Decorative separator
With but few exceptions the American journalists censure the immoral profession of "Mrs. Warren." Is it not heavenly irony that God pressed the headman's sword of morals into the hands of the newspaper writers? Perhaps the great God Pan thought they would be the fittest to handle the sword, since they are so intimately associated with mental prostitution.
A large, strong man, dressed in a uniform and armed to the teeth, knocked at the door of a hut on the west coast of Africa.
"Who are you and what do you want?" said a voice from the inside.
"In the name of civilization, open your door or I'll break it down for you and fill you full of lead."
"But what do you want here?"
"My name is Christian Civilization. Don't talk like a fool, you black brute; what do you suppose I want here but to civilize you and make a reasonable human being out of you if it is possible."
"What are you going to do?"
"In the first place you must dress yourself like a white man. It is a shame and disgrace the way you go about. From now on you must wear underclothing, a pair of pants, vest, coat, plug hat, and a pair of yellow gloves. I will furnish them to you at reasonable rates."
"What shall I do with them?"
"Wear them, of course. You did not expect to eat them, did you? The first step to civilization is in wearing proper clothes."
"But it is too hot here to wear such garments. I'm not used to them. I'll perish from the heat. Do you want to murder me?"
"Not particularly. But if you do die you will have the satisfaction of being a martyr to civilization."
"How kind!"
"Don't mention it. What do you do for a living?"
"When I am hungry I eat a banana; I eat, drink or sleep just as I feel like it."
"What horrible barbarity! You must settle down to some occupation, my friend. If you don't it will be my duty to lock you up as a vagrant."
"If I have to follow some occupation I think I'll start a coffee house. I've got a considerable amount of coffee and sugar stored here and there."
"Oh, you have, have you? Why, you are not such a hopeless case as I thought you were. In the first place you want to pay me the sum of fifty dollars."
"What for?"
"As an occupation tax, you ignorant heathen. Do you expect all the blessings of civilization for nothing?"
"But I have no money."
"That makes no difference. I'll take it out in tea and coffee. If you don't pay up like a Christian man, I'll put you in jail for the rest of your life."
"What is jail?"
"Jail is a progressive word. You must be prepared to make some sacrifices for civilization, you know."
"What a great and glorious thing is civilization."
"You cannot possibly realize the benefits of it, but you will before I get through with you, my fine fellow."
The unfortunate native took to the woods and has not been seen since—Waverly Magazine.
Decorative separator
I come, not with the blaring of trumpet,To herald the birth of a king;I come, not with traditional story,The life of a savior to sing;I come, not with jests for the silly,I come, not to worship the strong,But to question the powers that govern,To point out a world-old wrong.To kiss from the starved lips of childhoodThe lies that are sapping its breath,And brighten the brief cheerless valleyThat leads to the darkness of death;With reason and sympathy blended,And a hope that all mankind shall see,Untrammeled by Creed, Law or Custom—The attainable goal of the Free.
I come, not with the blaring of trumpet,To herald the birth of a king;I come, not with traditional story,The life of a savior to sing;I come, not with jests for the silly,I come, not to worship the strong,But to question the powers that govern,To point out a world-old wrong.
I come, not with the blaring of trumpet,
To herald the birth of a king;
I come, not with traditional story,
The life of a savior to sing;
I come, not with jests for the silly,
I come, not to worship the strong,
But to question the powers that govern,
To point out a world-old wrong.
To kiss from the starved lips of childhoodThe lies that are sapping its breath,And brighten the brief cheerless valleyThat leads to the darkness of death;With reason and sympathy blended,And a hope that all mankind shall see,Untrammeled by Creed, Law or Custom—The attainable goal of the Free.
To kiss from the starved lips of childhood
The lies that are sapping its breath,
And brighten the brief cheerless valley
That leads to the darkness of death;
With reason and sympathy blended,
And a hope that all mankind shall see,
Untrammeled by Creed, Law or Custom—
The attainable goal of the Free.
YOU rememberPunch'sadvice to the young man about to be married—don't. There is a jest nearly half a century old, and yet ever fresh and poignant. Why? Can it be that the secret, serious voice of mankind proclaims the jest truth in masquerade? Can it be that marriage, as an institution, has indeed proved itself in experience such a terrible failure?
We worship many fetishes, we of the superior civilization, and the institution of marriage is the chief of them. Few of us but bow before that; before that and the home of which it is the foundation. And I know what scorn and obloquy and denunciation await that man who stands unawed before it, seeing in it but an ugly little idol. And I guess what will be dealt out to him who not only refuses to bow the head, but openly scoffs. And yet I am going to scoff and say ugly words about this fetish of ours. I am going to say that it represents ignorance, hides and causes hypocrisy, stands in the way of progress, drags low the standard of individual excellence, perpetuates many foul practices.
Let me admit at the outset that I recognize in the institution of marriage a perfectly legitimate result of the working of the law of evolution. Of course it is; and the same may be said of everything that exists whether good or evil. Every vile and filthy thing, crime, disease, misery, are all equally legitimate products of the working of this law. Evolution is simply the process of the logical working of things; it explains how things come to be; and there is nothing in the nature of the law to enable it to give to its results the hall mark of sterling. A thing is because of something else that was. Marriage is because of a primeval club. Man craved woman and he procured her. Considering the beginnings of the institution of marriage, it is interesting, if nothing more, to consider the efforts of the priest to give it an attribute of sanctity, to call it a sacrament. In truth, marriage is the most artificial of the relations which exist in the social body. It is a device of man at his worst—a mixture of slavery, savage egotism and priestcraft. It is indicatedby nothing in the physical constitution of either male or female. It is an anomaly; a contract which can be freely entered into by the most unfit, but which cannot be broken, though both parties wish it, though absolute unfitness be patent, though hell on earth be its result. The pretense must be abandoned that men and women marry in order to reproduce their kind. Nothing could be less true. Marriage legalizes reproduction, but is not caused by desire for it. Marriage is the hard and fast tying together of a man and a woman without the least regard to moral or physiological conditions. Marriage may be for pecuniary gain, or for social advancement; it may be at the will of a controlling parent, or, more commonly for St. Paul's reason, that it is better to marry than to burn; but never for the reason that the parties to it are fitted to each other for parenthood. That supreme consideration not only does not enter into either the preliminary or after-thought of the matter, but is even held to be an indecent topic of conversation between persons not already married to each other.
The constituents of the average marriage are a man over-stimulated sexually by mystery and ignorance, and a woman abnormally undersexed by the course of self-repression and self-mutilation which have been taught her from her earliest childhood as necessities of modesty, purity and virtue. And then out of the carefully cultivated repugnance of the woman and the savage, exulting, unrelenting passion of the man are produced children, frequently welcome, seldom premeditated. And we are asked to believe that out of such elements are created the best foundation for a race or nation. Surely, surely, that combination of conditions is the best for a race or a nation which produces the best individuals; and quite as surely we should strive to bring about those conditions which tend to produce the best individuals.
Then there is home. Home, sweet home! the perfect flower, we are told, that blooms on the fair stem of marriage. Yet it is the very citadel of ignorance, when it should be the school in which are taught the beautiful phenomena of physical life. Home! where the simplest, purest facts of life are converted into a nasty mystery and deliberately endowed with the characteristics of impurity and sin; for what else is the meaning of that solemnformula, which most of us have been taught, that we were conceived in sin? What else is the meaning of the hush and blush that go to any reference to sex, sign or manifestation of sex? Is it not awful beyond the power of words to express that a man and a woman come together in ignorance and beget children who are not even to obtain the benefit of such knowledge as their unfortunate parents pick up by the way, but must themselves begin the most responsible functions of life, not only in equal ignorance, but with an added load of misconceptions, sex-superstitions, immoral dogmas and probably physical disabilities? A short time since a father was speaking to me of his son, fourteen years of age, and plainly at an age when some of the beautiful phenomena of sex-life were beginning to crowd upon him for notice. I asked the man if he had talked with his son about the matter. His answer was peculiar only in that he put into words a description of the attitude of the average parent: "Talked to him about that? Not I. Let him learn as I did. No one ever told me." But some one had told him, as his unpleasantly reminiscent smile advised me! He had been told by ignorant companions, by ignorant servants, and, quite likely, by books, whose grossness would have been harmless but for the child's piteous ignorance. No, the man would not talk with his son about such things, but he would go into his club and talk into the small hours over a glass of whiskey with his friends there, turning the beauty and purity of sex manifestation into shabby jest and impure ridicule. He would exchange stories based on sex relation with any stranger with whom he might ride for two hours in a smoking car. Every man knows that I speak well within bounds.
And the girl child! what of her? Does her mother, the victim of misinformation and no information, of misuse and self-mutilation, in the sweet privacy of this home, which is called the cradle of peace and the nestling place of purity, save her by taking warning of her own ruined life and giving her the benefit of such little knowledge as she has gained in physical, mental and moral misery? We know she does not. On the contrary, the same terrible old lies are told, the same hideous practices are resorted to; and another poor creature is launched into that awful life of legalized prostitution which is called marriage.
Motherhood is woman's highest function, and, moreover, it is a function which it is unwise not to exercise; for it is infinitely more perilous for a healthy woman not to be a mother than it is for her to bear children. Motherhood, too, is the most markedly indicated function of a woman's body. She is specialized for it; it is the thing indicated. And yet we never say to a woman, Be a mother when you will; we hold up our hands in horror at the very thought of motherhood itself, and we say, Marry; marry anything; get another name for yourself; merge your very identity into that of some man; get a home; never mind about children; you don't have to have them; they have nothing to do with your respectability. Is it not so? Is it not so that that woman who prefers her own name and her freedom, and who exercises her highest function of motherhood, thereby becomes a thing of scorn and contumely?
And yet, how in this world can a woman do a finer, wiser, braver, truer thing than to bear a child in freedom by a carefully chosen father? It is true that we have moralists who urge wives to breed for the good of the country, but even they, while declaring that it is the duty of women to have large families, roll their eyes in horror at the thought of a woman exercising her plainest right, without first having some man, whose only interest in the matter is his fee, say some magic words over her and her master.
Oh, that marriage ceremony! And is it not pathetic to hear the women, dimly conscious of their backbones, declaring that they will not promise to obey? They will promise vehemently to love and honor, which they absolutely cannot be sure of doing, but they refuse to obey—the only thing they could safely promise to do, and which, in fact, most of them do. For, writhe and twist as they may, defy never so bravely, the conventions of the world are against them, and conform they must. Down, down they sink until they are on their knees in the mire of tradition, their heads bowed to the ugly little fetish. A woman may be a thousand times the superior of her husband, and yet she must be his slave.
And what puerile fables, what transparent lies are told to reconcile the poor slave to her lot! A man's rib! And she is the weaker vessel! Nevertheless, she is the powerbehind the throne. And if the man possess her, does she not equally possess him? Is not monogamy the mainstay of our morals? Is not God to be thanked that he has given us light to see the horrors of polygamy? Oh, that shocking thing, polygamy! How the husbands of the land rise up to defend their firesides from it! No Smoots shall get into our Senate. That virtuous Senate!
Why if every practising polygamist went home from the Congress there would not be a quorum left to do business. Monogamy! Why it is the most shocking phase of the hypocrisy due to marriage. There is no such condition known in this country. Of course, there may be sporadic cases of it, but that is all. If monogamy be the practice of the men of this country, why the hundreds of thousands of prostitutes, why divorces for adultery, why those secret establishments where unhappily married men indemnify themselves for the appearance of monogamy by an association which can be ended at will? Whence come the mulattoes and the half-breeds of all sorts? Who so credulous as to believe the fable of monogamy?
What has monogamy or polygamy or polyandry to do with this matter? I assume that it is undeniable that motherhood is woman's most manifest function. If that be so, how can there be any more immorality in the exercise of it than in the process of digestion? What can be clearer than that a woman has the inherent right to bear children if she wish? And there is nothing in experience or morals which demands one father for all her children. It should be for her to say whether she will have one father for all her children or one for each. And if the question be asked how, under such conditions, the interests of the children would be safe-guarded, I ask if they are safe-guarded now. The right-minded man provides as he can for them; as would be the case always; while the wrong-minded man does not now provide properly for them. Besides, is the mother not to be considered? Do we not all know of women who in widowhood take care of their families? Do we not know of women who take care of their husbands as well as of their children? Women, of course, should, in any case, be economically free. But at least let them be sex free; let them decide for themselves whether they will have manyor few or no children. Teach woman to be economically independent, give her the opportunity for full knowledge of all that pertains to motherhood; make the motherhood a pure and beautiful manifestation of physical activity if you will, but without forgetting that it is only simple and natural; avoiding that hysterical glorification of the function in poetry and the hiding of it in actual life as if it were an unclean thing. But the important matter is to understand that a woman has a right to bear a child if she wish. Nothing is more distinctly pointed out by the constitution of her body, and therefore it is impossible that there can be any immorality in the exercise of the function. To put my idea in as few and as bold words as I can: Motherhood is a right and has no proper relation to marriage. Marriage is a purely artificial relation, and not only is it not justified by its results, but distinctly it is discredited by them. By it a man becomes a vile hypocrite since he loudly avows a moral standard and a course of conduct which in private by his acts he denies and puts to scorn; by it a woman becomes a slave, giving up her rights in her own body; submitting to ravishment, and becoming the accidental mother to unwished, unwelcome children; by it children are robbed of their plain right to the best equipment that can be given them; and which cannot be given them under the prevailing system. It is only when a woman is free to choose the father of her child that the child can hope for even a partial payment of the debt that was due it from its parents from the moment they took the responsibility of calling it from the nowhere into the here. This doctrine of the responsibility of the parent to the child is comparatively new and goes neither with marriage nor with the home. The old and current notion is that the child is a chattel.
Abraham never offers an apology for making little Isaac carry wood and then mount the sacrificial pile. Indeed we are asked to marvel at the heroism of the father. Then we are told that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. As if the child were the property of the parent. And yet there must always have been naughty children asking pointed questions, for it was long ago found necessary to try to scare them by a divine fulmination. Honor thy father and thy motherthat thy days may be long! It seems that even so long ago parents were afraid they could not win honor from their children. Abraham's place was on the pile, just as it is the place of the modern parent who looks upon his child as his chattel; disposing of him as he will; arbitrarily making rules for his conduct which he would not dream of observing for himself; stifling his natural demands for knowledge; converting what is pure and most beautiful in the world into a mire of filth and ignorance; wilfully robbing him of his birthright of individuality by forcing him to conform to methods of thought and conduct which his own experience tells him no man can or does conform to from the moment he wins his freedom or learns the hideous lesson of that hypocrisy which he is sure in the end to discover that his father practices. What right has any father to make a sacrifice of his child? What is his title to the love or gratitude or self-abnegation of his child? Is it that the child is the unconsidered consequence of the legal rape of some poor woman who has been unfitted for the office forced upon her, by a life mentally dwarfed, morally twisted and physically mutilated? Is it that the child is haled out of nothingness to be inoculated, perhaps, with germs of disease in the first instance and then half nourished for nine months in a body which has been robbed of its vitality by the mutilation and torture to which it has been subjected at the behest of fashion?
The highest duty of a parent is to so treat his child that it will enter upon the struggle of life prepared to obtain the utmost happiness from it.
If anyone fancies I have been too severe in my strictures I would ask him to read what Mrs. Gilman has to say on the subject of home. It is true that she does not come to the same conclusion that I do. She would have women economically independent, and she would have children taken care of by those especially fitted for the task, leaving mothers and fathers free to go their separate ways. But how could there be separate ways so long as the slavery of marriage remained? Woman must be not only economically free, but altogether free. As I have said, motherhood is not an affair of morals; it is a function. Marriage, on the other hand, is a matter of morals; andhideously immoral it is, too. Then why not have motherhood without its immoral, artificial adjunct, marriage?
You see I do not ask for easy divorce as a solution of the problem of marriage. I set my face sternly against divorce. I am one with the church in that. I only demand that there shall be no marriage at all, that there shall be no fastening of life-long slavery on woman. Let woman mother children or not, as she will. Let her say who shall be the father of her child and of each child. Let motherhood be deemed not even honorable, but only natural.
Can anyone believe that if men and women were free to decide whether or not they would be parents, they would not in the end, seeing their duty in the light of their knowledge, fit themselves for parenthood before taking upon themselves its responsibilities?
I would like to say that I have no fear of the odium of the designation of iconoclast. Nor do I quake lest some one triumphantly ask me what I will put in the place of marriage and the home. As well might one demand what I would give in the place of smallpox if I were able to eradicate it. I am not concerned to find a substitute for such perversion of sex activity. If men and women choose to live together in freedom, fathering and mothering their children according to a rule grown out of freedom, and directed by expediency, I fancy they would be, at least, as happy as they can be now, tied together by a hard, unpleasant knot. And if an economically free woman chose to have six children by six different fathers, as a wise woman might well do, I believe she could be trusted to secure those children from want quite as well as the mother-slave of to-day, who bears her children at the will of an irresponsible man, and then, often enough, has to take care of them and him too.
Decorative separator
"Wealth protects and animates art and literature, as the dew enlivens the fields."
Nonsense! Wealth animates art and literature, as the whistle of the master animates the dog and makes him wag his tail.
Let me describe to you, very briefly, a newspaper day.
Figure first, then, a hastily erected, and still more hastily designed, building in a dirty, paper-littered back street of London, and a number of shabbily dressed men coming and going in this with projectile swiftness. Within this factory companies of printers, tensely active with nimble fingers—they were always speeding up the printers—ply their typesetting machines, and cast and arrange masses of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, above which, in a beehive of little, brightly lit rooms, disheveled men sit and scribble. There is a throbbing of telephones and a clicking of telegraph instruments, a rushing of messengers, a running to and fro of heated men, clutching proofs and copy. Then begins a roar of machinery catching the infection, going faster and faster, and whizzing and banging. Engineers, who have never had time to wash since their birth, fly about with oil cans, while paper runs off its rolls with a shudder of haste. The proprietor you must suppose arriving explosively on a swift motor car, leaping out before the thing is at a standstill, with letters and documents clutched in his hand, rushing in, resolute to "hustle," getting wonderfully in everybody's way. At the sight of him even the messenger boys who are waiting get up and scamper to and fro. Sprinkle your vision with collisions, curses, incoherencies. You imagine all the parts of this complex, lunatic machine working hysterically toward a crescendo of haste and excitement as the night wears on. At last, the only things that seem to travel slowly in those tearing, vibrating premises, are the hands of the clock.
Slowly things draw on toward publication, the consummation of all those stresses. Then, in the small hours, in the now dark and deserted streets comes a wild whirl of carts and men, the place spurts paper at every door; bales, heaps, torrents of papers, that are snatched and flung about in what looks like a free fight, and off with a rush and clatter east, west, north and south. The interest passes outwardly; the men from the little rooms are going homeward, the printers disperse, yawning, the roaring presses slacken. The paper exists. Distribution follows manufacture, and we follow the bundles.
Our vision becomes a vision of dispersal. You see those bundles hurling into stations, catching trains by a hair's breadth, speeding on their way, breaking up, smaller bundles of them hurled with a fierce accuracy out upon the platforms that rush by, and then everywhere a division of these smaller bundles into still smaller bundles, into dispersing parcels, into separate papers. The dawn happens unnoticed amidst a great running and shouting of boys, a shoving through letter-slots, openings of windows, spreading out upon book-stalls. For the space of a few hours, you must figure the whole country dotted white with rustling papers. Placards everywhere vociferate the hurried lie for the day. Men and women in trains, men and women eating and reading, men by study fenders, people sitting up in bed, mothers and sons and daughters waiting for father to finish—a million scattered people are reading—reading headlong—or feverishly ready to read. It is just as if some vehement jet had sprayed that white foam of papers over the surface of the land.
Nonsense! The whole affair is a noisy paroxysm of nonsense, unreasonable excitement, witless mischief, and waste of strength—signifying nothing.
—FromH. G. Wells"In the Days of the Comet."
Decorative separator
I WAS ennuyé; the everlasting decency and respectability of my surroundings bored me. On whichever side of me I looked, I saw people doing the same things for the same reasons; or for the same lack of reasons. And they were uninteresting.
"Oh," said I to myself, "these are the people of the ruts; they go that way because others have gone; they are conforming. But there must be some persons who do not conform. Where are they?"
Now you can understand why it was that my thoughts turned toward that monument of our civilization on theHudson River, and why finally I made up my mind to visit it.
I knew that neither my citizenship, nor yet my philosophic and human interest in the working of that great school would avail to obtain me entrance there, so I sought out one of the politicians of my district, who at that time at least exercised his activities outside of the walls of the building, and I exchanged with him a five-dollar bill for an order to admit me.
"I suppose," I said to the attendant who did the honors of the place for me, "that these persons who are garbed alike and who affect the same tonsorial effect are those who have been unskillful in their non-conformity."
"They are prisoners," he replied. I bit my lip and looked as smug as I remembered one should who as yet has the right of egress as well as ingress in an institution of that character.
At that moment my eyes fell on a face that seemed familiar to me, and as I studied it I saw with surprise that I had come upon a man who had once been a schoolmate of mine.
Now I had always believed that if a person had done wrong, he would be conscious of it; and that if he were found out he would at least try to appear penitent. But in this case my theory did not seem to be working; for my former chum, whom I remembered as a quiet, unobtrusive fellow, met my startled glance with a twinkle of suppressed humor. I confess that such a blow to my theory filled me with indignation.
I stepped toward him, all my moral superiority betraying itself in the self-satisfied smirk which fixed itself on my face in accordance with the sense of duty which the Philistine feels so keenly in his relations with others.
"Why are you here?" I asked him.
"Are you not a little impertinent?" he asked. "I do not inquire of you why you are here."
"That is obvious, to say the least," I answered loftily.
"Obvious from your pharisaical expression, perhaps," he said good-naturedly. "But never mind! We look at the matter from different points of view. To me it is a greater indiscretion to annoy a helpless prisoner with 'holier-than-thou' questions than it would be to attendthe Charity Ball in pajamas. But of course you do not see it in the same light."
"Pardon me if I annoyed you," I said stiffly.
"Don't mention it," he replied, with the humorous twinkle still playing in his eyes. "And to prove that I bear no hard feeling, I will ask you some questions."
Naturally I was embarrassed at such an exhibition of hardihood in one in his situation, but I said I would be pleased to answer him to the best of my ability.
"It is some time since I was away from this retreat on a vacation," he said, with an easy assurance that was indescribably shocking to one of correct principles, "and I would like to know if all the rascals have yet been put in prison."
I pushed my insurance policy a little deeper into my pocket and replied, with conviction:
"Certainly not; but you must not forget that no man is guilty until he has been proven so."
"Ah, yes," he said; "and that a man may pride himself on his honesty on the secure ground that he has not yet reached the penitentiary. Yes, of course, you are right. But, tell me, is it true, according to a rumor which has reached us in our seclusion, that these good Christianspro tem, are considering the advisability of having rat poison served to us in place of the delicious stale bread and flat water which now comprise our bill of fare?"
"Oh," I answered vaguely, "there are still reformers of all sorts in the world."
"Reformers!" he cried, his face lighting up with a new interest. "Ah! you mean those profound thinkers who seek to cure every disease of the social body by means of legislation. Yes, yes! tell me about them! Society still believes in them?"
"Believes in them!" I cried indignantly. "Surely it does. Why, the great political parties are responding to the cry of the downtrodden masses, and—"
"Oh," he said dreamily, "they are still responding?"
"What do you mean by still responding?" I demanded curtly.
"Why, I remember that in my time, too, the people always responded. The party leaders would say to them that they were in a bad way and needed help. The people would cry out in joy to think their leaders had discovered this. Then the leaders would wink at each other and jump upon the platforms and explain to the people that what was needed was a new law of some sort. The people would weep for happiness at such wisdom and would beg their leaders to get together and make the law. And the law that the leaders would make when they got together was one that would put the people still more in their power. So that is still going on?"
I recognized that he was ironical, but I answered with a sneer:
"The people get what they deserve, and what they wish. They have only to demand through the ballot box, you know."
"Ah, yes," he murmured with a grin, "I had forgotten the ballot box. Dear me! how could I have forgotten the ballot box?"
Providentially the keeper came to notify me that my time was up, and I turned away.
"One thing more," cried the prisoner; "is it still the case that the American people enjoy their freedom best when they are enslaved in some way?"
"You are outrageous," I exclaimed; "the American people are not enslaved in any way. It is true they are restricted for their own good by those more capable of judging than they. That must always be the case."
"I don't know about must," he sighed, "but I am sure it will always be the case as long as a man's idea of freedom is his ability to impose some slavish notion on his brother."
"Good-bye," I said, with a recurrence to my smirk of pharisaical pity, "I am sorry to see you here."
"Oh, don't be troubled on my account," he answered; "on the whole, I am satisfied."
"Satisfied! Impossible!" I cried.
"Why impossible? Consider that I shall never again be compelled to associate with decent, honest folk. Oh, I have cause to be satisfied; I am here on a life sentence."
THE inscription over the Drama in olden times used to be, "Man, look into this mirror of life; your soul will be gripped in its innermost depths, anguish and dread will take possession of you in the face of this rage of human desire and passion. Go ye, atone and make good."
Even Schiller entertained this view when he called the Stage a moral institution. It was also from this standpoint that the Drama was expected to show the terrible consequences of uncontrolled human passion, and that these consequences should teach man to overcome himself. "To conquer oneself is man's greatest triumph."
This ascetic tendency, incidentally part of chastisement and acquired resignation, one can trace in every investigation of the value and meaning of the Drama, though in different forms. The avenging Nemesis, always at the heels of the sinner, may be placated by means of rigid self-control and self-denial. This, too, was Schopenhauer's idea of the Drama. In it, his eye perceived with horror that human relation became disastrously interwoven; that guilt and atonement made light of the human race, which merely served as a target for the principles of good and evil. Guilt and atonement reign because the blind force of life will not resign itself, but, on the contrary, is ever ready to yield itself to the struggle of the passions. Mountains of guilt pile themselves on the top of each other, while purifying fires ever flame up into the heavens.
In the idea that Life in itself is a great guilt, Schopenhauer coincides with the teachings of Christ, though otherwise he has little regard for them. With Christ, he recognized in the chastisement of the body a purification of the mind; the inner man, who thus escapes from close physical intimacy, as if from bad company. The spiritual man appears before the physical as a saint and a Pharisee. In reality, he is the intellectual cause of the so-called bad deeds of the human body, its path indicator and teacher. But, once the mischief is accomplished, he puts on a pious air and denies allresponsibility for the deed. Wherever the idea of guilt, the fear of sin prevails, the mind becomes traitor to the body: "I know him not and will have nothing to do with him." Whenever man entertains the belief in good and evil, he is bound to pretend the good and do the evil. And yet the understanding of all human occurrences begins, as with the Zarathustra philosopher, beyond good and evil.
The modern drama is, in its profoundest depths, an attempt to ignore good and evil in its analysis of human manifestations. It aims to get at a complete whole, out of each strong, healthy emotion, out of each absorbing mood that carries and urges one forward from the beginning to the end. It represents the World as it reflects itself in each passion, in each quivering life; not trying to confine and to judge, to condemn or to praise; not acting merely in the capacity of a cold observer; but striving to grow in oneness with Life; to become color, tone and light; to absorb universal sorrow as one's own; universal joy as one's own; to feel every emotion as it manifests itself in a natural way; to be one's self, yet oblivious of self.
The modern dramatist tries to understand and to explain. Goodness is no longer entitled to a reward, like a pupil who knows his lesson; nor is evil condemned to an eternal Hell. Both belong together in the sphere of all that is human. Often enough it is seen that evil triumphs over good, while virtue, ever highly praised in words, is rarely practiced. It is set aside to become dusty and dirty in some obscure corner. Only at some opportune moment is it brought forward from its hiding place to serve as a cover for some vile deed. We can no longer believe that beyond and above us there is some irrevocable, irresistible Fate, whose duty it is to punish all evil and wrong and to reward all goodness; an idea so fondly cherished by our grandfathers.
To-day we no longer look for the force of fate outside of human activity. It lives and weaves its own tragedies and comedies with us and within us. It has its roots in our social, political and economic surroundings, in our physical, mental and psychic capacities. (Did not the fate of Cyrano de Bergerac lie in his gigantic nose?) With others, fate lies in their vocation in life, in their mental and emotional tendencies, which either submergethem into the hurry and rush of a commonplace existence, or bring them into the most annoying conflicts with thedictaof society. Indeed, it is often seen that a human being, apparently of a cheerful nature, but who has failed to establish a durable relation with society, often leads a most tragic inner life. Should he find the cause in his own inclinations, and suffer agonizing reproaches therefrom, he becomes a misanthrope. If, however, he feels inwardly robust and powerful, living truly, if he crave complete assertion of a self that is being hampered by his surroundings at every step, he must inevitably become a Revolutionist. And, again, his life may become tragic in the struggle with our powerful institutions and traditions, the leaden weight of which will, apparently, not let him soar through space to ever greater heights. Apparently, because it sometimes occurs that an individual rises above the average, and waves his colors over the heads of the common herd. His life is that of the storm bird, anxiously making for distant shores. The efforts of the deepest, truest and freest spirits of our day tend toward the conscious formation of life, toward that life which will make the blind raging of the elements impossible; a life which will show man his sovereignity and admit his right to direct his own world.
The old conception of the drama paid little or no attention to the importance of the influences of social conditions. It was the individual alone who had to carry the weight of all responsibility. But is not the tragedy greater, the suffering of the individual increased, by influences he cannot control, the existing social and moral conditions? And is it not true that the very best and most beautiful in the human breast cannot and will not bow down to the commands of the commonplace and everyday conditions? Out of the anachronisms of society and its relation to the individual grow the strongest motives of the modern drama. Pure personal conflicts are no longer considered important enough to bring about a dramatic climax. A play must contain the beating of the waves, the deep breath of life; and its strong invigorating breeze can never fail in bringing about a dramatic effect upon our emotions. The new drama means reproduction of nature in all its phases, the social and psychological included. It embraces, analyzes and enriches alllife. It goes hand in hand with the longing for materially and mentally harmonious institutions. It rehabilitates the human body, establishes it in its proper place and dignity, and brings about the long deferred reconciliation between the mind and the body.
Full of enthusiasm, with the pulse of time throbbing in his veins, the modern dramatist compiles mountains of material for the better understanding of Man, and the influences that mould and form him. He no longer presents capital acts, extraordinary events, or melodramatic expressions. It is life in all its complexity, that is being unfolded before us, and so we come closer to the source of the forces that destroy and build up again, the forces that make for individual character and direct the world at large. Life, as a whole, is being dealt with, and not mere particles. Formerly our eyes were dazzled by a display of costumes and scenery, while the heart remained unmoved. This no longer satisfies. One must feel the warmth of life, in order to respond, to be gripped.
The sphere of the drama has widened most marvellously in all directions, and only ends where human limitations begin. Together with this, a marked deepening of the inner world has taken place. Still there are those who have much to say about the vulgarity contained in the modern drama, and how its inaugurators and following present the ugly and untruthful. Untrue and ugly, indeed, for those who are buried under a mass of inherited views and prejudices. The growth of the scope of the drama has increased the number of the participants therein. Formerly it was assumed that the fate of the ordinary man, the man of the masses, was altogether too obscure, too indifferent to serve as material for anything tragic; since those who had never dwelt in the heights of material splendor could not go down to the darkest and lowest abyss. Because of that assumption, the low and humble never gained access to the center of the stage; they were only utilized to represent mobs. Those that were of importance were persons of high position and standing, persons who represented wealth and power with superiority and dignity, yet with shallow and superficial airs. The ensemble was but a mechanism and not an organism; and each participant was stiff and lifeless; each movement was forced and strained. The old fateand hero drama did not spring from within Man and the things about him; it was merely manufactured. Most remarkable incidents, unheard of situations had to be invented, if only to produce, externally, an appearance of coinciding cause and effect; and not a single plot could be without secret doors and vaults, terrible oaths and perjury. If Ibsen, Gorky, Hauptmann, Gabrielle D'Annunzio and others had brought us nothing else but liberation from such grotesque ballast, from such impossibilities as destroy every illusion as to the life import of a play, they would still be entitled to our gratitude and the gratitude of posterity. But they have done more. Out of the confusion of trap doors, secret passages, folding screens, they have led us into the light of day, of undisguised events, with their simple distinct outlines. In this light, the man of the heap gains in life force, importance and depth. The stage no longer offers a place for impossible deeds and the endless monologues of the hero, the important feature is harmonious concert of action. The hero, on a stage that conscientiously stands for real art and aims to produce life, is about as superfluous as the clown who amused the audience between the acts. After all the spectacle of one star display, one cannot help but hail the refreshing contrast, shown in the "Man of Destiny," by the clever Bernard Shaw, where he presents the legend-hero, Napoleon, as a petty intriguer, with all the inner fear and uneasiness of a plotter. In these days of concerted energy, of the co-operation of numerous hands and brains; in the days when the most far-reaching effect can only be accomplished through the summons of a manifold physical and mental endeavor, the existence of these loud heroes is circumscribed within rather limited lines.
Previous generations could never have grasped the deep tragedy in that famous painting of Millet that inspired Edwin Markham to write his "Man with the Hoe." Our generation, however, is thrilled by it. And is there not something terribly tragic about the lives of the great masses who pierced the colossal stone cliffs of the Simplon, or who are building the Panama Canal? They have and are performing a task that may safely be compared with the extraordinary achievements of Hercules; works which, according to human conception, willlast into eternity. The names and the characters of these workmen are unknown. The historians, coldly and disinterestedly, pass them by.
The new drama has unveiled this kind of tragedy. It has done away with the lie that sought to produce a violent dramatic effect through a plunge from the sublime to the ridiculous. Those who understand Tolstoy's "Power of Darkness," wherein but those of the lowest strata appear, will be overwhelmed by the terrible tragedy in their lives, in comparison with which the worries of some crowned head or the money troubles of some powerful speculator will appear insignificant indeed. That which this master unfolds before us is no longer a plunge from heaven to hell; the entire life of these people is an Inferno. The terrible darkness and ignorance of these people, forced on them by the social misery of dull necessity, produces greater soul sensations in the spectator than the stilted tragedy of a Corneille. Those who witness a performance of Gerhart Hauptmann's "Hannele" and fail to be stirred by the grandeur and depth of that masterpiece, regardless of its petty poorhouse atmosphere, deserve to see nothing else than the "Wizard of Oz." And again is not the long thunderous march of hungry strikers in Zola's "Germinal" as awe-inspiring to those who feel the heart beat of our age even as the heroic deeds of Hannibal's warriors were to his contemporaries?
The world stage ever represents a change of participants. The one who played the part of leading man in one century, may become a clown in another. Entire social classes and casts that formerly commanded first parts, are to-day utilized to make up stage decorations or as figurantes. Plays representing the glory of knighthood or minnesingers would only amuse to-day, no matter how serious they were intended to appear. Once anything lies buried under the bulk of social changes, it can affect coming generations only so far as the excavated skeleton affects the geologist. This must be borne in mind by sincere stage art, if it is not to remain in the stifling atmosphere of tradition, if it does not wish to degrade a noble method, that helps to recognize and disclose all that is rich and deep in the human into a commonplace, hypocritical and stupid method. If theartist's creation is to have any effect, it must contain elements of real life, and must turn its gaze toward the dawn of the morn of a more beautiful and joyous world, with a new and healthy generation, that feels deeply its relationship with all human beings over the universe.