Yet the bitterest 
 and crudest things will have 
 to happen, thousands and 
 thousands of poor boys will 
 be smashed in all sorts of 
 
 chine-guns. As magnificent 
 as was their bearing, even so 
 pitiful was the collapse of 
 their onslaught. 
 
 Before the eightfold storm- 
 ing columns had been able to 
 make ten steps, they came 
 under our combined fire 
 rifles, machine-guns, cannon. 
 The batteries were lying in 
 wait and they obeyed the tele- 
 phone. The English knights 
 and baronets had not reckoned 
 with this. Fresh reserves came 
 running up and were mown 
 down in the cross-fire of our 
 machine-guns. Those riding 
 batteries came to a miserable 
 end. They too came within 
 the zone of the machine-guns, 
 and our heavy mortars, no- 
 tified by telephone, got hold 
 of them so swiftly and so 
 thoroughly, that they were 
 not even given time to un- 
 limber. The regiments of cav- 
 alry that were waiting in the 
 background, ready to come 
 dashing through, got salvoes 
 of the heaviest shells full in 
 their faces, and drew back 
 without having drawn a blade 
 from the scabbard. That 
 finished the pitched battle. 
 And the attack broke to 
 pieces in front of our wire en- 
 tanglements. 
 
 A prodigious number of 
 their dead lay before our 
 trenches. We had made 800 
 prisoners, among them a colo- 
 nel, four majors, and fifteen 
 officers. At a conservative 
 
 [8 7 ]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 dreadful ways and given over estimate, the losses of the 
 
 to every conceivable form of English in this single section 
 
 avoidable hardship and pain- of the division, may be fixed 
 
 ful disease before the obvious in dead and wounded as at 
 
 fact that war is no longer a least 20,000. It was clear 
 
 business for half-trained lads that, apart from a small local 
 
 in uniform, led by parson-bred success, it had been a disas- 
 
 sixth-form boys and men of trous job for the Britishers, 
 
 pleasure and old men, but an Never before has it been so 
 
 exhaustive demand upon very clearly proved that war is not 
 
 carefully educated adults for a sport for a dozen or two of 
 
 the most strenuous best that privileged dilettantes. 3 
 is in them, will get its practical 
 recognition. 1 
 
 Wells made his first hit with "The Time Ma- 
 chine", written under high pressure of the idea 
 within a fortnight by keeping at his desk almost 
 continuously from nine in the morning to eleven 
 at night. It is based upon the theory that time is 
 a fourth dimension of space, 3 and by a suitable 
 
 1 From Wells's "Anticipations." 
 
 2 From Kellermann's account of the Battle of Loos. 
 
 8 It would be interesting to learn where Wells happened to get hold 
 of the idea that time is the fourth dimension of reality and how much 
 he knew then of the history of the conception. He could not, at any 
 rate, for all his prophetic powers, have foreseen the important part it 
 was to play in scientific thought and metaphysical speculation in the 
 coming century. Lorentz, Einstein and Minkowski have incorporated 
 it into their new theory of relativity which threatens to abolish the 
 ether and to make mass a variable, dependent on velocity. Our or- 
 dinary Euclidean or three dimensional space would thus be a cross- 
 section at a certain time. (See "The Time-Space Manifold of 
 Relativity", by Edwin B. Wilson and G. N. Lewis, in Proceedings of the 
 American Academy of Arts and Sciences, November, 1912.) Heinrich 
 Czolbe in 1875 brought forward the theory (see Miiller, Archiv fur 
 systematische Philosophie, XVII, p. 106), and Lotze discusses it in his 
 
 [88]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 invention one may travel back and forth along that 
 line. Having once got his seat in his time-machine 
 Wells has never abandoned it. He uses it still in 
 his novels, in "Tono-Bungay," "The New Machia- 
 velli", and "The Passionate Friends", telling the 
 story partly in retrospect, partly in prospect, flying 
 back and forth in the most mystifying manner, pro- 
 ducing thereby a remarkable effect of the perpetual 
 contemporaneity of existence, though some readers 
 are dizzied by it. 
 
 The charm of a masked ball is that it enables 
 people to do and say what they please, in short to 
 reveal themselves because their faces are concealed. 
 Anonymity has the same effect, as many a name from 
 "Currer Bell" to "Fiona McLeod" attests. So 
 it is not surprising that the book l which purports 
 to have been written by one "George Boon" and 
 compiled by one "Reginald Bliss" shows Wellsian 
 
 "Microcosmos." Bergson's philosophy is based upon the distinction 
 he draws between psychological duration and the physical treatment 
 of time as a kind of space. Professor Pitkin of Columbia criticizes 
 Wells's time-machine from the metaphysical standpoint in "Time and 
 Pure Activity" (Journal Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 
 Vol. ii, No. 19). 
 
 ^'Boon, The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and 
 The Last Trump. Being a First Selection from the Literary Remains 
 of George Boon, Appropriate to the Times. Prepared for Publication 
 by Reginald Bliss, with an Ambiguous Introduction by H. G. Wells." 
 (Doran, 1915.) 
 
 [89]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 characteristics more pronounced than any of the 
 volumes of which H. G. Wells owns authorship. 
 
 For one thing Wells obviously likes to start things 
 better than to finish them. He is apt to run out 
 of breath before he comes to the end of a novel, 
 and if he gets his second wind it is likely to be 
 some other kind of wind. In most of his books 
 except the short stories the reader feels that the 
 author is saying to himself, "I wish I had this 
 thing off my hands so I could get at that new 
 idea of mine." 
 
 Then, too, Wells is fond of putting a story inside 
 of a story, like the Arabian Nights, and it often 
 happens that the "flash-backs", to borrow a cinema 
 phrase, are confusing. The framework of "The 
 Modern Utopia" is an instance of this. It is some- 
 times hard to tell in this where we are or who is 
 speaking. 
 
 Wells is inimitable in his ability to sketch a char- 
 acter in a few swift strokes, but he does not care much 
 for the character afterward. He delights in taking 
 such snapshots, but he hates to develop them. His 
 mind is quick to change. He is liable to be dis- 
 concerted by a sudden vision of an opposing view. 
 Sometimes in the middle of a sentence he will be 
 seized with a doubt of what he is saying, and being 
 
 [90]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 an honest man, he leaves it in air rather than finish 
 it after he has lost confidence. He may double on 
 his track like a hunted fox within the compass of a 
 single volume. 
 
 Finally, Wells is fond of satirizing his contempo- 
 raries, including his best friends and his former selves. 
 He is given to mixing realistic description with 
 recondite symbolism, desultory argumentation with 
 extraneous personalities, and other incongruous 
 combinations of style and thought. 
 
 Now all these peculiarities, call them faults or 
 merits as you like, are to be found intensified in 
 "Boon" Etc. First Mr. Wells introduces Mr. 
 Bliss, who then introduces Mr. Boon, a famous 
 author deceased, and tells how they together invented 
 Mr. Hallery, who introduces a host of living writers, 
 big and little, known and unknown, at the World 
 Conference on the Mind of the Race. He has given 
 me the honor of a seat on a special committee of 
 Section S, devoted to Poiometry, the scientific 
 measurement of literary greatness. 
 
 The volume is illustrated by the author who- 
 ever he may be but the best caricatures are not 
 the graphic but the verbal ones with their amusing 
 parodies of style. Perhaps the best of these is an 
 imaginary conversation between Henry James and
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 George Moore, in which both gentlemen pursue 
 entirely independent trains of thought. 
 
 Here's the sketch of "Dodd." We recognize 
 him, although we do not know who Dodd is : 
 
 Dodd is a leading member of the Rationalist 
 Press Association, a militant agnostic, and a dear 
 compact man, one of those Middle Victorians who 
 go about with a preoccupied, caulking air, as though, 
 having been at great cost and pains to banish God 
 from the Universe, they were resolved not to permit 
 Him back on any terms whatever. He has con- 
 stituted himself a sort of alert customs officer of a 
 materialistic age, saying suspiciously: "Here, now, 
 what's this rapping under the table here?" and 
 examining every proposition to see that the Creator 
 wasn't being smuggled back under some specious 
 new generalization. Boon used to declare that 
 every night Dodd looked under his bed for the Deity, 
 and slept with a large revolver under his pillow for 
 fear of a revelation. 
 
 One advantage of anonymity is that Wells can 
 contradict himself with even more freedom than 
 usual. For instance, he expresses great contempt 
 for Bergson and his "Pragmatism for Ladies." But 
 not long ago, in "Marriage", he was contemptuous 
 of "Doctor Quiller [Schiller] of Oxford," for "ignor- 
 ing Bergson and fulminating a preposterous insular 
 Pragmatism." 
 
 Much of the volume was manifestly written in 
 
 [92]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 the calm days before the war, but the fragment 
 entitled "The Wild Asses of the Devil" expresses 
 in fantastic guise his and the world's confusion 
 and despair at the catastrophe which has over- 
 whelmed the human race. "It is like a dying man 
 strangling a robber in his death grip. We shall beat 
 them, but we shall be dead beat in doing it," says 
 Boon, and he rejects all suggestions that it may be a 
 good thing in the end : 
 
 No! War is just the killing of things and the 
 smashing of things. And when it is all over, then 
 civilization will have to begin all over again. They 
 will have to begin lower down and against a heavier 
 load and the days of our jesting are done. The 
 Wild Asses of the Devil are loose and there is no 
 restraining them. What is the good of pretending 
 that the Wild Asses are the instruments of Providence 
 kicking better than we know ? It is all evil. Evil. 
 
 There are many different Wellses. Probably 
 nobody likes all of them. He does not like all of 
 himselves. In writing a preface or otherwise re- 
 ferring to an earlier work he is, after the manner of 
 Maeterlinck, almost apologetic, and looks back 
 upon the author with a curious wonder as to how 
 he came to hold such opinions and express them in 
 such a way. Those of us who have grown up with 
 him, so to speak, and followed his mind through all 
 
 l93l
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 its metamorphoses in their natural order can under- 
 stand him better, I believe, than those of the younger 
 generation who begin with the current serial and 
 read his works backward. Mr. Wells is just about 
 my age. We were in the laboratory together and 
 breathed the same atmosphere, although five thou- 
 sand miles apart. When he began to write I was 
 ready to read and to admire the skill with which he 
 utilized for literary purposes the wealth of material 
 to be found in the laboratory. Jules Verne had 
 worked the same rich vein, clumsily but with great 
 success. Poe had done marvels in the short story 
 with such scanty science as he had at his command. 
 But Wells, trained under Huxley in biology at the 
 University of London, had all this new knowledge 
 to draw upon. He could handle technicalities with 
 a far defter touch than Verne and almost rivaled 
 Poe in the evocation of emotions of horror and mys- 
 tery. Besides this he possessed what both these 
 authors lacked, a sense of humor, a keen appreciation 
 of the whimsicalities of human nature. So he was 
 enabled to throw off in the early nineties a swift 
 succession of short stories astonishingly varied in 
 style and theme. As he became more experienced 
 in the art of writing, or rather of marketing manu- 
 scripts, he seems to have regretted this youthful 
 
 [94]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 prodigality of bright ideas. Many of them he later 
 worked over on a more extensive scale as the metal- 
 lurgist goes back to a mine and with an improved 
 process extracts more gold from the tailings and 
 dump than the miner got out of the ore originally. 
 
 "The Star" was the first of these I came across, 
 clipping it for my scrap book from Harper's Weekly, 
 I believe. First loves in literature make an indelible 
 impression, so I will always hold that nothing Wells 
 has done since can equal it. Certainly it was not 
 improved by expanding it to "In the Days of the 
 Comet." The germ of that creepy tale of advanced 
 vivisection, "The Island of Dr. Moreau", appeared 
 first in the Saturday Review, January, 1895, as a 
 brief sketch, "Doctor Moreau Explains." "The 
 Dream of Armageddon", vivid and swift as a land- 
 scape under a flash of lightning, served in large part 
 for two later volumes, "When the Sleeper Wakes" 
 and 'The New Machiavelli." 
 
 It was, as I have said, "The Star" that first at- 
 tracted me to Wells. It was "The Sea-Lady" who 
 introduced me to him personally. It was in the 
 back room of a little Italian restaurant in New 
 York, one of those sixty-cent table d'hotes where 
 rich soup and huge haystacks of spaghetti serve 
 to conceal the meagerness of the other five courses. 
 
 [95]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 Here foregathered for years a group of Socialists, 
 near-Socialists, and others of less definable types, 
 alike in holding the belief that the world could be 
 moved and ought to be, but disagreeing agreeably 
 as to where the fulcrum could be placed and what 
 power should move the lever. We called ourselves 
 the "X Club", partly because the outcome of such 
 a combination of diverse factors was highly prob- 
 lematical, partly perhaps in emulation of the cele- 
 brated London X. One evening some ten years 
 ago, as I came late to the dinner, I noticed that the 
 members were not all talking at once, as usual, but 
 concentrated their attention upon a guest, a quiet, 
 unassuming individual, rather short, with a sun- 
 browned face, tired eyes, and a pessimistic mustache 
 a Londoner, I judged from his accent Then I 
 was introduced to him as "The man who knows all 
 your works by heart, Mr. Wells." This disconcert- 
 ing introduction was their revenge for my too 
 frequent quotation in debate. The reason, I sup- 
 pose, for the old saying, "Beware the man of one 
 book", is because he is such a bore. 
 
 Mr. Wells appeared to take the introduction 
 literally and began to examine me on the subject. 
 "Did you ever read 'The Sea-Lady'?" I happily 
 was able to say I had, and was let off from any 
 
 [96]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 further questions, for he said that he had never 
 met but two persons before who admitted having 
 read the book. I am glad he did not ask me what 
 it meant, for while I had an opinion on the subject, 
 it might not have agreed with his. 
 
 Then we turned the tables on Mr. Wells and for 
 the rest of the evening asked him questions and 
 criticized his views ; all of which he took very good- 
 naturedly and was apparently not displeased there- 
 by, since in the book about his trip, "The Future 
 in America", he expressed disappointment at not 
 finding in Washington any "such mentally vigorous 
 discussion centers as the New York X Club." 
 
 Five years later I had another glimpse of Mr. 
 Wells, this time a jolly evening at his home, where 
 he kept his guests, a dozen young men and women, 
 entertained, first by playing on the pianola, which 
 he bought at the suggestion of Mr. Shaw; after- 
 ward by improvising a drama for the occasion, the 
 star role being taken by his wife, whom I had seen 
 a few days before marching in the great London 
 suffrage procession. Mr. Wells's home differs from 
 most London houses in having a view and a park. 
 The back windows look over all the sea of houses, 
 the shipping in the Thames, and, smoke permitting, 
 the Surrey hills beyond. On the other side of the 
 
 [97]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 house five minutes' walk uphill brings one to Hamp- 
 stead Heath, the largest of London's public places, 
 which serves Mr. Wells for his long walks. 
 
 Mr. Wells perhaps got his love of outdoor life 
 from his father, Joseph Wells, who was a profes- 
 sional cricketer and the son of the head gardener 
 of Lord de Lisle at Penhurst Castle, in Kent. His 
 mother was the daughter of an innkeeper at Mid- 
 hurst. Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley, 
 Kent, September 21, 1866, and his childhood impres- 
 sions of his mother's kitchen and his father's garden 
 and shop he has described in "First and Last Things" 
 and in "Tono-Bungay. " In this novel, the first, 
 perhaps, to be devoted to that conspicuous feature 
 of modern life, the patent medicine, he has utilized 
 his brief experience as a chemist's apprentice, or, as 
 we would say, a drug clerk. Next an unsuccessful 
 attempt was made to train him as a draper's assist- 
 ant a dry goods clerk, in our language, though 
 we have fortunately nothing that exactly corre- 
 sponds. The hardships and humiliations of this 
 experience seem to have cut deep into his soul, for 
 he recurs to it again and again, always with bitter- 
 ness, as in "Mr. Polly", "Kipps", and "The Wheels 
 of Chance", for example. But to untangle the 
 autobiographical threads from the purely fictional 
 
 [93]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 in Wells's novels would be to cheat some future 
 candidate for a Ph. D. in English literature of his 
 thesis. 
 
 The interesting point to observe is that tempera- 
 ment and training have combined to give him on 
 the one hand a hatred of this muddled, blind, and 
 inefficient state of society in which we live, and on 
 the other a distrust of the orderly, logical, and 
 perfected civilization usually suggested as a pos- 
 sible substitute. He detests chaos, but is skeptical 
 of cosmos. Set between these antipathetic poles, 
 he vibrates continually like an electrified pith ball. 
 He has a horror of waste, war, dirt, cruelty, coward- 
 ice, incompetency, vagueness of mind, dissipation of 
 energy, inconvenience of households, and all fric- 
 tion, mental or physical. But yet his ineradicable 
 realization of the concrete will not allow him to 
 escape from these disagreeables by taking refuge in 
 such artificial paradises as Fourier's phalanx or 
 Morris' idyllic anarchism. Wells is a Socialist, 
 yet he finds not merely the Marxians, but even the 
 Fabians, too dogmatic and strait-laced for him. 
 His "Modern Utopia" is, I think, the first to mar 
 the perfection of its picture by admitting a rebel, 
 a permanently irreconcilable, antagonistic individ- 
 uality, a spirit that continually denies. Yet we 
 
 l99l
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 know that if a Utopia is to come on earth it must 
 have room for such. 
 
 Wells would never make a leader in any popular 
 movement. He has the zeal of the reformer, but 
 he has his doubts, and, what's worse, he admits them. 
 In the midst of his most eloquent passages he stops, 
 shakes his head, runs in a row of dots, and adds a 
 few words, hinting at another point of view. He 
 has what James defined as the scientific tempera- 
 ment, an intense desire to prove himself right 
 coupled with an equally intense fear lest he may be 
 wrong. 
 
 Your true party man must be quite color blind. 
 He must see the world in black and white ; must 
 ignore tints and intermediate shades. Wells as 
 Socialist could not help seeing and saying 
 that there were many likable things about the 
 Liberals. As a Liberal he must admit that the 
 Tories have the advantage in several respects. He 
 professes to view religion rationalistically, yet there 
 are outbursts of true mysticism to be found in his 
 books, passages which prove that he has experienced 
 the emotion of personal religion more clearly than 
 many a church member. 
 
 He has the courage of his convictions, but it does 
 not extend much beyond putting them into print. 
 
 [100]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 I doubt whether, if he were given autocratic power, 
 he would inaugurate his "Modern Utopia" or any 
 other of his visions. At least he has hitherto re- 
 sisted all efforts to induce him to carry them into 
 effect. 
 
 For instance, one of the most original and inter- 
 esting features of his "Modern Utopia" was the 
 Samurai, the ruling caste, an order of voluntary 
 noblemen ; submitting to a peculiar discipline ; 
 wearing a distinctive dress ; having a bible of their 
 own selected from the inspiring literature of all 
 ages ; spending at least a week of every year in 
 absolute solitude in the wilderness as a sort of 
 spiritual retreat and restorative of self-reliance. 
 A curious conception it was, a combination of 
 Puritanism and Bushido, of Fourier and St. Francis, 
 of Bacon's Salomon's House, Plato's philosophers 
 ruling the republic, and Cecil Rhodes's secret order 
 of millionaires ruling the world. 
 
 One day a group of ardent young men and women, 
 inspired by this ideal, came to Wells and announced 
 that they had established the order, they had be- 
 come Samurai, and expected him to become their 
 leader, or at least to give them his blessing; instead 
 of which Wells gave them a lecture on the sin of 
 priggishness and sent them about their business. 
 
 lioi]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 I have no doubt he was right about it, nor does his 
 disapproval of this premature attempt to incorpo- 
 rate the Samurai in London prove that there was 
 not something worth while in the idea. But it shows 
 that Wells knew what his work was in the world 
 and proposed to stick to it, differing therein from 
 other Utopians : Edward Bellamy, who because his 
 fantastic romance, "Looking Backward", happened 
 to strike fire, spent the rest of his life in trying to 
 bring about the cooperative commonwealth by 
 means of clubs, papers, and parties; Dr. Hertzka, 
 who wasted his substance in efforts to found a real 
 Freeland on the steppes of Kilimanjaro, Africa. 
 
 Perhaps the matter with Wells is simply that he 
 cannot find his proper pigeon-hole. Perhaps I 
 can find it. Wells has little sympathy with any 
 political grouping or ideal regnant to-day. The 
 orthodox Tory is in his view simply a man without 
 imagination. The orthodox Liberal is a mere 
 sentimentalist substituting democratic phrases for 
 science and discipline. The Imperialist, though 
 touching Wells at some points, repels him by his 
 mania for military expenditure and his ignorant 
 race prejudice. The Socialist or Labor Party man 
 is appallingly narrow and totally unimpressed with 
 the need for intelligence to rule the State. In 
 
 [102]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 "The New Machiavelli" the hero hovers distress- 
 fully over the entire field of modern politics, finding 
 as little rest for his soul as Noah's dove on the first 
 trip from the ark found for its feet. Once and once 
 only has Wells's ideal found even partial embodi- 
 ment, and that was in the best days of the Roman 
 Empire. 
 
 There was the Great State (in the familiar capital 
 letters) ; a world state so far as the world was 
 known and civilized. There was a universal lan- 
 guage, exact and lucid. There was freedom and 
 security of travel, at least as great as in those same 
 countries to-day. True, Wells would have dis- 
 approved of slavery. But so did the Stoics of the 
 Empire disapprove of slavery, at least in theory. 
 Their ideal was a universal citizenship. In the later 
 Empire every freeman in the Roman Empire was 
 called a citizen. There was tolerance, not only of 
 religion but of manners, such as the narrow and 
 parochial States of Western Europe which succeeded 
 its fall have never known till within a hundred 
 years. Statecraft was a science; devotion to the 
 State a cult. There were the legions, examples of 
 duty and discipline and scientific warfare, and yet a 
 few thousands of troops sufficed to police and guard 
 a whole civilized, wealthy, complex world state. 
 
 [103]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 But most important of all was the Roman Law. 
 Based on logical principles ; divested of superstitious 
 accessories and irrational taboos ; universal and in 
 the main equitable; raised above the Empire and 
 the muddy immediacies of politics till it seemed 
 the voice of nature itself; flexible and changing, 
 but by growth rather than whim, it was the intellec- 
 tual fabric of the Empire. It so happened that a 
 despotic Emperor wielded the power of state, but 
 still it was the State and not the mere person of the 
 Emperor that was really reverenced. It was cer- 
 tainly not the man or the artist that was divine in 
 Nero, but the office. Even in its decadent and 
 Byzantine days traces of the old ideal remained, and 
 it was not " Charles Richard Henry Etcetera, by the 
 Grace of God King of Anyland, Duke of Some- 
 wherelse, Knight of the Golden Spur, Most Reverend 
 Lord of the Free Cities of Lower Ruritania" in the 
 silly medieval (and modern) style, but "Senatus 
 Populusque Romani" and "Res Publica." The 
 medieval Papacy was as universal in structure, but 
 was obscurantist in basis, and left behind it as a 
 legacy the memory of the crusades and the monas- 
 teries and great cathedrals as its monuments. The 
 Roman Empire was rationalist in basis, and left 
 behind it laws, straight roads, aqueducts, baths, 
 
 [104]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 theaters, libraries, and municipal organizations. 
 Chesterton is a romantic and rather likes than other- 
 wise the whimsical eccentricities of modern national 
 institutions. But Wells, though he loves to play 
 with science, takes statecraft as seriously as Marcus 
 Aurelius, and, like him, he is a citizen of the Great 
 State, the Cosmopolis. The "Modern Utopia" 
 might have grown out of the actual Roman Empire 
 had the right turnings been taken from that time to 
 this ; no other state or civilization would have formed 
 its basis. 
 
 The significance of Wells's advocacy of Socialism 
 lies in the fact that it is addressed to the middle 
 classes. He might be called "The Apostle to the 
 Genteels." He took part for a time in the aggres- 
 sive socialistic campaign led by the Fabian Society 
 on lines distinct from but parallel to the Marxian 
 working class propaganda. The orthodox Marxian 
 has little use for middle-class people. He expects 
 them to become extinct so shortly that it is no use 
 trying to convert them. He takes no more interest 
 in them than missionaries do in the Tasmanians. 
 They will be ground fine between the upper and 
 nether millstones of the trusts and the unions. 
 Such individuals who survive will be able to do so 
 only by becoming retainers of the capitalists, and as 
 
 [105]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 such will be engulfed with them in the revolutionary 
 cataclysm which will end the present era. 
 
 With a firm faith in this theory, it is no wonder 
 that he often manifests annoyance at the slowness 
 of the bourgeoisie in carrying out the part assigned 
 them in the Marxian program. They do not dis- 
 appear fast enough, nor do they show any eagerness 
 to take sides either with the proletariat or with the 
 capitalists. On the contrary, they view both with 
 a certain distrust and antipathy, and maintain a 
 curious confidence in their ability to manage both 
 factions in the future as they have in the past. In 
 short, they are not a negligible quantity, but hold 
 the balance of power, at least for the present, and 
 can retard or accelerate the progress of Socialism 
 to a considerable though an indefinite extent. 
 
 Obviously, if the middle class as a whole is to be 
 converted to Socialism, it must be by different 
 arguments than those found effective with the 
 proletariat. The Manifesto does not appeal to 
 them, because they have more to lose than their 
 "chains." There must be something more alluring 
 than a universal competency and a steady job to 
 arouse them to the need of radical changes. 
 
 The sight of capitalists excites emulation and 
 ambition rather than hatred and despair. A man 
 
 [106]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 is not inclined to vote millionaires out of existence 
 so long as he cherishes a secret hope of becoming 
 one. They do not see the proletarian papers and 
 would be repelled by them if they did. 
 
 Wells's outline of the form that middle-class 
 propaganda should take presents several novel and 
 interesting points, but the most conspicuous is his 
 discussion of the effect of Socialism on family re- 
 lations. His frankness and honesty in bringing 
 that question into the open is in commendable con- 
 trast with the tendency of most advocates of Social- 
 ism to conceal or minimize the fact that any such 
 profound rearrangement of economic relations as is 
 involved in Socialism must inevitably affect the 
 family, because the economic factor in this institu- 
 tion is undeniably great, although how great is a 
 matter of dispute. 
 
 Wells boldly attempts to convert a prejudice into 
 an argument by appealing to the very classes which, 
 it is generally supposed, would be repelled by the bare 
 mention of the subject, to save the family from its 
 impending disintegration by adopting Socialism. 
 
 That Wells is right in thinking that the problem 
 of the family is a serious one at the present time is 
 clearly shown by the statistics collected by Sidney 
 Webb for the Fabian Society. He proves : 
 
 [107]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 That the decline in the birthrate which is depriving 
 England and Wales of at least one-fifth of every 
 year's normal crop of babies is not accounted for 
 by any alteration in the age, sex or marital condition 
 of the population, by any refusal or postponement of 
 marriage, or by any of the effects of "urbanization" 
 or physical deterioration of sections of the com- 
 munity. The statistical evidence points, in fact, 
 unmistakably to the existence of a volitional regu- 
 lation of the marriage state that is now ubiquitous 
 throughout England and Wales among, apparently, 
 a large majority of the population. 
 
 So much other statisticians have deduced, but 
 Mr. Webb went farther and obtained a direct proof 
 of his conclusion by the circulation of several hun- 
 dred question blanks among middle-class families. 
 The results are startling. Out of a total of one 
 hundred and twenty families reporting in one cate- 
 gory, there were only seven in which the number of 
 children was not intentionally limited. The average 
 number of children in such limited families is one 
 and a half, which is only one third what it was 
 twenty-five years ago. In about sixty per cent of 
 the cases "the poverty of the parents in relation to 
 their standard of comfort" was a cause in the limi- 
 tation of the family. 
 
 This shows how important a factor the increased 
 expense of raising children has become in well-to-do 
 
 [108]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 families, and unless the population of the future is 
 to be recruited very largely by the improvident, 
 ignorant, and debased, it points toward some form 
 of state encouragement of the production of well- 
 born children. Wells suggested a differential in- 
 come tax. Doctor Galton advocated the endow- 
 ment of gifted parents. The war has brought 
 this question out of the realm of speculative con- 
 troversy into that of practical necessity. Some of 
 the remedies proposed now make the measures 
 suggested by Wells ten years before seem timid 
 and conservative. 
 
 His early training in dynamical physics and 
 evolutionary biology furnished him with the modern 
 scientific point of view when he entered upon the 
 old battlegrounds of sociology and metaphysics. 
 He therefore never could believe in a static state, 
 socialistic or other, and he saw clearly that much 
 of what passes for sound philosophical reasoning is 
 fallacious, because the world cannot be divided up 
 into distinct things of convenient size for handling, 
 each done up in a neat package and plainly 
 labeled as formal logic requires. Here he is ex- 
 tremely radical, going quite as far as Bergson 
 in his anti-intellectualism though attacking the 
 subject in a very different way. He denies the 
 
 [109]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 categories, the possibility of number, definition, 
 and classification. 1 He brings three charges 
 against our Instrument of Knowledge : first, 
 that it can work only by disregarding individu- 
 ality and treating uniques as identically similar 
 objects in this respect or that; and, second, 
 that it can only deal freely with negative terms 
 by treating them as though they were positive; 
 and, third, that the sort of reasoning which is 
 valid for one level of human thought may not work 
 at another. No two things are exactly alike, and 
 when we try to define a class of varied objects we 
 get a term which represents none of them exactly 
 and may therefore lead to an erroneous conclusion 
 when brought back again to a concrete case. Or, 
 as Wells puts it in his laboratory language: "The 
 forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps and crush 
 the truth a little in taking hold of it." "Of every- 
 thing we need to say this is true, but it is not quite 
 true." 
 
 What the artist long ago taught us, that there 
 are no lines in nature, the scientist has come to be- 
 
 1 He has given three statements of his views on this point : First, 
 in an article, "Rediscovery of the Unique", in Fortnightly Review, 
 July, 1891; second, in a paper read to the Oxford Philosophical Society 
 and published in Mind, XIII, No. 51, and as an appendix to "A Modern 
 Utopia"; and, third, in Book I of "First and Last Things." 
 
 [HP]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 lieve, and perhaps in time the logicians will come to 
 see it too. At present, however, they are, as Wells 
 says, in that stage of infantile intelligence that can- 
 not count above two. This is amusingly illustrated in 
 a defense of logic by Mr. Jourdain in which he says : 1 
 
 To these strictures of Mr. Wells on logic we may 
 reply, it seems to me, that either they are psycho- 
 logical in which case they are irrelevant to logic 
 or they are false. Thus the principle that "no 
 truth is quite true", implying as it does that itself 
 is quite true, implies its own falsehood, and is there- 
 fore false. 
 
 This sort of thing might have passed as a good 
 joke in the days of Epimenides, the Cretan, when 
 logic was a novelty, and people amused themselves, 
 like boys learning to lasso, in tripping each other up 
 with it. But it is funny to see this ancient weapon 
 of scholasticism brought out to ward off the attacks 
 of modernism, such attacks from without the ram- 
 parts as Wells's essay and from within as F. C. S. 
 Schiller's big volume, "Formal Logic." 
 
 Wells has not only the sense of continuity in space, 
 but, what is rarer, the sense of continuity in time. 
 "The race flows through us, the race is the drama and 
 we are the incidents. This is not any sort of poetical 
 
 1 "Logic, M. Bergson and Mr. H. G. Wells", by Philip E. B. Jourdain 
 in Hibbert Journal, X, p. 835. 
 
 [HI]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 statement: it is a statement of fact." "We are 
 episodes in an experience greater than ourselves." 
 
 There is a desperate sincerity about the man that 
 I like. He seems always to be struggling to express 
 himself with more exactness than language allows, 
 to say neither more nor less than he really believes 
 at the time. I do not think that he takes delight 
 in shocking the bourgeoisie as Shaw does. Wells 
 would rather, I believe, agree with other people 
 than disagree. He is not a congenital and inveterate 
 nonconformist. But he insists always on "paint- 
 ing the thing as he sees it." His later novels have 
 come under the ban of the British public libraries 
 because, conceiving sex as a disturbing element in 
 life, he put it into his novels as a disturbing ele- 
 ment, thus offending both sides, those of puritanical 
 temperament who wanted it left out altogether and 
 those of profligate temperament who wanted to 
 read of amorous adventure with no unpleasant 
 facts obtruded. His sociological works, in which, 
 while insisting on permanent monogamy as the 
 ideal, he prophesied that the future would show 
 greater toleration toward other forms of marital 
 relationship, aroused less criticism than the frank 
 portrayal of existing conditions in his novels. 
 
 All his longer novels are largely concerned with 
 
 [H2]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 the problem of marital life but the only one of them 
 that comes near to a solution is that entitled "Mar- 
 riage." The couple in this case, the Traffords, are 
 exceptionally decent people for characters in a 
 modern novel, and if their marriage is not a success 
 it is not on account of any interference from a third 
 party, but rather because of the cares and compli- 
 cations that come from family life and financial 
 prosperity. The heroine is a charming specimen 
 of the modern young woman, educated at "Ox- 
 bridge", whose chief fault is a constitutional in- 
 ability to keep her accounts straight. She spends 
 money with excellent taste, but without regard to 
 her husband's bank balance. Consequently Traf- 
 ford has to lay aside his researches in molecular 
 physics to work out a successful process for syn- 
 thetic rubber easy to a man of his ability. 
 
 Mr. Wells apparently adopts the theory formu- 
 lated by Professor Devine, of Columbia, as to the 
 normal division of labor between husband and wife, 
 that men should be experts in the art of getting 
 money and women experts in the art of spending it. 
 Where both parties fail is in regarding these duties 
 as ends in themselves, the men getting absorbed in 
 business and the women buying things that they 
 do not want, that nobody needs, just for the sake
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 of buying. Apparently Mr. Wells has hope of 
 curing the men, but none of curing the women. 
 
 Premature attempts at realization, the demand 
 for immediate results, the disregard of purely scientific 
 research, the swamping of life by restless activity 
 and futile efforts at reform, these are the ailments 
 of the modern world, according to our author. His 
 satire spares neither conservatives nor radicals. 
 The following passage would apply to New York as 
 well as London : 
 
 London, of course, is always full of Movements. 
 Essentially they are absorbents of superfluous fem- 
 inine energy. They have a common flavor of 
 progress and revolutionary purpose, and common 
 features in abundant meetings, officials, and organi- 
 zation generally. Few are expensive and still fewer 
 produce any tangible results in the world. They 
 direct themselves at the most various ends : the 
 poor, that favorite butt, either as a whole or in such 
 typical sections as the indigent invalid or the indi- 
 gent aged, the young, public health, the woman's 
 cause, the prevention of animal food, anti-vivisec- 
 tion, the gratuitous advertisement of Shakespeare 
 (that neglected poet), novel but genteel modifications 
 of medical or religious practice, dress reform, the 
 politer aspects of socialism, the encouragement of 
 aeronautics, universal military service, garden sub- 
 urbs, domestic arts, proportional representation, 
 duodecimal arithmetic, and the liberation of the 
 drama. They range in size and importance from 
 campaigns on a Plessingtonian scale to sober little
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 intellectual Beckingham things that arrange to meet 
 half yearly and die quietly before the second as- 
 sembly. If Heaven by some miracle suddenly gave 
 every Movement in London all it professed to want, 
 our world would be standing on its head and every- 
 thing would be extremely unfamiliar and disconcert- 
 ing. But, as Mr. Roosevelt once remarked, the 
 justifying thing about life is the effort and not the 
 goal, and few Movements involve any real and im- 
 passioned struggle to get to the ostensible object. 
 They exist as an occupation ; they exercise the 
 intellectual and moral activities without undue 
 disturbance of the normal routines of life. In the 
 days when everybody was bicycling an ingenious 
 mechanism called Hacker's home bicycle used to be 
 advertised. Hacker's home bicycle was a stand 
 bearing small rubber wheels, upon which one placed 
 one's bicycle (properly equipped with a cyclometer) 
 in such a way that it could be mounted and ridden 
 without any sensible forward movement whatever. 
 In bad weather, or when the state of the roads made 
 cycling abroad disagreeable, Hacker's home bicycle 
 could be placed in front of an open window and 
 ridden furiously for any length of time. Whenever 
 the rider tired, he could descend comfortably at 
 home again and examine the cyclometer to see 
 how far he had been. In exactly the same way 
 the ordinary London Movement gives scope for the 
 restless and progressive impulse in human nature 
 without the risk of personal entanglements or any 
 inconvenient disturbance of the milieu. 1 
 
 To accomplish a cure, or at least to obtain a 
 diagnosis of the evil, Mr. Wells resorts to a curious 
 
 1 "Marriage," Duffield and Company, 1912. 
 
 [115)
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 expedient which he suggested first in his "Modern 
 Utopia", where he laid down as one of the rules 
 of his new order of Samurai that a man who aspired 
 to be a leader of men should for a week every year 
 go off into the desert and live absolutely alone, 
 without books or other distractions to keep him 
 from thinking. But in "Marriage" Mr. Wells 
 improves upon this plan, for Trafford and his wife 
 go into the wilds of Labrador together. "How 
 sweet is solitude," as the Irishman said, "when you 
 have your sweetheart with you." So, indeed, they 
 found it, and in their fight with cold, starvation, and 
 wild beasts they learned how to found their love 
 upon mutual comprehension and respect, and made 
 of their marriage a true union. The change of 
 heart which Trafford experiences is not altogether 
 unlike what Christians call conversion. His line 
 of argument, or, more properly speaking, develop- 
 ment of thought, finds expression in fragmentary 
 sentences muttered in the delirium of fever, a Freu- 
 dian emergence of fundamental feelings, as in the 
 following passage : 
 
 "Of course," he said, "I said it or somebody 
 said it about this collective mind being mixed 
 with other things. It's something arising out of 
 life not the common stuff of life. An exhalation. 
 
 [116]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 . . . It's like the little tongues of fire that came 
 at Pentecost. . . . Queer how one comes drifting 
 back to these images. Perhaps I shall die a Chris- 
 tian yet. . . . The other Christians won't like me 
 if I do. What was I saying ? . . . It's what I 
 reach up to, what I desire shall pervade me, not 
 what I am. Just as far as I give myself purely to 
 knowledge, to making feeling and thought clear in 
 my mind and words, to the understanding and ex- 
 pression of the realities and relations of life, just 
 so far do I achieve salvation. . . . Salvation ! . . . 
 
 "I wonder is salvation the same for every one? 
 Perhaps for one man salvation is research and 
 thought, and for another expression in art, an*d for 
 another nursing lepers. Provided he does it in the 
 spirit. He has to do it in the spirit. . . . 
 
 "This flame that arises out of life, that redeems 
 life from purposeless triviality, isn't life. Let me 
 get hold of that. That's a point. That's a very 
 important point." 
 
 This passage from "Marriage" showed that in 
 1912 Wells's thought was entering upon a new 
 phase, considerably in advance of that revealed in 
 his "First and Last Things." He seemed to be 
 working toward some sort of belief in God, a Berg- 
 sonian God, struggling upward in spite of and by 
 means of inert matter and recalcitrant humanity. It 
 would indeed be queer to find Wells not only among 
 the prophets, but among the Christian prophets, and, 
 as he intimates, some of the other Christians would 
 not like it.
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 Wells's catholicity of sympathy recognizes no 
 limitations of race. He has an abhorrence for race 
 prejudice of every kind. The greatest blot he 
 found upon American civilization was our ill treat- 
 ment of the negro. 1 
 
 In his article on "Race Prejudice" he puts it 
 foremost among the evils of the age but even his 
 "anticipations" could not conceive of such an 
 insensate revival of racial animosity between civi- 
 lized nations as the Great War has.brought about : 
 
 Knight errantry is as much a part of a wholesome 
 human being as falling in love or self-assertion, and 
 therein lies one's hope for mankind. Nearly every 
 one, I believe I've detected the tendency in old 
 cheats even and disreputable people of all sorts 
 is ready to put in a little time and effort in dragon- 
 slaying now and then, and if any one wants a credit- 
 able dragon to write against, talk against, study 
 against, subscribe against, work against, I am con- 
 vinced they can find no better one that is to say, 
 no worse one than Race Prejudice. I am con- 
 vinced myself that there is no more evil thing in this 
 present world than Race Prejudice; none at all. I 
 write deliberately it is the worst single thing in 
 life now. It justifies and holds together more 
 baseness, cruelty and abomination than any other 
 sort of error in the world. Through its body runs 
 
 1 See "The Tragedy of Color", chapter xii of "The Future in 
 America", and his article on "Race Prejudice", in The Independent of 
 February 14, 1907. 
 
 [118]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 the black blood of coarse lust, suspicion, jealousy 
 and persecution and all the darkest poisons of the 
 human soul. It is this much like the dragons of 
 old, that it devours youth, spoils life, holds beautiful 
 people in shame and servitude, and desolates wide 
 regions. It is a monster begotten of natural instincts 
 and intellectual confusion, to be fought against by 
 all men of good intent, each in our own dispersed 
 modern manner doing his fragmentary, inestimable 
 share. 
 
 The abolition of hatred between castes and classes 
 and countries, the growth of toleration and exten- 
 sion of cooperation, the improvement of education, 
 and the advancement of science, are what will lead 
 toward his ideal. And his ideal is that of an evolu- 
 tionist, the opportunity for continuous growth. 
 He has exprest it best, perhaps, in "The Food of 
 the Gods," in the speech of one of the new race of 
 giants, of supermen, to his fellows as they are about 
 to give battle to the community of ordinary people 
 determined to destroy them : 
 
 It is not that we would oust the little people from 
 the world in order that we, who are no more than 
 one step upward from their littleness, may hold 
 their world forever. It is the step we fight for and 
 not ourselves. . . . We are here, Brothers, to 
 what end ? To serve the spirit and the purpose that 
 has been breathed into our lives. We fight not for 
 ourselves for we are but the momentary hands 
 and eyes of the Life of the World. Through us and
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 through the little folk the Spirit looks and learns. 
 From us by word and birth and act it must pass 
 to still greater lives. This earth is no resting place ; 
 this earth is no playing place, else indeed we might 
 put our throats to the little people's knife, having 
 no greater right to live than they. And they in their 
 turn might yield to the ants and vermin. We fight 
 not for ourselves but for growth, growth that goes 
 on forever. To-morrow, whether we live or die, 
 growth will conquer through us. That is the law 
 of the spirit forevermore. To grow according to 
 the will of God ! To grow out of these cracks and 
 crannies, out of these shadows and darknesses, into 
 greatness and the light ! Greater, he said, speaking 
 with slow deliberation, greater, my Brothers ! And 
 then still greater. To grow and again to grow. 
 To grow at last into the fellowship and understanding 
 of God. 
 
 The Great War has inspired or at least instigated 
 many works of fiction already, but the best of these, 
 in my opinion, is Wells's "Mr. Britling Sees It 
 Through." It does not deal much with the fight- 
 ing at the front. The author is chiefly concerned 
 with another aspect of the war, its effect upon the 
 psychology of the Englishman. The book is divided 
 into two parts ; the first half is light, carefree and 
 amusing after the manner of Wells's earlier romances ; 
 the other half is darkened by the war cloud and is 
 written with more emotional power than he has 
 hitherto shown. 
 
 [120]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 Knowing Wells's habit of introducing autobio- 
 graphical details into his romances, we inevitably 
 surmise that Mr. Britling is himself. Mr. Britling 
 is a writer whom "lots of people found interesting 
 and stimulating, and a few found seriously exas- 
 perating." " He had ideas in the utmost profusion 
 about races and empires and social order and polit- 
 ical institutions and gardens and automobiles and 
 the future of India and China and esthetics and 
 America and the education of mankind in general. 
 . . . And all that sort of thing." 
 
 This certainly reads like Wells's repertory of 
 ideas. And to make the resemblance closer Mr. 
 Britling writes a pamphlet, "And Now War Ends", 
 shortly after the war began just as Mr. Wells 
 wrote "The War That Will End War." Several 
 of the characters are recognizable as Mr. Wells' 
 neighbors. At any rate we may be sure that the 
 book reveals the changing moods not only of the 
 author but of every thinking Englishman as the 
 enormity, the awfulness, the all-pervasiveness of the 
 war became slowly realized in the course of many 
 months. 
 
 As a contrast to his typical Englishman Mr. 
 Wells brings in an American, handled with more 
 skill than British writers usually show in dealing 
 
 [121]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 with American psychology. The delight of his 
 Mr. Direck at the recognition of the scenes and 
 customs he had known from history and novels 
 is well presented : 
 
 The Thames, when he sallied out to see it, had 
 been too good to be true, the smallest thing in rivers 
 he had ever seen, and he had had to restrain himself 
 from affecting a marked accent and accosting some 
 passerby with the question, "Say! But is this 
 little wet ditch here the Historical River Thames ?" 
 In America, it must be explained, Mr. Direck spoke 
 a very good and careful English indeed, but he now 
 found the utmost difficulty in controlling his im- 
 pulse to use a high-pitched nasal drone and indulge 
 in dry Americanisms and poker metaphors upon all 
 occasions. When people asked him questions he 
 wanted to say "Yep" or "Sure", words he would 
 no more have used in America than he could have 
 used a bowie knife. But he had a sense of role. He 
 wanted to be just exactly what he supposed an 
 Englishman would expect him to be. 
 
 Every American tourist in England has felt this 
 temptation. He also has the experience ascribed 
 by Mr. Wells to his American of finding that Eng- 
 land on closer acquaintance is not so antiquated as 
 she looks. When asked what his impression of 
 England is Mr. Direck answers : 
 
 That it looks and feels more like the traditional 
 Old England than any one could possibly have be- 
 
 [122]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 lieved, and that in reality it is less like the traditional 
 Old England than any one would ever possibly have 
 imagined. I thought when I lookea out of the 
 train this morning that I had come to the England 
 of Washington Irving. I find that it is not even the 
 England of Mrs. Humphry Ward. 
 
 To complete this study of national psychology 
 there is also a German in the family circle at first, 
 a tutor whose hobbies are Ido and internationalism 
 and a universal index, traits drawn from Professor 
 Ostwald apparently. He is not caricatured but we 
 suspect that like Mr. Direck, the American, Herr 
 Heinrich is affected by British expectations and 
 appears more German than he is. 
 
 The book reechoes all the passions of the war, 
 love, hatred, courage, despair, meanness, sacrifice, 
 heroism, selfishness, stoicism and mad wrath, but 
 ends upon a clear religious tone such as has been 
 heard but faintly in any work of Mr. Wells before. 
 What Mr. Britling sees through is not the war, for 
 nobody can yet see so far as that, but he sees through 
 the doubt and turmoil of his own mind and finds 
 internal peace in the midst of warfare. When he 
 sits down to write a letter to the parents of Hein- 
 rich, who like his own son had fallen in France, his 
 mind is torn by conflicting emotions, but finally these 
 are resolved into one common chord and he writes :
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 Religion is the first thing and the last thing, and 
 until a man has found God and been found by God, 
 he begins at no beginning, he works to no end. He 
 may have his friendships, his partial loyalties, his 
 scraps of honor. But all these things fall into place 
 and life falls into place only with God. Only with 
 God. God, who fights through men against Blind 
 Force and Night and Non-Existence ; who is the 
 end, who is the meaning. He is the only King. . . . 
 Of course I must write about Him. I must tell all 
 my world of Him. And before the coming of the 
 true King, the inevitable King, the King who is 
 present whenever just men foregather, this blood- 
 stained rubbish of the ancient world, these puny 
 kings and tawdry emperors, these wily politicians 
 and artful lawyers, these men who claim and grab 
 and trick and compel, these war makers and op- 
 pressors, will presently shrivel and pass like 
 paper thrust into a flame. Our sons have shown 
 us God. 
 
 How TO READ WELLS 
 
 The curious thing about H. G. Wells is his di- 
 versity. For a person of any intellectual consistency 
 it is impossible thoroughly to appreciate him in 
 certain moods without disliking him in others. He 
 is the stern moralist of "The Sleeper Awakes", 
 the detached and exquisite artist of "Thirty Strange 
 Stories" and "Tales of Space and Time", the genial 
 and conciliatory sociologist of "New Worlds for 
 Old", the intolerant Imperialist of "Anticipations", 
 the subtle anti-moralist of "The New Machiavelli" 
 and "Ann Veronica", the sympathetic if somewhat 
 
 [124]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 cynical portrayer of the shop-keeping classes of 
 "Mr. Polly" and "The Wheels of Chance", the 
 vague philosopher at large of "First and Last 
 Things", the imaginative rationalist of "A Modern 
 Utopia", the Jules-Vernish romancer of "The War of 
 Worlds" and "The First Men in the Moon", the 
 scientific transcendentalist of "The Food of the 
 Gods", and in addition he seriously chronicles 
 "Floor Games" with his boys and takes interest in 
 fugitive essays on modern warfare and "The Misery 
 of Boots." Unless one is alien to everything human 
 (and superhuman), it is impossible to escape being 
 interested in at least some of these. 
 
 Wells's philosophy is, as I have said, expressed 
 symbolically in many of his stories. It is most 
 fully explained in "First and Last Things: A Con- 
 fession of Faith and a Rule of Life" (Putnam), and 
 in the two essays previously referred to, " Scepticism 
 of the Instrument" (in "A Modern Utopia") and 
 "The Discovery of the Future", first published in 
 Nature, February 6, 1902, and in the "Report of 
 the Smithsonian Institution", 1902, and later in 
 book form (Huebsch, New York, 1913). 
 
 His sociological studies comprise the following 
 volumes: "Anticipations" (1901, Harper), "Man- 
 kind in the Making" (1903, Scribner), "A Modern 
 Utopia" (1904, Scribner), "The Future in America" 
 (1906, Harper), "New Worlds for Old" (1908, 
 Macmillan), "Socialism and the Great State", with 
 the collaboration of fourteen other authors (1911, 
 Harper), "Social Forces in England and America" 
 (1914, Harper), published in England under the 
 title "An Englishman Looks at the World" (Cas- 
 sell), "The War That Will End War" (1915), "What 
 Is Coming ?" (1916, Macmillan), " Italy, France and 
 
 [125]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 Britain at War" (1917, Macmillan), and "God the 
 Invisible King" (1917, Macmillan). 
 
 His short stones have been collected in several 
 different volumes, in part overlapping: "Thirty 
 Strange Stories" (1898, Harper), "Tales of Time 
 and Space" (1899, Doubleday), "Twelve Stories 
 and a Dream" (1903, Scribner), "The Planner 
 Story and Others" (1897, Macmillan), "The Stolen 
 Bacillus and Other Incidents" (1895, Macmillan). 
 
 Eight of the best of his short stories (including 
 "The Star", "Armageddon" and "The Country 
 of the Blind") are published in a sumptuous edition 
 with Coburn's photographic illustrations by Mitchell 
 Kennerley ("The Door in the Wall and Other 
 Stories", 1911). 
 
 His romances include: "The Time Machine" 
 (1895, Holt), "The Wonderful Visit" (1895), "The 
 Island of Dr. Moreau" (1896, Duffield), "The 
 War of the Worlds" (1898, Harper), "The Invisible 
 Man" (1897, Harper), "The Sea-Lady" (1902) 
 "The First Men in the Moon" (1901), "When the 
 Sleeper Wakes" (1899, Harper), rewritten (1911) 
 as "The Sleeper Awakes" (Nelson, London), "In 
 the Days of the Comet" (1906, Century), "The 
 Food of the Gods" (1904, Scribner), "The War in 
 the Air" (1908, Macmillan), "The World Set Free" 
 (1914, Macmillan). 
 
 His novels fall naturally into two classes : first 
 those of a lighter and humorous character : "The 
 Wheels of Chance" (1896, Macmillan), "Love and 
 Mr. Lewisham" (1900, Stokes), "Kipps" (1906, 
 Scribner), "The History of Mr. Polly" (1910, 
 Duffield), "Bealby" (1915, Macmillan), "Boon" 
 etc. (1915, Doran). 
 
 His longer and more serious novels are: "Ann 
 
 [126]
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 Veronica" (1909, Harper), "The New Machiavelli" 
 (1910, Duffield), "Tono-Bungay" (1908, Duffield), 
 "Marriage" (Duffield), "The Passionate Friends" 
 (1913, Harper), "The Wife of Sir Isaac Harmon" 
 (1914, Macmillan), "The Research Magnificent" 
 (1915, Macmillan), "Mr. Britling Sees It Through" 
 (1916, Macmillan). 
 
 To these we must add some early works : a 
 "Textbook on Biology" in two volumes (1892) 
 and two volumes of essays, "Select Conversations 
 with an Uncle" (1895, Saalfield) and "Certain Per- 
 sonal Matters" (1897). He has, like Stevenson, 
 devoted much attention to devising floor games for 
 children and has published two books upon it : 
 " Floor Games " and " Little Wars " (Small, Maynard) . 
 
 Wells still awaits his Boswell, but we have "The 
 World of H. G. Wells" by Van Wyck Brooks 
 (1915, Kennerley), a lively and appreciative critique, 
 and "H. G. Wells, A Biography and a Critical 
 Estimate of his Work" by J. D. Beresford (1915, 
 Holt), still briefer, equally interesting, and contain- 
 ing a list of his writings to date. An autobio- 
 graphical sketch was written for the Russian edition 
 of his works (1909) and published in T. P.'s Maga- 
 zine (1912). 
 
 Of magazine articles and critiques the following 
 have for one reason or another special interest : 
 
 "Les Idees de Wells sur 1'Humanite future" by 
 Charles Duguet in Revue des Idees, 1908. 
 
 "Wells" by Chesterton in American Magazine, 
 vol. 71, p. 32 (1910). 
 
 "Wells and his Point of View" in Catholic World, 
 vol. 91 (four articles, 1910). 
 
 "Wells and Bergson" by P. E. B. Jourdain in 
 Hibbert Journal, vol. 10, p. 835, July, 1912. 
 
 [127]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 "H. G. Wells et la Pensee contemporaine" by 
 Rene Leguy in Mercure de France (1912). 
 
 The contributions of Mr. Wells to current maga- 
 zines and newspapers are too numerous to enumerate, 
 but I must not omit the two articles on Socialism 
 which he contributed to The Independent, October 
 25 and November 3, 1906, and an article on "The 
 Nature of Love" (The Independent, August 13, 
 1908). 
 
 [128]
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 KNIGHT ERRANT OF ORTHODOXY 
 
 The central truth to be uttered about Mr. Ches- 
 terton is that he is the greatest prophet of our 
 generation. He is as great as Tolstoy or Ibsen. It 
 may seem rash to set him beside these great prophets, 
 but time will ratify my rashness. A prophet is a 
 man of genius with a spiritual message for his age. 
 
 The spiritual message delivered by Mr. Chester- 
 ton is mightier than any other sounding in our ears. 
 He is a bigger man than Maeterlinck or Bergson, 
 though we know it not. As a prophet he is larger 
 in every way than Mr. Shaw or Mr. Wells or Mr. 
 Arnold Bennett, because he deals with the soul, 
 whereas they deal with the soul's environment. 
 They deal with man as a social animal. He deals 
 with man as a spiritual being. 
 
 Our failure to salute the prophet is complete, and 
 it is emphasized by our failure to perceive that he 
 is the authentic voice of that English soul which is 
 now wrestling with the Teutonic soul for the soul 
 of the world. He is the soul of England. James 
 Douglas in the Observer, 1916. 
 
 CAN a journalist have a philosophy of life, and if 
 so would it be worth talking about ? In answer 
 
 [129]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 to the first question I shall quote Chesterton to the 
 effect that everybody has a philosophy, even generals 
 and journalists. To prove the affirmative of the 
 second I shall present, as Exhibit B, the whole body 
 of Chesterton's works. Perhaps the most heretical 
 passage of his book on "Heretics" was that which 
 begins : 
 
 But there are some people, nevertheless and 
 I am one of them who think that the most practi- 
 cal and important thing about a man is still his view 
 of the universe. We think that for a landlady 
 considering a lodger, it is important to know his 
 income, but still more important to know his phi- 
 losophy. We think that for a general about to fight 
 an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's 
 numbers, but still more important to know the 
 enemy's philosophy. We think the question is not 
 whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, 
 but whether, in the long run, anything else affects 
 them. 
 
 Like many other things in Chesterton's works 
 this does not sound so heretical now as when it was 
 written, about the time when the weary old world 
 had finished Chapter XIX of the second volume of 
 his history and had turned over the page in hopes of 
 finding something new and exciting in Chapter XX 
 and found it. Chesterton's countrymen then 
 were keeping careful count of Germany's soldiers
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 and ships, but they were contentedly ignorant of 
 German philosophy. But as soon as the war broke 
 out they began with feverish haste to translate and 
 study Treitschke, Nietzsche, Bernhardi, and any 
 other books which might throw light upon the 
 German Weltanschauung^ but which in the leisurely 
 days of peace they had no time to read. 
 
 It is convenient to compare Shaw and Chesterton 
 because they are antithetic in temperament and 
 opinion and represent two opposite currents of 
 modern thought. Shaw stands for the earlier 
 rationalistic, socialistic revolt against the conven- 
 tions of society. Chesterton stands for the later 
 conservative reaction to all this, for ecclesiasticism, 
 nationalism, and traditionalism. Shaw is a vege- 
 tarian and teetotaler. Chesterton is quite the 
 opposite ; he champions the public house as a good 
 old English institution. Shaw is a suffragist; 
 Chesterton is dead set against anything of the kind. 
 Shaw came from the most pronounced Protestant 
 stock, the Ulster kind, and, as we can see from his 
 introduction to "Androcles and the Lion", he has 
 constructed a sort of religion for himself, though he 
 could hardly be accounted orthodox. Chesterton 
 is a Catholic, though of the Anglican rather than the 
 Roman variety, a champion of orthodoxy, and a 
 
 [131]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 defender of all forms of ritualism and medievalism. 
 Chesterton makes it his business to find a logical 
 basis for popular traditions, customs, and super- 
 stitions which have always been regarded as purely 
 irrational and arbitrary even by those who liked 
 them and defended them as poetic and conforming 
 to a deeper reality than that of reason. Shaw is 
 always showing how absurd and illogical are the 
 soundest axioms and the most unquestioned plati- 
 tudes, whether of orthodox conservative or orthodox 
 revolutionary thought. Chesterton discovers new 
 reasons in things ; Shaw discovers new unreasons 
 in things. 
 
 Chesterton appears in the capacity of permanent 
 minority leader. But this is in respect to that 
 really small minority of professional writers, speakers, 
 and agitators who set the fashions for the Zeitgeist. 
 Actually he has the backing of the great inarticulate 
 immobile mass of the people. 
 
 Chesterton has discovered how to be witty though 
 orthodox. But his orthodoxy is so extreme that it 
 seems heterodoxy to most of us. Perhaps that 
 accounts for his success in making it sound para- 
 doxical. As Wesley determined that the devil 
 had no right to all the pretty music, so Chesterton 
 determined that the iconoclasts should not monopo-
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 lize all the cleverness. His orginality consists in 
 his genius for turning platitudes into epigrams. 
 He can put the most unquestioned axiom in a way 
 to shock the world. If he is right in what he says 
 in his books on Watts that "there is only one thing 
 that requires real courage to say and that is a 
 truism", Chesterton must be the bravest man alive. 
 But even he finds it necessary to promulgate his 
 truisms in the disguise of sensational novelties. 
 
 Chesterton's ideal is a complete democracy, not 
 merely democracy in politics but democracy in 
 science, religion, literature, sport, and art. If you 
 say this is impracticable he doubtless would retort 
 that it was the essence of an ideal to be impracti- 
 cable, otherwise it would be confounded with dull 
 reality. He always champions the opinion of the 
 many against that of the few, the laymen against 
 the expert. 
 
 Once men sang together round a table in chorus ; 
 now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason that 
 he can sing better. If scientific civilization goes on 
 (which is most improbable) only one man will 
 laugh because he can laugh better than the rest. 
 -"Heretics." 
 
 It was absurd to say that Waterloo was won on 
 Eton cricket fields. But it might have fairly been 
 said that Waterloo was won on the village green, 
 where clumsy boys played a very clumsy cricket. 
 
 [133]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 ... It is a good sign in a nation when such things 
 are done badly. It shows that all the people are 
 doing them. And it is a bad sign in a nation when 
 such things are done very well, for it shows that only 
 a few experts and eccentrics are doing them and that 
 the nation is merely looking on. "All Things 
 Considered." 
 
 On this ground he hated Germany even before 
 the war, as a nation ruled by experts. He denounced 
 its workingmen's insurance, its governmental ef- 
 ficiency, its higher criticism, and the like. "I am 
 all for German fantasy, but I will resist German 
 earnestness till I die. I am all for Grimm's Fairy 
 Tales ; but if there is such a thing as Grimm's Law, 
 I would break it if I knew what it was." l 
 
 It is on the basis of democracy that he defends 
 religion : 
 
 That Christianity is identical with democracy is 
 the hardest of gospels : there is nothing that so 
 strikes men with fear as that they are all sons of 
 God. "Twelve Types." 
 
 It is obvious that tradition is only democracy 
 extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus 
 of common human voices rather than to some iso- 
 lated or arbitrary record. The man who quotes 
 some German historian against the tradition of the 
 Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing 
 to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority 
 
 1 "The Crimes of England", p. 98. 
 [134]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 of one expert against the awful authority of a mob. 
 It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated and 
 ought to be treated more respectfully than a book of 
 history. The legend is generally made by the 
 majority of people in a village, who are sane. The 
 book is generally written by the one man in the 
 village who is mad. ... If we attach great im- 
 portance to the opinion of ordinary men in great 
 unanimity when dealing with daily matters, there 
 is no reason why we should disregard it when we are 
 dealing with history or fable. Tradition may be 
 defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition 
 means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes 
 our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. 
 . . . Democracy tells us not to neglect a good 
 man's opinion, even if he is our groom : tradition 
 asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even 
 if he is our father. "Orthodoxy." 
 
 I expect some time to find Chesterton defending 
 the Trinity on the ground that it is more democratic 
 than Mohammedan monotheism, a sort of com- 
 mission government extended to the universe. 
 
 Chesterton has the true artist's love for the in- 
 dividual and the concrete. He delights in clear 
 outlines and bright colors. He thinks in pictures. 
 I have never seen any of his painting, but he must 
 have the color sense strongly developed. He will 
 halt in a stern chase or in the height of an argument 
 to describe a sunset with the most chromatic lan- 
 guage at his command. He studied art at the 
 
 [135]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 Slade School in London, and although he was soon 
 switched off into journalism he still reverts to the 
 pencil on occasion. He has supplied the illustra- 
 tions to three of Belloc's books; "The Great En- 
 quiry", "The Green Overcoat", and "Emmanuel 
 Burden." l The last, a satire on imperialistic 
 financiering, is one of the cleverest pieces of irony to 
 be found in all literature, but it raises the question 
 of whether the ironical tone can be sustained through 
 a whole volume without a decline of interest. When 
 the question of illustration arose Chesterton sent out 
 for a bundle of wrapping paper, and in the course 
 of one evening drew all of the portraits in the book 
 as well as a lot that were not used. 
 
 For the understanding of Chesterton's romances 
 it is necessary to remember that the more non- 
 sensical they seem, the more sense they have in 
 them. This is because when he gets blinded by a 
 big idea he sees men as concepts walking. He is 
 too much of a Platonist to be a good novelist. He 
 admires Dickens but never imitates him, for Ches- 
 terton's stories are singularly devoid of individuals. 
 All the little variations and accidental peculiarities 
 that make a type into a person in the great novels 
 
 1 For specimens of his sketches see "Chesterton as an Artist" by 
 Joseph B. Gilder in The Bookman. 
 
 [136]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 of the world are lacking. In "The Ball and the 
 Cross" Mac Ian is simply the archetype of the 
 Catholic Romanticist and Turnbull of the Revolu- 
 tionary Rationalist. Neither of them ever does 
 anything out of character, but then neither of them 
 has any character outside of the Idea that made 
 them what they are. Each falls in love with a girl 
 of the opposite type, drawn to scale. This is carried 
 farther yet by the introduction of an incredibly 
 consistent Tolstoyan and a Nietzschean beside 
 whom Nietzsche would seem all too human. Thus 
 the whole book is balanced and matched like old- 
 fashioned wall paper or an Italian garden. 
 
 Manalive comes closer to being real. He cer- 
 tainly is alive, but he is not a man; he is an ideal, 
 Chesterton's superman. "All habits are bad hab- 
 its" is the text of G. K. Chesterton's "Manalive", 
 which proved as delightful to his admirers and dis- 
 tasteful to his antipathists as any of his former 
 productions. In his essays Mr. Chesterton's method 
 is first to set down something that sounds like a wild 
 absurdity and then to argue the reader into the ad- 
 mission cheerful or indignant, according to his 
 temperament that it is a very sensible thing after 
 all. In his romances his method is essentially the 
 same. Nobody could act crazier than Mr. Innocent 
 
 [137]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 Smith in the first chapters of this volume, but in 
 the end he is proved, by a long legal process, to be 
 the only really sane man of the lot. He is accused 
 of about as many crimes as the hero of Jokai's tale, 
 "The Death's Head", confessed to, but he turns 
 out to be quite as guiltless. Charges of murder, 
 burglary, bigamy, and kidnaping, amply certifi- 
 cated, slip off him like water off a duck's back. 
 Neither prison nor asylum can hold Manalive. 
 Smith's theory is that if you keep the command- 
 ments, you may violate the conventions ; which, 
 being the reverse of the ordinary rule of procedure, 
 gets him into all sorts of misunderstandings. He 
 had evidently read Schopenhauer's theory that the 
 only happiness is the pursuit of happiness, and, what 
 is more, he acts upon it by letting go what he most 
 delights in that he may recapture it. He goes round 
 the world in search of his own home, and his series 
 of amorous adventures are conducted in strict 
 accord with monogamous morality. By getting 
 outside of himself he can gain the joy of coveting 
 his own possessions. The economic law of dimin- 
 ishing returns applies to all our habitual pleasures, 
 and to escape it we must be continually seeking 
 new investments. 
 
 So Manalive is distinguished from ordinary men 
 [138]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 in that he has legs that he uses. He is not rooted. 
 He breaks out and runs around and discovers the 
 most novel and wonderful things in the most com- 
 monplace environment. 
 
 Mr. Chesterton is as fond of a chase as a fox 
 hunter or a kinetoscope man. We have it in "Man- 
 alive" as we have it in "The Man Who Was Thurs- 
 day" and "The Ball and the Cross." As usual he 
 stops every little while and paints a cloudscape to 
 rest our eyes ; and all along he enlivens the way by 
 epigrams and inverted proverbs. Here are a few : 
 
 When men are weary they fall into anarchy ; but 
 when they are gay and vigorous they invariably 
 make rules. We are never free until some institu- 
 tion frees us ; and liberty cannot exist until it is 
 declared by authority. 
 
 For she was one of those women who at bottom 
 regard all men as equally mad, wild animals of some 
 utterly separate species. 
 
 Though she never spoke she always looked as if 
 she might speak any minute. Perhaps this is the 
 very definition of a companion. 
 
 All that the parsons say is unproved. All that 
 the doctors say is disproved. That's the only dif- 
 ference between science and religion there's ever 
 been or ever will be. 
 
 The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full 
 of light by the simple process of being shallow and 
 standing still. 
 
 With our weak spirits we should grow old in 
 eternity, if we were not kept young by death.
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 Providence has to cut immortality into lengths for 
 us, as nurses cut the bread and butter into fingers. 
 
 The most fantastic and therefore characteristic of 
 Chesterton's romances is "The Man Who Was 
 Thursday" which the French are able more concisely 
 to entitle Nomme Jeudi. The author calls it "A 
 Nightmare", and it is. The only books to compare 
 with it are George Macdonald's "Lilith", Strind- 
 berg's "Dream Plays", and Andreyev's "Masked 
 Ball"; but for wild imagining, grotesquerie, farci- 
 cality, and swift transformations it cannot be 
 matched. It is a detective story, a motion-picture 
 chase, and a system of theology, all in one. Like 
 all dreams, according to Freud, it is symbolic, 
 but the symbolism is not to be interpreted in the 
 usual Freudian way, for Chesterton is clean-minded. 
 The clue to it is to be found in his earliest book of 
 essays, "The Defendant", when he argues for the 
 moral value of the detective story in the following 
 fashion: "By dealing with the unsleeping sentinels 
 who guard the outposts of society, it tends to 
 remind us that we live in an armed camp, making 
 war upon a chaotic world, and that the criminals, 
 the children of chaos, are nothing but traitors 
 within our gates." 
 
 The detective, he says, who stands alone and fear- 
 [140]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 less amid the knives and fists of a thieves' kitchen, 
 is the original and poetic figure, and the criminals 
 surrounding him represent cosmic conservatism. 
 But in "The Man Who Was Thursday" each one 
 of the six detectives, separately commissioned by 
 the mysterious head of the secret police to enter 
 the inner circle of seven anarchists, believes him- 
 self to be fighting single-handed for law and order 
 against a criminal conspiracy to destroy civilization. 
 The seven pseudo-anarchists go through all sorts 
 of perilous and absurd adventures in the course of 
 which they are metamorphosed successively into 
 the seven days of the week, the seven days of crea- 
 tion, the seven orders of created things, and the 
 seven angels of heaven. Finally seated upon seven 
 thrones, robed in state, blazoned of course, since 
 it is Chesterton with heraldic devices, they 
 recognize one another as friends and allies through 
 all their strange strife. It reminds one of Emer- 
 son's Brahma: "If the red slayer thinks he slays." 
 But Chesterton is too much of a Manichean to let 
 it go at that. One of the anarchists turns out to be 
 genuine, the only real one in the world, the irrecon- 
 cilable rebel, the Eternal Anarchist, the spirit that 
 continually denies, the leader of His Majesty's Op- 
 position. In some ways Chesterton's conception 
 
 [141]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 of the devil reminds one of Andreyev's "Anathema" 
 or perhaps rather of the Satan whom Dostoievsky 
 introduces into his "Brothers Karamazarov." Ches- 
 terton's mind seems to have] a curious affinity to 
 the Russian, though so far as I remember his writ- 
 ings show no evidence of being influenced by Rus- 
 sian literature. 
 
 "The Man Who Was Thursday" affects readers 
 variously. To some it seems ridiculous ; to others 
 blasphemous. Julius West, usually sympathetic, 
 dismisses it in his biography of Chesterton as in- 
 comprehensible and tiresome. Yet three people 
 I know a man, a woman, and a child con- 
 sider it one of the most wonderful books in the 
 world, and know it almost by heart. 
 
 My own opinion is that it shows that Chesterton 
 has not yet found the true medium for the expression 
 of his genius. Drawing and writing are too slow 
 and cold to give scope to his pictorial imagination. 
 He should, like D'Annunzio, take to the screen. 
 "The Man Who Was Thursday" would make a 
 magnificent scenario as it stands, and Chesterton 
 could then add all of the things he thought of or saw 
 while composing it but could not put into words. 
 
 Blake, too, was a man who would have done 
 wonders with the cinematograph if it had only 
 
 [142]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 been invented sooner. Chesterton, in his sketch 
 of Blake, explains his difficulties of expression by 
 word and picture : 
 
 How shall we manage to state in an obvious and 
 alphabetical manner the ultimate query, the primor- 
 dial pivot on which the whole modern problem turns ? 
 It cannot be done in long rationalistic words : they 
 convey by their very sound the suggestion of some- 
 thing subtle. One must try to think of something 
 in the way of a plain street metaphor or an obvious 
 analogy. For the thing is not too hard for human 
 speech : it is actually too obvious for human speech. 
 
 Chesterton's theory of the use of symbolism, 
 even absurd symbolism, is given in his "Defense 
 of Nonsense", 
 
 Every great literature has always been alle- 
 gorical allegorical of some view of the whole 
 universe. The Iliad is only great because all life 
 is a battle, the Odyssey because all life is a journey, 
 the Book of Job because all life is a riddle. . . . 
 
 Nonsense and faith (strange as the conjunction 
 may seem) are the two supreme symbolic assertions 
 of the truth that to draw out the soul of things with 
 a syllogism is as impossible as to draw out Leviathan 
 with a hook. 
 
 Chesterton at the beginning of his career wrote 
 "A Defense of Detective Stories" 1 and he has since 
 shown that he knows how to write them, in the 
 
 1 See also "The Divine Detective" in "A Miscellany of Men." 
 [143]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 collections entitled "The Club of Queer Trades", 
 "The Innocence of Father Brown", and "The 
 Wisdom of Father Brown." But they are different 
 from ordinary detective stories not merely because 
 a mild-mannered priest takes the place of Sherlock 
 Holmes but more because they frequently have 
 nothing to do with crime and all parties turn out, 
 as in "Thursday", to have the best of intentions, 
 whatever their actions. Chesterton's method in 
 these stories is much the same as he employs in his 
 essays ; that is, he piles up paradoxical impossi- 
 bilities, and then by some simple expedient resolves 
 them into apparent reasonableness. The author's 
 obvious enjoyment of his own ingenuity adds to the 
 reader's delight. It would be interesting to know 
 whether he has in mind the solution when he lays 
 out the plot or whether he is not playing a game with 
 himself like jackstraws, pitting his skill as a disen- 
 tangler against a muddle of his own making. 
 
 As an artist Chesterton has always been attracted 
 by the Orient, with its mystical fanaticisms, its 
 cruel colors, and its unfamiliar habits of thought. 
 But while Turkey is all very well at a distance, 
 Turkey in Europe is to him a distinct and horrible 
 menace. In "The Flying Inn" we have a story of 
 Mohammedan influence not only in Europe but in
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 England itself. This novel is an allegory of the 
 war between the sacred symbol of the cross and the 
 sacred symbol of the crescent, as Chesterton has 
 similarly related the struggle of the Ball and the 
 Cross in his book of that name. 
 
 The champions of the crescent are Misysra Am- 
 mon, the Prophet of the Moon, and Lord Ivywood, 
 an eccentric nobleman, a fanatic against the liquor 
 traffic as the embodiment of Christian custom as 
 opposed to Moslem. Misysra, who is as fertile 
 with impossible theories as with plausible arguments 
 to support them, maintains that England is Mo- 
 hammedan at heart and proves it in a hundred 
 ways from the contempt with which the pig is 
 popularly spoken of to the absence of any "idola- 
 trous" animal or vegetable forms in modern cubist 
 painting. Lord Ivywood's persecution of the inn- 
 keepers sends one of them adrift throughout the 
 country carrying his inn-sign with him and accom- 
 panied by Captain Dalroy, an athletic Irishman 
 who champions the cause of the cross. 
 
 So far we have a straight Chesterton novel, a 
 symbolic theme variegated by satires on modern 
 life. But Chesterton really seems uncertain that 
 he aimed to write a prose novel at all, for the book 
 is plentifully interspersed with verses, serious, 
 
 [1451
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 comic, ironical, militant, in good meter and in bad, 
 till the novel takes on the not unpleasant appear- 
 ance of a Chesterton anthology of songs. 
 
 Everybody who likes G. K. Chesterton has 
 wished that he might be induced to follow the 
 example of Charles Dickens and write a Child's 
 History of England. When a literary man of way- 
 ward genius undertakes to interpret and record 
 the story of his country the result is almost always 
 worth while. We do not get the white sunlight of 
 impartiality, but we get a beautiful rainbow of 
 prejudices, personal opinions, and mystical insight. 
 Chesterton has still to write us a complete English 
 history, but he has dealt faithfully with about a 
 century and a half of it in "The Crimes of England." 
 It is due to him to say that the unhistorical character 
 of the work is caused rather by partisan emphasis 
 than by any inaccuracy of detail. Rarely if ever 
 has Chesterton written with such care for his facts, 
 and, as for his transcendental interpretation of 
 them, he has as much warrant to philosophize as 
 Carlyle or Taine or any other literary historian. But 
 one does tend to get the impression from the book 
 that only Prussians had ever incurred the scrip- 
 tural curse on him who removes his neighbor's 
 landmark. 
 
 [146]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 For the "crimes of England" are really the 
 crimes of Prussia, and England's guilt is summed 
 up in the phrase that English politics has been de- 
 voted ever since the time of Frederick the Great to 
 "the belittlement of France and the gross exaggera- 
 tion of Germany." Chesterton denounces the part 
 played by his country in the wars of Frederick the 
 Great, in the Napoleonic struggles, in the repression 
 of Ireland, in tolerating Bismarck's schemes of 
 aggrandizement, only to bring into darker relief 
 the wickedness of the state which used England 
 throughout all these years as a catspaw. Yet the 
 indictment of England as Prussia's accomplice is 
 delivered in very sharp terms ; so far as Chesterton 
 shows bias it is pro-French or pro-Irish rather than 
 pro-British. He really believes that the war is an 
 epic struggle between the old soul of Christendom, 
 most clearly incarnated in the Catholic nations, 
 and a blast of sinister materialism from the wastes 
 and forests of Brandenburg. In this belief he 
 writes not only seriously, but soberly, as befits the 
 great hour, and concludes his book with a vivid 
 and moving description of the Battle of the Marne 
 which has in it a world of eloquence and no "clever- 
 ness" at all. 
 
 The large volume of "Criticisms and Apprecia- 
 [1471
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 tions of Dickens" is composed of his prefaces to 
 the separate books of Dickens. Although not so 
 important a piece of work as Chesterton's biography 
 of Dickens, they are well worth bringing together 
 in this way, because they form not only a brilliant 
 piece of literary interpretation, but because they 
 show that it is possible to write prefaces to the classics 
 which will increase the desire to read the book in- 
 stead of dampening one's ardor at the start with a 
 mass of dry and trivial details of the author's life 
 and environment. Chesterton has the first requisite 
 of a good introducer, an enthusiasm for his subject 
 and a belief in the importance of his message for the 
 times in which we live. His comparison of Dickens 
 and Thackeray, if not quite fair, has at least suffi- 
 cient point to suggest thought. 
 
 Thackeray has become classical ; but Dickens 
 has done more ; he has remained modern. There 
 was a painful moment (somewhere about the eighties) 
 when we watched anxiously to see whether Dickens 
 was fading from the modern world. We have 
 watched a little longer, and with great relief we begin 
 to realize that it is the modern world that is fading. 
 All that universe of ranks and respectabilities in 
 comparison with which Dickens was called a carica- 
 turist, all that Victorian universe in which he seemed 
 vulgar all that is itself breaking up like a 
 cloud-land. And only the caricatures of Dickens 
 remain like things carved in stone. 
 
 [148]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 But whether his medium is fiction, criticism, or 
 editorial, Chesterton is always a moralist, differing, 
 however, from most moralists in that he is never 
 prosy and never directs his preachments at obsolete 
 evils and deceased sinners. 
 
 Prose and poetry are such widely sundered fields 
 that a reputation made in one does not carry over 
 into the other. When Scott dropped poetry to take 
 up novel writing he found it expedient to leave his 
 name behind. When Kipling passed in the reverse 
 direction from prose to poetry he had to cultivate 
 a new clientele. It is very amusing to hear two lovers 
 of Hardy or of Meredith sing peans of praise to their 
 favorite author in strophe and antistrophe until 
 on descending from the general to the particular 
 they discover that one was extolling the poet and 
 the other the novelist and that each had never read, 
 or but lightly esteemed what the other most admired. 
 
 So while the essays and romances of Gilbert 
 Keith Chesterton reach thousands of readers week 
 by week through the journals, and are bought with 
 avidity in volume form, his poems are but little 
 known to readers of his prose, although they have, 
 I fancy, a circle of their own. Yet no one can un- 
 derstand Chesterton fully who ignores his verse, 
 for his thought, expressed through this medium, is 
 
 [H9]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 seen from another angle and so gains solidity to the 
 view. 
 
 Chesterton, like Tennyson, has taken one of 
 England's legendary heroes as the theme of an epic 
 by which to express his philosophy of life and his 
 message to his age. The stories of Alfred he accepts 
 as uncritically and handles as freely as Tennyson 
 did those of Arthur, but the poems resultant show 
 not merely the difference between the authors, but 
 also, in a way, the difference between the past 
 century and the present one, the contrast between 
 a faintly hopeful agnosticism and a robustious 
 affirmation of faith. 
 
 In his "Alarms and Discursions" he has told us 
 in prose of the impressions made upon him by his 
 visit to the Vale of the White Horse and Ethandune. 
 These he transmutes into poetry in "The Ballad of 
 the White Horse." l In the beautiful dedication 
 to his wife he gives her credit for having opened his 
 eyes to the Christian significance of the wars of 
 Alfred against the Danes. Miss Frances Blogg, 
 whom he married in 1900, was described by one 
 who knew her then as "a conservative rebel against 
 the conventions of the unconventional." We may 
 assume that it was largely through her influence that 
 
 'Published, 1911, by John Lane Co., New York. 
 [ISO]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 he was converted from youthful atheism to ex- 
 tremest orthodoxy. I can quote only a few stanzas 
 from this dedication although such fragments are 
 distressing to those who know the whole and ag- 
 gravating to those who do not. 
 
 Lady, by one light only 
 
 We look from Alfred's eyes, 
 We know he saw athwart the wreck 
 The sign that hangs about your neck, 
 Where One more than Melchizedek 
 
 Is dead and never dies. 
 
 Therefore I bring these rimes to you, 
 
 Who brought the cross to me, 
 Since on you flaming without flaw 
 I saw the sign that Guthrum saw 
 When he let break his ships of awe, 
 
 And laid peace upon the sea. 
 
 Do you remember when we went 
 Under a dragon moon, 
 And 'mid volcanic tints of night 
 
 Walked where they fought the unknown 
 fight 
 
 And saw black trees on the battle-height, 
 Black thorn on Ethandune ? 
 
 And I thought " I will go with you, 
 
 As man with God has gone, 
 And wander with a wandering star, 
 The wandering heart of things that are, 
 The fiery cross of love and war 
 
 That like your self goes on."
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 O go you onward, where you are 
 
 Shall honor and laughter be, 
 Past purpled forest and pearled foam, 
 God's winged pavilion free to roam, 
 Your face, that is a wandering home, 
 A flying home to me. 
 
 Up through an empty house of stars 
 
 Being what heart you are, 
 Up the inhuman steeps of space 
 As on a staircase go in grace, 
 Carrying the firelight on your face 
 
 Beyond the loneliest star. 
 
 It is hard to carry the ballad meter through a 
 whole volume without its growing monotonous. 
 Chesterton's poetry, like his prose, should be taken 
 in small doses. "The Ballad of the White Horse" 
 contains some wearisome stretches, particularly in 
 the most exciting parts, the fights. When I want 
 real zest in blood letting and the enjoyment of hand 
 to hand combat I should turn to Percy's Reliques, 
 or to Homer. My volume of the " Ballad " opens 
 easiest, as it has opened oftenest, at three passages. 
 The first is that where King Alfred as a fugitive 
 in the forest is set to mind the cakes and gets to 
 musing, not, as we children used to be told, about 
 how to beat the Danes, but, according to the 
 Chestertonian version, about the Christian view of 
 
 [152]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 the labor question. As the old, bent woman leaves 
 the hut Alfred wonders what shall become of such 
 as she. 
 
 And well may God with the serving-folk 
 
 Cast in His dreadful lot : 
 Is not He too a servant 
 
 And is not He forgot ? 
 
 For was not God my gardener 
 
 And silent like a slave : 
 That opened oaks on the uplands 
 
 Or thicket in graveyard grave ? 
 
 And was not God my armorer, 
 
 All patient and unpaid, 
 That sealed my skull as a helmet 
 
 And ribs for hauberk made ? 
 
 For God is a great servant 
 
 And rose before the day, 
 From some primordial slumber torn ; 
 But all things living later born 
 Sleep on, and rise after the morn, 
 
 And the Lord has gone away. 
 
 On things half sprung from sleeping, 
 
 All sleepy suns have shone ; 
 They stretch stiff arms, the yawning trees, 
 The beasts blink upon hands and knees, 
 Man is awake and does and sees 
 
 But Heaven has done and gone. 
 
 [153]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 But some see God like Guthrum 
 Crowned, with a great beard curled, 
 
 But I see God like a good giant, 
 That, laboring, lifts the world. 
 
 Wherefore was God in Golgotha, 
 
 Slain as a serf is slain : 
 And hate He had of prince and peer, 
 And love He had and made good cheer 
 Of them that, like this woman here, 
 
 Go powerfully in pain. 
 
 But whether Alfred pondered problems of war or 
 labor the cakes got burnt just the same. 
 
 Next I turn to the page where men come to Al- 
 fred on the island of Athelney and beg him to be- 
 come the ruler of all England. This gives Chesterton 
 a chance to expound his anti-imperialism. 
 
 And Alfred in the orchard, 
 
 Among apples green and red, 
 With the little book in his bosom, 
 
 Looked at green leaves and said : 
 
 "When all philosophies shall fail, 
 
 This word alone shall fit ; 
 That a sage feels too small for life, 
 
 And a fool too large for it. 
 
 "Asia and all imperial plains 
 Are all too little for a fool : 
 But for one man whose eyes can see, 
 
 [154]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 The little island of Athelney 
 Is too large a land to rule. 
 ******* 
 
 "An island like a little book, 
 
 Full of a hundred tales, 
 Like the gilt page the good monks pen 
 That is all smaller than a wren, 
 Yet hath high towers, meteors and men, 
 
 And suns and spouting whales. 
 
 "A land having a light in it, 
 
 In a river dark and fast, 
 An isle with utter clearness lit, 
 Because a saint has stood in it, 
 Where flowers are flowers indeed and fit, 
 
 And trees are trees at last." 
 
 As his men clear the weeds from the White Horse 
 that had ages before been cut upon the chalk bluff, 
 Alfred has a vision of the day when the ancient 
 symbol shall be again overgrown and forgotten and 
 when a new and less manly kind of heathen than 
 the Danes shall overrun England : 
 
 I know that weeds shall grow in it 
 
 Faster than man can burn : 
 And though they scatter now and go, 
 In some far century, sad and slow, 
 I have a vision, and I know 
 
 The heathen shall return. 
 
 They shall not come with war-ships, 
 They shall not waste with brands, 
 
 [55]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 But books be all their eating, 
 And ink be on their hands. 
 
 The dear sun dwarfed of dreadful suns, 
 
 Like fiercer flowers on stalk, 
 Earth lost and little like a pea, 
 In high heaven's towering forestry 
 These be the small weeds ye shall see 
 
 Crawl, covering the chalk. 
 ******* 
 
 By terror and the cruel tales 
 
 Of curse in bone and kin, 
 By weird and weakness winning, 
 Accursed from the beginning, 
 By detail of the sinning, 
 
 And denial of the sin : 
 
 By thought a crawling ruin, 
 
 By life a leaping mire, 
 By a broken heart in the breast of the world, 
 
 And the end of the world's desire : 
 
 By God and man dishonored, 
 
 By death and life made vain, 
 Know ye the old barbarian, 
 
 The barbarian come again. 
 
 When is great talk of trend and tide, 
 
 And wisdom and destiny, 
 Hail that undying heathen 
 
 That is sadder than the sea. 
 
 In this specification of "the marks of the Beast" 
 we may recognize Chesterton's antipathies ; ma- 
 
 [156]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 terialism, commercialism, Darwinism, imperialism, 
 cosmopolitanism, pacifism, and Socialism. He is 
 haunted by the same nightmare as Samuel Butler, 
 that the day may come when machines will master 
 the world and men be merely their slaves. For 
 relief he looks to a revolution like the French Revo- 
 lution, only worse. Chesterton is like the Eton 
 boys who, after a debate over woman suffrage, 
 passed a unanimous resolution disapproving of the 
 aim of the suffragettes but approving of their 
 methods. The socialists say we must have a revo- 
 lution, peaceful if possible. Chesterton would say, 
 "we must have a revolution, bloody if possible." 
 The guillotine, he says somewhere, had many sins 
 to answer for, but, at least, there was nothing evolu- 
 tionary about it. And he makes the English people 
 say: 
 
 It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose 
 
 the first. 
 Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath 
 
 be the worst. 
 
 Like Hilaire Belloc and other Neo-Catholics, he 
 manages somehow to combine an admiration for the 
 French Revolution with a devotion to Catholicism. 
 They are ardent advocates of democracy notwith- 
 standing the very explicit condemnations of popular 
 
 [157]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 government by the Popes. They are more inclined 
 toward syndicalism than Socialism and place their 
 hopes in the peasant proprietorship instead of in the 
 nationalized trust. It is an interesting novelty in 
 the labor problem, for it cuts across the old classifica- 
 tions, and I hope it will have a chance to develop 
 into something concrete. The similar movement 
 in France, the Sillon of Marc Sangnier, was crushed 
 out by a papal encyclical in 1912. Chesterton 
 might be called an English Sillonist, and in a literal 
 sense if we recall his essay on The Furrows in "Alarms 
 and Discursions." Chesterton sometimes praises the 
 achievements of modern science and industry, but al- 
 ways as ingenious toys. He is convinced that man- 
 kind in the mass will never take the city seriously. 
 
 When the rest of the world was looking for the 
 advent of cosmopolitanism and the reign of peace, 
 the earth lapped in universal law and all the local 
 idiosyncrasies ironed out, wherein all obstacles to 
 freedom of movement had been crushed out and one 
 could buy a tourist ticket to Timbuktu with the 
 same accommodation all along the route, Chester- 
 ton set his bugle to his lips and blew a fanfare of 
 audacious challenge to the spirit of the times in the 
 form of a nonsensical romance, "The Napoleon of 
 Netting Hill." In this he carries particularism 
 
 [158]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 to an extreme, breaking up London again into war- 
 ring wards, each with its own banner and livery, its 
 gilds and folk ways. The book is inscribed, as 
 we might expect, to his friend, Hilaire Belloc, and 
 I quote part of the dedication as it sums up the 
 message of the volume and is strangely prophetic : 
 
 For every tiny town or place 
 
 God made the stars especially : 
 Babies look up with owlish face 
 
 And see them tangled in a tree ; 
 You saw a moon from Sussex Downs, 
 
 A Sussex moon, untraveled still. 
 I saw a moon that was the town's, 
 
 The largest lamp on Campden Hill. 
 
 Yes, Heaven is everywhere at home, 
 
 The big blue cap that always fits, 
 And so it is (be calm ; they come 
 
 To goal at last, my wandering wits), 
 So it is with the heroic thing 
 
 This shall not end for the world's end, 
 And though the sullen engines swing, 
 
 Be you not much afraid, my friend. 
 
 This did not end by Nelson's urn 
 
 Where an immortal England sits 
 Nor where your tall young men in turn 
 
 Drank death like wine at Austerlitz. 
 And when the pedants bade us mark 
 
 What cold mechanic happenings 
 Must come; our souls said in the dark, 
 
 "Belike; but there are likelier things." 
 
 [1591
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 Likelier across these flats afar, 
 
 These sulky levels smooth and free, 
 The drums shall crash a waltz of war 
 
 And Death shall dance with Liberty ! 
 Likelier the barricades shall flare 
 
 Slaughter below and smoke above, 
 And death and hate and hell declare 
 
 That men have found a thing to love. 1 
 
 Remember this was written in 1904, at a time 
 when it was commonly thought that the last of the 
 wars had been fought and the nations might disarm, 
 for henceforth the Hague Court would hold sway; 
 when the socialists were becoming opportunists 
 and the anarchists had laid aside their bombs ; 
 when such scientists as Metchnikoff were saying 
 that self-sacrifice and heroism of the fighting sort 
 were antiquated virtues for which the peaceful and 
 sanitary world of the future would have little use. 
 Chesterton was wrong about the nature of the 
 catastrophe. He was looking and, I fear, hoping 
 for a social revolution, and that has not yet come 
 although it seems now less improbable than it did 
 then. 
 
 But the Great War has given an irresistible im- 
 pulse to the movement toward particularism as 
 against cosmopolitanism. Whether we like it or 
 
 1 Republished, 1913, in " Poems " (John Lane Co., New York). 
 
 [160]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 not, we must admit that the tide has turned in the 
 other direction and that it will be many years, 
 perhaps more than one generation, before there will 
 be the freedom of trade, intercourse, and migration 
 that prevailed at the beginning of the twentieth 
 century. Even England has abandoned free trade, 
 and every country will hereafter strive to secure 
 economic independence by developing its own re- 
 sources. Even before the war there was a tendency 
 toward the sort of local differentiation of which 
 Chesterton gave a fantastic forecast in "The Na- 
 poleon of Netting Hill." This tendency manifested 
 itself in a variety of ways ; in the cultivation of 
 local industries, the revival of folk dances and his- 
 toric costumes, in pageantry and community cele- 
 brations, in the interest in town history and in the 
 struggle to reestablish disappearing languages, like 
 Gaelic, Czech, and Ruthenian. 
 
 From Chesterton's latest book devoted to the 
 crimes of Germany, and characteristically entitled 
 "The Crimes of England", 1 we can see that it is 
 the primitive little peasant kingdom of Montenegro 
 that he most admires and the machine-like effi- 
 ciency of the German empire that he most abhors. 
 Montenegro, since he wrote this volume, has been 
 
 1 Published, 1916, by John Lane Co., New York. 
 
 [161!
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 overwhelmed by the tide of war, but probably 
 Chesterton has faith to believe that it will reappear 
 like Ararat when the waters subside. This faith 
 he expressed in the poem, "The March of the Black 
 Mountain", written during the Balkan war which 
 Montenegro initiated by a single-handed attack 
 upon the Turk : 
 
 But men shall remember the Mountain, 
 
 Though it fall down like a tree, 
 They shall see the sign of the Mountain 
 
 Faith cast into the sea ; 
 Though the crooked swords overcome it 
 
 And the Crooked Moon ride free, 
 When the Mountain comes to Mahomet 
 
 It has more life than he. 
 
 Chesterton has a better right to appear now as 
 the champion of small nationalities than some other 
 English authors we could name, for he first entered 
 the lists of public life to break a lance in defense of 
 the Boers at a time when it was most unpopular if 
 not dangerous to say a word in their favor. He 
 refers to these youthful days in his "Song of De- 
 feat", published some ten years afterward. I quote 
 part of one stanza : 
 
 I dream of the days when work was scrappy, 
 And rare in our pockets the mark of the mint : 
 
 [162]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 When we were angry and poor and happy, 
 
 And proud of seeing our names in print. 
 For so they conquered and so we scattered, 
 
 When the Devil rode and his dogs smelt gold, 
 And the peace of a harmless folk was shattered, 
 
 When I was twenty and odd years old. 
 When mongrel men that the market classes, 
 
 Had slimy hands on England's rod 
 And sword in hand upon Afric's passes 
 
 Her last Republic cried to God ! 1 
 
 One of his youthful dreams was to see a reunion 
 of the United States and England which he imagined 
 would come about in some great foreign war. But 
 by 1905, when he included the poem on "The 
 Anglo-Saxon Alliance" in a volume, 2 he had lost 
 faith in such ethnic generalities as the Anglo-Saxon 
 race, so he explains in his preface : 
 
 I have come to see that our hopes of brotherhood 
 with America are the same in kind as our hopes of 
 brotherhood with any other of the great independent 
 nations of Christendom. And a very small study 
 of history was sufficient to show me that the Ameri- 
 can nation, which -is a hundred years old, is at least 
 fifty years older than the Anglo-Saxon race. 
 
 But the poem, both because he wrote it and be- 
 cause he repudiated it, has an especial interest now 
 when American sympathy with England is stronger 
 
 1 From " Poems " (John Lane). 
 
 * "The Wild Knight" (Dutton & Co., New York). 
 
 [I6 3 ]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 than ever before, the traditional hostility has been 
 largely swept away, and there is talk of joining Eng- 
 land in this bloodiest of all wars. 
 
 This is the weird of a world-old folk, 
 
 That not till the last link breaks 
 Not till the night is blackest, 
 
 The blood of Hengist wakes. 
 When the sun is black in heaven, 
 
 The moon as blood above, 
 And the earth is full of hatred, 
 
 This people tells its love. 
 
 In change, eclipse and peril, 
 
 Under the whole world's scorn, 
 By blood and death and darkness 
 
 The Saxon peace is sworn ; 
 That all our fruit be gathered, 
 
 And all our race take hands, 
 And the sea be a Saxon river 
 
 That runs through Saxon lands. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Deep grows the hate of kindred. 
 
 Its roots take hold on hell ; 
 No peace or praise can heal it, 
 
 But a stranger heals it well. 
 Seas shall be red as sunsets, 
 
 And kings' bones float as foam, 
 And heaven be dark with vultures, 
 
 The night our son comes home. 
 
 In some respects we should expect Chesterton 
 to go better in verse than in prose. He thinks in
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 metaphors and pictures, vivid, fantastic, and color- 
 ful. The peculiarities of his prose style that grate 
 upon the taste of some readers, such as the repeti- 
 tion of the same words, the alliteration, the un- 
 qualified assertion of half truths, the queer rhythms, 
 the verbal tricks, and the superabundance of tropes, 
 are by tradition permissible in poetry and so arouse 
 no resentment. 
 
 On the other hand, poetry is a painstaking art, 
 and Chesterton does not like to take pains. He is 
 too indolent or too indifferent to hunt for the best 
 possible word or rime. Consequently we find 
 in his verse many a perfect line, rarely a perfect 
 stanza, and never a perfect poem. But scattered 
 all through his verse, even in the most nonsensical, 
 we happen upon curious cadences that linger in the 
 memory like the chant of some strange ritual. His 
 ballads abound in unconventional rhythms that 
 haunt one like those of Lanier's "Ballad of the Trees 
 and the Master." 
 
 Although Chesterton often seems to disregard 
 the canons of versification from carelessness or 
 caprice, yet at other times he takes delight in sub- 
 jecting himself to the most rigid of models, as, for 
 instance, the old French ballade, which, he says, is 
 "the easiest because it is the most restricted." He 
 
 [165]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 shows us how he constructs one in "The Ballade of 
 a Strange Town." l The strange town into which 
 he was shunted by the accident of taking the wrong 
 tramcar one rainy day while "fooling about Flan- 
 ders" was Lierre, an unknown and uninteresting 
 way station then, but now one of the famous places 
 of world history, for it stood for days the shock of 
 the German attack on Antwerp. While waiting 
 for the next car to take him away Chesterton 
 scribbled on the back of an envelope with an aniline 
 pencil a poem which begins in nonsense but ends 
 with as good an expression of his creed as he has 
 given anywhere : 
 
 Happy is he and more than wise 
 
 Who sees with wondering eyes and clean 
 This world through all the gray disguise 
 
 Of sleep and custom in between. 
 Yes : we may pass the heavenly screen, 
 
 But shall we know when we are there ? 
 Who know not what these dead stones mean, 
 
 The lovely city of Lierre. 
 
 Chesterton is so fond of the ballade that I must 
 quote one specimen complete. 2 For the benefit of 
 those who have taken no interest in versification 
 I may call attention to the technical difficulties of 
 
 1 " In Tremendous Trifles ", 1909 (Dodd, Mead & Co., New York). 
 1 From " Poems " Qohn Lane). 
 
 [166]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 the form of the ballade that he has chosen. It con- 
 sists of three octaves and a quatrain all ending in 
 the same refrain and using only two rimes. The 
 first rime is used in the first and third lines of 
 the first quatrain and in the second and fourth of the 
 second quatrain. The second rime is used in the 
 second and fourth lines of the first quatrain and 
 in the first and third of the second quatrain. The 
 closing quatrain or Venvoi is in the ballade ad- 
 dressed to a prince or other royal personage. Since 
 Chesterton hates princes his apostrophe to the prince 
 in this ballade is not in the usual sycophantic style. 
 
 A BALLADE OF SUICIDE 
 
 The gallows in my garden, people say, 
 
 Is new and neat and adequately tall. 
 I tie the noose on in a knowing way 
 
 As one that knots his necktie for a ball ; 
 But just as all the neighbors on the wall 
 
 Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!" 
 The strangest whim has seized me . . . After all 
 
 I think I will not hang myself to-day. 
 
 To-morrow is the time I get my pay 
 
 My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall 
 I see a little cloud all pink and grey 
 
 Perhaps the rector's mother will not call 
 I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall 
 
 That mushrooms could be cooked another way 
 I never read the works of Juvenal 
 
 I think I will not hang myself to-day. 
 
 [167]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 The world will have another washing day ; 
 
 The decadents decay; the pedants pall; 
 And H. G. Wells has found that children play, 
 
 And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall ; 
 Rationalists are growing rational 
 
 And through thick woods one finds a stream astray, 
 So secret that the very sky seems small 
 
 I think I will not hang myself to-day. 
 
 L' ENVOI 
 
 Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal, 
 The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way ; 
 
 Even to-day your royal head may fall 
 I think I will not hang myself to-day. 
 
 Those who assisted with more or less enthu- 
 siasm in the Shakespeare Tercentenary celebration 
 will appreciate Chesterton's verses about a similar 
 commemoration decreed by the calendar. 
 
 THE SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL 
 
 Lord Lilac thought it rather rotten 
 That Shakespeare should be quite forgotten, 
 And therefore got on a Committee 
 With several chaps out of the city, 
 And Shorter and Sir Herbert Tree, 
 Lord Rothschild and Lord Rosebery, 
 And F. C. G. and Comyns Carr, 
 Two dukes and a dramatic star, 
 Also a clergyman now dead ; 
 And while the vain world careless sped 
 Unheeding the heroic name 
 
 [168]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 The souls most fed with Shakespeare's flame 
 Still sat unconquered in a ring, 
 Remembering him like anything. 
 
 Lord Lilac did not long remain, 
 Lord Lilac did not come again, 
 He softly lit a cigarette 
 And sought some other social set 
 Where, in some other knots or rings, 
 People were doing cultured things, 
 
 Miss Zwilt's Humane Vivarium 
 
 The little men who paint on gum 
 
 The exquisite Gorilla Girl. . . . 
 He sometimes in the giddy whirl 
 (Not being really bad at heart), 
 Remembered Shakespeare with a start 
 But not with that grand constancy 
 
 Of Clement Shorter, Herbert Tree, 
 Lord Rosebery, and Comyns Carr 
 And all the other names there are ; 
 Who stuck like limpets to the spot, 
 Lest they forgot, lest they forgot. 
 
 Lord Lilac was of slighter stuff ; 
 Lord Lilac had had quite enough. 1 
 
 Chesterton's poetic versatility range may be in- 
 ferred from the fact that he has written a drinking 
 song that is used as a whisky advertisement and a 
 devotional song that has been incorporated into the 
 hymn book. The former may be found in "The 
 Flying Inn", the latter in the "English Hymnal", 
 
 From " Poems " (John Lane). 
 [I6 9 ]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 also in "Poems." The hymn is as follows, omitting, 
 as the preachers always say, 1 the third stanza. 
 Sing it to the tune of "Webb." 
 
 O God of earth and altar, 
 Bow down and hear our cry, 
 
 Our earthly rulers falter, 
 Our people drift and die. 
 
 The walls of gold entomb us, 
 
 The swords of scorn divide, 
 Take not thy thunder from us 
 
 But take away our pride. 
 
 From all that terror teaches, 
 From lies of tongue and pen, 
 
 From all the easy speeches 
 That comfort cruel men, 
 
 From sale and profanation 
 
 Of honor and the sword, 
 From sleep and from damnation 
 
 Deliver us, good Lord ! 
 
 But I know of some people and more sensible 
 people than you would suppose who say that they 
 like "Quoodle" the best of Chesterton's poetry. 
 Since there is no accounting for taste and some of 
 my readers may have taste, I must also quote this : 
 
 1 It has always been a puzzle to me why congregations have to be 
 warned against singing the third stanza of any hymn. I never could 
 see that it was any worse than the rest, but I assume the clergy know 
 best about it. 
 
 [170]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 SONG OF THE DOG NAMED QUOODLE 
 
 They haven't got no noses, 
 
 The fallen sons of Eve. 
 Even the smell of roses 
 Is not what they supposes, 
 But more than mind discloses, 
 
 And more than men believe. 
 
 They haven't got no noses, 
 
 They cannot even tell 
 When door and darkness closes 
 The park old Gluck encloses, 
 Where even the Law of Moses 
 
 Will let you steal a smell. 
 
 The brilliant smell of water, 
 
 The brave smell of a stone, 
 The smell of dew and thunder, 
 And old bones buried under 
 Are things in which they blunder 
 And err, if left alone. 
 
 The wind from winter forests, 
 
 The scent of scentless flowers, 
 The breath of bride's adorning 
 The smell of snare and warning, 
 The smell of Sunday morning, 
 God gave to us for ours. 
 
 And Quoodle here discloses 
 
 All things that Quoodle can ; 
 They haven't got no noses,
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 They haven't got no noses, 
 And goodness only knowses 
 The Noselessness of Man. 1 
 
 According to Mendelism new species are most 
 apt to come from the crossing of diverse forms. 
 We should then naturally expect Chesterton's verse 
 to be original, since it is the result of a cross between 
 Whitman and Swinburne. At any rate these were 
 the poets who most influenced Chesterton when in 
 his teens he began to write poetry. In philosophy 
 of life Whitman and Swinburne were not so far 
 apart, since they were both pagans and democrats, 
 but in form they are antipodes. Whitman was the 
 father or the grandfather of the vers-librists. He 
 cultivated the unconventional and introduced the 
 most unpoetic and uncouth words. Swinburne, on 
 the other hand, sought his themes in the classics 
 and sacrificed anything to the music of his lines. 
 
 The early poetry of Chesterton shows traces of 
 both influences. One very interesting instance of 
 this is found in a poem that he wrote at school, 
 when he was about sixteen. It is an Ave Maria 
 in the Swinburnian meter. That is, he has bor- 
 rowed the weapon of the atheist and used it in de- 
 
 1 I quote from The New Witness. The version in "The Flying 
 Inn " is a trifle different.
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 fense of Catholicism a trick that he has been 
 playing ever since. The poem begins : 
 
 Hail Mary ! Thou blest among women ; generations 
 
 shall rise up to greet, 
 After ages of wrangle and dogma, I come with a 
 
 prayer to thy feet. 
 Where Gabriel's red plumes are a wind in the lanes 
 
 of thy lilies at eve 
 We pray, who have done with the churches ; we 
 
 worship, who may not believe. 
 
 From his twelfth to his seventeenth year he went 
 to St. Paul's school, where, as he says, "I did no 
 work but wrote a lot of bad poetry which fortunately 
 perished with the almost equally bad exercises. I 
 got a prize for one of these poems Golly, what a 
 bad poem it was !" 
 
 The prize was known as the Milton Prize and the 
 subject assigned to the pupils competing for it was 
 St. Francis Xavier. A soliloquy of Danton on the 
 scaffold, written at the age of sixteen, shows how 
 early began his fascination for the French Revo- 
 lution. His fondness for discussion was cultivated 
 at the St. Paul's school in the Junior Debating 
 Club, of which he was chairman, and the monthly 
 periodical of the society, The Debater, contains many 
 essays and poems signed "G. K. C." His first 
 contribution to the outside press was a Socialist 
 
 [173]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 poem appearing in The Clarion, but a few years 
 later he was busy trying to puncture the balloon 
 of Socialism with his sharp-pointed pen. 
 
 After leaving St. Paul's he studied art at the 
 Slade School in London and has illustrated half a 
 dozen books with cartoons, for he draws as readily 
 as he writes. His first book was a volume of jingles 
 and sketches entitled "Gray-Beards at Play; Lit- 
 erature and Art for Old Gentlemen." 
 
 His propensity for dropping into nonsense rhymes 
 and sketches may be ascribed to heredity, for his 
 father, Edward Chesterton, though a respectable 
 real estate agent by profession, was responsible for 
 a slim volume of child verse and drawings, "The 
 Wonderful Story of Dunder van Haeden and His 
 Seven Little Daughters." 
 
 G. K. Chesterton was born in Kensington, Lon- 
 don, May 29, 1874. There is nothing in his heredity 
 or early training to account for his conservative and 
 High Church tendencies, for his father was a liberal 
 in politics and religion and attended Bedford Chapel 
 where the Reverend Stopford Brooke was preaching 
 what was then called "the new theology." Al- 
 though educated as an artist, G. K. Chesterton soon 
 passed from sketching through art criticism to 
 journalism. He began by writing pro-Boer articles 
 
 [174]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 for The Speaker, a Liberal weekly. The originality 
 of his thought and the vigor of his style attracted 
 public attention, and The Daily News took him over 
 to write a weekly article in spite of the fact that he 
 differed in opinion from the editors and readers on 
 certain points. As his anonymous biographer says : 
 
 "Thousands of peaceful semi-Tolstoyan non- 
 conformists have for years been compelled to listen 
 every Saturday morning to a fiery apostle preaching 
 consistently the praise of three things which seem 
 to them most obviously the sign-manuals of Hell 
 War, Drink, and Catholicism." 
 
 But more recently his antagonism to "cocoa" 
 extended symbolically to the politics as well as to 
 the beverage of Cadbury became so great as to 
 break this incongruous alliance and he has found 
 in his brother's weekly The New Witness a more 
 congenial although a smaller audience. He has also 
 contributed for many years a weekly page to The 
 Illustrated London News, which is under entirely 
 different management from The Daily News. Be- 
 sides these and frequent contributions to other 
 periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic, he manages 
 to turn out a volume or two of stories every year as 
 well as poetry and criticism, an amazing output 
 considering that there is hardly a dull page in it. 
 
 1175]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 To keep it up so long and steadily must be a strain 
 upon one of his easy-going temperament. Fleet 
 Street men tell me that it is hard to get his copy 
 on time. As press day draws near runners are sent 
 around to his clubs and other London haunts to tell 
 him that the editor must have his article immedi- 
 ately. Once caught Chesterton surrenders good- 
 naturedly and taking any paper handy will dash 
 off his essay, carrying on a lively conversation at 
 the same time. 
 
 Producing under such pressure or at least under 
 the compulsion of filling a certain number of columns 
 every week with witty comment on current events 
 inevitably tends to careless writing. Chesterton's 
 work is all equally readable, but not all equally 
 worth reading. He is an inspired writer, but he 
 goes on writing quite as brilliantly after the in- 
 spiration has given out, just as a man writing in 
 the dark goes on after his fountain pen has run dry 
 and is only making meaningless scratches on the 
 paper. His display of gems of thought is hardly 
 to be matched by any other show window, but 
 there are so many paste diamonds among them of 
 equal brilliancy that the half of the world which 
 does not like Chesterton takes it for granted that 
 they are all paste. They may even quote Chester- 
 
 [176]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 ton in support of their view for he says: "All is 
 gold that glitters for the glitter is the gold." 
 
 When ex-President Roosevelt, on his return from 
 Africa, was given a dinner by the journalists of 
 London, he was asked by the committee on arrange- 
 ments whom he would like to have placed by his 
 side to talk with during the meal, and he promptly 
 chose Chesterton. I was of much the same mind 
 when I went to England, but not being in a position 
 to summon him to my side I sought him out in his 
 home, Overroads. This is a little way out of Lon- 
 don, near the town of Beaconsfield from which 
 Disraeli took his title, uncomfortable quarters, 
 I should say, for Chesterton, considering his antip- 
 athy for Disraeli and his race. 
 
 Arriving at Beaconsfield by the tea-time train 
 I walked up the hill to where I saw a big man sitting 
 on the little porch of a little house. He impressed 
 me as Sunday impressed Symes. I do not mean 
 Billy Sunday, but quite a different personage, the 
 Sunday of "The Man Who Was Thursday." Great 
 men are apt to shrink when you get too close to 
 them. Mr. Chesterton did not. He was too big 
 to fit his environment. The house was what we 
 should call a bungalow; I don't know what they 
 call it in England. It was on a little triangular lot 
 
 [177]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 set with trees half his height and a rustic arbor 
 patiently awaiting vines. Afterward I saw in the 
 paper that Mr. Chesterton broke a leg on that 
 arbor. I suppose he must have tripped over it 
 like a croquet wicket. 
 
 Mr. Chesterton has a big head covered with curly 
 locks, two of them gray. He is gifted with a Taft- 
 like smile, and talks in a deep-toned, wheezy voice, 
 punctuating his remarks with an engaging chuckle. 
 It is no trouble to interview him. I never met a 
 man who talked more easily or more interestingly. 
 "There are no uninteresting subjects," he says, 
 "there are only uninterested persons." Start any 
 idea you please as unexpectedly as a rabbit from its 
 lair, and he will after it in a second and follow all 
 its turns and windings until he runs it down. His 
 mind is as agile as a movie actor. Epigrams, 
 paradoxes, puns, anecdotes, characterizations, meta- 
 phors, fell from his lips in such profusion that I, 
 who knew the market value of such verbal gems, 
 felt as nervous as a jeweler who sees a lady break 
 her necklace. I wanted him to stop while I got 
 down on my knees and picked them up. But he 
 did not mind wasting clever things on me, for there 
 were so many more where those came from. Be- 
 sides they were not so completely lost as I feared. 
 
 [178]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 I recognized some of them a few weeks later in his 
 causerif page of The Illustrated London News. 
 
 But when you visit Mr. Chesterton don't make 
 the mistake that I did and attempt to please him 
 by telling him how much he reminds you of Doctor 
 Johnson. He admitted to me that he had "paged 
 a bit" in that role, but I judge from what he says 
 in "The Mystery of a Pageant" 1 he does not re- 
 gard his selection for the part as altogether com- 
 plimentary to his personal appearance. 
 
 Perhaps he would not like it any better to be told 
 that the resemblance was more psychical than 
 physical. Chesterton is doubtless the most dog- 
 matic man England has seen since Doctor Johnson 
 died. He has equally violent prejudices, and he 
 expresses them with equal wit. Unfortunately he 
 has no Boswell. Chesterton has written a book 
 about Shaw, but so far Shaw has shown no dis- 
 position to return the compliment. 
 
 Shaw, in speaking of Coburn's portrait of Chester- 
 ton says: "He is our Quinbus Flestrin, the young 
 Man Mountain, a large abounding gigantically 
 cherubic person." 
 
 It is Shaw's theory that G. K. Chesterton and 
 Hilaire Belloc are not two persons, but one mytho- 
 
 1 "Tremendous Trifles", p. 317. 
 [179]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 logical monster to be known as "The Chester- 
 belloc." 
 
 Chesterton's ideals are large and generous and 
 very solid : A divinely ordered church, a really 
 democratic state, and a life of that hopeful and 
 humble wonder that men call romance. But his 
 usefulness as a moral philosopher is impaired by 
 the possession of a number of blind spots or in- 
 veterate prejudices that prevent him from seeing 
 clearly. He is like the tenor who had aelurophobia 
 and was upset whenever a cat came into the 
 room. So whenever one of these phobias comes 
 into his mind Chesterton loses his poise and sings 
 false. Some of the things for which he has a 
 particular abhorrence are : cocoa, colonies, divorce, 
 equal suffrage, Esperanto, eugenics, large scale pro- 
 duction, latitudinarianism, Lloyd George, official 
 sanitation, organized charity, peace movement, 
 pragmatism, prohibition, public schools, simplified 
 spelling, vaccination, vivisection, and workingmen's 
 insurance, all of which some of the rest of us look 
 upon with favor. His inability to see any good in 
 these and a score of other modern movements brings 
 him into curious inconsistencies. For instance, he is 
 an enthusiast for universal manhood suffrage. But 
 any mention of woman suffrage is like waving a 
 
 [180]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 red coat before an Irish bull. His statement that 
 there are three things which women can never 
 understand, liberty, equality, and fraternity, is as 
 brutal and untrue as anything Nietzsche or Strind- 
 berg has said. 
 
 In his essay on William James he says "pragma- 
 tism is bosh", yet his whole system of apologetics 
 is based upon the pragmatic argument; religion 
 is true because it works. "If Christianity makes 
 a man happy while his legs are being eaten off by a 
 lion, might it not make me happy while my legs are 
 still attached to me and walking down the street ?" 
 In order to make due allowance for Chesterton's class 
 and race prejudices while reading his works, it is con- 
 venient to keep a list like this as a bookmark : 
 
 TABLE OF CHESTERTON'S AFFECTIONS AND 
 AVERSIONS 
 
 CLASSES 
 
 He likes most: I. Children 
 
 2. Peasants 
 
 3. Domestic women 
 
 4. Artisans and laborers 
 
 5. Priests and soldiers 
 
 6. Poets and adventurers 
 
 7. Shopkeepers 
 (hereabouts is a great gulf 
 
 fixed) 
 
 [181]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 He dislikes most 
 
 He likes most : 
 
 He dislikes most 
 
 8. Business and professional 
 
 men 
 
 9. Criminals (including poli- 
 
 ticians) 
 
 10. The conceited professional 
 
 classes (the intellectuals) 
 
 11. Landlords 
 
 12. Millionaires 
 
 13. Multimillionaires 
 
 RACES 
 
 1. Irish 
 
 2. French 
 
 3. English 
 
 4. Russians 
 
 5. Turks 
 
 6. Jews 
 
 7. Germans 
 
 8. Cosmopolites 
 
 In his youth Chesterton wrote a poem in defense 
 of Dreyfus, "To A Certain Nation", but by the 
 time he came to publish it in his first volume, "The 
 Wild Knight", he had so changed his opinion that 
 he makes a partial apology for it in the preface. 
 Since then he has, in connection with his brother 
 Cecil and Mr. Belloc, introduced into British jour- 
 nalism a foreign element from which it had formerly 
 been free, the political anti-Semitism which has 
 been the cause of so much disturbance in France, 
 Russia, and Germany. Almost every number of 
 
 [182]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 The New Witness, edited by Cecil Chesterton, 
 contains sneers at Jewish financiers and politicians, 
 and in 1912 he went so far that he was fined 
 five hundred dollars and costs for defamatory libel 
 of Godfrey Isaacs, director of the Marconi Com- 
 pany. The prosecution significantly was conducted 
 by Sir Edward Carson and F. E. Smith. 
 
 It is greatly to be hoped that The New Witness 
 group may get rid of their race prejudice and cut 
 down on their muckraking, which, though often 
 necessary, is never nice, and bring forward the con- 
 structive part of their program, for this is the time 
 when there is a chance to do something. For in- 
 stance, the British Party system against which they 
 so long clamored without effect has now broken 
 down under stress of the war, but there is nothing 
 in sight to take its place. G. K. Chesterton was 
 quite right when he said that "the party system of 
 England is an enormous and most efficient machine 
 for preventing political conflicts", 1 and that what 
 party politics had done was to turn Balfour from the 
 analysis of the doubtful to the defense of the dubious 
 and Morley from writing on compromise to practic- 
 ing it. And again, "I think the cabinet minister 
 
 1 In Chesterton's book on Shaw. 
 [I8 3 ]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 should be taken a little less seriously and the cabinet 
 maker a little more." 1 
 
 Chesterton protests against being regarded as a 
 mere obstructionist and reactionary in such lan- 
 guage as the following : 
 
 I do not propose (like some of my revolutionary 
 friends) that we should abolish the public schools. 
 I propose the much more lurid and desperate ex- 
 periment that we should make them public. I do 
 not wish to make Parliament stop working, but 
 rather to make it work ; not to shut up the churches, 
 but rather to open them ; not to put out the lamp 
 of learning or destroy the hedge of property, but 
 only to make some rude effort to make universities 
 fairly universal and property decently proper. 2 
 
 Man has always believed in a paradise, but he has 
 never been certain whether to look for it in the past 
 or the future, or both. We have very detailed 
 descriptions of Atlantis, Valhalla, the Golden Age, 
 Utopia, and the like, but the tense of the verb is 
 indeterminable. Chesterton is equally uncertain 
 as to whether to look forward or backward for his 
 ideal state. His "Christmas Song for Three Gilds" 
 is headed "To be sung a long time ago or hence." 
 He has not yet favored us with a blueprint of his 
 Utopia, so we are left to surmise what he likes from 
 
 1 "Miscellany of Men." 
 
 1 "What's Wrong with the World." 
 
 [I8 4 ]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 the very plain indications he has given us of what he 
 does not like. Chesterton seems to obey a negative 
 magnetism and orients himself by his antipathies. 
 
 We may infer that his ideal would be a self-gov- 
 erning community of equally well-to-do, leisurely, 
 patriotic, domestic, religious, jolly, beer-drinking, 
 pork-eating, art-loving, freehold farmers and gild 
 craftsmen, clustered about the village inn and 
 church. They would all be of one race and creed, 
 healthy without doctors, wealthy without financiers, 
 governed without politicians. He believes with 
 Belloc that the nearest historical approach to this 
 ideal was Western Europe about 1200-1500. He 
 probably would agree with Doctor James J. Walsh 
 in calling the thirteenth "the greatest of all 
 centuries." Among contemporary communities I 
 should say that the mujiks of the Russian mir come 
 the nearest to complying with his specifications, 
 although he has not, to my knowledge, shown any 
 disposition to leave London and take to the steppes 
 in order to live the simple life in these communities 
 of pure democracy. But perhaps this is because 
 women vote in the mir. Of the made-to-order 
 Utopias I presume that of William Morris's "News 
 from Nowhere" would suit him better than the 
 Socialists for whom it was written. 
 
 [185]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 To sum up Chesterton in a sentence, I must 
 borrow the words of the Forum article of O. W. 
 Firkins : 
 
 A man who preaches an impassioned and ro- 
 mantic Christianity, and who adds to that the 
 Jeffersonian doctrine of democracy, the Words- 
 worthian and Tolstoyan doctrine of the majesty 
 of the untutored man, the Carlylean doctrine of 
 wonder, the Emersonian doctrine of the spirituality 
 latent in all objects, the Dickensian faith in the 
 worth and wisdom of the feeble-minded, the Brown- 
 ingesque standard of optimism, affects us as a man 
 with whom, whatever his vagaries and harlequinries, 
 it would be wholesome and inspiriting to live. 
 
 How TO READ CHESTERTON 
 
 Read whatever is handiest, for there is no order 
 and sequence is not important. Chesterton ex- 
 presses much the same philosophy of life in essays, 
 stories, and poems and there has been little change 
 in his opinions or style in the sixteen years he has 
 been writing. 
 
 Nowhere has he given a complete and orderly 
 presentation of his views. He is a born journalist 
 and prefers to fire at a moving target. About once 
 a year he gathers up a sheaf of his contributions to 
 the press and puts them out under as general and 
 indefinite a title as he can think up, but he never 
 can think up a title broad enough to cover the 
 variety of topics he treats. The heading to a 
 
 l-M]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 chapter gives no clue to the theme or its importance. 
 One is apt to find his deepest philosophy tucked 
 away in some corner of a discourse on cheese or 
 mumming or penny dreadfuls. He is like a sub- 
 marine ; when he goes under you never can tell 
 where he will come out. Consequently, as I say, 
 it does not matter much which volume you pick 
 up ; they are equally brilliant and inconsequential. 
 
 His views on religion and society are expounded 
 most thoroughly in "Orthodoxy" (1908), "Heretics" 
 (1905), both published by John Lane Company, 
 and "What's Wrong With the World" (1910, pub- 
 lished by Dodd, Mead & Company). Somewhat 
 briefer, more varied, and trivial in topic are "All 
 Things Considered" (1908, Lane), "Tremendous 
 Trifles" (1909, Dodd), "Alarms and Discursions" 
 (1910, Dodd), "A Miscellany of Men" (1912, Dodd). 
 
 Since the war began he has published "The Bar- 
 barism of Berlin" (1914), "The Appetite of Tyranny" 
 including "Letters to an Old Garibaldian" (1915, 
 Dodd), and "The Crimes of England" (1916, Lane). 
 To this we should add his first work, "The De- 
 fendant" (1901, Dodd). In The New Witness he 
 has been running a weekly page under the head of 
 "At the Sign of the World's End", and when his 
 brother, Cecil Chesterton, enlisted as a private in 
 October, 1916, he assumed the editorship of that 
 lively journal. 
 
 His youthful poetry is in "The Wild Knight and 
 Other Poems" (1900, Dutton). "The Ballad of 
 the White Horse" (1911, Lane) contains his epic 
 of King Alfred, and "Poems" (1915, Lane) con- 
 tains all the rest of his poetry except what still 
 remains buried in "the files." Of these I must 
 mention "The Wife of Flanders", which may be 
 
 [187]
 
 found in the Literary Digest, Current Opinion, or 
 Living Age of 1914. 
 
 Chesterton has written one play, "Magic: A 
 Fantastic Comedy" (1913, Putnam), which was a 
 success on the London and New York stage. 
 
 Of his allegorical fantasias I have discussed at 
 some length "The Man Who Was Thursday" 
 (1908, Dodd). "The Ball and the Cross" (1910, 
 Lane) describes the conflict between a religious 
 fanatic and an equally intolerant atheist. "Man- 
 alive" (1912, Lane) deals with domesticity, and 
 "The Flying Inn" (1915, Lane) is a defense of the 
 public house. In "Napoleon of Netting Hill" 
 (1908, Lane), his first romance, he preaches paro- 
 chialism. 
 
 His detective or rather mystery stories are : 
 "The Club of Queer Trades" (1905, Harper); 
 "The Innocence of Father Brown" (1911, Lane); 
 and "The Wisdom of Father Brown" (1914, Lane). 
 
 His literary criticism, mostly written as prefaces 
 to standard reprints, makes delightful reading, al- 
 though sometimes he uses his author merely as a 
 point of departure. Of Dickens he has written 
 most and best in the prefaces to Everyman's Library 
 edition (collected in " Appreciations and Criticism of 
 Dickens ", Dutton) and " Charles Dickens ; A Critical 
 Study" (1906, Dodd). His "Victorian Age in Litera- 
 ture" (1913, Home University Library, Holt) is 
 not quite so interesting because he does not have 
 room to ramble. His "George Bernard Shaw" 
 (1910, Lane) is not much of a biography, but it is 
 valuable as bringing into close contrast these repre- 
 sentatives of opposing points of view. His "Robert 
 Browning" forms an admirable volume of the Eng- 
 lish Men of Letters series (1908, Macmillan). Besides 
 
 [188]
 
 G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 these he has written many biographical sketches 
 and critiques, among which may be mentioned : 
 "Five Types" (1911, Holt); "Varied Types" (1902, 
 Dodd); "G. F. Watts" (1902, Dutton) ; "William 
 Blake" (1910, Dutton); "Samuel Johnson" (1903, 
 and 1911); "Carlyle" (1902 and 1904) and "R. L. 
 Stevenson" (Pott). 
 
 Chesterton is eminently quotable, and the pocket 
 volume of "Wit and Wisdom of Chesterton" (1911, 
 Dodd) will afford plenty of food for thought for any 
 one. 
 
 There are two biographies of Chesterton. One 
 published anonymously in 1908 gives the best 
 account of his early life ; the other by Julius West 
 (1916, Dodd) gives the most complete criticism of 
 his work up to date, with a bibliography. 
 
 His picturesque personality and peculiar views 
 have supplied innumerable journalists with ma- 
 terial for articles. Specially noteworthy for one 
 reason or another are : the excellent piece of 
 criticism by O. W. Firkins in The Forum (vol. 48,. 
 p. 597). "The Defender of the Discarded", The 
 Forum (vol. 44, p. 707), is harsh and unsympathetic. 
 "Chesterton as an Artist" by Joseph B. Gilder 
 (Bookman, vol. 39, p. 468, see also vol. 34, p. 117), 
 containing his sketches, a sketch by Henry Murray, 
 with sixteen portraits from childhood up, in the 
 London Bookman, May, 1910. Wells, in his "Social 
 Forces in England and America" (p. 205), discusses 
 Chesterton and Belloc. "A Visit to G. K. C. " by B. 
 Russell Herts in The Independent, November 7, 1912, 
 contains some of Chesterton's sketches ; reprinted 
 with other interviews in Herts's "Depreciations" 
 (1915, Boni). Chesterton wrote on " Shall the United 
 States Fight ?" in The Independent, January 12, 1916. 
 
 [189]
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 A BRITISH PRAGMATIST 
 
 The world knows nothing of its greatest men, be- 
 cause by the time it knows something about them 
 they have ceased to be the greatest. 
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER. 
 
 A DOZEN years ago I happened upon the word 
 "pragmatism", as it was printed, rather inappro- 
 priately, 1 upon the slip cover of Santayana's "Life 
 of Reason." Being a queer looking word and un- 
 known to me, I started to find out what it meant 
 and that led me on a long chase. The farther I 
 went the more interested I became, for I soon dis- 
 covered that I had been a pragmatist all my life 
 without knowing it. I was as delighted as M. 
 Jourdain when he was told that he had been uncon- 
 sciously talking prose all his life. I felt as relieved 
 
 1 Schiller says that "Professor Santayana, though a pragmatist in 
 cpistemology is a materialist in metaphysics." 
 
 [190]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 as Huxley when he invented "agnostic" as a tag for 
 himself. 
 
 I had come by my pragmatism honestly enough, 
 for I had got my training as a journalist through 
 the study of chemistry, and in science the prag- 
 matic mode of thinking is universal and unques- 
 tioned. So when I went to writing about other 
 things, politics, law, ethics, history, religion, 
 and the like, I naturally used my brains in the 
 same way as in science, that is, I persisted in the 
 valuation of all acts by their consequences instead 
 of their causes and in the validation of all truths 
 by practicality instead of precedent. But when I 
 found how this way of thinking shocked, annoyed, 
 or amused people I began to fear that I should 
 have to drop it as I had other evidences of my 
 buried past, such as the habit of using words like 
 "catalysis" and "parachlorbenzamidine" in casual 
 conversation. 
 
 But when I heard of the pragmatists I knew 
 that I was no longer alone in the world. There 
 were others, it seemed, even men of standing in 
 philosophical circles, whose minds ran in this way 
 and who were not ashamed to own it. I got their 
 names and started to find them wherever they 
 might be. I ran down Dewey in the Adirondacks
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 and Bergson in the Alps. Poincare I unearthed 
 in a Paris flat, James I heard in a Columbia lecture 
 room ; Ostwald I found in a Saxon village ; Schiller 
 I caught in an Oxford quad. I was thinking of 
 going to China to see Wang Yang-ming, but fortu- 
 nately before I had bought my steamer ticket or 
 learned Chinese I discovered that he had been dead 
 for three centuries. 1 
 
 Some who have read or tried to read what I said 
 about Bergson and Poincare 2 have complained that 
 I used too many big words, and one man wrote me 
 to say that if I would define pragmatism in words 
 of one syllable perhaps he might understand what 
 I was talking about. I could not guarantee that, 
 of course, but I had no hesitation about complying 
 with his request. Confucius wrote his immortal 
 works in words of one syllable, and I would not be 
 beaten by a Chinaman. Even Herbert Spencer 
 once condescended to translate his famous definition 
 of evolution into Anglo-Saxon. Since I am obliged to 
 use the word "pragmatism" more than once in this 
 book I may forestall criticism by putting here my 
 
 1 The Philosophy of Wang Yang-ming is now accessible in English, 
 through the translation of Doctor Henke (Open Court Publishing 
 Company, Chicago, 1916). 
 
 1 " Major Prophets of To-day, " First Series, 1914. Little, Brown, and 
 Company, Boston. 
 
 [192]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 MONOSYLLABIC DEFINITION OF PRAGMATISM 
 
 The one way to find out if a thing is true is to try it and see 
 how it works. If it works well for a long time and for all folks, 
 it must have some truth in it. If it works wrong it is false, at 
 least in part. If there is no way to test it, then it has no sense. 
 It means naught to us when we cannot tell what odds it makes 
 if we hold to it or not. A creed is just a guide to life. We 
 must live to learn. If a man would know what is right he must 
 try to do what is right. Then he can find out. Prove all things 
 and hold fast to that which is good. The will to have faith in 
 a thing oft makes the faith come true. So it can be said in a 
 way that we make truth for our own use. What we think must 
 be of use to us in some way, else why should we think it ? The 
 truth is what is good for us, what helps us, what gives us joy 
 and strength, what shows us how to act, what ties up fact to 
 fact, so the chain will hold, what makes us see all things clear 
 and straight, and what keeps us from stray paths that turn out 
 wrong in the end. Thought is a tool, a means to an end. Man 
 has to act, and so he must think. In this way he asks the 
 world what it means to him. The need for thought first comes 
 when man asks "Why?" or "Which?" so that he may know 
 what to do to gain his end. The mind as it thinks makes such 
 facts as it can to best serve its use. Out of the facts so come 
 by is made a law, and this law in turn serves as a rule to guide 
 one's acts. 
 
 But the reader should be warned that no two 
 pragmatists can be got to agree upon any definition 
 of pragmatism, and that the opponents of prag- 
 matism differ still more widely in their conception 
 of it. Schiller says that the most serious draw- 
 back in the name is that "it condemns every ex- 
 ponent of pragmatism to consume at least half an 
 hour of his limited time in explaining the word." 
 Schiller himself employs the term "humanism" 
 instead which being less novel is less disturbing to 
 
 [193]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 the conventional mind but on the other hand has 
 the serious disadvantage of having been applied to 
 a very different thing, namely, the spirit of the 
 Renaissance. Since C. S. Peirce who invented the 
 term "pragmatism" and William James who popu- 
 larized it are both dead, the word finds few de- 
 fenders, although the mode of reasoning it tried to 
 stand for is obviously permeating all fields of thought. 
 Like many other things pragmatism seems likely 
 to conquer the world incognito. 1 
 
 A man in the act of dismounting from a bicycle 
 is temporarily incapacitated from the effective use 
 of either mode of locomotion, and it was at this 
 psychological moment that I caught Doctor Schiller 
 
 1 Of course any one who wants to find out at first hand what prag- 
 matism is will not bother with what I say but will turn to William 
 James's "Pragmatism" or invest fifty cents in the briefer and more 
 comprehensive survey of the movement in D. L. Murray's primer of 
 "Pragmatism." A definition of pragmatism that is anything but 
 monosyllabic may be found in the chapter on Dewey. The story is 
 told of a college woman who was asked what Professor James's lecture 
 on pragmatism was going to be about and replied that she thought it had 
 something to do with the royal succession in Austria. Schiller's own 
 definition is to be found in his "Studies in Humanism : " 
 
 Pragmatism is the doctrine (i) that truths are logical values; 
 (2) that the "truth" of an assertion depends on its application ; (3) that 
 the meaning of a rule lies in its application ; (4) that ultimately all mean- 
 ing depends on purpose; (5) that all mental life is purposive. Prag- 
 matism is (6) a systematic protest against all ignoring of the purposiveness 
 of actual knowing, and it is (7) a conscious application to epistemology 
 (or logic) of a teleological psychology, which implies, ultimately, a vol- 
 untaristic metaphysic. 

 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 at the gate of Corpus Christ! College. Otherwise 
 I might have missed him, for he is as alert and agile 
 physically as he is mentally. He usually spends 
 his summers mountain climbing in the Alps, though 
 I suppose he has suspended this pastime during the 
 last three years while the Tyrolean Alps are being 
 used for other purposes than tourism. 
 
 Mr. Schiller wears the pointed beard that was 
 the distinguishing mark of the radical of the nineties. 
 He has a Shakespearean-shaped forehead, but wears 
 un-Shakespearean glasses. He is as interesting to 
 converse with as he is to read, which is more than 
 you can say of many authors. He talks best while 
 in motion, a real peripatetic philosopher. I won- 
 dered why he did not take his students out of the 
 old gloomy lecture room and walk with them as he 
 did with me, up and down the lawn between the 
 trees and the ivy-clad walls of the college garden. 
 Curious turf it was, close-cut and springy; I never 
 felt anything like it under my feet except an asphalt 
 pavement on a hot summer day. 
 
 But I suppose it would be against the Oxford 
 customs to adopt the Greek method in teaching 
 Greek philosophy. At any rate when I went to 
 Mr. Schiller's lecture on logic I found it as con- 
 ventional in form as it was revolutionary in spirit. 
 
 [195] 

 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 One would have thought that printing had never 
 been invented, nor even the mimeograph. The 
 lecture was delivered slowly, and necessarily with- 
 out feeling, clause by clause, with frequent repeti- 
 tions, so every word could be taken down. It was 
 really a brilliant lecture as I discovered afterwards 
 when I read over my notes, but at the time it sounded 
 as dull as proof-reading, for the lecturer dictated 
 even the punctuation marks, as he went along : 
 "colon", "Italics", "inverted commas", etc. The 
 English leave out the punctuation marks in legal 
 documents where they are needed and put them 
 into lectures where they do not belong. 
 
 The students, in short black gowns, were seated 
 uncomfortably on benches carved with the names 
 of many generations, and were writing awkwardly 
 on long boards. These were furnished with ink- 
 wells and quill pens, although the students sensibly 
 used fountain pens. I suppose it is somebody's 
 perquisite to supply such things as quills and snuff 
 to the college even if nobody uses them. An Ameri- 
 can college president told me that he thought there 
 was more graft at Oxford than anywhere else in 
 the world. 
 
 If Mr. Schiller had remained in America he would 
 now be lecturing to one or two hundred at a time, 
 
 [196]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 largely teachers who had come from all parts of the 
 country expressly to hear his ideas and who would 
 in turn transmit them to their students. But in 
 that room there were only these fifteen boys, many 
 of whom doubtless had no special interest in logic or 
 in Schiller's views of logic and who took his lectures 
 simply because they were required for examination, 
 after which they could be forgotten. I could not 
 help contrasting this scene with the big lecture room 
 at Jena, modern yet satisfying to the esthetic and 
 historic taste, where Eucken's fiery eloquence held 
 men and women gathered from five continents, or 
 with the College de France, where Bergson had 
 attracted an even larger and equally cosmopolitan 
 audience. A man in Schiller's position must gain 
 his disciples chiefly through his books, and for a 
 man of Schiller's attractive personality this is a great 
 disadvantage. Print can never take the place of 
 "the spoken word", but to have its effect the spoken 
 word must be widely heard. 
 
 The American visitor to Oxford meets a double 
 mystery : how it is that Oxford accomplishes so 
 much with a poor and antiquated plant and how it 
 is that American universities do not accomplish 
 more with their modern and convenient plants. 
 One hates to conclude that plumbing and ventila- 
 
 [I97l
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 tion are incompatible with high thinking. But if 
 Spencer is right in defining life as the power of 
 adaptation to environment, the Oxford dons are 
 most alive of any human beings. They have shown 
 the adaptability of hermit crabs in fitting themselves 
 into their awkward environment. They somehow 
 manage to make themselves comfortable in build- 
 ings that a New York tenement house inspector 
 who is never regarded as unduly particular 
 would order torn down. They work contentedly 
 under conditions that would cause a strike in any 
 well-regulated union. 
 
 ' Oxford is the favorite resort of American tourists 
 because it is the most satisfactory of all the sights 
 of Great Britain. The Tower of London and 
 Stratford-on-Avon do not compare with it. They 
 are as disappointing as an extinct volcano. But 
 Oxford is an antiquity in action. Our common 
 feeling in regard to it was best expressed by a lady 
 tourist who was being personally conducted through 
 one of the college quadrangles when a student stuck 
 his head out of a dormer window. "Oh, my! Are 
 these ruins inhabited?" was her delighted excla- 
 mation. 
 
 That is a characteristic trait of the English, the 
 economical utilization of antiquated buildings and 
 
 [198]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 institutions. The House of Lords actually does 
 something, even though what it does is wrong. 
 Westminster Abbey is not a mere mausoleum, like 
 the Paris Pantheon. It is a church where one may 
 worship and hear sermons of decidedly modernistic 
 tone. The French, when they made up their minds 
 that they did not need a King any longer, cut his 
 head off, which was a waste. The English keep 
 their King and make use of him for spectacular 
 and advertising purposes. Oxford is Cluny and 
 Sorbonne in one, a curious combination of old and 
 new, useful and superfluous, progress and reaction, 
 that puzzles and fascinates every American visitor. 
 
 Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller, M.A., D.Sc., 
 Fellow and Senior Tutor of Corpus Christi College, 
 Oxford to give for once his full name and titles 
 -was born in 1864. While at Rugby he showed 
 decided symptoms of intelligence, so he was picked 
 as a probable winner in the scholastic race and put 
 in training for the classical scholarships. The 
 British turn all things into sport, even war and 
 education, and since public opinion does not allow 
 headmasters to keep racehorses they indulge their 
 sporting instincts by backing their boys for the 
 Blue Ribbon, the Balliol Scholarships. These boys 
 are then given daily doses of classical verse competi- 
 
 [199]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 tion ; I infer for the same reason that jockeys are 
 fed on gin. 
 
 It is curious to see how widely educators differ 
 as to the fundamental principles of their business. 
 The British system is built upon competitions, 
 prizes, and examinations. The American state 
 universities in the days of their pristine purity 
 I mean by that of course, when I was a student 
 regarded competition as vicious, prizes as demoraliz- 
 ing, and examinations as an evil to be eliminated 
 if possible. But it ill becomes a pragmatist to 
 condemn a system that works so well as the British, 
 whatever theoretical objections may occur. 
 
 Much as Schiller detested making verses in a 
 dead language, he did it so well that he got a Major 
 Exhibition. This gave him three hundred and fifty 
 dollars for five years as well as four hundred and fifty 
 dollars in Exhibitions from Rugby. But it also meant 
 that he had sold himself to run in harness for another 
 four years at Balliol and was obliged to master a 
 philosophy which he already felt to be a fraud. 
 T. H. Green had died just before Schiller came up 
 and had been sainted for the greater glory of Balliol, 
 and it seemed to the tutors good pedagogy to set 
 their pupils to begin the study of philosophy with 
 Green's "Prolegomena to Ethics." Most of the 
 
 [ 200]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 boys confronted with this abstruse introduction 
 came to the conclusion that it was wonderful, but 
 that they had no head for metaphysics because 
 they could not see any sense in it. Schiller very 
 curiously came to the opposite conclusion from the 
 same premise. 
 
 Orthodox Oxford was at that time under the 
 sway of the great philosophic Trinity of Plato, 
 Aristotle, and Hegel, which was supposed somehow 
 to be concordant with or at least allied to the theo- 
 logical Trinity, and therefore fit food for the souls 
 of innocent young men. The third person of the 
 philosophic Trinity was kept much in the dark, 
 because the tutors generally were not fond of read- 
 ing German. They knew still less of science and 
 apparently did not suspect that Darwin and his 
 evolution might prove to have some bearing upon 
 philosophy. 
 
 Schiller took his First Classes at Oxford, although 
 he was given to asking awkward questions and was 
 known to be reading "out of bounds." One of his 
 examiners complained that he used such queer 
 terms in his papers, "solipsism" and "epistemol- 
 ogy" for instance. 
 
 The years 1893-1897 Schiller spent as instructor 
 at Cornell University, and at the end of that period 
 
 [201]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 an amusing incident occurred, though what it was 
 and how it came about I don't know; possibly be- 
 cause I never thought it best to inquire of any of 
 the few who were in the room at the time. The 
 bare fact is interesting enough, that a young man 
 who had written one of the most brilliant volumes 
 of the times on metaphysics, "Riddles of the Sphinx", 
 and who carried in his pocket a call to teach philoso- 
 phy at a leading college of Oxford, was flunked in 
 Cornell on his oral examination for Ph.D. in philos- 
 ophy ! Anybody who is curious can pick up half a 
 dozen inconsistent versions of this famous episode 
 on almost any campus. One is, that being fortified 
 by the crinkle of the above mentioned letter over 
 his heart and knowing that an American degree 
 would have no value in England, Schiller did not 
 take the examination seriously and neglected the 
 necessary cramming. Another version of the story 
 is that he turned tables upon his examiners by 
 bringing into action for the first time the pragmatic 
 arguments so much to their discomfiture and be- 
 wilderment that he was penalized for these foul 
 blows. But probably the details, if one knew them, 
 would prove to be quite commonplace compared 
 with either of these versions or the more picturesque 
 legends that are in circulation, so it is better to re- 
 
 [202]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 main in ignorance and file it in the envelope with 
 such cases as John Henry Newman, who got only 
 a Third Class ; F. H. Bradley, who got a Second ; 
 Gustave Dore, who failed in drawing; Darwin who 
 was called a stupid student, Grant who was grad- 
 uated in the lower half of his class, Mendel who was 
 never allowed to graduate at Vienna, and the like, 
 good material all for some one who wants to investi- 
 gate the psychology of students and examiners. 
 
 The chief benefit that Schiller got out of his 
 American sojourn was an acquaintance with William 
 James. It was a case of love at first sight and of 
 lifelong devotion. Schiller dedicated his "Human- 
 ism" "To my dear friend, the humanest of philos- 
 ophers, William James, without whose example 
 and unfailing encouragement this book would never 
 have been written." 
 
 In 1897 Schiller was called back to England to 
 become tutor in Corpus Christi College. The presi- 
 dent of that college, the late Thomas Fowler, be- 
 longed rather to the pre-Hegelian Oxford generation 
 of the Mill-British-empiricism school of thought. He 
 liked things to be made intelligible, and he was so much 
 struck by the lucidity of Schiller's "Riddles of the 
 Sphinx" that he called him from Cornell to Oxford. 
 
 Here then he has for twenty years lived the quiet, 
 [203]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 sheltered, contemplative life of the Oxford don, 
 varied only by such daring adventures as his hunt 
 for the hidden fallacies of formal logic, his single 
 combats with Mr. Bradley, and his ascent of the 
 bleak heights of speculative philosophy, where the 
 Absolute is supposed to dwell in solitude. Our 
 American universities are putting up some very 
 fair imitations of Oxford architecture now. Some 
 have transplanted ivy and it is growing. Some 
 have transplanted tutors and they are growing. 
 But one Oxford custom has not yet been introduced 
 into our universities, the custom of giving the pro- 
 fessors time to think. In Oxford all the men have 
 time to think and some of them do. In America 
 if a man shows a tendency to become absorbed in 
 thought he is made a dean or put on the committee 
 of accredited high schools, which cures him. 
 
 In the British "Who's Who" Mr. Schiller's recre- 
 ations are ordinarily put down as "mountaineering, 
 golf, etc." But in one edition of that handy volume 
 of contemporary autobiography it is stated that 
 his chief recreation is "editing Mind!" Thus was 
 revealed the secret of the mysterious appearance 
 at Christmas, 1901, of a periodical which in looks 
 resembled one of the regular numbers of that staid 
 blue-covered review of philosophy, Mind, but with 
 
 [204]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 most startling contents. The frontispiece is a 
 "Portrait of Its Immanence, the Absolute." This 
 is followed by an article on "The Place of Humour 
 in the Absolute, by F. H. Badley"; "The Critique 
 of Pure Rot, by I. Cant"; "A Commentary on the 
 Snark"; "More Riddles from Worse Sphinxes", 
 and the like. The advertisements were likewise 
 unusual "A Dictionary of Oxford Mythology, in 
 six volumes, containing a complete account of the 
 stories told in the Common Rooms and the men to 
 whom they have from time to time been attached " ; 
 "A fine consignment of assorted Weltanschauungen 
 just received from Germany" ; phonograms of all 
 the lectures, jokes extra, with colored cinemato- 
 graphs of the most famous professors in action, for 
 armchair study, etc. The history of philosophy in 
 fifty-one limericks, covering all systems from Thales 
 to Nietzsche, would be useful on examination time 
 by students of "Philosophy Four." 
 
 We hedonists, said Aristippus, 
 Discomforts detest when they grip us, 
 
 So wealth we adore, 
 
 The moment live for 
 And take what the rich 'Arries tip us. 
 
 The infinite self-absorbed Brahma 
 Was dreaming the World-Panorama : 
 
 [205]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 He groaned and he snored, 
 Till at length he grew bored, 
 And woke up, and broke up the Drama. 
 
 "To multiply beings", said Occam, 
 " Is needless, 'tis better to dock 'em." 
 
 So he seized on his razor, 
 
 This pestilent phraser, 
 And ran out to bloodily block 'em. 
 
 A pessimist, great Schopenhauer, 
 Found living exceedingly sour, 
 
 At Hegel he cursed, 
 
 His grievances nursed, 
 And poured forth his wrath by the hour. 
 
 As will be seen from the above, Mind! reads much 
 like the Junior Annual of an American college, but 
 at Oxford the students are deficient in journalistic 
 enterprise, so the duty of keeping things cheerful 
 devolves upon their betters. According to its cover 
 Mind! was "edited by a Troglodyte" but as there was 
 only one philosopher in England who would have the 
 cheek to do it and who could parody the style and 
 expose the weak points of the regular contributors to 
 Mind, the troglodyte was soon tracked to his cave. 
 The author of a similar jeu d' esprit, "The Joysome 
 History of Education", which surreptitiously circu- 
 lates about Columbia University, has so far as I 
 know never been disclosed to the public. 
 
 [206]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 But Schiller has not been able to confine his 
 humor to that uniquity, Mind! He allows it to 
 creep into his contributions to Min^-without-the- 
 exclamation-point and other serious journals. He 
 is a keen debater and does not follow the ordinary 
 rules of fencing, but frequently disconcerts his an- 
 tagonists by parrying their thrusts with a pun or 
 a personality. He is, so far as I know, the first 
 philosopher to find room for jokes in his formal 
 philosophy, as the following passage shows : 
 
 When we map out the whole region of Truth- 
 claim or Formal Truth, we find that it contains 
 (i) lies, (2) errors, (3) methodological fictions, 
 (4) methodological assumptions, (5) postulates, 
 (6) validated truths, (7) axioms, and (8) jokes. 
 
 Most philosophers in fact would not only ignore 
 his eighth category, but would neglect his first and 
 second, accepting any statement that claimed to 
 be true and devoting themselves to the study of 
 its logical implications. But the pragmatist is 
 more interested in finding out how and in what 
 way an assertion comes to be called true and how 
 it makes good its claim after it has been asserted. 
 As Schiller puts it: 1 
 
 1 Address on "Error" before the Congresso Internazionale di Filosofia, 
 Bologna, 1911. 
 
 [207]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 What then is common to all sorts of Truth and 
 Error, and renders them species of a common genus ? 
 Nothing but their psychological side; "truth" is 
 the proper term for what satisfies, "error" for what 
 thwarts, a human purpose in cognitive activity. 
 
 The difference between Truth and Error, there- 
 fore, is ultimately one in value. The "true" way 
 of conceiving an object or judging a situation is 
 simply the way most valuable for our purpose ; the 
 "false" way is one which is, at least relatively, 
 worthless. "Truth" is a eulogistic, "error" a 
 dyslogistic, way of valuing a cognitive situation. 
 
 Truth and Error therefore are continuous, as 
 history shows. Either may develop out of the 
 other, and both are rooted in the same problems of 
 knowing, which are ultimately problems of living. 
 The "truths" of one generation become the "errors" 
 of the next, when it has achieved more valuable and 
 efficient modes of interpreting and manipulating 
 the apparent "facts", which the new "truths" are 
 continuously transforming. And conversely, what 
 is now scouted as "error" may hereafter become 
 the fruitful parent of a long progeny of "truths." 
 
 It follows also that (as every examiner who marks 
 a paper knows) Truth and Error admit of quantita- 
 tive differences. Both can vary in importance, and 
 can attain (or fail of) their purpose to a greater or a 
 less degree. But neither is absolute. An answer 
 to a question is in general called true, if it is true 
 enough for the purpose in hand. But this does not 
 preclude a greater exactitude if (for a different 
 purpose) it should be required. It is a true answer 
 to the question "when do you leave?" to reply 
 "to-morrow"; but if necessary I can specify the 
 train I go by. Thus the demand for absolute exact- 
 
 [208]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 ness is both humanly unnecessary and scientifically 
 unmeaning. Indeed a degree of accuracy higher 
 than the situation demands would be irrational. 
 No one wants to know the height of a mountain in 
 millimeters, and if he did, he could not ascertain it, 
 because his methods would not measure fine enough. 
 Scientific truths are infinitely perfectible, but never 
 absolute. 1 
 
 Now if philosophers are wise, they will accept this 
 sort of truth, and admit that any truth is "absolute" 
 enough so soon as it is equal to the demands made 
 upon it, while none must ever be so absolute as to 
 become incorrigible and incapable of further growth. 
 
 A human factor, an element of personal desire, 
 enters into all our thinking; otherwise why should 
 we bother to think ? Even our most abstract and 
 general theorems have a hidden Hinterland of sub- 
 conscious motives, limitations, and conditions. 
 
 The abstract statement that "two and two make 
 four" is always incomplete. We need to know to 
 what "twos" and "fours" the dictum is applied. 
 It would not be true of lions and lambs, nor of drops 
 of water, nor of pleasures and pains. 2 
 
 1 I find the following incident reported of a Boston school which 
 would indicate that the philosophy of William James is influencing the 
 younger generation in his home city : 
 
 "Well, Waldo," said the professor of geometry, "can you prove any 
 of to-day's theorems ?" 
 
 "No, sir, I'm afraid I can't," said Waldo hopefully; "but I can 
 render several of them highly probable." 
 
 1 " Studies in Humanism." 
 
 [209]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 This suppressed context of thought is of course 
 largely personal, and with it is suppressed the 
 human interest of philosophy. Hence the endeavor 
 to drag it to light was very properly called Human- 
 ism. Schiller conceives every thought as some one's 
 experiment for which he is responsible. 
 
 "Every thought", he says, "is an act and even 
 the most 'theoretical' assertions are made to gratify 
 an interest." He finds in the present war a most 
 unpleasant confirmation of his theory that thought 
 is subordinate to action and never free from human 
 volitional influence : 1 
 
 If only philosophers could be got to face the facts 
 of actual life, could any of them fail to observe the 
 enormous object-lesson in the truth of pragmatism 
 which the world has been exhibiting in the present 
 crisis? Everywhere the "truths" believed in are 
 relative to the nationality and sympathies of their 
 believers. It is, indeed, lamentable that such an 
 orgy of the will to believe should have been needed 
 to illustrate the pragmatic nature of truth, but who 
 will dispute that for months say 999 persons out of 
 1000 have been believing what they please, and con- 
 sciously or unconsciously making it "true" with a 
 fervor rarely bestowed even by the most ardent 
 philosophers on the most self-evident truths ? No 
 improbability, no absurdity, no atrocity has been too 
 great to win credence, and the uniformity of human 
 nature has been signally attested by the way in 
 
 1 "Realism, Pragmatism and William James." Mind, 1915. 
 [210]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 which the same stories (mutatis mutandis) have been 
 credited on both sides. 
 
 Since the controversy over pragmatism hinges on 
 this theory of truth, I will quote in condensed form 
 what Schiller says in his discussion with Miss 
 Stebbing : l 
 
 It is an inevitable corollary of the belief in ab- 
 solute truth that absolute truth cannot find lodgment 
 in human mind, nor be attained by way of human 
 science. We were led, therefore, to examine how 
 in fact belief in the accepted "truths" grew up. 
 We found that every thought was essentially a per- 
 sonal experiment that might succeed or fail, and that 
 whether it did or not depended on its consequences. 
 But it seemed clear that "true" was the term ap- 
 propriated by language to the success, as false was 
 to failure, of such experiments. Of course both 
 "success" and "truth" are relative terms. Ab- 
 solute "success" is found as little as absolute "truth" 
 and for the same reason. All "truths" remain 
 (preferred) truth-claims and retain an infinite appe- 
 tite for assimilating further confirmation. 
 
 But there does come a point, alike in the individ- 
 ual's experience and in social opinion at any time, 
 at which it seems that certain truth-claims have 
 received confirmation enough to make them prag- 
 matically certain. These form the reigning truths. 
 But they never form a closed oligarchy or an im- 
 mutable system. Merit can force its way into their 
 ranks, and inefficiency entails degradation. Thus, 
 though their position is (psychologically) unchal- 
 
 1 Mind, vol. 22, p. 534, 1913. 
 [2U]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 lenged, it is never (logically) unchallenged. So it 
 can not be said that because they work they are 
 absolutely true. They are called true because they 
 work, and there is no sense in calling anything true 
 for any other reason ; but the progress of knowledge 
 may nevertheless supersede them at the next step. 
 
 Since Schiller indignantly repudiates the formula 
 often ascribed to pragmatism that "All that works 
 is true", and since Mr. Bradley has come to say 1 
 "I agree that any idea which in any way 'works' 
 has in some degree truth", it would seem that these 
 old antagonists are really not so far apart in their 
 opinions as their words would indicate. 
 
 For classical authority for his Humanism Schiller 
 goes back to the famous dictum of Protagoras : 
 "Man is the measure of all things." In Plato's 
 "Dialogues", Protagoras is represented as having 
 been argued quite out of court by Socrates, but 
 Schiller appeals to posterity against this decision, and 
 he has written several supplemental dialogues of his 
 own to prove that Protagoras was really in the right. 2 
 
 Schiller's most serious work so far is his destruc- 
 tive criticism of the Aristotelian logic. Since my 
 
 1 "Essays on Truth and Reality" by F. H. Bradley. See Schiller's 
 "New Developments of Mr. Bradley's Philosophy" in Mind, 1915. 
 
 2 See "Protagoras the Humanist", and "Gods and Priests" in 
 "Studies in Humanism", and "Useless Knowledge" and "Plato or 
 Protagoras " in "Humanism." 
 
 [212]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 own study of logic came to an abrupt end as soon as 
 I had secured a passing mark on Jevons, I shall not 
 attempt to express an opinion upon the value of 
 Schiller's "Formal Logic", but will instead quote 
 from the review of the volume by Professor Dewey 
 of Columbia. 1 
 
 In substance, the volume (a large octavo of about 
 four hundred pages) is an unrelenting, dogged pur- 
 suit of the traditional logic, chapter by chapter, 
 section by section. Not a single doctrine, nor, I 
 think, a single distinction of the official textbooks 
 escapes Schiller's demolishing hand. . . . A vital and 
 wholesome sense of the realities of actual thinking 
 pervades the whole book; it supplies the back- 
 ground against which the criticisms of formal doc- 
 trine are projected. Mr. Schiller brings out, in case 
 after case, with a cumulative effect which is fairly 
 deadly, that at the crucial point each formal dis- 
 tinction is saved from complete meaninglessness 
 only by an unacknowledged and surreptitious appeal 
 to some matter of context, need, aim, and use. Why 
 not, then, frankly recognize the indispensableness 
 of such volitional and emotional factors, and instead 
 of pretending to a logic that excludes them, build 
 up a logic that corresponds to human intellectual 
 endeavor and achievement. It is difficult to see 
 how even the most hardened devotee of a purely 
 theoretical intellectualism can lay down the book 
 without such questions haunting him. . . . 
 
 1 The Independent. Schiller's "Formal Logic" gave rise to much 
 controversy. See for instance Mind, vol. 23, p. I, 398, 558. One critic 
 called it " a sympathetic appreciation of all known logical fallacies." 
 
 [213]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 While traditional logic has much to say about 
 truth, the truth it talks about is mere formal con- 
 sistency, since it declines to consider the material 
 application of its premises. Relevance a funda- 
 mental conception of concrete thought is excluded 
 because it goes with selection, with selection of the 
 part that is useful, while formal logic professes an 
 all-inclusive ideal. Selection, moreover, is a volun- 
 tary and hence arbitrary act, and so is shut out from 
 a doctrine that acknowledges only what is purely 
 theoretical. Finally, formal logic, with its creed of 
 absolute certitude, abhors the very mention of ad- 
 venture and risk, the life blood of actual human 
 thinking, which is aroused by doubts and questions, 
 and proceeds by guesses, hypotheses, and experi- 
 ments, to a decision which is always somewhat ar- 
 bitrary and subject to the risk of later revision. 
 
 Much of the criticism of "Formal Logic" con- 
 tained in this large volume is too technical for any 
 save professionals to follow, but at my request Mr. 
 Schiller was kind enough to write an article for 
 The Independent putting the main points of it in a 
 form "understanded of the common people." From 
 this I quote the passage in which he shows that the 
 syllogism cannot lead unerringly to new truth : 
 
 The peculiar aim of logic hitherto has been to 
 discover a form of "valid inference." By this was 
 meant a form of words so fool-proof that it could 
 not be misapplied, and that the use of it would 
 absolutely guarantee the soundness of the con- 
 clusion if only the reasoning had been fortunate 
 
 [214]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 enough to start from true premises. In the syllo- 
 gism it was supposed that such a form had been 
 found. From all swans are white and this bird is a 
 swan it was to follow inevitably that this bird is 
 white, and the course of nature would eternally con- 
 form to the prophetic demonstrations of logic. 
 
 Yet logicians also had soon to note that even for- 
 mally there was something wrong about this syllo- 
 gistic form. It seemed to "prove" what was either 
 nothing new or nothing known. To justify the 
 "major premise" "all swans are white", must not 
 its assertor have already seen this swan and know 
 that it is white ? Or, if he did not know this, is he 
 not risking an assertion about some "swans" on 
 the strength of what he knows about others ? And 
 what right had he thus to argue from the known to 
 the unknown? Can an "inference" be "valid" if 
 it involves a risk ? 
 
 When therefore black swans arrive from Australia 
 to upset his dogmatizing, what is he to do ? Will 
 he say his major premise was a definition, and no 
 bird, however swan-like, shall be called a "swan" 
 if it cannot pass his color-test ? If so, his reasoning 
 is still caught in the old dilemma, that he either 
 "proves" nothing new or begs the question in an- 
 other way. For he then had no right to assert his 
 "minor premise", this bird is a swan, if he knew not 
 it was white. Or will he, desperately, say "in both 
 of these interpretations the syllogistic form is 
 fatuous ; but kindly understand it as asserting a 
 law of nature which is immutable, and applied to 
 the particular case in the minor premise." But, if 
 so, how does he know that his "law" applies to the 
 "case"? that the "case" is such as he takes it to 
 be? that he has picked out the right "law" to deal 
 
 [215]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 with the case and formulated it correctly ? If it 
 is quite certain that the "law" applies to the "case", 
 his conclusion proves nothing new; if it is not, he 
 runs the risk that the case of which he is trying to 
 predict the behavior may be so exceptional as to 
 break or modify his law. And if he runs that risk, 
 is he not renouncing his ideal of reaching fool-proof 
 certainty ? 
 
 There seems to be no way, therefore, of saving 
 "valid inference", of so interpreting the syllogism 
 that it is both formally valid and humanly instruc- 
 tive. If it is to be instructive, it can only enlighten 
 human ignorance, and then its premises cannot be 
 certainly true. 1 
 
 Some critics, having in mind how little attention 
 is paid to formal logic in American schools, have 
 expressed the opinion that Schiller was wasting his 
 powder on dead game. But however little it may 
 be used in reasoning, formal logic is still the object 
 of formal reverence everywhere, and in Oxford it is 
 strongly entrenched and heavily subsidized as 
 Schiller says in the passage : 
 
 That the same doctrine, in perfect verbal con- 
 tinuity, should have been taught and examined on 
 for over two thousand years would be the most 
 stupendous fact in education, were it not surpassed 
 by the still more surprising fact that during all this 
 time no one has arisen to call it nonsense through 
 and through, and that every would-be improvement 
 
 1 "Logic versus Life" in The Independent, vol. 73, p. 375. 
 
 [216]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 has been countered by the retort that it was "not 
 in Aristotle." . . . The great mass of logicians have 
 always been true to their salt. For Aristotle is still 
 very heavily endowed. 
 
 In the University of Oxford alone three philos- 
 ophy professors, twenty-eight litera humaniores 
 tutors, and about 460 classical scholars and exhibi- 
 tioners are paid, at an annual cost of over 50,000, 
 to believe that the theory of thought has stood still, 
 or stumbled into error when it tried to move, ever 
 since the composition of the "Organon", and that 
 all modern science may be read into and out of 
 the obscurities of the "Posterior Analytics." The 
 Secret Doctrine in which this is taught has never 
 been divulged in print, but examiners know that 
 there are passages in the ordinary Oxford Logic 
 Lecture which must have been copied down by 
 two hundred generations of students ever since 
 the twelfth century. 
 
 Like James and Bergson and unlike Dewey, 
 Schiller has interested himself in psychical research 
 as a possible way of proving personal immortality. 1 
 He does not seem from his published work to have 
 yet obtained any satisfactory experimental evidence 
 of a future life, but he regards immortality as an 
 ethical postulate, necessary to the conceptions of a 
 moral universe, for if we reject it "we should be 
 plunged in that unfathomable abyss where Scepti- 
 
 The latter part of "Humanism" and of "Riddles of the Sphinx" 
 is devoted to this topic. Schiller succeeded Bergson as President of the 
 Society for Psychical Research in 1914. 
 
 [2I 7 ]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 cism fraternizes with Pessimism and they hug their 
 miseries in chaos undisguised." 
 
 But in his earliest work "Riddles of the Sphinx" 
 he expressed the opinion that nowadays few people 
 took a real interest in the question of immortality 
 and that it had little influence upon conduct. This 
 unconventional opinion was confirmed many years 
 later when the Society for Psychical Research con- 
 ducted a questionnaire on the subject and found 
 that of the many thousand persons interrogated a 
 large proportion did not regard a future life as of 
 practical importance to them. 1 
 
 Within the last few years Schiller has entered a 
 new field, the eugenics movement, where his keen 
 wit and power of analysis are doing good service. 
 In his review of Nietzsche's work 2 he recognizes 
 that Nietzsche is not without reason when he asserts 
 that the moral qualities he dislikes, such as pity 
 and sympathy, may lead to decadence, for, as 
 Schiller elsewhere shows, social reform, unless it is 
 eugenically directed, may lead to the growth of the 
 evils it aims to alleviate. In a very remarkable 
 article published shortly before the outbreak of the 
 
 1 See Schiller's article on this in The Independent of September 15, 
 1904, or in Fortnightly Review, vol. 76, p. 430. 
 * Quarterly Review, 1913. 
 
 [218]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 war, 1 he foretold the collapse of European civiliza- 
 tion and suggested that the Japanese or Chinese, 
 through the greater importance they attach to the 
 family, might be found more worthy of preeminence. 
 
 If the ancestor-worship of the animist can be 
 developed into the descendant-worship of the eugen- 
 ist, I can see no reason why one should not prognos- 
 ticate for both of them a rosier future and a more 
 assured continuance than for our European societies, 
 if these latter yield to the pressure of those, whether 
 called individualists, socialists, or militarists, who 
 tempt them to destruction. 
 
 The danger to European culture lies, he says, in 
 that "our Hellenistic political philosophy exhibits 
 all the marks of senile dementia and progressive 
 paranoia." 
 
 The evidence goes to show that throughout the 
 most valuable part of the nation, not only in the 
 upper classes but also in the middle classes and in 
 the best parts of the working classes, the birth-rate 
 per marriage has in a generation sunk from four 
 and a half to two, and is now only half the size 
 required to keep up the numbers in those classes. 
 In other words, society is now so ordered that in 
 every generation it sheds one-half of the classes it 
 itself values most highly, and supplies their places 
 with the offspring of the feeble-minded and casual- 
 labourer classes, whose families still average more 
 
 1 "Eugenics and Politics" in The Hibbert Journal, January, 1914. 
 [219]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 than seven. What seriously aggravates the evil is 
 the whole trend of social legislation. Social reform 
 costs money, and the money is raised by taxation, 
 which bears very hardly on the middle classes, who 
 cannot curtail luxuries like the rich, and will not 
 lower their standard of comfort. They meet the 
 extra expense, therefore, by further postponing the 
 age of marriage, and further reducing their output 
 of children. One of the chief effects, therefore, of 
 our present methods of improving social conditions 
 is to deteriorate the race. And this in a twofold 
 manner : they eliminate the middle class, and they 
 promote the survival of the unfit and defective. 
 
 It is perfectly possible, therefore, to tax the middle 
 classes out of existence. Indeed, it has been done. 
 History exhibits a great object-lesson in the decline 
 of the Roman empire. This appears to have been 
 mainly due to an unscientific system of taxation 
 which crushed the middle class and left no breed- 
 ing ground for ability and ambition between the 
 millionaire nobles, who had nothing to rise to, and 
 the pauperised masses, who had no chance of rising. 
 Consequently, the empire had to take from without 
 its borders the men it needed to conduct its military 
 and civil administration. The barbarians alone 
 could furnish the men to run the empire, and con- 
 sequently the barbarians inevitably came to overrun 
 the empire. 
 
 The Great War which he could not foresee has 
 immeasurably accelerated the degenerative process 
 which he foretold. The death roll of university 
 students and graduates, representing, however in- 
 adequate the examination system, a selected class 
 
 [220]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 of young men of superior intellectual ability, is 
 probably higher than in any other class. When I 
 visited Oxford a few years before the war the students 
 were already drilling for the impending conflict and 
 practically all who were eligible enlisted at the first 
 call. Raising an army by appeals to patriotism as 
 was done in England means sending to the front to 
 bear the brunt of battle longest those who are most 
 energetic, self-sacrificing, and intelligent, while the 
 slackers, the incompetent, the weaklings, the self- 
 ish, and the dull were left to the last or not taken 
 at all. 
 
 Besides this the burden of taxation resting upon 
 the middle classes that Schiller thought unbear- 
 able in 1914 has been multiplied and will act as a 
 deterrent to large families more strongly than ever 
 in the future. A Royal Commission has been ap- 
 pointed to consider methods for checking the alarm- 
 ing decline in the birth-rate. 
 
 One anti-eugenic agency which Schiller fails to 
 mention but which strikes an outsider as very 
 serious is Labanism. It was formerly the custom 
 to require all Oxford fellows to remain celibate. 
 Later they were allowed to marry after serving seven 
 years, whence the name. Recently this prohibition 
 has been removed, but the antiquated social or- 
 
 [221!
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 ganization of the colleges acts as a practical deterrent 
 of marriage. So by this elaborate and expensive 
 system of examination, competitions, and promo- 
 tions which unfortunately is not so inefficient as 
 its occasional mistakes might lead us to think 
 the university prevents those whom it deems to 
 have the brightest minds from transmitting their 
 mental endowments to posterity. The devil could 
 not have devised a more ingenious scheme for the 
 promotion of mediocrity. Since Oxford has been 
 in existence for about eight hundred years it must 
 have had a considerable influence on the reduction 
 of British genius. 
 
 As Schiller points out, any measures to be eugeni- 
 cally effective must apply to the young. The re- 
 wards bestowed upon ability are not only frequently 
 misapplied but they are invariably too long delayed. 
 The youthful genius is too often forced to give up 
 having a family or compelled to support it on faith, 
 hope and charity. To this defect in our civiliza- 
 tion Schiller has given the apt name of "social 
 hysteresis." 1 , 
 
 In all the professions (except, perhaps, that of 
 the actress) the young are underpaid, and established 
 reputations are overpaid. It would be eugenically 
 
 1 "Practical Eugenics in Education." 
 [222 ]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 preferable to do the opposite. Yet the existing 
 practice is largely due to unintentional stupidity, 
 and failure to discover ability soon enough. Now 
 to the individual this system brings compensation, 
 if he lives long enough, because he continues to be 
 rewarded for work he has done long ago, and even 
 is no longer capable of doing, and is eventually raised 
 to the status of a "grand old man" whom ancient 
 institutions delight to honour, by dint of sheer 
 longevity. But eugenically this social hysteresis, 
 this delay in recompensing merit, has a fatal effect. 
 It renders the capable, ambitious and rising members 
 of the professional classes unduly sterile, owing to 
 compulsory celibacy, postponement of marriage, 
 overwork, etc. Thus a large proportion of the ability 
 which rises to the top of the social ladder lasts only 
 for one generation, and does not permanently benefit 
 the race. 
 
 From this passage it will be seen that Schiller 
 does not fall into the common fallacy of uncon- 
 sciously assuming that the upper classes of our 
 present social system necessarily consist of superior 
 individuals. But he does lay stress upon some- 
 thing often overlooked, that this assumption is 
 more justified as society becomes more democratic : 
 
 Precisely in proportion as a society improves the 
 opportunities of the able to rise, it must accelerate 
 the elimination of fitness in the racial stock. So 
 long as a relatively rigid social order rendered it 
 almost impossible for ability to rise from the ranks, 
 reservoirs of ability could accumulate unseen in the 
 
 [223!
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 lower social strata, and burst forth in times of need, 
 as in the French Revolution : but the more success- 
 fully a carri'ere ouverte aux talents is instituted, the 
 more surely are these strata kept drained, and in- 
 capacitated from retrieving the waste of ability in 
 the upper layers of society. Now it is doubtless 
 true that the primary need of society is to find 
 persons capable of conducting its affairs ably, and 
 that a social order which does not allow ability to 
 rise is therefore bad : but nations cannot with im- 
 punity so order themselves as to eliminate the very 
 qualities they most admire and desire, and must 
 husband their resources in men as in the other sources 
 of their wealth and welfare. 1 
 
 That is to say, it did not matter much if in former 
 times the nobility did tend to die out in a few gen- 
 erations, for in hereditable ability they were not 
 much above the average. But in the more just 
 regime that we are trying to introduce, especially 
 in America, when the opportunities for higher edu- 
 cation and advancement are extended to the gifted 
 of all classes, it will be disastrous if the professional 
 and well-to-do classes fail to contribute their share 
 to the future population, for it means a continuous 
 reversal of the method of the survival of the fittest 
 by which evolution has been accomplished. This is 
 not a law that man can repeal however he may dis- 
 regard it. So it happens that civilized societies tend 
 
 1 "Practical Eugenics in Education." 
 [224]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 to die at the top and the human race makes little or 
 no progress in native ability. As Schiller says : 
 
 The inventor of the wheel or even of a new mode 
 of chipping flints may well have been as great a 
 genius as the human race has produced, and it ac- 
 cords well with this that the early paleolithic races 
 seem to have possessed a cranial capacity, not less, 
 but greater than our own. For in the dim red dawn 
 of man the fool-killing apparatus of nature was 
 terribly effective, and society could do little to 
 mitigate its horrors and to protect its inefficient 
 members. 
 
 The injustice, and what is more important, the 
 injurious effects of the present distribution of honors 
 and emoluments he exposes in his article on "Na- 
 tional Self-Selection" : 
 
 Is it not nonsense to say that the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury is paid 15,000 a year and Prof. J. J. 
 Thomson seven or eight hundred, because the per- 
 sons fitted to perform the latter's functions are 
 twenty times as common as those suited to the 
 former's ? Is not the real reason plainly that the 
 former is the beneficiary of a long social develop- 
 ment which has liberally endowed the Church, while 
 the social appreciation of the value of science is 
 only just beginning, and has not yet raised the 
 makers of new truths to a par with the custodians 
 of time-honoured revelations ? Our example, how- 
 ever, draws attention to a very general fact, fiz., 
 that the social position of various functions is very 
 
 [225]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 largely the product of past valuations which have 
 persisted from mere habit. Hence their present 
 salaries do not really prove that an Archbishop is 
 twenty times as valuable to a nation as a scientific 
 genius, or thrice as precious as a Premier, nor even 
 that men now think so. How many of us, for ex- 
 ample, really now believe that mere descent from 
 an illiterate medieval baron attests sufficient merit 
 to entitle a man to a hereditary seat in the House of 
 Lords ? If we continued to value fighting qualities 
 as highly as of yore, we should promote our actual 
 fighting men. When we want really to defend the 
 House of Lords, we point to its sagacity in gauging 
 the will of the people and to the economic value of 
 its attractiveness for foreign heiresses. 
 
 Hence one of the chief needs of a society which 
 desires to reconstitute itself on eugenical principles 
 is a thorough revision of social status. It must 
 bring the social position of various services into 
 closer agreement with their present value. And it 
 must induce a greater feeling of responsibility about 
 the popular valuations and transvaluations of 
 functions, which are constantly exalting the posi- 
 tion of the caterers to individual pleasures above 
 the consolidators of man's permanent welfare. It 
 is not good for a society that a cricketer or a prize- 
 fighter or a dancer should be esteemed and rewarded 
 more highly than the man who discovers a cure for 
 malaria or cancer. 1 
 
 The humanistic view of metaphysics Schiller ex- 
 presses in the preface to the 1910 edition of his 
 earliest work "Riddles of the Sphinx." 
 
 1 Eugenics Review, April, 1910. 
 [226]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 Practically a system of metaphysics, with what- 
 ever pretensions to pure thought and absolute 
 rationality it may start is always in the end one 
 man's personal vision about the universe, and the 
 "metaphysical craving" often so strong in the 
 young is nothing but the desire to tell the universe 
 what one thinks of it. Of course, the tale may be 
 worth telling if told well. 
 
 This describes the "Riddles of the Sphinx" 
 exactly. In it the youthful Schiller tells the uni- 
 verse what he thinks of it and it is told well. But 
 his thoughts have changed in the twenty-five years 
 since this volume was published so that even in its 
 revised form it does not so well express his views as 
 do his later volumes, "Humanism" and "Studies in 
 Humanism", of which revised editions were brought 
 out in 1912. 
 
 The doctrine known as Absolute Idealism was, 
 Schiller explains, imported from Germany, "soon 
 after its demise in its native country", for the pur- 
 pose of counteracting the anti-religious develop- 
 ments of science. But the abstract conception of 
 the Absolute is, in his opinion, of no value to religion 
 or anything else. The pragmatic demand for God 
 is, first, as "a human moral principle of help and 
 justice", and second, as "an aid to the intellectual 
 comprehension of the universe", but the meta- 
 
 [227]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 physical Absolute satisfies neither of these cravings, 
 for it is too impersonal to help anybody and too 
 general to explain anything. 
 
 In his chapter on "Absolutism and the Dissocia- 
 tion of Personality" 1 he generously offers his aid to 
 the idealistic monists who have difficulty in con- 
 ceiving how the One became the Many and why 
 the individualistic minds included in the Universal 
 Mind should be so antagonistic. Schiller suggests 
 that it is an analogous case to the dissociation of 
 that celebrated Boston lady "Miss Beauchamp" 
 into several secondary personalities. But he admits 
 that it is "a little startling at first to think of the 
 Absolute as morbidly dissociated or even as down- 
 right mad", especially since in the case of the Ab- 
 solute there is no outsider, like Doctor Morton 
 Prince, to put the parts together again. 
 
 Many years before he had said 2 
 
 The conception of a Deity absorbed in perfect, 
 unchanging and eternal bliss is a blasphemy upon 
 the Divine energy which might be permitted to the 
 heathen ignorance of Aristotle, but which should 
 be abhorred by all who have learnt the lesson of 
 the Crucifixion. A theology which denies that the 
 imperfection of the world must be reflected in the 
 
 1 In "Studies in Humanism." 
 
 1 " Riddles of the Sphinx," p. 431. 
 
 [228]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 sorrows of the Deity simply shows itself blind to 
 the deepest and truest meaning of the figure of Him 
 that was "a man of sorrows and acquainted with 
 grief" and deaf to the gospel of Divine sympathy 
 with the world. Thus the world-process is the 
 process of the redemption alike of God, of the world 
 and of our own selves. 
 
 The conception of a struggling and self-develop- 
 ing God which Schiller adduced from Christian 
 principles is remarkably like that to which Bergson 
 was led by other lines of reasoning. 1 
 
 The value of the pragmatic method to religion 
 is discussed by Schiller in his article on "Faith, 
 Reason and Religion", 2 where he shows that even 
 the most rigorous scientific reasoning involves the 
 element of faith, and on the other hand that faith 
 is devoid of value unless it is verified in the only 
 way by which anything can be verified, that is, by 
 works. He says : 
 
 Christianity is an essentially human and thor- 
 oughly pragmatic religion, hampered throughout 
 its history and at times almost strangled by an alien 
 theology, based upon the intellectualistic specula- 
 tions of Greek philosophers. Fortunately the Greek 
 metaphysic embodied (mainly) in the "Athanasian" 
 
 1 See "Creative Evolution" and Chapter II of "Major Prophets of 
 To-day " ; also Wells and Shaw in this volume. 
 
 1 In "Studies in Humanism" and Hibbert Journal, January, 1906. 
 See also "Science and Religion" in "Riddles of the Sphinx", new edition. 
 
 [229]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 creed is too obscure to have ever been really func- 
 tional ; its chief mischief has always been to give 
 theological support to "philosophic" criticisms, 
 which by identifying God with "the One" have 
 aimed at eliminating the human elements from the 
 Christian religion. As against all such attempts, 
 however, we must hold fast to the principle that the 
 truest religion is that which issues in and fosters 
 the best life. 
 
 The pragmatic criterion of truth, that all truths 
 must work, is not a lax one as its opponents assert 
 but the most stringent that can be applied. It 
 means "You shall back your beliefs with your 
 acts and shall not assert the truth of whatever suits 
 you without any testing at all." It eliminates as 
 meaningless all theories that make no difference 
 whether they are believed or disbelieved. It de- 
 mands constant confirmation of all beliefs by their 
 consequences. It insists upon the unity of theory 
 and practice, of faith and works. This point was 
 plainly put by Schiller in his address before the Pan- 
 Anglican Church Congress of 1908 : 
 
 For any theory to work, it must be believed in, 
 e.g., believed to be true. It is impossible, e.g., to 
 practice prayer merely as a piece of spiritual hy- 
 giene, and in order to get the strengthening which 
 is said to result from the practice. The practice 
 need not, of course, start with a firm belief in the 
 reality of its object. But unless it engenders a 
 
 [230]
 
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 real belief, it will become inefficacious. Hence, to 
 conceive of Pragmatism as ultimately sanctioning 
 an "act-as-if" attitude of religious make-believe is 
 a misapprehension ; it is to confound it with the 
 discredited and ineffectual dualism of Kant's an- 
 tithesis of practical and theoretic "reason." Lastly, 
 it should be noted that any theory which works 
 must evoke some response from the objective nature 
 of things. If there were no "God", i.e., nothing 
 that could afford any satisfaction to any religious 
 emotion, the whole religious attitude would be futile. 
 If it is not, it must contain essential truth, though 
 it may remain to be determined what is the objective 
 fact corresponding to the postulate. 
 
 How TO READ SCHILLER 
 
 "Humanism" (1903, new edition 1912) and 
 "Studies in Humanism" (1907, new edition 1912) 
 are both collections of papers presenting various 
 phases of Schiller's philosophy. Either one may 
 serve as an introduction to the author. "Riddles 
 of the Sphinx" (1891), though also revised (1910), 
 represents an earlier mode of thought. "Formal 
 Logic" (1912) is too technical for any but well 
 prepared students. All Schiller's works are pub- 
 lished by The Macmillan Company. 
 
 The reader who loves a fight and does not faint 
 at the sight of inkshed will find what he wants in 
 almost any volume of the Oxford Mind or the Co- 
 lumbia Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scien- 
 tific Methods. Where the conflict rages most fiercely 
 there Schiller will be seen in the midst of the com- 
 
 [23 1 1
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 batants, thrusting in all directions at the weak 
 
 points in their armor. To enumerate all of his 
 
 controversial and fugitive writings would be im- 
 possible here, but the following articles at least 
 
 must be mentioned : 
 
 "Do Men Desire Immortality?" (Fortnightly, vol. 
 76, p. 430). 
 
 "The Desire for a Future Life" (Independent, 
 September 15, 1904). 
 
 "Psychical Research" (Fortnightly, vol. 83, p. 60). 
 
 Presidential Address (Proceedings Society for Psy- 
 chical Research, 1914-1915). 
 
 Miss Beauchamp (Journal Philosophy, Psychology 
 and Scientific Methods, vol. 4, p. 20; and Mind, 
 No. 70, p. 183). 
 
 "The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche" (Quarterly 
 Review, 1913). 
 
 "Choice" and "Infallibility" (Hibbert Journal, 
 1909). 
 
 "Plato" (Quarterly Review, vol. 204, p. 62). 
 
 "Pluralism" (Proceedings of Aristotelian Society, 
 1908-1909). 
 
 "The Rational Conception of Truth" (Proceedings 
 Aristotelian Society, 1906). 
 
 "Oxford of the Workingman" (Fortnightly, Febru- 
 ary, 1913). 
 
 "Cosmopolitan Oxford" (Fortnightly, May, 1902). 
 
 "War Prophecies" (Journal Society Psychical Re- 
 search, June, 1916). 
 
 "Criticism of Perry's Realism" (Mind, 1914). 
 
 Discussions of pragmatism (Mind, 1913, 1915)- 
 
 "New Developments of Mr. Bradley' s Philosophy" 
 (Mind, 1915). 
 
 "Present Phase of Idealistic Philosophy" (Mind, 
 January and October, 1910). 
 
 [232]
 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 "Realism, Pragmatism, and William James" (Mind, 
 
 I9I5)- 
 
 "The Humanism of Protagoras" (Mind, April, 
 
 1911). 
 
 " Logic versus Life" (Independent, vol. 73, p. 375). 
 "Aristotle's Refutation of the Aristotelian Logic" 
 
 (Mind, vol. 23, pp. I, 395, 558). 
 "The Working of Truths and Their Criterion" 
 
 (Mind, vol. 22, No. 88). 
 "Error" (IV Congresso internazionale di filosofia, 
 
 Bologna, 1911). 
 
 "Relevance" (Mind, vol. 21, No. 82). 
 "The Working of Truths" (Mind, vol. 21, No. 84). 
 "National Self-Selection" (Eugenics Review, April, 
 
 1910). 
 "Our Critic Criticized" (Eugenics Review, January, 
 
 . 
 
 Criticism of Schiller and other pragmatists may 
 
 be found in the controversies referred to, but I may 
 
 also add the following references : 
 
 "Vital Lies" by Vernon Lee (John Lane Company, 
 
 Pragmatism" (Quarterly Review, April, 1909). 
 "British Exponents of Pragmatism" by Professor 
 
 M'Gilvary (Hibbert Journal, April, 1908). 
 "Der Pragmatismus von James und Schiller," by 
 
 Doctor Werner Bloch (1913). 
 
 [233]
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 TEACHER OF TEACHERS 
 
 IF some historian should construct an intellectual 
 weather map of the United States he would find 
 that in the eighties the little arrows that show which 
 way the wind blows were pointing in toward Ann 
 Arbor, Michigan, in the nineties toward Chicago, 
 Illinois, and in the nineteen hundreds toward New 
 York City, indicating that at these points there was 
 a rising current of thought. And if he went so far 
 as to investigate the cause of these local upheavals 
 of the academic atmosphere he would discover that 
 John Dewey had moved from one place to the other. 
 It might be a long time before the psychometeor- 
 ologist would trace these thought currents spreading 
 over the continent back to their origin, a secluded 
 classroom where the most modest man imaginable 
 was seated and talking in a low voice for an hour or 
 two a day. John Dewey is not famous like W. J. 
 
 [234!
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 Bryan or Charlie Chaplin. He is not even known 
 by name to most of the millions whose thought he 
 is guiding and whose characters he is forming. This 
 is because his influence has been indirect. He has 
 inspired individuals and instigated reforms in edu- 
 cational methods which have reached the remotest 
 schoolhouses of the land. The first of the Dewey 
 cyclones revolved about psychology, the second 
 about pedagogy, and the third about philosophy. 
 
 I was a thousand miles away from the first storm 
 center, yet I distinctly felt the vibrations. That 
 was in the University of Kansas when the psychology 
 class was put in charge of a young man named Tem- 
 plin just back from his Wanderjahr in Germany. 
 This study had hitherto belonged ex officio to the 
 Chancellor of the university who put the finishing 
 touch on the seniors' brains with aid of McCosh. 
 But the queer looking brown book stamped "Psy- 
 chology John Dewey" that was put into our 
 hands in 1887 relegated the Princeton philosopher 
 to the footnotes and instead told about Helmholtz, 
 Weber, Wundt and a lot of other foreigners who, it 
 seemed, were not content to sit down quietly and 
 search their own minds surely as good as any- 
 body's but went about watching the behavior of 
 children, animals, and crazy folks and spent their 
 
 [235]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 time in a laboratory the idea ! measuring the 
 speed of thought and dissecting brains. This young 
 man in Michigan made bold to claim psychology as 
 a natural science instead of a minor branch of meta- 
 physics, and he did the best he could to prove it 
 with such meager materials as were available at 
 the time. His "Psychology" appeared, as should 
 be remembered, three years before the epoch-making 
 work of James and before any permanent psycho- 
 logical laboratory had been opened in the United 
 States. In taking down again my battered brown 
 copy of Dewey's "Psychology" I am surprised to 
 find how trite and old-fashioned some of it sounds. 
 Although Dewey thought he had thrown overboard 
 all metaphysics it is evident that he was then carry- 
 ing quite a cargo of it unconsciously. 
 
 But the commotion started by Dewey's "Psy- 
 chology" was a tempest in an inkpot compared with 
 the cyclone that swept over the country when he 
 began to put his theories into practice at the Uni- 
 versity of Chicago in 1894. I heard echoes of it as 
 far west as Wyoming. The teachers who went to 
 the summer session of the University of Chicago 
 came back shocked, fascinated, inspired, or appalled, 
 according to their temperaments. The very idea 
 of an "experimental school" was disconcerting, sug- 
 
 [236]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 gesting that the poor children were being subjected 
 to some sort of vivisection or what was worse 
 implying that the established educational methods 
 were all wrong. "He lets the children do whatever 
 they want to do," whispered the teachers to their 
 stay-at-home colleagues, who, like themselves, were 
 spending their time in keeping the children from 
 doing what they wanted to do and in making them 
 do what they did not want to do. "He lets the 
 children talk and run around and help one another 
 with their lessons!" and all the teachers looked at 
 each other with a wild surmise silent on the school- 
 room platform. Could it be that there was a better 
 way, that this task on which they were wearing out 
 their nerves, trying to reduce to rigidity for five 
 hours a roomful of wriggling children, was no less 
 harmful to the children than to themselves ? " I'd 
 like to see John Dewey try to manage my sixty," 
 remarks the presiding teacher as she suppresses a 
 little girl on the front seat with a smile and a big boy 
 on the back seat with a tap of her pencil. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the children neither studied 
 nor did what they pleased, but the idea was that 
 if children had a sufficient variety of activities pro- 
 vided they would like what they did and their ac- 
 tivities could be so arranged as to result in getting 
 
 [237!
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 knowledge and in forming good habits of thought. 
 The common assumption that the main idea was 
 to have the children do and study what they liked 
 was a complete missing of the intellectual idea or 
 philosophy of the school, which was an attempt to 
 work out the theory that knowledge, with respect 
 to both sense observation and general principles, is 
 an offshoot of activities, and that the practical 
 problems arising in connection with consecutive 
 occupations afford the means for a development 
 of interest in scientific problems for their own sake. 
 The social grouping of children, and the attempt 
 to get cooperative group work, was always just as 
 important a phase as individual freedom not only 
 on moral grounds, but because of the theoretical 
 conception that human intelligence developed under 
 social conditions and for social purposes in other 
 words, "mind" has developed not only with respect 
 to activity having purpose, but also social activity. 
 These same notions of the central place of intelli- 
 gence in action and the social nature of intelligence 
 are fundamental in Dewey's " Ethics." 
 
 The real distinguishing characteristic of schools 
 of the Dewey type is not absence of discipline but 
 a new ideal of discipline. This is most clearly 
 stated in one of his more recent works : 
 
 [238]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 Discipline of mind is in truth a result rather than 
 a cause. Any mind is disciplined in a subject in 
 which independent intellectual initiative and con- 
 trol have been achieved. Discipline represents 
 original native endowment turned through gradual 
 exercise into effective power. . . . Discipline is 
 positive and constructive. Discipline, however, is 
 frequently regarded as something negative as a 
 painfully disagreeable forcing of mind away from 
 channels congenial to it into channels of constraint, 
 a process grievous at the time, but necessary as 
 preparation for a more or less remote future. Dis- 
 cipline is then generally identified with drill ; and 
 drill is conceived after the mechanical analogy of 
 driving, by unremitting blows, a foreign substance 
 into a resistant material; or is imaged after the 
 analogy of the mechanical routine by which raw 
 recruits are trained to a soldierly bearing and habits 
 that are naturally wholly foreign to their possessors. 
 Training of this latter sort, whether it be called 
 discipline or not, is not mental discipline. Its aim 
 and result are not habits of thinking but uniform 
 external habits of action. By failing to ask what he 
 means by discipline, many a teacher is misled into 
 supposing that he is developing mental force and 
 efficiency by methods which in fact restrict and 
 deaden intellectual activity, and which tend to 
 create mechanical routine, or mental passivity and 
 servility. - "How We Think", p. 63. 
 
 But even more revolutionary than Dewey's rejec- 
 tion of the strict discipline then prevailing in the 
 schools was his introduction of industrial training 
 as an integral part of education, not merely for the 
 
 [239]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 purpose of giving the pupils greater manual skill, 
 still less with the object of improving their chances 
 of getting a job or of making them more efficient 
 for the benefit of the employer, but chiefly because 
 it is only through participation in industry that one 
 can get an understanding of the meaning of science 
 and the constitution of the social organism. In the 
 old days when most industries were carried on in the 
 household or the neighborhood children learned them 
 by observation and participation. ^School was then a 
 place where this very effective form of home educa- 
 tion could be supplemented by "book learning." 
 
 But Dewey faced frankly the fact that the house- 
 hold arts and handicrafts had passed away for keeps, 
 and he refused to join in the pretense that they could 
 be profitably "revived" by the various esthetic 
 and socialist movements of the William Morris and 
 Ruskin type. He recognized that the machine and 
 the factory had come to stay, and if the worker is 
 not to become a factory machine himself he must 
 receive in school such a broad and diversified train- 
 ing as will make him realize the significance of the 
 work he does. Or as Dewey said in "School and 
 Society" in 1899: 
 
 We sometimes hear the introduction of manual 
 training, art and science into the elementary, and 
 
 [240]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 even into the secondary, schools deprecated on the 
 ground that they tend toward the production of 
 specialists that they detract from our present 
 system of generous, liberal culture. The point to 
 this objection would be ludicrous if it were not often 
 so effective as to make it tragic. It is our present 
 education which is highly specialized, one-sided and 
 narrow. It is an education dominated almost en- 
 tirely by the medieval conception of learning. It 
 is something which appeals for the most part simply 
 to the intellectual aspect of our natures, our desire 
 to learn, to accumulate information, and to get 
 control of the symbols of learning; not to our im- 
 pulses and tendencies to make, to do, to create, to 
 produce, whether in the form of utility or art. 
 
 Mere "manual training", then all the rage, has 
 failed, as Dewey said it would, because of its fictitious 
 and adventitious character. His method was as 
 different from the ordinary kind of "manual train- 
 ing" as hay-making is from dumb-bell exercise. 
 
 We must conceive of work in wood and metal, of 
 weaving, sewing and cooking, as methods of living 
 and learning, not as distinct studies. We must 
 conceive of them in their social significance, as types 
 of processes by which society keeps itself going, as 
 agencies for bringing home to the child some of the 
 primal necessities of community life, and as ways 
 in which these needs have been met by the growing 
 insight and ingenuity of man ; in short as instrumen- 
 talities through which the school itself shall be made 
 a genuine form of active community life, instead of 
 a place set apart in which to learn lessons. 
 
 [241]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 So Dewey set the children to solving the problems 
 of primitive man and retracing for themselves the 
 steps in the evolution of industrial processes. They 
 picked the cotton from the boll, carded, spun it into 
 thread and wove it into cloth on machines of their 
 own making and for the most part of their own de- 
 vising. This gave opportunity for personal experi- 
 menting and taught them history by repeating 
 history, not repeating a verbal version of history. 
 And the history they thus learnt was the history of 
 the human race, not the history of some chosen 
 people. 
 
 This recapitulation theory, like all others, has 
 since been carried to an extreme. Acting on the 
 idea that children normally pass through the same 
 stages as European civilization some teachers seem 
 to think it necessary to keep them to the chrono- 
 logical curriculum. So they cultivate a pseudo- 
 savagery for a year or two, then make them pagans 
 and later teach the ideals of the age of chivalry which 
 are hardly less repugnant to the modern mind. So 
 careful are they to avoid anachronism that if a boy 
 should by any accident behave like a Christian be- 
 fore he reached the grade corresponding to A.D. 28 
 he would be likely to get a bad mark for it. So, too, 
 I have known teachers of mathematics who would not 
 
 [242]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 allow their pupils to take a short cut to the answer 
 by way of algebra unless it was in the algebra class 
 and teachers of chemistry who would not permit 
 the word "atom" to be mentioned in classroom 
 until the term was half through. But such extrava- 
 gances find no countenance in Dewey's writings or 
 the examples he cites. 
 
 In the laboratory school of the University of 
 Chicago Professor and Mrs. Dewey had for several 
 years a free hand in developing and trying out their 
 theories. Their aim was to utilize instead of to 
 suppress the fourfold impulses of childhood ; the 
 interest in conversation, the interest in inquiry, the 
 interest in construction and the interest in artistic 
 expression. The volume in which Professor Dewey 
 explained what he was trying to do and why, " School 
 and Society", was first published in 1899 and has 
 been reprinted almost every year up to the present. 1 
 It might well have borne the same title as Benjamin 
 Tucker's volume on anarchism: "Instead of a 
 Book, by a Man Too Busy to Write One." It con- 
 sists of the stenographic reports of three informal 
 talks by Professor Dewey to the parents of his 
 pupils and the friends of his school, supplemented 
 
 1 The University of Chicago Press published a second edition of 
 "School and Society", revised and enlarged, in 1915. 
 
 [243]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 by some fugitive papers. Yet it has an influence 
 comparable to no other modern book of its size 
 unless perhaps Herbert Spencer's tract on "Edu- 
 cation." 
 
 How far the seed was sown is shown by "Schools 
 of To-morrow", 1 which tells of a dozen places where 
 the ideas that were so novel and startling in the 
 nineties are in practical operation. But it is char- 
 acteristic of Dewey's self-effacement that he makes 
 no claim for priority, and there is no hint anywhere 
 in the volume that many of the methods described 
 were first devised and tried out in the Dewey school 
 at Chicago nearly twenty years ago. He gives the 
 credit for the theory to Rousseau and the credit for 
 the practice to Mr. Wirt of Gary, Mrs. Johnson of 
 Fairhope, Mr. Valentine of Indianapolis, Professor 
 Merriam of Missouri, and others. 
 
 Mr. Wirt who organized the school system of the 
 steel city of Gary, Indiana, and who is now em- 
 ployed in remodeling some of the schools of New 
 York City, owes his inspiration and ideas, as I have 
 heard him say, very largely to Dewey. 2 The Gary 
 system differs from the trade schools in that the 
 
 1 "Schools of To-morrow", by John Dewey and Evelyn Dewey 
 (Dutton), 1915. 
 
 2 Doctor Georg Kerschensteiner who founded the famous "work- 
 shop schools" of Munich also acknowledges his indebtedness to Dewey. 
 
 [244]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 industries are used for their educative value. The 
 pupils are shifted around from one shop to another 
 three times a year. Their tasks are artificial, sym- 
 bolic or imitative, but from the fifth grade up real 
 constructive work, for the boys making school 
 furniture, iron castings, laying concrete, and print- 
 ing; and for the girls, sewing, cooking, marketing, 
 millinery, and laundry, and for both, gardening, 
 pottery, designing, bookbinding and bookkeeping. 
 Arithmetic, writing, history, and geography come in 
 necessarily and naturally in connection with their 
 work. Under this regime the pupils make better 
 progress in the traditional subjects than those who 
 devote their whole time to books. That it does not 
 divert them from higher education is shown by the 
 fact that one third of all the pupils who have left 
 the Gary schools in the eight years of their existence 
 are now in the state university, an engineering school, 
 or a business college, a remarkable record for a 
 population mostly composed of foreign-born steel 
 mill laborers. All the schoolrooms are in use for 
 something all day long, so the "peak load" is avoided 
 and a great economy effected. The grounds and 
 buildings also serve as community centers and the 
 last trace of the ancient feud between "town and 
 gown" has been wiped out. 
 
 [HSl
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 The chief advantage which these "schools of to- 
 morrow" have over those of the past is, in Dewey's 
 opinion, that they come a step nearer toward giving 
 the type of training necessary to prepare citizens 
 for democracy. In this new book, then, he is work- 
 ing toward the ideal he promulgated at the beginning 
 of his career when he entered the faculty of the 
 University of Michigan as the youngest man ever 
 appointed to a professorship in that institution. He 
 sounded the note of his philosophy thirty years ago 
 in a paper on "The Ethics of Democracy", 1 and he 
 has never faltered in his allegiance to the high ideal 
 he there set forth, although he has broken away 
 from the Hegelian mode of thought he then used. 
 The paper was written to confute Sir Henry Maine 
 who, in his "Popular Government", argued that 
 democracy was an historical accident and the most 
 fragile, insecure, and unprogressive form of govern- 
 ment. Dewey objects to his mechanical and mathe- 
 matical conception of democratic government and 
 sets forth a very different conception as the following 
 quotations will show : 
 
 The majority have a right to "rule" because their 
 majority is not the mere sign of a surplus in numbers, 
 
 1 No. I of Series 2 of Philosophical Papers of the University of 
 Michigan, 1887. 
 
 [2 4 6]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 but is the manifestation of the purpose of the social 
 organism. 
 
 Government is to the state what language is to 
 the thought : it not only communicates the purposes 
 of the state, but in so doing gives them for the first 
 time articulation and generality. 
 
 A vote is not the impersonal counting of one; it 
 is a manifestation of some tendency of the social 
 organism through a member of that organism. 
 
 The democratic formula that government derives 
 its powers from the consent of the governed . . . 
 means that in democracy the governors and the 
 governed are not of two classes, but two aspects of 
 the same fact the fact of the possession by society 
 of a unified and articulate will. 
 
 The aristocratic idea implies that the mass of men 
 are to be inserted by wisdom, or, if necessary, thrust 
 by force, into their proper positions in the social 
 organism. . . . 
 
 Democracy means that personality is the first and 
 final reality. ... It holds that the spirit of per- 
 sonality indwells in every individual, and that the 
 choice to develop it must proceed from that indi- 
 vidual. From this central position of democracy 
 result the other notes of democracy, liberty, 
 equality, fraternity words which are not mere 
 words to catch a mob, but symbols of the high- 
 est ethical idea which humanity has yet reached 
 the idea that personality is the one thing of 
 permanent and abiding worth, and that in every 
 human individual there lies personality. ... It 
 means that in every individual there lives an in- 
 finite and universal possibility : that of being a 
 king or priest. Aristocracy is blasphemy against 
 personality.
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 Even in those days when socialism had hardly 
 begun to be whispered, at least in academic circles, 
 Dewey was not afraid to say that: "Democracy 
 is not in reality what it is in name until it is indus- 
 trial as well as civil and political. ... A democracy 
 of wealth is a necessity." Twenty-five years later 
 I saw Professor Dewey giving a public demonstration 
 of his faith in democracy when I found him march- 
 ing with a small body of men at the tail end of a 
 suffrage procession while the crowds that lined Fifth 
 Avenue jeered and hissed at us. Who would then 
 have thought that five years later all parties would 
 be committed to equal suffrage and four presidential 
 candidates would be bidding against one another for 
 the privilege of giving the women the vote ! 
 
 Education for democracy is the burden of Dewey's 
 message to the world, and I must give one more 
 quotation on this point : 
 
 Democracy, the crucial expression of modern life, 
 is not so much an addition to the scientific and in- 
 dustrial tendencies as it is the perception of their 
 social or spiritual meaning. Democracy is an 
 absurdity where faith in the individual as individual 
 is impossible ; and this faith is impossible where 
 intelligence is regarded as a cosmic power, not an 
 adjustment and application of individual tendencies. 
 . . . Democracy is estimable only through the 
 changed conception of intelligence that forms modern 
 
 [248]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 science, and of want, that forms modern industry. 
 It is essentially a changed psychology. The con- 
 ventional type of education which trains children 
 in docility and obedience, to the careful performance 
 of imposed tasks because they are imposed, regard- 
 less of where they lead, is suited to an autocratic 
 society. These are the traits needed in a state 
 where there is one head to plan and care for the 
 lives and institutions of the people. But in a de- 
 mocracy they interfere with the successful conduct 
 of society and government. ... If we train our 
 children to take orders, to do things simply because 
 they are told to, and fail to give them confidence 
 to act and think for themselves, we are putting an 
 almost insurmountable obstacle in the way of over- 
 coming the present defects of our system and of 
 establishing the truth of democratic ideals. 
 
 Children in school must be allowed freedom so that 
 they will know what its use means when they become 
 the controlling body, and they must be allowed to 
 develop active qualities of initiative, independence, 
 and resourcefulness, before the abuses and failures 
 will disappear. "School and Society", p. 304. 
 
 The old theory of education has been most pun- 
 gently put by "Mr. Dooley", the saloon-keeper of 
 Archey Road, in one of his monologues with Mr. 
 Hennessy : " It don't matter much what you study 
 so long as you don't like it." Professor Dewey 
 takes almost the opposite ground when he says : * 
 "Interest ought to be the basis for selection because 
 
 1 "Schools of To-morrow", p. 301. 
 [249] 

 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 children are interested in the things they need to 
 learn." 
 
 This, as he shows, does not mean that in the new 
 schools things are "made easy"; on the contrary 
 the pupils work harder because things are made 
 interesting. 
 
 The range of the material is not in any way 
 limited by making interest a standard of selection. 
 Work that appeals to pupils as worth while, that 
 holds out the promise of resulting in something to 
 their own interests, involves just as much persistence 
 and concentration as the work that is given by the 
 sternest advocate of disciplinary drill. The latter 
 requires the pupil to strive for ends which he cannot 
 see, so that he has to be kept at the task by means 
 of offering artificial ends, marks, and promotions, 
 and by isolating him in an atmosphere where his 
 mind and senses are not being constantly besieged 
 by the call of life which appeals so strongly to him. 
 But the pupil presented with a problem, the solution 
 of which will give him an immediate sense of accom- 
 plishment and satisfied curiosity, will bend all his 
 powers to the work : the end itself will furnish the 
 stimulus necessary to carry him through the drudg- 
 ery. . . . Since the children are no longer working 
 for rewards, the temptation to cheat is reduced to a 
 minimum. There is no motive for doing dishonest 
 acts, since the result shows whether the child has 
 done the work, the only end recognized. " School 
 and Society." 
 
 We have then two fundamentally different theories 
 of training, the Dooley versus the Dewey system. 
 
 [250]
 
 DEWEY 
 
 They are now on trial in some degree all the way up 
 from the beginning of the primary to the end of the 
 college. 1 One is authoritarian; the other liber- 
 tarian. One cultivates obedience; the other initia- 
 tive. One strives for uniformity ; the other diversity. 
 In one the impelling motive is duty ; in the other 
 desire. In one the attitude of the student is re- 
 ceptivity; in the other activity. In one there is 
 compulsory coordination ; in the other voluntary 
 cooperation. 
 
 Obviously neither could be carried to an exclusive 
 extreme, and in practice we find each more or less 
 unconsciously borrowing methods from the others. 
 Doubtless the optima for different temperaments, 
 ages, and studies will be found at different points 
 along the line connecting the two extremes. How 
 far one may safely go in either direction is to be deter- 
 mined by the pragmatic test of experiment. But 
 at present it is safe to say that the tide of reform is 
 running in the direction Dewey pointed out a quarter 
 of a century before, though recently a strong counter- 
 current of militarism has set in. That Dewey is 
 a true prophet is proved by the extent to which his 
 
 'See the admirable article in Atlantic Monthly of November, 1908, by 
 President Pritchett of the Carnegie Foundation, contrasting Harvard 
 and West Point, "The College of Freedom and the College of Dis- 
 cipline." 
 
 [2 5 I]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 ideas are being carried out in these "schools of to- 
 morrow" that are already in existence to-day. 
 
 The third period in Dewey's life began with his 
 appointment to the chair of philosophy at Columbia 
 University in 1905. This relieved him of the burden 
 of responsibility for the conduct of the laboratory 
 school at Chicago and enabled him to concentrate 
 his thought upon the fundamental problems of 
 knowledge. It was then perceived that he belonged 
 on the left or radical wing of that movement to which 
 James applied Peirce's name of "pragmatism." 
 But Dewey is reluctant to call himself a pragmatist, 
 partly because of his constitutional dislike to wear- 
 ing a tag of any kind, partly, I surmise, because he 
 has an aversion to the spiritualistic tendencies of 
 the two men who are usually classed with him as 
 the leaders of the pragmatic movement James 
 of Harvard and Schiller of Oxford. 
 
 Dewey's doctrine of cognition, the theory of in- 
 strumentalism, is now to be found in two recent 
 volumes, one technical and the other popular. The 
 ordinary skimming reader will find the "Essays in 
 Experimental Logic" rather hard sledding, so he 
 will be relieved to find that it has been translated by 
 the author into ordinary English in the little volume 
 entitled "How We Think." This is intended pri- 
 
 [252]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 marily for teachers whose business is supposed to 
 be that of teaching their youngsters how to think, 
 though in reality most of their time has to be taken 
 up with the imparting of information. 
 
 The "Ethics" of John Dewey and James H. 
 Tufts (1908) is not only a practical textbook ad- 
 mirably clear in expounding the conflicting theories 
 and eminently fair in criticizing them, but it would 
 be useful to any reader for broadening the mind and 
 pointing the proper way of approach to modern 
 problems. Professor Tawney of the University of 
 Cincinnati in reviewing it for the American Journal 
 of Sociology says: "Probably no more convincing 
 effort to construct a system of moral philosophy 
 by a strictly scientific method has ever been carried 
 out." 
 
 Moral philosophers are generally disposed to keep 
 their carefully constructed systems of ethics under 
 a glass bell jar rather than risk the hard knocks 
 they must receive if taken into the street and mar- 
 ketplace. But Dewey as a professed experimentalist 
 could not consistently adopt this cautious method. 
 His is no cloistered morality but a doctrine reduced 
 from practical life and referable to the same author- 
 ity for the validification of its influences. An 
 interesting instance of the practical application of 
 
 [253]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 his principles is found in his essay on "Force and 
 Coercion." l Here he discusses chiefly the ques- 
 tion of the allowability of the use of force by a 
 government as in war or by a class as in a strike and 
 repudiates the Tolstoyan view that all use of force 
 is wrong. On such a delicate question it would be 
 improper for me to paraphrase his argument, so I 
 quote instead his own summary of his conclusions : 
 
 First, since the attainment of ends requires the 
 use of means, law is essentially a formulation of 
 the use of force. Secondly, the only question 
 which can be raised about the justification of force 
 is that of comparative efficiency and economy in 
 its use. Thirdly, what is justly objected to as 
 violence or undue coercion is a reliance upon waste- 
 ful and destructive means of accomplishing results. 
 Fourthly, there is always a possibility that what 
 passes as a legitimate use of force may be so wasteful 
 as to be really a use of violence ; and per contra that 
 measures condemned as recourse to mere violence 
 may, under the given circumstances, represent an 
 intelligent utilization of energy. In no case, can 
 antecedents or a priori principles be appealed to 
 as more than presumptive : The point at issue is 
 concrete utilization of means for ends. 
 
 In this essay Dewey inclines to the view that 
 "all political questions are simply questions of the 
 extension and restriction of exercise of power on 
 
 1 International Journal of Ethics, vol. 26, p. 359-367. 
 [254]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 the part of specific groups in the community", and 
 says further that: "With a few notable exceptions, 
 the doctrine that the state rests upon or is common 
 will seems to turn out but a piece of phraseology to 
 justify the uses actually made of force. Practices 
 of coercion and constraint which would become in- 
 tolerable if frankly labelled Force seem to become 
 laudable when baptized with the name of Will, 
 although they otherwise remain the same." 
 
 I trust that Dewey is one of "the few notable 
 exceptions", for the quotations from his paper on 
 the "Ethics of Democracy" which I have given 
 on a previous page show that Dewey in his earlier 
 years went as far as Fichte in his later years toward 
 identifying government and a bare majority at 
 that with the common will of the social organism. 
 Such a Germanic doctrine of the power of the State 
 could be used to justify worse things than the Ger- 
 man Government has ever done, and it is perhaps 
 a realization of this that has led Dewey latterly to 
 look with more favor upon the use of force by the 
 minority. 
 
 The proper use of force is, in Dewey's opinion, 
 "the acute question of social philosophy in the 
 world to-day", and "a generation which has beheld 
 the most stupendous manifestation of force in all 
 
 [55l
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 history is not going to be content unless it has 
 found some answer to the question." In an article 
 on "Force, Violence and Law" 1 he discusses the 
 possibilities of the peace movement in the following 
 fashion : 
 
 At various times of my life I have, with other 
 wearied souls, assisted at discussions between those 
 who were Tolstoyans and well, those who weren't. 
 In reply to the agitated protests of the former against 
 war and the police and penal measures, I have 
 listened to the time-honored queries about what you 
 should do when the criminal attacked your friend 
 or child. I have rarely heard it stated that since 
 one cannot even walk the street without using force, 
 the only question which persons can discuss with 
 one another concerns the most effective use of force 
 in gaining ends in specific situations. If one's end 
 is the saving of one's soul immaculate, or maintain- 
 ing a certain emotion unimpaired, doubtless force 
 should be used to inhibit natural muscular reactions. 
 If the end is something else, a hearty fisticuff may be 
 the means of realizing it. What is intolerable is 
 that men should condemn or eulogize force at large, 
 irrespective of its use as a means of getting results. 
 To be interested in ends and to have contempt for 
 the means which alone secure them is the last stage 
 of intellectual demoralization. 
 
 It is hostility to force as force, to force intrin- 
 sically, which has rendered the peace movement so 
 largely an anti-movement, with all the weaknesses 
 which appertain to everything that is primarily 
 anti-anything. Unable to conceive the task of 
 
 1 The New Republic, January 22, 1916. 
 [2 5 6]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 organizing the existing forces so they may achieve 
 their greatest efficiency, pacifists have had little 
 recourse save to decry evil emotions and evil-minded 
 men as the causes of war. . . . And no league to 
 enforce peace will fare prosperously save as it is 
 the natural accompaniment of a constructive ad- 
 justment of the concrete interests which are already 
 at work. . . . The passage of force under law 
 occurs only when all the cards are on the table, 
 when the objective facts which bring conflicts in 
 their train are acknowledged, and when intelligence 
 is used to devise mechanisms which will afford to 
 the forces at work all the satisfaction that conditions 
 permit. 
 
 Dewey's primary purpose has always been the 
 development of a type of ethical thinking and a 
 method of school training suited to the democratic 
 and industrial society of modern America. Speak- 
 ing of the mental revolution that has been effected 
 by the advance of science he says : 
 
 Whether the consequent revolution in moral 
 philosophy be termed pragmatism or be given the 
 happier title of the applied and experimental habit 
 of mind is of little account. What is of moment is 
 that intelligence has descended from its lonely isola- 
 tion at the remote edge of things, whence it operated 
 as unmoved mover and ultimate good, to take its 
 seat in the moving affairs of men. Theory may 
 therefore become responsible to the practices that 
 have generated it; the good be connected with na- 
 ture, but with nature naturally, not metaphysically 
 conceived, and social life be cherished in behalf of 
 
 [2571
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 its own immediate possibilities, not on the ground of 
 its remote connections with a cosmic reason and 
 absolute end. "Influence of Darwin", p. 55. 
 
 In the preface to the "Influence of Darwin" he 
 quotes a German definition of pragmatism : l 
 
 Epistemologically, nominalism ; psychologically, 
 voluntarism; cosmologically, energism ; metaphys- 
 ically, agnosticism; ethically, meliorism on the 
 basis of the Bentham-Mill-utilitarianism. 
 
 Dewey, who dislikes to wear even one tag and 
 that a nice new clean one naturally resents having 
 these five old ones tied to him, so he says : 
 
 It may be that pragmatism will turn out to be all 
 of this formidable array, but even should it the one 
 who thus defines it has hardly come within earshot 
 of it. For whatever else pragmatism is or is not, 
 the pragmatic spirit is primarily a revolt against 
 that habit of mind which disposes of anything what- 
 ever even so humble an affair as a new method in 
 philosophy by tucking it away, after this fashion, 
 in the pigeon-holes of a filing cabinet. . . . 
 
 It is better to view pragmatism quite vaguely as 
 part and parcel of a general movement of intellectual 
 reconstruction. For otherwise we seem to have no 
 recourse save to define pragmatism as does our 
 
 1 To get the full force of this portentous definition one must read it 
 in the original : Gewiss ist der Pragmatismus erkenntniss-theoretisch 
 Nominalismus, psychologisck Voluntarismus, naturphilosophisch Ener- 
 gismus, metaphysisch Agnosticismus, ethisch Meliorismus auf Gnindlage 
 des Bentham-Millschen Utilitarismus. 
 
 [2 5 8]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 German author in terms of the very past systems 
 against which it is a reaction ; or, in escaping that 
 alternative, to regard it as a fixed rival system 
 making like claim to completeness and finality. 
 And if, as I believe, one of the marked traits of the 
 pragmatic movement is just the surrender of every 
 such claim, how have we furthered our understand- 
 ing of pragmatism ? 
 
 In one of his Socratic dialogues * Dewey brings 
 in at the close Chesterton's flip refutation of prag- 
 matism : 
 
 Pupil. What you say calls to mind something of 
 Chesterton's that I read recently: "I agree with 
 the pragmatists that apparent objective truth is not 
 the whole matter; that there is an authoritative 
 need to believe the things that are necessary to the 
 human mind. But I say that one of those neces- 
 sities precisely is a belief in objective truth. Prag- 
 matism is a matter of human needs and one of the 
 first of human needs is to be something more than a 
 pragmatist." 
 
 You would say, if I understand you aright, that 
 to fall back upon the necessity of the "human mind" 
 to believe in certain absolute truths, is to evade a 
 proper demand for testing the human mind and all 
 its works. 
 
 Teacher. My son, I am glad to leave the last word 
 with you. This enfant terrible of intellectualism has 
 revealed that the chief objection of absolutists to 
 the pragmatic doctrine of the personal (or "sub- 
 
 1 " A Catechism Concerning Truth " in " The Influence of Darwin 
 on Philosophy and Other Essays." 
 
 l*59l
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 jective") factor in belief is that the pragmatist has 
 spilled the personal milk in the absolutist's coconut. 
 
 It is curious to see how many different classes 
 are now holding up Germany as a horrible example 
 of the dangers of the theories they oppose. The 
 Anglican Catholics blame Luther for the war and 
 look upon the prospective triumph of the Allies as 
 the final destruction of Protestantism in the world. 
 The orthodox believe that Germany got into trouble 
 through higher criticism. The classicists say that 
 she is suffering from an overdose of science. The 
 Absolute Idealists ascribe the bad conduct of Ger- 
 many to her desertion of Kant, Hegel, and Fichte to 
 follow after the new gods or no gods of Haeckel 
 and Nietzsche. But Dewey, on the contrary, holds 
 Kant, Hegel, and Fichte responsible for it all. 
 "That philosophical absolutism may be practically 
 as dangerous as matter-of-fact political absolutism 
 history testifies." This is no new notion cooked up 
 for the occasion, like so many of them, but one which 
 Dewey plainly stated six years before the outbreak 
 of the war in his address on Ethics at Columbia 
 University. In speaking of Kant's denudation of 
 Pure Reason of all concrete attributes he said : 
 
 Reason became a mere voice, which having noth- 
 ing particular to say, said Law, Duty, in general, 
 
 [260]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 leaving to the existing social order of the Prussia 
 of Frederick the Great the congenial task of declar- 
 ing just what was obligatory in the concrete. The 
 marriage of freedom and authority was thus cele- 
 brated with the understanding that sentimental 
 primacy went to the former and practical control 
 to the latter. " Influence of Darwin ", p. 65. 
 
 After the war began he expanded this idea in his 
 McNair lectures at the University of North Caro- 
 lina. 1 Because Germany has developed continuously 
 without any decided break with its past like the 
 French Revolution or the transplanting of Euro- 
 peans to America, German thinkers have come to 
 declare all progress as the unfolding of national life 
 and to declare impossible the construction of con- 
 stitutions such as we have in the New World. Dewey 
 traces the intellectual process by which the German 
 people have reached the very startling opinions they 
 now hold as to their mission in the world as follows : 
 
 The premises of the historic syllogism are plain. 
 First, the German Luther who saved for mankind 
 the principle of spiritual freedom against Latin 
 externalism; then Kant and Fichte, who wrought 
 out the principle into a final philosophy of science, 
 morals and the State ; as conclusion, the German 
 nation organized in order to win the world to a 
 recognition of the principle, and thereby to estab- 
 lish the rule of freedom and science in humanity as 
 
 1 Published as "German Philosophy and Politics" (Holt), 1915. 
 [26l]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 a whole. ... In the grosser sense of the words, 
 Germany has not held that might makes right. But 
 it has been instructed by a long line of philosophers 
 that it is the business of ideal right to gather might 
 to itself in order that it may cease to be merely ideal. 
 The State represents exactly this incarnation of 
 ideal law and right in effective might. 
 
 A hundred years ago Fichte in his "Addresses to 
 the German Nation" roused his countrymen to make 
 a stand against Napoleon and fulfill their mission to 
 "elevate the German name to that of the most 
 glorious of all peoples, making this Nation the re- 
 generator and restorer of the world." "There is no 
 middle ground : If you sink, so sinks humanity 
 entire with you, without hope of future restoration." 
 
 This sounds very much like what we hear in 
 Germany to-day, although the present German 
 Empire differs markedly in some respects from the 
 ideal State that Fichte foresaw. It is also the same 
 sort of language as is being used in England and the 
 other allied countries. In fact every nation has 
 the same sense of its historic divine mission and 
 unique importance to the world's civilization. Cer- 
 tainly we cannot deny the existence of that feeling 
 among Americans. To quote again from Fichte : 
 "While cosmopolitanism is the dominant will that 
 the purpose of the existence of humanity be actually 
 
 [262!
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 realized in humanity, patriotism is the will that this 
 end be first realized in the particular nation to which 
 we ourselves belong, and that this achievement 
 thence spread over the entire race." 
 
 This might seem a harmless and indeed inspiring 
 conception of patriotism, but when the Fichtean idea 
 of a particular State as the incarnation of the divine 
 will is combined with the Hegelian idea of progress 
 through conflict, it makes a fatal mixture, as Dewey 
 shows : 
 
 Philosophical justification of war follows inevitably 
 from a philosophy of history composed in national- 
 istic terms. History is the movement, the march 
 of God on earth through time. Only one nation at 
 a time can be the latest and hence the fullest realiza- 
 tion of God. The movement of God in history is 
 thus particularly manifest in those changes by which 
 unique place passes from one nation to another. War 
 is the signally visible occurrence of such a flight of 
 the divine spirit in its onward movement. 
 
 This fallacious line of argument is, in Dewey's 
 opinion, the logical outcome of the a priori and 
 absolutist metaphysics which has prevailed in 
 Europe during the last century, and for which he 
 would substitute the method of intelligent experi- 
 mentation. He says, "The present situation pre- 
 sents the spectacle of the breakdown of the whole 
 philosophy of Nationalism, political, racial and 
 
 [263]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 cultural," and he urges as a substitute the promo- 
 tion of "the efficacy of human intercourse irrespective 
 of class, racial, geographical and national limits." 
 When we see the appalling results to which the doctrine 
 of Nationalism has led, we may indeed regard it with 
 Dewey as a logical breakdown, but I fear that ac- 
 tually it has become more powerful, pervading, and 
 firmly fixed than ever through the psychological 
 and economic experiences of the war. 1 
 
 Doctor F. C. S. Schiller of Oxford calls Dewey's 
 "German Philosophy and Politics" "an entirely 
 admirable book; clear, calm, cogent, and popular 
 without being shallow" and he further says : 
 
 Professor Dewey was assuredly the ideal person 
 to handle the subject. For though he had made 
 a deep and sympathetic study of German philos- 
 ophy, he had in the end turned away from it to 
 become a leader in the movement which is most 
 antithetical to the traditionally German type of 
 philosophizing. It must not indeed be alleged that 
 the Anglo-Saxon world has a monopoly of the prag- 
 
 1 "German Philosophy and Politics" is sympathetically reviewed by 
 Professor Santayana in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scien- 
 tific Methods for November 25, 1915. The same Journal reprints (vol. 
 XII, p. 584) a criticism appearing in The New Republic (vol. IV, p. 234) 
 by Professor Hocking of Harvard, who thinks that the fault of the Ger- 
 mans is being too pragmatic. Professor Dewey's reply is published with 
 it. See also Dewey's admirable analysis of the national psychology of 
 Germany, France, and England in his article "On Understanding the 
 Mind of Germany", Atlantic, vol. 117, p. 251. 
 
 [264]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 matic habit of mind ; for all men have to act and 
 pragmatism is only the theoretic apprehension of 
 the attitude which imposes itself on every agent 
 everywhere. But it is probably right to regard this 
 habit of mind as characteristically congenial to Anglo- 
 Saxon life, and it was a perception of this that so 
 infuriated our germanized professors who prided 
 themselves on their superiority to the vulgar practi- 
 cality of the national bent. 1 
 
 A stranger who drops into one of Professor Dewey's 
 classes is at first apt to be puzzled to account for the 
 extent of his influence and the devotion of his dis- 
 ciples. There is nothing in his manner of delivery 
 to indicate that he is saying anything of importance, 
 and it takes some time to realize that he is. He 
 talks along in a casual sort of way with a low and un- 
 eventful voice and his eyes mostly directed toward 
 the bare desk or out of the window. Occasionally 
 he wakes up to the fact that the students in the back 
 seats are having difficulty in hearing him, and then 
 he comes down with explosive stress on the next 
 word, a preposition as like as not. His lectures are 
 punctuated by pauses but not in a way to facilitate 
 their comprehension. Sometimes in the midst of a 
 sentence, perhaps between an adjective and its 
 noun, his train of thought will be shunted off on to 
 
 1 Mind, April, 1916. 
 [265]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 another line, and the class has to sit patiently at 
 the junction station until it comes back, as it always 
 does eventually. The difficulty of utterance in his 
 lectures, like the tortuous style of his technical writ- 
 ings, results from overconscientiousness. When he 
 misses the right word he does not pick any one at 
 hand and go on but stops talking until he finds the 
 one he wants, and he is so anxious to avoid a mis- 
 understanding that he sometimes fails to insure an 
 understanding. Talking has never become a reflex 
 action with Dewey. He has to think before he 
 speaks. Few professors and almost no instructors 
 are bothered that way. 
 
 In profile Professor Dewey looks something like 
 Robert Louis Stevenson, the same long lean face 
 and neck and nose. From the front one would take 
 him to be a Kentucky colonel disguised in spectacles. 
 His long straight black hair, parted in the middle, 
 is now getting gray, but his drooping mustaches, 
 being twenty years younger, are still dark. His 
 eyes are black and keen, and one can catch a twinkle 
 in them if the lids do not drop too quick. His neck- 
 tie is usually awry, and several thousands of orderly 
 schoolma'ams have felt their hands itch to jerk it 
 straight. His drawling careless tone and hesitant 
 manner quite disguise the boldness of his thought 
 
 [266]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 and the logical order of its wording. Questions 
 from the class never disconcert him, however in- 
 opportune, and the more he is heckled the better 
 he talks. 
 
 One of his former students at Columbia, Ran- 
 dolph S. Bourne, gives this pen sketch of Professor 
 Dewey : l 
 
 Nothing is more symbolic of Professor Dewey's 
 democratic attitude towards life than the disinte- 
 grated array of his published writings. Where the 
 neatly uniform works of William James are to be 
 found in every public library, you must hunt long 
 and far for the best things of the man who, since the 
 other's death, is the most significant thinker in 
 America. Pamphlets and reports of obscure edu- 
 cational societies ; school journals, university mono- 
 graphs, and philosophical journals, limited to the 
 pedant few; these are the burial-places of much of 
 this intensely alive, futuristic philosophy. . . . No 
 man, I think, with such universally important things 
 to say on almost every social and intellectual activity 
 of the day, was ever published in forms more in- 
 geniously contrived to thwart the interest of the 
 prospective public. 
 
 Professor Dewey's thought is inaccessible because 
 he has always carried his simplicity of manner, his 
 dread of show or self-advertisement, almost to the 
 point of extravagance. In all his psychology there 
 is no place for the psychology of prestige. His de- 
 mocracy seems almost to take that extreme form of 
 refusing to bring one's self or one's ideas to the 
 
 1 The New Republic , March 13, 1915. 
 [267]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 attention of others. On the college campus or in the 
 lecture-room he seems positively to efface himself. 
 The uncertainty of his silver-gray hair and drooping 
 mustache, of his voice, of his clothes, suggests that 
 he has almost studied the technique of protective 
 coloration. It will do you no good to hear him 
 lecture. His sentences, flowing and exact and lucid 
 when read, you will find strung in long festoons of 
 obscurity between pauses for the awaited right 
 word. The whole business of impressing yourself 
 on other people, of getting yourself over to the 
 people who want to and ought to have you, has 
 simply never come into his ultra-democratic mind. 
 
 A prophet dressed in the clothes of a professor of 
 logic, he seems almost to feel shame that he has seen 
 the implications of democracy more clearly than 
 anybody else in the great would-be democratic 
 society about him, and so been forced into the un- 
 welcome task of teaching it. 
 
 Knowing that every biographer is expected to 
 show that the subject of his sketch got his peculiar 
 talents by honest inheritance, I wrote to Professor 
 Dewey to inquire what there was in his genealogy 
 to account for his becoming a philosopher. His 
 ancestry is discouraging to those who would find an 
 explanation for all things in heredity. 
 
 My ancestry, particularly on my father's side, is 
 free from all blemish. All my forefathers earned an 
 honest living as farmers, wheelwrights, coopers. I 
 was absolutely the first one in seven generations to 
 fall from grace. In the last few years atavism has 
 
 [268]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 set in and I have raised enough vegetables and fruit 
 really to pay for my own keep. 
 
 John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, 
 October 20, 1859, the son of Archibald S. and Lucina 
 A. (Rich) Dewey. His elder brother, Davis Rich 
 Dewey, is professor of economics and statistics in 
 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the 
 author of the Special Report on Employees and 
 Wages in the I2th Census as well as of many other 
 works on finance and industry. 
 
 John Dewey went to the State University in his 
 native town and received his A. B. degree at twenty. 
 Being then uncertain whether his liking for philo- 
 sophical studies was sufficient to be taken as a call to 
 that calling he applied to the one man in America 
 most competent and willing to decide such a ques- 
 tion, W. T. Harris, afterward United States Com- 
 missioner for Education, but then superintendent 
 of schools in St. Louis. Think of the courage and 
 enterprise of a man who while filling this busy posi- 
 tion and when the war was barely over started a 
 Journal of Speculative Philosophy and founded a 
 Philosophical Society and produced a series of trans- 
 lations of Hegel, Fichte, and other German meta- 
 physicians. It would be hard to estimate the 
 influence of Doctor Harris in raising the standards 
 
 [269]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 of American schools and in arousing an interest in 
 intellectual problems. When young Dewey sent 
 him a brief article with a request for personal ad- 
 vice he returned so encouraging a reply that Dewey 
 decided to devote himself to philosophy. So, after 
 a year spent at home reading under the direction of 
 Professor Torrey of the University of Vermont, one 
 of the old type of scholarly gentleman, Dewey went 
 to Johns Hopkins University, the first American 
 university to make graduate and research work its 
 main object. Here he studied under George S. 
 Morris and followed him to the University of Michi- 
 gan as Instructor in Philosophy after receiving his 
 Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins in 1884. Two years later 
 he married Alice Chipman of Fenton, Michigan, 
 who has been ever since an effective collaborator in 
 his educational and social work. In 1888 he went 
 to the University of Minnesota as Professor of 
 Philosophy but was called back to Michigan at the 
 end of one year. 
 
 When President Harper went through the country 
 picking up brilliant and promising young men for 
 the new University of Chicago, Dewey was his 
 choice for the chair of philosopher. During the ten 
 years Dewey spent on the Midway Plaisance he 
 had the opportunity to try out the radical ideas of 
 
 [270]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 education of which I have spoken. In 1904 Dewey 
 was called to Columbia University, where he has 
 since remained. Besides his classwork he has always 
 been active though rarely conspicuous in many ed- 
 ucational and social movements. One of the latest 
 of these is the formation of the Association of 
 University Professors, of which he was the first 
 president. 
 
 The title of his latest volume, "Democracy and 
 Education", gives the keynote of his philosophy 
 and the aim of his life. In a recent article l he puts 
 it in these words : 
 
 I am one of those who think that the only test 
 and justification of any form of political and eco- 
 nomic society is its contribution to art and science 
 to what may roundly be called culture. That 
 America has not yet so justified itself is too obvious 
 for even lament. . . . Since we can neither beg 
 nor borrow a culture without betraying both it and 
 ourselves, nothing remains save to produce one. . . . 
 Our culture must be consonant with realistic science 
 and with machine industry, instead of a refuge from 
 them. ... It is for education to bring the light 
 of science and the power of work to the aid of every 
 soul that it may discover its quality. For in a 
 spiritually democratic society every individual would 
 realize distinction. Culture would then be for the 
 first time in human history an individual achievement 
 and not a class possession. 
 
 1 The New Republic, July i, 1916. 
 [271]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 How TO READ DEWEY 
 
 As has been said previously, Dewey's writings are 
 scattered far and wide in various periodicals and 
 educational series. He has never been able to say 
 "no" to any struggling journal of socialism or school 
 reform that begged him for an article although it 
 meant no pay, little influence, and speedy oblivion 
 for his contribution. The graduate student of 
 twenty-five years hence who undertakes to get a 
 Ph.D. by making a complete collection of Dewey's 
 works will earn his degree. The main principles 
 of Dewey's philosophy, imparted viva voce to suc- 
 cessive generations of students, have never been 
 printed in a complete and systematic form, though 
 his ideas have interfused the schools of the country 
 through the teachers he has trained and the educa- 
 tional books he has written. 
 
 The nearest thing to a short cut to Dewey's phi- 
 losophy that he has given us is "How We Think" 
 (Heath, 1910), and with this the reader may well 
 begin. "Essays in Experimental Logic" (Univer- 
 sity of Chicago Press, 1916) requires for its complete 
 comprehension some knowledge of current contro- 
 versies in philosophy. But the review of James's 
 "Pragmatism", contained in the chapter "What 
 Pragmatism Means", w r ill be of interest to any 
 reader seeking an answer to that question. 
 
 His epoch-making work, "The School and So- 
 ciety" (University of Chicago Press, first edition 
 1899, second edition 1915), has by no means lost its 
 value although much that was prophecy then is 
 now fulfilled. Most readers will be more interested 
 in the fulfillments as described in "Schools of To- 
 morrow" (Dutton, 1915). This contains, besides 
 
 [272]
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 the description of the new schools by his daughter, 
 Evelyn Dewey, several chapters by Professor Dewey 
 on the theory and aims of the educational move- 
 ment they represent. A more complete and system- 
 atic exposition of the principles of education under 
 modern conditions is to be found in his most recent 
 book, "Democracy and Education" (Macmillan, 
 1916). Professor Moore of Chicago who reviews 
 this volume in the International Journal of Ethics 
 (1916, p. 547) says of it : "The thinking world has 
 long since learned to expect from Professor Dewey 
 matters of prime importance. Of the general sig- 
 nificance of this volume it is perhaps enough to say 
 that, in the reviewer's opinion, it is the most im- 
 portant of Professor Dewey's productions thus far. 
 In defiance of possible imputations of chauvinism, 
 the reviewer will also say that it would be difficult 
 to overstate its import and value for all students 
 of education, philosophy, and society." 
 
 The volume clumsily entitled "The Influence of 
 Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays in Con- 
 temporary Thought" (Holt, 1910) contains, besides 
 the anniversary address which gives it its title, ten 
 essays chiefly concerned with the exposition and 
 defense of Dewey's form of pragmatism, "immediate 
 empiricism." "German Philosophy and Politics" 
 (Holt, 1915) is discussed in the preceding pages. 
 Dewey's "Psychology" (Harper, 1886) has largely 
 lost its interest through the rapid advance of the 
 science and the altered viewpoint of the author. The 
 " Ethics " which he wrote in collaboration with Pro- 
 fessor Tufts I have previously mentioned (Holt, 1908). 
 
 The practical applications of Dewey's philosophy 
 to current educational and public questions may 
 best be found in the brief and popular articles that 
 
 [273]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 he contributed frequently to The New Republic 
 (New York) in 1915-1916. His professional con- 
 tributions to logical theory and epistemology ap- 
 pear mostly in the fortnightly organ of the philo- 
 sophical department of Columbia University, the 
 Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific 
 Methods. 
 
 A volume of eight essays on the pragmatic attitude 
 was published in January 1917 by Henry Holt under 
 the title of "Creative Intelligence." The leading 
 essay on " The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy " 
 is by John Dewey. 
 
 Besides the articles to which reference has been 
 made in the footnotes of the preceding pages the 
 following writings of Dewey should be mentioned : 
 "Science as Subject-matter and as Method", the 
 vice presidential address of the section on edu- 
 cation of the Boston meeting of the American 
 Association for the Advancement of Science, 1909, 
 (in Science, January 28, 1910) ; "The Problem of 
 Truth", George Leib Harrison lectures before the 
 University of Pennsylvania, 1911 (in Old Penn 
 Weekly Review); "Maeterlinck" (Hibbert Journal, 
 vol. 9, p. 765) and "Is Nature Good?" (Hibbert 
 Journal, vol. 7, p. 827) ; "The Existence of the 
 World as a Problem" (Philosophical Review, vol. 24, 
 p. 357); "Darwin's Influence upon Philosophy" 
 (Popular Science Monthly, vol. 75, p. 90) ; Presi- 
 dential address to the American Association of 
 University Professors (Science, January 29, 1915); 
 "Professional Spirit Among Teachers" (American 
 Teacher, New York, October, 1913) ; The Inter- 
 national Journal of Ethics published "Force and 
 Coercion" (vol. 26, p. 359); "Progress" (vol. 26, 
 p. 311); "Nature and Reason in Law" (vol. 25, 
 
 [2743
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 p. 25); "History for the Educator" and other 
 articles appeared in Progressive Journal of Educa- 
 tion, Chicago, 1909; "Voluntarism in the Roycean 
 Philosophy" in the Philosophical Review, May, 1916; 
 "Logical Foundations of The Scientific Treatment 
 of Morality" in the Decennial Publications of the 
 University of Chicago. 
 
 A criticism of Bergson by Dewey under the title 
 of "Perception and Organic Action" may be found 
 in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scien- 
 tific Afethods, November 21, 1912. Professor Wil- 
 helm Ostwald, who, as I said in my chapter on him, 
 has devoted much attention to educational reforms, 
 includes a sketch of Dewey by Franz Ludwig in the 
 series on Moderne Schulreforme in Das Monistische 
 Jahrhundert of May 31, 1915. For a criticism of 
 Dewey's social philosophy see the articles by Lester 
 Lee Bernhard of the University of Chicago in Ameri- 
 can Journal of Sociology. 
 
 No biography of Dewey has yet been written 
 and none ever will be if he can prevent it. H. W. 
 Schneider of Columbia University has prepared a 
 complete bibliography of Dewey's writings, not yet 
 published. 
 
 (275!
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 APOSTLE OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 
 
 To the history of and criticism of these concep- 
 tions and their terminology Professor Eucken has 
 brought thorough and careful reading, acute and 
 candid criticism, and a clear and solid style. While 
 he is at home among the systems of the past, he 
 seems equally familiar with the controversies of 
 the present. Above all, he has studied brevity, 
 and has mastered the art of expressing in a few 
 words the results of patient research and critical 
 discrimination. 
 
 The writer of this notice was constrained to 
 recommend the work for translation to his friend 
 and former pupil by his estimate of the intrinsic 
 value of the treatise and the desire that it might 
 be brought within reach of English readers as 
 eminently suited to the times. He can say with 
 assured confidence that there are few books within 
 his knowledge which are better fitted to aid the 
 student who wishes to acquaint himself with the 
 course of superlative and scientific thinking and to 
 form an intelligent estimate of most of the current 
 theories. 1 
 
 1 "The Fundamental Concepts of Modern Philosophic Thought, 
 Critically and Historically Considered" by Rudolf Eucken, Professor 
 
 [2 7 6]
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 These were the words with which Professor 
 Eucken was introduced to the American public 
 in 1880 by one who was a good judge of men and 
 books, the primary qualification of a college presi- 
 dent. Thirty-two years later Professor Eucken 
 came to America ; this time in person, but under 
 the auspices of Harvard and the University of 
 New York, instead of Yale. This time he reached 
 a larger audience ; partly owing to his greater 
 fame, partly to a change in the popular attitude 
 toward the views he presents. In 1908, when 
 Eucken received the Nobel prize for the greatest 
 work of idealistic literature, there was no book 
 of his accessible to the English reader, for the 
 translation instigated by President Porter was out 
 of print. Since then all his important works have 
 been brought out in England and America ; and the 
 periodical indexes record a growing interest in his 
 thought, corresponding to that which is mani- 
 fested in Germany. 
 
 The Nobel prizes have failed to carry out the 
 intention of their founder, which was to place 
 $100,000 or so immediately into the hands of a 
 
 in Jena. Translated by M. Stuart Phelps, Professor in Smith College. 
 With additions and corrections by the author and an introduction by 
 Noah Porter, president of Yale College. Appleton, 1880. 
 
 [277]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 man who had made a signal contribution to science, 
 literature, or peace. Instead of this, the Nobel 
 committees absorb a liberal moiety of the income 
 of the fund in local "administrative expenses" 
 and usually give the residue, now amounting to 
 some $37,000, to men whose reputations have 
 long been established ; for example, in literature, 
 Sully-Prudhomme, Mommsen, Bjornson, Mistral, 
 Kipling, and Heyse. But in so interpreting their 
 mandate the Nobel committees have fulfilled 
 another useful function, possibly as much needed 
 as that conceived by Alfred Nobel. If they have 
 not discovered original genius, they have at least 
 pointed it out to the world at large. The men 
 thus distinguished as having contributed to human 
 progress have extended their influence over their 
 contemporaries, as well as received a due apprecia- 
 tion of their efforts. The Nobel prize does not 
 add to the stature of a man, but it does elevate 
 him to a pulpit. 
 
 In the case of Eucken the value of this is evi- 
 dent. He did not need the assistance of the Nobel 
 fund in order to prosecute his researches, for the 
 laboratory expenses of a metaphysician are but 
 slight, and Jena is as cheap a place to live as can 
 nowadays be found in civilized lands. The award 
 
 [278]
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 of the prize did not, of course, add to his reputa- 
 tion in philosophical circles, but Eucken does not 
 believe that the influence of a philosopher should 
 be confined to philosophical circles. He repudiates 
 entirely the aloof, impartial, disinterested spectator 
 attitude which philosophers in general have thought 
 it necessary to pretend to assume. The question 
 is, in short, what kind of a scientist the philosopher 
 should imitate : the chemist who transforms the 
 world in which he lives, or the meteorologist who 
 merely records the atmospheric currents without 
 attempting to guide them ? Eucken is not only 
 a teacher; he is a preacher. He has a message 
 which he believes of vital importance to his con- 
 temporaries, so it cannot be a matter of indifference 
 to him that he is, in his later years, gaining a wider 
 audience, that his works are the most widely cur- 
 rent philosophical writings of the present day in 
 Germany, 1 and are being extensively translated into 
 other languages. 
 
 This growing popularity is all the more note- 
 worthy since it is not attained by any novelty of 
 form, or even brilliancy of style. Eucken never 
 
 1 So says Professor Heinrich Weinel in an interesting article on "Re- 
 ligious Life and Thought in Germany To-day", in the Hibbtrt Journal, 
 July, 1909. 
 
 [279]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 tries to stimulate thought by shocking the reader 
 with audacious paradoxes, as did Schopenhauer and 
 Nietzsche, as do Shaw and Chesterton. He has 
 none of the freshness of phraseology and wealth of 
 novel illustrations which attract to James and Berg- 
 son their wide circle of admirers. He does not, 
 like Ostwald and Haeckel, make use of the direct 
 and concrete mode of expression which has been 
 introduced into literature by modern science. 
 Eucken always writes in a serious and methodical 
 style, elaborating his line of thought as he goes 
 along with exactness and just proportion ; expressing 
 himself in general and abstract terms, rarely mak- 
 ing use of imagery or concrete illustrations, never 
 introducing personalities. A sweeter-tempered phi- 
 losopher never lived. He speaks no evil, even 
 of the dead. He indulges in no polemics with his 
 contemporaries. In his historical works he passes 
 through all fields of thought, gleaning good grain 
 wherever he goes, and saying as little as possible 
 about the tares and brambles that he finds with it. 
 
 Very curiously, it has been Eucken's lot to have 
 been closely associated, on the faculties of small 
 universities, with the two men whose views are 
 most antagonistic to his : at Basel with Nietzsche 
 and at Jena with Haeckel, and he has been on the 
 
 [280]
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 best of terms with both of them. I was particularly 
 interested in what Professor Eucken told me of 
 Nietzsche, whose personality and philosophy were 
 in such violent contradiction. This advocate of 
 ruthless brutality, this scorner of sympathy and 
 compassion, was in reality a most tender-hearted 
 man, but too shy and sensitive to be popular; and 
 when his feelings were hurt he wrote down in a 
 passion what he felt at the moment. 
 
 At the University of Basel Professor Eucken 
 often served with Nietzsche on the examining com- 
 mittee of candidates for the doctorate in classical 
 philology. On such occasions, if the student ap- 
 peared to be getting the worst of it in the verbal 
 contest, Nietzsche would be observed to become 
 more and more nervous until, finally, he could 
 contain himself no longer and would break in with 
 leading questions: "I suppose you mean so-and- 
 so?" or "Do you not believe this or that?" until 
 he got the student to say just about what he should 
 have said in the first place. Professor Eucken does 
 not regard the widespread influence of Nietzsche 
 as altogether evil, believing he should not be held 
 responsible for all the vagaries and extravagances 
 of his devotees. The reason of Nietzsche's popu- 
 larity, according to Eucken, is his strong individual- 
 
 [281]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 ism ; for the Germans, in spite of governmental 
 control and the Social Democracy, are pronounced 
 individualists in character. The German will in- 
 sist upon having his own house, his own seat, his 
 own opinion. This sounded strange to the Amer- 
 ican, accustomed to have Germany referred to as 
 the most regimented of nations. 
 
 But modern Germany is a land of incongruities 
 and contradictions, a wild confusion of swirling 
 cross-currents. The increase of population, the 
 checking of emigration, the amazing prosperity, 
 the extension of commerce, the demand for terri- 
 torial expansion, would indicate a sound physical 
 constitution and a healthful growth. The immense 
 sale of serious works on religion and philosophy 
 shows a revival of interest in spiritual affairs. Yet, 
 if we were to judge of the character of the people 
 by the most conspicuous of its achievements in art 
 and literature, we should say that modern Germany 
 is hopelessly decadent and corrupt. In drama and fic- 
 tion Gallic license is allied with Gothic coarseness. In 
 pictorial art hideousness and viciousness are depicted 
 by means of strange and violent methods. Germany 
 of to-day, as seen by the tourist, is a land of spotted 
 painting, spotted literature, and spotted faces. 1 
 
 1 My visit to Jena, described in the following pages, was made in 1910. 
 [282]
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 In the little university town of Jena the incon- 
 gruities of modern Germany are curiously conspicu- 
 ous. In this historic stronghold of Protestantism, 
 this leader in the Enlightenment, the home of 
 Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Fichte, the Humboldts, 
 Hegel, Schelling, and Wieland, the barbarous cus- 
 toms of the past have the strongest hold. A student 
 is likely to miss his seven o'clock Wednesday lec- 
 ture on the spiritual life because he sat up till two 
 o'clock drinking compulsory beer with his corps 
 brothers in the middle of the marketplace. And he 
 may cut out his eight o'clock Saturday lecture be- 
 cause he has an imperative engagement to cut off 
 the nose or the ear of a fellow student at the Men- 
 surort of Dollnitz. 
 
 Among the nobler manifestations of the spirit of 
 new Germany the tourist is likely to take most 
 interest in the architecture. Here, indeed, he will 
 find much that is displeasing and eccentric, but 
 that in itself is encouraging, for it shows that we 
 are in the presence of a living art which is not 
 content to keep to the safe and beaten paths, but 
 would strike out new ways for itself. In city and 
 country unexpected forms and colors delight the 
 eye on villa, monument, and public building; 
 new and ingenious solutions of problems as old as 
 
 [283]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 man. The modern German architect is not the 
 imitator, but the rival, of the master builders of 
 the past. He knows how to harmonize the old 
 with the new, utilizing the old to give him inspira- 
 tion, but not permitting it to hamper him. A 
 striking example of this is the new university build- 
 ings of Jena, erected on the three hundred and 
 fiftieth anniversary of the university in 1908. The 
 whole group cost only three hundred and seventy- 
 five thousand dollars, not so much as some single 
 buildings in our leading universities, yet I know 
 of none more satisfactory from both the utilitarian 
 and the esthetic point of view. Here the problem 
 of harmonization was particularly difficult; not 
 only must the new buildings fit into the picture of 
 old Jena, but a tower of the ancient ducal castle 
 was actually to be incorporated. Yet the archi- 
 tect, Theodor Fischer, has made no sacrifices to 
 the spirit of antiquity. At Oxford the newer 
 buildings either clash violently with their elders or 
 imitate them so closely as to be almost equally in- 
 convenient and uncomfortable. The Jena build- 
 ings look as though they might well have been 
 built by Kurfurst Johann Friedrich der Gross- 
 miitige in 1558, but are up to date, commodious, 
 hygienic, well ventilated, steam heated, equipped
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 with electric lights and clocks, and electric vacuum 
 cleaners. 
 
 There are no superfluous statues stuck around in 
 niches and on pedestals. The adornment, plastic 
 and polychromatic, is strictly structural. It is 
 put where it belongs. With the possible exception 
 of a Rodin bust of Minerva in the vestibule, I 
 did not see any "objects of art" that I could have 
 carried off without tearing down the building. On 
 the stone of the north fafade are roughly chiseled 
 the Ephesian Diana in the gable, and, beneath, 
 four Egyptian-like figures representing the four 
 faculties. That of Philosophie, with solemn and 
 inscrutable face, is very appropriately nearest to 
 the lecture room of Professor Eucken. As we 
 enter we see opposite the portal to the Aula, the 
 university hall of state, on either side of which 
 are gigantic paintings emblematic of the trans- 
 mission of culture, a grown man on one side hold- 
 ing out his torch to a young man, that he may 
 light his torch by it. The most important picture 
 at the Jena University is the Auszug deutscher 
 Studenten im Jahre 1815 by Hodler, who used as 
 a model for the middle figure the youngest son of 
 Professor Eucken. 
 
 Auditorium Number I, the largest classroom 
 [285]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 of the new building, is assigned to Eucken, and 
 we find it already about half filled, although it is 
 not yet seven o'clock in the morning. Some seventy 
 students I count, and among them about a dozen 
 women, not segregated, but scattered here and 
 there, for Jena is coeducational now, and masculine 
 resentment at the intrusion of women has quite 
 died out. The students may seat themselves wher- 
 ever they choose, affixing a card with name and 
 hour if they want to hold a particular place. These 
 cards and even the desks are scrawled with auto- 
 matic writing and sketches by the inattentive 
 hands of students. The seats, long benches with 
 a fixed desk and book rack in front, are better 
 than those found in English universities, but not 
 so good as the American individual seats. There 
 are plenty of windows along one side of the room, 
 and the walls white above, light green below 
 diffuse the rays agreeably. The floor slants 
 down to a plain pine desk and a small blackboard. 
 On the wall is a mosaic portrait of the late Pro- 
 fessor Abbe, the real patron of the University, for 
 a prosperous optician is of much more use to a 
 modern university than a needy Gross-Herzog. 
 
 Promptly on the hour a vigorous shuffling and 
 stamping of feet announces the arrival of the pro- 
 
 [286]
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 fessor, who begins with " Mein' Herren und Damen" 
 as his first foot steps upon the platform. A German 
 professor always gives good measure, a full hourful, 
 pressed down, shaken together, and running over; 
 no period of preliminary meditation on what he 
 shall say and of casual conversation at the end, as 
 often in America. Nor do the German professors 
 find it necessary to adopt the low voice, indifferent 
 air and hesitating utterance regarded at Oxford and 
 Harvard as the mark of the gentleman and the 
 scholar. In fact I find, in roaming about our uni- 
 versities, that so many of our younger men have 
 adopted this pitch and tempo, being often inaudible 
 and never impressive to the back seats, that I am 
 tempted to lay down the law that the younger the 
 instructor the poorer the voice. When I complain 
 of it they reply coldly: "One can never shout and 
 tell the truth." But Eucken is evidently not 
 afraid that being heard will impair his veracity. 
 You might take him for a revivalist. You would 
 not be wrong if you did. His voice rings out loud 
 and clear. He is tremendously in earnest. Oc- 
 casionally, when he thinks of it, he sits down. 
 But not for long. He springs to his feet and throws 
 himself forward on the reading-desk in the effort 
 to really reach his audience. He clasps his hands 
 
 [287]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 to his breast and then throws his arms out wide, 
 as though to seize the Geistesleben with which his 
 heart is overflowing and spread it far over a material- 
 istic and indifferent generation. Who can doubt 
 the reality of "the spiritual life" after he has seen 
 Eucken ? It shines in his face. We do not need 
 to be told that Activism is his philosophy. It 
 shows in his movements. He lives his theories. 
 Few philosophers do, luckily for most of them. 
 
 "Happiness" is the subject of this lecture. The 
 spiritual life is the theme of it, as always. The 
 spiritual life, he says, goes out from within and 
 transforms the world, thus giving true happiness. 
 We must work with the world movement if we 
 would partake of its divine purpose. And here he 
 quotes Plotinus, the first religious philosopher, for 
 whom he has as high regard as have Maeterlinck 
 and Bergson. We must utilize the force of faith ; 
 must bring this Christian power into modern life. 
 True ability is moral ability. Labor is not merely 
 activity ; it has a purpose ; it is directed against 
 opposition. By strife and striving we must reach 
 the reality of the spiritual life. Through labor and 
 love we attain our true selves. The fulfilling of 
 duty is inner freedom. The unrest and stress of 
 the present day are the signs of a new spiritual 
 
 [288]
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 birth. The function of philosophy is not to afford 
 intellectual or esthetic gratification, but it is to 
 deepen and enrich life. To the fine old German 
 saying, "A man is more than his work", Eucken 
 added "Mankind is more than his culture." It is 
 a Lebensanschauung rather than a Weltanschauung 
 that he teaches, for to him a theory of life is more 
 important than a theory of the cosmos. 
 
 These are merely a few fragmentary thoughts 
 that I gathered in that memorable hour. Of no 
 value in themselves, I give them merely to prove 
 that I got something out of the lecture, for I never 
 understood spoken German until I heard Eucken. 
 But even a deaf man would have found it profitable 
 to be there. A second lecture followed immedi- 
 ately, on "Pessimism and Optimism", delivered 
 with the same vigor and listened to with the same 
 interest. Professor Eucken was then sixty-seven 
 years old, and would have been Carnegied if he were 
 in an American university, instead of giving lectures 
 from seven to nine. His hair and beard are pure 
 white, but set off handsomely his pink cheeks and 
 his bright blue eyes still unspectacled. 
 
 And when he leaves the lecture room he does not 
 leave his work, but goes to more of it at home. On 
 one wall of his study is a photograph of Michael 
 
 [289]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 Angelo's "Creation", from the Sistine Chapel, and 
 on the opposite a cast of a section of the Parthenon 
 frieze. Between these is the desk of the man who 
 has brought together the highest aspirations of 
 Greek and Christian culture ; a table stacked high 
 with papers and manuscripts. 
 
 His correspondence is now voluminous, but he 
 answers all letters promptly and carefully, writing 
 his replies in the old-fashioned way, with a pen. 
 He receives all visitors and will talk of his philosophy 
 to a single auditor with the same unwearied en- 
 thusiasm as to an audience. Even those who are 
 repelled by the severity of his literary style are at- 
 tracted by the charm of his personality, and this 
 accounts in large part for his devoted following 
 in all parts of the world. 
 
 After granting me an interview which took the 
 heart out of his afternoon, Professor Eucken re- 
 turned good for evil by inviting me to dinner in 
 the evening, when I found that the lady on my 
 right was from Nebraska and the one on my left 
 from Switzerland, while around the table I saw a 
 young Boer from the Transvaal, a don from Oxford, 
 a professor from Tokyo, and representatives of I 
 don't know how many other nationalities. 
 
 The extension of the influence of Professor Eucken 
 [290]
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 through this hearty hospitality is due largely to his 
 wife. Frau Eucken has happily not confined her- 
 self to the duties which the Kaiser prescribes as 
 woman's only sphere, Kirche, Kueche und Kinder. 1 
 She is not only wife, mother and housekeeper, but 
 artist and musician as well. Her success in manag- 
 ing what might be called an international salon of 
 philosophy is facilitated by her ability to converse 
 in many languages. On account of the generous 
 hospitality extended to students and strangers by 
 the Eucken household a removal was made last 
 year to a new villa in the suburbs. Professor 
 Eucken's wife and daughter came with him on his 
 visit to America. 
 
 Eucken's philosophy of life is dramatic. His 
 life has been undramatic ; the even, ordered course 
 of the typical German professor, made even more 
 uneventful by reason of his mastery of the gentle 
 art of not making enemies. Born in Aurich, East 
 Friesland, January 5, 1846, he studied at Gottingen 
 under Lotze, and at Berlin under Trendelenburg ; 
 taught for four years in a gymnasium; then for 
 three years in the University of Basel; in 1874 was 
 called to the University of Jena, where he has ever 
 
 1 These must, I suppose, be translated into English as " kirk, kitchen 
 and kids." 
 
 [291]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 since remained, in spite of calls to larger institutions. 
 His inner life has been as uneventful as its external 
 aspects ; a continuous, methodical, logical develop- 
 ment of thought, without leaps or backslidings. 
 
 First, in 1878, he laid the foundations in the 
 study of the concepts of philosophy which attracted 
 the attention of President Porter. Seven years 
 later he was ready to outline his own guiding theory 
 in a volume bearing the characteristically Germanic 
 title of "A Prolegomena for the Investigation of 
 the Unity of the Spiritual Life in the Consciousness 
 and Acts of Mankind." From this standpoint of 
 the unique significance of the spiritual life he then 
 reviewed the whole history of the evolution of 
 philosophy from Plato to Nietzsche. His purpose 
 in this work, known in English as "The Problem 
 of Human Life", was, as he explains, "to afford 
 historical confirmation of the view that concep- 
 tions are determined by life, not life by concep- 
 tions", and "that human destinies are not decided 
 by mere opinions and whims, either of individuals 
 or of masses of individuals, but rather that they 
 are ruled by spiritual necessities with a spiritual 
 aim and purport, and that for man a new world 
 dawns, transcending the merely natural domain 
 the world, namely, of the spiritual life." 
 
 [292]
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 The sentences quoted are alone enough to show 
 that Eucken's "history of philosophy" is a very 
 different thing from what usually goes by that 
 name, that is the chronicling of the speculations of 
 successive generations of metaphysicians, each one 
 wiping clean the slate before he began to write. 
 Eucken sees an aim and purpose in philosophic 
 thought. He does not regard it as a mere amuse- 
 ment or as an intellectual exercise, but rather as a 
 method by which humanity may grow into a higher 
 sphere of existence. The vital need of the day, 
 then, is to awaken the present indifferent and busy 
 generation to a realization of the supreme im- 
 portance of spiritual things and to the necessity 
 of bringing the Christian religion into vital con- 
 nection with modern thought. 
 
 This is the task to which Eucken devoted his 
 energies when by the close of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury he had fully matured his views, and the rapid 
 succession of volumes which have since come from 
 his pen are concerned with the moral and intellec- 
 tual difficulties which nowadays impede religious 
 progress. 
 
 The development of natural science and especially 
 the theory of evolution have led to the identification 
 of man with nature. Yet the very fact that we 
 
 [293]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 have come to know that we belong to nature shows 
 that we are more than nature. 
 
 A transcendence of nature is already accomplished 
 in the process of thought. A consideration of all the 
 facts leads us to the result that a life consisting solely 
 of nature and intelligence involves an intolerable in- 
 consistency ; form and content are sharply separated 
 from each other ; thought is strong enough to dis- 
 turb the sense of satisfaction with nature, but is too 
 weak to construct a new world in opposition to it. 
 Life is in a state of painful uncertainty and man is a 
 Prometheus bound in that he must experience all the 
 constraint and meaninglessness of the life of nature, 
 and must suffer therefrom an increasing pain without 
 being able to change this state in any way. 1 
 
 From time to time in the course of history, spiritual 
 impulses arise which are fundamentally different 
 from physical self-preservation. "They force human 
 activity into particular channels ; they speak to us 
 with a tone of command and require absolute 
 obedience. Neither the interests of individuals nor 
 those of whole classes prevail against them ; every 
 consideration of utility vanishes before their inner 
 necessity." Religious movements show life in a 
 particular form ; something emerges in it which, 
 unconcerned with the weal and the woe of man, 
 follows its own course and makes absolute demands. 
 
 1 "Life's Basis and Life's Ideal", p. 118. 
 [294]
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 Man is not altogether the creature of his environ- 
 ment, nor are his moral standards determined by 
 society. The individual is able in the light of his 
 own conscience to approve and value something 
 which all around him reject; and conversely to 
 condemn and reject something which all around 
 him esteem and respect. This opposition of in- 
 dividuals to the condition of things in the social 
 environment has been the main source of all inner 
 progress in matters of morality. 
 
 This line of thought leads Eucken to the con- 
 clusion that a new life distinct from that of nature 
 arises in our soul. The spiritual life is not the 
 product of a gradual development from the life 
 of nature, but has an independent origin and evolves 
 new powers and standards. We must recognize 
 in the spiritual life a universal life which transcends 
 man, is shared by him and raises him to itself. 
 The philosophical treatment of history ought first 
 of all to trace the liberation of life from the mere 
 human ; the inner elevation of our being to a more 
 than human. 
 
 In discussing the question of how man attains 
 the spiritual life, Eucken steers carefully between 
 the position of Buddhism, that each man must 
 work out his own salvation without any aid from 
 
 [295]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 above, and the extreme Calvinistic position, that 
 man is purely passive and altogether undeserving. 
 Or to quote his own words : 
 
 It is necessary to acknowledge that in all the 
 spiritual movement which appears in the domain 
 of man, there is a revelation of the spiritual world ; 
 as merely human power cannot lead the whole to 
 new heights, in all development of the spiritual 
 life the communication of the new world must pre- 
 cede the activity of man. At the same time, where 
 we are concerned with a life that is independent, 
 and of which the activity is conscious and self- 
 determined, the change cannot possibly merely 
 happen to man ; it must be taken up by his own 
 activity ; it needs his own decision and acceptance. 
 
 Only through ceaseless activity can life remain at 
 the height to which it has attained. 
 
 This leads to the distinctive form of Eucken's 
 philosophy of life, known as Activism. This is 
 like Pragmatism in its rejection of the mere intellec- 
 tualistic view of life and in basing truth upon a 
 more spontaneous and essential activity. But Euck- 
 en's objection to Pragmatism is stated in the follow- 
 ing language : 
 
 Pragmatism, which has recently made so much 
 headway among English-speaking peoples and be- 
 yond them, is more inclined to shape the world and 
 life in accordance with human conditions and needs 
 than to invest spiritual activity with an independence 
 
 [296]
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 in relation to these, and apply its standards to the 
 testing and sifting of the whole content of human life. 
 At its highest, religion has always been concerned 
 with winning a new world and a new humanity, not 
 with the achievement of something within the old 
 world and for the old humanity. 
 
 It will be seen that Eucken does not fall in with 
 the tendency of the times to subordinate the in- 
 dividual to society. The spiritual life springs up, 
 not in the "social consciousness", but in the soul 
 of the individual, elevating his spiritual nature 
 above all environment. But such a person is 
 guarded against the arrogance of a superman by 
 realizing that this superiority is not due to personal 
 merit, but solely to the presence of the spiritual 
 world. 
 
 This, as Eucken recognizes, may be called a form 
 of mysticism, but it differs decidedly from the older 
 mysticism in some important respects. It is not 
 Quietism, but its opposite, Activism. Eucken does 
 not regard the individual as seeking a peaceful 
 haven by absorption into the infinite ; on the con- 
 trary, the infinite enters the individual and rouses 
 him to intensest and creative activity. 
 
 Here Eucken shows a striking similarity to Berg- 
 son. The Geistesleben might be regarded as a 
 higher development or manifestation of the elan 
 
 [297]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 vital. Both involve the conception of an upward 
 impulse acting at individual points which thus 
 become centers of spontaneous vital activity. It 
 is curious that this view, so characteristically 
 modern and as novel as anything can be in the 
 realm of metaphysical speculation, should have 
 simultaneously and independently been made a 
 fundamental doctrine by two philosophers so unlike 
 in temperament and training, the French philosopher 
 starting from the standpoint of mathematical physics 
 and Spencerian evolution, and the German from 
 academic metaphysics and Christian theology. Such 
 a coincidence, as well as the reception which the 
 teachings of Bergson and Eucken have received 
 in many lands, show that their common principle 
 is in harmony with the spirit of the age. Eucken 
 and Bergson met for the first time at Columbia 
 University in 1912. 
 
 It might be feared that Eucken, emphasizing as 
 he does the individualistic origin of religious in- 
 spiration and realizing as he does the injury done 
 to the Christian cause by clinging to antiquated 
 formulas and medieval conceptions, would be in- 
 clined to undervalue ecclesiastical institutions and 
 to advocate too violent a break with historic Chris- 
 tianity. But here again his moderation and sanity 
 
 [298]
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 are manifest. He cannot be called orthodox from 
 the standpoint of the established Lutheran Church. 
 He agrees entirely with his colleague Haeckel in 
 condemning the union of Church and State, but for 
 opposite reasons; Haeckel because the Church re- 
 ceives thereby artificial support ; Eucken because 
 the Church is thereby hampered in its freedom of 
 development. 
 
 He never, however, falls into the error of thinking 
 that a " new " religion can be made to order to suit 
 the times, or even the needs of any one person. He 
 finds in historic Christianity all the essentials of a 
 permanent and universal religion, capable, when 
 properly understood and presented, of satisfying the 
 severe requirements of modern thought and feeling. 
 But this is not to be accomplished by merely elim- 
 inating whatever the modern mind finds objection- 
 able. 
 
 A religion is not primarily a mere theory concern- 
 ing things human and divine such a theory can, 
 of course, be quite easily put together with a little 
 ingenuity it discloses ultimate revelations of the 
 spiritual life, further developments of reality, great 
 organizations of living energy, movements, in a 
 word, which have convulsed the age in which they 
 came victoriously to birth, and have subsequently 
 proved themselves strong enough to attract large 
 portions of mankind, weld each of these inwardly 
 
 [299]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 together, and set an invisible world before it as the 
 main basis of life. In such upheavals of the life of 
 the people there is opened a rich mine of fact which 
 becomes the property of all men, and includes valu- 
 able experiences of humanity as a whole. He who 
 would cut himself off from this great stream of ex- 
 perience, inward as well as outward, will soon find 
 out how little the isolated individual can do in 
 matters of this kind. It is easy to find fault with 
 what tradition hands down, no less easy to draw up 
 vague views of one's own, but how immense is the dis- 
 tance which separates procedure such as this from the 
 creative effort which urges its sure way forward, 
 from the synthesis which embraces all men's lives 
 and exercises an elemental compulsion upon them. 1 
 
 Eucken's clairvoyant faith sees through the 
 present anti-religious atmosphere the dawning of a 
 new era in which the spiritual life shall again be 
 dominant. Yet no one has recognized more clearly 
 the alienation of the Church from the cultural and 
 the practical life of the day. This chasm is no 
 doubt greater in Germany, where the Catholic 
 and Protestant churches are State institutions and 
 identified with reactionary elements, than it is in 
 our own country, where there is fortunately no 
 Church, but many churches, all equally free to 
 adapt themselves to changing conditions and to 
 prove themselves useful to society in their own 
 
 1 "Christianity and the New Idealism", p. 146. 
 [300]
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 way. But it must be admitted that our churches 
 are not availing themselves of this exceptional free- 
 dom and do not show the originality and diversity 
 which is characteristic of life and growth. 
 
 Eucken is conciliatory, but no compromiser. He 
 does not solicit for religion a humble place in modern 
 life by using arguments like those employed in the 
 sale of "patent medicines", that it is innocuous at 
 the least and may somehow do some good. He meets 
 modern science upon her own ground. He claims for 
 religion an equal practicality and efficiency; he de- 
 mands for it a greater certitude, and he is willing, as 
 Jesus was willing, to put it to the pragmatic test. 
 
 Since we have found that religion is linked thus 
 closely with the whole, we need not make any timid 
 compromise with certain superficial contemporary 
 movements and content ourselves with a lower 
 degree of certainty, saying, for instance, that we can 
 never altogether eliminate the subjective element, 
 and that religious truths can never have the cer- 
 tainty of such formulae as 2x2 = 4. On the con- 
 trary, we maintain that it is a very poor conception 
 of religion which deems any certainty superior to 
 hers, and does not claim for her truth a far more 
 primary certainty than that of the formula 2x2 = 
 4. Only a shallow and perverse conception of truth 
 can allow the certainty of the part to exceed the 
 certainty of the whole. 1 
 
 1 "Christianity and the New Idealism", p. 28. 
 IS 01 !
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 Either religion is merely a product of human 
 wishes and ideas under the sanction of tradition and 
 social convention and then neither art nor might 
 nor cunning can prevent so frail a fabrication from 
 being whelmed by the advancing spiritual tide or 
 else religion is based on facts of a suprahuman order, 
 and in that case the most violent onslaught cannot 
 shake her ; rather will it help her in the end, through 
 all the stress and toil of human circumstance, to 
 discover where her true strength lies, and to express 
 in purer ways the eternal truth that is in her. 1 
 
 POSTSCRIPT, 1917 
 
 I have thought best to leave the article on Eucken 
 just as I published it in The Independent of Febru- 
 ary 27, 1913, with only a few slight changes in 
 tense and time references. It presents a picture of 
 German life and thought as I saw it shortly before 
 the war, and it would be impossible for me to bring 
 it up to date now when the British censorship pre- 
 vents German books and papers from reaching 
 America. I can only add some quotations from 
 Eucken's recent writings to show his attitude to- 
 ward the war. 
 
 In the fall of 1914, Eucken joined with his 
 colleague in the university and his opponent in 
 philosophy, Professor Ernst Haeckel, in a public 
 statement charging that British greed and egotism 
 
 1 "The Truth of Religion." 
 [302]
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 had caused the Great War. 1 In the following spring 
 Eucken sent an appeal to the American people in 
 the form of eight questions which I quote entire. 
 
 You say that we are a nation militarist and greedy 
 for conquest. Permit us a few questions with re- 
 gard to that rash statement. 
 
 First. How do you explain that in times gone by 
 Germany did not take advantage of the difficulties of 
 her present opponents as, for instance, England's 
 difficulty during the Boer war or Russia's difficulty 
 during the Japanese war ? If we had meant conquest 
 should we have chosen the very moment when half 
 the world was against us, and we were numerically in 
 the minority ? Do you really think that we are as 
 stupid as all that? 
 
 Second. Next, how do you explain that all 
 parties in Germany approve of the policy of the 
 government and loyally hold together, including the 
 Social Democrats ? Yesterday they were our decided 
 opponents. Do you believe that the Socialists have 
 overnight, as it were, become changed from decided 
 opponents to adherents of militarism ? 
 
 Third. How do you explain the fact that the 
 Americans who were in Germany at the outbreak of 
 the war in an overwhelming majority sided with us ? 
 Does not the opinion of those who see events quite 
 near nay, who live through them carry greater 
 weight than the view of such as observe occurrences 
 from a remote distance ? 
 
 Fourth. You believe that the Germans are op- 
 pressed and narrowed down by the rule of militarism. 
 How do you explain that education and technical 
 
 1 Published in The Independent, September 28, 1914. 
 [303]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 and scientific research are so highly developed and 
 universally esteemed in Germany and that for this 
 reason so many Americans come to Germany in order 
 to study sciences and arts ? 
 
 Fifth. --You always discuss war with regard to 
 Belgium, France and England only. Have you for- 
 gotten Russia, with her one hundred and fifty million 
 inhabitants and her army, which is by far the largest 
 in the whole world ? Russia is a danger to Germany 
 and to the whole of Europe and just now insists on 
 the possession of Constantinople. Have you for- 
 gotten that Russia, by interfering with the Servian 
 murder case, began the war, and that England, ac- 
 cording to the parliamentary statement made by 
 Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, was deter- 
 mined, even before the German invasion of Belgium, 
 to abandon her neutrality in favor of France ? 
 
 Sixth. You generally argue that all Europe was 
 in profound peace and that only the greed of Ger- 
 many disturbed that peace. Have you forgotten 
 that long before the war there was a triple entente 
 which was directed against Germany and that the 
 entente newspapers openly discussed the war plans 
 hatched against Germany and even recommended 
 1916 as a suitable year for commencing hostilities ? 
 
 Seventh. You want to be good Christians and as 
 such work for peace among the nations. Can you 
 reconcile such Christianity with the fact that your 
 country sends huge consignments of arms and am- 
 munition to our opponents and thus intensifies and 
 lengthens the war ? Can you further reconcile that 
 with neutrality, a neutrality in spirit and not merely 
 in the letter ? 
 
 Eighth. Do not you think that a great nation 
 with a glorious past should see the events of the day 
 
 [304]
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 with its own eyes and that such independence of 
 thought is the highest test of true liberty ? But you 
 contemplate present history more or less through 
 English spectacles, as if your country were still a 
 British colony and not an independent empire with 
 its own goals and standards. In such a passion- 
 stirred age as ours neutrals have the lofty duty to 
 keep out of party strife and to endeavor to be just 
 and impartial to both sides. This endeavor is lack- 
 ing in Germany's American opponents. 
 
 That even the antagonisms aroused by the war 
 have not shaken Eucken's faith in the power of 
 religion and philosophy to heal the wounds of hu- 
 manity is shown by a recent article on "The Inter- 
 national Character of Modern Philosophy" in the 
 Homiletic Review of New York. In this he discusses 
 with great impartiality the contributions which 
 England, France, Germany, and Italy have made to 
 philosophy and concludes as follows : 
 
 After all, philosophy is summoned to proclaim the 
 unity of mankind over against the present split 
 among the peoples. To be sure, this does not mean 
 that individual philosophers are less earnest to put 
 forward the claims of their own people than the 
 claims of others ; for they are not mere scholars, they 
 are also living men and citizens of their own nation. 
 When they see this assaulted and its existence put in 
 peril, it is for them a holy duty to come to the defense 
 of the fatherland if not with the weapons of war. 
 at least to do their best with the weapons of the 
 
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 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 intellect. Meanwhile, the belief is entirely proper 
 that the intellectual gains which are the result of 
 philosophical labor remain unharmed by war, that a 
 realm of intellectual creation will retain full recog- 
 nition beyond the enmities of man. Keenest blame 
 is deserved by the attempt to array against each 
 other the intellectual leaders of a people which is for 
 the moment a foe, or to disparage the entire mental 
 character of the opponent. That is the stamp of a 
 small and vengeful disposition he who aims to 
 depreciate others to whom great thanks are due dis- 
 honors himself. Let each, therefore, remain true to 
 his own people, but never forget the task and aim of 
 philosophy to consider things under the form of 
 perpetuity, maintaining for humanity in the present a 
 world superior to all the littlenesses of human action. 
 A further and much more weighty task is from this 
 arising for philosophy to work mightily for the 
 inner unity of human life and endeavor ; the lack of 
 such a unity has contributed not a little to whet the 
 antagonisms of the nations. . . . Only when we are 
 convinced that we belong together essentially, that 
 we have a great work to accomplish in common and 
 have to raise mankind from the stage of nature to 
 that of intellect that we have to carry on unitedly 
 a fight against the manifold unreason of life only 
 by the strengthening and operation of such convic- 
 tions can the division of humanity into hostile 
 nationalities be successfully withstood. Not through 
 elegant addresses and articles, only by means of a 
 dynamic deepening of life and the introduction of 
 new power can we progress in the solution of these 
 problems. 1 
 
 1 "The International Character of Modern Philosophy," Homiletic 
 Review, April, 1916. 
 
 [306]
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 How TO READ EUCKEN 
 
 Eucken is not a man of one book. He has put forth 
 his ideas in many different forms ; large volumes and 
 little, works historical, expository, argumentative, 
 theoretical and practical, but his point of view has 
 remained throughout his long productive career es- 
 sentially unchanged, and is so clearly indicated in all 
 his works that one may be sure of obtaining the 
 fundamental principles of his philosophy from what- 
 ever volume he selects. If, however, I am expected 
 to prescribe a particular book as an introduction to 
 Eucken, I should say that the general reader who is 
 interested in the relation of philosophy to religion 
 and one who is not interested in that would not 
 care to read Eucken anyway would find "Chris- 
 tianity and the New Idealism" (translated by Lucy 
 Judge Gibson and W. R. Boyce Gibson, Harper) 
 most suitable for the purpose. It is a small volume, 
 as easy reading as anything of Eucken's, and dis- 
 cusses frankly the present crisis in religious thought 
 and indicates what he believes the churches ought 
 to discard and what they must maintain of their 
 inherited doctrines and forms. "The Truth of 
 Religion " (translated by W. Tudor Jones, Putnam) 
 covers similar ground, but in a more thorough and 
 theoretical manner. 
 
 The volumes entitled in their English version 
 "The Meaning and Value of Life" (Gibson trans- 
 lation, Macmillan); "The Life of the Spirit" 
 (translated by F. L. Pogson, Putnam), are in- 
 tended for the non-philosophical reader; while 
 "Life's Basis and Life's Ideals" (translated by 
 Alban G. Widgery, Macmillan); "Main Currents 
 of Modern Thought : A Study of the Spiritual and 
 
 [307]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 Intellectual Movements of the Present Day" (trans- 
 lated by Meyrick Booth, Scribner) ; and "The 
 Contest for the Spiritual Life" (Putnam) are of a 
 more technical character. 
 
 "The Problem of Human Life as Viewed by Great 
 Thinkers from Plato to the Present Time" (trans- 
 lated by Williston S. Hough and W. R. Boyce 
 Gibson, Scribner) differs decidedly from the or- 
 dinary history of philosophy in that the author is 
 not trying to set at odds and overthrow the successive 
 philosophers, but is seeking for whatever in them is 
 good and permanent, finally coming to "see them 
 linked together as workers in one common task : the 
 task of building up a spiritual world within the realm 
 of human life, of proving our existence to be both 
 spiritual and natural." 
 
 Single lectures and articles by Eucken readily 
 accessible in English are: "Religion and Life" 
 (Putnam); "Back to Religion" (Pilgrim Press); 
 "Can We Still Be Christians?" (Macmillan) ; 
 "Naturalism or Idealism" (the Nobel Lecture). 
 Twenty of his papers are included in "Collected 
 Essays of Rudolf Eucken (Scribner, 1914). 
 
 The titles of Eucken's chief works in German 
 and in the English versions are as follows: "Die 
 Grundbegriffe der Gegenwart" (The Main Currents 
 of Modern Thought), 1878; "Die Einheit des 
 Geisteslebens in Bewusstsein und Tat der Mensch- 
 heit", 1888 ; "Die Lebensanschauungen der Grossen 
 Denker" (The Problem of Human Life), 1890; 
 "Der Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt", 
 1896; "Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion" (The 
 Truth of Religion), 1901 ; "Grundlinien einer neuen 
 Lebensanschauung" (Life's Basis and Life's Ideal), 
 1907 ; "Hauptprobleme der Religionsphilosophie der 
 
 [308]
 
 RUDOLF EUCKEN 
 
 Gegenwart" (Christianity and the New Idealism), 
 1907; "Sinn und Wert des Lebens" (The Meaning 
 and Value of Life), 1905; "Einfiihrung in eine 
 Philosophic des Geisteslebens" (The Life of the 
 Spirit), 1908; "Erkennen und Leben" (Knowledge 
 and Life, 1912). 
 
 Of the numerous books and articles about Eucken 
 which have appeared in Europe, it will be sufficient 
 to mention : " Rudolf Eucken. Die Erneuerer des 
 deutschen Idealismus", by Theodor Kappstein (Ber- 
 lin-Schoneberg : Bucherlag der "Hilfe") ; "Rudolf 
 Eucken's Werk, Eine neue idealistische Losung des 
 Lebensproblems", by Kurt Kesseler (Bunzlau : 
 Kreuschmer, 1911) ; "Eucken's dramatische Lebens- 
 philosophie", by Otto Braun (Zeitschrift fur Phi- 
 losophic und Philosophische Kritik, 1909); "Rudolf 
 Eucken's Christenthum", by Ludwig von Gerdtell 
 (Verlag von Becker). On Eucken's seventieth birth- 
 day, January 5, 1916, the Zeitschrift fur Philosophic 
 published a Festschrift devoted to his work. "La 
 philosophic de M. Rudolph Eucken", by Emile 
 Boutroux {Academic des Sciences morales et poli- 
 tiques, 1910). 
 
 It is unnecessary to give a list of articles about 
 Eucken in American magazines because any library 
 that contains the files will have a periodical index, 
 but a few references may be given: "Religious 
 Philosophy of Eucken", Harvard Theological Re- 
 view (vol. 2, p. 465, 1909); "Eucken and St. Paul", 
 by Richard Roberts, Contemporary Review (vol. 97, 
 p. 71); "Religious Philosophy of Eucken", by 
 Baron F. von Hiigel, Hibbert Journal (vol. 10, p. 
 660); "Eucken's Philosophy of Life", by W. Fite, 
 The Nation (vol. 95, p. 29); "Eucken's New Gos- 
 pel of Activism", Current Literature (vol. 53, p. 67); 
 
 [309]
 
 SIX MAJOR PROPHETS 
 
 "Idealism of Rudolf Eucken", by S. H. Mellone, 
 International Journal of Ethics (vol. 21, p. 15). 
 
 There are two excellent expositions of Eucken's 
 philosophy in English, by his students and trans- 
 lators : "Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy of Life", by 
 W. R. Boyce Gibson (Macmillan), and "An Interpre- 
 tation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy", by W. Tudor 
 Jones (Putnam). A briefer compendium, "Eucken: 
 A Philosophy of Life ", by A. J. Jones, has appeared in 
 a series of handy volumes known as "The People's 
 Books" (New York: Dodge Publishing Company). 
 Meyrick Booth (Ph.D. of Jena) has published 
 "Rudolf Eucken: His Philosophy and Influence," 
 London (Unwin, 1913).
 
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