ESSAYS 
 VERSE AND LETTERS 
 
 JORL M. JOH ANSON . 
 
OF THE 
 OF 
 
( 
 
ESSAYS 
 VERSE AND LETTERS 
 
 OF 
 
 JOEL M. JOHANSON 
 
O-^ ^^y^'TA^^ 
 
ESSAYS 
 VERSE AND LETTERS 
 
 OF 
 
 JOEL M. JOHANSON 
 
 DXFARTMBNT OF PHINTINQ 
 
 UmTBBSITY OF WASHINGTON 
 
 1020 
 
J. M. J. 
 
 He should have died hereafter, 
 There would have been a time for such a word. 
 But not a time like this : a crowded hour 
 When men run headlong lest they fall outright ; 
 An hour when one whose stride is firm and sure 
 Wins to the goal that frenzy only seeks 
 To drop far short, or blindly run beyond 
 And miss the crown. He did not stand aside. 
 He heard the gun and started with the rest 
 And held the pace ; but in the race he ran 
 Like one who knows his power, who sees the tape. 
 Is sure where he will breast it, why and when. 
 
 Was he betrayed? Did God reach from His height 
 
 And slay him there, that we might know again 
 
 He is a God of fear ? Was his the pride 
 
 The godhead frowns upon? And must we know 
 
 Our journey is from dark, with light 
 
 Let in a day to show that dark is night. 
 
 And death is pain and not mere nothingness? 
 
 He is not dead. Those only die whose spirit 
 
 Fails. But when he seemed to fall he left 
 
 A spirit marching free. I see him now 
 
 Before me. My call he answers with a smile 
 
 But with no gesture^ — so I know 'tis he. 
 
 He does not wave me on. He never waved 
 
 Me on. But where he goes I know that I 
 
 May follow sure. He knew the goal was far. 
 
 He knew. He knew that what he was must die 
 
 A thousand deaths in winning to that life. 
 
 And dying win it everlastingly. 
 
 J. B. H. 
 

 TO THE FATHER AND MOTHER OF 
 
 JOEL M. JOHANSON 
 
 THIS BOOK 
 IS RESPF.CTFULLY DEDICATED 
 
 M713353 
 
For permission to use certain of the essays in this collection, thanks 
 are due to the Editors of The Sewanee Review, School and Society, 
 The University of Washington Alumnus. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The publication of this book is inspired by the desire of the many 
 friends of Joel Marcus Johanson to have a permanent record of what 
 he was and what he did. For them it is perhaps especially intended; 
 but it is likewise offered to the general reader who is interested in any 
 significant humanistic approach to the problems of the time. 
 
 In making the selections for the volume from among the varied 
 writings of Mr. Johanson the editors have been guided by an intimate 
 knowledge of the man and his work and have sought to make their 
 choices as representative as possible of the versatile personality which 
 that work illustrates. The undertaking requires no apology, and the 
 only regret that need be expressed is that the writer's untimely death 
 cut short an intensive intellectual activity of which but the first fruits 
 are here presented. 
 
 Some liberties have been taken in editing minor details in certain 
 of the papers which Mr. Johanson had not prepared for publication, 
 but for the most part the materials are presented as they were found 
 in manuscript. There are doubtless many changes, omissions and ad- 
 ditions and corrections, which the writer himself would have made be- 
 fore putting these materials into a book; but the editors have felt that 
 their privilege did not extend to more than the alteration of those obvious 
 imperfections that are to be found in every uncompleted manuscript. 
 
 Richard F. Scholz 
 Harvey B. Densmore 
 Ralph D. Casey 
 Joseph B. Harrison 
 
Joel Marcus Johanson was bom November 30, 1879, in Independ- 
 ence, Wisconsin. He was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Johan Arnt Johan- 
 son, who were bom in Norway, but came to America in their youth. 
 Mr. Johanson received his grade school and high school training at 
 Fairhaven (Bellingham), Washington. He was graduated from the 
 University of Washington with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1904. 
 Having won the first Rhodes scholarship from the State of Washing- 
 ton, he entered Exeter College, Oxford, England, in the fall of 1904. 
 While in Oxford Mr. Johanson did reading toward a research degree, 
 and participated in various collegiate activities, especially in rowing. 
 He was bow oar in the Exeter boat for the three years of his residence. 
 
 Upon his return to Seattle in 1908, he became instructor in German 
 in the University of Washington, a position he held until 1910 when he 
 was appointed instructor in English. He became assistant professor of 
 English in the same university in 1914. Mr. Johanson was elected a 
 member of Washington Alpha of Phi Beta Kappa in 1915. He was a 
 charter member of Beta Omega chapter of Beta Theta Pi. 
 
 Mr. Johanson's death on December 13, 1919, was the result of 
 injuries received in an automobile accident. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Statement of Faith 13 
 
 Modern Libsrai, Education 17 
 
 Through Wisdom is a House Buii,iif,u 27 
 
 Economics and Literature 33 
 
 Why I Sympathize With England 63 
 
 Democracy in Criticism 81 
 
 The Turning Point 107 
 
 A Modern Dante 119 
 
 Pelle THE Conqueror 1^7 
 
 A Childhood Tragedy 137 
 
 Absolute Ablatives 143 
 
 Poems 149 
 
 Letters 159 
 
 Innocence Aboard 189 
 
STATEMENT OF FAITH 
 
STATEMENT OF FAITH 
 
 In the ten years since I left Oxford it has been proved to me that I 
 owe most to Oxford for her teaching of the humanities and especially 
 for her insistence that the sciences and professions be included among 
 the humanities. Perhaps because this teaching was presented to me 
 under the name of "culture," it did not favorably impress me in the 
 beginning; but in the end the simple human reasonableness and per- 
 suasiveness of it won me over. 
 
 Although there have been times in the ten years when it seemed 
 almost impossible to defend the humanistic method against our in- 
 tensely practical world with its scientific measurements, its accuracies, 
 utilities, and efficiencies, I have in the main kept faithful. The events 
 of the last few tremendous years have convinced me beyond doubt of 
 the need in the world for just what Oxford teaches, as she teaches it. 
 One needs no longer think indulgently of Oxford as the home of lost 
 causes, but proudly of her as the nurse of the saving truth. 
 
 It is not easy to explain what Oxford has meant to me. But I 
 can try. Oxford taught me the livingness of things. She taught me 
 that there is a category of life — one of the most obvious facts of ex- 
 perience and inseparable from it — whereby we may view the world; 
 that organism is more than the mere mechanism; and that the impon- 
 derables and immeasurables must be included in any realistic account 
 of the world. She taught me that things may be simply and humanly 
 known, and yet for human purposes sufficiently known, with all the 
 limitations and hesitations and humilities that human knowing imposes ; 
 that the university is the place above all where humility in knowing 
 must be practiced, and where studies are but dignified common sense ; 
 that education must concern itself with a man as well as with man, with 
 individual autonomy, not with subordination, with the quickening and 
 diversifying of men's thoughts rather than with their regimentation 
 and control; that there must be obedience to the authority within as 
 well as to that without ; whereupon may be built a morality of nations 
 as well as of men, to the utter confusion of all Realpolitik ; that all ac- 
 tivities and purposes of mankind must find human sanctions and be 
 submitted to human judgements and that no individual is to be exalted 
 above this judgment and none submerged beneath it; that the ad- 
 justment which shall accomplish this is democracy — intricate, various 
 
 13 
 
and changeable as life itself, and like life, efficient only in the endless 
 trying. 
 
 I find Oxford coming to be my most cherished memory. For ten 
 years I have tried to apply Oxonian ideals in my teaching; and hope 
 to continue in the same way. The world looks like a place where 
 there will be much work to do for those who have been trained at Ox- 
 ford. Other ideals than hers have brought it to the present fearful 
 testing. The new time will demand a new teaching. And that, I think, 
 will be found in the humanities, of which the sciences may be even 
 the larger part, so long as they remain but a part. 
 
 14 
 
MODERN LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 15 
 
MODERN LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 To secure the degree of bachelor of arts the candidate must meet the fol- 
 lowing requirements : 
 
 He must complete the number of credits specified in each of the following 
 subjects : 
 
 a. Ancient language and literature 8 credits 
 
 b. Modern foreign language 8 credits 
 
 c. Rhetoric 8 credits 
 
 d. Mathematics 4 credits 
 
 e. Physical science 8 credits 
 
 /. Biological science 8 credits 
 
 g. History 8 credits 
 
 h. Philosophy 8 credits 
 
 i. Political science 8 credits 
 
 /. Physical training 8 credits 
 
 He must complete a total of 128 credits. 
 
 This is the formula, taken from the catalogue of a typical state univer- 
 sity, by the application of which its college of liberal arts prepares that 
 compound which is known as liberal education. Such a simple and pre- 
 cise statement of the business of preparing a college education must 
 be quite encouraging to the entering high school student, who probably 
 has looked forward with some misgiving to a serious change in methods 
 of education in the university. He has known, of course, that "to be 
 admitted to the freshman class students must pass an examination based 
 upon a four-years' course amounting in the aggregate to fifteen units 
 or complete a course of the same length in an accredited school. Of 
 these fifteen units eight and one-half are prescribed, the remaining eight 
 and one-half are wholly or partly elective from the list of optional 
 studies." He has been informed, furthermore, that "to count as a unit 
 a subject must be taught five times a week, in periods of not less than 
 forty-five minutes, for a school year of not less than thirty-six weeks." 
 Consequently, since he has been engaged in the task of aggregating 
 fifteen college entrance units for four years of thirty-six weeks each, 
 in recitation periods, five times a week, of not less than forty-five min- 
 utes each, it should dissipate his misgivings concerning a radical change 
 in methods to know that he must similarly complete 128 credits during 
 another period of four years, of a certain number of weeks, in reci- 
 tation periods of not less than a certain number of minutes each. Es- 
 sentially the methods are the same : in the university he completes cred- 
 its ; in the high school he aggregated units. 
 
 17 
 
Here we have a very abstract, very exact conception of the method 
 of liberal education. It is as precise as the specifications for some en- 
 gineering enterprise — an engineering enterprise, that is, for which no 
 plans exist. For, strange as it may seem, there seems to exist no clear- 
 ly defined structure for which these educational specifications are made. 
 What picture appears in the mind when we think of the liberally edu- 
 cated man to be produced by the above formula ? 
 
 In the literature of the past we frequently find concrete represen- 
 tations of the man to be realized through education. The Greeks direct- 
 ed their education towards a certain definite end, the training of the 
 citizen-soldier. In his Courtier, Castiglione draws a clearly defined 
 ideal suitable for the society of his time. Peacham depicts another in 
 his Complect Gentleman. And Newman's ideal of the English gen- 
 tleman, and of the method of education necessary for his training, is 
 well known. Wherever there has existed a conception of liberal edu- 
 cation corresponding to political and social ideals of successive periods 
 of history, there has existed along with this a fairly well-defined idea in 
 the contemporary mind of the product of such education. As political 
 ideals have become increasingly democratized there has been a descent, 
 as it were, from the citizen-soldier to the courtier, to the complete gen- 
 tleman, to the simple gentleman, until ultimately we have arrived at the 
 democratic citizen, who exists, apparently, merely in abstracto as a math- 
 emathical formula. Whatever he may be, or ought to be, we have at 
 all events a beautifully simple and definite formula for the preparation 
 of him. And the machinery for the application of the formula is as 
 well organized and well articulated and efficient as the formula is simple 
 and definite. So that it reminds one of that great automobile factory 
 in which we may see the raw material enter one end of the plant, un- 
 dergo a variety of processes, and in a short time emerge from the other 
 end in the form of a completely assembled machine. And many, many 
 thousands are turned out every year. 
 
 The comparison tempts one to continue. "Having their origins 
 m the national mind, the institutions of each epoch, whatever be their 
 special functions, must have a family likeness." The past epoch has 
 been one of machinery in all things; the national mind has operated 
 through the most elaborate machinery. Indeed, in many cases the na- 
 tional mind has not needed to operate at all ; for, as in things political, 
 the machine has operated itself, with little regard for the national mind. 
 It will therefore be a simple matter to discover a family likeness among 
 the institutions of this epoch. 
 
 The university or college is a great factory, operated by a typical 
 corporation, with its general manager, its departmental managers, its 
 
 18 
 
foremen, and its workmen. All great modern business concerns have 
 elaborate card-index systems for the information of the concern re- 
 garding the least details of manufacture. This factory's field of in- 
 terests is extremely wide. It is therefore divided, subdivided, and sub- 
 divided again ; so that there are sections, drawers and cards represent- 
 ing schools, departments and subjects, respectively. The ultimate card 
 in the index then represents a unit of operation, that is, one hour each 
 week for a semester of, say, sixteen weeks. The notation upon a card 
 might read somewhat as follows: "English, I.-IL, ... 4 credits," or 
 "German, III. -IV., ...2 credits," which would mean that in the division 
 l.-II, of the division of English, of the college of liberal arts, four hours 
 a week in the class-room entitle the student at the end of the semester 
 to four credits in English; similarly for German, division III. -IV., two 
 hours a week, 2 credits. This scientific and abstract language is sup- 
 posed to represent what is known more concretely as studying the his- 
 tory of English literature or the storm and stress period in German 
 literature, for instance. By means of this division into small units, it 
 may readily be seen, a great flexibility results ; so that many ingenious 
 combinations can be made, under the formula, in aggregating 128 cred- 
 its. If it is considered expedient to add a new department to the plant, 
 it is necessary merely to add a new section or a new drawer to the file, 
 and to fill this with a few new cards, together with a judicious selection 
 of cards from the already existing supply. Thus the essential quality 
 of liberality is ensured in the mixture. 
 
 Let us now observe the operation. Freshmen are the raw material, 
 tested, standardized, 1 5-Carnegie-units pure. As indicated above, there 
 is a great possible variety of processes for the raw material to undergo. 
 It becomes necessary, when the freshmen appear, to refer to the formula 
 of the catalogue and by its aid to choose the processes for the first eighth 
 part of the entire operation, that is, for sixteen credits upon the books. 
 These represent basic operations during the first two years. When the 
 formula has been specifically determined, the processes begin, and are 
 carried on at the rate of sixteen hours a week in the class rooms under 
 the immediate charge of the workmen. Exact account of these hours 
 for each individual is kept. If at the end of the sixteen weeks the work- 
 man in charge is satisfied upon examination of the material that his 
 work has taken well, he notifies the central accounting office of this fact, 
 and the necessary notations are made upon the factory's books. The op- 
 erations are then continued according to the specific formulae chosen 
 at the beginning of each subsequent semester. The card representing 
 some particular piece of work at the end of the first semester might 
 read, for instance: English, I.-II., — 4 credits; German, III.-IV., 
 
 19 
 
credits; history, V.-VI., — 4 credits; chemistry, I.-II., — 4 credits; phy- 
 sical training, I.-II., — 2 credits; aggregating 18 credits. This process 
 of aggregation continues for four years, carefully accompanied by the 
 accounts upon the books. Thus one may discover by reference to the 
 books at any point in the process just how near it is to completion. Upon 
 request a certificate of this may be had from the accountant. This cer- 
 tificate has a definite exchange value, somewhat like a time-check; it 
 is accepted at par if it comes from a standard institution; but if it be 
 from a smaller institution it is usually discounted. The credit-hour 
 basis determines the rate of exchange. In the course of time the neces- 
 sary 128 units are credited to a job on the books. It is then finished 
 and ready to send out, adorned with a quiet, old-fashioned label : "The 
 contents of this package have been chosen, tested and packed with ex- 
 treme care, according to the formula of the standard manufacturers. 
 Quality and weight guaranteed." 
 
 Pure-food labels, it is said, have often covered a multitude of sins. 
 "The institutions of each epoch, whatever be their special functions, 
 must have a family likeness." 
 
 In an institution where so much stress is placed upon the mechanics 
 of operation one would expect, and would not be disappointed in ex- 
 pecting, an almost automatic perfection. It is the aim of all to make the 
 machinery operate with the least need of attention; and as regularly 
 and efficiently as possible. One may hear the term automatic applied 
 oftentimes to the method whereby certain results are obtained. A stu- 
 dent may be automatically conditioned or dropped from the institution. 
 He may automatically graduate. To illustrate this a case in point comes 
 to mind. A senior found on examining the books of the college at the 
 end of the year, that he did not have enough credits to graduate. He 
 therefore returned to summer school to "earn" a few more credits. But 
 when he returned to summer school he was notified by the office that he 
 had more than enough to graduate; extra credits had been discovered; 
 and his education was finished. To discover so suddenly that one is 
 educated at last must be a wonderful mental experience. The burst of 
 illumination which flooded his mind at that instant must have reminded 
 him of the experience of Cortez and his men when they gazed upon the 
 Pacific's boundless expanse, "silent, on a peak in Darien." 
 
 In the formula for liberal education and in its application there is 
 nothing vague, indefinite, or haphazard — unless that be called haphaz- 
 ard which has no concretely representable end. The question is insist- 
 ent: What kind of man is this wonderfully organized machinery to 
 produce? One might in reason expect to find current some clear rep- 
 resentation of that man whom to produce it is merelj' necessary to put 
 
 20 
 
youth in the hopper, turn the crank, and eject him prepared. And yet 
 all there is in answer to the question is a formula, a sort of equation: 
 4a+4i+4c4-4rf+etc.=128, or X. The quantity is exact enough; but 
 what is the unknown quality? An examination of the mechanism in 
 some of the details of its operation may throw some light on this im- 
 portant question. 
 
 One of the ingredients of the formula is known as "physical train- 
 ing ... 8 credits." This is the abstraction for that which in a demo- 
 cratic society is the equivalent of military training, proficiency in knight- 
 ly exercises, expertness in the playing of games, in societies variously 
 otherwise constituted. Perhaps it represents the ideal of healthy clear- 
 headed citizenship. That is to be taken on faith. The operation of the 
 system in this respect will give an impression of what occurs in respect 
 of other portions of the formula. And since this is concerned with the 
 training of the body, it is reasonable to suppose that it will be more 
 amenable to the demands of a mechanical system than the others, which 
 are concerned with the training of the mind. 
 
 The instinct for play, recreation, or exercise is a common phenom- 
 enon in the normal youth of college age. If it were given opportunity 
 and encouragement for expression in a natural manner, there can be 
 no question but it would manifest itself in many forms of physical 
 activity. "Physical training ... 8 credits" is the opportunity and en- 
 couragement for the expression of this instinct. This means the pres- 
 ence of the student, for each of the eight credits required for gradua- 
 tion, one hour each week in the classroom for physical training, that is, 
 the gymnasium. It means nothing else. The playing instinct, the in- 
 terest in physical recreation, by adaptation to this formula in mechani- 
 cal class drill is transformed into a listless, perfunctory habit of earning 
 credits. The student trains his body by earning credits. Of course 
 there are games for college men, too; and they are exceedingly well- 
 organized. Those fortunate men who have been endowed by nature with 
 a splendid physique may become members of Coach Drivem's "high- 
 powered football machine," or of some other athletic machine. It may 
 be that in these games they get a great deal of normal physical recrea- 
 tion, in which case it is quite unfortunate that reporters will continue 
 to speak of their teams as machines. But that is probably merely a ten- 
 dency of the national mind. If the playing instinct of the normal col- 
 lege man — the one who does not get a chance to play on any team, but 
 plays in a gymnasium class — is not sufficiently chastened and subdued 
 by the formal nature of his training, a means is provided whereby the 
 persisting remainder may be efifectually purged away. He may repair 
 to the occasional week-end game, there to give his inhibited playing in- 
 
 21 
 
stinct sympathetic exercise up to an intense, vociferous pitch of emotion; 
 and thus he effects a purgation of it. He is for the time being like the 
 Athenian at the tragic spectacle, except that the Athenian contrived to 
 effect the purgation of his emotions without the assistance of a yell- 
 leader. Athletic games thus cooperate with the class-room drill in ap- 
 plying the formula for the physical element in liberal education. 
 
 When this is what occurs in the formalization of the method of 
 physical training, it is a simple matter to infer by analogy what occurs 
 in the parallel method of mental training, which, in the nature of things, 
 is even less susceptible of such formalization. Since the student must 
 earn sixteen credits during the semester, he must be in the class-room 
 sixteen hours each week. A credit on the books represents a class- 
 room hour a week. That is the fundamental equation upon which 
 the entire structure of liberal education rests. There is no other method 
 of estimating the student's study. The accounting system must be kept 
 intact ; all else must be accommodated to it ; or ignored. Of the mani- 
 fold subtle and intangible influences outside of the class-room, of ad- 
 mittedly the highest value for purposes of education, no account can be 
 kept. The various ways by which the instructor, as an individual, may 
 guide, encourage, influence, or inspire the student, as individual, are 
 extremely difficult to estimate quantitatively. They elude the classroom- 
 credit system of measurement, and no attempt is made to estimate them 
 otherwise. It is very likely that what is thus left out of account will 
 exert very little influence. 
 
 So the student goes a dull round of sixteen recitations a week to 
 earn his sixteen credits a semester. Whatever intellectual eagerness he 
 may have brought with him is hard put to it to survive the inhibitory in- 
 fluence of this punctual timekeeping; for after the demands upon his 
 time of the regular schedule in class and laboratory, and of the daily 
 fragmentary preparation for them have been satisfied, there are the num- 
 erous student "activities," properly so-called, the demands of which, en- 
 forced by student opinion, are equally exigent. By the time the intel- 
 lectual interests have run this formidable gauntlet of requirements and 
 distractions they have become enervated and reduced; and the torpid 
 residue is volatilized in the week-end sentimentalities ; parties and danc- 
 es, the new vaudeville bill, the latest girl from Paris, or the moving pic- 
 tures ; and thus it vanishes. In the end the intellectual interests of the 
 student do not differ much from those of the "tired business man." At 
 the week-end they both seek "amusement" — some intellectual anaesthet- 
 ic. The mind which is made torpid by the tedium of dull routine does 
 not seek intellectual pleasures. 
 
 After all, it is not known what end is desired by the application of 
 
 22 
 
the educational formula. So long as the formula is sufficient unto it- 
 self, and there is no concern about its results, no definite ideal to try to 
 attain, perhaps the attendance upon classes and the earning thereby of 
 credits to be recorded in the college ledgers is considered an adequate 
 training for the man who is to enter a career of some kind of earning. 
 Credits very much resemble time-checks. But one wonders why the 
 misleading designation is still retained. Why is this called liberal educa- 
 tion? 
 
 An English educator. Professor Raleigh, recently warned his hear- 
 ers that "there is a kind of lethargy which falls upon universities in the 
 days of their prosperity, when they have thousands of students and a 
 full measure of public recognition and material success. Then they 
 sometimes forget their earlier gospel, they lose their first sprightly im- 
 pulse, and settle down to a program, a time-table, an industry, a sys- 
 tem." This is a grave danger because "thought, the cardinal duty of a 
 university, can not be performed to order. Machinery and discipline, 
 a constitution, and regulations — these things are necessary for any great 
 institution; but they are the body of the institution; not its animating 
 soul. If discipline be exalted at the expense of everything else, you get 
 a spirit creditable perhaps to a brigade, but disastrous to the activities 
 of the mind." 
 
 It seems strange to hear of an English educator warning English 
 universities against the dangers of systematization. Several genera- 
 tions of American students who have some knowledge, through ex- 
 perience, of the English system as it obtains at Oxford, have puzzled 
 their brains in vain to find in that university's method of training a 
 system in the thoroughgoing American sense. The secret of it has 
 seemed to be that in that sense Oxford has no system at all. The Ox- 
 onian method is simply that of providing the student with sufficient 
 latitude in the matter of time and studies, so that, under the direction 
 of the tutors, he may develop his own intellectual powers to their fullest 
 capacity. For this self -development he is given credit — not credits — in 
 the final estimation of his training. The English university understands 
 what we call system not at all, or too well. 
 
 Professor Raleigh asserts quite dogmatically that the cardinal duty 
 of a university is thought. The differing conceptions of system may be 
 based upon a difference in the interpretation of thought. 
 
 Thought, under the formula for liberal education, must be con- 
 sidered as an inorganic mass of fact, a mere agglomeration of inert 
 matter. Otherwise it surely would not be considered susceptible of such 
 minute dissection. Dissection is not usually practised upon anything 
 living; and if it were, there would be little hope of restoring life to the 
 
 23 
 
fragments by merely assembling them. Under the formula the living 
 body of thought is divided and subdivided. The student is made aware 
 of the content of liberal education under the form of this subdivision. 
 He is expected to gather these unrelated fragments in such a way as 
 to make them an organic unity, to endow them with life. Goethe's 
 precious Wagner constructed his Homunculus indeed by some chemical 
 hocus-pocus, and we live in high hope that even more will be accom- 
 plished nowadays. But for all practical purposes the difficulty seems to 
 be that when a living thing is dissected, something extremely valuable 
 escapes in the act, something which it is impossible to restore again by 
 any synthetic process. And yet one hears teachers of science complain 
 that the analytic method of studying literature did not build up in them 
 a living interest in that subject. They assume evidently, quite naively, 
 that literature is to be studied by the scientific method which they ap- 
 ply to the study of inorganic compounds ; that is, that it is not a living 
 thing. Literature is interesting because it is living, because it is a spirit- 
 ual correlative of life in man. If one can see no beauty in a poem it 
 would be fatuous to try to find it by analysis. And if one can see beauty 
 in a poem, he will probably not analyze it. Thought, the spiritual cor- 
 relative of man's life, must be approached as whole and living if it is 
 to be an organic, harmonious whole in the end. Of system there is 
 needed just enough to bring student and subject most advantageously 
 together, and no more. 
 
 Journalists tell us that The Old Order Changeth, that our institu- 
 tions are in a transitional stage. The valiant stand at Armageddon has 
 broken down that former conception of the political machine as existing 
 for itself alone. The political organization seems to be regarded more 
 and more as the body to contain some animating soul, some informing 
 life principle. We should expect the hitherto self-sufficient system of 
 liberal education to reveal a family likeness to its sister institution in 
 transition. We should expect to catch the gleam of an animating soul 
 in its lineaments. But universities are notoriously the homes of lost 
 causes. 
 
 The abiding faith of the mechanists then must give us hope that 
 living thought may eventually be synthetically compounded. They as- 
 sure us that it is their aim "to form new combinations from the ele- 
 ments of living nature just as the physicist and the chemist form new 
 combinations from nonliving nature." When they shall have attained 
 their aim, we may borrow from their method, add to our existing for- 
 mula "Life-principle eight credits," and thus form an organic 
 
 unity out of the heterogeneous 128 elements. 
 
 24 
 
THROUGH WISDOM IS A HOUSE BUILDED? 
 
 25 
 
THROUGH WISDOM IS A HOUSE BUILDED? 
 
 There was once a man who wanted to build him a house. He did not 
 know what kind of a house he wanted. So he went up to the place 
 where men had houses built, and said : "I want me a house built." And 
 they said, those whom he asked : "What kind of a house shall we build 
 you?" And he answered: "I do not know; I confide in your wisdom." 
 Whereat the master-builders were pleased and forthwith began to show 
 forth their wisdom. They drew out books, and looked into them, and 
 then said : "Houses are of several kinds : Ornate, in modem and an- 
 cient style ; severely plain, and useful only ; or dignified and impressive, 
 yet simple withal. And under each main kind there are a multitude of 
 others. Which kind shall you build ?" To which he answered : "I do 
 not know ; I leave that to your wisdom." And they were pleased again, 
 and said: "That is as things should be. Take no thought of your 
 house; but do you build yourself a foundation, broad and strong and 
 general." At which he wondered again, and asked : "Wherefore build 
 a foundation for I know not what?" And they: "It is written in the 
 book that a foundation, broad and strong and general, there must be 
 first of all. It is not meet that you, or even we, question the book. Con- 
 fide in the wisdom of this book as we do ; and build you a foundation." 
 
 Accordingly he began to build a foundation. Then there was a 
 digging of pits, and driving of piles, and pouring of concrete, setting of 
 pillars of timber and cement, placing of beams of iron and steel, and lay- 
 ing of walls of brick and stone; and the work progressed apace. But 
 now and then the man murmured against lifting and placing the heavy 
 beams ; for he knew not where they should be placed ; and he grumbled 
 at the mixing of the concrete, for it was main heavy work. And now 
 and again he would fall to wondering about the plans of his house. But 
 when he asked about these things he was told : "Why vex yourself be- 
 fore the time? Build — build the foundation good and strong and gen- 
 eral. Plan later. Each thing in its own good time." So he builded, 
 better than he knew, he hoped. 
 
 Thus two years passed. The foundation was ready for his house. 
 For, according to the book of the master-builders, where such things 
 are writ, two years, and many things besides, will build a foundation — 
 but mainly two years. Further, according to the book, he must now 
 plan his house, and come to the master-builders with his plans. So he 
 bethought him to look over his foundation, that he might thereby be 
 
 27 
 
aided to conceive his plan. But when he had looked into his foundation 
 he found that the concrete was already breaking up; for it had been 
 mixed with the carelessness of utter weariness ; and he found the beams 
 not truly and rightly placed; for they had been lifted with pain, 
 placed in ignorance ; and the columns leaned this way and that drunk- 
 enly — it was all askew, and awry, and a vexation to the spirit to 
 look upon. Such seemed to him the foundation, broad and strong 
 and general, that contained the principles of all foundations, that might 
 serve for skyscraper or temple, for church or theater, bungalow or 
 cabin. But it would serve for nothing that he knew. He examined 
 his structure again and again to find some place where he might build, 
 and some clue to what he might build. It was near the time to come 
 forth with his plan to the master-builders. At length he found by 
 merest chance a few random wooden posts in a corner of the founda- 
 tion, and upon these he determined to place his house, such as could be 
 placed there; for he must have some shelter built in two years more. 
 Two years he worked upon the modest cabin shelter on a corner of the 
 broad foundation, bringing a few boards from one place, a few bricks 
 from another, sand and gravel from a third, building little by little. 
 .\nd while he thus labored it was a melancholy pleasure to him to view 
 from all sides the foundation that he had builded, and to meditate up- 
 on the wisdom of building such, broad and strong and general. 
 
 In two years more then he had builded him a house — a sufficient 
 shelter against the weather, and had begun to live therein, making 
 himself as comfortable as might be. For, according to the book, when 
 the foundation has been builded for two years and the house for two 
 years more, it is then time to occupy it and make oneself at home for 
 the days to come. And it happened that he often and again took a mel- 
 ancholy pleasure in looking out from the window of his modest shelter 
 upon the broad waste of foundation, and to observe how the indis- 
 criminate mass of materials slowly gave before the attacks of time and 
 weather: the concrete crumbled, the steel rusted, stone walls sagged, 
 and timber rotted ; and all of it availed him naught— but for reflection 
 upon the things that are. 
 
 It chanced in later time that he met the master-builders of his house ; 
 and he asked them again: "Wherefore build a foundation for I know 
 not what?" Hereupon they looked out upon the crumbling structure, 
 and upon the modest cabin built at random upon its wooden posts ; and 
 they shook their heads and mumbled, "the ways of the Inscrutable," 
 and "the slings and arrows of misfortune," and "man proposes, but 
 God disposes," and sundry similar consolations; then spoke: "It is 
 wise that a man learn to do the day's work and not ask why. For thus 
 
 2S 
 
he experiences before the day the bitter lesson of life, and is prepared 
 against the evil time when he knows that he must do what he fain 
 would not do. So plan not your life overmuch, and kick not against 
 the thing that is, for that is right. You have builded your foundation 
 for reasons to you inscrutable. Thus you have prepared yourself to 
 meet the ways of the Inscrutable in life." Saying which, they passed 
 on to speak words of wisdom unto other builders of houses. 
 
 Now the man pondered these things in the deeps of his heart ; and 
 looked out upon the crumbling foundation and pondered them again. 
 Then there appeared before the eye of his mind the plan of the house 
 that he would build, as it first appeared to his enraptured vision in the 
 last year of his housebuilding, when it was too late to begin to build 
 anew. And there grew in him the resolve to build him this house, ac- 
 cording to his vision, and according to plan, from the foundation up- 
 ward, even unto the latest day of his life. It would be a fair house, 
 with spacious halls and sounding galleries, situated upon an high emi- 
 nence, and overlooking a far and wide prospect over the goings and 
 comings of men. Such was the vision of his house as it had come to 
 him in the last year of his housebuilding under the master-builders. 
 And when it had come he had looked out upon the foundation, broad 
 and strong and general, and had wondered why it had all been neces- 
 sary — wondered why his master-builders had not shown unto him plans 
 of all those structures of beauty of which they had spoken — shown 
 them to him, and counselled with him, and guided him to choose. Then 
 perhaps the house of his vision in the last year of his housebuilding 
 had come to him in the first year when he was building his foundation 
 in pain and toil and utter weariness, that foundation broad and strong 
 and general, now lying out there in the weather and crumbling away, 
 availing him naught — but to reflect upon the things that are. If he had 
 had that plan then after the first year, how much might have been saved 
 out of the ruck and ruin lying out there in the weather. And if he had 
 had his plans how much better had his concrete been mixed, how much 
 more true and right had the beams been placed, with what infinite care 
 and precision had all the necessary things been done according to the 
 plan for his house. 
 
 But what of the words of the master-builders, those mysterious 
 words about the ways of the Inscrutable, and about learning the les- 
 sons of bitterness? 
 
 Nay, he knew in his heart that the harsh tasks, the heavings and 
 straining, and daily heartrending toil would be done with a stern joy if 
 but the builder might see the plans of his house growing real under his 
 hands, a little each day. Is it not, then, the best school for life to learn 
 
 29 
 
why the daily, irksome task is necessary and, knowing why, to do it 
 with earnestness? Out in life, there he knew why the irksome task 
 must be done, and did it therefore gladly. For out of such daily tasks, 
 done gladly, is the house of life builded fair. 
 
 Again he looked out upon the foundation, crumbling under the 
 weather — and wondered at the wisdom of the wise that passeth all un- 
 derstanding. 
 
 30 
 
ECONOMICS AND LITERATURE 
 
 *i 
 
ECONOMICS AND LITERATURE 
 
 The most noteworthy tendency in the study of literature since the 
 turning of the century is the emphasis which is being placed upon the 
 relationship between economic and literary studies. Fifteen or twenty 
 years ago literary study was normally aesthetic or technical, and literary 
 history in America, a loosely connected series of critical evaluations 
 upon a vaguely sketched background of history. Economics was then 
 as far removed from literature as chemistry. But now even chemis- 
 try, not to speak of economics, may furnish analogies and even interpre- 
 tations; and history has become the very body and blood of literature 
 with aesthetic and critical evaluations hardly so much as the limbs and 
 outward flourishes. It has become almost as heretical now to study 
 an author's work critically, considered as art, as it was a few years 
 ago to suggest that there might be an interesting relationship between 
 Victorian literature and its economic background. 
 
 A theory of literature that has been able to command such unan- 
 imous interest in a comparatively brief time merits some close consid- 
 eration. For there are teachers of literature who begin to wonder, 
 when they behold the triumph of the new study, just what place is be- 
 ing left them for the study of what they still believe is art in liter- 
 ature. And there are many students who wonder what difference 
 there is between literary history and economic or political history ; and 
 where they may study literature as such. I shall attempt in this paper 
 to justify the name literature for something which is neither economics 
 nor sociology nor history, but which is itself. A short account of the 
 development of the theory of economic determinism or interpreta- 
 tion will first be necessary. 
 
 I believe it is generally admitted that among the contributions of 
 Karl Marx to economic, social and historical thought none has been 
 more stimulating to research, or more fruitful in its results, than the 
 theory of economic determinism. According to this theory the hist- 
 ory of society depends on its methods of production and exchange; 
 production and transportation determine exchange, distribution of 
 .society into classes, relations of classes, the existence of the state, 
 the character of its laws, and all that the state means for man- 
 k.nd. There are still remaining some economic and political theorists 
 who believe with Marx that everything can be explained economically, 
 that is, by historical materialism. But the historians who refuse to ac- 
 33 — 2 
 
cept this extreme statement of the law have revised and modified it, so 
 that in its modified form it is accepted by the majority of economists. 
 Historians of the modern scientific school are frank to admit their 
 indebtedness to the economist for opening up this new and fruitful 
 field of research by means of which the simple and homely and hitherto 
 obscure facts of life have become essential to a more satisfactory un- 
 derstanding of the past. 
 
 Professor Seligman may speak for the moderate position in his 
 defense of the economic theory against five commonly suggested ob- 
 jections. His statement of the theory itself is as follows: "To eco- 
 nomic causes must be traced in the last instance those transforma- 
 tions in the structure of society which themselves condition the rela- 
 tions of social classes, and the various manifestations of social life." 
 He explains the objections to this theory in five statements: first, it 
 is fatalistic; second, it rests upon the assumption of historical laws, 
 the existence of which are open to question; third, it is socialistic; 
 fourth, it neglects ethical and spiritual forces ; and fifth, it leads to ab- 
 surd exaggeration. He answers the objection that it is fatalistic by the 
 following course of argument: Since man has will power and may act 
 or refrain from acting, he reveals himself in a sense as a free agent. 
 But certain causes operative in the organism are responsible for deci- 
 sions. If the environment, past and present, were known, we should 
 be in a position to foretell with some degree of precision the actions 
 of human beings. Among the myriad decisions that compose a given 
 society there can be discovered a certain general tendency or uniform- 
 ity of action from which there is but a slight deviation, and this is rep- 
 resented by the choices of the majority; that is, by the social choices. 
 Social law rests upon the assumption that men choose in harmony 
 with their welfare, and that the idea of society implies a majority who 
 will entertain common ideas of this welfare. If the conditions change, 
 the common ideas will change. But since the conditions so far as they 
 are social in character are created by men and may be altered by men, 
 ultimately there is nothing fatalistic about progress. 
 
 As to the theory resting upon unproven historical laws, he answers 
 that law is an explanation of the actual relations between facts. What 
 is true of the sciences is equally true of the social sciences, except that 
 the social sciences are immeasurably more complex because of the 
 greater difficulty in isolating the phenomena to be investigated and in 
 repeating the experiments. If each phase of social activity constitutes 
 the material for a separate science with its array of scientific laws, the 
 whole of social activity, which in its ceaseless transformations forms 
 the warp and woof of history, must be equally subject to law. To 
 
 34 
 
deny the existence of historical laws is virtually to maintain that there 
 is to be found in human life no such theory as cause and effect. 
 
 Concerning the objection that it is socialistic he suggests that so- 
 cialism is purposive, the economic theory descriptive— the one is a 
 speculative ideal, the other, a canon of interpretation — and that it 
 is possible to be the staunchest individualist and at the same time an 
 ardent advocate of the doctrine of economic interpretation. 
 
 With those who maintain that it neglects ethical and spiritual 
 forces he argues that, since the conception of morality is a social pro- 
 duct, and since the economic factors are often those of chief signif- 
 icance in all the complex of social conditions, therefore the influence 
 of pure ethical or religious idealism can make itself felt only within 
 the limitations of existing social conditions. Whatever the changes, 
 there always exists a border line beyond which moral and spiritual 
 ideals point toward progress, but the desired changes will occur only 
 when the economic conditions are ripe for them. When the economic 
 conditions of society become ideal, the individual will have a free field 
 for moral development. Then the economic factor, since it will have 
 become a constant, may be neglected. Thus the economic conception 
 of history, properly interpreted, does not neglect the spiritual forces in 
 history; it seeks only to point out the terms on which the spiritual life 
 has hitherto been able to find its fullest fruition. 
 
 These answers of Professor Seligman, make such a moderate 
 claim for the theory that it seems almost unnecessary to counter the 
 charge that it leads to absurd exaggeration. Correctly understood, 
 he says, it does not claim that every phenomenon of human life in 
 general or of mental life in particular is to be explained on economic 
 grounds ; for economics deals with one kind of social relation only, yet 
 there are as many kinds of social relations as there are classes of social 
 wants. 
 
 In this defense by Professor Seligman of the theory of economic 
 interpretation it is seen that historical materialism as an universal ex- 
 planation of all human life is definitely rejected. The Marxian theory 
 in its extreme form did not lead, so far as I know, to a study of its 
 control over literature or art or other manifestations of spiritual forces ; 
 for the reason, I suppose, that it was too materialistic a conception to 
 attract the interest of those qualified to have made such a contribution. 
 But the more moderate theory recently advanced, under which these 
 forces are left a certain validity and sphere of influence, has led to a 
 number of theories of the relationship between economic forces and 
 literature.* 
 
 •I am indebted to Dr. Allen R. Benham for a ran-ey of these lnte:pretations, including his 
 own theory. 
 
 35 
 
The first is Professor Brander Matthews' theory of the economic 
 interpretation of literary history, under which the succession of forms 
 in literary history, such as the change from the romance to drama, 
 drama to essay, essay to novel, is determined by economic causes. 
 
 The second is Dr. Gregory's statement that literary movements, 
 so-called, are said to follow "economic or industrial change of a sig- 
 nificant nature, involving a change in the relative power of economic 
 groups in the state," revealed by the fact that in every historical period, 
 it is the ideas and ideals of the dominant class in that period that pre- 
 vail. In the end she admits that all art that is economically conditioned 
 is likely to be mediocre. 
 
 As an extension of these theories. Dr. Benham maintains, in addi- 
 tion to Professor Matthews', that not only are the forms in literary 
 history determined, but also the contents of literature ; and, in qualifica- 
 tion and enlargement of Dr. Gregory's thesis, that not only is mediocre 
 art but also the greater art determined by economic causes. He is 
 unwilling to accept Dr. Gregory's limitation, because she fails to ad- 
 duce any criteria for the determination of "universal and undying art", 
 as it is called. Dr. Benham's final summary of his position is the 
 following: "I contend that a survey of literary history supports the 
 hypothesis that literary development, like social development, is a mat- 
 ter at bottom of economic causes ; that this applies to subject matter as 
 well as to form; and that the 'economic interpretation of literature' 
 must be given an important place in literary study." 
 
 I have thus far traced the course of the changes in the theory of 
 economic determinism from the rigid materialism of Karl Marx down 
 to the more or less flexible and relatively modest application of the 
 theory to throw light upon some aspects of the literary problem. One 
 is struck with the fact that what was at first held to be capable of ex- 
 plaining a multitude of phenomena, indeed all, in the complexity of life, 
 has progressively degenerated from an all-inclusive formula to a moder- 
 ately ambitious theory. The applications of this thesis to literature 
 often make more claims in the argument than are substantiated in the 
 conclusions; so that I am somewhat in doubt as to whether there be 
 any theory to criticize, when we get down to actual practice. But to 
 one who is interested in literature in an academic way as a problem for 
 teaching — which, I assume, involves an understanding of the subject, 
 literature — any illumination of it is gratefully accepted. I have ob- 
 served that certain electric bulbs, while bravely pretending to shed 
 light, grow dim to the point of extinction. The economic interpretation 
 of literature promised at first to shed a brilliant illumination upon the 
 nature of literature ; but it has grown very dim. The theory itself still 
 
 86 
 
glows, but the nature of the subject to be illuminated recedes gradually 
 into the surrounding gloom. 
 
 The question we ask is, What is literature? It is answered thus: 
 "Literature is the product of certain materials set in motion by economic 
 causes." This has led to a deep, thorough, and prolonged study of eco- 
 nomic causes, much to the advancement of history- But we had asked. 
 What is literature? Professor Matthews answers us that the history 
 of literary forms, at all events, is determined by the conditions of ex- 
 change. The writer wants pay for his commodity. The reader is 
 economically incapable of buying his commodity in the manner in which 
 it is prepared. A new package for the article is therefore devised, to- 
 gether with a marketplace for the facilitation of ready exchange. The 
 new package is called a play, and the marketplace, a theatre. The 
 writer's patrons may come to the market and buy their goods at a rea- 
 sonable price and save all the expense of delivery and costly package; 
 which in book form are in fact prohibitive. 
 
 In time the demands of a public for political information or local 
 gossip are the necessity which produce the invention of periodical pub- 
 lications. In these a great impetus is given to the writing of essays, 
 compact and pointed, suited to the small page of the journal. Thus 
 writers and readers are brought together through the medium of the 
 essay. Then after another lapse of time, many causes conspire to effect 
 the cheapening of printing and the making of books; and producers 
 and consumers are brought together through the medium of the novel, 
 a modern version of the romance. Thus ceaselessly there is shown the 
 effect of economic causes upon the forms of literature. This theory 
 is interesting but not astonishing. That the manner of serving a public, 
 whether through book, periodical, pamphlet, or play, must be subject 
 to economic causes, since these are all material things, commodities in 
 the market, I should think would be an obvious historical fact. These 
 things must be subject to the demands of the market and conditioned 
 by the facts of exchange. From the time when the wandering rhap- 
 sodes, and bards, and gleemen received largess for their acceptable oral 
 entertainment from the nobles assembled within earshot to the time 
 when the writer gets cash for his story addressed to an audience of two 
 million persons through the Saturday Evening Post that has been true. 
 Even the singer is worthy of his hire. 
 
 To return to Professor Matthews' thesis, while he has been con- 
 cerned with the predominance of the one form he has said nothing 
 about the accompanying forms. It is true that the drama dominated 
 the Elizabethan period; but there existed along with this form such 
 others as romance, satire, various types of lyric poetry, essays, charac- 
 
 37 
 
terwriting, and so on ; and these were in their respective types, of most 
 excellent quality. It was a period rich in form and content. To ac- 
 count for the predominance of one form of literature by saying that 
 it was cheap in price, is, it seems to me, to say an obvious thing. When 
 an economic interpretation of literary form is being given it is not 
 .satisfactory to slight the manifold variety of literary forms which were 
 produced (whatever the demand may have been) and speak of the 
 reasons why one was predominant. It would not yield much illumina- 
 tion upon the question of literary forms in our day to say that the 
 Saturday Evening Post has two million readers because it is cheap. 
 Nor would it illuminate the nature of that literature itself. 
 
 Professor Matthews' thesis has to do with purely material things 
 rather than with literature. He calls his theory an Economic Interpre- 
 tation of Literary History, of history, that is, not literature; and it is 
 really an explanation of the rise and popularity of the Elizabethan 
 theatre, of the periodicals in the eighteenth century, and of the art of 
 bookmaking in the nineteenth. When he speaks of forms he means 
 external forms, mechanical forms. The circumstances he speaks of 
 had little to do with the origins of literary forms — they had all existed 
 before. And even the vagaries of popular taste are sufficient to account 
 for the changes in the literary forms that are approved at any time, 
 quite apart from economic conditions. Might it not be true that the 
 demand for dramatic presentations, a craving for that form of amuse- 
 ment long prevalent in England, caused the building of the theatres? 
 The drama came first, the theatre afterward. The cheapening of the 
 amusement created a larger demand, and that in turn a larger output. 
 If a historian were to present a thesis upon the economic interpretation 
 of the contemporary automobile industry and should say: "The Ford 
 motor was easily the predominant motor in the early twentieth century 
 because it was cheap," we might well ask, I think, "But what about the 
 existence of the other types ? Are they to be accounted for purely on 
 economic grounds?" There is a certain point to the analogy; for the 
 drama is considered by some the democratic literature of the period, 
 and I believe the Ford may be considered the democratic vehicle of our 
 period. But at the same time the analogy points out a very significant 
 distinction in the respect that, while these machines are as similar as 
 mechanical ingenuity in standardization can make them, there are no 
 two plays by different dramatists alike. They are as different as two 
 men are different. The explanation has to do with purely external and 
 transient things, and throws no light upon a phenomenon which is es- 
 sentially internal. Men will adapt themselves to conditions; but the 
 
 38 
 
spirits of men will be as different and various within any one form as 
 they are different in different forms. 
 
 In the second application of the economic theory by Dr. Gregory, 
 it is suggested that literary movements follow economic or industrial 
 change of a significant nature, involving a change in the relative power 
 of the economic groups in the state. Since the ideas and ideals of the 
 dominant class prevail in every historical period, whenever such change 
 occurs, there follows a literary output that reflects that change. Those 
 authors who most immediately reflect this change are grouped together 
 and called a movement. Dr. Gregory observes about such writers that 
 they are usually considered mediocre artists. This is as much as to say 
 that authors who are nearly determined by the conditions of their en- 
 vironment are lacking in something that we have come to regard as 
 characteristic of art. Those authors who have been interested in ideas 
 rather than in men, and especially in those ideas that were current in 
 their times concerning economic conditions, lend themselves easily to 
 this method of classification. They are propagandists rather than art- 
 ists and their work belongs in a category which is different from that 
 of creative art as distinguished from informative literature. This dis- 
 tinction will be considered later in this paper. 
 
 The great-man theory, which has always been a stumbling block 
 to economic historians, and is especially so to economic historians of 
 literature, is thus seen to be involved in Dr. Gregory's application of the 
 theory. The existence of the great, the exceptional, man is not denied 
 except by the extreme theorists. Whatever our theories may decide for 
 us in this matter, even to the point of denying his existence, our daily 
 practice is a measuring of men in our judgment and an evaluation of 
 them involving a greater and a lesser, all degrees indeed from the great 
 to the mediocre. I cannot very well analyze here the methods by which 
 the results are attained ; it is sufficient to say that it is done. I know at 
 all events that the particular consciousness that forms these judgments 
 is precisely the one out of which literature issues. This is a realistic 
 account, not a theoretical. Those men, then, who are limited in their 
 thinking by a set of material conditions to such an extent that no es- 
 sential differences distinguish them from each other are legitimately 
 considered minor writers. A theory that accounts for the minor writ- 
 ers is not of much avail in understanding literature, for the reason that 
 the literature in which we are most interested is produced by admitted- 
 ly exceptional men. It is customary to admit that there are great men 
 in history, but to save the economic theory by saying that the influence 
 of these men remains inoperative until economic conditions have pre- 
 pared men for its acceptance. In literary history, on the other hand, it 
 
 39 
 
is a commonplace to say that great originators create the taste by which 
 they are enjoyed ; and it is very Hkely that great men in other fields of 
 action must influence the judgments of men whereby their theories are 
 ultimately accepted. It seems absurd to admit the existence of great 
 men and then to deny their influence ; for it must be by their influence 
 that they are considered great. That their own generations fail to ac- 
 cept them is not a denial of their greatness. One man here and there, 
 it is admitted, is influenced by something other than these economic 
 forces, which it is assumed control men's self-expression. If there is 
 an exception made in favor of the one there must be exceptions made in 
 favor of the intermediate grades of excellence between the supreme and 
 the mediocre, that mediocre which is nothing more than an expression 
 of immediate environment, or of external force of some kind. 
 
 Professor Seligman is explicit upon the point of the exception to 
 be made in favor of the great man. Dr. Gregory limits the application 
 of her theory expressly to the minor men. But Dr. Benham, I believe, 
 is inclined to question the validity of the separation of literary men into 
 two groups, one minor, and one greater ; for the reason that the basis 
 for this division is not systematic. This objection necessitates the dis- 
 cussion of literature artistically or ethically. Such a discussion econom- 
 ic theorists avoid, or reject as immaterial. Under the early form of 
 the theory when all ethical and spiritual values were thought to be 
 ultimately economic, this would have been a tenable position, but it 
 cannot be considered so when these forces are of such exceptional kind 
 as to be excluded from the rigid determinism of material causes. To 
 exempt them for such a reason and then to disparage their values or to 
 deny them right of judgment is not enlightening. 
 
 The third way of economic interpretation, that of Dr. Benham, is 
 connected with the second, concerning the influence of economic causes 
 upon literary movements, the individual members of which are con- 
 fessedly mediocre. Dr. Benham contends that the theory may be ap- 
 plied to the content as well as to the succession of forms, as an ex- 
 tension of Professor Matthews' theory, and that literary development 
 as well as social development is a matter at bottom of economic causes. 
 To illustrate that subject matter as well as form in literature is largely 
 determined by economic causes, he uses Mrs. Gaskell's novel Mary Bar- 
 ton, in which the struggle between social classes newly created by an 
 economic change — the Industrial Revolution — is represented. Whether 
 or not she herself was aware of the causes of the conflict she describes, 
 they were undoubtedly to be traced back to the Industrial Revolution. 
 In the nineteenth century there were unquestionably many novels which 
 dealt with the conflict between classes in society, or with conditions 
 
 40 
 
which revealed economic inequaHties. If I understand Dr. Benham 
 correctly, these novels were determined by economic causes because 
 the conflicts revealed in them are ultimately to be traced to such sources. 
 If one were to generalize upon this inference, one would conclude that 
 the life of mankind at any time, since that life ultimately rests upon 
 economic bases, is therefore economically determined. That generaliza- 
 tion is avoided, however, by admitting place for the operation of spirit- 
 ual and ethical forces apart from the economic, and along with them. 
 In the cases of the authors mentioned there was apparently no 
 economic compulsion to write upon the subjects chosen; for even if 
 they were not of independent means, the reading public had become 
 relatively numerous and of diverse interests; so that their demand 
 might be satisfied by many different kinds and qualities of products. 
 There existed along with these social novels other novels, containing 
 no implications of class conflict, and in addition to these various kinds 
 of novels a manifold variety of other literary forms. Indeed it is this 
 very complexity that encourages Dr. Benham to seek for some mean- 
 ing that shall explain it. If the economic causes determine one kind or 
 one form in an environment of conflict, then they should determine 
 all. If a determining force so pervasive as an environment can control 
 but a few, one wonders why this is not rather chance than determinism. 
 Of the many novels of Mrs. Gaskell it is strange that only in one or two 
 cases should her work be susceptible of economic interpretation ; others 
 are called ethical, historical, idyllic, or what not, and these all deal with 
 contemporary life as well as does Mary Barton. Can it be said perhaps 
 that the heredity of Mrs. Gaskell influenced her to write the one ftovel 
 on one subject and others on others, if it is the economic heredity that 
 ultimately controls? If the economic forces were contributing through 
 heredity to the choosing of Mary Barton, then what about the others? 
 I confess I cannot understand why the fact that authors have written 
 in times of conflict about social movements in which individuals are 
 represented as suffering from the effects of economic causes, should be 
 generalized into a rule of interpretation. To me that fact is as much as to 
 say that the author has chosen a subject in that instance in which he 
 was interested; and I can see no need for going beyond that interest 
 and saying that it was controlled by economic causes. Why did eco- 
 nomic causes operating upon Mrs. Gaskell's likes and dislikes cause her 
 to write a novel of character or an idyll? Most novelists are, I sup- 
 pose, persons of sympathy and insight and understanding. What more 
 natural than that they should be attracted by the miseries and misfor- 
 tunes of their fellowmen and should seek for the causes of these and 
 try to arouse the understanding of men toward accomplishing some 
 
mitigation! That it represents deliberate choice rather than any com- 
 pulsion must be shown by the great variety of different kinds of litera- 
 ture any one author may write. It is a common occurrence to find 
 works of so different a kind written by one man that it is sometimes 
 impossible to believe that they have come from one and the same per- 
 sonality. Of such works, differing so much in kind, one may possibly 
 have dealt with economic matters. 
 
 There have always been authors who have been keenly interested 
 in the arrangements of society in their time and who have pondered 
 the ways of explaining the causes of human misery. There have al- 
 ways existed along with such men others who have ignored these prob- 
 lems. And those writers who have had a direct intellectual interest 
 in these social problems in some works have in other works utterly 
 ignored them. This is true not only of literature after the theory of 
 economic interpretation was broached and after the Industrial Revolu- 
 tion was accomplished. Sophocles writes of life in terms of tragedy. 
 His interest is not in classes or their conflicts so much as in individuals 
 and their struggles with the social will, or with what the Greeks called 
 Fate. His work has always been regarded as the type of what is known 
 as artistic work. He tries to present a faithful image of what he con- 
 siders the most representative facts of life, and he is not hampered by 
 any preconceptions of theory to account for the facts. Euripides, his 
 contemporary, is more a student of his time. His tragedies, on ac- 
 count of this primarily intellectual interest, are full of acute observa- 
 tions on contemporary life. Those of his plays, however, which are 
 considered the more excellent are usually lacking in this immediate al- 
 lusiveness. These are adjudged the more artistic, or, if that is a mean- 
 ingless qualifier, they are the plays that most powerfully affect the 
 feelings of the generality of men. But if the reader were first of all 
 an investigator of social conditions, he would be likely to rank higher 
 just these plays that most conspicuously recorded contemporary events 
 and ideas. That would apparently be the economically determined 
 literature, like Mrs. Gaskell's Mary Barton. But what of the others? 
 They seemed to proceed at that time immediately out of the feelings 
 evoked by religious needs and demands. Euripides' work was, I be- 
 lieve, accepted by the intelligentsia, but was sternly criticised by the 
 populace. Which was the dominating class that controlled literature? 
 Two kinds of literature then as now and always flourished side by side. 
 Chaucer and Langland show this excellently. Did wealth determine 
 the one, and lack of it the other? The intellectuals were wealthy; 
 Euripides had independent means. But suppose wealth determined 
 one and lack of it the other, either in the patron or the artist. Then 
 
 41 
 
that would surely imply a greater homogeneity in proportion as wealth 
 was more widely diffused. But Dr. Benham's thesis starts from the 
 very opposite standpoint. He tries to account for the variety and com- 
 plexity of art by economic causes. And to do this he has an ingenious 
 method of accounting for those works of literature which are not of 
 immediate economic import by suggesting that such literature is de- 
 termined negatively; that is, it is written or demanded by way of es- 
 cape from the conflict of economic conditions. That amounts to saying 
 that all activities of men that under examination cannot be accounted 
 for on economic grounds by any direct or indirect logical process are 
 undertaken and accomplished under compulsion of escape from eco- 
 nomic conditions. Economic causes then after all explain all activities ; 
 some positively, because of relationships discoverable by the intelli- 
 gence ; and others negatively, because the relationships are not discover- 
 able by the intelligence. We shall find this theory applied to literature 
 in the following manner. 
 
 The literature of the nineteenth century is dealt with under a num- 
 ber of heads. In Mrs. Gaskell's work it is found that one novel is 
 concerned with class conflicts, one with a religious problem, one with 
 an ethical problem, one with character-study. There are some works 
 in the period called romantic ; some, historical ; some, political ; some, 
 religious; some, realistic; and many others besides. Under each of 
 these heads it is an easy matter to find many other subdivisions accord- 
 ing to the viewpoint of the critic who examines the material. One view 
 of the economic theory would make it applicable as a designation for 
 those works between which and their economic background some re- 
 lationship could be discovered and explained. To the other works other 
 designations discovered and explained in similar ways would be ap- 
 plied. But according to Dr. Benham's view these designations should 
 all be merged in the economic, such works coming into being because 
 writers compose and readers read them to escape from the limitations 
 imposed upon them by economic forces, and therefore are negatively 
 determined by these same forces. 
 
 It does not seem to me to be a very illuminating explanation of a 
 complexity to say that some part of it results from certain forces posi- 
 tively as can be shown, and that the rest results from the same force 
 negatively because it cannot be shown positively. This theory amounts 
 in a sense to a sort of higher synthesis of the Marxian theory with its 
 moderate successors. Historians objected to the materialism of the 
 Marxian hypothesis in its attempts to give a positive explanation to 
 all the phenomena of life. Accordingly they modified it to admit the 
 
 43 
 
play of spiritual and ethical forces within certain limitations. It is 
 within these limitations, in which spiritual and ethical forces have some 
 scope for action, that literature, as I understand it, is to be found, since 
 literature is preeminently the medium in which such forces find their 
 clearest expression. Dr. Benham includes these forces and their free- 
 dom within the confines of his thesis by calling this freedom escape, or 
 negative expression; and thus he returns to something similar to the 
 Marxian hypothesis. To reveal the difference between this theory and 
 Professor Seligman's I shall include here a series of quotations from the 
 latter. 
 
 Professor Seligman says at the conclusion of his statement of 
 the case for the economic interpretation of history that "this theory 
 properly understood does not claim that every phenomenon of human 
 life in general, or of mental life in particular, is to be explained on 
 
 economic grounds No such claim can be countenanced for 
 
 the obvious reason that economics deal with one kind of social relationr?, 
 and that there are as many kinds of social relations as there are classes 
 of social wants." Again "Economics deal with only one kind of social 
 utilities or values and can therefore not explain all kinds of social 
 utilities or values." And again "The more civilized a society the more 
 ethical its mode of life. But to become more civilized, to permit the 
 moral ideals to percolate through continually lower strata of the popu- 
 lation, we must have an economic basis to render it possible. Not 
 until the economic conditions of society become ideal will the ethical 
 development of the individual have a free field for limitless progress. 
 Only then will it be possible to neglect the economic factor which may 
 henceforth be considered as a constant. The economic conception of 
 history properly interpreted does not neglect the spiritual forces in 
 history; it seeks only to point out the terms on which the spiritual life 
 has hitherto been able to find its fullest fruition." 
 
 According to Professor Seligman's explanation the complexity and 
 variety of literature today would be accounted for on the ground that 
 a broader and more stable economic basis had been prepared for the 
 readier expression and percolation of moral ideals and that the limits 
 against which the spiritual has chafed in the past have been .sufficiently 
 removed to allow it fuller fruition. Ethical ideals have always existed 
 in the exceptional individual and, of course, by implication in the in- 
 termediate individuals, and, I should think, potentially in most men; 
 but they have had little opportunity for expression because of the time 
 and energy required for supporting life. The spiritual life has always 
 existed among men but it has not been allowed to find expression ex- 
 
 44 
 
cept among the favored few in the main until a new method of co- 
 operation was introduced for the preparation of that essential economic 
 basis out of which the spiritual life grows in a multitude of forms. 
 
 If this is a correct interpretation of Professor Seligman's theory, 
 I am willing to accept it as very valuable among others for an under- 
 standing of the motives that have actuated men. But he leaves open a 
 very large loophole for the escape of literature from his method of 
 interpretation when he explicitly exempts spiritual and ethical forces 
 from the operation of this theory and admits (as does Dr. Benham) 
 that so-called great men appear by chance and that ethical and spiritual 
 ideals taught by such men lead the mass of mankind to higher levels, 
 becoming thus influential among the forces that affect progress. The 
 rule that explains the acts of such men is this: that "there is a new 
 principle and a new rule for every act of greatness." Historically con- 
 sidered, if the exemption for ethical and spiritual forces is made, this 
 exempted field is the one occupied in life by literature, and the econom- 
 ic theory can have little place for operation there. 
 
 Literature is now studied historically mainly in three ways: in 
 one as a part of the manifold activities of man and therefore accorded 
 its proportionate rank among other activities in historical study; in 
 another it may be regarded as having a history of its own separate from 
 its background and consisting of the relations and continuities of liter- 
 ary movements ; or in the third way it may be regarded as a con- 
 temporaneous record of, or commentary upon, the successive environ- 
 ments in which it has been produced. 
 
 The first is normal history. 
 
 The second study tends to make literature seem to have been the 
 preoccupation of men who have kept themselves aloof from life. It 
 gives literature an unwholesome air of disinterestedness and exclusive- 
 ness, and makes it lack in appeal to ordinary men and women. In the 
 study of an individual's work it tends to ignore those writings in which 
 he comments upon the conditions of his own time and upon the ideas 
 current among his contemporaries. It tends in short to etherealize 
 literature and make it the plaything of esthetes. 
 
 The third is the method that has yielded the most interesting and 
 valuable results in bringing literature back to the soil out of which 
 it has sprung. It has brought literature more and more into the 
 consciousness of ordinary men, and has made it seem a counterpart of 
 their lives, not a thing set aside for dilletantes and supermen. To show 
 what relationships exist between political ideals, social ideals, ethics, 
 religion, art, national psychology, race, natural environment and so on. 
 
 45 
 
is to bring literature back into the affairs of men ; and that was a serv- 
 ice that was very much needed in our Hterary study not so many years 
 ago. But excellent as it is, there is in this method observable a tendency 
 to become interested chiefly in that part of the background or of the 
 relating principle that the author affects to illustrate; so that if it be 
 proposed, for instance, to reveal literature as related to the political 
 ideals of various times, the reader finds himself and the author grad- 
 ually yielding to the superior attraction of the political ideals and ne- 
 glecting the literature. For various reasons this must be true. The 
 author is interested, of course, in his study of conceptions of state, 
 which are after all not literature. That which is literature he has to 
 use as it will fit the thesis. What cannot be made to agree is neglected. 
 The reader may read such a work and get a clear impression of a 
 species of continuity, but unless he be well-informed, be left quite 
 ignorant of the fact that a great deal of significant literature has been 
 ignored in order to obtain the impression of continuity. He will find, 
 too, that his reading is not far different from ordinary history and that 
 the works read are rather of an informative kind, works of an obvious 
 doctrinaire quality, not purely literary. If the reader be well-informed 
 in literature and wonder why primarily literary works are omitted and 
 himself try to make them serve under the general scheme, he will find 
 that the author has advisedly ignored them, since they cannot be so 
 explained. In all historical studies of literature the tendency is to em- 
 phasize history and to make literature a subsidiary study, and, in gen- 
 eral, to strain the issue, to warp meanings in the excess of partisan zeal. 
 The general or special historian must, from the nature of his 
 postulate, seek to present an explicable continuity ; he must seek plaus- 
 ible causes for known effects, and endeavor to deduce general law from 
 the observed events. For the man who seeks general laws personali- 
 ities are refractory material ; for there is always a something in them 
 that eludes the limitations of general schemes. Literature presents 
 this something, this essence of personality, as does art, better than any 
 other activities of man. "There is no master principle for that art 
 whose very nature it is to shun generality, and cleave to the unique na- 
 ture of each individual experience." (Eastman.) Therefore the histor- 
 ian of literature has the difficulties doubly enhanced. His work, if it 
 is realistic, gives the impression of being a history in one place and a 
 study of personalities in another place; the two can never be quite 
 fused together into a harmonious and satisfactory unity. The economic 
 theory is one of the most exacting and inclusive of general laws and 
 must therefore reduce to one level all the authors with which it deals. 
 
 4$ 
 
It must leave no place for qualitative evaluations which every reader 
 makes for himself, however much he may be advised to the contrary. 
 
 In the applications of economic theory to literature that have been 
 mentioned above, Professor Matthews is concerned only with forms 
 and with these in an extreme material way, involving no attempt at 
 interpretating the evolution of literature within the forms. Dr. Greg- 
 ory finds that the authors which are amenable to the requirements of 
 her theory are mediocre. These both are insisting upon the interpreta- 
 tion of literary history — let it be noted — not the interpretation of liter- 
 ature. There is a need of distinguishing in which case the theory is 
 applicable. It cannot be denied that the commercial element in supply 
 and demand and the changes in the methods of communication between 
 an author and his public are material things of which a material ac- 
 count may be given. Nor can it be denied that those writers who deal 
 with subjects more or less closely related to conditions of an economic 
 nature, may be grouped according to some economic designation. It 
 is of such men, however, that Turgenev says: "Those only who can- 
 not do better will submit to a preconceived program, because a truly 
 talented writer is the condensed expression of life itself, and he can- 
 not write either a pamphlet or a panegyric — either would be too mean 
 for him." Work that is doctrinaire, or didactic, or written as a con- 
 tribution to rational knowledge may be included within this group ; but 
 in both cases it will be seen that literature as such, containing and ex- 
 pressing some indefinite flavor of personality, cannot be readily in- 
 cluded in the scheme. The more imaginative literature, that which 
 makes its appeal to the feelings and emotions instead of to the reason is 
 almost invariably given scant justice in historical treatises. The fact 
 is, of course, that literature (as art) is in each case something unique, 
 an expression of a personality different from any other. It has quali- 
 ties and values distinct and separate from all men of the same time 
 and of other times, although it must be expressed in materials in a 
 sense common to all contemporaries. 
 
 The historian, of whatever kind, is concerned with the common 
 fund of materials in which men work ; the student of literature per se, 
 in the manner in which the material has been moulded, formed, made 
 into new creations. This historian is interested in what is alike among 
 many writers ; the investigator of literature, in what is different — in 
 values and qualities. 
 
 Shelley states the case thus: "Poets of any age have a generic 
 resemblance under which their specific distinctions are arranged." 
 History will of course be concerned with the generic resemblance, liter- 
 ary study itself, with the specific differences. It is worth while to quote 
 
 47 
 
Shelley here again. His conceptions of art are especially appropriate, 
 since it is he above all who is held up as an example of the manifesta- 
 tion of economic forces, and who is valued more and more for his 
 doctrinaire utterances. Referring to the extent to which the study of 
 contemporary works may have colored his compositions as well as 
 those of others, he says : "It is impossible that anyone who inhabits the 
 same age with such writers as those who stand in the foremost ranks 
 of our own, can conscientiously assure himself that his language and 
 tone of thought may not have been modified by the study of the pro- 
 ductions of those extraordinary intellects. It is true, that, not the 
 spirit of their genius, but the forms in which it has manifested itself, 
 are due less to the peculiarities of their own minds than to the peculiar- 
 ity of the moral and intellectual conditions of the minds among which 
 they have been produced. Thus a number of writers possess the form, 
 whilst they want the spirit of those whom, it is alleged, they imitate; 
 because the former is the endowment of the age in which they live, and 
 the latter must be the uncommunicated lightning of their own mind." 
 
 Here Shelley states clearly enough the case for the two methods 
 of study, the historical and the individual. The historical consists of 
 the moral and intellectual conditions in which the writer lives, the lat- 
 ter concerns itself with what Shelley calls "the uncommunicated light- 
 ning" of the individual mind. There are works in which one is not 
 aware of much uncommunicated lightning of personality. Such are 
 obviously concerned with the moral and intellectual ideas of their own 
 time, just as they might be concerned with the theory of economic de- 
 terminism today, and their work is usually expressed in pedestrian 
 prose. Their work is the result of the operation of the reasoning facul- 
 ty unaided, the record of analysis applied to logical ends ; they have a 
 purpose, a doctrine, a propaganda, which, if they attempt imagination 
 controls or vitiates its quality, and therefore destroys the necessary 
 impression of realism. Oftentimes they are not so much working with 
 ideas as ideas are working with them. From a literary standpoint they 
 are mediocre. 
 
 Shelley is considered a primarily doctrinaire writer by many mod- 
 ern interpreters who tend, I have observed, to ignore those poems of 
 his which, like all of Keats', have no discoverable social message; and 
 they reduce his revolutionary or social poems to rational schemes. In 
 the preface to Prometheus Unbound he speaks of such interpretations 
 in this way: "It is a mistake to suppose that I dedicate my poetical 
 compositions solely to the direct enforcement of reforms, or that I con- 
 sider them as containing in any degree a reasoned system on the theory 
 of human life. Didactic poetry is my abhorrence; nothing can be equally 
 
 4S 
 
well expressed in prose that is not tedious and supererogatory in 
 verse." 
 
 This last statement is one that I should like to commend to the 
 rationalizers of literature. True verse expresses some things which 
 cannot be expressed in prose. By verse is meant poetry, and by poetry 
 probably the equivalent of the German word Dichtung, including im- 
 aginative literature in general. If Shelley's revolutionary poems had 
 been reducible "in any degree" to a reasoned system on the theory of 
 human life, according to his own statement, they would not have been 
 written; for what could equally well have been expressed in prose is 
 tedious and uncalled-for in verse. Of course there may be some com- 
 fort for the rationalizers in the judgment of Plato that "poets utter 
 great and wise things which they do not themselves understand." Shel- 
 ley may not have understood the great and wise things which subse- 
 quent interpreters have been able to bring down to the level of a rea- 
 soned system. But it does not seem likely. As to his purpose he con- 
 tinues thus: "My purpose has hitherto been simply to familiarize the 
 highly refined imagination of the more select class of poetical readers 
 with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence ; aware that until the mind 
 can love, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned prin- 
 ciples of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which 
 the unconscious passenger tramples into dust, although they would 
 bear the harvest of his happiness." 
 
 I have quoted Shelley extensively because he is the storm center 
 around which contrary opinions rage ; and to show how one who is 
 claimed by both sides in the controversy insists that the author must 
 be regarded as a personality apart from environment, or law, in so far 
 as he is a literary artist. The time gives the form, the idea, the mater- 
 ials; the person himself, the spirit, the life-giving realization, the un- 
 communicated lightning. The external, the material, the formal, may 
 be studied historically; the essence, individually. The theory of eco- 
 nomic interpretation may be regarded as including history or as one 
 of the historical methods ; in either case its limitations in literature are 
 clear. But we are concerned with explaining the nature of literature. 
 The remainder of this paper will concern itself with that rather am- 
 bitious project. 
 
 Before proceeding with that, however, it will be necessary to ob- 
 tain some measure of consent to my assumption that we mean by liter- 
 ature in the main an artistic activity. I am assuming that literature is 
 one of the fine arts. Critics are wont to make a division between what 
 they call the literature of information and that of inspiration; or be- 
 tween the literature of knowledge and that of power, respectively. 
 
 49 
 
These divisions correspond realistically with certain obvious diflferences, 
 although there are border literatures in which both qualities are found 
 together. Some informational literature is written in an inspirational 
 manner, and some literature of power is written with the purpose of 
 presenting certain ideas. When we speak, for instance, of literature 
 as one of the branches of study in a university, I think we will admit 
 that it is considered as one of the fine arts, or, at all events, as a separ- 
 ate study along with history, philosophy, ethics, sociology, politics, 
 among the liberal arts. To the extent that literature is primarily in- 
 formative it will properly belong in that division of studies where its 
 facts are dealt with. But to the extent that in appealing to the emotional 
 and imaginative side of man's nature as well as to the intellectual, it 
 properly belongs in the category called literature in the university's 
 division of studies. It is with literature in this sense that I propose to 
 deal, and to try to indicate why it is not possible for any historical or 
 general and so-called scientific interpretation to give a satisfactory ex- 
 planation of it. 
 
 Anyone who has listened and contributed to discussions in the var- 
 ious groups dedicated to that purpose during the last year or so must 
 have been impressed with the tendency for all questions of an ethical 
 or esthetic nature, when the argument is pursued to its ultimate source, 
 to result in a sharp division upon the hypothesis which underlies them. 
 One group will be found to be mechanists; another, vitalists. Those 
 who are of the type of mind of the scientific specialists are usually the 
 mechanists ; those who are concerned with the conventional liberal stud- 
 ies are in the main vitalists. One group attempts to explain life as if 
 it were composed of chemical elements controlled by physical forces. 
 To this group life is physics and chemistry. This the vitalists deny. 
 They claim in addition something that they may call, perhaps, vital 
 force. 
 
 In general the method of explanation of the one school is analytic 
 and abstract ; they attempt to resolve things living or dead into their 
 elements and to discover the general laws whereby these elements are 
 combined to form the variety of organic as well as inorganic sub- 
 stances. The attitude they assume toward inorganic material and which 
 undoubtedly works there, they apply to'the investigation of all phenom- 
 ena, organic, inorganic, or conscious. They give the impression of 
 knowing of what all these things are composed and how the compon- 
 ents work together, much as a machinist will explain the construction 
 and operation of his engine. In each case the result of the analysis, 
 the element, is a simple, self-existent, thing. When this has been 
 reached one may retrace, build up, synthesize, make the machine, which 
 
will then be completely understood in all its parts. This is the im- 
 pression the mechanist makes upon the innocent listener. 
 
 His opponent is skeptical of the possibility of the analysis includ- 
 ing everything, in such a way that by assembling them you get what you 
 began with, in the case of organism or consciousness. He may accept 
 the analytic method as far as it goes and then insist upon adding an- 
 other element, spirit, force, whatever it may be called, of which neither 
 he nor anyone else knows much in an analytic way. He knows, how- 
 ever, that when he demands proof from the mechanist of such a kind 
 as would convince him when applied to inorganic material, it is not 
 forthcoming. He gets the answer that it cannot be given yet. The 
 questioner doubts that it will ever be given. He is firmly convinced 
 that another way of looking at things must be utilized in attempting 
 to understand life. The organic is to him everywhere and always dif- 
 ferent from the inorganic, so long as it is still alive. That the human 
 body is composed of chemical elements he may well grant. But that 
 fact was shrewdly suspected long since. We were told that it was but 
 clay, or dust, inspired with the breath of the divine; which if but the 
 inspiration be left out is the same thing. But the opponent of the me- 
 chanist insists upon keeping the inspiration so long as life last. He will 
 not believe that what is true of the inorganic is equally true of the or- 
 ganic ; that matter and force are the same as living matter and living 
 force or that any Uving thing can be reduced to elements in any sense 
 simple. To him it seems that the scientific mind cannot free itself from 
 the prejudice that effects may exist the causes of which it ignores. He 
 believes that, however minute the analysis, always the resultant will be 
 found to be as intricate a complexity as the organism with which the 
 analysis began, and will always be living. Any so-called primal plasm 
 yet discovered turns out to be so subtly complex that elemental sim- 
 plicity is as far removed as before. These things being so this inquir- 
 er's method of explanation is not that of analysis in the sense of finding' 
 the ultimate indivisible and self-existent elements out of which the or- 
 ganism may be made. It is rather that of discovering and revealing 
 relationships between the organism and the environing organism, be- 
 tween the smaller and contained and the larger and containing ; for not 
 anything can be understood by itself alone in this field. The very fact 
 of life involves everywhere interdependence, interrelation between or- 
 ganisms of lower and higher order. The part must be looked at in the 
 light of the whole. For these reasons the questioner's attempts at ex- 
 planation are those of analogy and metaphor instead of analysis. He 
 returns the impression of life as complex organism in forms which are 
 themselves as living and complex as life seems to his inquirying intelli- 
 
 51 
 
gence. He seeks for a harmony composed of diversity and complexity, 
 and returns it as such ; but the minutest form of his explanation will 
 be an organism, a living thing, in its sphere, as well as the organism of 
 which it makes up a part. This is the method of art. That art is imita- 
 tion of life is an old statement that often needs renewal. It is not a 
 statement of what simple elements make it up mechanically. The artist 
 does not say: "These are the things which may be added together to 
 make up life." He says rather: "This is what life seems like to me." 
 He employs in addition to the conventional categories under which the 
 universe appears to us, the one of organism; and when he speaks of 
 living things then he uses the corresponding category. 
 
 If he works in literature, in words, it is the same. It seems ob- 
 vious that the very existence of literature itself is proof that life can- 
 not be explained adequately to man except by some living counterpart. 
 I think it can be shown that even in the simplest of the elements with 
 which the author works, words, the process is always that of returning 
 something like the thing intended. Words themselves, one must be 
 tempted to think, arise, in this manner. 
 
 Speculations upon the origin of language may possibly be vain ; 
 even the origins of expressive words of recent coinage are apparently 
 lost in obscurity. Every year some new word or phrase seizes the popu- 
 lar imagination, becomes universally accepted, and yet so soon after 
 its acceptance its origin cannot be accounted for. The origins of hu- 
 man institutions, the origins of language itself cannot be known. Of 
 language we may a least say that it is in one sense to be regarded as 
 an instrument of communication, whether we conjecture its origin to 
 have been imitational or interjectional. As mere utterance it was prot)- 
 ably an accompaniment of gestures and grimaces intended to communi- 
 cate meanings which were existent before such efforts arose. .\s com- 
 munication language is broader and more fundamental than as facili- 
 tation of thought, and it is especially this aspect of language which we 
 are interested in. If we cannot discover origins we can at least observe 
 some changes which are occurring in recent time and upon this basis 
 speculate more securely. 
 
 Our dictionaries increase in size by leaps and bounds ; recent edi- 
 tions assume the volume of encyclopedias. This increase is explained 
 by the fact that our modern life is continually creating new material 
 forms, and scientific investigation, new distinctions which must be 
 characterized by new names. In some cases, in fact in most cases, the 
 method of naming new things is the simple one of fofining the new 
 name out of elements already existing in our own or some foreign 
 language. It is a sort of compounding process by which the new word 
 
 52 
 
explains the construction or functioning of the new machine or new 
 scientific classification. The process of constructing new words by 
 this compounding may be more or less complex, as will be seen by 
 analyzing some simple everyday words down to their so-called roots. 
 But the method whereby this compounding has been accomplished is 
 loo remote to be known. But it is significant that these roots seem to 
 be the equivalents of signs; they are integral signs, significant in their 
 entirety, and not divisible into parts. Whether there may be going on 
 some process of word-making similar to that by which these indivisible 
 roots were discovered is an interesting question for us here and now. 
 The method by which the new machine is named: the wireless, the 
 aeroplane, the automobile, is simple enough. But there are other real- 
 ities that are not so easily named. 
 
 We may assume, I think, that along with the numerous mechani- 
 cal inventions which are continually being named anew there are cer- 
 tain accompaniments in a more strictly human sphere which may not 
 be named in so mechanical a way. The possibilities of sensation and 
 emotion and experience in general are enlarged and intensified. These 
 also are new things. The aeroplane, for instance, has brought within 
 the reach of actual experience those sensations and emotions which 
 poets have tried to interpret and express by a process of sympathetic 
 imagination out of the flight of birds. I suggest this as one of the 
 most obvious and yet simple examples of that continuous coming of 
 new human experience which has been always true from the time when 
 something was to be communicated by gesture or grimace and sounds 
 until today, and for which language has come gradually to be the al- 
 most exclusive means for communication. For this new experience 
 what new name will serve? The simple compounding process that is 
 used to name the machine or logical distinction, as I have described 
 it above, will not serve in this case. The components of this new ex- 
 perience are not known, as are the functions and parts of the machine. 
 It seems not to have components ; it seems rather to be something whole, 
 integral. It must be named then, if at all by one word, by some process 
 of imitation, or creation, or intuition. Something felt must find ex- 
 pression directly in language, not through the mediation of the reason- 
 ing process. And although this new experience is one that may have 
 been enjoyed by many persons, not every \>ne of them will be able to 
 hit upon the name that will at once obtain common consent as the most 
 adequate. This is not so esoteric a matter as it may seen. Numerous 
 slang words and phrases arise in just this way, and anyone who tries 
 to define such words and phrases will discover that they are not synon- 
 ymous with others; they express exactly something which had not 
 
 53 
 
been hitherto expressed. Such words and phrases become the expres- 
 sive as well as the reputable stock of our language. A too rigid academ- 
 icism has often contrived to limit the natural growth of language. Too 
 much study of grammar and too little study of speech obstruct the 
 natural development of that organic reflection of life that we call lan- 
 guage. It must be admitted that any word which carries its expres- 
 siveness in its face instead of in its etymology like so many of our 
 I^atinisms and other borrowings is a more suitable word for us. 
 
 The naming of things is a process that never ceases. My purpose 
 so far has been to show how that process varies from the naming of 
 material things to the naming of intimate experiences. This latter pro- 
 cess is a species of creation, a bringing into articulateness of something 
 which is not yet so existent. The process cannot be described ; it may 
 be called intuition and representation. Language is in this sense the 
 medium which imitates something that exists nameless in the emotions 
 or feelings or sensations. Samuel Butler has some richly suggestive 
 things to say upon this question in his Note-Books. "We want words 
 
 to do more than they can ," he says. "We expect them to help 
 
 us to grip and dissect that which in ultimate essense is as ungrippable 
 as shadow." 
 
 We may proceed from this process which we may assume takes 
 place in the making of the word and say that a literary work is the 
 result of a similar activity, with the difference that it includes a wider 
 scope. It will represent a series of experiences, or a complex of emo- 
 tional states, or a new thought, for which no collocation of words, ar- 
 ranged according to any pattern available, will be adequate. It will 
 represent, too, a something new, something not analyzable — since it 
 conies out of an organic and personal source — but of infinitely complex 
 inter-relationships, which must find expression, if at all, in something 
 similar in some artistic medium, in imitation, or likeness, or analogy. 
 This new creation must make its appeal directly to the full personality. 
 It cannot appeal indirectly through the intellect alone and hope for 
 adequate representation. Hoffding, the Danish philosopher, expresses 
 the nature of literature when he says : "Every ideal possessed of signi- 
 ficance will reveal itself as a great concentrated expression of tendencies 
 of life which must have been moving spontaneously before they took 
 on the forms of thought and imagery." 
 
 A poem is the most excellent type of this literary form. It may 
 be regarded as an enlarged word, brought into being by the same pro- 
 cess and serving a similar but more complex need. It is for this reason 
 that a poem is called an enlarged metaphor, just as a new word is a 
 metaphor. And all literature of an imaginative kind is metaphor, what- 
 
 54 
 
ever type it may be. "For the true poet," says Nietzsche, "the metaphor 
 is not a rhetorical figure, but a vicarious image which actually hovers 
 
 before him in the place of a concept The character is not for 
 
 him an aggregate composed of a studied collection of particular traits, 
 but an irrepressibly live person appearing before his eyes, and diflfering 
 only from the corresponding vision of the painter by its own continued 
 life and action." Literature, in so far as it tries to represent that vast 
 organism life, as it is, must be metaphorical. So-called literature, pre- 
 senting a theory or a system or a body of knowledge or any abstraction, 
 is not attempting to represent life. By its very limitations it can only 
 represent a portion of living reality. The philosophers provide excel- 
 lent testimony to the truth of this contention. It was Aristotle who said 
 that "the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor;" for it 
 itnplies an intuitive perception of similarity in dissimilars. Literature 
 then is an attempt to reproduce the living functioning of the world in 
 an immediate manner — by likeness. The analytic process is not that 
 at all ; it is on the contrary an attempt to find the content as composed 
 of elements to be combined in many ways to form the whole. This 
 can, from the very nature of organism, not become an adequate repre- 
 sentation of life. 
 
 The danger that lurks in the supposition that such an explanation 
 of life is adequate may plainly be seen for instance in the fate of cer- 
 tain theories of economics. When scientific, or supposedly scientific, 
 conceptions of society based upon such methods are applied in practice 
 they may work for a time. But recent experience has shown that such 
 an interpretation cannot work long. When Ruskin applied a method 
 to economics which may be called the organic, and indicated that eco- 
 nomic science must be made to include the whole man, the whole per- 
 sonality, in its reasoning, since there is no reality corresponding to the 
 abstract economic man, he applied what is the essential literary attitude 
 toward this science. He humanized it and made it serviceable to actual 
 men. The element upon which economic science was to be built was the 
 individual man with all his wants included, as an integral part of the 
 complexity of society. This made the science inexact and largely de- 
 stroyed the value of the deductive method. I believe it is granted that 
 it was the impulse given to economic thought by Ruskin and similar 
 literary, or organic, thinkers that is responsible for the trend now taken 
 by economic studies, resulting in social legislation to make law and in- 
 dustrial organization aware of the laborer as a man and not an abstrac- 
 tion. Labor has even been allowed to maintain that it is not a com- 
 modity. What has happened in this case is an earnest of what must 
 happen to any theoretical conception of the nature of society that is 
 
based upon a mechanistic hypothesis. The mechanistic conception is 
 no doubt an efficient tool for scientific investigation. But when we 
 erect our understanding of Hfe upon that basis, it is as much as to say: 
 "I have constructed a very remarkable tool or machine. It works so 
 well, so efficiently that I am lost in admiration of it. I shall govern my 
 life according to it, and serve it." So the speaker denies himself a per- 
 sonality, a spirit or soul, and, as it were, gets himself inside of his ma- 
 chine and makes himself a mere part of it. But a machine with no 
 mind outside of it and controlling it is not a conceivable thing. Wher- 
 ever and whenever men have chosen to erect such machines and to ab- 
 dicate their essential humanity to them there have not been wanting 
 minds outside controlling and using them to their own personal ends. 
 The phenomenon that the world is now being permitted to speculate 
 upon with horror is not necessarily a new thing. The name of the 
 theoretical Absolute is different and the priests who serve it are clad In 
 shining armor. It is abstraction governing life. 
 
 There is another way of looking at a mechanistic conception, as 
 T have tried to indicate. Man might say : "No machine nor tool that I 
 create, whether mechanical or intellectual, however efficiently it may 
 work, can understand me, the mind which gave it birth, and certainly 
 shall not control me. It must, like all tools, serve me. It must serve 
 V) extend and enrich my personality, and at the same time to make me 
 more aware of other personalities like myself, and to make this larger 
 life that we call the world more and more a larger personality conscious 
 of itself as such." If we apply this attitude to the present world we 
 shall find that this larger organism is, as it were, suffering from an 
 hypertrophy of its Germanic organ, which is in such a diseased condi- 
 tion from the falsity of the hypothesis upon which it endeavors to func- 
 tion, that all the cells of life and health are feverishly at work in a 
 wonderfully correlated and co-operative attack upon the diseased por- 
 tion to reduce it to its normal functioning. When this shall have been 
 accomplished, the world will be organized upon that democratic basis 
 in which each part of the whole, as in other organisms, will have its 
 work determined by the whole and not by itself alone. We will have 
 discovered that there is no self-existent element in that larger organ- 
 ism; but that each realizes itself in its relationships. That will be an 
 application of the category of personality to the world; that is, it will 
 be the literary method of looking at life applied to the whole. A recent 
 political writer applies the pluralist theory to government in arguing for 
 the presence of sovereignty within sovereignty as follows: "One of 
 the qualities of life always is the possession of unstable equilibrium. 
 Chemically and physically the equilibrium of a living body is unstable, 
 
 66 
 
and cannot be maintained except by the presence of life. We may not 
 know what life is, but at least we know that it has the property of main- 
 taining unstable or dynamic equilibria. What is true of the individual 
 is also true of society. Apart from the existence of life, an imperium 
 in imperio is as impossible a position for a state, regarded mechanistical- 
 ly, as is standing upright impossible for a man, but if life be present, 
 it is the right attitude." 
 
 According to the view that opposes mechanism then the world is 
 an organism composed of more or less minute organisms down to the 
 smallest hitherto discovered, all of which are interdependent, and in- 
 terwoven in functional relationships, and which are explicable only in 
 the light of these relationships. This infinite complexity it is the busi- 
 ness of literature to try to reveal, through a medium, language, which 
 is' constructed after the same method, an organic counterpart. 
 
 So far I have spoken of the reasons why the world must be re- 
 garded as an organism and not as a mechanism, if literature is to exist 
 at all. There is, however, another fact as well known to each one of 
 us as the fact of life. That is personality. When I mentioned the re- 
 ality of the great-man conception, I suggested that our daily empirical 
 observations of men led us to evaluate personalities. We regard men 
 qualitatively, whether we are conscious of it or not. That is, in addi- 
 tion to the organism, there is the consciousness, or that which we call 
 the personality and of which men signify the presence in exceptional 
 cases by the term personal magnetism. We become aware of this by 
 actions, words, gestures, and the reactions to the relations of life. The 
 writer is one who is capable of giving this estimation of personalities, 
 including his own, in expressions which are unified, organic, and whole. 
 As in the case of the organism this personality cannot be regarded as a 
 self-sufficient individuality. It can only be understood as participating 
 in the wider personal life, and the world in which it exists can only be 
 understood as related to it in perception and volition. The world we see 
 is the world as we see it. And each individual, in so far as he is pos- 
 sessed of the power may communicate his own vision of it to us. 
 
 We know that no two men ever think alike even when they com- 
 mit themselves to the same formulas ; how much less should they feel 
 alike ? As Schiller says : "Two men with different fortunes, histories, 
 and temperaments ought not to arrive at the same metaphysic, nor can 
 they do so honestly; each should react individually on the food for 
 thought which his personality affords, and the resulting differences 
 ought not to be set aside as void of ultimate significance. Nor is it true 
 or relevant to reply that to admit this means intellectual anarchy. What 
 it means is something quite as distasteful to the absolutist temper, viz.. 
 
toleration, mutual respect, and practical co-operation." This statement 
 ought to apply with even more force in relation to the emotional and 
 volitional differences of men. When we hear then of the influence of 
 environment tending toward the levelling of men, it should be borne in 
 mind that even in this one general environment no two men have quite 
 the same environment after all, and that it is these differences that liter- 
 ature is especially interested in. If we were limited to the expression 
 of the cognitive faculties alone, the same intellectual environment would 
 be more likely to cause likeness than the expression of the other facul- 
 ties which make up the whole personality. 
 
 I have collected several expressions from widely separated sources 
 in order to show what men who have made it their business to create 
 literature have to say about it as a revelation of individuality. Arnold 
 Bennett makes this commonsense suggestion regarding the enjoyment of 
 literature in his advice to readers. When you are in doubt about your 
 judgment of a book, he says, ignore style, "and think of the matter as you 
 would think of an individual." That is so delightfully simple a maxim 
 one critic in a thousand would think of it. "What we should read," 
 says Butler, "is not the words but the man whom we feel to be behind 
 the words." A book is an individual ; why not think of it as you would 
 of an individual? vSurely your neighbor is something more than an 
 expression of economic necessity. 
 
 Zola is one writer who is still held up as a naturalist. He is sup- 
 posed to represent man as the sport of natural forces and without 
 independent personal existence. He says that "art is nature seen through 
 the medium of a temperament;" by which he obviously means that it 
 is the personal view of nature that distinguishes it, and gives it signifi- 
 cance. Francis Thompson insists that "the object of writing is to com- 
 municate individuality, the object of style adequately to embody that 
 individuality : and since in every individuality worth anything there are 
 characteristic peculiarities, these must needs be reproduced in the em- 
 bodiment." De Gourmont speaks to a similar effect: "The sole ex- 
 cuse which a man can have for writing is to write down himself, to un- 
 veil for others the sort of world which mirrors itself in his individual 
 glass He should create his own aesthetic — and we should ad- 
 mit as many aesthetics as there are original minds, and judge them for 
 what they are, not what they are not." I quote these men because they 
 are representatives of the art they try to explain, in preference to sci- 
 entists ; for I note that when scientists speak of literature they speak of 
 it under general classifications, such as they are wont to work with. 
 But I have been trying to show that literature exists on a level where 
 generalizations do not correspond with reality. I suspect that scien- 
 
 58 
 
lists of this kind even, when they are dealing with men, are as keenly 
 aware as any others of the fallacy of generalizing. I am sure that the 
 process of explaining a personality is one that is not carried on in a gen- 
 eral fashion but that it is a close study of each unique specimen; and 
 that in many cases it may take a long time to finish the explanation of 
 a character. A satisfying work of art is such a personality. 
 
 In conclusion I would quote a statement from Vernon Lee, who 
 has spent her life in art criticism, and who seems to be as competent 
 a person as can be found to speak of the history and development of 
 this subject. Its later development has been from the artistic criticisnj 
 of Sainte-Beuve, a sort of empirical personal criticism; through the 
 philosophies of art of Hegel and Taine, which tended to subordinate 
 the personal element to the historical view — to environment, civiliza- 
 tion, and race, archaeology, comparative religion, anthropology, and kin- 
 dred studies ; until now in the end it is back again at the starting-point ; 
 so that "we seem to return," as she says, "to the earliest and naivest an- 
 swer to the question. Why has a work of art come to be just what it 
 is ? namely, that there is a special creative power in the artist." We must 
 consider "the individual endowment of each artist in its turn selecting, 
 rejecting, transforming the traditions which he has received from his 
 predecessors and the tasks he has accepted from his paymasters." This 
 is a question "upon which archaeology, dealing with anonymous or un- 
 documented works, and therefore rather with schools than with mas- 
 ters, does not promise much help. We have arrived in the presence of 
 the great, the mysterious question of the individual artistic endowment 
 and its relation to the general temperament and life of the individual 
 artist. This is a question for the psychology of individual variations, 
 that, so to speak, new-born study working, as it must work sooner or 
 later, in concert with a more scientific development of 'Connoiseur- 
 ship', that nowadays still rule-of -thumb comparison between the works 
 of a master and his pupils." Miss Lee is here speaking in the main of 
 the plastic arts ; but what she says is as applicable to literature, which 
 we have contended is also a fine art. J. E. Spingarn is more explicit 
 upon the literary question in these words : "granted the times, the en- 
 vironment, the race, the passions of the poet, what has he done with his 
 material, how has he converted poetry out of reality? To answer this 
 question — as it refers to each single work of art is to perform what Is 
 truly the critic's vital function; this is to interpret 'expression' in its 
 rightful sense, and to liberate aesthetic criticism from the vassalage to 
 Kulturgeschichte imposed upon it by the school of Taine." It seems 
 that the attempted explanation of the nature of art and literature by 
 general laws is being found inadequate. Those who still maintain that 
 
 59 
 
tradition are defending a forlorn hope. They make excellent historians 
 but doubtful literary critics. If they would explain literature they must 
 study it in each case in the creating personality. 
 
 Since I have so much stressed the importance of looking at the 
 world as personality, it ought not to be necessary to reassert my belief 
 that, if we would really understand this world, literature is at least of 
 equal importance with any and all scientific studies. I subscribe to 
 Arnold Bennett's following testy declaration: "Literature instead of 
 being an accessory, is the fundamental sine qua non of complete living 
 
 he who has not been 'presented to the freedom' of literature 
 
 has not wakened up out of his prenatal sleep. He is merely not born. 
 He can't see; he can't hear; he can't feel, in any full sense. He can 
 only eat his dinner." Bennett has here excellently described that 
 shrewd American advertiser who expressed his conviction of the eco- 
 nomic determination of life in this manner: "Tell me what you eat and 
 I'll tell you what you are." 
 
 60 
 
WHY I SYMPATHIZE WITH ENGLAND 
 
 61 
 
WHY I SYMPATHIZE WITH ENGLAND 
 March 1, 1917 
 
 When I first began to consider the preparation of this paper and what 
 would be the necessary limits of the somewhat vague subject assigned 
 to me, in order to do some show of justice to it in a few minutes of 
 exposition, I thought of presenting an account of the steps which had 
 led England into the war, and to try to justify her in that action. I, 
 and all of us together, I suppose, have read thousands of pages, in all 
 manners of presentation, from the cold and calm to the fervid and pas- 
 sionate, on the cause of each belligerent. We have, in our own think- 
 ing, carefully noted each hard-won step in a strictly logical chain of 
 reasoning to establish our contention, whatever it might be. Then we 
 have been disconcerted within the week to find that the premises upon 
 which we had built were not so secure as they ought to be. We have 
 nevertheless gone to work again with patience to rebuild that absolutely 
 necessary structure of logic with which we were to confound our op- 
 ponent when next we should meet. Then again we have had the mor- 
 tification of learning that there might be some reasonable doubt as to 
 the truth of the simple materials of our thought. Now after such a 
 course has been continued for a time, one begins to question the ad- 
 visability of proceeding in the same way. Remembering such exper- 
 iences, I have wondered whether it would be worth while again to 
 construct a seeming tower of strength for my mental security; for al- 
 most certainly it will be undermined again by opponents in the argu- 
 ment. Whether I try it again or not, I know that the constructive pro- 
 cess will keep going on, in spite of the most persistent discouragements. 
 It is in this never-dying spirit of constructiveness after all that the 
 hope of the future lies ; especially now that that spirit is so sorely tried 
 by the spectacle of a world in ruins. For it is but a manifestation of 
 the desire to arrange the world in an orderly fashion, which each one 
 of us has within him ; that is, it is the desire for peace. So although I 
 .shall not primarily attempt to erect another of those vainly rational 
 structures of which I have spoken, I want to pay a tribute to that in- 
 cessantly constructive, rational attitude. It is the world's indirect ex- 
 pression of a powerful longing for peace, and therefore worthy of 
 every encouragement. 
 
 With this explanation then I propose to examine into that basis 
 of emotion, instincts, feelings, (you may call it prejudice, if you will) 
 
 63 
 
which persists in throwing up one logical structure after another so 
 determinedly. In these matters we do not always reason in order to 
 convince ourselves. The conviction, more often than not, has come 
 before the reasoning process begins ; and it remains hidden down below 
 somewhere, weaving, working, building, seemingly undisturbed by what 
 catastrophes overtake its labors. It is this basis, down below, in the 
 twilight, curiously compact of shreds of feeling and patches of emotion, 
 threaded together with filaments of thought and reflection, that I in- 
 tend to look into tonight. This is a worthy labor, too, as well as the ac- 
 tivities I have spoken of. We should consider everything in every 
 possible way, if thereby some light may be cast in dark places. 
 
 I told a friend what I proposed to do : to write an explanation of 
 my reason for favoring England in the world war. He said, "What's 
 the use? Everybody knows that." To which I answered: "Well, if 
 that is so, I should be very glad to find out myself, too. That's what I 
 propose to do." And it may turn out that everybody's explanation is 
 different from the true one. It is an instance of the unfortunate habit 
 of generalizing to say that because a man has been a Rhodes Scholar 
 at Oxford University he must necessarily be a supporter of England, 
 whatever England's cause may be. Englishmen are not united on the 
 question of the war. Should Rhodes Scholars be more united than 
 they are? At all events, Oxford as I remember her, will be anxious 
 that I seek truth. 
 
 Some of you who have studied the English constitution and English 
 government may say in respect of the plan I have set myself: "That 
 certainly is characteristically English." For it is so much emphasized 
 that the English rely upon instinct to extricate themselves from predica- 
 ments, that they avoid reasoning out their institutions in advance but 
 rely upon instinct to guide them when the crisis is at hand. Their con- 
 stitution itself is an imperishable record of crises met in this way, of 
 institutions patched up to meet new demands in the national life, and 
 of the organic rather than the rational nature of English government. 
 They characterize it themselves as a "curious penumbra of law and 
 morality." It is the policy of "muddle through" glorified. 
 
 So I shall have to admit that my method seems English in a sense. 
 But I am examining into the past. They apply the attitude toward the 
 future, too. Between these two acts there is a difference. 
 
 I returned ten years ago from a three-years' stay at Oxford. I 
 spent a large part of my vacation time on the continent. Vacations in- 
 clude a larger period of time in England than in America. Terms at 
 Oxford comprise 24 weeks in the year ; vacation, 28 ; so that half of my 
 time might be spent in England and half away. It is of the impressions 
 
of these years in England and on the continent that I intend to speak, 
 recording them as they came to me, favorable and unfavorable to one 
 country and the other, and amalgamated to form that foundation which 
 determines my subsequent reasoning. First of all I shall consider Eng- 
 land, as the land and its life made favorable impressions upon me. 
 (This may include what may seem minutiae; but I am sure that each 
 one who introspects into the causes of his actions and moods from day 
 to day will agree with me that minutiae sometimes become mountainous 
 in their effects.) 
 
 I shall never forget the appearance of the English landscape as it 
 spread out before us when we approached on the steamer, and as it 
 rolled away before our vision from the car windows on the journey 
 from Liverpool to Oxford. Neatness, orderliness, cosiness, homeli- 
 ness are the words that come at once to mind to describe it. The vivid 
 greenness of it in varying shades of the color, the tidiness and trimness 
 of the general effect, gave it that quality of beauty that one associates 
 with a well-kept, well-watered garden. It was not nature on the grand 
 scale, such as we know her. But, it seemed to me, that the word "home" 
 as applied to an entire nation might here seem not a far-fetched, emo- 
 tionally patriotic expression. Long generations past had left the traces 
 of their efforts, and nature had been thoroughly domesticated. It 
 seemed to me that even a tramp in England might consider himself at 
 home. This is a vivid impression, as you see; it was never erased or 
 overlayed; but rather deepened and intensified; so that a poem de- 
 scribing the simple English countryside, like Rupert Brooke's Grant- 
 chester, stirs me more deeply than anything else I know. At Oxford 
 I found the tutors kindly and tolerant and anxious to make one at home 
 in the new environment. I am not recording this as anything exception- 
 ally favorable; for that is a teacher's business, I suppose. I had not 
 been in Oxford very long before I became absorbed in the study of 
 its very strange system, so different from our American system that 
 the contrast is forced upon one whether he be given to thinking or not. 
 The more I studied the more favorably impressed I became. I found 
 it to have been devised in the spirit of freedom and in the interest of 
 freedom. What appears at first sight to be a rigid and limited curri- 
 culum reveals itself to be a flexible system which does what it is de- 
 vised to do with a minimum of effort and time lost in the administra- 
 tion of red tape. It was a humanistic system, always aware of each 
 and every individual under its instruction and directing its efforts 
 towards the development of the individual, not according to some pre- 
 determined needs, not according to the needs of some research scholar 
 who would utilize the labors of his students for his own personal pur- 
 
 65 
 
poses, but according to the requirements of the pupil as they were dis- 
 covered in his close intellectual association with his tutor. It gave me 
 then an impression of freedom in instruction, and of confidence in the 
 intellectual integrity of the learner. This was a surprising and pleasing 
 discovery to one fresh from a system more like manual of arms, or at 
 best, school drill. I began to see how essentially undemocratic our 
 conception of university education in reality was, and how necessary 
 it was that we in America adopt some system conceived in the spirit oi 
 what I found at Oxford. Happily that has been largely accomplished 
 in the ten years since I left England, even though the new system is not 
 yet administered with unvarying understanding and success. 
 
 Of English athletics so much has been said of late years that I 
 venture with some hesitancy to speak of it again. However, it made 
 such an impression that I must make the venture. The athletic system, 
 too, is humanistic ; fitted to the students, not the other way about. There 
 was no university gymnasium at Oxford, I learned with great surprise. 
 If you can imagine a landscape like the one I describe above, and a 
 climate to go with it, that is, a fairly tractable one, equal and temper- 
 ate, and furthermore a fondness for exercising in the open inherited 
 from sportloving ancestors, and a tradition that a man who doesn't 
 take outdoor exercise is a "slacker," as they say — if you can imagine 
 these things, you can readily see that there is no need of a g)'mnasium, 
 no need of a hotbed for the forced culture of exercise, no need of bad 
 imitation of a very real and wholesome thing. The athletic system then 
 was a method by which the desire and need of exercise expressed itself 
 naturally. It was commonsense. No man so weak, none so effeminate, 
 but that there was something he might do and did do, if nothing more 
 than walking across country or punting on the Cher. This is another 
 indication of the method of making the educational ideal suit the need 
 of the individual, a democratic ideal. 
 
 In connection with athletics more nearly than with any other in- 
 stitution, I think it would be pertinent to attempt an analysis of what 
 the English call "fair play." It is the spirit that animates the athletic 
 system. It is shown, of course, in the insistence that every man shall 
 have a chance. It is shown again in the playing of games in the desire 
 not to have any advantage over an opponent. I never heard of rules 
 contests at Oxford ; I never saw any athlete complain that a game was 
 being stolen from him ; I got the impression, indeed, that the unwilling- 
 ness to do these things was a part of the training one got from playing. 
 In a university tennis match, when a player smashed a ball in a man- 
 ner impossible to return, I have often heard him apologize for it. In 
 a rugby match or a soccer match I have heard men apologizing for un- 
 
 66 
 
necessary violence. Obviously these games were not being played for 
 any purpose beyond the game itself. We would say that that is in- 
 efficiency. The Englishman might say that self control, honesty, honor, 
 understanding may not be so well cultivated if the efficiency of the 
 game were the primary consideration. Always the question is, "What 
 is the human value of this thing?" "In the eager anxiety about win- 
 ning, may I not do violence to my better self?" This did not appear to 
 me to be a form of egoism, of undue attention to self-development ; but 
 an expression of lively regard for the opponent, sympathy for him and 
 understanding of him, and keen desire to retain his confidence and es- 
 teem. That, I think is the essence of "fair play" as it is shown in games. 
 I liked it very much. 
 
 While I was at Oxford I had an excellent opportunity to observe 
 what the military spirit in England was. Lord Roberts had agitated 
 for stronger military preparation for a long time, and as a result of his 
 work there was recruited a number of voluntary companies at Oxford. 
 I am not certain as to the status of the new army, but I think it was 
 similar to our militia. What interested me was the fact that, although 
 service was quite optional, there was a keen sentiment about it in the 
 various colleges and a devotion to the cause great enough to call the 
 men out to drill under strict military supervision at six o'clock every 
 morning. The men were rather enthusiastic about their work and 
 willing to undergo sacrifices for what seemed simply patriotic reasons. 
 It contrasted strangely with what I had seen of college drill at the Uni- 
 versity of Washington. Let it be remembered that it was purely volun- 
 tary and that no stigma attached to refusing to volunteer. 
 
 Toward the end of my three years abroad I had progressed so far 
 in my understanding of the English character that I could say that I 
 liked the English people very much. I had at length discovered, under 
 the forbidding protective husk that may wound at first, many delight- 
 ful, simple and gentle human qualities. The Englishman will be the 
 last man to wear his heart upon his sleeve, I imagine. I think it is on 
 account of his extreme sensitiveness that he seems cold, and that it is 
 on account of his keenly sympathetic understanding of his fellowmen 
 that he is sensitive. Sensitive men are notoriously shy, and oftentimes 
 incur the reproach of priggishness or snobbishness when the truth of the 
 matter is that they are very simple and companionable. They were 
 very likely to be taken by storm by breezy American manners ; for such 
 they supposed were typically American, and they like to see men live 
 up to the characters they are assumed, from their reading, to have. But 
 when they found in some Americans the same qualities they themselves 
 possessed they were somewhat nonplussed and reserved. Given time 
 
 67 
 
and real understanding and they became the most companionable of 
 men. And English hospitality, when one has deserved it, is a delight- 
 ful experience. It is not their aim to entertain you in their homes ; they 
 are not making a show of you to the neighbors, nor are they over- 
 whelming you with a schedule of events in your honour. They have 
 too keen a sense of your individuality and of its desires and of its right 
 to its own expression to bury it under an avalanche of well-meant but 
 inept intentions. They do to you as they would be done by. You arc 
 one of the family, subject to its rules, expected to observe its customs, 
 and with each member's right to spend his time as he pleases. It may 
 seem lacking in cordiality ; but I am sure it is not lacking in fine under- 
 standing. I will own that to a Westerner it is difficult to get this view- 
 point. It took many of us Americans all the three years to get it. For 
 we expect a man to reveal the innermost secrets of his personality in 
 a handshake. An Englishman knows that it cannot be done. He is 
 willing to bide his time both to understand and to be understood; but 
 he is all the time extremely anxious to know. I came to like this too, 
 very much. 
 
 I have now touched upon several aspects of English life and man- 
 ners as they favourable impressed me. There is another side of the 
 picture ; and that I shall describe next. 
 
 Along with my idyllic picture of the English landscape I associate 
 hideous pictures of slum life in cities. When I was a school-boy I read 
 Dickens with great pleasure. I used to wonder what strange imagina- 
 tion possessed the artist who illustrated him; for it was incredible to 
 me that anywhere in the world such miserable people could live, in 
 such disreputable surroundings. One day soon after my arrival in 
 Oxford I wandered into a part of the town called, ironically enough. 
 Paradise Lane, and there I saw a scene in front of a "pub" which was 
 so vividly reminiscent of Dickens and his impossible illustrator that 1 
 cried out in astonishment at the truth of both. There was actually such 
 abject wretchedness in England; there were actually such caricatures 
 of humanity living there. This impression was repeated in every town 
 I visited ; and in London intensified and ^;irtensified, if I may coin the 
 word. That there should be so foul a blot on so fair a landscape is one 
 thing for which I have never forgiven England. Well might Ruskin 
 and Carlyle, and Arnold and Newman, and Morris and Mill, and all 
 the liberal and forward-looking men of the late nineteenth century cry 
 out against this horrible desecration of a great country. 
 
 A reflex expression of this misery was to be seen in the obsequi- 
 ousness of servants everywhere. The attitude of the man who looked 
 after my wants in college was such that it made me rage against a caste 
 
 S3 
 
system if it could make such things of men. The manner of young 
 boys just up from school in addressing venerable servants was intoler- 
 able. I tried to make the man wrho served my staircase feel that I re- 
 garded him as a human being of about the same stuff as myself only to 
 discover that he thought me a fool and cheated me out of all he could 
 possibly lay his hands on. Some experiences of this kind taught me 
 that I had better acquiesce in the social system as I found it, wfith such 
 good graces as I could command. 
 
 My first week in college was a trying experience. I remember yet 
 how each night after dinner with a few men who were present so eager- 
 ly, I went back to my rooms and jotted down a note in my diary to the 
 effect that I had just returned from another session in the refrigerator. 
 So distant and reserved, and uncommunicable a lot of men I have nev- 
 er since met. And from that time till the end of the first term I had a 
 series of most disagreeable experiences with Englishmen. I might be 
 invited out to breakfast or tea or lunch with an upperclassman and 
 after leaving his room, might meet him in the quad and be given the 
 "cut direct" by him. I might spend a pleasant evening talking with a few 
 freshmen in my room and have them ignore me the next day. I might 
 get the greeting "hello" from a man in the morning and pass him again 
 during the day several times without even being noticed by him. These 
 were disagreeable experiences. Finally I asked a man with whom I had 
 come to feel somewhat at home, what was the reason for such behavior. 
 He said that upperclassmen never recognized freshmen except when 
 they were their hosts at some function in their rooms. And further, he 
 said that it was absurd to be always saying "hello" to men you were 
 meeting repeatedly during the day. When you greeted a man in the 
 morning that ought to be enough for the day. After all, that is ex- 
 cellent commonsense, thought I ; and cut men regularly without a second 
 thought. It is sensible enough from their standpoint. 
 
 My first impressions of the English people were distinctly unfavor- 
 able. I thought them cold, distant, indifferent, and inaccessible. 1 
 seemed to be a sort of curiosity for their inspection in a casual way. I 
 felt that I was some rare bird on exhibition. (I was one of the first 
 American Rhodes Scholars in Exeter College). It was all very irk- 
 some. 
 
 These first unpleasant impressions led me directly to reflect on the 
 evils of classes in a population. I learned what it meant to be a mem- 
 ber of the upper class, or the middle class, or the lower classes. It was 
 repugnant to one's Americanism. I made inquiries about the system. 
 I asked one of my best friends why Mr. So-and-So was left out of 
 things in the freshman class. He said that the boy was not a gentle- 
 
 69 
 
man. That seemed strange ; for he was one of the best-mannered men 
 in the year, according to my judgment. Then I learned that he was no 
 gentleman because his father was an ironmonger, that is a hardware 
 merchant, obviously wealthy, to be able to send a son to Oxford. That 
 interested me in finding out what constituted a gentleman. Well, he 
 said, "This man's son might be a gentleman; certainly his grandson 
 would be." He himself, however, had no chance; for he was not far 
 enough removed from the earning of money by trade. This was illum- 
 inating to me. My informant was a poor country parson's son, and, I 
 suppose, the most democratic man in the college. 
 
 Of a similar kind with this was the attitude toward service in the 
 church and the army. Both professions seemed to be regarded as per- 
 quisites of the upper classes. A good comfortable living in the country 
 offered an easy berth for one who was not too ambitious. There was 
 no hint of the desire to enter a life of human serviceableness in choos- 
 ing the ministry. It was rather like the attitude taken by certain chron- 
 ic officeholders in our country. The country owes them a job, they 
 seem to think. Their class entitles them to an easy living in the church. 
 As for the army and the navy, especially the army, that too is a service 
 reserved for the wealthy or the privileged. The son who doesn't seem 
 to fit anywhere may have a commission purchased for him in the army. 
 That gives a curious impression of what army service is considered to 
 be. It seems to be rather social than military in the stricter sense. 
 
 The atmosphere of the University is in the main conservative. 
 There is a tendency to dry down the things which the modern world is 
 doing and to find all wisdom crystallized in the ancients. The liberal 
 statesman in England in my time were rather cordially hated in univer- 
 sity circles. Lloyd George was an object of universal aversion. 
 
 Oxford, I must admit, is an aristocratic university. It offers no 
 opportunity to the workingman or his son. A man could not work his 
 way through the university, as he might work his way through an 
 American college. They have a caste of servants who do the very work 
 that students would be allowed to do here. It would be impossible for 
 a student to do this work. He would be ostracized, and life made a 
 burden for him. Hardy in Jude the Obscure has made a keen study of 
 the university's attitude on this question, and it is a highly unflattering 
 picture. These are the unpleasant impressions that I remember best. 
 
 If there seems to be an inconsistency betv/een some of these and 
 some of the former pleasant impressions, it must be borne in mind that 
 I am recording alf impressions, some of which were rectified by time. 
 
 I shall now turn to Germany, and give an account of my exper- 
 iences there, beginning, as in the case of England, with the favorable. 
 
 70 
 
I left England with great relief to spend my first Christmas at 
 Heidelberg. The five weeks I spent there are among the most agreeable 
 of my memories of foreign travel. I discovered here an attitude dia- 
 metrically different from that of the English — friendly, interested, hap- 
 py, prosperous, generous. It was as if they were always eager to get 
 acquainted with the stranger, to show him their sights, to inform him 
 about the curiosities of their life and customs, to teach him the lan- 
 guage and learn his in turn, to show him with an almost childish joy 
 how well informed they were about the life of his own country. It is 
 a manner that is powerfully attractive to the lonely American. It is 
 more like the American than different, I think, in most ways. At 
 Christmas the stranger is taken into the family celebration and shares 
 the joys of the time. The German loves his cafes and restaurants. 
 They give him so good an opportunity to indulge in that social life that 
 he values. To visit one of these was to be taken into comradeship by 
 all present. Theirs is the hearty, unaffected, perhaps boisterous, hos- 
 pitality of simple folk. Wherever I found simple German people, there 
 I found the same geniality and interest and kindliness — in Berlin, in 
 Dresden, in Munich, always the same. In Dresden the Saxons are a 
 trifle more formal, but extremely fond of their art and opera; and in- 
 clined to chide the Prussians. In Munich there is a trifle more color 
 and vivacity, more artistic natures; and the same dislike of the Prus- 
 sians. That orderliness that I mentioned as characteristic of the Eng- 
 lish landscape was in Germany extended to human life as well. I saw 
 none of those hideous evidences of poverty and distress that were so 
 frequent in England ; nor were unemployed men loitering on the streets. 
 There was more of an air of contentment and prosperity; all seemed 
 well-clad and well-fed. I think this impressed me more favorably than 
 anything else in Germany when I contrasted it with parallel English 
 sights. There seemed to be a sort of American note in the rather ex- 
 hilarating business atmosphere of the quaint, old-world setting. Things 
 were up-to-date, scientific, smart, the very latest. There was a more 
 cordial receptiveness toward American invention in Germany than in 
 England. 
 
 The sense of civic pride was highly developed. City utilities were 
 splendidly administered. Street railway systems, surface, underground, 
 and elevated, were highly developed. Parks, zoos, museums, galleries, 
 theatres, operas, were arranged to give the maximum of service and 
 comfort and pleasure. Picnic grounds and prospect towers were to 
 be found in the environs of every town. It was astonishing to me what 
 pains had been taken to exploit the possibilities of wholesome amuse- 
 ment in town and country. Life was clearly well cared for. 
 
 71 
 
The German people seem actually to have some real knowledge and 
 understanding of art. Pictures, plays, operas, symphonies — the very 
 streetsweeper seemed to knovf them. To stand in line w^aiting for 
 tickets at the Royal Opera of a Sunday morning, along with scrub- 
 women and cabdrivers, and listen to their intelligent and discriminating 
 criticism of the best music would be a rare experience, I think you will 
 admit. To hear Wagner sung by Destinn for twenty-five cents ; to hear 
 Joachim at the Berlin symphony for fifteen cents; these are great satis- 
 factions (at prices which are decidedly un-American.) 
 
 These details must suffice to indicate what impression German life 
 made upon me. That I have not included institutions among the things 
 impressing me favorably is due to the fact that I was continually mov- 
 ing about and not quietly studying such things as in England. 
 
 Many of the impressions I have mentioned above were from Berlin. 
 But in general I found Berlin to be more like an American city than 
 a typical European city. And I did not care so much for that in 
 Europe. It was glaringly new, it was garish, it was boastful, it was of 
 the mushroom variety of city growth ; and it was infested with soldiers. 
 Great barracks loomed up in the midst of the city. Here is a list of 
 them in part: The Cuirassier Guards, the Dragoons, the Emp. Alex- 
 ander, the Emp. Franz, the Field Artillery, the First Foot, the Fusiliers, 
 the Gardes du corps, the Hussar, the Queen Augusta, the Queen Eliza- 
 beth, the Railway Regiments, the Third Foot, the Train Corps, the 
 Uhlans. Soldiers were daily marching out to drill and back, parading, 
 standing guard-mount, lounging along the avenues and parks, crowding 
 the public places. I have no hatred of the common soldier ; he comes 
 from the simple stock that I have tried to praise above, as the finest 
 among men. But at Berlin I conceived a hatred for militarism that will 
 not down ; and that principally on account of the Prussian officer type, 
 as he is seen in his perfection. Let me attempt a composite picture of 
 him. A tall, broad-shouldered, heavy- jawed, bull-necked, slightly fat 
 man, dressed with the immaculate affectation of the perfect fop, star- 
 ing insultingly at every woman, and insolently at every mere man, 
 striding with Olympian disdain through the mean workaday world- 
 such I see him again. Time and time again I have had to take to the 
 street to let him have the entire sidewalk. All my friends had done the 
 same. Whenever we were met together and an officer was observed, 
 then and there might be heard vigorous language — and picturesque, in 
 description of militarism. For arrogance, superciliousness, affectation, 
 insolence, brutality, commend me to the Prussian officer. And he is an 
 elegant dandy withal. I saw ten German officers wearing monocles, to 
 one Englishman. Yet we picture the English fop as affecting the single 
 
 72 
 
eye glass. When we speak of militarism we are in the realm of sinister 
 suggestions. There were many hospitals for diseases of women in Ber- 
 lin. The bookshops were always making prominent displays of books 
 on sexual questions and prostitution. A friend of mine Secame ac- 
 quainted with a pleasant young officer who boasted of his valor in cer- 
 tain encounters, (in the parks and other places of public gatherings). 
 He kept a record covering all the pages of a pocket memorandum of 
 his triumphs. I don't remember how many more than a hundred girls 
 he had seduced; he was no patronizer of prostitutes. He was one of 
 about 60,000 soldiers in Berlin at that time. This is a vivid impression. 
 
 There was militarism everywhere in Germany, of course; but no- 
 where else did I get so unfavorable an impression of it as in Berlin. 
 In Dresden there were soldiers everywhere ; but the people spoke their 
 dislike of Prussia. In Munich there were soldiers everywhere; they 
 spoke their dislike of Prussia. And I believe what I saw in Berlin 
 was the reason why. In Munich, pleasant place as it is; most delight- 
 ful of all German cities to me, I recorded a scene that lies deep-graven 
 on my memory. Returning late one night to my lodgings which were 
 near one of the great barracks of the city I saw a gang of women at 
 work unloading lumber from a number of wagons just under the walls 
 of the barracks. It might be possible that some of the youth snoring 
 in their bunks above were the sons of those women toiling dully through 
 the night. Or if not of these, of other women drudging at hard manual 
 labor. For one saw gangs of them laying water mains, cleaning sewers, 
 sweeping streets. In Berlin there was one clear juxtaposition of cause 
 and effect; here, another. I prefer the Munich picture; but I reject 
 both. 
 
 One may find the effects of a system like this in many unexpected 
 places when one's attention is called to it. Now I noticed the German 
 policemen always wore regular military helmets, and carried swords. 
 Of what use is a military helmet and a sword to a policeman? The 
 London bobby carries no arms at all. He is the very pink of courtesy. 
 Train officials all wore military uniform. Think of a fireman pitching 
 coal into the firebox, dressed in a military blouse with high collar, of 
 brakemen on the trains similarly dressed, of all these persons standing 
 rigidly at attention and saluting a stationmaster on arriving at or leav- 
 ing a station. Why are such manners needed? 
 
 When one has asked why it is that almost all the men of higher 
 class in Germany bear ugly scars across their faces, he is told that it is 
 merely a university custom. Men challenge each other to duels in a 
 friendly way, and they fight a duel, just as we fight a football game, to 
 develop nerve and courage and coolness, and honor. One suspects that 
 
 7S 
 
it is for still another purpose. The duel is still a very live institution, 
 in spite of this imitation of it in the universities, which leaves its scars 
 upon the faces of youth to be worn with the pride one feels here some- 
 times in a fraternity pin. Probably it is a potent aid in keeping alive the 
 military tradition with its joy in flashing swords and physical courage. 
 
 With this record I shall end my account of clear memories. If I 
 had the time, and you the inclination to listen further, I might ransack 
 odd corners and bring to light many other memories; but what I have 
 here written will serve the purpose with which I set out. 
 
 This record of likes and dislikes may seem to be balanced ; when 1 
 look at it as I have it written here it is fairly evenly balanced. But 
 when the impulses to examination, which the impression set in motion, 
 were followed and considered by the intellect, the whole mass has cry- 
 stallized into a pro-English basis. Permeating my impressions of Eng- 
 land is a sense of love of home. The Englishman's house is his castle. 
 For this house he will fight, even against his own kin. As he has ad- 
 vanced out of the primitive tribal antagonisms into the national unified 
 consciousness, he has clung to his right to defend his own. It seems 
 to me that it is out of this sturdy insistence on his rights that freedom 
 has made consistent gains in English life from Magna Carta down. He 
 may have been too individualistic at times. He may have lost sight of 
 other individuals' rights at times. But those other individuals have 
 banded together to defend their individualities by military or political 
 struggle, and the resulting compromise has been a real gain in freedom. 
 You can easily see in this why the Englishman has relied upon the in- 
 stinct to guide him ; has believed that the maintenance by individuals of 
 their rights will in the end make for the best for all. Of later years I 
 believe that he has been able to read into other men more of his own 
 desires to live his own individual existence, and that therefore he has 
 become more accessible to the arguments of socialism than he had been 
 before under too insistently laissez faire policy. But his socialism is 
 still an individualistic one ; it is decidedly not a rigid regimentation of 
 the whole social group determined outside his own will. He would 
 rather volunteer for service to the state (even though that state is to 
 serve him ultimately) than have his services ordered from him by his 
 superiors over whom he may have no control. That he has come to 
 this respect for the other individual, and the willingness to help him live 
 his own life unhindered, is revealed most strikingly to me in the British 
 grant of autonomy to the South African Republic after the Boer war. 
 I condemn the Boer war; but I think liberal thought in England, 
 returned into power by the bungling Tory conduct of that war, 
 has vindicated the British conception of Empire in the eyes of the world 
 
 74 
 
by its attempt to make good for the crime. Lloyd George in his brave 
 denunciation of the Boer war at peril of his life is an example of the 
 individualistic sympathy with others that I have in mind, and he is an- 
 other in a long list of English champions of freedom, many of whom 
 are now nobly resisting the encroachment of what they fear may be- 
 come a tyranny upon English freedom, either by a silent veto or by ac- 
 tive propaganda. Karl Liebknecht in Germany is such another, and all 
 honor is due him for the greater odds he is facing in a land of auto- 
 cratic power. Out of the impression of "fair play" in games, in the 
 athletic system, in the university system I find rising what in a political 
 sense is the instinct for freedom. It is rooted in the habits of the 
 people, and will get its expression sooner or later. In proportion as the 
 democracy functions directly, freedom is attained, in industrial life as 
 well as in the political. Therefore I have come to believe that England 
 represents in this war the democratic aspirations of the world. If 
 liberal statesmen have the helm they will not be disappointed. Of her 
 it can be said as Pericles spoke of Athens in his wonderful Funeral 
 Speech, "Our military training is different from our opponents. The 
 gates of our city are flung open to the world. We practise no periodi- 
 cal deportations, nor do we prevent our visitors from observing or dis- 
 covering what an enemy might usefully apply to his own purposes. 
 For our trust is not in the devices of material equipment, but in our 
 good spirits for battle." And again, "If we choose to face danger with 
 an easy mind rather than after a rigorous training, and to trust rather 
 in native manliness than state-made courage, the advantage lies with 
 us; for we are spared all the weariness of practising for future hard- 
 ships, and when we find ourselves amongst them we are as brave as 
 our plodding rivals." The Athenian commonwealth is more or less con- 
 sciously the model of English political thinking. And so Sparta may be 
 regarded as the model of the German, modified by the Roman — both 
 primarily military. One is a government of distrust ; the other of con- 
 fidence, in men. 
 
 Some of you may wonder why I have not a kind word to say for 
 Germany. If my impressions of Germany did not speak clearly enough, 
 then I shall sum them up. For the German people, the common people, 
 I have, as I had, the highest regard and kindliest feelings. For the 
 system under which they live I have a hatred T cannot overcome. Some 
 say one cannot distinguish between a people and the system under which 
 they live. I think one can. I think one can in the case of Germany. 
 The patriots who were driven out early in the last century, and the 
 many high-spirited Germans who sought asylum from military service 
 in their own fatherland, as colonists to the United States, are of the 
 
 76 
 
same stuff as the political idealists who have made England what it is. 
 Carl Schurz is a noble example of the type. In England the system 
 under which they lived would in time have had to yield to their struggle 
 for freedom ; the system in Germany did not yield ; so they left ; and the 
 system remained. I cannot be persuaded that militarism as it has grown 
 up to be a menace to the peace of Europe and the world was a neces- 
 sary thing. Germany's last several wars surely were not wars of self- 
 defense. After the crushing defeat of France what was the need of 
 increasing military preparation ? I cannot believe that a people, through 
 their elected delegates, placed this burden upon themselves. It must 
 have been placed upon them by their masters. It is hard enough for 
 people who have democratic governments to get rid of masters; how 
 much more difficult for those under monarchical forms? Militarism 
 must be a burden placed from above. So I think one can distinguish 
 between a people and the system under which they live. 
 
 Obviously since I find so little to choose between peoples it must 
 be a system that I execrate, an autocratic, feudal, military system, 
 which shows, I admit, a very attractive face to the world in peace times, 
 with its methodical humanitarianism, its well-nurtured prosperity, its 
 happiness, its art, aiyl science, and culture ; but which is now in war time 
 the repulsive thing I once saw in Berlin. So far as this war is con- 
 cerned, then, it is to me only a war between systems, between democracy 
 and autocracy, between the free West and the fettered East. And if 
 you are inclined to ask, "But what of Russia?" the answer must be 
 that if the West wins, Russia becomes democratized; if the East, she 
 remains the military autocracy she is. Russia does not invalidate the 
 thesis that it is a war between democracy and autocracy. 
 
 I have more faith in a democracy, governed by a despotic few, for 
 the time being (as England may be ruled today), than in any undemo- 
 cratic system over however kindly and hospitable a people ; for a demo- 
 cratic people can, and usually do, get control of their government in 
 time. But this is almost impossible in a monarchy. And it is sys- 
 tems that make war, not people. The analogy that I have once referred 
 to has a peculiarly significant relevance now; for it calls to mind that 
 in the contest between the naval empire of Athens, with its freedom 
 loving spirit, and the inland Sparta with its military government, Ath- 
 ens was the loser, and that from the downfall of Athens dates the decay 
 of that glorious Greek civilization which has been the inspiration of in- 
 telligent lovers of freedom and beauty everywhere, from that day to 
 this. History, some say, repeats herself. Are we then to see the island 
 naval empire of Great Britain, mother and nurse of democracies, de- 
 stroyed in this war? Or are those skeptics who say that history never 
 
 76 
 
repeats herself to be upheld by the event? And is democracy to have 
 won then its last war in the long upward struggle against dynastic rule ? 
 Athens was destroyed, not I believe, because it was a democracy, but 
 because it could not federate its empire, had it desired to do so. Eng- 
 land seems to have solved that problem; it has become under the im- 
 petus of the war virtually a federated empire. So vast a federation as 
 the British, with a free India and a free Ireland, like all the rest of the 
 colonies, united in friendship, if not by federation, with that other vast 
 federal government, the United States, it seems to me, is the irresistible 
 beginning of that world federation of the poets' dreams. That is what 
 liberal men the world over believe is possible, if democracy wins in this 
 war. That is why I sympathize with England. 
 
 77 
 
DEMOCRACY IN CRITICISM 
 
 79 
 
DEMOCRACY IN CRITICISM 
 
 I have a learned and ingenious friend, who finds time, amid the claims 
 of his busy profession, to pursue with a commendable zeal the forma- 
 tion of final judgments upon literary questions. I suppose this zeal of 
 my friend's is commendable; for we come to regard untiring industry 
 in the pursuit of an object, however mistaken it may often be, as hav- 
 ing something religious about it. In this case it manifests itself with a 
 uniform persistency, such that, whenever I become aware of an ap- 
 proaching conversation with my friend, I am able to rehearse in ad- 
 vance the conversation which we are about to have. Now such fore- 
 knowledge may be a delight to a mind of omniscient quality, but for 
 me, with my mortal limitations, it holds no delights; for me there is 
 no delight in conversation equal to the unexpectedness of it, the arbi- 
 trariness of it, the turning this way or that as it list. The conversation 
 which I am thus about to have proceeds as follows, my friend being 
 the questioner: 
 
 "How do you determine whether literature is good or bad ?" 
 
 "Very simply. What I like is good ; what I don't like is bad." 
 
 "That's all very well for you ; but how am I to determine for my- 
 self?" 
 
 "My dear friend, you have likes and dislikes too, surely. It re- 
 quires no special dispensation to have them." 
 
 "But I am in doubt about my judgments when I consult merely 
 my own likes and dislikes. I should enjoy so much the more keenly 
 if I knew that I enjoyed correctly." 
 
 "You don't mean to say that your literary pleasures are like some 
 people's clothes — uncomfortable unless they are what is called correct ; 
 or that they ought to be so ?" 
 
 "That's getting near it in some ways, if you interpret the analogy 
 correctly. I know what is 'correct' in clothes, for there are authori- 
 ties, and by following these I enjoy my clothes the more. Now how 
 am I to knok equally as unmistakably what I should enjoy in litera- 
 ture?" 
 
 "Why worry about the rightfulness of your enjoyment, so long 
 as it is not ethically questionable?" 
 
 "I believe in order and method in everything. I want to find the 
 scientific method of doing things. I believe in clearness, definiteness, 
 precision. All knowledge should be systematized." 
 
 81 
 
"What you want then is some infalHble method for determining 
 whether a book is good or bad." 
 
 "Yes, that's about it. My friends and I read a good deal together. 
 When we have read a book we Hke to discuss it and tell each other 
 what we find agreeable or otherwise in it. But we are often in doubt 
 about our judgments, and about whether we ought to have liked it. We 
 should like to be able to refer to some authority to decide the matter 
 for us; we should like to have some criteria to apply to the work to 
 measure its artistic or aesthetic value." 
 
 "Let me understand you. When you say that you want some 
 method for determining whether a book is good or bad, I wonder what 
 you mean by 'good' or 'bad'." 
 
 " I mean by 'good' of course that it fulfills the requirements of the 
 canons which have been discovered by scientific investigation to apply 
 in literary criticism, and the reverse in the case of the 'bad' book." 
 
 "What if you and your friends should have enjoyed the deepest 
 pleasure in reading a book and then should discover later by the ap- 
 plication of such criteria that your enjoyment had been illicit, as it 
 were, what then, would you repudiate your enjoyment as something 
 reprehensible ?" 
 
 "It might be likened to a youthful peccadillo which maturer wisdom 
 would have guarded us against committing. Knowing that that sort 
 of thing was not right we should not enjoy it thereafter." 
 
 "I see that you would exercise the virtue of obedience in this as 
 if it were a military matter. Then in the case of the book you found 
 enjoyable and, upon examination, conformable to the canons, you would 
 not only have the enjoyment of the book but in addition the enjoyment 
 of the enjoyment. Like a boy who enjoyed doing the chores for once, 
 and afterwards the praise of his mother for having done them joy- 
 ously." 
 
 "Well — yes. In a crude way that represents it." 
 
 "Is there any difference between these two kinds of enjoyment? 
 Is not that primary enjoyment which you get from a book when you 
 are quite unconscious of its orthodoxy the enjoyment that you ought 
 to get out of a book, or out of anything else beautiful? That second 
 enjoyment, which you experienced when you found your judgment 
 ratified, is that not rather merely vanity? You find that your taste in 
 literature is getting to coincide with that of the critic." 
 
 "Well, suppose I admit that the primary pleasure is the only legit- 
 imate one to be derived from literature, and that the pleasure experi- 
 enced in discovering the orthodoxy of a book is secondary or of in- 
 ferior quality, am I not justified in thinking that my pleasure will be 
 
 82 
 
the keener if I know why I have the pleasure? If, as I read and enjoy, 
 I am able to understand my enjoyment, as it were, would not that be 
 a desirable thing? When I discuss a book with my friends, would it 
 not add to our pleasure to be able to analyze it, and explain it? When 
 I discuss anything, I like to have clear notions of what we are dis- 
 cussing." 
 
 "That puts the question on another basis, of course. It is not 
 canons of criticism you want now, by which to establish your ortho- 
 doxy ; but you justify your pleasure, regardless of criticism ; you main- 
 tain its integrity; and want instead of criticism, scientific analysis of 
 3'our pleasure, is that it?" 
 
 "Yes, as I said before, I am a believer in the scientific method, 
 and think that all knowledge is capable of being made scientifically 
 systematic." 
 
 "I do not believe that we are here concerned with a matter oT 
 knowledge which is susceptible of scientific treatment at all. What 
 you want then is a scientific explanation of the principles which under- 
 lie literary pleasures. And you assume that this pleasure is so uniform 
 and invariable that what is true for me will be true for you in the main, 
 so that laws of literary enjoyment may be discovered, which will serve 
 as a test for literature." 
 
 "Yes, much as you apply logic to discover fallacies in argument, 
 you might apply these laws which determine pleasure in literature." 
 
 "You would have to read a work of literature to be able to apply 
 the test and discover whether the rules sanctioned your enjoyment of 
 it, would you not?" 
 
 "No, not entire ; for you would soon know that there was no like- 
 lihood of the book's giving you pleasure, and then cease reading it." 
 
 "How would you know that?" 
 
 "Having a knowledge of the laws governing the enjoyment of liter- 
 ature, I could soon discover whether the work was conformable to 
 them." 
 
 "And in the meantime you would be reading quite without any 
 emotion at all ? Waiting until you should have read enough so that the 
 applicability of the laws might be determined?" 
 
 "Yes, I suppose so." 
 
 "But suppose that you did experience some pleasure before you 
 had determined whether you should or not ; it would then be necessary 
 to revise your laws so as to include this again. What you have done is 
 to shift the authority from the book to your own pleasure. Whereas 
 according to the canons of criticism, this book is good or that bad, you 
 
 83 
 
now say that this pleasure is good, that bad; and you have the same 
 authority and orthodoxy as before." 
 
 "However that may be, I still believe that an analysis of the things 
 that give me pleasure will be valuable to me, and will give me more 
 pleasure in turn." 
 
 "I believe that too; and that's just what you and your friends do 
 when you pass judgment together upon the book you have been reading. 
 Why should you then insist that I tell you what are the qualities that 
 give pleasure in literature? When I try to explain to myself what they 
 are, this explanation is valid only for myself. I do not believe that It 
 is so for you, and I cannot understand why you should think that it 
 might be. I know of no canons of criticism which are valid in general." 
 
 "Isn't it then the function of you men who teach English to dis- 
 cover them by scientific methods, and tell us laymen in such things what 
 they are?" 
 
 "I can tell you what my opinion in the matter is, and frankly own 
 that the opinion is based upon feeling rather than upon purely intellect- 
 ual processes. If you could tell me what beauty is, I might give you 
 canons ; if you could tell me what life really is, I might try to tell you 
 what beauty is ; but these are questions about which I am content to 
 speculate without hope of scientific explanation for some time to come. 
 In the meantime there is for me the outstanding fact that I enjoy life 
 and beauty with a zest not in the least dulled by my inability to define 
 scientifically the pleasure for you. You are asking me to do that which 
 will take the heart out of your pleasure, the soul out of your beauty. 
 You are bent upon the destruction of your pleasure, not upon the 
 heightening of it." 
 
 "Well, I am especially interested in this question because I have 
 had an unfortunate experience in acquiring an appreciation of litera- 
 ture. I was taught by the early analytic method. We analyzed a few 
 select poems and works of literature with the result that I lost what 
 liking I may have had for literature in the beginning. Since that ex- 
 perience I have picked up by myself haphazardly what I know, and have 
 acquired my liking for it by myself. I am in doubt about the quality of 
 the literature which I read and enjoy." 
 
 "Then it is strange to me that, in the face of that experience, you 
 want to apply to the judgment and appreciation of literature now the 
 very method which in the first instance robbed you of what joy you 
 may have found in it — the scientific, analytic method. Will you not 
 destroy your liking a second time, if you obtain your desire? Is it not 
 enough that you enjoy?" 
 
 Such is the course of our conversation. It has proceeded far 
 
 84 
 
enough to make it clear what are the elementary differences between my 
 questioner and me. He, though not himself a scientist by profession, 
 insists upon the clearest formulation of his knowledge, and upon in- 
 cluding under knowledge which is thus to be formulated and systema- 
 tized, many things which are not properly knowledge as that word Is 
 ordinarily understood at all. I am not a scientist by profession, and in 
 his sense of the word less so by inclination. I cannot yield to his de- 
 mand concerning the analysis of pleasure derived from literature, al- 
 though I may know that it is at the price of being considered ignorant. 
 I must bear that embarrassment now in the faith that what may be the 
 correct scientific attitude towards some fields of research may be found 
 to be unsuited in others, as, for instance, that field which is my academic 
 subject. 
 
 The confession which I have been tortuously approaching is this : 
 I do not know the permanent canons of criticism; I do not know the 
 laws of pleasing in literature; I cannot define beauty; although I do 
 maintain that I take pleasure in literature without concerning myself 
 much about the nature of that pleasure. My task here consequently 
 becomes the defense of my ignorance. And I intend to proceed in some- 
 what the following course. First, to show that the history of literary 
 criticism has been but the struggle between the two types of mind 
 which the opening dialogue represents, in which struggle the formalistic 
 mind has been in the ascendancy until the eighteenth century, when it 
 was overthrown by the other opposing type; second, to show that the 
 present struggle in criticism is the same as the old except that it is 
 waged under new forms and with this difference that now the practice 
 in criticism is determined by the second type of mind, while the other 
 insists upon the elevation of new standards again; and finally to try 
 to show that this elevation of new standards is not possible since the 
 testimony of history is against it, and the testimony of various other 
 fields of intellectual and spiritual activity oppose it as well. 
 
 The two types of mind revealed in the foregoing dialogue, whose 
 struggles constitute the history of literary criticism, are variously named : 
 Aristotelian and Platonic, dogmatic and protestant, formal and familiar, 
 classic and romantic, scholastic and humanistic, aristocratic and demo- 
 cratic, authoritarian and latitudinarian, analytic and creative, scientific 
 and artistic, academic and impressionistic, etc. Whatever form the 
 quarrel between these two types of mind may have taken, or whatever 
 the matter of their contention may have been, or the names of the re- 
 spective parties, it is nevertheless true that the distinctions between the 
 two hold in the main and that the essential differences are those of 
 temperament rather than anything else. 
 
 85 
 
Aristotle is by general consent credited with being the originator 
 of the art of literary criticism, and is of course the prototype of a cer- 
 tain kind of mind, as I have indicated. Whether he himself represented 
 all that subsequent literary critics have attributed to him is a question not 
 yet entirely solved, but it may be said in passing that he was much more 
 sensible about the limits of his theories of literature than his followers 
 and interpreters have been. What Aristotle has come to represent has 
 been briefly summarize3 as the insistence that the writer must please 
 in a certain kind, by a certain quality, according to a certain rule. It 
 was on account of his consideration of technical questions in a sys- 
 tematic manner that this formalistic twist was given to his teaching. 
 But he also taught that "all art and literature should have as function 
 the pleasure-giving representation or 'imitation' of what was universal, 
 appertaining to all human nature, and not particularly or significantly 
 mdividual ; and that a great art was measured by the high and lasting 
 pleasure it afforded to society." His method of approach in arriving at 
 his formulations was that of induction. And this induction, it must be 
 lemembered, was limited to Greek literature, and to a part of that. The 
 Aristotelian method of criticism had its way in the course of criticism 
 through a long succession of Greek, Byzantine, and Latin critics, un- 
 broken by the work of Longinus, On the Sublime. This work was 
 the first positive adumbration of the ultimate trend of criticism. 
 
 It was the especial contribution of Longinus to introduce that con- 
 ception of Appreciation into criticism, which Aristotle, seeking after 
 universals, failed to"mclude. Longinus in seeking after the principle of 
 Sublimity, concludes that the "transport" that art causes does not require 
 that it profit or instruct. It is enough that it delight. As compared with 
 Aristotle he declares that it is the critic's intermediate duty to form 
 rules and kinds, if it is his business to concern himself with these at all. 
 Faultlessness as a criterion, one of the strictest canons of the formal- 
 ists, he rejected. And finally he considered critical judgment to be 
 the "last acquired fruit of long endeavor," i. e., careful induction. 
 Longinus, accordingly, was the first representative of worth of the sec- 
 ond type of mind in criticism, the appreciative. Following Longinus 
 is a succession of the mechanical-rules type of critics, containing some 
 celebrated names, as Horace, with his so-called Ars Poetica, Cicero, and 
 mmors who out-Aristotle Aristotle in their insistence upon the arbitrary, 
 elegant creed of restraint, order and positive rule. Among the Latin 
 names in criticism, with a leaning toward the romantic, are those of the 
 satirists, Juvenal, and Martial, and especially that of Quintilian. 
 
 With the exception of Dante, the Middle Ages are blank up till 
 1600. Dante's ideas were quite in the tradition of classicism, except 
 
 86 
 
that he justified the use of the vernacular for poetry, and in so doing 
 exhibited the beginnings of the Renaissance defense of the modern 
 languages for purposes of poetry, and pointed in that way in the direc- 
 tion of freedom. 
 
 Of more value, however, although of not much more novelty, but 
 continuing the classical tradition with some cleverness and even bril- 
 liancy, were the critics of the earlier and later Renaissance, serving in 
 addition to transfer the canons of criticism to England and the rest 
 of Europe. Up to Scaliger and Castelvetro the course of criticism was 
 but a hardening and strengthening of the classical method into that 
 system which has been called the neo-classic, the system of Good Sense 
 and Taste. During all these years then Aristotle was the supreme au- 
 thority in criticism, and the art itself was become nothing more than 
 the deduction of principles from those inductively discovered by Aris- 
 totle. What few lapses there were from this method were of not per- 
 manent moment in history of criticism— merely serving as indications 
 of a different method. 
 
 Criticism in England, to which we may as well limit ourselves 
 henceforth, since in modern times the critical art has been much the 
 same in the various European literary nations, showed increasing in- 
 dications here and there of a breaking away from this despotic Aris- 
 totelian rule; yet those who adhered to the rule, and they were in the 
 majority, strengthened it still further in the neo-classic direction, aided 
 by French interpreters, until in the early eighteenth century the reductio 
 ad absurdiim of classicism had been reached. It had at length over- 
 reached itself, and from that remarkable climax dated the final eleva- 
 tion of the romantic criticism to a position of superiority, or at least 
 of parity, where it remains today under new shibboleths and forms. 
 We have scarcely time to do more than mention the services of such 
 men as Corneille, Boileau, Diderot, Hugo, Sainte Beuve in France; 
 Kant, Schiller, and Eessing in Germany; and Sidney, Pope, Dryden, 
 Addison, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley and many others in Eng- 
 land, representing one side or another of critical theory. 
 
 In England, amid the almost universal orthodoxy of Aristotelian 
 criticism, there were occasional lapses from the method by men who 
 expressed what they actually thought and saw. But these were in the 
 way of rebellion against the judgment-by-rule method. Sidney, in spir- 
 it a true poet, argues formally against his own poetical practice. Un- 
 consciously he rebels against the classical. One would need to go far 
 to find a more capable champion of the classical in English literature 
 than Ben Jonson; yet rare Ben in a moment of common sense advises 
 "read the best books, observe the best speakers, and exercise your own 
 
 «7 
 
style much." Here in his emphasis upon writers rather than upon rules 
 he is on the way to that just criticism which will be attained eventually, 
 "the fruit of long endeavor," by induction. But in his emphasis upon 
 the "best" books he reveals his orthodoxy ; for only the critic can deter- 
 mine which is the best book. When I spoke of Jonson advising this 
 in a moment of common sense, I did so quite advisedly ; using common 
 sense as something very different from the Good Sense of the formal- 
 ists. Common sense is the natural man speaking when his special train- 
 ing is asleep ; good sense is that which is in accord with accepted theory, 
 oftentimes anything but natural. There is much invidious comparison 
 implied in the word "good." Good sense is the aristocrat's prerogative 
 as against the common sense of the commonalty. More than all others 
 does Dryden, when he speaks as poet, not as critic, reveal the spirit of 
 the new criticism before its advent. And yet Dryden docilely accepts 
 the principles of literary criticism by rule. When he speaks for him- 
 self, that is, when his common sense speaks, he makes such pointed re- 
 marks as that one about Aristotle, that if he had seen the English plays 
 probably he would have judged differently — an inference rational 
 enough, since Aristotle's method was that of induction from what was 
 already in existence. It was probably Dryden who established the Eng- 
 lish fashion of criticism, that of "aiming at delight, truth, justice, na- 
 ture, poetry, and letting the rules take care of themselves," as Saints- 
 bury puts it. Dryden considered individual works of literature without 
 regard to principles on the sound ground of the impression they made 
 on him, believing that this delight or transport was the first criterion of 
 criticism ; literature must delight. Saintsbury, who defends in our times 
 the romantic type of mind in criticism, observes regarding the services 
 of Dryden that, "the critical reading without theory, or with theory 
 postponed, of masses of different literatures, and the formation and 
 expression of genuine judgments as to what the critic liked, not what 
 he thought he ought to like or dislike — this was what was wanted, 
 and what nobody had yet done." Dryden consequently was a lonely 
 outpost of the movement which was to come in great force when the 
 post-Dryden classicalism began to break away. Samuel Johnson, com- 
 ing just at the time of this breaking-up of quintessential formalism in 
 English, himself one of the staunchest defenders of conservatism in 
 poetry as in all things else, says perhaps a little querulously that "criti- 
 cism is now the judging of books and authors," that it is judging by the 
 event and not by rule, o posteriori and not a priori. 
 
 When the overturning of the classical dogmatism was once ac- 
 complished by a long line of poets, who occasionally criticized, a fruit- 
 ful union of powers and functions — criticism of the formal kind — the 
 
 88 
 
mechanical, measuring kind, disappeared. Systems have been pro- 
 mulgated since, which though not of the old kind, bear marks of having 
 originated in the same type of mind, moderated to suit modern thought 
 on social conditions. This new, romantic or individual, interpretative, 
 appreciative, impressionistic kind dates then from the successful at- 
 tack on the classical method in the eighteenth century. Its creed has 
 been variously expressed ; perhaps it were better to deny it creed, how- 
 ever, for creed implies rule to be applied a priori. The spirit of this 
 criticism has been given such expression as the following, to mention 
 but a few: Hazlitt describes his practice in these words, "I have en- 
 deavored to feel what was good, and to give a reason for the faith that 
 was in me when necessary and when in my power." And Pater con- 
 siders criticism to be the defining of feeling, "to feel strongly the charm 
 of an old poet or moralist .... and then to interpret that charm, 
 to convey it to others .... this is the way of criticism." Or again, 
 "To feel the virtue of the poet or painter, to disengage it, to set it forth, 
 — these are the three stages of the critic's duty." I take it that these 
 express pretty well what has become of the critic's function, and that 
 the descriptions of method will hold today. But there is a difference 
 of opinion as to how the critic's function is to be carried on. And that 
 difference is based upon that difference of temperament which I men- 
 tioned as being at the root of different theories of criticism. 
 
 The general course of criticism, as we have roughly traced it, has 
 been away from that Aristotelian, formalistic, kind that concerned itself 
 at its best with formulating rules for the guidance of writers by induc- 
 tion from more or less general lists of authors, and at its worst deducing 
 rules from Aristotle's first principles. Criticism in this view consisted 
 in regarding literature as similar to material objects of scientific ob- 
 servation and susceptible of the same treatment as such in the process 
 of obtaining laws. Under this system Aristotle has been set up as an in- 
 fallible pope whose authority should be unquestioned and whose pre- 
 cepts should be obeyed by anyone who would aspire to the name of 
 poet. These precepts have had a way of becoming more and more rigid 
 and consequently more limiting to the poet who subscribed to them as 
 the scholastic influence had to do with their interpretation, until in the 
 end the Aristotehan classical criticism became not more than a catalog 
 of prohibitions, a sort of imperial proclamation of "Verbotens," by the 
 faithful obedience to which the writer might win to "faultlessness and 
 eternal grace." But posterity had a habit of cutting the eternal grace 
 short off, sometimes. 
 
 All this criticism was for the benefit of the poet. Critics had all 
 seemed to forget that poets had existed before Aristotle formulated his 
 
 89 
 
laws, and that Aristotle had but commented upon the work poets had 
 already done, probably with no intention of dogmatizing to those who 
 were to follow. That was the first step in the direction away from the 
 true scientific method of Aristotle, and the pseudo-scientific method of 
 deduction from accepted principles was established as the Aristotelian 
 method, for the judgment of literature a priori. Criticism in this inter- 
 pretation becomes merely a matter of applying the footrule to discover 
 faults, to reveal them, and thus to condemn or glorify the work. Had 
 criticism been as potent as its pretensions were magnified, literature 
 would have been limited to the same continual round of subjects, done 
 in the same way, and of invariable quality. Change could not have oc- 
 curred. 
 
 However, poets sometimes are ignorant of rules, know nothing but 
 their desire to create, and their joy in the power to consummate the de- 
 sire; thus arise productions quite contrary to the rules. Now such 
 literature is considered excommunicate by the orthodox, since it will 
 not come under the dominion of the rule. Thus the literature of the 
 Middle Ages, unaware of the existence of Aristotle, somehow con- 
 trived to come into being nevertheless, and to flourish, until in the Re- 
 naissance, when the inspired scripture of criticism was rediscovered, it 
 was found by the expounders and commentators of this scripture that 
 the literature of the Middle Ages would not do at all. It was therefore 
 ignored by the critics. 
 
 When Shakespeare wrote, he was constrained to violate 
 almost all the rules that the critics had laboriously construct- 
 ed, perhaps because he didn't know what they were, but more 
 likely because mere playwriting — undignified trade as it was — the pleas- 
 ing of the populace with his .shows, was not literature anyway, and 
 need not be too carefully limited by correctness. Having, however, a 
 normal human desire for fame, he had placed a sheet anchor to wind- 
 ward by composing some little poems, so dainty and regular and work- 
 manlike and correct, that he won by them the suffrage of the con- 
 noisseurs, who guaranteed him his desire. These poems he published; 
 his plays, output of his workshop, merely earned him a living, and 
 were not published. What a calamity would it not have been, had 
 Shakespeare been directed in the composition of his dramas by the post- 
 Aristotelian scheme of criticism, and given us dramas as regular and 
 insipid as the Venus and Adonis for instance, which he published. As 
 usual the judgment of the populace, whom he sought to please, that 
 base populace who knew naught of, and cared less for, the rules of the 
 critics, so they might get their penn'orths of pleasure — as usual, how 
 their judgment has won out in the long run. But Shakespeare's reputa- 
 
 »o 
 
tion suffered for his presumption. He had most monstrously trans- 
 gressed, for he had ignored the Unities ; he had denied the Holy Trinity 
 of dramatic criticism. For a hundred years he was forgotten. Then 
 the heretics of the romantic revival drew attention to this treasure in 
 their national gallery, and got the name of Shakespeare again inscribed 
 among the reputable citizens of the republic of letters. 
 
 It must not be understood that the classical criticism and its per- 
 versions had its own way altogether throughout this long time. 
 It could not entirely ignore the literature which had appeared subse- 
 quently to Aristotle without a serious battle now and then with those 
 persons who demanded a certificate of legitimacy for it, and its inclu- 
 sion in a broader field of induction for formulating new rules. There 
 were continual struggles between the Ancients and the Moderns up till 
 the eighteenth century, one set of ideas dominating now, another then, 
 but with no appreciable effect upon the methods of criticism. The 
 modern was judged according as he succeeded in doing well what the 
 ancients had done; he was successful in proportion as he was a good 
 imitator. The struggle in England over the question of rhyme is an- 
 other of the same kind, for rhyme was a barbarous, Gothic invention of 
 the Dark Ages, not to be admitted into polite society. But the impu- 
 dent barbarian not only broke in, but was most cordially treated in 
 the politest of societies, much to the consternation of critics. In fine, I 
 think it may be said of preventive criticism that it never prevented a 
 good poet, though it may have made many a bad one. The poet has an 
 unfortunate habit of being a rule unto himself, and often enough, what- 
 ever society or the critics may have thought of it, the rules have had 
 to be amended after his advent. 
 
 When after the customary lapse of years, the conservative mind be- 
 came aware of what lay patent before it, it was then discovered that all 
 commands of the critic to write a priori was ignored, and in the main 
 with great success, so that criticism had fallen of its own weight ; then 
 it began to be considered the critic's function to pass judgment on au- 
 thors a posteriori, "after the event," as Samuel Johnson puts it, and as 
 many original viewers of literature had long suspected the case should 
 be. At all events the exercise of commandments against those who do 
 not obey is an ungrateful task, and what is infinitely worse, it is an 
 undignified task. The thing to do then is to find someone who will 
 obey, and set commandments for him; the first essential is obedience 
 from someone, it matters little whom. 
 
 Criticism is accordingly shifted from writer to reader, and what 
 the writer ought to do has been changed to what the reader ought to 
 like. Canons for the writer's guidance having broken down, canons for 
 
 91 
 
the reader's guidance may possibly set up. That was the turn given 
 to classified dogmatic criticism by the romantic movement. Although 
 the neo-classical perversion of Aristotelianism whereby authors were 
 judged a priori by rule has been given up, the type of mind of this 
 criticism still persists, and concerns itself over much with the ought 
 for the reader, and thus indirectly with the ought for the writer. For 
 to say to the reader after the event that he ought not to like a certain 
 book is equivalent to saying to the author that he ought not to have 
 written a certain book, although it does grant him the privilege of writ- 
 ing whatever he may please for the critic's subsequent judgment. To 
 grant the critic the right to say to the reader what he ought to like and 
 dislike is after all to grant him the right to dictate to the writer. So 
 that the criticism is in effect where it was in the beginning. There can 
 be no more hope for it to prevail in this than there was success for it 
 in the former way. 
 
 The persistence of the neo-classic type is shown in the theory of 
 such a critic as Matthew Arnold, for instance, in such a work as that 
 On Translating Homer where there are canons for poetry. Poetry of 
 the best kind must be in the "grand style," as that style is somewhat 
 vaguely defined by'Arnold. If it is not in this "grand style" according 
 to Arnold's definition, it cannot be great poetry. That is a neW version 
 of Aristotelianism. Lessing, too, before Arnold, doing a great service for 
 criticism by clearing it of many foolish prejudices, re-establishes it 
 again upon Aristotle more firmly than ever. The reformers do but 
 establish a new discipline for the old, which, as soon as it is discovered 
 to be mere discipline, becomes as irksome as the old. Lessing dreads 
 the antinomianism of the Storm and Stress; therefore he establishes 
 criticism as a discipline upon the purified Aristotelian basis. Of the 
 criticism in the direction of freedom we have those masters who have 
 given their methods above, Hazlitt and Pater, and others since. 
 
 But what I have wanted to emphasize is that the difference be- 
 tween the two great opposing parties in criticism is similar to that which 
 we have upon other larger questions perhaps, the difference between 
 two temperaments which may be variously designated again as the 
 standpat and the progressive, conservative and liberal, classical and 
 romantic, dogmatic and free, orthodox and heterodox, etc. While the 
 romantic criticism as defined in its method by Pater — "To feel the 
 virtue of the poet, to disengage it, and to see it forth" — is upheld by the 
 majority, and seems indeed to be the prevailing method in practice, 
 whatever may be the theory of the critic, as is exemplified by the dis- 
 crepancy between the theory and practice of Arnold ; yet the old divi- 
 sion occurs and we fin3 critics taking sides in two camps, the academic 
 
 92 
 
and the impressionistic, where we have again the same old quarrel, 
 under different terms and phrases. Pater's criticism, excellently de- 
 fined above as to its method, is of course the impressionistic method of 
 today. The academic has been established upon the following prin- 
 ciples : 
 
 "1. Due weight should be given to the collective wisdom of the 
 past and the trained knowledge of the present. 
 
 "2. There are more or less ascertainable degrees of value in var- 
 ious genres of artistic production. 
 
 "3. No art can be absolutely divorced from ethics." 
 How typical of the two different types of mind! Pater merely tells 
 what his impressions are, not what those of others ought to be; the 
 academic critic is concerned about what others ought to think or feel 
 and emphasizes that "due weight should be given," that "there are de- 
 grees of value in genres" ; that "art cannot be divorced from ethics." 
 There are three dogmatic statements for your unquestionable accep- 
 tance. Whatever its creed may be this legalist mind would like to have 
 it sharply defined so that there may be little question about matters 
 coming up for judgment under it. It is fearful that, if judgment in 
 matters of literary concern be left in the hands of the individual, "un- 
 formed" opinion may come to prevail. This danger may be averted by 
 referring the matter to "formed" opinion. As to what is "formed" opin- 
 ion, that is a matter for the self-constituted "formed" opinion, that is 
 the critics, to decide. There is little difference between this attitude and 
 that of neo-classicism — the spirit, at least, is the same. Yet Professor 
 Babbit, an academic, considers neo-classicism to be nothing but "Jesuiti- 
 cal casuistry." Although he affects to despise neo-classicism, he con- 
 siders it to be "related to a virtue — the love of clear and logical dis- 
 tinctness," meaning by this that that clear and logical distinctness which 
 for him is a virtue ought to be so for you. And again he implies that 
 his impression is to be set up for a standard when he considers "our 
 modern appreciativeness" as "only the amiable aspect of a fault — an 
 undue tolerance for indeterminate enthusiasm and vapid emotional- 
 ism," meaning here again that he should let it be known what are the 
 limits beyond which emotionalism becomes vapid and enthusiasm inde- 
 terminate. I imagine that the only answer to such an indictment of the 
 impressionistic in criticism is to say that if the matter in which people 
 generally take pleasure after having had knowledge of it for some time 
 is judged by Professor Babbit to be vapid emotionalism, then he will 
 eventually have to revise his code to include vapid emotionalism. His 
 impression, for that is all it was, all it could be, was wrong, in the judg- 
 ment of the final arbiter. Professor Babbit is of the type which insists 
 
 93 
 
upon setting up standards, rules, however little may have been accom- 
 plished by them in the past. It is the weakness of the type. I suppose 
 that it is not aware that it merely substitutes new rules for old. Critics 
 of this type do make a concession to the status of things as they are by 
 substituting (in their dread of mere antinomianism) for the hard and 
 fast rules, which are so obviously out of place, vague rules or ill-de- 
 fined generalizations which it is possible for each to interpret according 
 to his own likes or dislikes. This criticism is actually treated as if it 
 were mere appreciation or impression, although it affects to be academ- 
 ic; the reader indulges the critic in his whim. Such criticism is Arn- 
 old's of the "grand style." Consequently for practical purposes the 
 academics may as well say that their criticism is merely appreciation 
 or impression. But the aristocratic tj^ie of mind is not satisfied with 
 the mere appreciation of literature ; it must have the additional pleasure 
 (the perquisite of aristocracy) of handing down its better opinion, its 
 "good" sense to others. This type, like the poor of Scripture, we shall 
 always have with us. It will never be satisfied with the critical faith 
 that each man is sufficient authority unto himself for his own likes and 
 dislikes in literature. It is of that strange individualistic type which 
 regards itself and some few others of its own selection as individual 
 entities disintegrated from an amorphous lump called humanity and 
 burdened down with the enormous responsibility for moulding this 
 lump into some semblance of good form, like themselves. So long as 
 you have men of this mind, and that will be a long time, you will always 
 have the quarrel between them and the liberals, whatever may be the 
 actual working theory of any time. 
 
 Since the question now is one of authority in literary pleasures, and 
 there seems to be no authority in this vague field of the feelings, aca- 
 demic critics, like my friend, look forward to the coming of some great 
 scientist in the field of aesthetics, whose figure shall impose upon us 
 as Aristotle's did upon the mind of the Renaissance and upon whose 
 dicta rules for the determining of values in books may be promulgated. 
 In the meantime, which to my mind will be for all time, each individual 
 who desires, as a part of the pleasure which he derives from books, to 
 analyze his feelings, or have others analyze them for him, may certainly 
 do so. This kind of criticism is merely a part of the pleasure which he 
 derives from books. However, when my friend asks me to tell him 
 what are the infallible methods for determining what causes pleasure 
 in literature, so that he may have "scientific" data, and have done with 
 the vexatious problem of accounting for these pleasures, he asks what 
 is impossible. If he thinks I am merely arbitrary about the matter I 
 shall refer him to some man whose business it is rather than mine to 
 
 9) 
 
explain what are the ingredients of his pleasure, to Bosanquet, for in- 
 stance. Bosanquet says that "the aesthetic theorist desires to under- 
 stand the artist, not to interfere with the latter, but in order to satisfy 
 an intellectual interest of his own." And that is a rational standpoint 
 for the literary critic to take. It is the one I take as against my friend ; 
 for he does not ask me to help him to appreciate but to determine why 
 he does so. He asks more of me than the aesthetician will do for him. 
 
 I suppose I have admitted by this time that I favor the impression- 
 istic school of criticism, as against the academic. The course of criti- 
 cism shows that the canons which endeavor to dictate to the poet how 
 he shall compose have broken down ; that the poet is now allowed to go 
 his own way, but that the canons which failed in the poet's case are 
 being revived for the reader's salvation, in order that he may be guided 
 in his likes and dislikes against the allurements of unformed opinion. 
 1 think I am justified in thinking that what happened in the case of the 
 canons for poets will be more likely to happen in the case of canons 
 for readers, if it has not already happened. Of other canons there can 
 be no discussion. It seems that the impressionist manner of criticism 
 will continue to prevail. It will continue to be, as it is, the practice of 
 each individual to judge whatever he reads for himself, to explain his 
 own feelings, to read another's analysis of similar emotions, or to find 
 them recreated in some capable critic's appreciative criticism, for the 
 pleasure he derives from them only. I have no doubt that there will be 
 the two divisions in criticism, since they seem to correspond to two 
 needs in the human temperament. There will always be some, I sup- 
 pose, who will want their likes or dislikes made up for them by critics ; 
 for these there will be the criticism they deserve. There will always be 
 those who will want to be free in this matter as in matter of the in- 
 tellect. The)' will be impressionists. 
 
 Criticism for them is but another phase of literature which they 
 may like or not. It will be in the main criticism of life at two removes ; 
 literature is criticism of life at one remove. When Arnold said that 
 poetry was the criticism of life it is obvious that he meant by criticism 
 appreciation or impression. It would be just as rational to demand that 
 there be canons of life as that there should be canons of poetry. 
 
 Criticism, we said, was criticism of life at two removes. Since it 
 is appreciation, since it is subjective, depending upon our prejudices 
 and beliefs, our past experience, our physiological and psychological 
 constitution, it is also criticism of life at one remove, like literature 
 proper, since it reveals, like literature, an individuality, that of the sub- 
 ject. Then it becomes something more than a source of intellectual 
 pleasure ; it becomes a source of aesthetic pleasure. If I choose to find 
 
 95 
 
aesthetic pleasure in my criticism, that is my concern. If my friend 
 chooses to find intellectual pleasure in his, that is his concern. We 
 grant that to each other; I grant it to him, but I am doubtful about 
 his generosity with me. I am myself inclined with Saintsbury, "to 
 suspect abstract inquiries except in matters of pure intellect," and with 
 Wordsworth to suspect "those false secondary powers by which we 
 multiply distinctions." Criticism which is of an analytic nature, or of 
 a scientific nature, or which is based upon universals of any kind, can- 
 not do justice to the delight of literature. Creative criticism only, by 
 recreating the pleasure of the book for us, may suggest it ; but I do not 
 think that the pleasure can be defined. As I have suggested once before 
 I should like to ask him who thinks it can be defined if he knows any 
 definition of life or beauty which means anything more to him than the 
 words life and beauty themselves. One may suggest what they are, 
 one may attempt to recreate the impressions they make, but when he 
 attempts to define he is lost. So about the pleasures evoked by litera- 
 ture. 
 
 Great as one's admiration for Aristotle must be for his pioneer 
 services in many ways, his criticism of literature must be suspect be- 
 cause he attempts to give a purely intellectual account of something 
 which it is beyond the sphere of the intellect to treat adequately. It 
 is all very well for the scientific investigator to examine into the facts 
 about literary genres and literary excellences, to compare, sift, classify, 
 and group them according to relations and thus to obtain some system- 
 atic knowledge about literature for statistical or historical purposes. 
 The wider the field of induction the more reliable the statistics become. 
 But as in the case of statistics, new facts continually arise and cause 
 the need of revision. Statistics do not define the nature of the facts 
 which are to come, any more than the nature of the facts with which 
 they deal. When the investigator examines into literature, he examines 
 into more than fact ; and it is precisely this more-than-fact about litera- 
 ture which is of supreme importance. It is this more-than-fact about 
 which his judgment can be nothing more than subjective and therefore 
 necessarily valid for himself alone. Logic cannot successfully deal with 
 these subjective matters, these feelings, for they are individual, not 
 universal. When Aristotle has systematized his opinions, or the re- 
 lationships between the things he has felt concerning literature, he has 
 not done more than furnish himself with an interesting explanation of 
 his own pleasures. It is essentially a revelation of Aristotle, who hap- 
 pens to be an interesting personality and whose criticism is therefore 
 more interesting than that of any of the somewhat absurd scholiasts 
 who followed him with their misinterpretations of the master. Had 
 
 96 
 
they imitated his method instead of liis assumed content, and proceeded 
 in their generahzations from Hterature instead of deducing from his so- 
 called principles, they would have done their master more honor. The 
 master himself would no doubt have been the last to subscribe to such 
 methods as theirs. Today it is likely that he would have been an im- 
 pressionist (as real cntics have often said), for he seems to have been 
 a man of common sense, and would not have claimed any more validity 
 for his generalizations than the creative critics claim for theirs, or the 
 aesthetic theorists claim for theirs. Certainly had he been criticizing 
 today he would have been satisfied with the advice of such an impres- 
 sionist as Saintsbury, the advice that the critic should read masses of 
 different literatures without theory or with theory postponed, and ex- 
 press genuine judgments of what he liked and disliked — not what he 
 ought to like and dislike. With this he would probably have agreed; 
 but he might have been tempted to exalt these individual judgments 
 into logical universals, forgetting that the important things in literature 
 are not to be logically treated. About these things he has purely sub- 
 jective judgments, which he cannot rationalize, and by rationalizing 
 them, generalize for all other men. In subjective matters Aristotle's 
 judgments are probably like those of other men who have the same 
 experience ; that is, the ordinary individual will judge of emotional ex- 
 periences in reading about similarly with Aristotle, when he will have 
 had the same reading, and the same experiences otherwise. 
 
 We come to the conclusion that criticism is, and can be, nothing 
 but individual expression about literature. At its best it is another form 
 of literature. In lower forms it is not literature, but science, or pseudo- 
 science, interesting to some who are incapable of being interested in 
 literature itself, except as material for classification. Or it may be 
 simply history, in which case, if it is imaginatively written, it is like the 
 literature of which it discourses; if scientifically written, it is chronol- 
 ogy- 
 
 The summary to which I am always led by my study of the progress 
 of criticism is this : that it has come down from higher to lower places 
 owing to some forces over which it has had no control ; for it has not 
 yielded its pretensions to dictate to poet or reader without decided strug- 
 gles. The forces against which the dogmatic critic has contended in 
 vain in the writer's case are probably as potent in the reader's case. 
 They are, I suppose, the individual's desire for self-expression. In the 
 reader's case the urge toward self-expression, that is, the artistic im- 
 pulse, may not be so compelling, but it will express itself in choosing 
 what it will read, thus getting a second-hand expression of itself. 
 
 If criticism cannot compel, then what are canons for? That which 
 
 97 — 4 
 
is not generally accepted has no validity. There are no aesthetic sanc- 
 tions upon which canons may be built. Each artistic expression is a 
 case by itself ; individual ; to be judged upon its own merits. Each 
 reader must judge for himself; no one can judge for him; no one can 
 put himself at the center of the experiences which a man has under- 
 gone, as is necessary before any one can judge for him. He must un- 
 fortunately judge for himself. 
 
 When I conclude that each man must be his own critic, I believe 
 that this is so because experience plainly points this as the conclusion. 
 I spoke of forces, or perhaps I should have said facts, which academic 
 criticism had been unable to overcome. I have wondered how this could 
 be scientifically explained. It has seemed by some process of intuition 
 to be eminently right that academic or formalist criticism should be 
 suspect in judgment of artistic expression. I have felt (I use the word 
 advisedly) that a scientific, analytic process of mind, which differs al- 
 most diametrically frdih an artistic, creative process, could not in any 
 case be a final judge of the activities of the latter. It has seemed that 
 minds must be similarly tempered for one to interpret the other. Of 
 course, I am at a loss to prove this. It does not seem to be a matter 
 susceptible to proof. If it is asked, I shall have to say that I know it, 
 as I know many things I cannot prove. In default of proof I can avail 
 myself of the testimony of Croce on aesthetics. His testimony points 
 to the conclusion that to feel this to be true is the only way to know 
 it to be true. 
 
 Croce sets himself squarely against all Aristotelian and academic 
 criticism. He distinguishes logic from intuition by saying that logic 
 deals with the apprehension of relationships, of universals; intuition, 
 with the apprehension of the particular, the individual. The act of in- 
 tuition is the act of expression: all expression is "art", and all art is 
 expression. The creative act in art is the act of expression in the mind 
 of the artist : the material execution of the work of art is posterior to 
 the creative act, of which it is only a copy. The insistence by Croce 
 upon the intuitive nature of art destroys the critical value of rhetorical 
 categories, and the terminology of literary genres and artistic classi- 
 fications becomes devoid of sense, since each production is a work sui 
 generis, representing a moment, a mental state, that has intrinsically 
 nothing to do with any other mental state. "The function of criticism 
 becomes primarily interpretative, its object being to reconstruct the 
 mental state in its causal and final elements. The aesthetic judgment 
 is possible only with reference to the intention of the artist and to the 
 extent to which the purpose has been realized." 
 
 This is a rather more clearly stated conception of what I have tried 
 
 >8 
 
to make clear to myself by saying that there has seemed to me to be an 
 incompatibility between the artistic, creative mind and the formalistic, 
 analytic mind ; and by saying that logic, or abstract reasoning should be 
 suspect in any realm but that of pure intellect. It is the thing we have 
 in mind when we suspect the method of rhetoric for the teaching of 
 composition in English. For the method of analysis, of determination 
 of general principles, which is the method of rhetoric, does not lead to 
 the act of creation or composition. In proportion as composition is 
 considered to be creation in any way, analysis cannot be a successful 
 teaching method, because it exercises a function of the mind at the op- 
 posite pole from that which should be strengthened. 
 
 If scientific explanation regarding what we practice and believe in 
 criticism is regarded as essential, Croce's will serve. It is especially 
 satisfactory, now that the question of criticism is one of aesthetics, in 
 which field the special investigators should be authority, to find one of 
 the most considerable figures denying that there can be any general 
 principles of pleasure in literature. But I do not suppose that the aca- 
 demic mind will be satisfied with such a theory. With it, the fear of 
 the prevailing of unformed opinion amounts to an obsession. And the 
 matter is ultimately, as before stated, a matter of disposition ; there will 
 always be those who will depend upon authorities in aesthetic, as in 
 other matters. It suggests nothing to this kind of mind that the entire 
 course of civilization has been toward discovering the last individual, 
 revealing him, and guaranteeing his integrity. That has been the pre- 
 occupation of all the liberal movements in history. Civilization has 
 been the freeing of class after class from political and social disabilities, 
 and after the freeing of classes the discovery of individuals in them. 
 But your true conservative will not face the implications of facts which 
 are so patent. Even if he admit that the trend of government is in the 
 direction of more, or purer, democracy ; somehow he does not see there 
 are more things involved in this than are written into his philosophy. 
 And one of these, surely, is this, that democracy is based upon the in- 
 tegrity of the individual, intellectually, morally, and so on. The ob- 
 vious device for denying this is stoutly to avow in public one's belief in 
 democracy, and covertly to sneer at the mob, and the demagog. The 
 difficulty with such a one is that he does not believe in democracy at all. 
 It is something he does not understand. He is really an aristocrat in 
 his political beliefs — one who believes that the so-called mob is in- 
 capable of interpreting its own desires, and governing its own concerns, 
 except through his mediation. Naturally such men will contend that 
 the question of literary interpretation is not for the individual alone, 
 but one for qualified mediators to determine for him. 
 
 99 
 
Aristotle, with all his keenness in analysis, could not have set up 
 standards of literary excellence which would be acceptable to us today. 
 It is only necessary to recall his theory of the slave as presented in the 
 Politics — Some men are born slave, not by position, but by nature. 
 Even if his criticism of literature seemed acceptable, its association 
 with that theory of state would vitiate it for me. And similarly with 
 the theories of criticism and society held in subsequent times. The 
 elevation of Aristotle's principles into dogmas, under the influence of 
 scholasticism was coincident with the institution of serfdom. I should 
 not be inclined to accept a criticism which would harmonize with this 
 social conception. The criticism of the Renaissance, coexisting with, 
 an expression of, the various more or less absolutist forms of govern- 
 ment of those times could not be acceptable to me. It was not until the 
 romantic criticism came, along with the great democratic movement 
 of the eighteenth century, that the individual came into the right of full 
 recognition, and received free franchise, in theory at least, to partici- 
 pate in the affairs of society, of whatever nature. It is the concern of 
 governments today to translate into reality that which is universally 
 held in theory, that the individual is worthy of respect, in whatever 
 position he may be found. The many consciously and unconsciously 
 socialistic movements are merely the demands among individuals that 
 society make good its promise that they be made equal. Socialism ts 
 individualism seeking the aid of society. Everything points toward the 
 increasing significance of the individual, toward his entire release from 
 all leading strings, especially in the matter of judging his own likes and 
 dislikes. By analogy from the course of government then, the individ- 
 ual should be the ultimate authority in matters of criticism. He Is 
 master of himself politically, why not artistically? There is less chance 
 of his going wrong in the case of his likes and dislikes, than in the more 
 intellectual processes of government. 
 
 There was a time when literature was a concern of a few both to 
 write and to read. Then the few might justly lay down laws, for such 
 concerned only themselves. But more and more men have come into 
 the means of reading and writing, by the cheapening of the processes 
 of communicating thought. And the time comes in which each man 
 may hope to become the possessor of the world's selected literature. As 
 possessor of this literature, in the true sense of the word possess, his 
 judgment is as good as the best. The publisher who cheapens the price 
 of books is the critic who does most to guard against the prevalence of 
 "unformed" opinion. Everyman's edition of world literature has done 
 more already to establish sound opinion, I imagine, than the labors of 
 all the critics. 
 
Turn to the religious analogy. In almost all forms of the church 
 today the individual is free. He believes what he chooses regardless of 
 the creed that he may profess. He regards no one as qualified to tell 
 him what he shall believe, certainly not the man who is supposed by his 
 position to be authority for him. He prepares his own belief from his 
 own moral, emiotional, and intellectual experiences. The pastor oc- 
 cupies the place of the critic ; he is permitted to talk, and is liked or dis- 
 liked, for his personality; but he is by no means authority. For the 
 layman has now the privilege, along with his pastor, to read and criti- 
 cize the religious literature which at one time it was the privilege of the 
 initiated few to read. This literature too he interprets for himself; 
 and enjoys his pastor's interpretation on the Sabbath day, or not, as it 
 agrees or not with his interpretation. In fact religious problems of 
 today are often being presented through literature by laymen for solu- 
 tion. The Inside of the Cup, to mention one of the most popular, is an 
 ■ apology for individualism. Now if the lay individual exercises this 
 right in religious matters, he should likewise in literary; for these are 
 near akin. Thus the religious analogy points toward the futility of 
 canons of criticism. 
 
 It does not seem necessary to multiply instances to show that the 
 individual is coming into his own in our society. Theoretically he has 
 arrived ; practically every effort is being made to accommodate him. 
 Theoretically every man is capable of forming his own literary criti- 
 cism ; practically every effort is being made to let him practice his criti- 
 cal faculty. Therefore he is liberated from all restrictions of canons 
 in literature. For every age its own apologists : ours is one of powerful 
 aspirations for the individual ; and Croce elaborates an aesthetic which 
 suits this spirit. 
 
 A word or two as to that "unformed" opinion that the academics 
 are gravely concerned about. It is a very strange truth that the academic 
 critic must appeal to precisely this unformed opinion for its suffrage. 
 His formed opinion, or cultured opinion, will prevail with them just 
 in proportion as it is agreeable to them. The unformed opinion is the 
 court of last resort; that it often prevails against the most valiant ef- 
 forts of critics to prevent it is the commonplace of literary history. 
 If the critics had had their way some of the noblest names in literature 
 would have had short shrift. The critics should really be thankful that 
 there is an unformed opinion to set them right when they are on their 
 aberrations. A few phrases of Shaw's state this view with character- 
 istic pungency : 
 
 "When the true prophet speaks, he is proved to be both rascal and 
 idiot, not by those who have read of how foolishly such learned demon- 
 
 101 
 
strations have come off in the past, but by those who have themselves 
 written volumes on the crucifixions, the headings and hangings, the 
 Siberia transportations, the calumny and ostracism which had been the 
 lot of the pioneer as well as of the camp follower. It is from men of 
 established literary reputations that we learn that William Blake was 
 mad, that Shelley was spoiled by living in a low set, that Robert Owen 
 was a man who did not know the world, that Ruskin is incapable of 
 understanding political economy, that Zola is a mere blackguard, that 
 'Ibsen is a Zola with a wooden leg.' The great musician, accepted by 
 the unskilled listener, is vilified by his fellow-musicians ; it is the musi- 
 cal culture of Europe that pronounced Wagner the inferior of Meyer- 
 beer. The great artist finds his foes not among the men in the street: 
 it is the Royal Academy which places Mr. Marcus Stone — not to men- 
 tion Mr. Hodgson — above Burne- Jones." 
 
 I remember once finding Dr. Johnson's common sense speak very 
 plainly against his doctrine, in a criticism on Addison, to this effect: 
 ■'About things on which the public thinks long, it commonly attains to 
 think right." This was his approval of the critical judgment current 
 among the public on one of Addison's dramas. From so noteworthy 
 a champion of conservatism as Dr. Johnson, this is indeed a concession. 
 Recently I read in a popular weekly an astonishing corroboration of this 
 theory about "unformed" opinion from a member of the British Foreign 
 Office. It concerned a sphere more or less allied to literature — that of 
 the press. This diplomat holds the press alone responsible for the petty 
 spite, the unworthy ridicule, and the idle boastfulness which has been 
 served up at English breakfast tables during the weary months of the 
 war. "The press," he says, "does not represent the people of this coun- 
 try, for the commonplace man in the street has springs of nobility which 
 the editors have failed to discover, and the antics of superficial self- 
 satisfaction indulged in by our press bear no relation whatever to the 
 slowly accumulating reserve of determination which characterizes our 
 people." This official thereupon expresses some concern about the 
 problem of the press, which he is coming more and more to feel is the 
 greatest problem for England to face in years to come. "Its claim to 
 voice public opinion is untrue, because it really succeeds only in voicing 
 the upper thoughts of our unguarded moments. The deeper springs of 
 action on which the existence of society depends remain unvoiced and 
 unencouraged." The official we quote places a very large measure of 
 confidence in that unformed mob which the academic critics fear. He 
 shows clearly what happens when a few affect to think for the many ; 
 how they go far astray and must be led back to sanity by the many. 
 
 Blake, it is said, was mad. This is his advice on criticism: "O 
 
 102 
 
Englishmen ! know that every man ought to be a judge of pictures, and 
 every man is so who is not connoisseured out of his senses." It is rather 
 fortunate that there have been such madmen to impart such a note of 
 madness to criticism, whenever it fell to wandering around the arid, 
 rational sands of scholasticism. Such madmen often have saved litera- 
 ture from ultra-sanity. 
 
 These opinions display another attitude toward the mass of "un- 
 formed" opinion from that held by the academics. I do not see clearly 
 why he who believes in democracy should not be consistent in his faith 
 and carry it out in other departments of human activity, as well as the 
 political. Just as the politician must appeal for suffrage to his con- 
 stituency, to the mob, composed of ordinary individuals; so the writer, 
 in a democracy, must appeal to the mob. There are many who loudly 
 protest their faith in democracy, but in that very act make the reserva- 
 tion that democracy would be a sound doctrine if all the citizenry were 
 as intelligent as they are ; and therefore resist trusting their government 
 in the hands of the crowd, if by any means they can prevent it. Repre- 
 sentative democracy, if you will, but no referendum or initiative folly. 
 We have seen often and again the very essential intelligence of a state 
 gathered in the capital, pondering the laws in a manner most amazing 
 to the unformed yokels at home. Whatever the form of the govern- 
 ment under which they exist, or the principles to which they be com- 
 mitted, men of this type of mind, good, orthodox, Aristotelian, will be 
 there, refusing excellence to any but themselves. 
 
 103 
 
THE TURNING POINT 
 
 105 
 
THE TURNING POINT 
 
 Rupert Brooke, who served for a time as a symbol of England facing 
 a new destiny, was a member of the Dardanelles expedition. As a well- 
 known classical scholar he would quite naturally be deeply impressed 
 when he found himself upon a mission of war in those regions where 
 Greek history had played its splendidly recorded events; and his 
 thoughts speculated upon what fates might be in store for the modern 
 world in the places celebrated by ancient glories. In a letter written 
 on his approach he cries in wonder: "Should we be a Turning Point 
 in History ?" When the magnitude of the events which caused the out- 
 cry is considered, it is not strange that he should have wondered. And 
 although he himself did not live to verify his speculation, thinking men, 
 both simple and illustrious, assume that the world has passed the point 
 that marks a new era. 
 
 History may be like a certain noted view of life, "a tale told by an 
 idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," as some skeptical his- 
 torians are inclined to affirm. But while the historians are settling that 
 basic question in their branch of learning, let it be accepted that it has 
 a modicum of rationale, and that the historic accounts of turning points 
 in the past, placed at the decisive battles, are for the time being accept- 
 able. It would then seem reasonable that this war, which has included 
 in its tremendous scope nearly all the fields of great decisions; which 
 has put old men and women and children to work, and starved the 
 dazed inhabitants on the far edges of empire; which has transported 
 armies across the seven seas; and plentifully sown again with corpses 
 the already fertile battlegrounds of the world; — it would seem reason- 
 able that such a war would mark a change in the tendencies of human 
 thought and action. Its panorama is so vast and its implications so in- 
 volved that this change may well be considered in terms of the slow- 
 moving centuries, which seem suddenly to have been telescoped into a 
 few years' time. To consider it adequately it would seem necessary to 
 march with seven-league boots across the historical records. 
 
 It is customary to begin a review of our culture with an account 
 of our inheritance from the Greeks. This somewhat cavalier treatment 
 of the pre-Grecian civilizations may not be entirely valid ; but the meth- 
 od may be justified on the ground that each subsequent time of great 
 decisions, accompanied by great accomplishments, has been one of 
 awakened admiration of Greek culture. The signs are not wanting that 
 
 107 
 
this is also true of our time today ; and therefore this inquiry may begin 
 with a summary of the outstanding traits of this illuminating Greek 
 thought, the admiration of long generations of critics. 
 
 The qualities which best characterize Greek thought are realism, 
 criticism, and humanism. These, like all the qualities of things, are, 
 of course, interwoven with each other and one should therefore guard 
 against sharp distinctions. To be realistic is to love truth, beauty, 
 goodness, freedom, action, intellectual curiosity; to be critical is to be 
 sensible, clear, and rational, with a view to right understanding; to be 
 humanistic is to temper these two qualities to each other, one character- 
 istic of the will and the emotions, and the other characteristic of the 
 reason, so that harmony of life may result. All conspiring together 
 preserve freedom for thought and action, each in its due measure; 
 these lead to experiment, observation, inference, and analysis; evalua- 
 tion and judgment in the light of known and tested experience succeed ; 
 and these in turn guarantee freedom. Thus the fruitful round continues 
 until the introduction of some other than human sanction or authority 
 limits freedom and thus vitiates all the qualities that previously flowed 
 pure from that source. 
 
 Those who from an orthodox religious standpoint first encounter 
 the Greek mythology are amused by a work of such childish imagina- 
 tion. They would scarcely consider it as an expression of the qualities 
 just enumerated. Yet a more intimate acquaintance and just considera- 
 tion reveal that it expresses such qualities. Certain observers have said 
 that the Greek mythology is a sort of science, a startling statement 
 enough, until it is recalled that science is concerned with explaining 
 the mysterious forces that surround us, precisely what mythology at- 
 tempted to do. The mythological explanation, it is true, did not make 
 these forces available to mankind ; but it served the urgent need of mak- 
 ing life comfortable and attractive, at least, by giving names and clearly 
 intelligible descriptions to these forces. That it amply succeeded in this 
 aim is shown by the ardent longing for some similar golden age evoked 
 by it in a long line of poets and thinkers, upon whom their several 
 worlds lay all too heavily. And that freedom which permitted the 
 Greeks boldly to reason concerning the ultimate constitution of the uni- 
 verse, and which gave them the privilege of creating the world, like 
 divine artists, in their own image, has been the envy of subsequent ages. 
 
 These simpler anthropomorphic reflections of the Greeks give place, 
 as the power of reflection develops, to daring hypotheses concerning the 
 constitution of the universe, shrewd guesses based upon little measured 
 observation, all of which have much, though less obviously, of the an- 
 thropomorphic quality. Contemporary with the decay of typical politi- 
 
 108 
 
cal institutions there occurs a new development in thought; and men 
 are found anxiously inquiring into their own notions. Since the ex- 
 planation of the objective universe is losing its power to satisfy the 
 curious, and orthodoxy is yielding to the inevitable, the attention of as- 
 tute inquirers turns to the problem of knowing the creator of the ideas 
 with which he has beguiled himself. It is a time for the revaluation of 
 currently accepted doctrines and principles. If man be the measure of 
 all things, then assuredly the measure should be better known. "The 
 fields and the woods have nothing to teach me," says Socrates, "I learn 
 my lessons from men." And so the problem for man is to know himself. 
 
 This problem, pursued by the instrument of the concept, continued 
 to be for many centuries the preoccupation of great minds. It was 
 eventually crystallized and elaborated by the Christian religion until 
 it reached its highest point of development, probably, in the works of 
 St. Thomas Aquinas, and his poetic disciple Dante, as the study of the 
 moral nature of man. The Greek gave his understanding of life and 
 nature clear objective forms ; the mediaeval poet and moralist expressed 
 his understanding of life by a complete subjective analysis. The one 
 sought to make man comfortable in nature, the other sought to make 
 him comfortable (sometimes by the threat of making him uncomfort- 
 able) in the life of eternity. The Greek was an inventor and builder 
 of states, a political animal, as Aristotle says, because he must save 
 himself in this life. The mediaeval man was a subtle analyst of himself, 
 because he must prepare himself for eternity. The future life cast no 
 appreciable shadow upon the Greek world; but it cast a dark shadow 
 upon the mediaeval world and all its works. When man may gain 
 eternal happiness by his service in this life, it is reasonable to assume 
 that he will strive with all his energy to earn this surpassing reward. 
 And the attempt to earn this reward has left behind it monuments of 
 unequalled abstract reasoning which, like the colossal remains of Egypt- 
 ian civilization, and the stupendous armaments of the Great War, make 
 one marvel at the immense futility of man. 
 
 There came into the world with Socrates and lasted up till the 
 Renaissance, "the profound illusion," says Nietzsche, "the impertur- 
 able belief that by means of the clue of causality thinking reaches to 
 the deepest abysses of being, and that thinking is able not only to per- 
 ceive but to correct it." The diligent use of the concept and the syllog- 
 ism to explain the world and make it useful had led to circular exercises 
 in verbal mechanics, beginning in a concept and ending in eternity. It 
 required but a glimpse of the Hellenic world again to make men see 
 beauty around them and to express it in a glow of artistic enthusiasm. 
 The world was joyously accepted, keenly perceived, and represented in 
 
 109 
 
magnificent plastic forms. The Renaissance replaced the concept with 
 artistic representation. 
 
 Bacon substituted for fruitless verbal mechanism fruitful observa- 
 ton, generalization and inference. If nature, approached in this man- 
 ner, refuse to yield her ultimate secret, still she grants fruits of ex- 
 traordinary variety and abundance. She reveals herself a kind mother 
 indeed; she has become something more than the Greek's beautiful but 
 inconstant companion of man. The mediaeval man's imagined source 
 of devils and imps of evil has become a benefactor who rewards proper 
 diligence. Scholastic speculation looking inward becomes science look- 
 ing outward. Boundless vistas for scientific conjectures appear on 
 every hand. Bold spirits sail out into the unknown and chart it ; and 
 like another race of Titans storm the very heavens. They brook no 
 limits to their desire to know and to have. A Faust will sell his soul 
 to the devil that he may have knowledge; Machiavelli's Prince will 
 yield himself to evil that he may have dominion; and Michaelangelo's 
 figures are tense with the strain of monumental aspiration. Science, 
 justifying itself by its fruits and thus easily disposing of the skeptic, 
 has endowed man's spirit with an endless expansiveness. There is no 
 limit set beyond which man may not inquire into nature. And each in- 
 quiry yields a new wealth of material things to stop the mouth of the 
 prophet of evil. Thus science by yielding to man's asking a store of 
 earthly things without stint or limit, arrogates all power to itself, jyst 
 as scholasticism held power since it was able to grant man the eternal 
 delights of heaven for the asking. But man lives no more by bread 
 alone than he lives without bread entirely. The restless expansiveness, 
 the ruthless exploitation, the grasping imperialism, the colossal ac- 
 quisitiveness, the endless outward view, leading to action without pur- 
 pose ; these approach an end after all, either a limit humanly devised, or, 
 as the world's state has recently shown, destruction. The new philoso- 
 phy begins to ask science of what avail its abundant fruits are. Shall 
 man perish in their midst ? 
 
 The sober man accumulates what is necessary for the enrichment 
 of his personal life ; for security, for leisure, and then for self-cultiva- 
 tion ; for things which reflection values. It is a means to an end. But 
 the modern accumulator, as he turns from his task to make himself a 
 man, having no knowledge how to proceed, lapses back into accumula- 
 tion. The end for which action exists must not be too far postponed 
 lest action become its own end, and meaningless. 
 
 While the fruits of the earth accumulate, the problem of their 
 utilization remains unsolved. Men weary of harking forward to some 
 far-off divine event, and losing life in the meantime. But life is the 
 
 110 
 
solving of the problem in the going, "solvitur ambulando" ; and that 
 involves finding the human value for science and for industry. There- 
 fore it becomes necessary to study man as he really is in all his divine 
 complexity in order that the end of richness in life for v^rhich all the 
 wrorks of man exist may be made known and effective. When man ex- 
 isted for the sake of his works, his life was lost. Under ecclesiasticism 
 he was the spawn of an original sin; under industrialism he was a 
 simple abstraction ; under science he is a mechanism ; and man is a slave 
 to his own mind's vagaries. But when these many activities of man 
 exist for him, his nature being rightly understood, he becomes a master 
 of the fulnesses of living. 
 
 Ruskin's conventional and unanalytic picture of the man who is at 
 the center of all economic endeavor leads through long and patient an- 
 thropomorphic studies down to modern social psychology. When man's 
 nature becomes known as it really is, the phrase "human valuation" 
 acquires content and effective meaning, and attempts are constantly made 
 to give science and industry purpose and effectiveness in the light of the 
 new learning. Thus the persistent mediaeval quest into man's ultimate 
 moral nature returns into life again; but in another form and with an- 
 other purpose. Its form is now that of science, instead of formal logic; 
 and its purpose is life here instead of hereafter. Man, the measure 
 of all things, is to be understood as he is instead of as he ought to be. 
 He becomes again the first study of mankind. That long and patient 
 study begun by Socrates and culminating in the middle ages is again 
 resumed. 
 
 But it is resumed in the realistic spirit of the Greeks, unhampered 
 by theological preconceptions, and unlimited by superhuman sanctions. 
 It is also critical ; and criticism is the frank acceptance of the human 
 quality in all things. One must judge because one is human ; and to 
 criticize is to judge. One must estimate values in terms of the crystal- 
 lized experience of the individual and the race. What the race has 
 found to be valuable in the judgment of the wise, although it may be 
 somewhat contemptuously called merely prejudice and moralistic, is 
 after all the touchstone whereby all human conceptions and all human 
 labors will be judged. The new orientation centers around a core of 
 humanistic realism. The new realism looks at the universe without 
 bias, either ecclesiastical or scientific; and the new humanism inter- 
 prets its data in the light of their simple human origin. Man makes his 
 universe; therefore he should make it useful for himself. Science is 
 the instrument with which he has been building it ; but it has not always 
 been useful for him, since he has, more often than not, regarded the 
 instrument as something greater than himself. 
 
 Ill 
 
Among the devices which subordinates a man to his thought is 
 that of conceiving of the universe as a unity. Henry Adams in his 
 Education has given an account of his vain pursuit of that conception 
 in history, and ultimately in science, from which the historical con- 
 ception had come. Since the early gropings after it among the reflec- 
 tive Greeks, it had grown in power and influence, associated with var- 
 ious great expressions of imperial ambition to which it was a congenial 
 aid, such as the Roman Empire and the Universal Church, until it 
 reached a zenith in the modern scientific and mechanistic sense, as- 
 sociated with imperial industrialism. Adams, however, applying a real- 
 istic measure, is unable to find in the multiform complexity of the world 
 any manifestation of this unity. He finds rather in the last resort, 
 when he applies to the more reflective scientists, that even they are un- 
 able to discover the unity that was supposed to underlie all science. 
 They assert that order and reason, beauty and benevolence, are con- 
 ceptions solely associated with the mind of man and cannot be projected 
 beyond it. Necessity cannot be inferred in that which lies beyond 
 sense-impressions since it is a concept formed by the mind of man on 
 this side of sense-impressions. And chaos, therefore, is all that can be 
 asserted of the super-sensuous. The scientists themselves thus insist 
 that the world is one of multiplicity rather than of unity alone. 
 
 "This sublime metaphysical illusion," as Nietzsche says, "that by 
 means of the clue of causality thinking reaches to the deepest abysses 
 of being and that thinking is not only able to perceive but also to cor- 
 rect it, is added as an instinct to science and again and again leads the 
 latter to its limits where it must change into art ; which is really the end 
 to be attained by this mechanism." It seems then that science has been 
 led to its limits, when it must change into art. If it be not changed into 
 art, its ends dangle vainly in the inane and it remains purposeless and 
 meaningless, blind leader of the blind. 
 
 The world will probably admit now at once that science is a mech- 
 anism, the most powerful and efficient of the tools devised by man. 
 But no tool, from the simplest stone axe to the most complex intellect- 
 ual conception, can remain an end in itself. Whatever issues from the 
 human brain must somehow serve to enrich life; it must somehow re- 
 turn to that life from which it sprang, with interest. But mere mechan- 
 ism neither explains, as Nietzsche says, nor does it return comfort and 
 solace to its deviser. Art is the peculiar activity of mankind which 
 most adequately serves that use. The great poets have been the most 
 deeply religious of men. And such art as theirs is more nearly an end 
 in itself than any other human expression. It attempts to give an ex- 
 planation of life by imitation, by analogy, by likeness. Farther than 
 
 112 
 
that man cannot go. If Ihe tools, which he builds become more flexible, 
 subtle, and powerful, he should by means of them return more adequate 
 analogies of life whereby to explain it. 
 
 The Greek mythology has been called a science ; but it is rather an 
 artistic and religious transformation into art of such science as was 
 then known. It may be derided as a simple animism, but unlike other 
 animisms, it exhibits a clear and rational attitude towards the world 
 and makes explanations which are purely personal, and therefore illum- 
 inating, not grotesque and obscure. It reveals a rational sense of the 
 limitations of thought in that it does not try to make extra-human ex- 
 planations. Just as the sciences, each in its respective groups of data, 
 apply to these the conceptions of reason and order which are innate in 
 the observer and do not assume that the inferences from one are neces- 
 sarily valid in every other, so the early Greeks applied to the forces 
 within and without themselves interpretations that have exactly the or- 
 der to be found in human beings and concretely visualized them thus; 
 that is, when their science reached its limits, it changed into art. Each 
 force or group of phenomena had its own individual representation not 
 transferable to any other. They were polytheists, and their thought was 
 frankly anthropomorphic. Theirs was a multiple world, with a dim 
 Fate in the background. 
 
 There are now probably more sciences than the Greeks had gods 
 and spirits ; and each rules over its own particular sphere of nature. 
 Each is a group of observations arranged into an order of some human 
 kind ; and by human kind is meant according to some analogy taken 
 from human experience. If it seems absurd to compare these sciences 
 with the elder mythology, it might be asked what will be thought of 
 these sciences at a time as remote from us in the future as we are dis- 
 tant from the Greeks. They will probably have become a very strange 
 mythology indeed. And if it be objected that the gods and spirits oT 
 the Greek world were never known in the concrete, whereas science 
 works with tangible objects and achieves predicted results, it might be 
 answered that when the greater scientists exercise their imaginations 
 to understand the real nature of things, the world is reduced to a sys- 
 tem of hypotheses and formulae which surely are as intangible as the 
 gods and spirits, without their saving grace of offering comfort and 
 solace to the general mind. 
 
 There are many sciences, not one. If we suspect one science with its 
 general behind all these multiple things, so long as this is a mere conjec- 
 ture, it seems unnecessary to arrange the world, humanly speaking, as 
 if this were known; which has so often happened under one or another 
 form of absolutism. Behind the Greek gods was a dimly suspected 
 
 113 
 
Fate ; but Fate, as interpreted by some group of human beings, was not 
 permitted to rule life. So long as dim mysterious presences are merely 
 suspected, it may as well be conjectured that "above all law is human- 
 ity." And in making this conjecture there is something definite to work 
 with, if men would know more nearly what it is that limits their wills, 
 in so far as a knowledge of mankind with its infinitely variable rela- 
 tionships, in which all individuals are involved, may be comprehendingly 
 utilized for their advantage. There are order and reason in the uni- 
 verse in just the measure that these are found in the personality that 
 imputes it to his environment. But that the order and reason that is 
 found in any one personality shall be the order for all is no longer pos- 
 sible. Such order as may exist must be built up by agreement among 
 the many, assuming them to be conscious and tolerant of each other, 
 and able to understand that each man's world is different from every 
 other's. An order thus built up by understanding and agreement, and 
 comprehensible to him who accepts it, is a guarantee of freedom and 
 all its fruits as they were enjoyed under the Greek dispensation. And 
 since this is an order that is found in the human personality, it becomes 
 vitally necessary that this mysterious entity be understood. In this 
 very sense there is a movement in the world towards right understand- 
 ing, a new humanism. "Values must be discovered and produced in a 
 world of experience before they can be conceived or assumed to exist 
 in a higher world; the other world must always be derived from this 
 world ; it can never be a primary concept. It changes with the changes 
 of this world." This is true under whatever auspices the dogmatism 
 may be promulgated. 
 
 The new tide ebbs away from the pursuit of an elusive unity, in- 
 evitable accompaniment of practical absolutism. It flows strongly 
 towards multiplicity; yet it does not reduce the world to a chaos. 
 Neither was the multiform and beautifully diversified world of the 
 myths a chaos. The mind of man persists in seeing the world under 
 the appearance of order; but it must always be emphasized that this 
 order is not a concept, or a mechanism, or syllogism; but that of the 
 full human personality. While the early Greek view of it was ingenu- 
 ously anthropomorphic, the modern accords with the more adequate 
 understanding of the human being which modern humanistic studies 
 provide. 
 
 Philosophic thought has progressed systematically in this direction 
 from the empiricist turning point of some two centuries ago. Recently 
 it has emerged through many varieties of vitalism in the extreme form 
 of psychological vitalism, or personalism, which regards the universe as 
 constituted by an infinitely great number of interrelated selves. Whereas, 
 
 114 
 
it is said, the selfless or impersonal idea, like the impersonal value, is 
 an abstraction from the concretely real self, "the world as mental, in- 
 evitably is a world made up not of ideas, or mental processes, but of 
 selves." Whatever may be said of this as an advanced view, it may be 
 taken to indicate a main trend towards humanism. 
 
 The tide has ebbed slowly away from the mechanistic unity that 
 accompanied industrialism, just as it ebbed away from the verbally 
 mechanistic unity that accompanied imperial ecclesiasticism. The Turn- 
 ing Point has been passed and it flows again towards a human interpreta- 
 tion of those things which are human inevitably. Men try to see the 
 world as it really is to each individual, and to build it up for the pur- 
 poses of life by agreement among each other, making its order that 
 which comes from an interrelation of personalities. The evidences of 
 these things are to be seen on every hand. In the industrial life, after 
 many years of haphazard legal tinkering, the last change impends where- 
 by men shall determine for themselves their parts in industrial organi- 
 zations. In government centuries of organic development has evolved 
 that anomaly among world empires, the British, an imperial association 
 of free governments, bound together by moral ties rather than by legal 
 sanctions. And the League of Nations comes as a further universal 
 extension of this principle of organization, the only one which has so 
 far proved that it has the qualities of growth and permanence. For 
 such conceptions of organization knowledge and understanding of hu- 
 manity are needed. That this is being garnered is shown by such a phen- 
 omenon as realism in literature. For realism can ultimately be little else 
 than a sincere and faithful recording of the universe as it appears to 
 each individual; and in proportion as it comes to be known that each 
 record must be different from every other, understanding and tolera- 
 tion ensue. In realism the eighteenth century romanticism, collateral 
 of the democratic movement, comes to full fruit. There must be real 
 understanding of the varieties of men as well as a passion for humanity 
 in the abstract before there can be real democracy. In that branch of 
 literature known as journalism there appear increasingly new members 
 of what may be called the free press. And this is also an expression of 
 the desire to know the free and untrammeled opinions of men as in- 
 dividuals in place of those which are guided or controlled by corporate 
 interests. The oldtime fiction of the soulless corporation, like that of 
 national sovereignty above all human law and morality, no longer holds. 
 It is known that individuals conceal themselves behind these specious 
 pretences. It is therefore demanded that purely personal opinions be 
 made known as personal and that fictions be dispensed with. In educa- 
 tion it is more clearly realized that the proper study of mankind is man, 
 
 115 
 
not only historically and scientifically, but concretely in the student him- 
 self, for he is also a man. Therefore studies tend to group themselves 
 around anthropological centers; and the development of individual 
 powers and character becomes paramount in all instruction. 
 
 These new attitudes reveal how men become realists again, looking 
 through their own eyes, not through the spectacles provided by inter- 
 ested concept-makers. And so they judge the things that they see and 
 try to know in the light of their own experiences and that which is ac- 
 ceptable to them. They are critical ; not by the measuring-rule of codi- 
 fied principles, but by the standards of the best lives. And in being thus 
 critical, they are humanistic. In this direction they have been tending 
 against enormous obstacles — obstacles so great that the riddance of 
 them has almost wrecked mankind. But with the end of the Great 
 War, and the coming of peace, the painful convalescence begins. 
 
 Rupert Brooke might well ask, "Should we be a Turning Point in 
 History?" as he thought of battles fought to make possible the glorious 
 light of Greek culture. The war in which he becomes a hero is the 
 turning point into a culture even more glorious, it is to be hoped. It 
 will be made possible by applying a similar realistic, human vision to 
 the marvellous instruments that man has since fashioned for himself. 
 
 116 
 
A MODERN DANTE 
 
 117 
 
A MODERN DANTE 
 
 In the dedication of his Toward the Gulf, Edgar Lee Masters ac- 
 knowledges the immediate source of the inspiration for his Spoon River 
 Anthology. From contemplation of the epitaphs of the Greek Anthol- 
 ogy, he says, his hand unconsciously strayed to the preliminary sketches 
 which were in time to grow into his own work. And the familiarity 
 with Homer, the result of an annual reading for many years, he feels, 
 had its influence both as to form and spirit. He concludes with the 
 statement that the confessional might have been pursued farther, and 
 thus leaves the way open for conjectures as to other possible influences 
 upon his Anthology. 
 
 In that work he explicitly mentions three great poets: Homer, 
 Dante, and Whitman. This fact offers clues for investigation. Hom- 
 er's influence has been acknowledged. Whitman has been an example 
 in the attempt to picture the life of America, to mirror the age and 
 country of the next generation after him. There remains Dante. Is 
 it not likely that Dante also is responsible for something of the spiritual 
 and ethical quality of his poem ? 
 
 Many readers feel that Dante is an influence both as to form and 
 spirit, and the clue, offered above, may therefore be worth pursuing. 
 The mediaeval poet has a certain advantage over the modern moralist 
 in that the theology of his time, which he frankly accepted, provided him 
 with a fixed architectonic form, and through that, with a large part of 
 the spiritual meaning of his work. The modern moralist, setting him- 
 self the same spiritual goal, has to be content with presenting merely 
 the authentic records of the spirits that lie sleeping on the hill in the 
 Spoon River cemetery. Conformable to the claims of a catholic church, 
 Dante has the advantage of speaking for the spirits of all times and all 
 places, while the modern's spirit world is somewhat parochial, although 
 sometimes a Father Malloy or an Edith Conant may be indirectly in- 
 cluded, and we may be told of the presence of such remoter spirits as 
 Homer and Dante. Yet much of the same effects as those of Dante's 
 elaborate tripartite abode of spirits in the after life are contrived by 
 Master's simple device of the Spoon River cemetery. 
 
 The modern poet, however, reveals less, and perhaps knows less, 
 about the final abode than Homer knew of Hades. What he knows is 
 common knowledge: that a cemetery is a place where spirits may be 
 found. To learn that these spirits, who are supposed to have unlocked 
 the last mystery, cannot agree upon the facts of their own interrelated 
 
 319 
 
experiences, is disconcerting ; because the device is chosen in order that 
 we may be sure of the very truth. Dante's spirits agree; they have 
 found truth. But to find truth is perhaps a small matter in modern 
 spirit-abodes. Or is the truth too fluctuant nowadays to be entirely 
 grasped? However, much of the effect of Dante's poem may be de- 
 rived out of the simple device ; the little cemetery may possibly be plot- 
 ted into a hell, purgatory and paradise. In any event Dante is an inter- 
 esting guide to the spirit-world, and he should have a certain compet- 
 ence after his journey with Virgil and Beatrice. He may have given 
 spiritual aid to Masters, just as he in turn received and acknowledged 
 it from Virgil. 
 
 The form of Masters' verse has been the cause of tempests enough, 
 it is to be hoped; all of which was no doubt foreseen by the resolute 
 moralist. Dante speaks for him in this matter, in a sense, when he de- 
 fends himself for the use of the vernacular for so sublime a subject as 
 his. The vernacular speech, he says, is that which our children learn 
 from their nurses without rule. It is nobler than grammatical speech 
 because it was first employed by men, and is used by all, and because 
 it is natural, whereas the other is artificial. Not peculiar to any town, 
 but common to all, it is the generic Italian, "whose fragrance is in 
 every town, but whose lair is in none." Apply this statement with the 
 necessary changes to the question of free verse as opposed to conven- 
 tional forms and it will be surprisingly apropos. But probably that 
 verse whose fragrance is in all forms, but whose lair is in none, will 
 prove to be the heritage from Whitman, just as Dante's speech proved to 
 be his own Tuscan. There are some critics who, if they would be re- 
 luctant to compare him with Dante, would be enthusiastic to apply to 
 his verse and purpose what Dante further says of his vernacular in 
 another place. "It is lax and humble, for it is the vernacular speech 
 in which very women communicate." They could scarcely have chosen 
 words more adequate for their opinion. This verse is so lax and humble 
 that it vulgarly sprawls, they might say ; and its purpose is that for which 
 very women sometimes communicate. And some might even hope to 
 heaven that this sharp-tongued woman does not come to their own 
 home towns. But the nobility of the simple and intimate is very real 
 to both moralists. 
 
 He who read the Spoon River Anthology when it first appeared 
 will recall that the reading was finished with difficulty and even pain 
 and after repeated attempts. It reminded him of Dante in the dark 
 wood, where it was so hard to find the way that the thought of it made 
 him fear anew — so hard that death itself could be but little more bitter. 
 But if he persisted, the delectable mountains came into view and hope 
 
 120 
 
encouraged him to struggle onward until he emerged and saw the stars. 
 There was good to be found in the wild and rough and difficult wood; 
 but there was need to know of the other things to be found there. It 
 was the process of learning these things in the first part of Masters' 
 book that discouraged many in the first trials, since they had no 
 knowledge of the good that was eventually to be found. 
 
 The path to the knowledge of God leads through sorrow and ad- 
 versity, through the wild and rough and difficult wood, says Dante. 
 (The sorrow and adversity of Mr. Britling led Mr. Wells to such a full 
 knowledge of God that he has painted a full-length portrait of the In- 
 visible King.) Therefore it is evident that this great poem should be 
 called a comedy; "for with respect to the content it is in the beginning 
 horrible and fetid, for it is hell ; and in the end it is prosperous, de- 
 sirable, atid gracious, for it is paradise." The modern poem has been 
 called a comedy — a human comedy — after Balzac, the design in the 
 name being probably the same as Dante's, but representing the modern 
 "stepping-down" of the theological to the sociological, of the divine to 
 the human. According to Dante's etymology the name fits the modern 
 song as well; for comedy is village song, rustic song; and "so comedy 
 is a certain kind of poetic narration differing from all others." Surely 
 the song of the village of Spoon River is a song differing from all 
 others ! 
 
 Since the first part of the Anthology was horrible and fetid, readers 
 found it so disagreeable. It was the modern counterpart of hell. Since 
 the end was so prosperous, and desirable, and gracious, it was an ample 
 reward for the pains of the first part. It was the modern paradise. 
 Thus we may identify hell and paradise in the Anthology. 
 
 But is there a purgatory ? The attentive reader will discover, after 
 he has sojourned awhile in the eternal places among the despairing cries 
 of "the ancient spirits woful," (among whom Virgil warned Dante that 
 it was necessary to pass) that the spirits have become comparatively 
 contented in their state. Their confessions lack the customary ironical 
 sting. They entertain the passer-by with homilies on the general 
 meaning of life, as if from some superior point of vantage. This is 
 purgatory, the home of those "who are contented in the fire," as Dante 
 says, "because they hope to come, whenever it may be, to the blessed 
 folk." Whether for the same reason or not, these are at all events con- 
 tented folk, otherwise they would not so calmly sermonize. Thus the 
 simple cemetery in its effects, that is spiritually, resembles the Dantesque 
 formal threefold division into hell, purgatory, and paradise. 
 
 Masters' inferno is no more pleasant a place than Dante's. And it 
 lacks that topographical interest which sometimes mitigates the accumu- 
 
 121 
 
lated horrors of Dante's dark world. Dante's sheer descriptive power, 
 appHed to the objectively real environment as well as to the fragments 
 of nature from the world above, which are introduced by way of con- 
 trast and comparison, arouses an esthetic pleasure that tempers fear 
 and pity. Masters' dark world, however, is one of pure spirit, re- 
 lieved, to be sure, by some wonderful memories of nature, like Hare 
 Drummer's vivid appreciation of the walnut tree, 
 
 "Standing leafless against a flaming west," 
 the smell of autumn smoke, the dropping acorns, and the echoes about 
 the vale. 
 
 Amid the almost universal condemnation of the ogre "life" by 
 those whom he has maimed and bruised and broken, there appears here 
 and there a relief, as in Dante's hell. Old Fiddler Jones has lived and 
 fiddled for ninety years ; he has done nothing more, but he has no re- 
 grets. He is a plebeian exemplar of Dante's Capaneus, on the burning 
 sands under the raining fire, defiant still for all his sufferings, who, in 
 spite of his creator's intentions, like Milton's Satan, stirs our admira- 
 tion. Old Fiddler Jones defied the ogre life, even sported with him and 
 after a full experience feels no regrets. He is like a sunbeam in this 
 "horrible and fetid place." 
 
 Paolo and Francesca gleam like red roses through the murk of 
 Dante's hell. The story of their great love, which unites them here in 
 death as it united them there in life, overcomes Dante with grief, so 
 that he loses consciousness. So William and Emily touch their creator's 
 heart among the ironies and disillusionments of his hell. They alone 
 are permitted to speak their story together, because it deals, like that 
 of Paolo and Francesca, with true love. In the one case vengeance 
 unites the two in eternal love; in the other death fades their passion 
 away in a unison like love itself. Reuben Pantier and Emily Sparks, 
 too, gleam brightly amid the gloom of this hell. They seize and hold 
 the attention as Dante's was held by those two who went together so 
 light upon the wind. The firelike quality of Reuben's spirit and the 
 flamelike devotion of Emily are rare in this eternal place. 
 
 Blind Jack, a fiddler like Old Jones, performs a grateful service 
 when he gives a glimpse of old Homer singing the fall of Troy to the 
 gathered fiddlers, "from the highest to the lowest, writers of music and 
 tellers of stories." Masters and Dante have a special tenderness for 
 poets and artists, but the modem has no noble castle for the elect. His 
 Whitmanesque, democratic sympathy includes all, from Petit, the poet, 
 counting his little iambics that tick like seeds in a dry pod and Blind 
 Jack, fiddler at county fairs, to Homer and Whitman, "roaring in the 
 pines," and "the mighty shade who sings of one named Beatrice." 
 
 122 
 
These are reliefs in the Spoon River inferno, which, of the three 
 realms of the after life, seems to be most congenial to the spirit of the 
 modern poet, since the account of it comprises the larger half of his 
 poem. 
 
 Beginning with Edmund Pollard and Thomas Trevelyan he has 
 apparently decided "to sail his bark over better waters," and leave be- 
 hind "a sea so cruel." Now the orge of life that broke and crushed 
 and drove to despair has been vanquished. Evidently a new perusal of 
 the ancients has filled the poet with a pagan serenity, and he acknowl- 
 edges with Thomas Trevelyan whence the new joy and clearness in his 
 soul has come. 
 
 "O livers and artists of Hell as centuries gone, 
 Sealing in little thuribles dreams and visions. 
 Incense beyond all price, forever fragrant, 
 A breath whereof makes clear the eyes of the soul; 
 How I inhaled its sweetness here in Spoon River!" 
 
 Spoon River has indeed profited by inhaling its sweetness. The 
 ogre is being overcome; it is found good to warm the hand at the fire 
 of life. Henceforth the spirits sweetly ruminate the contents of their 
 memories and discourse in a mood of calm reflection. They are full 
 of mellow advice, "sealing in little thuribles dreams and wisdom." They 
 are "contented in the fire" like those on the mount of purgatory, who 
 have discovered with Calvin Campbell and Lyman King that Fate is 
 oneself and that "man, by good or ill deserts, in the exercise of the 
 freedom of his choice, becomes liable to rewarding or punishing justice." 
 It is pleasant to be among them, and the fears that beset one in the dark 
 world are happily far behind. Our spirits mount the cornices of this 
 purgatory, until with the thought of Lincoln, stirred by Anne Rutledge, 
 the poet soars toward his paradise. With Herndon we see Lincoln, the 
 Pioneer, 
 
 "Arise from the soil like a fabled giant 
 
 And throw himself over a deathless destiny," 
 
 and yet we see him telling stories of the old boarding house with Han- 
 nah Armstrong. Lincoln is the guide who conducts the poet into the 
 abode of the blest spirits and the Eternal Presence. The pioneers, typi- 
 fied by Lincoln, are the angels of this sphere. They have learned the 
 great mystery. 
 
 "The mystical pathos of their drooped eyelids 
 
 And the serene sorrow of their eyes" 
 are far beyond fathoming, says Rutherford McDowell, contrasting 
 them with their degenerate offspring, whose fates the Spoon River hell 
 
 123 
 
chronicles. How excellently Lucinda and Davis Matlock announce the 
 old gospel, "it takes life to love life," to those for whom it was too 
 strong : 
 
 "Well, I say to live it like a god 
 
 Sure of immortal life, though you are in doubt, 
 
 Is the way to live it." 
 These spirits are joyous, exultant; they have won their inner freedom, 
 have found the true way, and are in glory. It is not by abstinences and 
 prohibitions that they climb heavenward, but by being "glad of earth" 
 and "worshipping her in wonder" ; for immortality is an achievement 
 to be possessed after mighty striving by the strong of soul, not a thing 
 to be chaffered for. Apocalyptic visions are revealed to them in many 
 degrees of splendor, accordant with the tradition of heaven. Faith 
 Matheny interprets the sudden flashes in her soul. Gustave Richter's 
 dream presents an unbelievable glory of light immanent with the 
 thought of a Presence. When Dante tried to remember the Supreme 
 Vision, so much mightier was it than his speech that, like one who saw 
 in a dream, when the dream vanished, only the stamp of the passion 
 remained, and nothing else. Arlo Will announces that the strong of 
 soul will pass through many splendours here and "through unnumbered 
 heavens to the final flame." Elijah Browning swiftly reviews life from 
 dancing childhood at the mountain's base upward to the last icy pinnacle 
 overhung by a star. He climbs the pinnacle, flings away his staff, 
 touches the star and vanishes ; 
 
 "For the mountain delivers to infinite truth 
 
 Whoever touches the star." 
 Dante found within the eternal light the scattered leaves of all the 
 universe bound up by love in one volume, but power failed him for 
 the high fantasy of revealing what he saw. With a conclusion similar 
 but in a spirit quite different, Webster Ford apostrophizes the Delphic 
 Apollo and exhorts youth to fling itself into the fire and die if it must 
 be: 
 
 "For none shall look 
 
 On the face of Apollo and live." 
 Such are the cherubim and seraphim of the modern paradise, ex- 
 ulting in a triumphant affirmation of life. It is the old pioneers, of 
 whom Lincoln is the eternal archetype, with his gentle courage, clear 
 vision, and mystic sadness, who teach men to overcome by life itself 
 the evils of living. 
 
 So though Masters may have gone through hell and climbed pur- 
 gatory with Dante, he has levelled his heaven down to the Olympus 
 of the Greek tragic poets. 
 
 124 
 
PELLE, THE CONQUEROR 
 An epic of labor. 
 
 126 
 
PELLE, THE CONQUEROR 
 
 An epic of labor. 
 
 Among the niany literary surprises of the last ten years is the re-ap- 
 pearance and unexpected success of the novel in three volumes. The 
 trend of the times has seemed to be in the direction of economy and 
 compactness in literature, rather than in the direction of expansion. 
 And, although there has recently been a rapid production of the shorter 
 lyric forms in verse, the broader epic has not become popular except 
 in such abbreviated and modernized versions as Masefield's Daffodil 
 Fields. The drama has been much sought as a reading form, because 
 of its lack of what is considered the non-essential descriptive matter. 
 And the short story clings to popularity as persistently as ever. KTany 
 tendencies indicate the literary equivalent of the demand for efficiency 
 in the industrial life. 
 
 Parallel with this undoubted trend in literature there has also 
 existed an enthusiastic, and seemingly inconsistent, admiration for Rus- 
 sian fiction, a literary form as shapeless, and bulky, and incomprehen- 
 sible as the land from which it springs is today. It may be that this 
 enthusiasm for Russian fiction has influenced our novelists to experi- 
 ment with larger forms merely under the impetus of desire for change. 
 But there are of course many other models besides in their respective 
 literatures from that past time when men were assumed to have more 
 leisure for the elaboration of their artistic designs. Or it may be that 
 these novelists are groping after some literary form to present the im- 
 mense magnitude and intricate complexity of the problems of modern 
 life. A broadly realistic manner will require a work of much larger 
 scope than those to which we have become accustomed by the effective 
 demand of a novelty-loving public. 
 
 Pelle, The Conqueror, is one of these larger works of the epic 
 kind which won immediate recognition. Its author, Martin Anderson 
 Nexo, was probably entirely unknown to American readers until the 
 translation of his four-volume novel was completed. It is said he was 
 not well known even in his own country until the masterpiece ap- 
 proached completion. A work which has been greeted as a great liter- 
 ary landmark wherever it has been read, and which has consequently 
 made its author at once a world figure in literature, deserves more at- 
 tention than it has hitherto received in America. And the more so 
 
 3 27 
 
since it deals with a problem in organization concerning which the 
 world today has great need to know. 
 
 The four volumes of the novel deal with four phases of its hero's 
 development; boyhood, apprenticeship, the struggles of manhood, and 
 the victory. 
 
 The first volume is one of those realistic studies of boy life in which 
 modem literature abounds. The boy Pelle comes from Sweden to the 
 island of Bornholm in the Baltic, a Danish possession, with his aged 
 father, who seeks employment for them there in the land of promise 
 as farm-workers. They are domiciled on Stone Farm, owned by the 
 Koggstrups, who are reputed to be the severest taskmasters in the island. 
 They are paid a trifling sum, the boy being too young, and the father 
 too old for full wages. The unfolding of the boy's intelligence in the 
 environment of the farm while her3ing cattle in the meadow in sum- 
 mer and caring for them in winter, while trying to establish himself 
 among his playmates on the farm and in the little religious school, is a 
 vivid record. After confirmation at fifteen he is ready to shift for him- 
 self and goes to the neighboring seaport town where he is apprenticed 
 in the shoemaker's trade. 
 
 The second volume continues the story of the boy's development 
 in the hard school of the city. The curiosity about the life around him 
 which characterized his farm experiences here has a larger field for 
 exploration, and there is little about the town and its inhabitants that 
 he does not have an opportunity to learn while serving his apprentice- 
 ship. The difficulties of orientation here are much greater; but in the 
 attempt to find himself in his surroundings his character gains in 
 strength and stability. At length the curiosity to learn about that life 
 beyond the narrow city horizon, which sends strange intimations to 
 him from time to time, attracts him to the capital before his apprentice- 
 ship is fully served. 
 
 The third volume. The Great Struggle, is concerned with the period 
 of young manhood. In Copenhagen he finds himself at the very heart 
 of a problem which had come to him in mysterious hints and perplexing 
 suggestions on the farm and in the town. He sets himself to solve this 
 in the same way in which he had learned to face and overcome the 
 smaller problems of his adjustment to his simpler youthful environ- 
 ment. His method is to throw himself with great energy into the labor 
 movement of which he became in time the leader. It is not to be un- 
 derstood, however, that this is a volume on labor unionism. It is still 
 the very interesting record of a strong and magnetic personality. The 
 bitter conflicts between his loyalty to a cause and the needs of his own 
 life, his loves, wedded life, and family give the volume an intimately 
 
personal impression. At the height of his success as a labor leader, when 
 he has just won a great general strike, he is sent to prison on a false 
 charge of forgery. 
 
 The last volume is an account of his attempts, after his release from 
 prison, to rehabilitate himself and to re-establish his family life, which 
 had been broken up even before his imprisonment on account of his 
 devotion to the labor cause. From this time on his interest in the labor 
 problem takes the form of attempting to establish a co-operative shoe- 
 making industry in the capital. This enterprise involves him in endless 
 struggles with the allied competitive manufacturers; but he succeeds 
 gradually and extends the co-operative principle into other activities. 
 His personal fortunes are improved and his family happily reunited 
 and established on a country estate known as Daybreak which gives 
 the title to the volume. The book thus ends with a note of optimism 
 quite different from that of the realistic novels of the day. 
 
 Although the novel is primarily the record of Pelle's personal life, 
 there is interwoven more or less deftly with this an account of condi- 
 tions that have a wide economic and historical significance. Certain 
 well-known problems are here shown as they are to be seen from the 
 • viewpoint at the center of them. Boyhood thus presents the centraliz- 
 ing tendency in competitive agriculture, with its attendant human mal- 
 adjustments. The better farms of the island are gra'dually being ac- 
 quired by the wealthy farmer, leaving the poor-farmers to till the bar- 
 ren plots and to eke out an existence by occasional labor in the stone 
 quarries. The independent peasantry is being transformed into a pro- 
 letariat of unskilled labor. There is a continual streaming of young 
 men and women away from the land to the cities, led by the hope of 
 improving outlook for the future. The places of these in turn are filled 
 by the incoming stream of immigrant labor. Pelle joins the outbound 
 migration to the town. 
 
 The town presents the same centralizing tendency in the trades, 
 which are gradually coming under the control of the masters, who suc- 
 ceed by exploiting the labor of their apprentices. The masters them- 
 selves are being forced to the wall by the competition of machine-made 
 goods from the larger industrial centers. The apprentices, when their 
 service is finished, find no work at their trades and drift into the ranks 
 of unskilled labor like the peasants in the country. The problem of 
 increasing unemployment and acute poverty recurring each winter begin 
 to attract an uneasy curiosity. The prospects for the future in a trade 
 are no better than they were on the land. So the service is thrown 
 over and Pelle is caught up in the endless drift towards Copenhagen to 
 seek there the promised land. 
 129 —5 
 
The capital is the center toward which all these blind forces of 
 life converge. Here all those evils that revealed themselves in town 
 and country are aggravated. There are overcrowded tenements, hid- 
 eous slums, drunkenness, disease, desperate poverty, sweated labor, 
 monopolistic industries, usurers, and all the rest. But a phenomenon 
 new to Pelle is found in a rebellious labor which will refuse to work 
 when conditions become intolerable. Out of this attitude grows union- 
 ism, strikes, lockouts, parleyings between employers and employes, pro- 
 tocols, mediations, and general suspicion and hostility. Emigration 
 from Sweden to a land of promise (always the hope of the emigrant) 
 has brought Pelle after many chances to this end ; the only escape seems 
 to be another emigration to another land of promise. But one experi- 
 ence of this cycle seems to have satisfied Pelle. He joins the struggle 
 for change and becomes a leader in the labor movement and works 
 with such energy that he eventually brings his cause to a dramatic tri- 
 umph in a general strike. Thus a certain respect for the power of labor 
 is won and the right to organize is conceded. But the imprisonment 
 of Pelle quickly ends his triumph. Up to this point the background 
 for his life is the universal experience of the past generation. There is 
 very little real difference between the conditions revealed here in Den- 
 mark and those in any other industrial country. These are everywhere 
 the same. All the phenomena that sociological observation has dis- 
 covered are presented as the incidental accompaniments to the life of 
 the central figure. 
 
 The fourth problem presents a phase of the problem that is rela- 
 tively new in America. It suggests that unionism, now recognized as 
 respectable, has not obtained the results it struggled for. There is 
 as much poverty and unemployment as before. It further suggests that 
 the new phase of the movement, the parliamentary and political, will 
 yield no more acceptable results. Then in the end it points a way oi 
 escape from the situation in the organization of co-operative industries 
 owned by the laborers themselves. Pelle leads the movement, both 
 by the object-lesson of his own co-operative equal-sharing shoe factory, 
 and by active propaganda. The new principle is shown to make its way 
 against all the embarrassments that competitive industry can contrive 
 to throw in its way, until in the end the principle seems to control many 
 industries, highly organized from the soil to the consumer. The capital 
 for the first venture comes from without Pelle's class, an expedient 
 which he is reluctant to accept. But he becomes reconciled to it by the 
 reflection that the new order which labor must build for itself must 
 use those instrumentalities which the two orders, capital and labor, had 
 hitherto used against each other. 
 
 130 
 
In this review it is seen that the hero of the novel, the completely 
 individual and completely realized character, at the same time reveals 
 through his life the fortunes of the laboring class (a class, by the wray, 
 which Disraeli dignifies by the name of a nation in his memorable 
 phrase concerning England "divided into two nations";) and it seems 
 that the work might well be called the epic of labor, not necessarily of 
 Danish labor alone, but of that entire western world where the same 
 problems await solution. Although the first half of the novel is some- 
 what intimate in its realism, it is not that isolated and exceptional ex- 
 perience that is recorded in so many modern investigations into the in- 
 dividual soul. It acquires an epic sweep and significance because of 
 the universal nature of this one individual ; for the pattern of this life 
 is traced upon a background made completely familiar to us by books 
 and periodicals without number in the last generation. And in the re- 
 spect that the hero rises to be a leader in the most significant of modern 
 movements, the epic quality is heightened and maintained. In these 
 several ways the book is similar to the great national epics. The per- 
 sonal fortunes of the epic heroes are indeed the primary interest, but 
 these acquire a greater significance by being connected with nafional 
 fates. Upon the adventures of Odysseus depends the fate of Ithaca. 
 Upon Beowulf's magnificent combats depends the welfare of a people. 
 The Aeneid is scarcely anything else than the high destiny of imperial 
 Rome. But this epic loses its power to attract in proportion as its hero 
 is felt to be merely a personification of Rome. The hero who is a sym- 
 bol without self-governing personality does not seem to satisfy the re- 
 quirements of an epic. He must be individual as well as representative 
 of national and universal destiny. 
 
 Like the Aeneid in this respect are those works in which the hero 
 serves some concept. Those two interesting works, The Adventures 
 of Gargantua and Pantagruel and Don Quixote are not properly 
 epics although they present wide-sweeping views of life. They are the 
 works of reflective and skeptical men, the summaries of discredited 
 cultures, presented in a burlesque or farcical imitation of that epic man- 
 ner which would have been appropriate before the cultural unity of the 
 time which they satirize had been destroyed. The romances of roguery 
 which come after these return simply to the realities of contemporary 
 life among the commons with however light a purpose. Upon these reali- 
 ties more seriously considered the enduring works must eventually be 
 built. There appears in time such a "history" as that of Tom Jones in 
 England. In this there are realism, unity, and characterization seriously 
 directed. But Tom Jones remains only an interesting type of a kind of 
 Englishman ; he does not represent the fate or fortunes of England. In 
 
 t31 
 
such a work, on the other hand, as Hugo's Les Miserables, there is found 
 a wider significance in the Hfe of the hero, which does not necessarily re- 
 duce him to a symbol. But Hugo's characteristic lyrical gift impairs the 
 epic impression. It is always insistent upon the larger share in his at- 
 tempted realizations. 
 
 To come quickly to the present (if that far-away time before the 
 war can be called the present) Jean-Christophe, the well-known novel 
 by Rolland, summarizes the civilization of Europe just turned into the 
 new century as it is reflected in the life experiences of a master musi- 
 cian. It is not a national novel ; it is frankly cosmopolitan. But cosmo- 
 politanism as a reality has unfortunately not yet arrived in the world, 
 although Erasmus could avow himself a cosmopolitan with some show 
 of truth, since he represented a universal power and spoke in an inter- 
 national language. Of course art is said to be international, to be limited 
 by no national barriers, and musicians before the war may have been 
 the only true internationals. All that is changed now, and Jean-Chris- 
 tophe represents a beautiful dream only. At all events it is difficult 
 to think of an artist, who is intent upon self-realization in pure artistic 
 expression, as representing the simple realities of the workaday world. 
 The author of this work has issued from Switzerland a pamphlet called 
 Above the Conflict. This attitude of Holland's during the present 
 crisis explains the lack of living consistency between the life of Jean 
 and the author's interpolated reflections upon European civilization as 
 seen from a high intellectual eminence. The novel is in the tradition of 
 Wilhelm Meister, whose cosmopolitan author considered the cultured 
 development of his hero with Olympian detachment in the midst of 
 troublous times. 
 
 The great Danish novel may be truly regarded as an epic of labor, 
 much as the earlier national poems are called epic. This statement may 
 well be criticized on the ground that life as seen from the viewpoint of 
 a class can scarcely be called epic. It is unfortunately true that a divi- 
 sion between classes exists in modern times, and that therefore the work 
 which is broadly realistic must present the view of the one or the other 
 of the two classes. Until this division is eliminated there can be in no 
 work that impression of cultural unity which pervades the work of 
 simpler times. Of the two nations, however, as Disraeli called them, it is 
 very likely that the nation of labor will be the more homogeneous, and 
 that the other will be of many diverse opinions. The very fact that the 
 one group is spoken of as "the masses" argues for its homogeneity. 
 Pelle, The Conqueror does present that unity which characterizes 
 epics because in this work life is seen from the laborer's center, and 
 interpreted by the laborer's philosophy. It gains therefore also an im- 
 
 132 
 
pression of simplicity. There are but few characters from the upper 
 classes. Brun, the librarian, is one sympathetically drawn exception. 
 
 Pelle, The Conqueror then may be said to mark the clear emerg- 
 ence of the laborer as self-sufficient hero, and the realization of his dig- 
 nity in articulate literature. There have been many side-references to 
 the life of the humble, many bird's-eye views of it, but hitherto prob- 
 ably no work that attempts to construct the world from that point of 
 view. 
 
 133 
 
CHILDHOOD TRAGEDY 
 
 iti 
 
CHILDHOOD TRAGEDY 
 
 Sharply intagliated upon the delicate traceries of my childhood mem- 
 ories stands the grim vision of three gaunt wooden structures, white 
 on a dark blue ground. They represent what in my childhood were 
 three great swings set on a plateau just at the outskirts of the middle 
 western town where I was born. Swings as such are so much like the 
 other machinery of childhood's joys that there should be nothing es- 
 pecially noteworthy about them, unless perhaps there might have been 
 associated with them something of the nature of the pathetic, or pos- 
 sibly, tragic. But these I remember with a startling vividness, whenever 
 my thoughts stray backward, as they often do. The uprights were 
 made of peeled poles that gleam weirdly against a darkling sky, almost 
 like slits of light in the dark velvet canopy of the spring night — as it 
 seems to my insistent memory. Whenever I become conscious of this, 
 critically conscious, that is, I wonder why the image should come in 
 this gloomy shape; and when I probe into the memories more deeply, 
 I know that I enjoyed many a sunlit day of untroubled joyousness in 
 and around those swings. Then the great structures creak and groan 
 a troubled groundbass to the treble of childish glee as they labor under 
 the urge of children pumping them up and down ; and round about, the 
 plateau resounds with the shouts of children and is alive with flashes 
 of swift color. Why, I wonder, when this secondary is so much more 
 beautiful and satisfying, should it not in time take the place of prece- 
 dence over the former ? It is often said that memory is the alembic in 
 which all the ugliness, and pain, and weariness of life are refined away, 
 or, if of higher worth, transmuted into the gold with which age visions 
 youth. For gold one must have somehow ; and if it is not to be had in 
 the living, then it may be had in the remembering. But in this case 
 of mine the alchemic process has failed — unless gold have other ap- 
 pearances that I know not of. 
 
 It seems that the function of dreams is to satisfy with their vani- 
 ties the hidden, unrequited desires of day; and perhaps by a similar 
 process it is what the heart has once passionately desired that memory 
 presents to it. I longed with a fierce intentness for the pleasures of 
 those swings at night, but then I could not enjoy them. Night after 
 night, year after year, (although it could not have been many years)' 
 I longed with a nameless yearning for them — in vain. But now when- 
 ever I look back I can enjoy them at night. But it is a sad enjoyment 
 
 137 
 
that my memory presents me with, a mockery. I have them indeed, 
 all to myself, no sound to disturb, no light to merge them into their 
 setting, stark, forbidding, awful. They have become the very emblem 
 of tragedy. 
 
 Then the scene shifts. A small boy sits on the porch in the brown 
 twilight. Before him is a pail of water. Rebelliously he rolls up his 
 trousers, twitching and jerking petulantly. With elbows on knees 
 and chin in hands he glowers at the water in the pail. Suddenly a 
 medley of joyous cries rises like a mellow rocket into the night. He 
 turns his head to listen and a grimace of pain twists his features. He 
 pictures all the children of the town romping madly about the swings 
 at their evening play, while he — he must wash his feet. He spurns the 
 pail so that the water splashes high around him. Life is but a tragedy, 
 each night repeated. What malicious ingenuity could have invented a 
 more bitter punishment than this: to listen to the poignantly sweet 
 sounds of distant unshared joy, to know that it must remain unshared 
 in eternity, and as if that were not enough, to have to wash one's feet 
 the while. As he thinks thus the longing turns to fire within as each 
 warm current of night air raises the confused happy murmur to a 
 higher pitch. Could any reasonable person tell him why it was neces- 
 sary to wash one's feet in spring? Had they not been sprinkled by 
 gleaming sprays of cool dew as he raced through the meadows that 
 morning ! And perfumed with flower pollen as he rolled down the hill- 
 sides in the morning sun ! And powdered with hot, pungent dust as he 
 padded along the country roads in the afternoon heat ! And rinsed in 
 the warm silver shallows, and scoured under the high heaps of yellow 
 sand on the bars! All day he had been out in the freshness and the 
 wholesomeness of the open, yet he must wash his feet. This is the 
 highly praised wisdom of our parents — nothing but a mean caution 
 about bed linen. It would be wiser for a mother to love her son more 
 and her linen less — Another rocket of cries in the distance draws his 
 mind to prick out the shining outlines of the swings as with a spotlight. 
 And then from within comes the impatient warning that it is bedtime 
 and those feet must be washed by now. So it has to be. But he can 
 pretend great concern about the cleanliness of his feet so as to prolong 
 the bitter-sweetness. He places the soles of his feet gently upon the 
 surface of the water, sensing the smooth coolness, and, as he lowers 
 them abstractedly, feels the tickling between his toes and the unbroken 
 surface rolling up his legs until his feet touch the bottom. Then begins 
 the foot-laving — no sacrament this, performed with religious unction. 
 It is a humiliation, a desecration. Faintly in the distance sounds the 
 chorus, a malicious accompaniment. But even so, the task is pro- 
 
 13S 
 
longed until the imperative note in the warning from the house threatens 
 direr things. It is finished ; and he creeps into those infinitely precious 
 sheets of his mother's. 
 
 When he closes his eyes to sleep, he sees inside their lids three 
 gleaming white structures upon their strangely mottled darkness. Upon 
 a wave of dull resentment he drifts into sleep. 
 
 When he has fallen asleep, he finds himself peering out from white- 
 washed prison bars, just six of them, into a bright world of happiness. 
 
 A few years ago I visited the great gallery at Dresden. I had 
 just been paying my respects before the Sistine Madonna in her special 
 cabinet and was proceeding through the smaller cabinets where the 
 masters of Dutch and early German painting were displayed. As I 
 strolled into one of these I saw upon the opposite wall and somewhat 
 in the corner what might have been a rectangular hole cut in the wall. 
 And through this my astonished vision travelled back, far back, to a 
 midwestern village, and to a plateau beyond, where three livid struc- 
 tures shone against a gloomy sky. I stood lost in reverie a moment 
 Then I crossed the floor and read the legend beneath the frame, "The 
 Crucifixion, by Albrecht Durer." 
 
 139 
 
ABSOLUTE ABLATIVES 
 
 141 
 
ABSOLUTE ABLATIVES* 
 
 By Philologus 
 
 An alumnus of the University of Washington, a business 
 man with literary proclivities, expresses his appreciation of 
 the practical value of his training in foreign languages. 
 Having the business man's fear of being caught in pursuit 
 of the classics in literature, he desires to preserve his 
 incognito. — Editor The Washington Alumnus. 
 
 As I sit in my study, idly musing, my gaze chancing to fall upon 
 tny library, I am agreeably impressed by the splendid array there of 
 books in foreign languages — Greek, Latin, French and German. The 
 atmosphere they give to my room is distinctly academic and I am much 
 pleased thereat. Certainly I deserve to be surrounded by an atmos- 
 phere of learning for I have vi^orked through every one of those books 
 of mine in high school and college. My pleasure, I believe, is duly 
 modest. As a student in Liberal Arts with a fondness for literature, 
 what was more natural than that languages should have formed a large 
 part of my curriculum ? 
 
 Alumni, in their leisure moments, are apt to look back over their 
 college years and wonder just what elements of good practical value 
 they have obtained from their college courses, as tested by the experi- 
 ence of life. And so I look back over my college work and especially 
 over my language work to try to estimate what benefit I have derived 
 from the years I have devoted to it. 
 
 If I understand aright the purposes of language instruction, as it 
 is given, then the results of my attempt at estimation are satisfiactory 
 and I have profited by work in language. 
 
 In what manner will be seen. To begin with Latin, to which I de- 
 voted the larger part of my time, I shall enumerate what are the pleas- 
 ures and profits I now obtain from my knowledge of Latin. I am ex- 
 ceedingly proud of my Latin books and am very pleased to be able to 
 discuss with any lover of literature those things which I have learned 
 to consider of first importance in each author. I should say, for in- 
 stance, of Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War, that it might more 
 appropriately have been called Commentaries on the Oratio Obliqua. 
 Vividly I remember what beautiful illustrations of the Accusative with 
 
 *Beprlnted from The Washington Alumnus, October, 1908. 
 143 
 
Infinitive construction would follow whenever "Ariovistus dixit" any- 
 thing in Indirect Discourse. 
 
 And sometimes, but very rarely, some man would be quoted, so 
 that an idea might be obtained as to how men talked in Direct Discourse. 
 Again, I wonder if any man that has studied Caesar could ever forget 
 his bridge — the bridge that Caesar built! What an array of strange 
 and unusual words he used in that bridge ! What complex grammati- 
 cal constructions and, all in all, what a marvel of philological engineer- 
 ing that bridge was ! It must have been a wonderful structure ! In all 
 the Civil War of Caesar there was no such bridge ! 
 
 Virgil's Aeneid recalls to mind "Arms and the man" : Aeneas, who 
 was tossed about so much on land and sea until he finally landed on the 
 Lavinian shore. Virgil "sang," as he says, and his singing was in Ab- 
 latives Absolute of manner, means, cause, accompaniment, etc., ad li- 
 bitum, horrible dictu ! As I remember the poem, these things were the 
 burden of his song, so to speak. Whether it was a dirge or a paean of 
 praise is not yet clear, but its exemplifications of complex grammatical 
 construction were excellent. 
 
 Horace in his Odes, Epodes, Satires and Epistles had a variety of 
 clever exemplifications, too. And likewise the other writers, poets, his- 
 torians, essayists, orators, with whose works I became familiar in the 
 same manner such as Ovid, Cicero, Pliny, Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius, etc. 
 
 All the authors I studied served as a means to one end — a thorough 
 knowledge of Harkness' Grammar. It was a long way about, but it 
 was by this longest way around that I am now at last safely at home in 
 Harkness' Grammar. Poets and philosophers and public men all helped 
 me along each with his grammatical mite. 
 
 Now, in Greek, on the other hand, it was Goodwin's Grammar I 
 learned, through Homer and Xenophon chiefly. I hadn't time to study 
 very many Greek writers. Consequently I am not very familiar with 
 Greek grammar. I regret this very much for Greek has interesting and 
 intricate inflections well worth years of reading to acquire a knowledge 
 of for future reference. 
 
 To come down to the modern languages, I spent some two years 
 or more in each of French and German. It has always been a pleasant 
 pastime to put into play the conversational knowledge of those lan- 
 guages that I acquired in class exercises and in conversation, provided 
 the subjects discussed did not stray far from the weather and the time 
 of day. One cannot be expected to learn to talk about anything. 
 
 As in the ancient languages, so in the modern, classics were read 
 in order to ground one in inflection, grammar and word-order. With 
 an exact knowledge of these things and a dictionary it is possible to 
 
 144 
 
compose classical French arid German. It was none other than the best 
 masters in either language that taught me my fundamentals — Goethe, 
 Schiller, Lessing, Corneille, Racine, Moliere. 
 
 From this hasty review it may at once be seen that my liking for 
 literature brought me directly in contact with the greatest masters in 
 four languages, many of whom are masters of literature in all lan- 
 guages. I have become familiar with their vocabularies, knowing fairly 
 accurately the inflectional forms of the larger number of their words 
 and the grammatical relations of these words to each other in the var- 
 ious styles of composition in which they were encountered. I was 
 always taught to rivet my attention upon the word and not to permit 
 it to stray into a contemplation of the thought words carried, nor of the 
 esthetic qualities of poetic forms or ideas. We were concerned with 
 the tangible, the practical, the word, not with indefinite esthetic things 
 which lie in forbidden paths. The logical conclusion of such studies is 
 eventual possession of a doctor's degree and the publication of a thesis 
 on the Uses of the Subjunctive in some author or other in some lan- 
 guage or other. In that way I shall never be able to utilize my training, 
 for that same fondness for literature that led me to the study of lan- 
 guages has now interposed to prevent the logical conclusion of my 
 studies. Of later years in my browsings about I have come to know 
 much, by second hand, about the conciseness of Caesar's style, the pur- 
 ity of the Ciceronian; about the naivete of Homer, the simplicity of 
 Virgil and the elegance of Horace; about the position occupied by the 
 French dramatists and Lessing in the general drama; and about the 
 philosophies of Schiller and Goethe and so forth. When I consider my 
 training it would seem heresy to read the original works again for these 
 things, if indeed it would be possible to read them. I should no doubt 
 become involved in a struggle with some construction on the first page 
 of my work or become lost in meditation on some point of etymology, 
 a subject which interests me very much. For instance, should I come 
 across the verb "e-duco" in Latin, the English work "education" would 
 come into mind at once and how our word has changed in meaning from 
 that of its root. It would be very difficult to get away from words. 
 
 My attention has recently been directed to the attempt on the part 
 of some Eastern colleges, notably Princeton, to depart from the ortho- 
 dox method of language study and to substitute for it what they choose 
 to call the cultural method, in which emphasis is placed upon the liter- 
 ary, esthetic, historical, philosophical, etc., elements of that which they 
 study. Something after the old Humanist methods. Surely in this 
 age of enlightened education a retrogression toward the methods in 
 vogue in the Middle Ages should not be tolerated. They would by their 
 
 145 
 
method advance to a reading knowledge of a language by the simplest, 
 easiest and most direct route. Whereas the present academic ideal 
 supposes, rationally, that a thorough reading knowledge must be 
 based upon a thorough and exact knowledge of the word in all its gram- 
 matical relations and forms, and that since this requires years of 
 patient and careful study, reading knowledge is not to be attained until 
 post-graduate years. He who sacrifices that special mental training 
 that grammar can give, merely to read and enjoy a foreign work is like 
 the boy who eagerly hastens through his first novel. He enjoys for- 
 bidden fruit ; his enjoyment rests upon blissful ignorance. Were you to 
 ask either the definition of a word at random, or the simplest question 
 in grammar he would betray a profound ignorance of these essentials. 
 
 I must admit, however, that in spite of my thorough training, my 
 own reading methods in my mother tongue are somewhat lax. Al- 
 though I have an English dictionary and a grammar convenieritly placed 
 I have become so careless or lazy that I usually neglect to ascertain the 
 exact definitions of unusual words or to explain the exact grammatical 
 relations of one word to another when this is not absolutely certain. 
 But with my foreign languages I can conscientiously say that my 
 knowledge of such things is much more exact since my attention is not 
 distracted by the sense of what is being said. 
 
 From these reflections I think it will be granted that my pride as I 
 look at my volumes is justifiable. Feeling a desire tonight to follow 
 Ulysses again in his world-famed wonderings I shall resist the tempta- 
 tions to parallel my Greek text with Butcher and Lang's translation, 
 but shall remain true to my academic traditions and get aid and inspira- 
 tion from Goodwin's Greek Grammar through "a hundred lines" of 
 the journey. 
 
 146 
 
POEMS 
 
 147 
 
PICTURES 
 
 A Canoe 
 
 Like the course of silent thought 
 
 A canoe glides straight across the bay; 
 
 With dim whisperings 
 
 As swinging paddles fling their tiny spray. 
 
 Holiness 
 
 The moon swings high 
 
 Like a swaying silver censer, 
 
 And spills its sacred fire, 
 
 Pure and colorless as a nun's prayer, 
 
 In a thin ghostly sheen 
 
 Over the low grey shoreline. 
 
 And in gently undulating gleams of light 
 
 Across the musing waters. 
 
 Passion, strife, and color are purged away, 
 
 And all is spiritual loveliness. 
 
 Gulls 
 
 In the northward gloom 
 
 Dun grey shapes 
 
 Float among the ripples 
 
 Or wheel and poise and swoop 
 
 With flashes of underwing in the moonlight. 
 
 A sound of plaintive murmuring 
 
 And sudden strident cries 
 
 Break the solemn quietude. 
 
 The Path 
 
 Clear pools of light in the open. 
 
 Sifted moonlight under the alders. 
 
 Deep pools of darkness under the maples; 
 
 Clear forms float along. 
 
 Mottled under the alders. 
 
 And vanish silently. 
 
 149 
 
APRIL DAY 
 
 Foam cloud, keen-edged, gleaming; sun-drenched skies; 
 Glistening- jewelled grass blades ; warm earth scents ; 
 Vivid green buds, trembling; birthtime sighs; 
 Crystalline air, rain-cleansed ; sky blue intense. 
 
 Gusts of sudden wind, swift-scudding cloud; 
 Fir trees, lofty, swaying, darkling air ; 
 Bickering branches, leaves complaining loud ; 
 Wind-lashed rain — a Maenad's streaming hair. 
 
 Holy calms and Bacchic revelries ; 
 Sunbursts, glooms, and swirling flower-spray; 
 Fleeting shadow, wind-sped develries: — 
 Passion, smiles, and tears — an April day. 
 
 KINGSTON 
 
 Sharply etched upon the Western sky 
 The massive purple portals stand, deep-scarred. 
 Against the welling dusky flood on guard. 
 While the sun's last faintly golden colors die. 
 There lies the pond, cold like polished steel. 
 Amidst the solemn trees, see, far away, 
 The leaden dull-green stretches of the bay ! 
 And all so still — I doubt if it be real. 
 Thus vanishes the day in history: 
 The smiling clarity and fair light fades. 
 Beneath the Western rim lurk dusky shades 
 And pensive twilight broods on mystery. 
 
 Behold the twilight mystery that lies 
 Beneath the smiling daylight of your eyes. 
 
 150 
 
HERALDINGS OF DAY 
 
 Wash and sweep — wash and sweep — 
 O'er the sands a sacred rite; 
 Surge — recede — surge, recede — 
 Dimly, faintly, through the night ; 
 Ebb and flow — ebb and flow — 
 Tell the coming of the light. 
 
 Earth waits silent, swathed in grey ; 
 Dark tremors fret the gleaming ocean 
 And flit and weave in ghostly motion 
 And whisper heraldings of day. 
 
 THERE ARE NO CLOCKS IN THE FOREST 
 
 A faint far breeze is moving on the sea — 
 The maples shudder in the cold grey light — 
 A stream of gold flows down the eastern height; 
 And fills the waiting world with ecstacy, 
 With merry songs and cries and shouts of glee. 
 To quiet evening winds the day's slow flight; 
 And shadows creep ; and merge ; and blend in night. 
 A lone star trails its silver mesh to me. 
 
 Thus comes the day — and goes — in endless time. 
 What clock can tick the measure of a day ? 
 What numbered days the fulness of a life? 
 
 151 
 
CONSOLATION 
 
 Blue days, when the long lashes wet with tears, 
 
 Cling to the tired cheeks and the melancholy mind turns through the 
 
 years 
 Of buried happiness and hopes that rose and fell — 
 Days of the sad heart, when the bitter load bears hard 
 And life runs low to ebb, and the sweetest thoughts are scarred 
 By sadness since, and whispers rise from Hell — 
 Days, when the great gray mists fall low and cling, 
 And smear with their clammy touch, and everything 
 Is warped and changed, and raindrops slowly creep — 
 These are the days when one must think of those 
 Whose happiest moment scarcely ever knows 
 The pleasure of the tears of those who weep. 
 
 QUERY 
 
 Urged by the peacocks of our vanity 
 Up the frail tree of Life we climb and grope; 
 About our heads the tragic branches slope, 
 Heavy with Time and Xanthis mystery. 
 Beyond, the brooding bird of Fate we see 
 Viewing the world with eyes forever ope'. 
 And lured by all the phantom fruits of Hope, 
 We cling in anguish to this fragile tree. 
 
 O louring skies ! O clouds, that point in scorn 
 With the lean fingers of a wrinkled wrath! 
 O dedal moon, that rears its ghostly horn! 
 O secret stars athwart the cosmic path! 
 Shall we attain the glory of the Mom — 
 Or sink in some abysmal aftermath? 
 
 152 
 
To R. D. C. 
 
 Dear Friend, when 1 look forward in the years 
 
 To come, full-laden with their promised store 
 
 Of deeds for your assay, unstayed by fears 
 
 That shackled weaker men who tried before; 
 
 When I darkly peer behind the obscure veil 
 
 With eager eyes for your high destiny, 
 
 I sometimes faintly seek to trace a tale 
 
 Of lowlier though kindred lot for me. 
 
 But if of me tTiere be no tale to tell 
 
 Of noble deeds, and fame of such high kind, 
 
 I hope that these poor lines may serve as well 
 
 To guard the ties that you and me now bind ; 
 
 For men forget in haughty triumph's days 
 
 The friends that walked with them on earlier ways. 
 
 THE POOR SCHOLAR OF WASHINGTON 
 
 A gay scoler was ther at Washingtoun 
 
 Was never wight of half so greet renoun. 
 
 Of his stature he was of evene length 
 
 And wonderly delivere, but lyte of strength. 
 
 Of twenty yeer of age he was, I trow. 
 
 Col-blak was his heer as any crow, 
 
 Streight-up y-kempt ful smothe and fetisly. 
 
 Alwey his eyen twinkled jolily 
 
 Out of his face, as reed and fresh as May. 
 
 A fewe fraknes in his face y-spreynd, 
 
 Betwixen yelow and somdel blak y-meynd. 
 
 Upon his heed he hadde a cappe of grey, 
 
 Ther-to he wore a cote al pomely-gris 
 
 Noon other man so gay y-clad, I wis; 
 
 His hosen were wyde about his hippes 
 
 Brown were his shoon, broune, street y-teyd and fetis 
 
 With pers and sangwyn shoon his nekke-clooth 
 
 Of brighte colours him were nothing looth. 
 
 Of gold y-wrought a curious pin hadde he 
 
 Of a solempne and greet fraternitee. 
 
 Al be he was a verray fetis male 
 
 Of his array tell I no longer tale. 
 
 153 
 
To Ipgic hadde this scolar long y-go, 
 
 Somtyme to rhetoric and physice also ; 
 
 Of aristotle and his philosophye 
 
 It roghte him nat a bene, sin he was free ; 
 
 Thrugh al his lessouns on a hors he rood ; 
 
 What should he studie, and make himselven wood 
 
 Upon a book in College alwey to poure 
 
 Or swinken with his minde, and laboure ? 
 
 He yaf nat of that text a pulled hen 
 
 The wisdom of an heap of learned men. 
 
 For him was lever have at his beddes heed 
 
 Twenty portreitures in blak or reed 
 
 Of meydes faire, and eek a gay sautrye, 
 
 Than bokes of lerning and philosophye. 
 
 But al be that he was not philosophre 
 
 Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre 
 
 But al that he might of his f reendes hente 
 
 On maydes and delyes he it spente. 
 
 Ful wel biloved and famulier was he, 
 
 With damoiselles over-al in his contree; 
 
 On al the campus wyde, is noon that can 
 
 So much of daliaunce and fair langage; 
 
 Of janglerye of love he knew perchaunce; 
 
 For he coude of that art the olde daunce. 
 
 Ful swetely herde he confessiouns 
 
 And pleasaunt was his consolaciouns. 
 
 There was noon other man of better chere ; 
 
 He was verray parfit lovyere. 
 
 Souning his own vertu was his speeche 
 
 And gladly wolde he telle, and gladly teche 
 
 To al his felawes by the chimenee 
 
 Of good aventures in love, pardee. 
 
 Dauncen he coude, a twenty devil way. 
 
 Singing he was, or whistlynge, al the day; 
 
 Of studie took he no cure and lyte hede, 
 
 Noght o worde redde he more than was nede. 
 
 Now is nat that of God a ful fair grace 
 
 That swich a sleye mannes wit shal pace 
 
 The wisdom of a lerned facultee? 
 
 Ther is namo, out of al charitee. 
 
 154 
 
SPRING 
 (A Monologue) 
 
 Scene — A small plot of brilliantly green grass by the side of a large 
 ugly stump, in an open space among tall firs, wide- spreading maples, 
 and other growth. A cloudy day. 
 Time — Early spring. 
 
 (A daisy is discovered among the grass blades, nodding, slowly opening 
 its eye. Mumbling.) 
 
 Dear me, that was an awfully heavy sleep; I could hardly get my eye 
 open. Wonder what woke me up. I was having such a lovely dream. 
 Let me see, what was it about ? O yes, about that rascal Pan — and then 
 I seemed to feel a warm breath (petulantly) just in time to spoil it all. 
 (Stares about in wide-eyed surprise) Well, well, what sort of festivity 
 is on here, I wonder. Seems to be a lot of joy loose about something 
 or other — a pageant, I guess. Look at the way the trees are all lit up ; 
 there's a million nice little green flames on each one. I dreamt about 
 something like that once, only the flames were different, and the ground 
 was covered by a fluflfy white blanket. This is something moi-e to my 
 taste. Isn't that a lovely blue canopy they have stretched up above, 
 with bunches of cotton stuck on it, I like that; sort of careless-like. 
 (Turns her head aslant to value it.) 
 
 Seems to me I have smelt that strange odor somewhere, too. There's 
 a little current of musk in it. And then there are whiffs of something 
 else. Must be smoke from those green flames. I do love odors that 
 don't scream. (Shivers a little) It is chilly, isn't it ? I must get down 
 among the grassblades. 
 
 (The sun emerges from behind a cloud and floods the earth with 
 warmth. The daisy cranes her head out to see.) 
 
 Oh! What a gorgeous sight! (Entranced.) 
 
 No wonder things are decked out. That must be the King. 
 Well, he ought to be king the way he showers gold around. 
 I have heard about him somewhere before, too. O, I suppose I dreamed 
 about him. Funny how I have dreamed so many things that are com- 
 ing true. That's a real king, all right. Makes me glow to look at him. 
 (Warm zephyrs lazily moving.) Hello, What's this? I feel so strange. 
 What a painfully sweet melody! It thrills me to the very marrow. 
 Everything feels the urge ; the grass-blades nod gravely, the green flames 
 
 186 
 
sway. It must be a welcoming minuet for the King. O, I'd like — 
 
 I'd like to give myself to the ecstacy of it. I— 
 
 (The daisy reluctantly begins to swing, and gradually gives herself to 
 
 the universal rhythm.) 
 
 (A girl comes by and picks up the daisy for a wreath ; for she too must 
 
 deck herself for the King.) 
 
 Poor Daisy? 
 Glad girl? 
 Both are daisies after all. 
 
 15S 
 
LETTERS 
 
 157 
 
SEATTLE, August 16, 1912. 
 Dear R : 
 
 Well, I'm back from a 160 mile hike in the woods from Ta- 
 coma, the greater part of the distance to Mt. Adams, in addition to scal- 
 ing the mount. We accomplished the feat, carrying all our provisions, 
 clothing and bedding on our backs in a week's trip, which we consider 
 a very creditable feat. Our packs averaged at the beginning well over 
 40 pounds to the man, and for the greater part of the trip well over 
 35, I should say. That, I believe you will grant, was not so howling 
 bad for a lot of tenderfeet pedagogs, especially when you include in the 
 consideration the fact that we carried our loads over 8,000 feet up the 
 mountains before we cached them for the final dash for the summit. And 
 we made the ascent by a route which had not before been tried, accord- 
 ing to the information we coufd gather as we approached the mountain. 
 The trip was begun in very auspicious weather, a little hot, if any- 
 \hing — 94 degrees in the shade in fact. Then it changed to the moistest 
 weather it has ever been my good, or ill, fortune to be caught out in. 
 Struggling along under a heavy pack, with the water streaming in sheets 
 from the sky, up hill and down dale ; your clothing hanging to you with 
 a cold but clinging embrace and becoming momentarily heavier — this is 
 an experience worth living through once, at least. Then, by way of giv- 
 ing the spice of variety to life, it was refreshing to have it drizzle all 
 night upon our beds out in the open. There is a caressing touch to 
 rain upon your face in the night, and an insinuating coolness in a stream 
 trickling from the poncho down your neck. And once in a while when 
 you turn over there is a slushy warmth in the pools you find in unexpect- 
 ed places on your blankets. That particular night I was tenderly nurs- 
 ing a game knee which promised to give me some trouble in the morn- 
 ing if I did not care for it well during the night. So I cared for it very 
 solicitously. But during the night I was careless enough to fall asleep. 
 When I awoke again and came to consciousness of that knee again I 
 found that it had been very thoroughly drenched by a dribble through 
 a gap in the poncho and blankets, but was otherwise feeling quite com- 
 fortable. In the morning it was thoroughly well. It was as if I had 
 had a hot compress upon it. Henceforth when I get a sore knee on the 
 march I shall know what to do. I shall find a rainy night and place the 
 knee under the hole in the blankets to cure it. 
 
 159 
 
The scaling of the mountain was a lark— very easy indeed— and the 
 coming down was a regular aeroplane glide down the snow. We came 
 out a little above the Columbia, took an auto stage down to the river, the 
 North Bank Road to Vancouver, and the Shasta Limited up from that 
 place, arriving at Tacoma at 5 in the morning, fortunately for me, 
 for I got home without being observed very much, finally satisfied my 
 own watch-dog as to my identity, and rolled into a civilized bed at about 
 6 :30 to sleep till 10. As mementos of the trip I still carry what grew 
 on my upper lip during the week and a couple of pretty sore shins from 
 the descent of the mountain. But I am thoroughly satisfied with my 
 experience and should be glad to try another such next summer. I am 
 feeling quite "bucked up", as my Oxford friends would say, over the 
 way I managed a 40 pound pack over all kinds of going and at any pace 
 the best of them could set. 
 
 Concerning R 's story, he told me when he spoke about it, that 
 
 it contained a theme we had often discussed together. This morning, 
 having read your letter last night, I received a copy of Collier's con- 
 taining the story. The address was typewritten, so I concluded without 
 further thought that you had forwarded the magazine you had bought. 
 But later on, happening to glance at some torn papers on the floor, I 
 was surprised to find that they were a letter head from the new paper 
 
 which R is editing, and that he had sent me the story. Now here 
 
 is quite a combination of coincidences, isn't it? And the strange part is 
 that that is the very theme of the story. I had often discussed with 
 
 R the strange premonitions I had when I was abroad that I should 
 
 on certain days receive letters from him. It occurred many a time that, 
 as I went down to get my mail, I thought, today I get a letter from R — , 
 and I did. And there were often other things that seemed to point to a 
 strange medium of communication — often too subtle and fleeting to put 
 definitely in words — yet with a power to startle one with a feeling of 
 familiarity. I have forgotten the particular incidents of the time, but 
 I know that there were coincidences — so many that I brought the subject 
 up with him and we discussed it after I came back home. That, you 
 can see, is the theme of the story — that there is a medium of communi- 
 cation between persons very remote from each other in actuality. He 
 has enlarged it a bit from our experience and made it concern those 
 who were strangers to each other. The theory of the possibility of men- 
 tal or spiritual communication has engaged the attention of a great 
 many bright minds of late years, and I am not ashamed to own that I be- 
 lieve in it and that much will be discovered in that connection before 
 many years roll by. Now Mark Twain was as canny a mind as you 
 
 160 
 
might well find in many a day's journey ; he believed in it devoutly and 
 cited many instances of strange coincidence. W. T. Stead, who went 
 down on the Titanic, believed in it. Sir Oliver Lodge, one of England's 
 foremost scientists, believed in it ; and many others. You exclaim about 
 the impulse which compels you to buy that particular magazine, make 
 
 that particular remark, and then turn to the article in mind. R 's 
 
 story is also an exclamation, almost identical in nature though a bit 
 wider in scope; what phenomenon is it that brings together as by one 
 impulse people who are far remote from each other in the world ; how 
 do they come to be aware of each other's existence and go on what 
 seems a wild goose chase to find each other? If there is a spiritual med- 
 ium of communication to account for the startling coincidences that oc- 
 cur in the lives of persons who are acquainted with each other, it is 
 quite possible that that same medium might affect persons who are not 
 
 acquainted with one another. That's R 's theme. You can well say 
 
 that it is quite possible. But at the same time you would have to admit 
 that the thing which occurred to you is also quite impossible. It is quite 
 as illogical and unreasonable as a bit of fiction. But it is the truth — a 
 fact ; and therefore, according to the old saying it is naturally stranger. 
 In that light don't you think that the theme is pretty well worked out? 
 I thought it was one of his best. 
 
 I have just received a new volume of Stevenson to complete the 
 set I have in my library, containing a series of letters hitherto unpub- 
 lished. They include letters to his parents and intimate friends over a 
 period of years from the time he was seventeen till his death. I have 
 dipped into several of them and find them delightful. In his personal 
 correspondence he is a most whimsical and entertaining man, and evi- 
 dently as careful in his abandon as in his serious work, if that isn't too 
 paradoxical. It seems to be carefully wrought foolery. That is, the 
 whim with which he begins may be careless enough, but he carries it out 
 carefully. 
 
 SEATTLE, Jan. 15, 1916 
 Dear R : 
 
 I haven't been able to finish The Mummer's Wife since it 
 came, and can therefore give no account of it — except that it falls far 
 short of The Brook Kerith, in my opinion. Carnival by Compton Mac- 
 kenzie seems to do the stage life so much more satisfactorily for me. 
 I admit that my preference is dite to something of a gleam of romance. 
 
 161 
 
 -6 
 
possibly, in the Carnival version. I am supposed to be the real realist 
 defender among the men in the department ; so that it seems to be quite 
 a momentous confession to make to say that a gleam of romance in a 
 book makes it more attractive to me than some other. Dead Souls, with 
 all its unattractiveness in title, which is undeserved, by the way, is more 
 to my liking; yet it poses to be a forerunner of all realism in Russia. 
 Whether George Moore is realism or not I don't know. I suppose it is. 
 It is what is conventionally called so, since it is depressing. The wife is 
 impossible; and George can't convince me that she is credible. If she is, 
 she doesn't belong in a book, but in an infirmary. The girl in Carnival 
 had her fling, but she proved to have decency in the end : she, at least, 
 put up a plucky fight against things, and died well. But — well, I have- 
 n't finished The Mummer's Wife, and cannot be too certain about judg- 
 ments upon some furtive peering into the later pages of the book .... 
 
 I have been looking over Murray's pamphlet a bit since it came— 
 I am grateful for it ; it will help me in many ways. The more I read of 
 Grey, the more I like him. This evening I chanced upon a paper on him 
 in Collier's by Frank Harris. Now I suppose Frank has about as little 
 use for things English as a German ; but I must admit that he draws a 
 very pleasing portrait of Grey. I expected to see Harris flay him en- 
 tirely. Murray has always seemed to me to be a very successful plead- 
 er in whatever cause he argues for. I do not mean that he is a 
 special pleader ; but that his conviction of the truth of his presentation 
 is so transparently the result of careful consideration of the possible in- 
 terpretations that it carries weight without much more ado. What I 
 have read of the pamphlet is pleasing to my views. 
 
 As I consider the question that I am asked to speak on I become 
 more convinced that I shall merely indicate what almost insensible 
 things have come into my experience to make my reason favor the Al- 
 " lied cause. I have in mind things of seeming trivial import at the time, 
 during the past ten years, since I was in England, which have been grad- 
 ually accumulating their weight to make me lean the way I do. There 
 is so much, to the point and off, said about the philosophy of the Ger- 
 mans, and the ideals of the English, and others, that it seems an utter 
 bore to me now to rehash all the long platitude again. After all, I am 
 choosing my readings rather carefully according to predilections already 
 formed; they are not changing my fundamental opinions. These are 
 based upon things more difficult to estimate. I think it would be inter- 
 esting to me to try to do the estimating. If it turns out to be passably in- 
 teresting I shall send you a copy. 
 
SEATTLE, Oct. 24, 1916 
 DearR : 
 
 I have at length finished The Brook Kerith. And just now 
 I read a review in The Nation lambasting it. They sure give it some 
 hell. Nevertheless, I stick with my original interpretation that it is a 
 fine piece of work. In many respects The Nation is intolerably prig- 
 gish. It has some halfbaked philosopher on its reviewing staff who 
 thinks he is the last word when it comes to thinking straight. So the 
 work must be drawn and quartered because Moore isn't a philosopher, 
 doesn't think logically. And he is sentimental. Well, any poet who 
 thinks straight, according to the syllogism, and is a good hard matter- 
 of-fact man without any monkey business in his nature, is a rotten poet, 
 and a rotten novelist, usually. And I had always had the pleasant delu- 
 sion that Jesus wasn't such shucks as a logician himself. It occurs to 
 me that his favorite way of avoiding contradictions was to tell a parable. 
 It^even seems that there are so many contradictions in his teaching that 
 the world doesn't know yet what he taught. God knows there are 
 enough differences of opinion called by the name Christian for one to 
 believe in no mystical way that there must be some difficulty in inter- 
 preting the teaching. Hence, I assume, it can't be logical, or rational 
 (in the narrow way). If a man tries in his way to give a consistency 
 or meaning to the teaching, or some interpretation satisfactory to it, 
 which isn't irreverent, that is worthy of respect. I find it well worth 
 while at all events. It does strike one as odd in many ways. But I 
 fancy that if one might have been transported to the time and the place, 
 the reality would have sounded more odd than Moore's fiction. The re- 
 viewer for The Nation would have stood on the outskirts of the crowd 
 and wondered why so absurd a man with such quaint naivete in his 
 thinking processes should be allowed public license to preach, had he 
 been there — of that there can be no question. 
 
 SEATTLE, Nov. 19, 1916 
 
 Dear R- 
 
 This morning P and I took a really good hike north along 
 
 the Bothell road and across country to the Edmonds road and back 
 home, a couple of hours of as brisk walking as we could do — then baths 
 and preparation for dinner. Then at 2 :30 we were down at the Dream- 
 land pavilion where a Free Speech meeting had been scheduled as a 
 result of the Everett riot. There was a free speech demonstration down 
 
 I6,n 
 
at Dreamland a number of years ago, you will remember, in connection 
 
 with the high-handed outrages of J H in the name of Law and 
 
 Order. This time there is a protest against similar high-handed metH- 
 ods in the name of Law and Order. I should say that it was as orderly 
 a meeting as one might well expect to find at a time of high tension. 
 Certainly, if one were to judge by the printed reports of sympathetic 
 
 papers concerning the Club meeting the other night, stampeded by 
 
 J B , it was a much less emotional meeting than that was. 
 
 There was no interruption of the speakers except by goodnatured ap- 
 plause, the speakers were restrained in their utterance, and there was an 
 obvious serious intent to get at the purpose of the meeting. The 
 speakers all emphasized, of course, the need of protecting the right of 
 free speech, and quoted from the U. S. and state constitutions and from 
 various constitutional authorities statements concerning the nature of the 
 right and the guarantees of it. All emphasized that the disaster at Ev- 
 erett was the direct result of only one thing — the deprivation of certain 
 citizens of the right of free speech. And there was a severe condemna- 
 tion of the extra-legal method whereby the right of free speech had 
 been abridged there. It was interesting to me to see how even the 
 L W. W. had come sufficiently under the notice of the public for them to 
 begin to inquire into the purpose of the organization and the facts upon 
 which its propaganda was being based. It seems to have come to the 
 intelligence of our communities that an organization which has such 
 loyal followers, willing to suffer anything for its cause, must have some 
 cause ; for it is not the customary human experience for men to become 
 so inspired for a movement unless that movement is based upon some- 
 thing essentially just. The meeting expressed clearly one outstanding 
 fact ; that the daily press, the so-called general public press, had en- 
 tirely forfeited its right to any credence any longer. That was re- 
 peatedly emphasized. Reports from the press, garbling the entire story, 
 were read, along with the statements of men who had followed the 
 movement at Everett from the beginning, oftentimes as eye-witnesses 
 of the events. The labor member from Everett told of his experiences 
 in seeing how men were arrested for street-speaking and advised to quit 
 the town and not come back. He made it clear that the officers 
 who did the arresting were entirely beyond their rights in doing as they 
 did from time to time, even mentioning how he had made the remark 
 to the officer at times, apparently as a friend, but with the response 
 that it didn't matter whether it was legal or not, the men would be driv- 
 en out. He spoke of the campaign of terrorism finally instituted in or- 
 der to keep laboring men away, culminating in the gauntlet affair in 
 which the men were so badly beaten up. A certain man who lives near 
 
 164 
 
the place where this happened remonstrated with the citizens in their 
 administration of Law and Order, to be met with the observation that 
 if he didn't clear out he would get a bit of the same. He phoned to the 
 police what was going on and was told that it was beyond their jurisdic- 
 tion, being outside of the city limits. The speaker himself went out to 
 the place the next day and found it looking like a battle scene, with 
 blood spattered all around and articles of clothing left lying about. 
 
 S S read a letter from a citizen of Seattle, name not men- 
 tioned, but who would be known by three-fourths of the persons pres- 
 ent should it be mentioned, in which he told of being on a train coming 
 back from Everett that night and seeing a number of men get on the 
 train at the city limits, with their clothes all torn, what they had left — 
 most of them were without some article or other of clothing — their heads 
 bandaged with bloodsoaked towels, their arms and hands tied up with 
 strips of overalls, and in general pretty badly beaten up. They were en- 
 tirely sober; so that he conjectured that there had been an accident in 
 a logging camp, a collision on a logging train or something. 
 
 The man from Everett, by the way, said that things had come to 
 such a pass that any man wearing overalls in Everett was in danger 
 of the citizens' committee. ***** 
 
 The opinion of the meeting seemed to be that the whole trouble be- 
 gan really with the attempt to break up the shingle and longshoremen's 
 strikes ; that is, the free speech campaign instituted by the I. W. W. was 
 an attempt to organize laborers there in aid of the shingleweavers' 
 strike. But the mill owners worked up the sentiment for a citizens' com- 
 mittee * ********* and packed 
 the group of deputy sheriffs with their own sympathizers and even 
 with strike-breakers whom they had imported. It was as clear a case 
 of one class attempting to rule a community and to terrorize their op- 
 ponents as might well be found in the country. 
 
 W gave an explanation of the song which the I. W. W.'s are 
 
 said to have sung on the Verona on their way to Everett. The song 
 which they are supposed to have sung, read with great dramatic effect 
 
 at the Club meeting as a blasphemous song, was said not to be an 
 
 I. W. W. song and was not sung, according to the testimony of the men 
 on the boat; instead they sang their "Hold the Fort" after the well- 
 known religious air. This they sang at the meeting. Had I closed my 
 eyes, I might have sworn the song was being sung in a quiet church 
 in the country. I noticed especially the way a couple of men directly 
 behind me sang it — not intensely, not as if covering a burning passion, 
 but hesitatingly, awkwardly, stumbling over the words, and with con- 
 viction, sometimes not much more than whispering it, as if content with 
 
speaking to themselves of a vision. The words had been read by W — 
 They spoke of the laborers marching onvi^ard toward a better time and 
 away from the miseries and wretchedness of the present. I suppose 
 nothing was needed in addition to the singing of that song to convince 
 me that the I. W. W.'s need not go to any Sabbath services in any 
 church in order to express their religious convictions. And I should 
 say that if they sang that way on their way to Everett that Sunday they 
 were celebrating the Sabbath in an eminently fitting manner 
 
 B B probably got more near to passion in his speech than 
 
 any one else. He certainly came through in an unmistakable manner. 
 At the conclusion of his speech he read a set of resolutions calling upon 
 Congress to investigate the entire affair from beginning to end. The 
 resolutions were adopted by a standing vote. I hope something will 
 result from it, but I am afraid that Congress will not order an investiga- 
 tion. I suppose some commission will be given charge of the work. 
 B , by the way, read of the manner in which free speech distur- 
 bances had been dealt with in other communities in a similar brutal way, 
 from the report of the Industrial Relations investigation. One might 
 have thought that the citizens of Everett, so-called, had read the re- 
 port for the purpose of enacting a similar reign of brutality there. But 
 probably not one of them ever even saw the report. Now I suppose 
 there are many good citizens hereabouts, who, in the face of the Everett 
 tragedy will still insist that that report was much exaggerated. Indeed 
 we read that reporters give accounts of the warfare in Europe in which 
 they exaggerate. Men are no doubt killed there; but how gloriously 
 and splendidly; heroically! What a breeder of spiritual qualities! I 
 
 heard tales of the front told by C direct from officers who were 
 
 home on leave. What he told us passes beyond anything that I have 
 read yet in the way of coldblooded brutality, and on the side that I 
 should like to favor, the English. It is absolutely incredibl? what men 
 are told to do and do do in warfare. It is all atrocity — not only in 
 Belgium. When these things are true, I am prepared to believe that In- 
 dustrial Commission reports cannot be made black enough to picture the 
 truth ; war only uncovers ; it must be all there before. And it is in the 
 relations between laborers and their masters that the thing lies scarcely 
 beneath the surface. ***** 
 
 In comparison with these things there isn't much to say. R 
 
 and I went to a good picture at the Liberty and enjoyed it very much. 
 The day is a lovely one. It was misty this morning, with a patch of 
 wonderful blue visible overhead every now and then and the sun just 
 to be seen all the time. At noon it was clear and as balmy as a spring 
 
 166 
 
day. The streets in town were packed with people, and the crowd at 
 the Liberty the biggest I have seen there. 
 
 Me, I am poring over Plato. I am trying along with Socrates and 
 his friends to find out what justice is. I find the study very apropos. 
 I shall be reading my paper before the Philolog soon; I think it will 
 galvanize them, as I read it over again and patch it here and there. 
 
 In December, I am to give a talk to some boys down at the Y. M. 
 
 C. A. on "Books and Reading" at the invitation of W R . I don't 
 
 know what to do with that ; but I guess I shall be able to bull through 
 with something. I don't relish that very much. My reading gets more 
 philosophical all the time ; and I find it hard to give the ordinary reasons 
 for reading. Still, perhaps I can after all. If philosophy isn't common 
 sense it isn't much good. And I believe it is common sense in highfalu- 
 tin language. I'll step the language down a few thousand volts. 
 
 Friday 
 
 Dear R : 
 
 At two today I finished the day's conferences, after a contin- 
 uous session since eight o'clock. I feel that the week's work is so near- 
 ly disposed of that I may indulge in a letter to the young prof. I can't 
 call you the old prof yet, of course ; but believe me, it will not be long 
 before you will overhear the students telling about the old prof in a sly 
 manner. I do recognize (or pretend to recognize) that the "old" is not 
 so much expressive sometimes of age as of a certain ineptitude, supposed 
 at least, (with apologies to the Republic) which is to be found in the 
 teaching profession. One of the crosses you are going to have to bear ; 
 but rather light, that one, after all. 
 
 The fact which you have discovered concerning the class-room 
 work's proportion of the teacher's work in toto, is a rather easy one to 
 discover, unless you are a bluffer; in which case I suspect there isn't 
 much of anything to discover, and consequently, to learn. The things 
 which are not so easy to discover (weren't to me, at least) are the more 
 human relations to your fellow-workers. I had no conception for a 
 number of years what are the forces continually at work underneath 
 the complacent surface of academic life, the significance of certain 
 friendships, of certain coolnesses, and certain extravagances in protes- 
 tations of regard, of certain innocent academic innovations, of, in short, 
 the complex woof of an apparently simply textured life. We are all 
 here presumably out of our whole-hearted devotion to learning. Cer- 
 tainly I was, and I was wholly at the command of those who I con- 
 ceived were here for similar reasons, and that was of course, all the 
 
 167 
 
group. It is only of comparatively recent years that I have become more 
 aware of the whole comic, or maybe tragi-comic, interplay. I have al- 
 ways enjoyed a game, learning it, and playing it. This I have begun to 
 learn to play, but always with some misgivings whether by learning and 
 playing it I were not making a sacrifice of some kind which at a later 
 time I may come to regret. I seem to feel convinced, however, that by 
 this time, the right attitude towards the profession may have become so 
 firmly ingrained that it will keep me instinctively from making the sa- 
 crifice. That is, I feel that it need not necessarily derogate from the 
 value of one's ideals to take a hand in seeing that they prevail. Ideals 
 do have a habit of speaking, for themselves in the long run. But when 
 one sees other things than ideals not only speaking for themselves so- 
 norously but having other forces mobilized for their eventual triumph, 
 one is sorely tempted to interpose among those forces and do a little 
 pulling and hauling too. Wilson appeals to me because I conceive him 
 to be a man firmly based upon high principles of conduct as any man 
 I have so far understood to be great, and yet a man who understands and 
 manipulates the forces with which men work — in that respect like Lin- 
 coln, than whom this world has seen few greater. I didn't intend this 
 to be a homily. But there were those who at one time saw in me a po- 
 tential preacher of God's word. I didn't. Man's best words seemed 
 good enough for me, and they may be propagated from other sources 
 than the pulpit. Well, in other words, and in brief, you will sometime 
 
 discover at M in the faculty a most fascinating game being played 
 
 all around you. Maybe you are much more versed in the ways of men 
 than I was and have already the secret of the game ; still I believe there 
 are phases of it, lights and shades, depths and shallows, that will be re- 
 vealed only after a longer lapse of time. All by way of encouragement. 
 
 Tuesday 
 
 Dear R- 
 
 D A dropped in on me again last night on his regular 
 
 Monday night off. We were both somewhat out of sorts when he ar- 
 rived : I secretly felt that I should have preferred to be alone, and he 
 aware of it ; so that it didn't promise to be a good evening. But it soon 
 came around to an exchange of opinion upon questions of experience in 
 writing, and we eventually both thawed out and had a fine conference. 
 
 D is still concerned about what is best to do. He isn't satisfied by a 
 
 long shot. But he doesn't know what he would be better satisfied about. 
 I try to encourage him to work — and keep the flame burning. I think 
 
 168 
 
that it takes time, of course — I have to think that naturally enough to 
 save my own face — so I try to put it up to him that while a man works 
 at things apparently unrelated to the grand object, things nevertheless 
 are conspiring in his favor. The great trouble of course is the limited 
 amount of time and energy left available after the exactions of his 
 work are satisfied. It leaves little time for the careful thought a man 
 would like to put into actual creative effort. But even while he is 
 working at the humdrum of the job he is ripening; and when a man 
 has a considerable command of the technique, the essential thing is the 
 accumulation of impressions and experiences, as I have told you ad 
 nauseam, time and time again. I have evidence right out of his exper- 
 ience to prove my contention ; for he brought me a poem that appeared 
 in a recent issue of the Bellman, which shows me that he has been 
 growing since he last wrote out here. It has strength, and definiteness, 
 and precision. I give it to you here : 
 
 PINES 
 
 Freehanded nature spends a thousand seeds 
 
 To rear a single pine against the sky; 
 
 Starward to a point that one clear shaft, she breeds 
 
 The rest that seek to climb, and seeking, die. 
 
 Yet somewhere in a muddied swamp there grow 
 
 Rank things that thrive from every spark set free — 
 
 Base, greedy plants that are contented so, 
 
 If only their lush life cease not to be. 
 
 Like men who scan the giddy, barren edge 
 
 Whereon the spirit walks, testing the soul, 
 
 But they, unheeding of the summons, hedge, 
 
 And choose the softer path, the closer goal. 
 
 That truth and beauty both are born of pain. 
 
 They know not, nor shall know clear joy again. 
 
 J. D. A. 
 
 ********* 
 
 I struck out for Ballard yesterday to get some belated exercise. 
 It was a windy evening. By the time I got to the canal it was raining 
 furiously. I beat my way back to the house in the teeth of a gale, and 
 arrived here wet to the skin. It was one of our regular fall gales out 
 of the southeast. Ballard seemed like a small natural Bedlam as I 
 passed through. The wind whining through the wires overhead, the 
 steam exhausts of various kinds roaring, or hissing or howling from 
 the mills, the smoke torn from the stacks and whirled along the ground, 
 the steam whirled into shreds of white mist, now and then some shriek- 
 
 169 
 
ing whistle in the dim, incessant rattle of riveting in the boiler shops, 
 spicy cedar smells and pungent fir smoke — these impressions mingled 
 together in an indescribable confusion. The wind seemed to be com- 
 posed of all these things as it almost overwhelmed one, with heavy rain 
 adding its considerable force to the impact. I felt exultant in the face 
 of it. That's the kind of a walk I like to take. Walking when the ele- 
 ments are at rest is satisfying, too; but when they are in violent mo- 
 tion as they were yesterday, it is more so. Although I got back thor- 
 oughly battered and wet, when I had got into new clothes and the old 
 were steaming over the radiator, I felt quite comfortable up here in the 
 old den. 
 
 SEATTLE, Nov. 25, 1916 
 Dear R : 
 
 Think of the Down East statesmen having to learn lessons 
 from the men out of the forests and plains and mountains of the West. 
 Out of the West, emblem of the better future, towards which states- 
 manship must ever continue to look, comes the man who must guide 
 toward that future. Tell me, what will happen on this sphere when all 
 the lands will have been colonized, when there will be no west more, no 
 land for the forward-lookmg, when all the countries will have become 
 "mother countries," all will have settled down to the practice off use 
 and wont, will have come to that point where all seem to arrive in 
 time? Will there be no progressivism then? Or will the vision- 
 ing of a future be the normal thinking of men ? Instead of the grasp- 
 ing of what they have, uncertain of anything else ? Will then that gold- 
 en land of the west, which has beckoned to men since Aryan civiliza- 
 tion began, but which will then be no more in reality, have become a 
 land of promise in the minds, the dreams, of men, only to be attained 
 then as before by the hardy pioneer spirits who will brave the hazards 
 along the way and trust to their own courage and resourcefulness to 
 build their homes there, strong and stable, when they will have arrived ? 
 How long will it take men to learn that when the geographical empires 
 are exploited there are empires within their own spirits greater than 
 any they will ever have exploited without? I wonder sometimes if 
 Wilson isn't the turning point toward real scientific government. If 
 the technique of government as it must be sometime is found in his at- 
 titude toward it on the question of the Adamson law, then he is a great 
 pioneer in the new government. And I believe it is found there. Grasp 
 a new vision of things ; experiment with it, observe carefully and record 
 scientifically ; do the results accord with your hypothesis ? The method 
 
 170 
 
of science. But be bold. Costly failures will not be a thousandth part 
 so expensive as the war which under our present dispensation will 
 sooner or later come devouring all you will have carefully saved by 
 your niggardliness and fear. The statesman of the future, I believe, 
 will be the supreme artist among men, shaping ideals of use and beauty 
 out of human life. There is a medium for an artist to work in, eh ? 
 
 I suppose you notice that the boys have acquired a bear. The pun- 
 ning faculties of the house have been busy with that bear since he ar- 
 rived. I have become the butt of the faculty wits that I meet about that 
 bear of mine. He is a funny brute, and interesting. But I fancy he will 
 become a nuisance before many weeks roll along. So long as he is still 
 an object of interest to everybody who sees him when he is being led 
 along by a bunch of the men he will be worth their attention. But so 
 soon as it is discovered by the men that he is no longer an object of uni- 
 versal attention — no more so than a dog on a chain — he will become a 
 tedious concern. I guess they will have donated him to the Park Board 
 before Christmas. In the meantime I will have to answer questions 
 about the bear from the wits: Hear you had to move out of the Beta 
 House? Oh no, I'm still there; how did you get that idea? Well, thought 
 maybe they gave the bear your room? Is there anything to the story 
 that they are making the bear room with you down at the house ? Aren't 
 you having bear steaks on Thanksgiving ? And many of the same brand. 
 I hope the faculty wit isn't often provoked to expression. It's far worse 
 than the bear. Time to quit. 
 
 SEATTLE, Dec. 28, 1916 
 Dear R : 
 
 Tacoma has been a very restful place up till now ; but I don't 
 find Seattle any the less so. I have planned trips, up the mountain, out to 
 camp, long walks, and so forth, but I am still content to stick around 
 the house here and loaf — no less than you. At Tacoma I might walk 
 an hour a day or so, or walk down town and back on shopping tours — 
 when I wake up from those shopping tours, by the way, I find that 
 Christmas is an expensive holiday — but that's about all. 1 did do some 
 painting for Mother. It wasn't exactly what I would call exercise. I 
 read a bit : Foma Gordyeef by Gorky, The Duel by Kuprin, The Sweet- 
 scented Name by Sologub, Those of his Own Household by Rene Bazin, 
 The Emperor of Portugalia by Selma Lagerlof, some novelettes by 
 Knut Hamsun in Norwegian (it's almost impossible to get anything by 
 him in translation ; and then the old platitude about things losing flavor 
 
 171 
 
in translation is strikingly true in his case), and a bit of Santayana on 
 German Philosophy. And a little in a work on the beginnings of Eng- 
 lish literary prose. I see I have covered a bit of ground, but nearly 
 all fiction. I remember reading two novels and a couple of those novel- 
 ettes in one day. And then I slept a good deal. I discovered that I 
 might sleep late mornings without fear of headaches and enjoyed that 
 very much. I think I am pretty well rested. * * * 
 
 I get rather ashamed of myself about my laziness. I should think 
 that the writing ought to come as a relaxation for me after my long 
 hours over at college. But I find myself looking forward to a sitting 
 at the machine much as a penitential program; and I convince myself 
 that I have nothing to do penance for. I am having an acute attack of 
 
 conscience lately over this matter. I mentioned in a letter to H 
 
 who has recently turned out his first history (he is a Rhodes Scholar of 
 my time, a Beta) that I had some things boiling within, to which 
 he retorted — justly — "there are two perils in allowing the boiling to con- 
 tinue without attention: there is danger of an explosion; and there is 
 the possibility of the stuff that boils all vanishing in vapor uncon- 
 densed." He makes too literal a figure of it ; I Had in mind Stevenson's 
 practice in writing his essays ; but the warning is apt. * * * * 
 
 Your letter just came, along with the magazines that I came over 
 for. I congratulate my.self on our weather still more. Concerning 
 John Hay, there's a man for whom I have had deep respect without 
 knowing anything definite about his life and career. You may be sur- 
 prised to know why I had the respect for him on such slender know- 
 ledge. It came from odd hints and suggestions here and there. For in- 
 stance, I knew of Hay as a literary figure before I knew of him as an 
 exceptional diplomat. I knew that he was a poet, a novelist, and a hu- 
 morist. I learned these things at about the time when I wondered why 
 it was that American statesmen were never interestd in literary matters 
 as so many of the great European statesmen were. The one great recom- 
 mendation for Roosevelt for me in those days was that he had done 
 a great deal of historical and other writing and that seemed to me to 
 augur well for the future of American statesmanship. Ha man so 
 strenuous and mascuTme as Roosevelt could combine politics with liter- 
 ary avocations then maybe the literary man might eventually be regard- 
 ed as not necessarily incapacitated for statesmanship. Then I learned 
 of the high quality of Hay's work, and began to think of him as another 
 who was pointing the way. Somehow this literary activity argued in 
 my mind a sort of personal disinterestedness in a statesman such as our 
 traditions seemed to lack. A statesman, or politician, as we thought of 
 them ought to be working for their own interests. Surely they did. They 
 
 172 
 
didn't have any time for literature. That requires an understanding of 
 life, not only of interests. And I had the notion that our statesmen 
 might well know something about human life, too, without losing effi- 
 ciency as statesmen. That's why I liked Hay. On your recommend- 
 ation I shall try to find time to read of his life. 
 
 I did read John Reed's account of the Bayonne affair soon after the 
 Metropolitan came ; but I omitted the account of John Lawson because I 
 imagined what it would be. The Colorado affair I followed pretty 
 closely at the time of the ruction and I think I would only find corrobor- 
 ation for what I already knew. My father has taken the little Socialist 
 weekly The Appeal to Reason for a number of years. I have been in- 
 terested in observing how that paper manages to get at the facts of the 
 industrial upheavals about a year ahead of all other papers. And al- 
 though they are treated sometimes in a highly colored way, a manner of 
 treatment they have learned from the capitalist yellow press long before 
 them, the facts are usually to be found there. This I have ascertained 
 " by noticing how magazine articles, reviewing in a dispassionate way the 
 same occurrences long after the event, have given me material which I 
 already have, and nothing new, and little different. Reed's articles car- 
 ried out also the suggestion given in the New Republic's announcement 
 of the unfairness of the New York press concerning the strike. As a 
 pendant to that article of Reed's I notice that Standard Oil is now ad- 
 vertising (or the Associated Press is carrying highly complimentary 
 articles, which is the same thing, I imagine) an increase of wages and 
 the reduction of working hours to the uniform eight on the Pacific 
 Coast. Now do you suppose that it is done for the Pacific Coast be- 
 cause of the lessons of the recent election? I don't suppose it will be 
 necessary to do the same things for the East where the political warning 
 was no warning, but rather an encouragement to continue as in the 
 past. Anyway they employ "wops" in the East largely, and "wops" 
 aren't American. They must be given lessons in citizenship, its glories 
 and responsibilities and duties, and especially in loyalty to the flag that 
 so generously provides opportunity for them and for Standard Oil, too. 
 "In loyalty to the common cause and the common interest, for we are 
 not a land of classes in America." 
 
 The peace flurry is a puzzle. I am not very well satisfied with any 
 explanation of it yet. * * * 
 
 So far as the Germans are concerned, it seems to me that their idea is to 
 cinch right now what they have substantially got, and yet with an ap- 
 pearance of magnanimity. It's the Mittel-Europa dream that they are 
 all writing about. What the Allies are mainly concerned about, however. 
 
 J 73 
 
even should Germany make many concessions, is that very fact that 
 it has to be spoken of as the making of concessions by Germany. That 
 is, she is generous. The Allies will not have earned what she will grant 
 them in peace terms. It doesn't accord with their notions of the fitness 
 of things in the European scheme that the Kaiser declares war, runs 
 over everything in his way, rearranges the map of Europe ; basks to his 
 heart's content in the sun that he has so long sought ; plays a magnifi- 
 cent war-lord part ; travels like a modern counterpart of the older world- 
 rulers in his own equipages from the Golden Horn to Antwerp and is 
 monarch of all he surveys from Mediterranean to the North Sea; be- 
 comes weary of playing at war, since it is rude after all in places like 
 Verdun, and in places like America, where of all places bigness and 
 magnificence ought to be appreciated even if it be accompanied by some 
 little lapses of memory of things humanly simple; becomes weary 
 of playing the big game then ; thinks of larger (yes, admittedly larger 
 now that they serve the needs) worlds to conquer, by peace and good 
 will among men; strikes an ultra-magnificent pose and proposes to con- 
 fer upon a waiting world the supreme blessings of peace ; modestly ac- 
 cepts the approving cheers of a neutral world, throws with an imperious 
 gesture the half of what he has won to his enemies, as if to say, "Why 
 fight for it gentlemen ? I give it you" ; gives them peace as he has given 
 them war ; and in the protecting shadow of his mighty right arm allows 
 the world to go back to its work again, musing the while upon this 
 divine being among mortals, who cometh like a pestilence and goeth 
 like a blessing — like Caesar, coming, seeing, conquering, but unlike him 
 perhaps, blessing; like Wa.shington, first in war, first in peace, and 
 first in the hearts of his country-men, but unlike him perhaps, first in 
 the hearts of his fellowmen-imperial, yet Christlike. In the person of 
 Wilhelm then, the world finds that unique personality who shall unite 
 the pagan with the Christian, the will to power, with the will to serve, 
 what the world has wearied its poor brains about since Julian, without 
 an answer. I fancy the Allies will not be over- anxious to accept a peace 
 which will be interpreted as a concession from Germany, whereby the 
 aims for which she went to war will have been established without pay- 
 ing further price for it. 
 
 And yet I wonder. Strange things are happening during this war, 
 those unexpected things which come into being when a few precipitate 
 upon themselves forces too mighty for their foresight to have foreseen 
 All the world aspires towards democracy. What then if a few men at- 
 tempt by a gigantic war to establish their sovereignty ? It is, I think, the 
 aspirations of the many which avail the most when all are thrown into 
 the maelstrom. What is the meaning of the overturning of cabinets, 
 
 174 
 
and the shelving of foreign ministers, and retirement of generals, even 
 those who were of the minority who controlled the beginnings of it and 
 hoped to reap the rewards of the end of it ? Isn't there after all a force 
 of public opinion at work overturning what are virtual dictatorships con- 
 tinuously? And it seems to me that such things happened before this 
 war only at the price of revolution. The spirit of the French Revolution 
 is a powerful thing ; it seems to live on ; or the spectre of it walks the 
 boards to some purpose these days. Herr Zimmermann displaces Von 
 Jagow at the foreign office in Berlin. He (without a von, by the way) 
 talks for publication about the inevitable establishment of constitutional 
 democracy in Germany after the war. Stiirmer is overthrown in Rus- 
 sia, and the Duma's authority is becoming supreme. A people educated 
 to its own power probably likes to give that power scope ; and if it isn't 
 given scope, woe to them that stand in the way ! Let's see what Lloyd- 
 George does to placate it. As it is now, England has retrogressed. Ger- 
 many and Russia have advanced. But England will no doubt show 
 , them all yet what democracy can do ; for what is a setback in England, 
 is only seemingly so. Well, it may be that Germany's peace proposal is 
 a sincere desire to begin over and do things as civilized peoples, without 
 Kultur, do them. 
 
 It's all too confusing for me to make much out of it. I think I 
 have become somewhat inoculated with the English method of muddling 
 through. Trust to your instinct when your head can't make any prog- 
 ress through things. Wait and see. 
 
 Dear R : 
 
 Last night all of us met together at the Prexy's place for the 
 annual reception — and we had such a glorious time. It really was bet- 
 ter than last year's by a long shot, however. Last year's was a strictly 
 formal, butlerized proposition, your name bawled out on entrance, and 
 shake hands and grin foolishly down a long, long line of warm receivers, 
 at the end of which beads of sweat stand out on your pale brow like the 
 juice oozing out of a stone jug in the summertime. This time it was 
 rather come-and-go-easy, grabbing a bit of grub on the way. Anyway 
 I had the joy of getting the dress suit out of the bag and discovering 
 that it still fits and wasn't eaten up by moths. And I also got out the 
 old topper and wore it again for old time's sake and felt like a bleedin' 
 devilish old top, s'help me. Now I have performed the social duties for 
 the year, and shall not need to appear again, disguised as a social ani- 
 mal. For I am not, and never hope to be able to be. I can wear a dress 
 suit, with a certain dignity, but to wear a dress suit and talk too— it's 
 too much. One thing at a time is enough for a simple man. 
 
 175 
 
And yet I remember now, looking back (business of looking wist- 
 ful into the dim distance), how I used to throw on (with an air of the 
 contempt bred of long familiarity) — throw on my dress clothes, which 
 my man had laid out for me before the fire to take the Oxford damp- 
 ness out of them, and saunter out to dine with the boys, and perchance, 
 who knows, arrive back at my rooms ivy-crowned. But that's neither 
 here nor there. 
 
 Well, I observe that as you work into the university atmosphere 
 you find it composed of almost the same proportion of strange- smell- 
 ing ingredients as that of the outside world. The standpatter, who 
 knows how to make money, and despises the rest of the world for their 
 lack of his acumen in such matters, forgetful of the fact that if he has 
 got the nerve to take what he can get quietly there are hundreds of 
 others who question the means and manner of his money-getting, but 
 have qualities in every respect finer, better, more useful — this standpat- 
 ter is the man who has the daring imagination (!) to grab any money 
 lying around while finer men wonder whose it may be by rights, and 
 who has the high quality of self -appreciation which tells these same 
 men who have seen him steal his funds that they are lacking in the es- 
 sential qualities of initiative, and resourcefulness, and strength. The 
 more I hear of the blusterings of standpatter politicians about strength 
 the more I am convinced that between the standpatter ideal of a states- 
 man and a highwayman there is the difference between tweedledum and 
 tweedledee — with tweedledee the highwayman, having a little sugges- 
 tion of effeminacy in the sound — dee compared with dum — an essen- 
 tial point, in this time of high intelTectual issue — hunting an issue — ex- 
 position. And your mathematical standpatter is as true to type as the 
 Lord ever breeds. If at any time the style of a Carlyle appeals to me 
 it is when I try desperately to find a vocabulary picturesque enough 
 in its acerbity and "atrabiliar" anger to objectify my feelings about the 
 average standpat word-monger. 
 
 I am surprised at you in asking me for the gossip. Anyway there 
 doesn't seem to be any. Either I am completely cut off from the cur- 
 rent of it, or there is an uncommon little of it floating around where I 
 hang out. Well, when I confer, I don't hear much gossip, and by the 
 time I have finished that, and have walked by myself alone for a while, 
 and have gone to a picture or written a letter, or taken a kink out of a 
 deranged universe for some of the boys, by that time it is bedtime and 
 I roll in, as I did not use to do. I keep on thinking that I will be alter- 
 ing my schedule but put it off from week to week. But I shall try to 
 get a line on some scandal by next time : Satan surely has a literal hell 
 of a time finding some mischief for busy hands to do. 
 
 176 
 
SEATTLE, Feb. 15, 1917 
 Dear R : 
 
 ********* 
 
 That reading I have been doing has been accomplished under 
 such tremendous pressure that I scarcely remember anything about it. 
 There was The Genius, for instance, by Theodore Dreiser, and Windy 
 MacPherson's Son, by Sherwood Anderson. About the first there has 
 been stirred up a devil of a row, a sort of censorship, which has brought 
 forth a protest from the Authors' League and others. They consider 
 it immoral and profane and in their circular condemning it, cite page and 
 line for the instances of these offences. Truly an ingenious and ingen- 
 uous way to censor a novel. Fancy the Bible censored in this way. 
 Fancy another group of men taking offence at that respectable and 
 venerated bit of literature and indicating title, page and verse where of- 
 fences against respectability are to be found. Wouldn't there be a won- 
 derful turning over of Bible pages for a time? The good censors would 
 have sinners in hell using denatured language lest good people find that 
 they were suffering too much. They'd have case-hardened sinners lisp- 
 ing with the tongues of babes. I wonder why? It doesn't seem to me 
 that the hero in this book of Dreiser's is enjoying such a transcendently 
 happy life that people would rush to emulate his career. If they believe, 
 and they are the kind who usually do, that literature ought to provide 
 warnings against error then surely this is one. It is a book of profound 
 suffering to me. The genius is a dyspeptic and nervous invalid who Has 
 rather strong erotic impulses which he satisfies without moderation 
 both before and after marriage until the breakdown takes place; who 
 rises again ; breaks down again ; and finally triumphs over his tenden- 
 cies. The second half of the book is a long record of bitter experience, 
 extremely depressing. It is about as true a picture of a life that any 
 newspaper man knows as there can be found, I imagine. But because it 
 lets the man act as such men as he do act, and speak as such men as he 
 do speak, they don't like it. By the time they had it tinkered up, your 
 little girl might read it and be prepared against what she is going to find 
 God knows where. Anderson's book is quite different in this respect. 
 It is powerful with the strength of restraint in the first half, then it 
 strays a lot and finally concludes fairly well. It is well written. But it 
 has to do with a much less emotional, less artistic character, and is 
 therefore just different. Anderson's, for a first novel, is certainly prom- 
 ising. I have got through a bit of Gorky, too, and find him to be a great 
 writer truly. The Spy is just such a book as The Genius in its frank- 
 ness ; but any man who understands what the writer is about must feel 
 his heart bleed for such utter wretches as he shows to be found where 
 
 177 
 
life is made insecure and devious and desperate by the devices of vicious 
 autocracy. How any man can tolerate any sort of a spy system after 
 reading this book, I can't understand ; and yet there isn't an angry word 
 said about the system. It damns itself utterly and irretrievably out of 
 the mouths of its own servants. That is art, after all. I didn't under- 
 stand it at first, thought it was gratuitous insult to decent humanity. The 
 life is, but it cannot be otherwise where such systems flourish. I have 
 heard tell of spy systems in our modern industrial plants ; . . . 
 This book shows you what sort of men and women it breeds. 
 ********* 
 
 Just now (Sunday afternoon) I returned from a trip out to camp 
 
 with the C s and V and Sister. We went out on the morning 
 
 boat and returned in the afternoon. The lunch we got together out at the 
 boathouse was a wonder. Had a great steak cooked inimitably by our 
 amazing chef from the Olympic hike, and he sure do know how to cook. 
 For late February the signs of spring are unusual. Coming over on the 
 
 boat Mrs. C asked what that was just above the line of green firs 
 
 that looked like a mist. Why it was a mist, made by millions of alder 
 buds just now turning from the sombre mouse color of winter to the 
 faintest mist-lavender of stirring life. Ashore there were emerald tips 
 on the spirea, large deep-green shoots on the elder, specks of green on the 
 wild gooseberry, the white blossoms of the Indian peach showing through 
 pale green leaf sheaths — there were many signs of spring. 
 
 It is a pleasure to get out with C , he enjoys himself so sin- 
 cerely, and he gets so interested about the books he likes, and the war. 
 I had almost forgotten about the war. I have fallen into the state that 
 forgets about the war, since all I can do about it is merely to hope that 
 the right thing will be done about it by America. And I have conceived 
 so great a respect for Wilson that I leave everything in his hands, some- 
 how having convinced myself that he will do the right thing, whether I 
 at the time agree with him or not. I worried more over the war during 
 the campaign last summer than I shall worry again. What I worried 
 over then was precisely the war and not much else. For I knew that if 
 Hughes were elected, I should have suspected every move of American 
 diplomacy and have squirmed and wriggled to fit myself to the decisions 
 of men in whom I had no confidence. Now on the contrary I have so 
 much confidence that I don't concern myself about things except as a 
 passive spectator or one gratified by the things done. I suppose it is 
 bad ; but when I have faith, I have loyalty, and leave matters to the de- 
 cision of wiser and better-informed men. It is interesting to look back 
 over that much-advertised blunder of that previously impeccable diplo- 
 mat, Lansing, in giving out the interview concerning the gravity of 
 
 178 
 
American relations and the imminency of war at the time of the Presi- 
 dent's peace note. You see, he had to retract at once, and that is very- 
 bad, very bad for a diplomat to do ; for it is equivalent to admitting that 
 he is not infallible. Our worthy friend, The Nation, called him severely 
 to account for that ; and it was much pained at the need of reproving so 
 excellent a gentleman. I wondered at the time whether Lansing didn't 
 know much better than to commit so absurd a blunder. For the wise 
 his action was supposed to be sufficient, I assume. It was a necessary 
 thing that the nation be advised that unless there were peace there 
 would be more severe war if not more extended war. And yet it was not 
 wise to issue a direct threat against Germany, hence the warning, for 
 America, and the retraction, for Germany, to be interpreted correctly 
 by the understanding in both places. Now the President's peace efforts 
 come out pretty clearly as the best of merely practical diplomacy (if you 
 want to make them so, or believe in no other kind), and yet as highly 
 idealistic in giving a new meaning to American life in the community 
 of nations. 
 
 SEATTLE, March 8, 1917 
 Dear R : 
 
 Just now we are head over heels in an energetic preparedness 
 campaign. The University has a committee at work sending out blanks 
 for information about the occupation and fitness for any kind of work 
 that may possibly be needed for military or industrial purposes in case 
 there should arise an emergency. It is all hysterical, of course ; but 
 one must prepai-e. I shouldn't mind it so very much were it not for the 
 forces behind the frenzy. It is as obvious as possible that what is in 
 the air is an attempt to drive us into some form of universal militarism. 
 I cannot see, nor can I be persuaded, why there is need for all this 
 pother. (Good word, pother.) I am willing to let it be known what 
 I can do, or do what it is reasonable to do, if any emergency arises. But 
 I am going to insist upon using my own intelligence in interpreting what 
 an emergency is. Certainly I shall not sign any blank commitment for 
 an emergency to be declared by those who are engineering this sort of 
 thing. 
 
 ********* 
 
 Those panic-stricken accounts of what Germany is going to do to 
 us fill me with disgust for the military mind and its courage. A mili- 
 tarist is apparently a man who deals in realities ; but in reality he deals 
 in the wildest imaginations. And he fears the dreams he builds himself. 
 He is a sleepwalker. 
 
 179 
 
I am tired of the breed and the questions he deals with. I wish he 
 would come out in the open and fight the labor menace above ground. 
 But I am in the mood to say pretty soon : "Very well, if you think you 
 are going to accomplish your personal ends and those of your kind by 
 universal military conscription, fall to it, and I shall be only too glad to 
 help you ; for if you must learn your lesson through a nation of soldiers, 
 if you must get your lesson at that expense and at the expense of what 
 will follow, then may heaven help you. For a nation of soldiers is a 
 different thing from a strikebreaking militia, or a constabulary, or or- 
 ganized strikebreakers. What it wants it can take without the media- 
 tion of rather cumbrous legislation. And surely it will not be what you 
 want. Surely the autocracy of Russia was a more fearsome thing than 
 our would-be controllers of life. When the armies of Russia will con- 
 sent to the removal of their dynasty, then a smaller thing will fall more 
 easily. An organized nation will not have so far to go to arrive at so- 
 cialism. Maybe that's what they all want after all. 
 
 SEATTLE, April 7, 1917 
 
 Dear R- 
 
 The eagle is on the wing — not to peck carrion on the mesa in 
 Mexico, thank heaven — but for a flight worthy of its pinions, and for 
 a foe (as enemies go) worthy of its talons! When the Roman eagles 
 took to the wing, that was a time for free peoples to tremble; if the 
 flight of our eagle be not to make tyrants tremble wherever they may 
 be found, then I have no stake in his flight. But I feel that it is so. I 
 placed my decision in the hands of the President last summer, believing 
 that if the decision must be made it must be made; because the great 
 good for mankind is threatened, and not only because it is threatened 
 now, immediately, but rather because the greater good which might en- 
 sue from this great slaughter can by sacrifices be measurably obtained, 
 now — or maybe slipped by for another century's toil to attain. So I 
 have come to feel that a miraculous opportunity has been seized by the 
 President in order to fix inalterably this war as a war for freedom of 
 all peoples, our own no less than Germany's. For that is what is going 
 to emerge from it all if President Wilson inserts his provisos into the 
 terms with the Allies. Tyranny, I have observed, has been not only seen 
 in Russia, or in Germany, but in many other places. It has fondly 
 deemed war to be a means for its enthronement in many places ; and 
 I had feared that it might gain a power not to be shaken off for hun- 
 
 iso 
 
dreds of years. Then between two days Russia, prototype of tyranny, 
 frees herself of the incubus that war, it has been thought, fastens more 
 firmly than ever. There lies hope. It's a people in arms that will have 
 its way. It does not will arms ; but if tyrannic force can make it bear 
 arms, that force has executed itself. It seems as if the way to liberty 
 is through blood always. If it is not revolution nationally, it is through 
 national war made international revolution. That's what is impending 
 now. If the world's citizens are to be invited, and have been invited, to 
 fight for democracy, there can be no question of a doubt that they will 
 get just that precise thing. And that means that what they want, as a 
 majority, henceforth they are very likely going to get. There can be 
 no doubt about what they want, since they are laborers, educated through 
 long years of propaganda as to their place and power. The interna- 
 tional idea, that source of homeric laughter to the mirthful militarist — 
 what about it now ? Is there not a good deal of international sympathy 
 being shown by laborers, that they have to wade through blood to be 
 allowed in the end to express the truth openly that there is only one foe 
 to men of all nations and that, tyranny ? We fight, militarists and all 
 of us, for an international idea, and yet that was so weak a thing, that 
 it would not prevent a few Socialists voting war credits ! They did not 
 see apparently that having to vote war credits and having to go to this 
 war was (I hope devoutly) the last spasm of tyranny's attempts; may it 
 prove the death throes ! 
 
 Let it not be misunderstood that those people who elected Wilson 
 and who follow him into this war are fighting for the symbol of a few 
 ships sunk. I rather suspect that it is to resist that tyranny that calls 
 itself militarism and that now rides so triumphantly. They are few who 
 ride thus, and yet they fight for democracy; that they will get, and 
 then they may ride hobby horses with all the gallantry and tinsel and 
 show of the circus, to the applause of gentle ladies in the boxes and the 
 homeric laughter of the sweating herd on the benches. I would risk 
 my bespectacled dignity to be shoved in under the tent to look on this 
 show, by heck' 
 
 Thus you see how I have metamorphosed from the pacifist to the 
 man who believes that some things, as the world is now constructed, 
 must be fought for. I have felt it coming. I feel keenly for those 
 young Englishmen who hate war with the hatred of calm judgment and 
 yet take up arms to fight what they believe must be the last fight. As 
 for those men, were they sure that this is merely another of those wars 
 preliminary to many another, I am almost sure that they would refuse to 
 fight. That is the way I feel about it. What I am interested in is that 
 
 181 
 
the sentiment of such men shall be upheld throughout the world, that 
 this shall be a crusade toward that New Jerusalem ; not the disciplining 
 of one nation, but the welding of all, against the foes within. For what 
 we fight against in Germany, we have to fight against here, and England, 
 and France in their own lands. If we have real war, you will find that 
 
 the and the incompetents and unfits that sit like leeches on 
 
 the army will be automatically removed, and that service will be re- 
 warded. We shall probably learn who is the man who can best lead 
 when there is work to be done and not parading to display. Wilson, 
 and Baker, and Daniels are very likely men who will help to make an 
 army democratic. Ye gods ! think what it would have meant to have 
 the Republicans in power now! I voted last fall with a feeling more 
 nearly like religion than I have ever felt in a church, and I hung on the 
 results with an apprehension that I had never experienced. For I knew 
 that this was what hung on it all. That trial over, the country was safe, 
 come what may, even war. 
 
 The week of vacation has just passed. I have tried to write. We 
 have had abominable weather. I have had to stay in the house, except 
 for a little show now and then. War news has kept me on tenterhooks. 
 It has been practically impossible to do any work. It seems of such 
 trivial nature to be writing on literature in these times. When I got 
 home and settled down last night I did quite a little bit. I found my 
 thoughts flowing fairly well and accomplished some rough sketch work 
 that may be useful to me in the end. The theme I am on is close to the 
 question of the times after all, and the feeling engendered by the world 
 situation can be transmuted into argument for my cause. I am merely 
 trying to relieve literature from the absolute control of any one method 
 of interpretation, to make it free to express the individual and to be 
 judged by his own attempt. I am trying to make the understanding of 
 literature based upon the understanding of the individual and his per- 
 sonality, and not upon any one thesis whether economic or social or 
 whatever it may be called. Individualism is what I am concerned about ; 
 
 my friend B likes to call it anarchy in literature, because it 
 
 seems in his judgment to take too little account of the economic forces. 
 But if he wishes to call it that, I have no objection. For anarchy in the 
 judgment is precisely what we have. 
 
 It is about time to roll in — 12:30. I hope the trip to Chicago will 
 have been a revelation that provincialism is not limited to the small 
 town. — 
 
 ********* 
 
 1S2 
 
SEATTLE, May 22, 1917 
 Dear R : 
 
 If you don't mitTd my talking about myself so much, I must 
 tell you that I feel myself growing in power this year, so much that I 
 shall be able to turn out good copy in fairly regular fashion when I turn 
 to it again. Altogether I have turned out some 25,000 words since the 
 turning of the new year, and work that has not been of the easiest to 
 do, some of it. It is the feeling that I can do a pretty fair daily stint of 
 it regularly that gives confidence. What I grind out is just as good as 
 any I can do ; so I may as well arrange my days in such a fashion that 
 so many hours are devoted to some kind of writing. What verse I have 
 tried hasn't been any good; I don't seem to have been able to make it 
 go. But this summer I am intending to try my hand at a variety of 
 things. I shall not be in summer school, and am feeling in fairly good 
 trim, and may as well keep the good work going so long as the resolution 
 . is strong. Writing is grinding any way, except for rare moments when 
 things shape themselves almost by themselves. I have had several good 
 flashes during the half year — so good that it made my old nerves tingle 
 with the consciousness of power. I am being convinced that I can evoke 
 the feelings oftener by sticking to the job, hanging on till the thing 
 comes right. 
 
 I have been fearfully blue sometimes, I must confess, as you well 
 know. The rewards come so late. I imagine that I have drilled myself 
 so hard this year as much on that account as any. 
 
 SEATTLE 
 Dear R : 
 
 The developments of our life these days come so rapidly and 
 are so little attended with publicity that one must look sharp to keep 
 pace with them. The affair of the Columbia professors received no 
 notice, so far as I remember, in our local press. I am surprised there- 
 fore to learn of it through the weeklies, and of course glad to see with 
 what lively energy they attack the trustees of the University. I am be- 
 ginning to wonder how these weeklies will be able to withstand the 
 prices they will be offered or the pressure they will be subjected to. 
 It would take but a little money now, considering the conspiracy that 
 seems to have been entered upon, to blot out every vestige of liberal 
 opinion in the country. Heaven help us if it is done. It does seem to 
 me that the profession of journalism in the universities is a crying need, 
 as that which passes for it now manifests itself in this country. I have 
 
 183 
 
seen many rotten manifestations of it but this time it o'erleaps itself — 
 let us hope to fall in a heap on the other side of the war. The hound- 
 ing of La Follette is certainly a disgraceful thing. Militarism, they 
 say, is a fearful thing — in Germany; but in our owji country a thing 
 to be clasped unto our bosoms. I wonder if La Follette would have been 
 persecuted so bitterly under the German government for what lit- 
 tle he has done here. I wonder if in any country in Europe there is more 
 outcry against one difference in opinion with the existing government 
 than there is here. France, one would think, if any country, would have 
 the excuse that in war there must be unanimity. But where do govern- 
 ments totter and fall so quickly? I fancy however that there is a 
 ground swell in the opinion in this country that has been but little ruf- 
 fled by the little whiffs of treason-mongering that blow, and that the 
 elections that are coming will see some surprising registers of it. I shall 
 not be surprised to see before the congressional elections come off, if 
 the war is still with us then, that our intensely democratic press will be 
 howling for a coalition government, lest the people say something to 
 them. 
 
 Whatever else you accuse LaFollette of, it must be admitted that 
 he is one dependable man in a legislature that thinks with its numerous 
 mouths. That is the real reason for the hue and cry. Well, I don't flat- 
 ter myself that I am much wiser on this press than the man in the 
 street. That is one lesson of humility I have been learning in the last 
 few years whereby I have come to be more nearly a democrat. So when 
 I think that the man-hunt has just about reached the limits of patience, 
 I suspect that that is about the situation in the minds of the public, and 
 I suspect that the public remembers as well as I how patriotically the 
 press has served the cause of democracy in peace, and knows how pa- 
 triotically it is serving it now in the time of war. And when the first 
 iridescent rapture of war enthusiasm is worn off (as it soon must be at 
 the rate it is being subjected to wear) I make the surmise that strange 
 things will be heard here, sober, but strange. 
 
 SEATTLE, Nov 8, 1917 
 Dear R : 
 
 The aftermath of a headache which has accompanied me all 
 day, still lingers and makes me uncomfortable enough to try to postpone 
 any necessary tasks that vex me with the insistence that they be done. I 
 walked this afternoon around Green Lake to Ballard and around the 
 waterfront to town thinking I might shake it off, but I didn't succeed. 
 
 184 
 
The autumn display of foliage is wonderful, yellows and reds that glow 
 in the pale afternoon sunlight. L observed some beautiful things that 
 1 wish I might have the art to preserve for myself. If one could only 
 paint, there's a multitude of moods and atmospheres in our landscape 
 characteristic of each season, some of them so poignant that I seem to 
 be a part of them — or they of me — and to vibrate, if that is the word, 
 in harmony with them. Thought ceases at such times and one is sim- 
 ply a bit of non-sentient nature. To try to translate that state into lan- 
 guage is beyond me; although it has always been with me an intense 
 longing to be able to do it. It is on such occasions that I wish I might 
 have followed my native early bent to draw, and, I hope, eventually to 
 paint; for it seems that it might be possible to capture some of these 
 raptures through the medium of line and color. But to translate it into 
 so foreign a medium as that of words — that I seem unable ever to do. 
 Today I saw, for instance, a cherry tree, which seems to have thrown 
 off its burden of leaves with one effort, for they lay there on the 
 ground, each leaf crisp and perfect, golden as a heap of yellow corn. 
 The tree stood in a little unkempt yard, clean-limbed and bare, con- 
 temptuously amid its cast-off gold. Now what was there to call up 
 such keen ecstacy as I felt when I passed ? That's what I cannot quite 
 seize. Every day as I run from breakfast to school through our little 
 bit of wood I see some effect of tree or shrub or cloud or rain or sky 
 that grips me. They leave me memories only. If I could only put these 
 things on paper I think I could quit the teaching work very soon. 
 
 This Italian affair will start some remarkable things going this 
 winter I fear. I don't know what to make of the situation. I am more 
 and more in doubt as to what we are in the war for. When I see Lord 
 Northcliffe here in America letting us know what our business in the 
 war is, I get perplexed as to the purposes of it. I can't find in my 
 memory any trace of any work that he has ever done in the interest of 
 democracy. I had at one time, in spite of my hatred for war, just about 
 determined that this one was necessary for democracy's sake. I do know 
 that liberalism was winning all over the world before the war broke 
 out, and I had been told by some theorists that when such a thing was 
 inevitable in peace time it was customary for conservatives, or capital- 
 ists, or whatever forces of reaction control foreign policies, to bring 
 about a war and thus check the movement for another century. I had 
 given that theory up for a while. Now I am deeply in doubt, and I 
 fancy there are many like me. To judge by the guidance of the war in 
 those countries which are most powerful still, it is just those men who 
 are accredited with sinister designs who are in absolute control. I do re- 
 
 186 
 
member that Lincoln was bitterly attacked for insisting on a finish fight, 
 and try to fit his attitude to these men in control, but it is a tragic thing 
 to observe the way these men of the present shrink under such a com- 
 parison. There aren't any Lincolns in this war, not even Wilson. As- 
 quith seems nearer to the stature to me than any of the men now in 
 control — and Earl Grey, I think, measures up well. Lincoln was pei^- 
 fectly willing to treat with the enemy at any time and did so. Why is 
 it a treasonable thing now to mention a possible diplomatic escape from 
 the war ? I cannot see it clearly. More and more I come to believe that 
 it is the fear that the world may have to come to political settlement of 
 international questions, the thing precisely which these gentlemen don't 
 want. They want to retain that power in the hands of a few over whom 
 they have control. One military decision only begets another in the 
 future ; and war must be retained as a means of settlement of internal 
 as well as external questions. Therefore this must be fought until the 
 other side, or ours, can't fight any longer, and therefore must submit 
 to force pure and simple. I hope Wilson will say something soon that 
 may clarify the situation. The winter is going to see remarkable things 
 unless he does, I am certain. 
 
 186 
 
INNOCENCE ABOARD 
 
 or 
 
 The Log of The Witch 
 
 187 
 
INNOCENCE ABOARD 
 or 
 
 The Log of The Witch 
 
 Tacoma, July 5, 1915. 
 Dear Skipper and Mate: 
 
 I enclose the log of the cruise of the witch some several years 
 ago. The beginnings of it have lain about amnong my papers accusing 
 me of procrastination until patience has ceased to be a virtue, and I 
 have driven myself in the summer heat to finish and forward the thing. 
 
 I don't know what sort of memories it will stir in you men, 
 who now mayhap look back with a sort of fatherly indulgence to those 
 carefree days. But for me, who have none of the cares that you have 
 {although I have some, too) the writing of these notes and the vivid 
 recalling of those scenes resultant therefrom have been an undiluted 
 pleasure. That's one advantage of a trip like that — you can take it as 
 often as you wish over and over again. You fellows will now have to 
 take it over again once more at least; for I assume that you will read 
 the yarn once, just for courtesy's sake. I should count it a triumph for 
 me if it were such — the log — that it tempted you to take the trip a couple 
 of times, say. 
 
 Well, anyway, here it is, and with it my gratitude for a royal 
 time both aboard THE witch and The hamyon. The halcyon days, 
 I regret to say, don't stick in my memory so well as those of the witch, 
 or I should have written the log of them too. 
 
 With a prayer that you be lenient towards my many short- 
 comings in the manipulation of the sailor's lingo, 
 
 Yours, 
 
 Joel M. Johanson. 
 
 It is my good fortune to be the possessor of a couple of friends who 
 sail, and it is theirs to be the possessors of a trim little yacht. The Witch. 
 This is a very happy combination of circumstances; for they can 
 satisfy their instincts of sailing, whenever a lull occurs in the law-court 
 grind and vacation appears ( for one is a budding, not to say "bloomin' ", 
 barrister, and the other a successful abstractor — and the lull in the one 
 case usually coincides with the vacation in the other, that is to say, 
 
 189 
 
whenever the weather and the wind are fair in summertime) ; and I can 
 satisfy the instincts of friendship by benignly accepting the invitation 
 to sail with them, or rather, to be sailed by them. 
 
 It came to pass that a lull occurred in vacation time; the weather 
 was fair and the wind was free; and an invitation was issued, and ac- 
 cepted forthwith ; and thus I, lubber if there ever was one, shipped to 
 be sailed by my friends upon the good ship Witch. 
 
 Both of my friends have at some time or other led a seafaring life. 
 One has coursed the Spanish Main, The South, and all the other Seven 
 Seas, and especially those of the Far East around which the glamor 
 of romance hangs most thickly. He's full to the brim of yarns about 
 his experiences in storm and in calm, ashore and afloat, with wondrous 
 reptiles, birds, and beasts of the tropical jungle ; and can always manage 
 to recall a hair-breadth escape in his imminent breeches as a final flour- 
 ish. The other is not so much given to the spinning of yarns, but I 
 imagine he was some pretty high official. You may know that life on 
 has not taken him so far afield, or rather, a-sea. His sphere of activity 
 was limited to coastwise travel and the position of mess-master. 
 That "mess-master" has a doubtful sound to an inhabitant of dull, cold 
 earth, but if you should hear him and see him pronounce the title, you 
 would know that it is something out of the ordinary at sea. So I 
 imagine he was some pretty high official. You may know that life on 
 board The Witch under two such seasoned old sea-dogs is one of strict 
 discipline. It was. 
 
 The coastwise man is skipper, that is, master of the craft. The 
 South- Sea- farer is mate. And if anybody else ships he is God-knows- 
 what-all. In this case under attention I was the last. As soon as I had 
 signified my intention of becoming a member of the crew, the skipper, 
 a lean, swarthy, taciturn cuss, in fact, as piratical looking a man as 
 ever sailed under a Jolly Roger and made men walk the plank without 
 the wink of an eye, peremptorily ordered me to bring my kit aboard. 
 Accordingly I went ashore and rolled up my blanket, and, knowing that 
 men dress in white when sailing, in my lubberly ignorance I rolled up 
 my tennis outfit with it. When I came aboard with my kit, the skipper 
 eyed my tennis outfit with a contemptuous grin and growled something 
 about the fool things some people bring on board ship; but the mate, 
 a rotund, moon-faced, jolly old dog, said he guessed they'd do. "Well, 
 stow your kit below and make things snug. Get busy," ordered the 
 skipper. 
 
 I didn't know where "down below" was ; but he had said something 
 about below being the cabin ; so I went down into that place and stowed 
 my stuff away and began to tidy things up a bit. 
 
 Thus I became cabin-boy aboard The Witch. 
 
 190 
 
Soon it was time to have a snack of something to eat and it became 
 my duty to boil coffee over an oil stove that smoked, like a wet-straw 
 fire, fearfully, but burned fitfully. In the course of the afternoon the 
 coffee boiled and I had my first taste of ship's fare. 
 
 After this eating I went outside to help sail or turn my hand to 
 some more stirring occupation than stirring coffee. The skipper had 
 in mind, however, that he would try me out on some simple nautical 
 terms before entrusting me with my duty that might call for special 
 skill. Casually he asked me, "My boy, can you box the compass?" to 
 which I eagerly replied, anxious to do anything to show my aptness, 
 "Sure thing. If you've got any tools aboard, I'll have it boxed in no 
 time; and it will be boxed so you can send it anywhere without harm 
 when I get through, too." The skipper snorted, turned with a shrug 
 and looked appealingly at the mate. But the mate was holding his belly 
 with both hands, for it was heaving and rolling spasmodically, his face 
 was red like a lobster and puffed out awfully, so that he couldn't even 
 gurgle a word. I never saw such a fit. Getting no sympathy from the 
 mate, the skipper turned again to me, and said with a look of sadness 
 and pitying concession, "Well, we ain't a-going to box the compass to- 
 day, son." Thus I escaped one job. 
 
 When I came up from below, I noticed that the skipper was hold- 
 ing a sort of iron bar wrapped in twine that came up out of the bottom 
 of the boat. He held this in one hand, and looked ahead once in a while 
 and once in a while at the sails. I wondered what it was all about — 
 fooling around with that bar that way, but I knew that it was some 
 supremely necessary thing to do, because that skipper surely couldn't 
 be conceived as doing anything else. When he had sat muttering to 
 himself about crating the compass and apparently holding down some- 
 thing he was awful anxious to yell out, he said to me at last : "D'ye see 
 this thing in my hand here? We won't box the compass to-day, lad, 
 but we'll put ye to some other work. This thing in my hand here is 
 the tiller. You steer the ship with this tiller. I am going down below 
 to read a fairy tale about a lost one a little while, and while I am gone 
 you can hold this tiller and steer the ship. Hold her just where she is. 
 Don't let her luff. Keep your sail full ; and if you see any passing ves- 
 sel, take her swell on the bluff of the bow. And remember," said he 
 with a scowl, "a helmsman must not close his eyes to keep them warm." 
 
 I determined that I would show him that I could be trusted to 
 carry out instructions to the letter. I sighted along the tiller, as he 
 called it, to be sure just where it was, and held it there, if I did nothing 
 else. Then I would look up at the sail once in a while, just as the skip- 
 per had done, thinking it was a necessary part of the job. It looked 
 business-like anyway. And then I would go forward and peer around 
 
 191 
 
for an approaching vessel and that swell the skipper had spoken of, 
 although I didn't know what a swell was — not on board ship; and I 
 wondered what the bluff of the bow was, too. Then the darn tiller 
 would wobble around. I couldn't leave it to go ahead for a minute 
 without its getting swung around. So I fixed myself in the hole where 
 the steerer sits and held onto the thing for dear life. But things didn't 
 seem to go right. The sail began to flop around and at last flew clear 
 across and tangled me all up in a mess of snarled ropes and pulleys. 
 Before I could extricate myself, I heard a rush of feet accompanying 
 a roar from down below. I was yanked out of the ropes with a fearful 
 speed, and then dimly saw a swarthy face glaring at me and heard a 
 howl, "What in hell did I tell you about holding her where she was? 
 You blanked idiot, don't you understand English ?" 
 
 I answered meekly that I had held her just where he had told me 
 to hold her. "I marked the place where the tiller was when you went 
 below and held it there all the time. I went ahead once in a while to see 
 if there were any of those swells around, but whenever I did the tiller 
 would wobble around. I gave up going ahead then and just held the 
 tiller right." 
 
 "Well, who said anything about holding the tiller straight? It's 
 the ship, I told you to hold straight, you infernal lubber," he yelled, 
 "the ship, the ship, not the tiller. Now take that tiller again and see if 
 you can hold the ship straight. It's lucky for you there's a Paddy's 
 hurricane bearing down on us or ye'd gone to the bottom the way you 
 handle ship. Now don't let her come about again," and with that he 
 stalked fuming down below again. 
 
 That skipper was a marvellous man ; talking about hurricanes as 
 if they were the experiences of the day ; even trusting himself to me and 
 going below as if a hurricane was something for a real tried seaman to 
 snap his fingers at. It was wonderful. However, I wasn't going to let 
 my admiration for this consummate courage keep my mind from the 
 task in hand. I kept the ship heading in the exact direction the skipper 
 had left her when he went down to his fairy-tale. And I didn't do any 
 fancy skippering forward nor looking at the sails — just kept the ship 
 true, that's all. We passed in this way several interesting places: 
 Point No Point, Useless Bay and Cultus Bay. The names didn't seem to 
 indicate anything worth stopping over for. Then we approached Foul- 
 weather Bluff. As we approached a presentiment crept into my heart 
 that here, if anywhere, we should run into that hurricane. "Foul- 
 weather" didn't sound right, with hurricanes in the air. But the wind 
 became quieter, and the sea calmer, until there was no wind at all and 
 the sea like a pond of oil. In spite of my exertions I couldn't hold the 
 boat where the skipper had said I should. It gradually changed course 
 
 192 
 
and then headed in all sorts of directions. I heard no sounds from be- 
 low and judged that the skipper hadn't found it out. He came up after 
 things had settled down completely, and looked around as if everything 
 were as it should be, saying, "Well, here's that hurricane I expected. 
 Now we're in for it. We'll have to row in and anchor." Thus I learned 
 that a dead calm sometimes is a hurricane. 
 
 What the skipper had read below, although he called it a fairy 
 tale, had made him glum. He seemed to be worried about something 
 and grumbled to himself. Anticipating an outburst which I knew from 
 one experience was a serious thing, I struggled with my tiller to keep 
 her headed right. Then apparently unable to keep it any longer. "Sup- 
 posin' this here vessel," said the skipper with a groan, "should lose her 
 bearin's, run away and bump upon a stone? Suppose she'd shiver and 
 go down when save ourselves we couldn't?" The mate replied, "Oh, 
 blow me eyes, suppose again she shouldn't." Wherein is shown the dif- 
 ference between my sailing masters; for the mate was a jolly old soul, 
 not the sort to borrow trouble. 
 
 The skipper plainly was in distress. He walked about dejectedly, 
 looking for a wind and worrying audibly about bumping upon a stone. 
 He decided that it was no use to wait longer for wind and that we should 
 have to make shore in some other way. He told me, in a manner un- 
 usually gentle for him, to get into the dinghy, take it forward, and catch 
 the rope he would pass me there. Fortunately he had indicated with a 
 nod of his head what the dinghy was, or I should have betrayed myself 
 again for a lubber. I climbed into the little cockleshell of a boat that 
 had bobbed along behind all afternoon, caught the skipper's rope from 
 forward, tied it to the seat in my craft, seized the oars, and fell to. Now 
 there is one thing I am a bit proud of and that is my prowess with the 
 oars in any sort of bar-propellable craft. That little cockleshell, when 
 it is tied to a ship like The Witch, is not an oar-propellable craft — not 
 that you might notice ; for when I had struggled a while I tried to notice, 
 and didn't. But the skipper told me I might row for the shore until I 
 got tired. 
 
 Thus I became the auxiliary engine of The Witch. 
 
 I rowed until the shades of night were falling fast. The good 
 yacht Witch is a beautiful, slim and trim and graceful thing to look at, 
 floating on the water light as a gull. I discovered that some light and 
 graceful things have some weight about them somewhere, and are 
 deuced hard things to persuade to move. My oars were no shucks at 
 persuasion, much. I pulled desperately, the rope grew taut, the dinghy 
 was snubbed and bounded back, while The Witch — beautiful thing — 
 just bobbed her head a little to me. The skipper asked me with an air 
 
 193 — 7 
 
of concern if I were gettin' tired. "Oh, no, I could row all day. I love 
 rowing. I never get tired rowing." Whereat he was much relieved. 
 But I was not relieved at all; kept on rowing, as faithful as a little, 
 well-tuned gas engine. 
 
 When the skipper thought he had passed the stone he was worry- 
 ing about, and I was about to begin to miss firing, he called me back 
 aboard again. 
 
 The fat mate had in the meanwhile by throwing in a piece of lead 
 discovered what the depth of water was. At the skipper's command to 
 "let go the ank" he dropped the anchor overboard and tied The Witch 
 to it. Then we wrapped up the sails and tied some strings around them 
 to keep them from flapping. This done I was ordered to get the dinghy 
 alongside; whereupon it was loaded with cooking utensils and pro- 
 visions for me to row ashore. A second trip brought the officers ashore. 
 Then it was my duty to get wood for the fire while the mate cooked up 
 a mess for us. I use the word mess in order to get the sound of the sea 
 into this narrative, not in disparagement of the mate's cooking. I found 
 his mess very palatable, after the exercise of dragging the fairy ship to 
 her anchorage and ferrying freight and officers, and fetching wood for 
 the fire, and several other duties too minor to mention. After the meal 
 I was put to scouring the dishes out in the salt sea waves. 
 
 And thus I became scullion aboard The Witch. 
 
 And then I ferried the officers and freight back to the yacht again. 
 After this exercise there was a little time of rest when I watched the 
 officers enjoy their evening smoke and listened to their outlandish jar- 
 gon of the sea, which bore little meaning to me. Mortified at this ig- 
 norance of mine I resolved that I would avail myself of the first oppor- 
 tunity to learn some of it ; for I had discovered a dictionary of the lan- 
 guage while I had been tidying up the cabin in the afternoon. Rest was 
 of short duration. We were soon all busy with preparations for 
 the night. 
 
 The officers prepared their bed in the cabin, telling me that I should 
 be given the bed of honor, the guest's bed, that night — much to niy 
 pleasure, for I had begun to suspect that I was not the guest of honor 
 on that trip. Accordingly when they had made their beds as comfort- 
 able and cozy as beds could very well be, they turned their attention to 
 me. I was given a bunch of spare sails and instructed how to make a 
 bed with them out in the cockpit, as they called it. There was no dearth 
 of instructions as to the making of the bed, very minute they were, 
 and detailed, and voluminous ; the while they sighed to think how nice 
 and pleasant it would be out there under the stars in the fresh air, and 
 hov/ healthy it was to sleep outside, too. But they would have to be 
 satisfied with things as they were, for I had earned the right to the bed 
 
 194 
 
of honor. Meanwhile I pulled and twisted and shifted the sailcloth 
 this way and that until I had what seemed to be a bed. It was passed 
 upon and highly commended. The lights were blown out and I settled 
 myself for the long night, the lovely long night with the stars burning 
 intensely overhead The boat rocked ever so gently and sooth- 
 ingly, and the water faintly gurgled under its motion, and I was wooed 
 
 to slumber, strength-restoring slumber Several hours passed 
 
 thus in this unsuccessful courtship : the stars burned still more intensely, 
 the boat rocked even more gently, and the water gurgled ever more 
 coaxingly. Added to all was the sound of slumber issuing from the 
 uncomfortable beds in the cabin, intoxicating sound ! With senses more 
 and more keenly alive to all these impressions as the night wore on, I 
 became aware of another thing : the breeze was beginning to blow more 
 freshly and I could feel the grateful coolness brush over my upturned 
 face. With the breeze there came other things to observe. There came 
 a creaking among the pulleys, and a squeaking among the ropes, and a 
 pounding under the boat. The rest of the night I listened to a chorus 
 of squeak, creak, ka-chug ; squeak, creak, ka-chug with slight variation. 
 I spent the long hours of the lovely night in observation of these re- 
 markable appeals to the various senses. After an infinite space of time 
 dawn appeared — and after another infinity there were sounds of re- 
 turning consciousness down below where the officers had been suffer- 
 ing in their beds. Faint murmurs arose, sounds of conversation, of 
 persons moving about, culminating in the appearance of a head in the 
 cockpit, with the suggestion of breakfast. A night spent in the minute 
 observation of sensations ought not to make one balk at the sensation of 
 a breakfast, surely. I thought that would be a satisfaction; it might 
 even be refreshing, as the guest's bed of honor on the good yacht 
 Witch certainly was not. After ferrying, firebuilding, wood-gathering, 
 came breakfast; it was really much more refreshing than guest-bed 
 sleep. Then dishwashing and ferrying again, functioning in my various 
 capacities as God-knows-what-all on The Witch. 
 
 The skipper, now that the chores had been finished, was anxious 
 to get away on what he called a fair breeze up the canal whither our 
 trip was planned, because we ought to reel off the knots in grand style 
 while it lasted, which was a very uncertain thing. T noticed now why 
 the skipper had been worried about bumping upon a stone the night 
 before. They were lying bare all around us, exposed by the ebb tide. 
 Our things were got aboard with all possible speed; no, with my pos- 
 sible speed, not all. The sails were hauled up, the ank was pulled in, 
 and away she flew. Just a little way; there was a crunch below, the 
 skipper slewed around desperately ; then the boat began to hop, skip, and 
 jump along, stopped, and leaned over until the water began to pour over 
 
 195 
 
the rail, while the sail pulled us over farther and farther. I was for 
 climbing the mast to get out of the water, but reflection convinced me 
 that it would be safer to be in the water in the boat than in the water 
 on the mast; so I stayed. While the skipper and the mate got down 
 the sail that was pulling us over, I grabbed a handy pole and tried to 
 shove off, as if I was riding a blooming little punt. The officers took 
 down the sail all right, but all I succeeded in doing was to lift myself 
 off the deck with great ease. But with the aid of the whole crew, 
 officers and scullion, and cabin-boy, and auxiliary engine, and ferryman, 
 and cook, and all the rest, the boat was at last pushed off the rock upon 
 which she had climbed, into deeper water alongside, but on the shore- 
 ward side. The skipper investigated "the reef we had run afoul of" 
 and found that it extended out diagonally from the shore with the open- 
 ing out to windward. We were literally in a cul de sac; there was no 
 getting out before the tide had risen high enough to float us over the 
 reef. The ank was heaved over, and we lay to ; that is, I think we lay 
 to, that sounds right anyway (I haven't had any chance to get at that 
 dictionary yet, life on shipboard hitherto being all work and no sleep). 
 Thus was the skipper's prophetic soul more than borne out by the events. 
 We had bumped upon a stone, at least, even if we hadn't lost our 
 bearin's. 
 
 Everything fast, the skipper's sense of responsibility for the safety 
 of the ship asserted itself in the regulation precautions. He commanded 
 me to go below and sound the well to see if we were making water. 
 
 "Sound the well, sir?" I asked, determined not to "box another 
 compass." 
 
 "Yes, sound the well. Holy rum and tarbarrels! Do I have to 
 make a picture of everything I ask you to do ? Sound the well. Meas- 
 ure the water. And quick." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 I hastened down below, and prodded around awhile, finding to my 
 satisfaction that there was still plenty of water below. I reported that 
 we weren't losing any. 
 
 "Ain't losing any," he cried furiously, "Who the hell asked you to 
 find out if we wuz losing any? Mate, hustle down and see if you can 
 find out if we are making any water. That blanked ijit is enough to 
 drive a respectable seafarin' man to drinkin' milk." 
 
 The mate reported after investigation that the vessel was making a 
 mite of water, but not enough to cause undue worry. There wasn't much 
 to do but sit there and watch the wind go humming by up the channel, 
 and wonder how it would feel to be out there in it. We were in the 
 doldrums for fair, as the story books tell about it, as "idle as a painted 
 ship upon a painted ocean," while the wind blew gaily by. There had at 
 
 1»6 
 
last come a time in my nautical experience when there was nothing to 
 do, when I might spend a few moments time learning some necessary 
 seaman's lore in the dictionary I had found below. I spent the morn- 
 ing, therefore, between cramming my lubberly mind with the language 
 of the deep and dozing occupations not exactly compatible with each 
 other, but serving to while away time satisfactorily. The skipper might 
 fuss and fume, so far as I was concerned, about good sailing going by 
 the board; but, as the situation was, I was my own master and life be- 
 gan to wear a rosy aspect again. When we were under way, on the 
 other hand, and the skipper was in high fettle, I was expecting his 
 scowling visage to hover over me, raging against the sublime ignorance 
 of landsman. However, any paradise this side of the eternal must have 
 its ending. The tide rose, so that we could clear the reef. The wind 
 had lost its morning eagerness ; still there was a fair draft. So the skip- 
 per crowded on all his canvas and made a run for it to make up for the 
 lost time of the morning. Yesterday I should have stated the same 
 facts as follows: we hauled up all the sails and sailed as fast as we 
 could, because we were late. It is easily seen that I profited by the 
 study of the dictionary during the enforced idleness. 
 
 Well, with the wind dead aft and a flowing sheet well eased off 
 to it, and the spinnaker and balloon jib all holding well, we bowled 
 along up the Canal right merrily, everything happy as a marriage bell. 
 There was nothing for it, said the mate, but to get down in his favorite 
 place abaft the binnacle and yarn it awhile. He told me of the many 
 gorgeous larks of himself and his mates down in the South Seas when 
 they'd splice the main brace as often as shore leave. Those were the 
 days, the jolly sailing days, when there was a lass in every port to glad- 
 den the eyes of a singing sailorman, wot ? Even the skipper, happy now 
 that the wind came up piping in our tail, so that we romped up the 
 Canal, stowed his chronic gloom and showed a gleam of sunshine in his 
 face. When we had set out our cold snack of lunch, he even growled 
 a bit of a sailor's chanty betimes as he kept his eye on the sails. I caught 
 a fragment of it now and then, and managed to patch together some- 
 thing like this, which may be a well known sailor song for aught I know : 
 
 Westward ho! With a rumhelow, 
 And hurrah for the Spanish Main, 0. 
 
 And then he snarled out with a vehement emphasis on the syllables : 
 
 A randy, dandy, dandy, 0, 
 A whit of ale and brandy, 0, 
 With a rumbelow and a Westward — ho! 
 And brave, my mariners all, 0. 
 
 197 
 
We bore down on one landmark after another that afternoon and 
 passed them all in smashing style. There was Point Hannon on Hood's 
 Head, and Termination Point, hard by Port Gamble, lying snug in her 
 bay. After lunch the mate piped all hands to muster and ordered them 
 to wash down the decks. So all the crew appeared in their bare feet 
 and labored steadfastly. There was the cook, and the scullion, and the 
 ferryman, and the cabin-boy working faithfully under the watchful 
 eye of the skipper and the mirth of the fat, joking mate. Then we 
 passed Salsbury Point and Squamish Harbor, and South Point, and 
 Brown Point, and Little Bangor on the King's Spit; and we rounded 
 Hazel Point and Oak Head, and then a little later, Tskutsko Point on 
 Toandos Peninsula, by which time we had brought the wind from dead 
 aft to about two points abaft the beam as we swept into Dabop Bay. 
 
 We had had too much luck for our skipper and he was harboring 
 plans for the distress of the crew. About four in the afternoon he 
 dropped anchor in Jackson's Cove and announced that the crew would 
 fall to and pump out the bilge so that he could make an examination of 
 the hull after the straining of the morning. Now pumping out the bilge 
 in cramped quarters isn't a sweet job, nor a clean one, and with a sav- 
 age skipper glowering at you to make you keep up speed, I find it isn't 
 the thing for comment in this here particular diary. Nevertheless the 
 bilge was pumped dry, and a hole was plugged, and the skipper was 
 satisfied, and we were both beginning to get hungry, when all of a 
 sudden the mate ashore let out a bloodcurdling whoop. We saw him 
 whaling away at something down in the marsh. For once the mate had 
 been sent ashore to get the meal ready, while I was busy with the bilge. 
 His strange antics, yelling like forty devils, and beating a marsh with 
 a flail like a madman, if it did nothing else, reminded us that he ha3 
 been sent ashore to get a meal ready for which we were already fam- 
 ished. When he came in answer to our summons to ferry us ashore, 
 he announced that he had killed a dogfish in the marsh, and announced 
 it with some air of triumph. From that moment on I had my suspicions 
 of the genuineness of his tales of prowess among ferocious Oriental 
 beasts. Kill a dogfish in a marsh, forsooth ; and then tell about it ! For 
 once, then, I played passenger to the fat mate's Charon, the ferryman, 
 and was rowed ashore. There we encountered such a lively host of 
 enthusiastic mosquitoes as never before in my experience had made an 
 evening meal hideous. I had never imagined that mosquitoes were a 
 pest for sailors to account for. Anyway I got a few morsels of food 
 away from them, enough to take the edge from my hunger, at least, 
 and was glad enough to accompany the Officers on a water expedition. 
 
 It was a wonderful evening, quiet as a grave. The mountains at 
 the base of which we walked, rose abruptly from the water's edge. 
 
 198 
 
The sun had set long since behind them, and the shadows shrouded 
 everything along shore and well out into open water, casting all things 
 into a mysterious gloom in which we recognized here a deserted house, 
 there a house half-burned with its charred skeleton weirdly shaped — 
 everything ghostly. Finally we came upon a hotel-like structure in the 
 half-light, all empty and windowless. This we entered to explore what 
 remained of it, having by this time filled our water-casks. Our exam- 
 ination revealed little but the remains of ancient high revelries, there 
 being empty liquor bottles lying dead in battalions and regiments about 
 the floors. This place was called Christian's Folly, we learned sub- 
 sequently. If Bunyan's Christian in his Progress had sojourned here, 
 he would have drowned in the fiery deluge which must have flowed from 
 such an array of bottles. I meditated, on our return in the deep dusk, 
 upon the multitudinous follies of man, and long after I had retired for 
 the night in the guest's bed of honor. But this night I slept like a 
 top ; such is the virtue of pumping oiit the bilge when you haven't slept 
 the night before. 
 
 Thus came night and morning, and it was the third day of my 
 seaman's life. It came with a fair breeze. Breakfast is held according 
 to the usual formula of labor by the crew — unnecessary to record again. 
 Then we up with the hook, take a fair breeze a couple of points abaft 
 the beam, and waltz off for the Port of Quilcene past Point Pulali. 
 This was a morning almost devoid of incident, the ship creeping along 
 under bare steerage way, and the sun beating down in a most distress- 
 ful way upon an unweathered lubber. The skipper was in a reasonable 
 mood, and I had little to do. I wrote letters descriptive of the terrors 
 of seafaring life to the folks at home; for we were going ashore at 
 Quilcene to get and leave mail and provide supplies, while the mate 
 looked up a bit of business with a namesake there. After letterwriting 
 I got some tackle out astern in the hap of landing some fresh fish for 
 the cook, seeing a number of small craft around us fishing. At twelve, 
 while the skipper was shooting the sun, I landed a fine salmon, amid 
 rejoicing. We needed fresh provision. 
 
 Having worried along well into the harbor we dropped the hook 
 and went ashore, the entire crew, and walked to Quilcene in a sun that 
 brought the sweat boiling out of a man. It was pleasant to be in a sort 
 of civilization again, albeit that of a very small village, and to observe 
 the envious looks of the villagers at the bunch of real seadogs rolling 
 along the highway. That was a sweet moment of triumph — one for 
 which I was willing to endure the concentrated wrath of our skipper 
 again and again. Having seen the burg and let the inhabitants see us, 
 we sauntered into the Hotel Queen, the most luxurious hostelry within 
 eyeshot, and ordered up chuck with a sniff of grog alongside. I 
 
 199 
 
noticed that we were the target of the charms of a number of highly 
 ornamental and ornamented ladies in the place, as well we might be, 
 such a handsome trio of bronzed and capable tars as we were. 
 
 I was already weary of the land, and longed for The Witch. 
 While the officers transacted what further business they had before 
 them in Quilcene, I got myself back to the ship and busied myself with 
 various forms of tidying up, replenishing the stores of water, washing 
 down decks, cleaning the fish, and other little orders of the day. Then, 
 while I awaited the return of the skipper and mate, curiosity led me 
 ashore to inspect a house labelled The Quilcene Megaphone, which I 
 wondered about as I worked. I found that this oddly-labelled house 
 covered the local press and newspaper. It would be necessary to have 
 a megaphone to attract attention to this quiet nook in the woods. This 
 rural newspaper thus by its name quite simply and sincerely announced 
 that its business was to attract attention to itself. Thus it gave a lesson 
 to the great journals of the cities which conceal the same purpose under 
 such specious titles as The News, or The Post, or The Times, blatant 
 and hypocritical self -advertisers as they are. One can learn lessons for 
 the great even among the simple. But that's neither here nor there in 
 the chronicles of a simple sailorman. 
 
 The captain and the mate came aboard. The hook was got over 
 the rail again, and at three we were creeping out of the Quilcene Bay 
 with a breath of air. I was allowed to fish again, but, though salmon 
 leapt and splashed all around us, none was to be lured by my tackle. 
 By evening we had got to the point at the entrance to the bay. We 
 anchored off the point and made supper, which we enjoyed — after 
 we had in a body attended the obsequies of a seal, offensively deceased 
 in the near vicinity of our camping place. Fresh provisions from shore 
 added to the cargo with which the meal was eaten, after the nuisance 
 had been abated. But the meal was cut short perforce ; for, as we ate, 
 a breeze began to stir the waters of Dabop Bay outside, and we decided 
 to make a run for Tskutsko Point at the turning of the Canal to see if 
 we couldn't make it before dark. We made haste, put up our canvas, 
 and got away. As we swung out into the stream and felt the thrill of 
 good sailing again, the crew was for crowding on a bit more canvas ; 
 he had become enthusiastic about the possibilities of sailing when The 
 Witch had come thumping up the Canal the day before with spinnaker 
 and balloon jib set. That had been something like! But when I ven- 
 tured upon this suggestion, the skipper merely grunted as he cast his 
 weather eye over the water to windward. "It's a lubber that cracks 
 on till all's blue; but it's a seaman who knows when he's got enough, 
 and shortens sail in time," said he. "The breeze is likely to pipe up, 
 and I shouldn't be surprised if it would come up a devil of a blow. 
 
 200 
 
Yes sir, if we don't have to scud for it under bare poles afore we're 
 through with this night I ain't a sailor." 
 
 It wasn't long till I began to appreciate what an infallible eye our 
 skipper had for the weather: the wind freshened increasingly; the sky 
 grew threatening ; the water, dark and angry. Presently it had stiffened 
 into a gale: the cordage whistled and screeched: the combers chased 
 and overtook us, lifting us high and dropping us as they sped on, the 
 water seethed and raged, and the wind swept the foaming crests of the 
 waves into the air with an angry hiss. The dinghy tugged and jerked 
 this way and that with its nose to the sky lil^e a balky pony until the 
 painter was so taut that it hummed. The Witch yawed about, wildly 
 threatening at every rise to hurl herself on her beam ends into the 
 trough. 
 
 The crew and mate began to wonder what plan the skipper had 
 to save us from imminent destruction and suggested that something 
 ought to be done : The mainsail ought to be closereef ed, or he ought to 
 run for shore and anchor, until the force of the storm should have 
 spent itself. Whatever plan the skipper had, he kept his own counsel 
 and drove the ship onward. Then suddenly a furious squall literally 
 tore the ship away from the skipper's control, threw her around beam 
 to the wind, and heeled her over farther and farther — until the mate 
 and crew with a frenzied leap to the windward rail held her, with the 
 canvas lashing itself to ribbons and the boom drawing circles in the 
 water. Everything loose along the decks had been swept over the rail 
 into a boiling sea and had vanished in a flash. She held. The mate 
 scrambled forward, warning the crew to stay on the rail, and struggled 
 with the halyards until the peak was let down. This eased the vessel 
 sufficiently, so that the throat could be let down and the boom and can- 
 vas got inboard. This done the ship began to ride fairly comfortably, 
 although in the trough, and rolling dizzily. So the skipper ordered the 
 mate to mend the jib, which had by this time torn loose, and make it 
 fast, so that the vessel could be got under steerage way again. 
 
 All this time the crew, hanging over the rail, was lost in admira- 
 tion of the seamanship, the surprising skill and nimbleness and readi- 
 ness, displayed by the fat, jolly mate. He wondered how so much effi- 
 ciency could be carried under so much fat. 
 
 The crew had by this time learned that scudding before the wind, 
 which he had imagined to be the simplest and easiest of all sailing, call- 
 ing for no especial qualities of seamanship, was mighty ticklish business ; 
 and decided that when he went sailing in the future for fun he would 
 always choose a day when he would have the wind somewhere afore 
 the beam ; he would certainly see to it, at all events, that it was not dead 
 aft. 
 
 201 
 
Well, by this time the mate has mended and made fast the jib. 
 It fills, jerks the ship around, and away we go racing along under that 
 little wisp of a sail every bit as fast as the day before we raced along 
 under full sail. The dinghy jerks away at her painter, but comes along, 
 nose as proudly high as ever. Our difficulties are over for the time. 
 
 Looking around us now a bit we observed a strange sight ahead 
 where the Bay met the Canal. The waters of the Canal behind Tskutsko 
 Point were in a state of dead calm ; while the wind from the bay behind 
 us tore across the canal diagonally ; so that there was a strip of water 
 between the calm and the stormy where we could see a long series of 
 miniature waterspouts being whirled up several feet into the air in a line 
 diagonally across and up the Canal. That seemed to the landsman to be 
 a rather interesting evidence of the violence of the storm. The skipper 
 was evidently trying to avoid being blown up the Canal by getting the 
 wind sufficiently on the quarter so as to sneak through the line of 
 spouts into the calm backwater behind the point. By clever handling 
 of his tiller (I give the skipper the credit of being the skilfull mariner 
 that he is, after this soul-stirring experience) we approached the line 
 diagonally, with an apparently good chance to slip through. Just as we 
 stuck our nose into these strangely agitated waters, the wind seemed 
 to desert us, and we lost headway ; then we started to spin like a top, 
 our jib full and pulling all the while. We were getting a stirring demon- 
 stration of how the waterspouts were being made. Here was a pretty 
 kettle of fish. We were seemingly doomed to stay there spinning if we 
 depended on sails to get us along. The skipper, however, was as anxious 
 as we were to get into that haven of quiet waters just beyond. He gave 
 orders to stow the jib, get the dinghy forward, and start towing through. 
 Here was a chance for the crew at last to show his prowess among the 
 elements. He flopped into the dinghy, was passed a towing rope from 
 forward, belayed it to the seat, and fell to. The little midge of a boat 
 was mighty worried among the thousand and one motions of that choppy 
 sea ; but the auxiliary was determined to do his little exhibition as well 
 as the others had been done. The engine showed that he could be de- 
 pended on too, in the time of storm and stress. Gradually the ship 
 crept out of the troubled zone in the wake of the bobbing dinghy, and 
 at about nightfall it came to anchor after the skipper's order, "Avast 
 towing and come aboard." 
 
 The ending of this day was a harmony of lurid and wild effects. 
 The sun had disappeared under the high western mountains in a blazing 
 riot of red and gold which threw uncanny streaks of light over the 
 seething waters of the bay where we had struggled. Now in the deep 
 twilight the amethystine afterglow of the sunset lingered faintly in the 
 
 202 
 
west ; the waters moved slowly and oilily, reflecting strange distorted 
 paths from our lights ; there was little sound but the faint slap-slapping 
 of water under our hull and now and then a subdued roar from around 
 the point. Fishermen, anchored near, made signal flares which were 
 answered from the distant hills. The day had ended in a literal blaze of 
 glory — glory of color and glory of motion. For a simple landsman, a 
 little less glory, and more simple, straightforward sailing, please. When 
 the night settled down the blackness was thick enough to carve with a 
 cutlass: "the night's as dark as a ship's bilge after the storm," as the 
 mate expressed it. 
 
 The next day dawned fair, with the wind in our teeth. The canal 
 being quite narrow made the matter of sailing out in "the face of the 
 wind a slow and careful work. So we spent a quiet and uneventful day 
 beating to windward with a course full and by. The skipper apparently 
 had decided that I had earned the right to try my 'prentice hand at the 
 tiller again, for he called me to observe the manner of handling the boat 
 for awhile and then surrendered the tiller to me, cautioning me not to 
 nip too close to the wind. "A helmsman," said he, "must always be on the 
 watch to prevent his boat from broaching to and from being brought by 
 the lee. When beating into the wind, as we are now, don't let her broach 
 to," said he. "Aye, aye, sir," I cried, with the true tang of the sea in 
 my voice. You see, gentle reader, how I have progressed in the hearty 
 language of the tar. Even the skipper let his eye rest upon me in mild 
 approval at this. I determined to earn his further approval by my man- 
 ner of handling the vessel. "Broaching to" hadn't conveyed much mean- 
 ing to me. I knew enough not to nip too close to the wind, anyway, and 
 did get through the ordeal without blundering. It was an uneventful 
 day, as I have said. When I could handle the vessel without calling 
 down the maledictions of the skipper upon me, it goes without saying 
 that it was an uneventful day. We cast the ank that night off Hood's 
 Head, and we all slept again in our respective places of honor and 
 dishonor, I mean we all really slept. 
 
 The next day, the fourth day, a good early breeze took us up to the 
 face of Foulweather Bluff and left us there, as if plotting to cast us on 
 the rocks again. The tide came to our rescue and carried us past. We 
 loafed along to Point No Point, where the wind perked up, and with it, 
 fhe crew, anxious to make port that night. All the ship's canvas was 
 crowded on again. The skipper orders a new set for the spinnaker, and 
 decides after trial that it works well. So we spin along then on the 
 homeward flight in right smart style. As we pass the point and my 
 attention is attracted to the group of buildings here, the skipper in 
 answer to my query informs that the buildings are used for lighthouse- 
 
 203 
 
keeping. To think that I had missed the waggish depths of the old 
 skipper these many nights and days! It was an afternoon of high 
 spirits. The mate told me about a famous occasion when he lay aloft to 
 fasten a block to the stuns'l boom and lead an inch of rope through it 
 and got his eye on a junk off the port quarter ; how he bawled the news 
 below and got them stirred up for the chase; how they bore down on 
 them in smashing style and overhauled them as if they were anchored, 
 boarded her and took her captive in the name of Jehovah and the Conti- 
 nental Congress — and found her loaded to the guards with edible bird's 
 nests. Lord, how that mariner roared and sputtered and choked with 
 glee when he came to this climax. Then the skipper took me in hand 
 again and quizzed me about toppin' lifts ; and ratlines ; and halyards, 
 main and throat and peak; and about luffing, and easing off the sheet, 
 and dowsing every inch of canvas; and about reeving the bridle; and 
 many other things that a seaman loves to quiz about. Late in the after- 
 noon the good ship Witch came to anchor at her berth in Apple Tree 
 Cove in the Port of Kingston. Thus ended the cruise ; and the skipper 
 and the mate and the entire crew went ashore, back to the humdrum of 
 daily landlubber life. 
 
 Often since I have reviewed in my mind the incidents of my maiden 
 cruise and have longed for another chance to lie on the deck just "abaft 
 the binnacle" with that jolly old mate ; and to see the fierce scowl and 
 hear the burning words of our swarthy, taciturn skipper; yes, even if 
 he were talking to me. 
 
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