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INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

That a young Scotsman, reacting from the vast emotional assault of the late ferocious war, should have withdrawn himself into an ivory tower in Glasgow town, and there sat himself down in heroic calm to wrestle with the vexatious and no doubt intrinsically insoluble problems of being and becoming--this was surely nothing to cause, whispers among connoisseurs of philosophical passion, for that grim, persistent, cold-blooded concern with the fundamental mysteries of the world has been the habit of the Scots ever since they emerged from massacre and blue paint. From blue paint, indeed, the transition was almost instantaneous to blue souls, and the conscience of Britain, such as it is, has dwelt north of the Cheviot Hills ever since. Find a Scot, and you are at once beset by a metaphysician, or, at all events, by a theologian. But for a young man of those damp, desolate parts, throwing himself into the racial trance, to emerge with a set of ideas reaching back, through Nietzsche and even worse heretics, to the spacious, innocent, somewhat gaudy days of the Greek illumination--for such a fellow, so bred and circumscribed, to come out of his tower with a concept of life as a grand and glittering adventure, a tremendous spectacle, an overpowering ecstasy, almost an orgy--such a phenomenon was, and is, quite sufficient to lift the judicious eyebrow. Yet here is this Mr. Edwin Muir of Caledonia bearing just that outlandish contraband, offering just that strange flouting of all things traditionally Scotch. What he preaches in the ensuing aphorisms is the emancipation of the modern spirit from its rotting heritage of ingenuous fears and exploded certainties. What he denounces most bitterly is the abandonment of a world that is beautifully surprising and charming to the rule of sordid, timid and unimaginative men--the regimentation of ideas in a system that is half a denial of the obvious and half a conglomeration of outworn metaphors, all taken too literally. And what he pleads for most eloquently, with his cold, reserved northern eloquence, is the whole-hearted acceptance of "life as a sacrament,... life as joy triumphing over fate,... life made innocent,... life washed free from how much filth of remorse, guilt, contempt, 'sin'."...

What Mr. Muir, following Nietzsche, is most dissatisfied with in the modern spirt is its intolerable legalism--its fatuous frenzy to work everything out to nine places of constabulary decimals, to establish windy theories and principles, to break the soul of man to a rule. In part, of course, that effort is of respectable enough origin. It springs from intelligent self-assertion, healthy curiosity, the sense of competence; it is a by-product of the unexampled conquests of nature that have gone on in the modern age. But in other parts it is no more than a by-product of the democratic spirit, the rise of the inferior, the emancipation of the essentially in competent. Science is no longer self-sufficient, isolated from moral ideas, an end in itself; it tends to become a mere agent of mob tyranny; it takes on gratuitous and incomprehensible duties and responsibilities; like the theology that it has supplanted, it has friendlier and friendlier dealings with the secular arm. And art, too, begins to be poisoned by this moral obsession of the awakened proletariat. It ceases to be an expression of well-being, of healthy functioning, of unpolluted joy in life, and becomes a thing of obscure and snuffling purposes, a servant of some low enterprise of the cocksure. The mob is surely no scientist and no artist; it is, in fact, eternally the anti-scientist, the anti-artist; science and art offer it unscalable heights and are hence its enemies. But in a world dominated by mob yearnings and mob passions, even science and art must take on some colour from below. The enemies, if they cannot be met and overthrown on a fair field, can at least be degraded. And when the mob degrades, it always degrades to moral tunes. Morality is its one avenue to superiority--false but none the less soothing. It can always be good. It can always dignify its stupidity, its sordidness and its cowardice with terms borrowed from ethical revelation. The good man is a numskull, but nevertheless he is good.

Mr. Muir has at the modern spirit on many other counts, but nearly all of them may be converted with more or less plausibility into an objection to its ethical obsession, its idiotic craze to legislate and admonish. When he says, for example, that realism in the novel and the drama is hollow, he leaves his case but half stated; there is undoubtedly a void where imagination, feeling and a true sense of the tragic ought to be, but it is filled with the common garbage of mob thinking, to wit, with the common garbage of moral purpose. All of the chief realists, from Zola to Barbusse, are pre-eminently moralists disguised as scientists; what one derives from them, reading them sympathetically, is not illumination but merely indignation. They are always violently against something--and that something is usually the fact that the world is not as secure and placid a place as a Methodist Sunday-school. Their affectation of moral agnosticism need deceive no one. They are secretly appalled by their own "scientific" pornographies, just as their brethren of the vice crusades are appalled and delighted. Realism, of course, can never be absolute. It must always stress something and leave out something. What it commonly stresses is the colossal failure of society to fit into an orderly scheme of causes and effects, virtues and rewards, crimes and punishments. What it leaves out is the glow of romance that hangs about that failure--the poignant drama of blind chance, the fascination of the unknowable. The realists are bad artists because they are anaesthetic to beauty. And a good many scientists are bad scientists for precisely the same reason. In their hands the gorgeous struggle of man against the mysteries and foul ambuscades of nature is converted into a banal cause before a police court, with the complainant put on the stand to prove that his own hands are clean. One cannot read some of the modern medical literature, particularly on the side of public hygiene, without giving one's sympathy to the tubercle bacilli and the spirochaetae. Science of that sort ceases to be a fit concern for men of dignity, superior men, gentlemen; it becomes a concern for evangelists, uplifters, bounders. Its aim is no longer to penetrate the impenetrable, to push forward the bounds of human knowledge, to overreach the sinister trickeries of God; its aim is simply to lengthen the lives of human ciphers and to reinforce their delusion that they confer a favour upon the universe by living at all. Worse, it converts the salvation of such vacuums into a moral obligation, and sets up the absurd doctrine that human progress is furthered by diminishing the death-rate in the Balkans, by rescuing Georgia crackers from the hookworm and by reducing the whole American people, the civilized minority with the barbarian mass, to a race of teetotalling ascetics, full of pious indignations and Freudian suppressions.

Meanwhile, Mr. Muir cannot expect his ideas to get much attention. A gaudy parade is passing and the populace is busy cheering. Nevertheless, they were ideas worth playing with, and they are now worth printing and pondering. It seems to me that, in more than one way, they help to illuminate the central aesthetic question--the problem as to the nature and function of artistic representation. They start from Nietzschean beginnings, but they get further than Nietzsche ever got. His whole aesthetic was hampered by the backwardness of psychology in his time. He made many a brilliant guess, but more than once he was hauled up rather sharply by his ignorance of the machinery of thought. Mr. Muir not only has Nietzsche behind him; he also has Freud, as he shows, for example, in ?145. Beyond him there is still a lot of room. He will not stop the parade--but he will help the next man.

H. L. MENCKEN.

THE OLD AGE

Among the advanced one observes a strange contradiction: the existence in one and the same person of confidence and enthusiasm about certain aspects of life along with diffidence and pessimism about life itself. The advanced have made up their minds about all the problems of existence but not about the problem of existence. In dealing with these problems they find their greatest happiness; they are there sure-footed, convinced and convincing. But brought face to face with that other problem, how helpless, vacillating and spiritless are they! What! are propaganda, reform, and even revolution, perchance, with many of them simply their escape from their problem?

An intellectual coquetry is one of the worst vices of this age. From what does it arise? From fear of a decision? Or from love of freedom? It cannot be from the latter, for to abstain from a choice is not freedom but irresponsibility. To be free, is, on the contrary, itself a choice, a decision involving, in its acceptance, responsibility. And it is responsibility that the intellectual coquettes fear: rather than admit that one burden they will bear all the others of scepticism, pessimism and impotence. To accept a new gospel, to live it out in all its ramifications, is too troublesome, too dangerous. The average man in them pleads, "Be prudent! Where may not this resolution lead you? Through what perils? Into what hells?" And so they remain in their prison house of doubt, neither Pagans nor Christians, neither Theists nor Atheists, ignorant of the fact that they are slaves and that a decision would set them free.

But in the end the soul has its revenge, for their coquetry destroys not only the power but the will to choose. To flirt with dangerous ideas in a graceful manner: that becomes their destiny. For the intellectual coquette, like other coquettes, dislikes above everything passion--passion with its seriousness, sincerity and--demand for a decision.

The average man, however, takes a second glance at classical tragedy and reaches a second discovery. There is something enigmatical, he finds, behind the Greek clearness of representation, something unexplained; in short, a problem. This problem, however, is not sufficiently clear. Let us state our problems clearly, he cries! Let us have problems which can be recognized at a glance by every one! Let us write a play about "the marriage question," or bad-housing, or the Labour Party! But, again, the theory of the Greeks, at least before Euripides, was altogether different. The "problem" in their tragedies was precisely not a problem which could be stated in a syllogism or solved in a treatise: it was the eternal problem, and it was not stated to be "solved."

It has been observed again and again that as societies--forms of production, of government, and so on--become more complex, the mastery of the individual over his destiny grows weaker. In other words, the more man subjugates "nature," the more of a slave he becomes. The industrial system, for instance, which is the greatest modern example of man's subjugation of nature, is at the same time the greatest modern example of man's enslavement. What are we to think, then? Is the problem a moral one, and shall we say that a conquest of nature which is not preceded by a conquest of human nature is bound to be bad? In a society which has not surpassed the phase of slavery does every addition to man's power over nature simply intensify the slavery? Or is the problem intellectual? And when the intellect concentrates upon one branch of knowledge to the neglect of the other, is the outcome bound to be the enslavement of the others? For instance the nineteenth century devoted far more of its brains to industry than to politics--its politics, indeed, was merely the reflection of its industry--with the result that industry has now enslaved us all. Yes, it has enslaved us all--not merely the wage-earners, not merely the salariat! In the old days the workman, indeed, was a slave, but now the employer is a slave as well.

In this age, therefore, in which man appears as the helpless appendage of a machine too mighty for him, it is natural that theories of Determinism should flourish. It is natural, also, that the will should become weak and discouraged, and, consequently, that the power of creation should languish. And so the world of art has withered and turned barren. The artist needs above all things a sense of power; it is out of the abundance of this sense that he creates. But confronted with modern society, that vast machine, and surrounded by its hopeless mechanics and slaves, he feels the sense dying within him; nor does the evil cease there, for along with the sense of power, power itself dies.

Well, does not the moral become clearer and clearer? If art and literature are to flourish again, artists, writers, nay, the whole community must regain the sense of power. Therefore, economic emancipation first!

Is there a critic who wishes to be at once edifying and entertaining? Let him write a history of hurry in its relation to literature and art. Has literature decayed as hurry has intensified? Have standards of balance, repose and leisured grace gradually shrunk since, say, the Industrial Revolution? Has the curtailment of the realm of literature, its reduction from the Romantic school to the Victorian circle and from that to the Decadent clique, been due to the everstrengthening encroachment of hurry? And has hurry now become finally triumphant so that our critics and even our artists and savants are nothing more than journalists? For certainly they seem to be so.

These are questions to be investigated by our historian.

How did the vogue of the sex novel arise? Perhaps from the great attention which was in the last century given to the sciences of biology and physiology; and perhaps, more especially from the popularization of these sciences. Love was, under the spell of science, translated by the novelists into sex. Not the psychology, but the physiology of love was found interesting: with the result that for the production of a modern novel one qualification alone is now necessary: a "knowledge of the simple facts of physiology," as the primer-writers say. Well, what is the remedy for this? Not a denial of physiology: those who have learned it cannot now erase it from their memory and become voluntarily ignorant. No; let, rather, the opposite course be taken! Let us popularize psychology as well!

A. Free Love is all right in theory, but all wrong in practice. B. On the contrary! I think it is all right in practice, but all wrong in theory.

In English literature, until very modern times, sex was treated only within the limits of a very well-understood convention. From this convention the physiological was strictly excluded. Yet, of our classical writers, even in the most artificial periods, it cannot be said that they did not understand sex. No matter how "unreal" they might be in writing about Love, the physiological contingencies of Love were unmistakably implied in their works, but only, it is true, implied. The moderns, however, saw in this treatment of Love nothing but a convention, a "lie"; and they became impatient of the artificiality, as if art could be anything but artificial! To what was the change of attitude due? Not to a failure in the artistic convention: that was perfectly sound. No, it was the reader who had failed: a generation of readers had arisen who had not learnt the art of reading, who did not understand reading as a cultured amateur of the eighteenth century, for instance, understood it. Literature was to this reader a document, not an art. He had no eye for what is written between the lines--for symbolism, idealization, "literature." And it was to satisfy him that the realistic school arose: it arose, indeed, out of himself. In the realist the modern reader has become writer: the man who could not learn the art of reading has here essayed the more difficult art of writing--documentary art!

Who will write a series of biographies of modern writers, illustrating this thesis: that they are nothing more than modern readers wielding a hasty pen? Such a set of memoirs would almost compensate us for having read the works of these writers. How interesting, for instance, it would be to know how many years--surely it would be years?--they spent in trying to understand literature before they dedicated themselves to its service. How interesting, again, to discover how many hours each day X, the celebrated novelist, devotes to contemplation, how many to writing for the newspapers, and how many to his present masterpiece. What! one hour's thought has actually preceded five hours' dictation! This revelation is, after all, not so startling. On second thought, these memoirs seem superfluous; we can read everything we wish to know of the moderns in their works.

Yet, for our better amusement, will not some one write his one and only novel, giving the true history of the novelist? A novel against novels! But for that we need a second Cervantes, yet how unlike the first! For on this occasion it is not Don Quixote that must be satirized, but Sancho Panza.

All of us who read are novelists more or less nowadays: that is to say, we collect "impressions," "analyse" ourselves, make a pother about sex, and think that people, once they are divorced, live happily ever after. The habit of reading novels has turned us into this! When one of us becomes articulate, however--in the form of a novel--he only makes explicit his kinship with the rest; he proclaims to all the world that he is a mediocrity.

How amazingly popular he is. Even the man in the street reads him. Yes; but it is because he has first read the man in the street.

It is not easy to tell by a glance what is the character of a young man; his soul has not yet etched itself clearly enough upon his body. But one may read a middle-aged man's soul with perfect ease; and not only his soul but his history. For when a man has passed five-and-forty, he looks--not what he is, perhaps--but certainly what he has been. If he has been invariably respectable, he is now the very picture of respectability. If he has been a man about town or a secret toper, the fact is blazoned so clearly on his face that even a child can read it. If he has studied, his very walk, to use a phrase of Nietzsche's, is learned. As for the poet, we know how terribly poetical he looks in middle age--poor devil! Well, to every one of you, I say, Beware!

Is it the modern novelists who are to be blamed for the degraded image of the artist which lives in the minds of the cultured populace? Turgenieff in "On the Eve," and Henry James in "Roderick Hudson" display the artist simply as a picturesque waster, an oh so charming, impulsive, childlike, na?ve waster. But, in doing so, they surely confused the artist with the man of artistic temperament. Of the artistic temperament, however, the great artists had very often little or nothing--far less, certainly, than either Shubin or Roderick. The great examples of last century, the Goethes, Ibsens, and Nietzsches, knew that there were qualities more essential to them than temperament; discipline, for instance, perseverance, truth to themselves, self-control. How is it possible, indeed, without these virtues--virtues of the most difficult and heroic kind--for the artist to bring his gifts to maturity, to become great? His discipline to beauty must be as severe as the discipline of the saint to holiness. And, then, how has his sensuousness been misconstrued and vulgarized; and treated precisely, indeed, as if it were the licentiousness of a present-day Tom Jones! That artists can be thought about in such a way proves only one thing, namely, in what poor esteem they are now held. We need a new ideal of the artist; or, failing that, an old one, that of Plato, perhaps, or of Leonardo, or of Nietzsche.

It is in the decadent periods that the most triumphantly healthy men--one or two--appear. The corrupt Italy of the Renaissance gave birth to Leonardo; the Europe of Gautier, Baudelaire and Wilde produced Nietzsche. In decadent eras both disease and health become more self-conscious; they are cultivated, enhanced and refined. It has been said that the best way to remain healthy is not to think of health. But lack of self-consciousness speaks here. Perhaps the Middle Ages were as diseased as our own--only they did not know it! Is decadence nothing more than the symptom of a self-conscious age? And is "objectivity" the antidote? Well, we might believe this if we could renounce our faith that mankind will yet become healthy--if we could become optimists in the present-day sense!

In those wildernesses of dirt, ugliness and obscenity, our industrial towns, there are usually art galleries, where the daintiest and most beautiful things, the flowers of Greek statuary, for instance, bloom among the grime like a band of gods imprisoned in a slum. The spectacle of art in such surroundings sometimes strikes us as being at once ludicrous and pathetic, like something delicate and lovely sprawling in the gutter, or an angel with a dirty face.

When moderns talk of the "vitality" of their most lauded writer, what they mean is finally the size of his muscles, physical energy, or, at the most, strong emotions; not vigour of mind. Well, let us on no account make the opposite mistake and revile the large muscle and energetic feelings: they are admirable things. Let us point out, however, that vitality of emotion undisciplined by vitality of thought leads nowhere, is often disruptive and cannot build. But to build is our highest duty and our peculiar form of freedom--we who have realized that there is no freedom without power. As for the old freedom--it is only the slaves who are not already tired of it.

The decisive thing, determining whether an artist shall be major or minor, is very often not artistic at all, but moral. Yes, though it shock our modern ears, let this be proclaimed! The more "temperament" an artist has, the more character he requires to govern it, to make it fruitful for him, if he would not have it get beyond control, and wreck both him and itself. And, consequently, the great artists show, as a rule, less "temperament" than the minor; they appear more self-contained and less "artistic." Indeed, they smile with the hint of irony at the merely "artistic."

The old tradition of artistic discipline must be regained, then, or a new and even more severe tradition inaugurated. A text-book of morality for artists is now overdue. When it has been written, and the new discipline has been hailed and submitted to by the artists, who can say if greatness may not again be possible?

How is the dissolution of the tradition of artistic discipline to be explained? To what cause is it to be traced? Perhaps to the more general dissolution of tradition which has taken place in modern times. When theological dogmas and moral values are thrown into the melting-pot, and the discipline of centuries is dissolved into anarchy, it is natural that artistic traditions should perish along with them. Decadence follows free-thought: it appears at the time when the old values lie deliquescent and the new values have not yet risen, the dry land has not yet appeared. But this does not happen always: the old traditions of morality, theology, politics and industry are overthrown, the beginnings of a new tradition appear tentatively, everything fixed has vanished, the wildest hopes and the most chilling despair are the common possession of one and the same generation--but, throughout, the artistic tradition is held securely and confidently, it remains the one thing fixed in a world of dissolution. Then an art arises greater even than that of the eras of tradition. The pathos of the dying and the inexpressible hope of the newly born find expression side by side; all chains are broken, and the world appears suddenly to be immeasurable. Is this what happened at the Renaissance?

The refined degeneracy of Oscar Wilde might be explained on the assumption that he was at once over--and under--civilized: he had acquired all the exquisite and superfluous without the necessary virtues. These "exquisite" virtues are unfortunately dangerous to all but those who have become masters of the essential ones; they are qualities of the body more than of the mind; they are developments and embellishments of the shell of man. In acquiring them, Wilde ministered to his body merely, and, as a consequence, it became more and more powerful and subtle--far more powerful and subtle than his mind. Eventually this body--senses, passions and appetite--actually became the intellectual principle in him, of which his mind was merely a drugged and stupefied slave!

The so-called Paganism of our time, the movement towards sensualism of the followers of Wilde, is not an attempt, however absurd, to supersede Christianity; nor is it even in essence anti-Christian. At the most it is a reaction--not a step beyond current religion into a new world of the spirit, but a changing from one foot to the other, a reliance on the senses for a little, so that the over-laboured soul may rest. And there is still much of Christianity in this modern Paganism. Its devotees are too deeply corrupted to be capable either of pure sensuousness or of pure spirituality. They speak of Christ like voluptuaries, and of Eros like penitents. But it is impossible now to become a Pagan: one must remember Ibsen's Julian and take warning. Two thousand years of "bad conscience," of Christian self-probing, with its deepening of the soul, cannot be disavowed, forgotten, unlived. For Paganism a simpler spirit, mind and sensuousness are required than we can reproduce. We cannot feel, we cannot think, above all, we cannot feel without thinking of our feelings, as the Pagans did. Our modern desire to take out our soul and look at it separates us from the na?ve classic sensuousness.

What, then, does modern sensualism mean? What satisfaction does it bring to those, by no means few in number, its "followers"? A respite, an escapade, a holiday from Christianity, from the inevitable. For Christianity is assumed by them to be the inevitable, and it fills them with the loathing which is evoked by the enforced contemplation of things tyrannical and permanent. To escape from it they plunge madly into sensuality as into a sea of redemption. But the disgust which drives them there will eventually drive them forth again--into asceticism and the denial of the senses. Christianity will then appear stronger than ever, having been purged of its "uncleanness." Yes, the sensualists of our time are the best unconscious friends of Christianity, its "saviours," who have taken its sins upon their shoulders.

There still remain the few who do not assume Christianity to be inevitable, who desire, no matter how hopeless the fight may seem, to surmount it, and who see that men have played too long the game of reaction. "To cure the senses by the soul and the soul by the senses" seems to them a creed for invalids. And, therefore, that against which, above all, they guard, is a mere relapse into sensualism. Not by fleeing from Christianity do they hope to reach their goal; but by understanding it, perhaps by "seeing through" it, certainly by benefiting in so far as they can by it, and, finally, emancipating themselves from it. They know that the soil no longer exists out of which grew the flower of Paganism, and that they must pass through Christianity if they would reach a new sensuality and a new spirituality. But their motto is, Spirituality first, and, after that, only as much sensuality as our spirituality can govern! They hold that as men become more spiritual they may safely become more sensual; but that, to the man without spirit, sensuality and asceticism are alike an indulgence and a curse. That the spirit should rule--such is their desire; but it must rule as a constitutional governor, not as an arbitrary tyrant. For the senses, too, as Heine said, have their rights.

Pater's creed marks, therefore, a degradation of the conception of art. Art as something exclusive, fragile and a little odd, the occupation of a few aesthetic eccentrics--this is the most pitiable caricature! To make themselves understood by one another, this little clique invented a jargon of their own; in this jargon Pater's books are written, and not only his, but those of his followers to this day. It is a style lacking, above all, in good taste; it very easily drops into absurdity; indeed, it is always on the verge of absurdity. It has no masculinity, no hardness; and it is meant to be read by people a little insincerely "aesthetic," who are conscious that they are open to ridicule, and who are accordingly indulgent to the ridiculous; the Fabians of art. To admire Pater's style, it is necessary first to put oneself into the proper attitude.

The true creators and the mere aesthetes agree in this, that they are not realists. Neither of them copies existence in its external details: wherein do they differ? In that the creators write of certain realities behind life, and the aesthetes--of the words standing for these realities.

And that is the criticism which modern men must pass upon Mr. Chesterton; that he interposed in the course of their malady to bring relief with a remedy which was not a remedy. The modern problem should have been worked out to a new solution, to its own solution. Instead of going back to the old dogmas, we should have strained on towards the new. And if, in this generation, the new dogmas are still out of sight, if we have meantime to live our lives without peace or stability, does it matter so very much? To do so is, perhaps, our allotted task. And as sacrifices to the future we justify our very fruitlessness, our very modernity!

ORIGINAL SIN

And as such it is the great enemy of the Future, the believers in which hold that there is not this metaphysical drag. But it is more. At all things aspiring it sets the tongue in the cheek, gladly provides a caricature for them, and becomes their Sancho Panza. To the great man it says, through the mouths of its chosen apostles, the average men, "What matter how high you climb! This load which you carry even as we will bring you back to us at last. And the higher you climb the greater will be your fall. Humanity cannot rise above its own level." And therefore, humility, equality, radicalism, comradeship in sin--the ideas of Christianity!

Distrust of the future springs from the same root as distrust of great men. It derives from the belief in the average man, which derives from the belief in Original Sin. The egalitarian sentiment strives always to become unconditional. It claims not only that all men are equal, but that the men who live now are no more than the equals of those who lived one, or five, thousand years ago, and no less than the equals of those who will live in another one, or five, thousand years. And it desires that this should be so: its jealousy embraces not only the living, but the dead and the unborn.

Society is a conspiracy, said Emerson, against the great man. And to blast him utterly in the centre of his being, it invented Original Sin. Is Original Sin, then, a theological dogma or a political device?

Is equality, in truth, a generous dogma? Does it express, as every one assumes, the solidarity of men in their higher attributes? It is time to question this, and to ask if inequality be not the more noble and generous belief. For, surely, it is in their nobler qualities that men are most unequal. It was not in his genius that Shakespeare was only the equal, for instance, of his commentators; it was in the groundwork of his nature, in those feelings and desires without which he would not have been a man at all, in the things which made him human, but which did not make him Shakespeare: in a word, in that which is for us of no significance. Equality in the common part of man's nature, equality in sin, equality before God--it is the same thing--that is the only equality which can be admitted. And if its admission is insisted upon by apologists for Christianity, that is because to the common part of man's nature they give so much importance, because they are believers in Original Sin. In their equality there is accordingly more malice than generosity. The belief that no one is other than themselves, the will that no one shall be other than themselves--there is nothing generous in that belief and that will. For man, according to them, is guilty from the womb. And what, then, is equality but the infinitely consoling consciousness of tainted creatures that every one on this earth is tainted?

If men had been equal at the beginning, they would never have risen above the savage. For in absolute equality even the concept of greatness could not have come into being. Inequality is the source of all advancement.

In very early times men must have had a deep sense of the tragicality of existence: life was then so full of pain; death, as a rule, so sudden and unforeseen, and the world generally so beset with terrors. The few who were fortunate enough to escape violent death had yet to toil incessantly to retain a footing on this unkind star. Life would, accordingly, appear to them in the most sombre tones and colours. And it was to explain this human misfortune, and not sin at all, that the whole fable of Adam and Eve and the Fall was invented. The doctrine of Original Sin was simply an interpretation which was afterwards read into the story, an interpretation, perhaps, as arbitrary as the orthodox interpretation of the Song of Songs.

Nevertheless, what our primitive poet meant by the Fall and the Redemption was probably something entirely different. The Fall to him was the fall into misfortune, not into sin: the Redemption to him was the redemption from misfortune, not from sin. And his Redeemer would be, therefore--whom? Perhaps it is impossible for us to imagine the nature of such a being.

This is not an interpretation, but an attempted explanation of the story of the Fall.

How inexhaustible is myth! In the story of the Fall is a meaning for every age and every creed. The interpretation called Original Sin is only one of a thousand, and not the greatest of them. Let us dip our bucket into the well.

Or to take another guess, granted we read Original Sin in the Fall, must we not read there, also, the way to get rid of it? If by Original Sin Man fell, then by renouncing it let him arise again. But how renounce it? What! Cannot Man renounce a metaphor?

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