"Please, Hermes (Mercury), do not interrupt me! I know very well what you mean to say. In all actions of men, victory depends more on the shortcomings of their rivals and competitors than on their own genius. It is no special feature of military victories. Of two grocers in the same street, one succeeds mainly because the other is neglectful and unbusinesslike. Of two dramatists in the same country, one succeeds because he gives the people whattheywant, and not, as does the other, what dramatic Art wants. And so forthad infinitum.
"But my Cynical Shavian does not heed these inconsistencies; he knows the public will not notice them. He wants simply to ridicule War, and the whole military spirit. Accordingly out with the witch's wand, and let us change the hero first into a whimpering calf, and then suddenly into a lewd he-goat, and then, for no reason whatever, into the most mendacious magpie flying about, and finally into a little mouse caught in a trap laid by a kitchen-maid. For this is precisely what happens to the hero Sergius.
"Returning from war, he is sick of it with a nauseating sea-sickness. Why? Unknown; or, as Herbert Spencer, the next best replica of Antisthenes in Britannia, would have said,unknowable.
"Sergius is sentimentally idiotic about the nullity of his military glory. A few moments later he cannot resist the rustic beauties of a kitchen-maid, one minute after he had disentangled himself out of the embraces of his beautiful, young, and worshippedfiancé. The he-goat is upon him. Why? Unknown, unknowable.
"Here in our fourth dimension we know very well (do we not, Ares?) that soldiers have done similarescapades? But have barristers done less? Have all solicitors proved bosom-proof? Has no dramatist ever been sorely tempted by buxomness and vigorous development of youthful flesh? One wonders.
"Why then bring up such stuff, without the slightest reason, without the slightest need, internal or external? But the soldier, do you not see, must be run down. He must be ridiculed. It must be shown that he is only a cowardly mouse caught in the trap laid for him by that very kitchen-maid whom at first he treats merely as a well-ordered mass of tempting flesh, and whom in the end he—marries.
"This trait is delicious. I have frequently been in Mysia, or what these people now call Bulgaria, where Shaw's scene is laid. The idea of a Bulgarian gentleman of the highest standing marrying a kitchen-maid gave me a fit of laughter. In eccentric England a high-born gentleman may very well marry a barmaid. In Bulgaria a nobleman will no more marry a servant-girl than his own mother. He has known too many of them; he can study her carefully, encyclopædically, without marrying her in the least. For,shewill never lovehim.
"Of course, my acolyte full well knows that the English are not at all conversant with any nation south of Dover Straits, and that one may tell them anything one pleases about nations other than themselves, They will believe it. And so Sergiusmarries the girl by the same necessity that a mouse may be said to have married the trap into which it drops.
"Is not this fun indeed? To call marrying what simple people call getting morally insane? How clever! How bright!
"This is precisely what we Cynics used to do in ancient Greece. We turned humanity inside out, and then I walked in day-time in the streets with a lamp in my hand in search of a normal man, of a human being. If you vitriole a person's face or character first, how can you expect him to have unscathed features? But that is precisely the point with us Cynics. We take human nature; we then vitriole it out of all shape, and afterwards cry out in sheer indignation, 'How awful!' 'How absurd!' This reminds me of my lawyer pupil who once, in the defence of a fellow who had murdered his parents, pathetically exclaimed to the jury: 'And finally, gentlemen, have pity on this poor, orphaned boy!'
"Not content with Sergius, another 'type' of soldier is dragged up to the stage; a Swiss. Now I do not here mean to repeat our old Greek jokes about people similar to the Swiss, such as the Paphlagonians or Cilicians. I will only remark that the French, who have for over four hundred years had intimate knowledge of the Swiss, put the whole of Swiss character into the famousmot: 'Which animal resembles a human being most?' Answer: 'A Swiss.'
"From a Swiss you may expect anything. He talks three languages; all in vile German. He is to his beautiful country like a wart on a perfect face.In the midst of paradise he is worse than a Prussian yokel born in the dreary heaths of North Germany. He is a Swiss. He has been a mercenary soldier to Popes and Lutheran princes alike. His aim was money; is money; will always be nothing but money. He sells his blood as he does the milk of his cows, by thelitreor thedecilitre; preferably by the latter. He likes war well enough; but he prefers truces and cessation of arms. He thinks the best part of death is the avoidance thereof. He is, when a mercenary, a military Cynic.
"I like him dearly; he does me honour. Whenever I see him on the grand staircase in the Vatican, I grin 'way down in my heart. Here is a Cynic dressed up like a parrot in gorgeous plumage. Diogenes in Rococo-dress! It is intensely amusing.
"Now this Swiss is made by Shaw a 'type' of a soldier. This is quite in accordance with the procedure of the Cynical School. First, all real soldierly qualities are vitrioled out of the man by making him a Swiss mercenary; and then he is shown up in all his callous indifference to Right, Love, or Justice; which is tantamount to saying 'a distinguished Belgian lady patrolling Piccadilly after midnight.' That Swiss mercenary proves no more against the worth of soldiers, than that Belgian woman proves anything in disgrace of the women of Belgium. If Shaw's figure proves anything, it proves the worthlessness of mercenaries in general, and of Swiss mercenaries in particular. That is, it proves something quite different from what it means to prove. This too is arch-Cynical. Why, who knows it better than I, that we Cynics were not infrequently instrumental in bringing about the very reverse of whatwe were aiming at? But the more perverse, the better the fun.
"And the fun is excellent beyond words. It is, in fact, as grim as the grimmest Welshman. On my way home from the theatre I thought of it, and started laughing in the street with such violence that a policeman wanted to take me to the station. The grimness of the fun was this: inquiring about the author, I learnt that he was an Irishman. I had no sooner made sure of the truth of this statement than I could not control myself for laughter.
"An Irishman reviling war, and soldiers, and the military spirit! How unutterably grim,—how unspeakably grimy! The Irish, endowed by nature with gifts of the body as well as the mind incomparably superior to those of the English, have made the most atrocious failure of their history, of their possibilities, of their chances, for that one and only reason, that they never found means of character and endurance to fight for their rights and hopes in bitter and unrelenting wars. Not having made a single effort in any way comparable to the sustained armed resistance of the Scotch, the Dutch, the Hungarians, or the Boers, in the course of over three hundred years, they have fallen under the yoke of a nation whom they detest. This naturally demoralised them, as it demoralises a mere husband when he is yoked to a hated wife. Being demoralised, they have never, oh never, reached that balance of internal powers without which nothing great can be achieved. The English with lesser powers, being undemoralised, got their powers into far greater balance. So did the Scot through sustained, reckless fighting for their ideals. Hence the misery of the Irish, who arelike their fairies, enchanting, but fatal to themselves and to others; unbalanced, unsteady in mind and resolution to a sickening degree; fickle, and resembling altogether sweet kisses from one's lady-love intermingled with knocks in the face from one's vilest creditors.
"Their recoiling from making resolute war on the enemy being the great cause of the failure of the Irish, what can be more grimly Cynical than an Irishman's indignation at all that appertains to war? We Cynics always do that. Moderation having been the soul of all things Hellenic, we Cynics told the Greeks that the one fatal excess that man can commit is moderation. Of music we taught that its only beauties are in the pauses; and of man we held that he is perfect only by making himself into a beast.
"We taught people to contemplate everything in a convex mirror and then to fall foul of the image so distorted. This the idlers and the mob greatly admire. They deem it marvellous originality. And what can be nearer to the origin of new things than to take man and nature always in the last agonising stage of final decomposition?
"In my own dramas I did all that with a vengeance; so did Crates, my revered colleague. What was a plot to us? What does a plot matter? The other day when I sauntered through the Champs Elysées of Paris, I overheard a conversation between little girls playing at ladies. By Antisthenes, that was the real model of the plot and dialogue of all Cynic dramas!
"Said one little girl to the other: 'How are you, madame?'
"'Thanks,' said the other, 'very well. I am watching my children.'
"'How many have you?'
"'Seventy-five, please.'
"'And how old are you?'
"'Twenty years, madame.'
"'And how is your husband?'
"'Y pensez-vous?My husband? Fancy that! Why, I have none!'
"This is precisely the plot and dialogue in Shaw'sCandida.
"I enjoyedCandidaso intensely; I could have kissed the author. How entirely like my own dramas! How closely modelled on the dialogue of the little girls!
"A husband of forty, vigorous, brave, honest, hard-working in a noble cause, loving and loved, father of two children, befriends a boy of eighteen, who is as wayward and conceited and inconsistent as only boys of eighteen can be. That boy suddenly tells the husband that he, the boy, loved Candida, the wife of the said husband. The boy, not satisfied with this amenity, becomes intolerably impudent, and the husband, acting on his immediate and just sentiment, wants to throw him out of the house.
"But this is too much of what ninety-nine out of a hundred husbands would do. So instead of kicking the impertinent lad into the street, the husband—invites him to lunch.
"I was so afraid the husband would in the end bundle the youth out of the room. To my intensedelight the author did not forget the rules of the Cynic drama, and the boy remained for lunch.
"Bravo! Bravo! I secretly hoped the husband would solemnly charge the interesting youth to fit Candida with the latest corset. To my amazement that did not take place. But yet there was some relief for me in store: the husband invites the boy to pass the evening with his wife alone.
"This is, of course, precisely what most husbands would do.
"This is what another disciple of mine in Paris (a man called Anatole, and misnamed France), did do in an even worse case. In Anatole's story, the husband arrives in the most inopportune moment that a forgetful wife can dread. He looks at the scene with much self-control, takes up thePetit Parisienlying on the floor, and withdraws gracefully into another room, there to make sundry reflections on thePetit Parisienand on the 'Petite Parisienne.'
"How classically Cynical! How Bion, Metrocles, Menippus, and all the rest of our sect would have enjoyed that! Here is a true comedy! Here is something truly realistic, and realistically true. That's why Anatole is so much admired by Englishmen. He too is, as we Cynics have been called, a philosopher of the proletariate.
"Much, O Zeus, as I enjoy the honour and pleasure of being allowed to crouch on one of the steps of your divine halls, I do also keenly appreciate the pleasure of meeting my disciples of the hour. One of these next days I will ask Momus to invite Tolstoy, Ibsen, Shaw, Anatole, and a few others to a lunch, to meet me in a Swiss hotel. Plato, you better come and listen behind a screen. You mightperhaps improve upon yourGorgiasin which dialogue you attempt to sketch the superman and super-cynic. Ibsen will stammer and jerk his best in deathly hatred of all Authority. Shaw will pinprick to death the foundations of Marriage and Family. Anatole will try to upset, by throwing little mud-pellets at them, ideal figures such as Joan of Arc" (—Diogenes had barely uttered this name, when Zeus and all the other gods rose from their seats, and bowed towards Pallas Athene, who held Joan in her holy arms—). "Tolstoy, with a penny trumpet in his toothless mouth, will bray against war; Oh, it will be glorious.
"Of course, by this time I know very well that the controlling principle of all mundane and supramundane things is Authority. As we here all bow to Zeus, so mortals must always bow to some authority. Nothing more evident can be imagined nor shown. It is the broadest result of all history, of all experience. Just because this is so, and unmistakably so, my disciples must naturally say the reverse. They do not look at facts by a microscope or a telescope; they telescope train-loads of facts into a mass of pulverised debris.
"Instead of saying that in England, through her social caste system, there are many, too many,parvenusor tactless upstarts, my disciples must say: 'The greatness of England is owing to her tactlessness.' This is the real merchandise which I sold at Corinth over two thousand years ago.
"Tolstoy thunders against War. I wonder he does not thunder against mothers' breasts feeding their babies. Why, War made everything that is worth having. First of all, it made Peace. Without war there is no peace; there is only stagnation. The greater the ideal, the greater the price we have to pay for it. And since we always crave for the sublime ideals of Liberty, Honour, Wealth, Power, Beauty, and Knowledge, we must necessarily pay the highest price for it—ourselves, our lives in war. There is no Dante without the terrible wars of the Guelfs and the Ghibellines. There could have been no ideal superman like Raphael without the counter-superman called Cesare Borgia. It is only your abominable Philistine who squeaks: 'Oh, we might have many a nice slice from the ham of Ideals without paying too dearly for it.' What do you think of that, Hercules? Did you win Hebe by avoiding conflicts and disasters?"
Hercules groaned deeply and looked first at his battered club and then at charming Hebe. The gods laughed aloud and Apollo, taking up his lyre, intoned a grand old Doric song in praise of the heroes of war who, by their valour, had prepared thepalæstrafor the heroes of thought and beauty. He was soon joined by a thousand harmonious voices from the temple of Isis, and from his own majestic sanctuary at Pompeii. Vesuvius counterpointed the lithe song with his deep bass; and, with Dionysus at the head of them, Pan and the nymphs came wafting through the air, strewing buds of melodies on to the Olympian wreaths of tones sung by Phœbus Apollo in praise of War.
When the song had subsided, Zeus, in a voice full of serenity and benign music, addressed the gods and heroes as follows: "We are very much beholden to Diogenes for his bright and amusing story of the Cynical ants that at present run about the woods and cottages of men, biting each other and their friends. Their epigrams and other eccentric utterances can affect none of us here assembled. You very well know that I have not allowed Apollo, or Reason to reign alone and unaided by Unreason, or Dionysus. The Cynical critics of men want to bring about the Age of Reason, or as these presumptuous half-knowers call it, the Age of Science. This, I have long since laid down, shall never be.
"At the gate of the Future, at Delphi, Apollo is associated with Dionysus, and so it has been ever since I came to rule this Universe. Just as good music consists of tones and rhythms, and again of the cessation of all sound, or of measured pauses; even so my Realm consists of Reason, and of the cessation of all Reason, or of Unreason. The Cynics who ignore the latter, misjudge the former. This, I take it, is perfectly clear to all of us.
"But while we here may laugh at the bites of the Cynical ants below, we do not mean to state that in their occupation there is no point, no utility at all. These little ants may be, and undoubtedly are largely sterile mockers. Yet even I have experienced it on myself that the effects of their doings are not always sterile."
And leaning back on his chryselephantine chair, Zeus lowered his voice and said almost in a whisper: "See, friends, why do we meet here in lonely places, in a dead town, during the mysterious hours ofnight? You know very well who and what has prevailed upon me to choose this temporary darkening of our blissful life."
At this moment there came from the rushes near the sea a plaintive song accompanied by a flute, and a voice of a human sobbed out the cry: "Pan, the Great Pan is dead!"
A sudden silence fell over the divine Assembly. A cloud of deep sadness seemed to hover over all.
The three Graces then betook themselves to dancing, and their beauteous movements and poses so exhilarated the Assembly, that the former serenity was soon re-established.
Zeus now turned to Plato, calling upon him to give his opinion on the Cynics. Zeus reminded Plato that hitherto the Cynics had been treated by him merely incidentally, mostly by hidden allusions to Antisthenes, or by witty remarks on Diogenes. At present Plato might help the gods to pass agreeably the rest of the beautiful night by telling them in connection and fulness what really the ultimate purport of these modern Cynics, Shavian or other is going to be. Everybody turned his or her face towards Plato, who rose from his seat, and bowing, with a smile, towards Diogenes, thus addressed Zeus and the Assembly of gods and heroes at Pompeii:
"It is quite true that in my writings I have not devoted any explicit discussion to the views and tenets of the Cynics. They appeared to me at thattime far too grotesque to be worth more than a passing consideration. Of their dramas I had, and still have a very poor opinion. From what I hear from Diogenes, the modern imitators of Cynic dramatists are not a whit better. In addition to all their wearying eccentricities, they add the most unbearable eccentricity of all, to wit, that their dramas and comedies represent a new departure within dramatic literature.
"Shaw's dramas are no more dramas than his Swiss, inArms and the Man, is a soldier; or his clergyman inCandidaa husband, or a man. His pieces are not dramatic in the least; they do not exhibit the most elementary qualities of a comedy. For, whatever the definition of a comedy may be, one central quality can never be missing in it: the persons presented must be types of human beings.
"Shaw's persons are no humans whatever. They arehomunculiconcocted in a chemical laboratory of pseudo-science and false psychology. They crack, from time to time, brave jokes; so do clowns in a circus. That alone does not make a wax figure into a human.
"There may be very interesting comic scenes amongst bees, wasps, or beavers; but we cannot appreciate them. We can only appreciate human comicality, even when it is presented to us in the shape of dialogues between animals, as Aristophanes, the fabulists, and so many other writers have done.
"Who would care to sit through a comedy showing the comic aspects of life in a Bedlam? If madmen have humour, as undoubtedly they have, we do not want to see it on a public stage. The fact that it is a madman's humour deprives it of all humour.
"Hedda Gabler can appeal to no sound taste.One never sees why she is so fearfully unhappy. If she is not in love with her husband, let her work in the house, in the kitchen, in the garden; let her try to be a mother; let her adopt a child if the gods deny her one of her own. Let her do something. Of course, idling all day long as she does, will in the end demoralise a poker; and far from wondering that she ends badly at the end of the last act, one only wonders that she did not do away with herself before the first scene of the first act. By doing so she would have done a great service to herself, her people, and to dramatic literature.
"Of the same kind is Raina, inArms and the Man. She is a doll, but not a young girl. She has neither senses, nor sense. She is made of cardboard, and fit only to appear in a Punch and Judy show. She is, in common with most of the figures in the comedies of the modern Cynics, a mere outline drawing of a human being from whose mouth hang various slips of paper on which the author conveniently writes hisvariorumjokes and bright sayings. All these so-called dramatic pieces will be brushed away by the broom of Time, as happened to the dramas and travesties of our Greek Cynics. Life eternal is given to things only through Art, and in these writings of the Cynics, old or modern ones, there is not the faintest trace either of one of the Graces, or of one of the Muses.
"Having said this much about Shaw's and the other modern Cynics' alleged dramatic writings, Ihasten to add, that when we come to consider theeffectthese so-called dramas have, and possibly will continue to have on the mind of the public, we are bound to speak in quite a different manner.
"I have had plenty of time, since the days of my Academy at Athens, to think out the vast difference between such works of the intellect as aim at nothing but truth and beauty, or what we might callalethology, on the one hand; and such works as aim at effect, or what may be generally termed aseffectology.
"It is from this all-important point of view that I say that Tolstoy, Ibsen, Shaw and the others are,effectologically, just as remarkable as they arealethologicallywithout much significance.
"As to the latter; as to their hitting off great or new truths; as to their being philosophers; or to put it in my terms, as to their having anyalethologicalvalue, Diogenes has already spoken with sufficient clearness. Just consider this one point.
"Tolstoy, as well as Shaw, wants to reform the abuses of civilisation. In order to do so they combat with all their might the most powerful purifier and reformer of men,—War. Can anything be more ludicrous, and unscientific?
"Who gave the modern Germans that incomparable dash andélan, thanks to which they have in one generation quadrupled their commerce, doubled their population, quintupled their wealth, and ensured their supremacy on the Continent?
"Was it done by their thinkers and scholars? The greatest of these died before 1870.
"Was it done by getting into possession of themouth of the Rhine, or of the access to the Danish Sounds, which formerly debarred them from the sea? They do not possess the mouth of the Rhine, nor Denmark to the present day.
"Nothing has changed in the material or intellectual world making the Germany of to-day more advantageous for commerce or power than it had been formerly.
"Except the victorious wars of 1866 and of 1870.
"Can such an evident connection of fact be overlooked? And would Russia have introduced the Duma without the battle of Mukden? It is waste of time even for the immortals to press this point much longer.
"As in this case, so in nearly all the other cases, Cynics revile abuses the sole remedies for which they violently combat. In their negative attacks they brandish the keenest edges of the swords, daggers and pins of Logic; in their positive advices they browbeat every person in the household of logical thought.
"Yet, worthless, or very nearly so, as they may be as teachers of truth, they are powerful as writers of pamphlets. For this is what their literature comes to. They do not write dramas, nor novels. They can do neither the one, nor the other. But they write effective pamphlets in the apparent form of dramas and novels.
"They are pamphleteers, and not men of letters.
"In that lies their undeniably great force. They instinctively choose as eccentric, as loud, and as striking forms and draperies of ideas as possible, soas to rouse the apathetic Philistine to an interest in what they say. They are full of absurdities; but which of us here can now after centuries of experience venture to make light of the power of the absurd?
"Error and Absurdity are so powerful, so necessary, so inevitable, that Protagoras was perhaps not quite wrong in saying that Truth herself is only a particular species of Error.
"Once, many years ago, I despised the Cynics, and my own master Socrates made light of them. But at present I think differently. When Socrates said, with subtle sarcasm, to Antisthenes: 'I see your vanity peeping out through the holes of your shabby garment,' Antisthenes might have retorted to him: 'And I, O Socrates, see through these very holes how short-sighted you are.'
"For have we not lived to see that while all revere Socrates in words, they follow the pupils of Antisthenes in deeds? The Cynics, fathered by Antisthenes, begot the Stoics; and the Stoics were the main ferment in the rise and spread of Christianity. Many of the sayings and teachings and doings of the Cynics, which we at Athens made most fun of, have long since become the sinews and fibres of Christian ideas and institutions. There is greater similarity and mental propinquity between Antisthenes or Diogenes and St Paul, than between Socrates and St Augustine of Hippo.
"I pray thee, O Zeus, to let us for a moment see this town of Pompeii as it was a day before its destruction, with all its life in the streets and the Forum, so as to give us an ocular proof of the truth of what I just now said about the Cynics and Eccentrics of Antiquity, and what I am going to apply to the modern Cynics, literary or other."
Thereupon Zeus, by a wave of his hand, placed the whole Assembly in the shadow as if encircled by a vast mantle of darkness, and shed a strange and supramundane light on the town of Pompeii, which grew up at sight from the ground, putting on life and movement and beauty on all its houses, narrow streets, gardens, and squares. The ancient population filled, in ceaseless movement, every part of the charming city. Richly dressed ladies, carried in sedan-chairs by black slaves; patricians in spotless togas, followed by crowds of clients; magistrates preceded by lictors; soldiers recruited from all nations; tradesmen from every part of the Roman Empire; all these and innumerable others, visitors from the neighbouring cities, thronged the streets, and the whole population seemed to breathe nothing but joy and a sense of exuberant life.
In one of the squares there was a hilarious crowd listening, with loud derision and ironical applause, to a haggard, miserably clad, old man who, addressing them in Ionian Greek, with the strong guttural accent of the Asiatics, stood on one of the high jumping-stones of the pavement, and spoke with fanatic fervour of the nameless sinfulness of the people of Pompeii. With him were two or three other persons of the same description, joining him from time to time in his imprecations against the "doomed town."
The old man told them that their whole life was rotten through and through, a permanent lie, a contradiction to itself, a sure way to damnation. He thundered against the soldiers jeering at him in the crowd, calling them cowards, butchers, wretches, and the sinners of all sinners. He sneered at one of the priests of Isis present in the crowd, telling the people that there was only one true belief, and no other.
The more the old man talked, the more the crowd laughed at him; and when a Greek philosopher, who happened to be there, interpellated and elegantly refuted the old man in a manner approved by the rules of the prevalent school of rhetoric and dialectics, the crowd cheered the philosopher, and the more accomplished amongst the bystanders said to one another: "This old man is a mere charlatan, or an impostor; it's waste of time to take him seriously."
One man alone, in the whole crowd, a shy and retiring disciple of Apollonius of Tyana, waited until the crowd had dispersed, and then walking up to the old man, asked him what sect of Cynics he belonged to.
The old man said: "I am no Cynic; I am a Christian."
Thereupon the disciple of Apollonius took the old man's hand, pressed it with emotion, kissed him, and turning away from him, walked off, plunged in deep thought.
A minute later the supramundane light over Pompeii disappeared, and the Assembly of the gods and heroes was again in the mild rays of Selene.
"Can anyone here," continued Plato, "deny that that crowd together with the philosopher was quite mistaken in their appreciation of the eccentric old man, and that the silent pupil of Apollonius alone was right?
"Cynics and Eccentrics have at all times been the forerunners of vast popular movements. The flagellants, the Beguins and Lollards, and countless other Cynics in the latter half of the Middle Ages preceded the Reformation.
"And was not the French Revolution, or the vastest effort at realising Ideals ever made by the little ones down here, preceded by a Cynic and his pamphlets, by Jean Jacques Rousseau?
"No Greek town would have endured within its walls a youth so completely shattered in all his moral build, as was Rousseau. He was thoroughly and hopelessly demoralised in character,décousuand eccentric in thought, and badly tutored in point of knowledge. The clever woman that was his protectress, mistress, and guide, and who displayed a marvellous capacity for devising jobs and an inexhaustible resourcefulness in turning things and persons to practical use, could yet never discover any usefulness in Jean Jacques.
"He wrote, later on, novels, political treatises, botanical ones, musical ones. In truth he never wrote a novel; he wrote nothing but pamphlets; stirring, wild, eccentric, enchanting pamphlets. He was not, like Beaumarchais, a pamphleteer and yet a writer of a real, and immortal comedy, itself a political pamphlet. Rousseau was a writing stump-orator doing anticipative yeoman's work for the Revolution.
"So are all the Cynics. So are Ibsen, Tolstoy; sois Shaw. Their dramas may be, sayareno dramas at all; their novels may be, sayareno novels at all; their serious treatises are neither serious nor treatises; and yet they are, and always will be greateffectologicalcentres. They attack the whole fabric of the extant civilisation; by this one move they rally round them both the silent and the loud enemies ofWhat Is, and the eager friends of whatOught To Be. Of these malcontents there always is a great number; especially in times of prolonged peace.
"A war, a real, good national war would immediately sweep away all these social malcontents.
"That's why the leaders of the Cynics, and more especially Tolstoy and Shaw, hate war. It is their mar-feast, their kill-joy; their microbes do not prosper in times of war.
"Without the fatal and all but universal peace of the period from 50A.D.to 190A.D., Christianity could never have made any headway in the Roman Empire; just as we got rid of our Cynics by the second Athenian Empire and its great wars.
"This, then, is in my opinion the true perspective of our modern Cynics. As literature or truth, they exhibit little of value, except that Shaw appears to me (—if a Greek may be allowed to pass judgment on such a matter—) to be the only one amongst living writers in England who has real literary splendour in his style. As men, however, exercising an effect on a possible social Revolution, these writers are of the utmost importance.
"Or to repeat it in my terms:alethologicallynil or nearly so,effectologicallyvery important or interesting; this is the true perspective of writers like Tolstoy, Shaw, and other modern Cynics.
"Their influence is not on Thought, nor on Art, but on Action.
"They may eventually, if Mars will continue trifling with wood-nymphs and other well-intended cordials, become a great power. They may beget Neo-Stoics, who may beget Neo-Christians. They themselves may then appear only as the tiny drum-pages running in front or beside the real fighters in battle. Yet their importance will be little impaired thereby.
"The Church Fathers have frequently endeavoured to honour me with the name of one of the lay protagonists of Christianity. But I know much better than that. The true protagonists were Antisthenes or Diogenes; and that is why the Roman Catholic Church has at no time countenanced me. And just as we now do not mind the jokes, burlesques andboutadesof Diogenes any more, admitting freely, as we do, that behind them was theaurora borealisof a new creed, a new movement, a new world; even so we must not mind the grotesqueboutadesof Tolstoy, Ibsen, Shaw, Anatole, and other modern Cynics, for behind them is the magnetic fulguration of new electric currents in the social world.
"This, the public indistinctly feel; that's why they continue to read and criticise or revile these men. The public feels that while there may not be much in what these men yield for the present, the future, possibly, is theirs.
"The little ones below do not as yet know, that there is no future; nor that all that is or can be, has long been. Therefore they do not turn to us who might point out to them what things aredriving at; but they want the oldest things in ever new forms.
"We, however, know thatplus cela change, plus c'est la même chose, as one of the modern Athenians in Paris has put it.
"Do not frown on me, Heraclitus; I well know that you hold the very reverse, and that you would say: 'plus c'est la même chose, plus cela change.'
"I have gladly accepted that in my earthly time when I made a sharp distinction between phenomena and super-phenomena, ornoumena. But I do no longer make such a distinction.
"We are above time. We Hellenes are alive to-day as we were over two thousand years ago. We still think aloud or on papyrus the most beautiful and the truest thoughts of men. Have we not but quite lately sent down for one of us to while amongst us for ever? He too began as a Cynic. But having learnt the inanity of the so-called 'future,' he rose above time and space, and soared on the wings of eagle concepts to the heights where we welcome him. He has just entered the near port in a boat rowed by the nymphs of Circe. We cannot close our meeting in a more condign fashion than by asking Hebe to offer him the goblet of welcome."
The eyes of all present turned to the shore, where a man of middle age, who had evidently regained his former vigour, walked up to the steps of the amphitheatre. When he came quite near to the Assembly, Diogenes exclaimed: "Hail to thee, Frederick Nietzsche!"
THE THIRD NIGHT
ALCIBIADES ON WOMEN IN ENGLAND
In the third night the gods and heroes assembled at Venice. Where the Canal Grande almost disappears in the sea, there on mystic gondolas the divine Assembly met in the town of Love and Passion, at the whilom centre of Power wedded to Beauty. It was a starlit night of incomparable charm. The Canal Grande, with its majestic silence; the dark yet clearly outlined Palaces surrounding the Canal like beautiful women forming a procession in honour of a triumphant hero; the grave spires of hundreds of churches standing like huge sentinels of the town of millions of secrets never revealed, and vainly searched for in her vast archives; and last not least the invisible Past hovering sensibly over every stone of the unique city; all this contributed ever new charms to the meeting of the gods and heroes at Venice.
Zeus, not unforgetful of the Eternal Feminine, asked Alcibiades to entertain the Assembly with his adventures amongst the women of England. Alcibiades thereupon rose and spake as follows: "O Zeus and the other gods and heroes, I am still too much under the fascination of the women with whom I have spent the last twelve months, to be in a position to tell you with becoming calmness what kind of beings they are. In my time I knewthe women of over a dozen Greek states, and many a woman of the Barbarians. Yet not one of them was remotely similar to the women of England. I will presently relate what I observed of the beauty of these northern women.
"But first of all, it seems to me, I had better dwell upon one particular type of womanhood which I have never met before except when once, eight hundred years ago, I travelled in company with Abelard through a few towns of Mediæval France. That type is what in England they call the middle-class woman. She is not always beautiful, and yet might be so frequently, were her features not spoilt by her soul. She is the most bigoted, the most prejudiced, and most intolerant piece of perverted humanity that can be imagined.
"The first time I met her I asked her how she felt that day. To this she replied, 'Sir-r-r!' with flashing eyes and sinking cheeks. When I then added: 'I hope, madame, you are well?'—she looked at me even more fiercely and uttered: 'Sir-r-r!' Being quite unaware of the reason of her indignation, I begged to assure her that it gave me great pleasure to meet her. Thereupon she got up from her seat and exclaimed in a most tragic manner: 'Si-r-r-r, you arenogentleman!!'
"Now, I have been shown out, in my time, from more than one lady's room; but there always was some acceptable reason for it. In this case I could not so much as surmise what crime I had committed. On asking one of my English friends, I learnt that I ought to have commenced the conversation with remarks on the weather. Unless conversation is commenced in that way it will never commend itselfto that class of women in England. It is undoubtedly for that reason, Zeus, that you have given England four different seasons indeed, but all in the course of one and the same day. But for this meteorological fact, conversation with middle-class people would have become impossible.
"The women of that class have an incessant itch for indignation; unless they feel shocked at least ten times a day, they cannot live. Accordingly, everything shocks them; they are afflicted with permanentshockingitis.
"Tell her that it is two o'clockP.M., and she will be shocked. Tell her you made a mistake, and that it was only half-past one o'clock, and she will be even more shocked. Tell her Adam was the first man, and she will scream with indignation; tell her she had only one mother, and she will send for the police. The experience of over two thousand years amongst all the nations in and out of Europe has not enabled me to find a topic, nor the manner of conversation agreeable or acceptable to an English middle-class woman.
"At first I thought that she was as puritanic in her virtue as she was rigid and forbidding in appearance. One of them was unusually pretty and I attempted to please her. My efforts were in vain, until I found out that she took me for a Greek from Soho Square, which in London is something like the poor quarters of our Piræus. She had never heard of Athens or of ancient history, and she believed that Joan of Arc was the daughter of Noah.
"When I saw that, I dropped occasionally the remark that my uncle was Lord Pericles, and that the King of Sparta had reasons to hide from mehis wife. This did it at once. She changed completely. Everything I said was 'interesting.' When I said, 'Wet to-day,' she swore that it was a capital joke. She admired my very gloves. She never tired asking me questions about the 'swell set.' I told her all that I did not know. The least man of my acquaintance was a lord; my friends were all viscounts and marquesses; my dog was the son of a dog in the King's kennels; my motor was one in which three earls and their wives had broken eleven legs of theirs.
"These broken legs brought me very much nearer to my goal; and when finally I apprised her that I had hopelessly spoilt my digestion at the wedding meal of the Duke of D'Ontexist, she implored me not to trifle any longer with her feelings. I stopped trifling.
"This experience," Alcibiades continued, "did much to enlighten me about what was behind all that forbidding exterior of the middle-class woman. I discovered Eve in the Mediæval form of womanhood. I was reminded of the Spartan women who, at the first meeting, seemed so proud, unapproachable and Amazonian; at the second meeting they had lost some of their prohibitive temper; and at the third meeting they proved to be women, and nothing but women after all.
"Honestly, I preferred the English middle-class woman in her first stage. It suited the somewhat rigid style of her beauty much better. In the last or sentimental stage she was much less interesting. Her tenderness was flabby or childish. Then she cried after everyrendez-vous. That annoyed me considerably. One evening I could not help asking her whether she did not feel like sending five pounds of conscience-money to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. She drew the line on that, and cried more profusely. Whereupon I proposed to send fifty pounds of conscience-money and to be released of any further tears. This seemed to pacify and to console her; and thus we parted.
"A few days after I had been relieved of my first lady friend in England," Alcibiades continued, "I made the acquaintance of a girl whose age I was unable to determine. She said she was twenty-nine years old. However, I soon found that all unmarried girlsd'un certain âgein England are exactly twenty-nine years old.
"She was not without certain attractions. She had read much, spoke fluently, had beautiful auburn hair and white arms. In her technical terms, which she used very frequently, she was not very felicitous. She repeatedly mixed up bigotry with bigamy, or with trigonometry. My presence did not seem to affect her very much, and after two or three calls I discovered that she was in a chronic state of rebellion against society and law at large.
"She held that women were in absolute serfdom to men, and that unless women were given the most valuable of rights, that is, the suffrage, neither women nor men could render the commonwealth what it ought to be. I told her that shortly after my disappearance from the political stage of Athens,about twenty-three centuries ago, the women of that town, together with those of other towns, clamoured for the same object. 'What?' she exclaimed. 'Do you mean to say that suffragettes were already known in those olden times?' I assured her that all that she had told me about the aims and arguments of herself and her friends was as old as the comedies of Aristophanes. That seemed to have a strange effect upon her. I noticed that what she believed to be the novelty of the movement constituted really its greatest charm for her. She had thought that suffragettism was the very latest fashion, in every way brand new.
"But after a time she recovered and said: 'Very well; if our objects and aims are as old as all that, they are sure to be even more solidly founded in reason than I thought they were.'
"Reason, Right, Equity, and Fairness were her stock-in-trade. She was the daughter of Reason; the wife of Right; the mother of Equity; and the mother-in-law of Fairness. It was in vain that I told her that this world was not held together by Reason or Right alone, but also by Unreason and Wrongs. She scoffed at my remarks, and asked me to come to one of her speeches in Hyde Park on one of the next Sundays. I came. There was a huge crowd, counting by the hundreds of thousands. My lady friend stood on a waggon in the midst of about half-a-dozen other women, who all had preferred single blessedness to coupled bliss. They were, of course, each of them twenty-nine years old; and yet their accumulated ages brought one comfortably back to the times of Queen Elizabeth. When my friend's turn came, she addressed the crowd as follows:
"'Men and women. Excuse me, ladies, beginning my speech in that way. It is mere custom, the behests of which I obey. In my opinion there are no men in this country. There are only cowards and their wives. Who but a coward would refuse a woman the most elementary right of citizenship? Who but a wretch and a dastardly runaway would deny women a right which is given to the scum of men, provided they pay a ridiculous sum in yearly taxes? There are no men in this country.' (A voice from the people: 'None for you, m'um, evidently!')
"'I repeat it to you: there are no men. I will repeat it again. I can never repeat it too frequently. Or, do you call a person a man who is none? The first and chief characteristic of a true man is his love of justice. It is so completely and exclusively his, that we women do not in the least pretend to share in this his principal privilege.
"'But can the present so-called men be called just? Is it justice to deny justice to more than one half of the nation, to the women? Let us women have the suffrage, so that men, by thus doing justice, shall become true men worthy oftheirsuffrage. For are not all their reasonings against our wishes void of any force?
"'They say that the suffrage of women, by dragging them too much into the political arena, would defeminise them. Pray look at us here assembled. Are we unwomanly? Do we look as if we had lost any of that down which hovers over the soul of domesticated women as does the nap on a peach?' (Stormy applause.) 'Thanks, many thanks. I knew you would not think so.
"'No, it is indeed absurd to assume that a waggon can change a woman into a dragon. Am I changed by entering a 'bus? Or by mounting a taxi? Why, then, should I be changed by standing on a waggon? I am no more changed by it, than the waggon is changed by me.' (A voice: 'Good old waggon!')
"'We want to have a share in legislation. There are a hundred subjects regarding which we are better informed than are men. Take food-adulteration—who knows more about it than we do? Take intemperance—who drinks more in secret than we do? Take the law of libel and slander—who libels and slanders more than we do? Who can possibly possess more experience about it?
"'Look at history. Repeatedly there have been periods when a number of queens and empresses proved to be more efficient than men. Politics, especially foreign policy, spells simply lies and dissimulation. Who can do that better than ourselves? People say that if we women get the suffrage, the House of Commons would soon be filled with mere women. Let us grant that, for argument's sake. Would the difference be really so great? Are there not women in trousers? And are there not more trousers than men?
"'Nowadays most men cry themselves hoarse over Peace, Arbitration, International Good Will, and similar nostrums. Could we women not do that too? I ask you men present, could we not do that as well? The men of this country think that they will bring about the millennium by preaching and spreading teetotalism, Christian Science, vegetarianism, or simple lifeism. How ridiculous and petty.
"'Look at the "isms" we propose to preach and spread: (1) Anti-corsetism; (2) Anti-skirtism; (3) Anti-bonnetism; (4) Anti-gloveism; (5) Anti-necktieism; (6) Anti-cigarettism; and finally (7)Anti-antiism.
"'On these seven hills of antis, or if you prefer it, on these seven ant-hills, which are in reality anti-ills, we shall build our New Rome, the rummiest Rome that ever was, and more eternal than the town of the Cæsars and the Popes. Give us the suffrage! Do you not see how serious we are about it? We know very well that the various classes of men obtained the suffrage only by means of great fights in which, in some countries, untold thousands of men were killed. But can you seriously think of putting us women to similar straits?
"'Evidently, what men had to fight for in bitter earnest, ought to be given to women in jest as a mere gift. Do give us the suffrage! Do not be pedantic nor naughty. We mean it very seriously; therefore give it to us as a joke, by sheer politeness, and as a matter of good manners.
"'Come, my male friends, be good boys; let me brush your coat, fix the necktie in the proper shape and pour a little brilliantine on your moustaches. There! That's a nice little boy. And now open the safe of the nation and give us quick the right of rights, the might of mights, the very thing that you men have been fighting for ever since Magna Charta in 1215, give us the suffrage as an incidental free gift.
"'If you do so, we will pass a law that all barbers' shops shall be in the soft, pleasant hands of young she-barbers. Think of the downy satisfaction that this will give you! Think of the placid snoozes ina barber's chair when your face is soaped, shaven and sponged by mellow hands! Is it not a dear little enjoyment? Now, look here my male friends, this and similar boons we shall shower upon you, provided you give us the suffrage.
"'Nay, we shall before everything else (provided we have the suffrage!) pass a lawabolishing breach-of-promise cases.'
"(Endless hurrahs from all sides—Band—Fire-works—St Vitus' Dances, until the whole immense crowd breaks out in a song 'She is a jolly good maiden, etc.')
"'Thanks, you are very kind. Yes, we mean to abolish breach-of-promise cases. Consider what advantages that would imply for you. A man will be able to flirt round five different corners at a time, without risking anything. He will be able to practise letter-writing in all the colours of the rainbow, without in the least jeopardising his situation, purse or expectations. He will be in a position to amuse himself thoroughly, freely, everywhere, and at any time. What makes you men so stiff, so tongue-tied, so pokery, but the dread of a breach-of-promise case. Once that dread is removed by the abolition of such cases, you will be amiable, great orators, full of charmingabandon, and too lovely for words. As a natural consequence, women will be more in love with you than ever before. Your conquests in Sexland will be countless. You will be like Alcibiades,—irresistible, universally victorious. Now, could we offer you anything more tempting?
"'I know, of course, that outwardly you affect to be no ladies' men. But pray,entre nous, are you notin reality just the reverse? Manispolygamous. We women do not in the least care for men, and if all my female contemporaries should die out, leaving me alone in the world with 600,000,000 men, I should myself speedily die with boredom. What are men here for but as mere cards in our game of one woman against the other? If I cannot martyrise a little the heart of my female friend by alienating her man from her, what earthly use has her man for me?
"'But you men, you are quite different. You do wish that all the women, at any rate all the young and beautiful women, shall be at your order. This of course we cannot legislate for you. But we can do the next best thing: we can abolish the chief obstacle in your way: the breach-of-promise cases. This we promise to do, provided you give us the suffrage. You are, however, much mistaken if you think that that is all we have in store for you. Far from it.
"'If you give us the franchise, we pledge ourselvesnever to publish a novel or a drama.'
"(Applause like an earthquake—men embrace one another—elderly gentlemen cry with joy—a clergyman calls upon people to pray—in the skies a rainbow appears.)
"'Yes, although with a breaking heart, yet we will make this immense sacrifice on the altar of our patriotism: we will henceforth not publish any novels. I cannot say that we will not write any. This would be more than I or any other woman could promise. We must write novels. We are subject to a writing itch that is quite beyond our control. The less a woman has to say the moreshe will write. She must write; she must write novels.
"'We write, we publish at present about five novels a day. If you give us the suffrage, we pledge ourselves not to publish a single novel.'
"(Universal cry: 'Give them the suffrage, for God's sake!')
"'And if you do not give us the suffrage, we shall publish ten novels a day.'
"(Fearful uproar—fierce cries for the police—twenty publishers present are mobbed—Miss Cora Morelli present is in imminent danger of life.)
"'Did I say, ten? What I meant to say is, that if you do not give us the franchise, we shall publish fifteen novels a day.'
"(Revolution—pistol shots—the fire-brigade comes.)
"'Twenty—thirty—forty novels a day.'
"(The Big Ben is howling—the Thames river floods Middlesex—the House of Commons suspends the Habeas Corpus Act.)
"'Or even ten novels every hour.'
"(The Albert Memorial leaves its place and takes refuge in the Imperial Institute—the crowd, in despair, falls on their knees and implores the speaker to have mercy on them—they promise the suffrage, at once, or somewhat before that.)
"'There! I told you, we do mean what we mean, and we have all sorts of means of making you mean what we mean. It is therefore understood that you will give us the franchise, and we shall stop publishing novels. But should you change your mind and go back on your present promises, then I must warn you that we have in store even more drastic meansof forcing your hands. You must not in the least believe that the pressure we can bring to bear upon you is exhausted with the devices just enumerated. There are other devices. But for evident reasons of modesty I prefer calling upon my motherly guide, Mrs Pancake, to tell you more about them.'
"With that my tender friend retired, and up got a middle-aged woman with hard features and much flabby flesh. She was received with mournful silence. She began in a strident voice, which she accentuated by angular gestures cutting segments out of the air. She said:
"'You have, ladies and gentlemen, heard some of the disadvantages that will inevitably be entailed upon you by not granting us what Justice, Equity and our Costume render a demand that none but barbarians can refuse. I am now going to give you just an inkling of what will befall you should you pertinaciously persist in your obdurate refusal of the franchise to women. We women have made up our minds to the exclusion of any imaginable hesitation, change, or vacillation. We shall be firm and unshakable.
"'We have done everything that could be done by way of persuading you. We have published innumerable pamphlets; we have trodden countless streets in countless processions; we have been wearing innumerable badges and carrying thousands of flags and standards; we have screamed, pushed, rowdied, boxed, scuffled, gnashed our teeth (evensuch as were not originally made for that purpose), and suffered our skirts to be torn to shreds; we have petitioned, waylaid, interpellated, ambushed, bullied and memorialised all the ministers, all the editors, all the clergymen, all the press-men; we have suffered imprisonment, fines, scorn, ridicule; we have done, with the exception of actual fighting, everything that men have done for the conquest of the suffrage.
"'Should all these immense sacrifices not avail us any; should it all be in vain; then we the women of this country, and I doubt not those of the other countries too, will, as a last resort, take refuge in the oldest and most powerful ally of our sex. Eternal Time has two constituents: Day and Night. The Day is man's. The Night is ours.'
"(Deadly silence—men begin looking very serious.)
"'The Night, I repeat it in the sternest manner possible, the Night is ours. We grant, indeed, that sixteen hours are man's; but the remaining eight are ours. The stars and the moon; the darkness and the dream—they are all ours. Should you men persist in refusing us the franchise, you will wake in vain for the moon and the stars and the dream. You will see stars indeed, but other ones than you expect. We shall be inexorable. No moon any more for you; neither crescent, half nor full moon; neither stars nor milky-way; neither galaxy nor gallantry.'
"(A salvationist: 'Let us pray!'—A soldier: 'Hope, m'um, that Saturdays will be off-days?'—Solicitors, teetotallers, and three editors of Zola's collected works: 'Disgraceful! shocking!'—A scholar: 'Madame, that's a chestnut, Aristophaneshas long proposed that!'—General uproar—a band of nuns from Piccadilly hurrah the proposal and raise prices of tickets—Scotland Yard smiles—theDaily Nailkodaks everybody and interviews Mrs Pancake on the spot—Mrs Guard, the famous writer, at once founds a counter-League, with the motto 'Astronomy for the people—Stars and Stripes free—the United Gates of Love'—theDaily Cronyhas an attack of moral appendicitis.)
"I wish," continued Alcibiades, amidst the laughter of the immortals, "Aristophanes had been present. I assure you that all that he said in his comedies calledEcclesiazusaeandLysistratapale beside the tumultuous scenes caused by the peroration of Mrs Pancake. Her threat was in such drastic contrast to the stars and moon she personally could exhibit to the desires of men, that the comic effect of it became at times almost unbearable.
"While the pandemonium was at its height a stentorian voice invited all present to another platform where another woman was holding forth on Free Love and Free Marriage. I forthwith repaired to the place, and heard what was in every way a most interesting speech delivered by a woman who consisted of a ton of bones and an ounce of flesh. She was between forty and seventy-nine. She talked in a tone of conviction which seemed to come from every corner of her personal masonry. Her gestures were, if I may say so, as strident as her voice, which cameout with a peculiar gust of pectoral wind, unimpeded, as it was, by the fence of too numerous teeth. She said:
"'Gentlemen, all that you have heard over there from the platforms of the suffragettes is, to put it mildly, the merest rubbish. We women do not want the suffrage. What we want is quite another thing. All our misery since the days of Eve comes from one silly, absurd, and criminal institution, and from that alone. Abolish that cesspool of depravity; that hotbed of social gangrene; that degradation of men and women; and we shall be all happy and contented for ever.
"'That institution; that cancerous hotbed; that degradation is:Marriage. As long as we shall endure this scandalous bondage and prostitution of the most sacred sentiments and desires of human beings, even so long will our social wretchedness last.
"'Abolish marriage.
"'It has neither sense, nor object, nor right; it is the most hapless aberration of humanity. How can you uphold such a monstrous thing?
"'Just consider: I do not know, and do not care to know what other nations are like; I only care for my great nation, for England, for Englishmen. Now, can anyone here present (or here absent, for the matter of that), seriously contend that an Englishman is by nature or education fit for marriage? Why, not one in ten thousand has the slightest aptitude for it.
"'An Englishman is an island, a solitary worm, morally a hermit, socially a bear, humanly a Cyclop. He hates company, including his own. The ideathat any person should intrude upon his hallowed circles for more than a few minutes is revolting to him. When he is ill he suffers most from the inquiries of friends about his condition. When he is successful he is too proud to stoop to talking with anyone under the rank of a lord. When he is unsuccessful, he takes it for granted that nobody desires to speak to him. He builds his house after his own character: rooms do not communicate. He chooses his friends among people that talk as little as possible and call on him once a year. Any remark about his person he resents most bitterly. Tell him, ever so mildly, that the colour of his necktie is cryingly out of harmony with the colour of his waistcoat, and he will hate you for three years.
"'And you mean to tell me, gentlemen, that such a creature is fit for marriage? That is, fit for a condition of things in which a person, other than himself, claims the right to be in the same room with him at any given hour of the day or the night; to pass remarks on his necktie, or his cuffs, or even on his tobacco; to talk, ay, to talk to him for an hour, to twit him, or chaff him—good heavens, one might just as well think of asking the Archbishop of Canterbury by telephone whether he would not come to the next bar round the corner for a glass of Bass.
"'And as to other still more personal claims of tenderness and intimacy on the part of the wife, such as embraces and kisses, one shudders to think how any woman may ever hope to attempt doing them without imminent risk to her life.
"'Fancy a wife trying to kiss her legal husband! He, prouder of his collar and cuffs than of his banking account, to stand calmly and willingly an assaulton the immaculate correctness of the said collar and cuffs!
"'It passes human comprehension. The mere idea thereof is unthinkable.
"'Perhaps in the first few weeks of married life. But after six months; after a year, or two—by what stretch of imagination shall one reach the possibility of such an event? After six months, he is indifferent to the entire astronomy of his wife; after a year or so, he hates her. It is not so much that he wants another woman, or another man's wife, or another wife's man; what he wants is to be left alone.
"'He has long since shaken off the State, the Church, the Army, and, politically, the Nobility. Nothing can be more evident than that he wants to shake off the last of the old shackles: Marriage. His motive is: shekels, but no shackles.
"'Some incomprehensibly modest people have proposed marriage to last ten years only. It appears, they contend, that the critical period of the modern marriage shows itself at the end of ten years. The scandals that are usually cropping up at the end of that period, they say, might very well be avoided by terminating marriage legally at the end of the tenth year. People proposing such stuff clearly manifest their utter inability to see through the true character of modern marriage.
"'If marriages were to last only ten years, then be sure that the said critical period with its inevitable scandals would set in at the end of the fifth year. The cause, the real cause of these scandals is not in the length of time, but in the very nature of marriage. If this iniquitous and barbarous contract were to last only for five years, then its critical period and itsscandals would appear at the end of two years. And by a parity of reasoning, if marriage were to last one year only, it would by its inherent vice come to grief at the end of six months.
"'The only cure for marriage is to abolish it. Does marriage not demand the very quality that not one English person in a hundred thousand possesses: yieldingness? Or can anyone deny that no English person has ever really meant to admit that he or she was wrong?
"'They are all of them infallible. People write such a lot about the hatred of Popery in English history. What nonsense. English people do not hate Popery; they despise the idea that there should be only one infallible Pope, whereas they know that in England alone there are at present over thirty millions of such infallibles. This being so, how can marriage be a success?
"'Or take it,' the Free Love lady continued, 'from another standpoint. Most Englishmen enter married life with little if any experience of womanhood. Only the other day a young man of twenty-five, who was just about to marry, asked in my presence whether it was likely that a woman gave birth to one child early in the month of May, and to the other in the following month of June? He thought thatThe Timesinstalment system applied to all good things.
"'Other young men inquire seriously about the strategy of marriage, and the famous song in theBelle of New York, in which the girl asks herfiancé"When we are married what will you do?" was possible only in countries of Anglo-Saxon stock. In Latin countries the operette could not have beenfinished in one evening on account of the interminable laughter of the public. In London nobody turned a hair, as they say. Half of the men present had, in their time, asked the same question of themselves or of their doctors.
"'Now if there is one thing more certain than another in the whole matter of marriage it is this, that the inexperiencedfiancégenerally makes the worst husband. Being familiar only with the ways and manners of men, he misunderstands, misconstrues, and misjudges most of the actions or words of his young wife. He is positively shocked at her impetuous tenderness, and takes many a manifestation of her love for him as mere base flattery or as hypocrisy. Not infrequently he ceases treating her as his wife, and goes on living with her as his sister; and, since the wife, more loyal to nature, rarely omits recouping herself, her husband acts the part of certain gentlemen of Constantinople. It is thus that the famousménage à troisdoes not, properly speaking, exist in England. In England it is always aménage à deux.
"'If, then, instead of continuing marriage; if, instead of maintaining an institution so absurd and so contrary to the nature of an Englishman, we dropped it altogether; if, instead of compulsory wedding ceremonies, we introduced that most sacred of all things:Free Love; the advantages accruing to the nation as a whole, and to each person constituting that nation, would be immense.
"'Free Love, ay: that is the only solution. Nature knows what she is after. The blue-eyed crave the black-eyed ones; the fair-haired desire the dark-haired; the tall ones the small; the thin onesthe thick; the unlettered ones the lettered unfettered ones. This is Nature.
"'If these affinities are given free scope, the result will be a nation of giants and heroes. Affinities produce Infinities. Free Trade in wedlock is the great panacea. Since the only justifiable ground for marriage is—the child, how dare one marry anyone else than the person with whom he or she is most likely to have the finest babe? That person is clearly indicated by Nature. How, then, can Society, Law, or the Church claim the right to interfere in the choice?
"'I know that many of you will say: "Oh, if men should take their wives only from Free Love, they would take a different one every quarter." But if you come to think of it, it is not so at all. If men took their wives out of Free Love, they could not so much as think of taking another wife every quarter. For, which other wife could they take? There would be none left for them, since all the other women would, by the hypothesis, long have been taken up bytheirFree Lovers. Moreover, if a man takes a wife out of Free Love, he sticks to her just because he loves her. Had he not loved her, he would not have taken her; and if he should cease loving her, he would find no other woman to join him, owing to his proved fickleness.
"'Last, not least, women and men would form elaborate societies for the prevention of frivolous breaches of faith. At present no woman has a serious interest in watching another woman's man. It would be quite different in Free-Love-Land. The unofficial supervision and control of men and women would be as rigorous as in monastic orders. As aman will pay off debts contracted at a card-table with infinitely greater anxiety than any ordinary debt of his to a tailor or a grocer, just because such gambling debts are not actionable; even so conjugal debts would, in Free-Love-Land, be discharged with a punctuality that now is practically unknown.