The Egoist

Published the 1st and 15th of each month. The egoist AN INDIVIDUALIST REVIEW. Formerly the NEW FREEWOMAN. No. 3 Vol. I. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 2nd, 1914. Sixpence. Assistant Editors : RICHARD ALDINGTON. LEONARD A. COMPTON-RICKETT. Editor: DORA MARSDEN. B.A. CONTENTS. Men, Machines and Progress. Views and Comments. The Plain Person. By Allen Upward. Books and Papers. By Richard Aldington. Serial Story :— Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. By James Joyce. The Bourgeios. By Bastien von Helmholtz. John Synge. By Bastien von Helmholtz. Poems. By H. D. The Horses of Diomedes By Remy de Gourmont. (Ch. 20). Clouds. Presentation to Mr. W. S. Blunt. By Richard Aldington. Art-Passion, Patronage and Pay. By Huntly Carter. Correspondence.

MEN, MACHINES AND PROGRESS. IT is the distinguishing mark of the " Verbal Age " that when the vogue of any of its shibboleths is at its zenith and exerting its strongest influence it is the least open to the questioning of sense. The hypnotism of sound lulls sense into accepting a "thought," i.e. an error born of ineffectual thinking, into its categories of existent things, and giving to it a " local habitation and a name." The name is all-important since over and above the name there is nothing of reality connected with it. Men cling to the names of thoughts because they are dimly aware that in abandoning the names they abandon all. The name of a spade can be abandoned and beyond a little hesitancy, a greater circumlocution in speech, nothing is changed ; the spade remains : but abandon the names of thoughts and you have nothing left. Hence the device of making " sacred " names —the sacred names of "Duty," "Right," " Obedience," " Liberty " and the entire " moral " outfit, whereby it becomes sinful to question names. The sole purpose in fact in making a concept sacred is to •ensure its immunity from being questioned. * * * * It is therefore because this has been the " Age of Progress " that those who believe in " Progress " have regarded it as blasphemous to attempt its definition. Differing things may have been for or against progress, but as for "progress" itself—it is just "progress." That has not prevented assumptions in regard to " progress " being made. It is in fact under cover of the sacred aegis that the largest assumptions always contrive to pass muster, and as far as " progress " is concerned it has been tacitly assumed that progress and an easing of the struggle with external environment are one. If the powers inherent in Nature can be set in such relation that one will overcome the other, and this with decreasing human effort so to set them : that it is assumed, is progress. It happens that two pronouncements, one being an Individualist manifesto (which its author Mr. Heinrich Charles describes as The Anti-Thesis to the Communistic Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and the Synthesis of Social-Individualism) and the other that of a journal which believes itself to be the intellectual organ of English Socialism, both making this same assumption in regard to " progress " come to our hands together. Upon that on which individualist and socialist agree it is worth while to pause to consider. Thus the manifesto : What has been the world's greatest curse? Physical labour! Manual work ! Mechanical drudgery ! Toil oppressive to mind and body ! Compulsory service ! Who shall hew the wood ? Who shall draw the water? Who shall do the dirty work? This has been the bone of contention . . . the immediate sole cause of all wars : of all the bloodshed and struggles between man and man ; of all the land-hunger and the great migratory movements ... of all the revolts, rebellions, and revolutions, the division of classes, of slavery, of serfdom, and the modern system of exploitation. . . . Man's main mental work has been how to escape physical work. All the social systems and organisations of the past, all the mighty empires and republics, all the nations and states were based on one proposition : that there must be one class which does the work. To escape from this class was the ruling ambition. It is the writer's contention that that which distinguishes developed man from the savage is the possession of knowledge relating to inventions which relieve men from the necessity of physical toil ; that the genius of the few will never rest until it has discovered a power upon which can be thrown the performance of the labouring work of the world. All tools he maintains are efforts in this direction. Harnessed to the energy of the human hand and arms, a tool will lighten labour ; tools harnessed to the tremendous power in steam will turn the world into a hive of industry where the man's task is that of mere minder of the tool ; progress is due to the men who are possessed of unusual faculties, which provided them with the inspiration and intuitive sense to see relations between things which the ordinary man would never think of relating. The pioneers of science are the true forces of progress. Not the world's fifteen or sixteen great battles—but the fifteen or sixteen decisive discoveries and inventions, from those of fire and missiles onwards. It is not surprising therefore, holding such views, that in judging the calibre of the thinkers of the nineteenth century Mr. Charles should award the palm to Marx and Engels ! Great men were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels ! There is no doubt that they were the most scientific and deepest thinkers, 42 THE EGOIST February 2nd, 1914 economists and sociologists of the Nineteenth Century. But with all their genius in seeing and relating things as others in their day did not, they were still hampered by human limitations. They could not foresee what subsequent revolutionary changes, new inventions entirely beyond the vision of even the loftiest imagination, would make. Marx and Engels (inevitably Mr. Charles thinks) faced with the advent of steam-machinery came to the conclusion that men must of necessity supply themselves with a new philosophy of living, to wit, one which would fit them—men—to the increased dimensions of the tool. The desire to own things individually must give way and adjust itself to collective ownership. Hence Socialism in all its varieties : Communism, Collectivism, Guildism, which is Syndicalism without its soul ; and Syndicalism itself, of which the soul is anarchistic temper and the body of a heavy-footed communism. All these in his opinion were " moulds of thought " to which the minds of thinkers of the 19th century, no matter how virile, penetrative and original, must accommodate themselves, because forsooth the day of the steam engine was here. It will not be necessary for us to say that we disagree entirely with the dictum that a thinker, however great, is unable to think around or away from the mechanistic appliances of his age, but it is worth pointing out that the 19th century thinker who preceded Marx provides a direct refutation of it. Max Stirner was not hypnotised by the steam-engine. Nor would any thinker who knew his own temper sufficiently well be capable of exercising a selection among the services which his time and age were able to offer him. " Das Kapital " was refuted before it was written. Its theories based on word-values had already been proved empty of relevance. Once it is recognised that individual human temper is the standard against which all tools are measured, a proposal to adjust temper to fit the mechanism reveals itself as the flimsy excuse to cover the feebleness of those who are so spiritless as to allow even their tools to become their masters. Steam even with the machinery, enormous and cumbersome which its nature seems to demand, is not too big to be the tool of those who have the audacity to use it so. It is the tool of the capitalists, and there is no preordained class of capitalists. All may be capitalists who can be. Men who know their own minds know that they need tools, i.e. instruments subjected and amenable to their own wills, and by hook or crook they will get them. They cannot be bluffed by the mere size of a machine into accepting a master and calling it a tool ; they leave that sort of thing to the philosophers. But, unless that which has been the desideratum of all who since the history of the world began have looked in pity at the hard lot of their fellows be achieved—a change of heart—there will always be those who are born tools, those who to relieve themselves of the burden of being responsible for themselves are more than willing to become not merely the appendages and tools of others but the tools of any instrument which should yield itself to their service. It is not the kind of tool which is the decisive factor : it is the lack of temper in the man who uses it. It is not the steam-engine which has created slaves and slaves will not be abolished by its supersession. Before its advent, when tools were of a maniable size, the slaves existed, hounded, beaten, branded and manacled. * * * * So it seems worth while to get behind the generality " Progress " since obviously there exists no such thing. A person or thing can progress : that is, advance in any number of ways. He or it can " progress " downwards, upwards or onwards. But " Progress " as a generality is the instrument of the rhetorician and the professional exploiter of the brainless. In relation to the human kingdom, especially since the rise to popularity among the word-stunned of its related conceptual spook, " evolution," human progress has been regarded as an inevitable transmutation of this planet into a human world where men can live without hardship, toil, danger and difficulty. The " progress of civilisation " has been the softening of the rigours of the external world, the dwindling of harshness and asperity in the struggle with "nature." "Progress," so it is held, has proceeded pari passu with inventive energy expended to subject the power of nature into the service of men, relieving them of toil. That this is true to a large extent of " progress " in the development of tools cannot be denied. That it is true, explains why civilisation has become synonymous with decay, a blight eating into the individual lives which make up the human kingdom. The notion that the condition of slavery and submission among men fluctuates about the type of tool which is prevalent in any age has arisen from thinking that the " progress of civilisation " need have any antecedent causal relation to the " progress of men " : that the easy submissiveness of matter to handling by men has of necessity direct beneficial results for the advancement of men. Increase in the amenities of a progressively softened environment, and the growth of men's sensitive power are two totally different things : they are almost opposites ; in fact the greater part of the development wherein men have become more sensitive, aware and able has been achieved by rough and harsh experience, which has accentuated their consciousness of the difference which exists between them and their environment. It has broken the hypnotic spell which made them at one with it. They have veritably cut their teeth on the sharp edge of difficulties. The difficult task has been the anvil on which human strength has been forged, and if history is allowed to speak in the matter, life on a " press the button " basis will be none too friendly to the growth of men. " To increase the penetrative power of the senses " is the periphrasis which should oust " progress " as a term applicable to living development from language. Reference to environment is excessive because unnecessary. The " environment " is what it is. Its potential powers and uses are given quantities : postulates to be learned in order to be accepted, and thereafter used. Matter is not altered when it is used. It is accepted for what it is. What alters is the intelligence which is increasingly able to recognise the existent character of environment. To stand on the sea-shore and hold communion as power to power with a jelly-fish for instance will make it all plain. Any ordinary human intelligence regarding it is aware that the inert mass of substance is surrounded by what the intellect calls the " wonders " of the universe. Yet if the choicest of such wonders were gathered from all the corners of the world into its immediate vicinity it would make no difference to the jelly-fish. The "discoveries" are there; what is behind time is the fish. Everything awaits its awareness, and to intensify this by even so much as a tremor means more for it than the whole world beside. "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" No more than it profits the fish. Environment is a wholly secondary matter—a result and not a cause. It will be acted upon readily enough when the intelligence becomes alive to it. To reverse the order of the relation between intelligence and its environment is not a matter of more or less : it is rather one of truth and its opposite. All thinkers of any value have risen superior to the environmental conditions accidental to their age. It is a sufficient condemnation of the Socialist thinkers merely to state that they have not, and their Nemesis is already treading at their heel. While yet the filthy spectacle of the industrial towns which an easy acceptance of steam machinery made possible still befouls the countryside, the hollowness of Marxian economics with their theories of value can be made demonstrable to the mind of a child. February 2nd, 1914. 43 THE EGOIST effort. Indeed if economy has any voice in the matter, the transport trade of the world will cease, seeing that the present cost of the transportation of goods averages out at 100% of the cost of production. In view of the foregoing it is easy to arrive at an intellectual estimate of the value of those communistic writers who have been endeavouring to scarify the much-though-miserably advised proletariat into an acceptance of their particular nostrums. We can take as typical of the rest a recent jeremiad of the Editor of the " New Age " in reply to a challenge from one of the capitalistic press to refute its defence of the South African Government's action during the recent disturbances. The " reply " contains the following : We come to that aspect of the problem which as we said at the outset will raise the question ... of the very existence of society. . . . Does it not exist in part ... of the class we call the proletariat? ... In all affairs concerning society . . . they have as much title as any of us, to ask where, and exactly where they come in. But their only means of existence . . . is to sell their labour. What is to happen......if nobody chances to think their labour worth the cost of reproduction and .... if human labour power ceases to be of sufficient value to command the price of subsistence? Under these circumstances the proletariat is in the position of horses . . . threatened with the extinction of petrol . . . the fact that . . . the obsolescent material consists of human beings, each made in the image of God does not disqualify it from falling under the general rule of Economics. . . . Economists measure the advance of an industry, not by the increase in the number of men it employs, but by the increase of production at a diminished cost . . . and the economists, as we say are right in measuring progress by the ease with which production is maintained. . . . Such schemes, of labour-saving appliances . . . are numerous as the Armada, and as threatening to the existence of the proletariat as that was to England. Now will Mr. Strachey begin to see where retrenchments for economy may carry us? Now will he look like a Statesman, etc., etc. Would we . . . stop science . . . put a period to progress, cease inventing proletariat saving machinery ? . . . We would not ! What then ? There only remain two means of dealing with them . . . one is castration and the lethal-chamber for every proletarian, . . . and the other is the . . . social device for at once saving part of society from extinction which is known to our readers as the National Guild System. In the same calm hypnotised way one could imagine an insane mathematician attempting to prove a proposition to an understanding listener, by a careful proof of its contrary. It is the concept, dear reader, which has made this hapless writer mad. By generalising from the verb " to produce "—a word which to mean anything at all requires specific limitation by subject and object—he has arrived at a " conception," a " thought," i.e. production, to which by the very act of generalising he gives absolute unconditioned existence. After that of course he has no control over it; it simply runs away with him, to the extent that he is driven to make proof to workers, who would not willingly produce a pin did they not think they were producing something to live on : he assures such that " the economists are right in measuring progress by the ease with which production is maintained " ! Ease with which the production of lethal-chambers is maintained ! might not the worker be " right " in thinking them maintained somewhat too easily—even with progress at stake? It is this kind of mind which accepts slavishly an accepted but erroneous mould of speech in the face of common sense—a mind unoriginal and conventional, which is ready to be hypnotised by an existent, what though hateful, mode of labour. It cannot think or imagine beyond it. It fails to appreciate that creator and creation are not on equal standing : that the intelligence that created a monster can create its destroyer; that only by the consent of its creator and user can the machine do anything either for or to the mind which creates it. The machine is powerless to vary itself or its powers : its use even lies at the mercy of men of whom the only constant thing which can truly be asserted is that they change, who can destroy it or supersede it : or simply neglect it. To base a way of living on the assumption that a type of machine is permanent and that men will submit their variable ways permanently to it, is to be dazzled and therefore deluded by a single chance Having said this, it will be easier to allow full value to the illuminating suggestion as to the tendency in labour-saving machinery which it is the purpose of the Manifesto, to which we have already referred, to define. Its description is not merely an Individualist manifesto: it calls itself an "Electro-Individualistic Manifesto," and powerfully suggestive of enormous changes in industrial enterprise it is. Electricity is displacing steam as a servant power : a commonly-observed fact but of which few have noticed any important implications. The import of electricity in relation to industrialism is according to the Manifesto this : its use will abolish the machine of enormous magnitude : its natural " bent " favours the miniature machine which is a " tool " : whereas steam-power favours the machine of enormous magnitude which cannot be individually owned on any extended scale. The use of electricity means therefore the return—after an enormous sweep round the circle which includes the machine—to the tool : not indeed as it was harnessed to the human energy of hand and arm, but to a power which can be regulated to almost unlimited strength or shaded off to the most delicate fineness. But the unique importance lies in the possibility of such miniature tools being individually owned : the personal possession of the user : capable of being stored and used in the home. The break-up of the factory-system therefore : break-up of the towns : decentralisation and disintegration of the industrial system ! No wonder Mr. Charles is intoxicated by his imaginative sweep into the possibilities of electricity. He quotes T. A. Edison and his comment on this modern Prometheus he shall make for himself. He says " Thomas Alva Edison has spoken ax cathedra: "Not individualism but social labour will dominate in the future. You can't have individual machines and every man working for himself. Pace, Mr. Edison : you may be a great inventor and a magnificent organiser of inventive talent, but don't prophesy until you know. What for instance is your endeavour to make a form which would cast in one mould a complete cement-house in a variation of styles, but an attempt to create an individual machine in house-building? Is not your electric vehicle an individual machine in locomotion? Is not the tiny motor on the sewing machine a magnificent example of individual miniature machinery? Is not all the inventive talent busy now to invent a practical tractor for the small farm? Is this not an individual machine? Almost all inventors of modern times are in the direction of the individual machine." Of how it will be possible to " burst the steel trust " without striking a single blow at its armour, the Manifesto illustrates by the following from the "Scientific American." (It is now possible to produce steel by electricity at almost a commercial price in a miniature cylindrical furnace about 18 inches high and 14 inches in diameter.) "Electrically-refined Steel for Automobiles.— Apropos of the recent article in the ' Scientific American ' on the growth of electrical refining of steel, we note that the automobile manufacturers are availing themselves of the new process for the production of mild steel castings. One of the largest English automobile manufacturers has installed an electric furnace for supplying castings of this kind for machines made at his factory." The Manifesto would be made more valuable by an augmentation of its list of such instances : but those who are on the look-out for the first appearance of a type of labour-saving tool which can be used apart from a herd will be sufficiently heartened by the sight of a single instance. That others will follow there is no need to fear. The Manifesto prophesies that by the year 2000 a single unsupported individual will be able to produce almost without manual labour, and certainly without overwhelmingly harsh labour, the entire round of tasks necessary for the complete service of his needs. The regulation of light and heat which electricity gives promise of suggests the creation of artificially-created climatic conditions which will make the present vast transport trade of the world appear a costly and barbarously crude 44 THE EGOIST February 2nd, 1914 discovery of a facile way of handling the vast inanimate power stored up in the world. It is sure that there must be billions of possible alternatives to this present way of handling, but that the sensitive observation of a Watt happened to concentrate, probably if the truth were known on account of a habit of mooching over the fire, upon this one, which suggested to him the possibility of steam-machinery. Had Watts had the type of mind which is hypnotised by its environment, deadened in its powers of observing new relations by a too strong " set " towards the accepted conventional way of regarding them, he could never have been impressed by a commonplace phenomenon in such a degree. But it is just this " set " type of intelligence which has seen finality in the system he established ; who are persuaded that men must either adapt themselves to its ungainly services or present themselves at the door of the lethal-chamber, unwilling but persuaded that they must die. * * * * Of all these " means of production " to which one philosopher says that the workers must either become adaptable or succumb, the Manifesto makes very short work : " Why not make every proletarian also a possessor? Why use legal and revolutionary methods to gain possession of something that will be of no value in the near future? Electricity will do all the necessary dispossessing and expropriation. It will rapidly put all the present means of production on the junk heap." It seems a little ominous to be speaking already of " making " the proletarian into a possessor. Is he never going to throw off his non-possessing character on his own account and become a possessor without waiting to be made? Is he in fact going to dodge the uprising—the insurrection—after all ? For it is not the question of dispossessing and expropriation that anyone is much concerned with : it is the appropriation and possession : and who or what is the benevolent despot which is going to make him proprietor save at the length of the only efficient demand —i.e. the power to take. And, once given—or taken, though one might like to think that if work is to be reduced to the level of pressing a button, the button to be small and modest enough for a humble man to consider its possession not wholly above his station, and in the limits of his own home too, he will surely have the spirit to stick to the button and defend the home. But there is no knowing; to those of the serving habit there is no limit to the number of ways they will devise for slipping into the mud and sticking in it, just as there are a million ways to the intelligence of a Napoleon who wants a continent or an Alexander who wants the world, for getting what they want. What for instance instead of the happy dream that with electricity's advent each member of the proletariat will be presented with a neat little electric outfit, with land and climate, all complete, merely requiring that he shall " press the button "—what is to prevent some erratic genius being seized with the quite conceivable and quite overpowering dislike to their faces and devising a machine to wipe them out of existence? Indeed until now electrocution is the most familiar of the dramatic forms in which the ordinary public have been made aware of its possibilities. There is nothing moreover in the past service of machines sufficient to induce men to set them up as saviours of Society, and electricity fitted to no matter what kind of machine, unless it is kept in its place as a servant will become the master of the unintelligent. Everything turns on courage and temper in the long run, and if it is absent mechanical labour-saving power might as well have developed in the direction of a ring through the nose and a clamp through the foot for any virtue it might have to save men from slavery. There will always be men who will contrive to be masters as long as there are men willing to be slaves. The temper which will submit itself ; adapt itself easily to systems either mechanical or spiritual, to anything other than its own personal preferences, is the dry-rot in the spirit which makes slavery. It may be objected that this temper is born and not made. Very well then, why kick against the pricks on its behalf? If men are born with that kind of temper they are born slaves and will sink to slavery in spite of every effort of born masters to hold them up. Whether they are or no remains to be seen. At any rate the passing away of the dead weight of an industrial system, fitted to the requirements of huge composite machines will give the egoist temper a chance to breathe if it exists though ever so feebly. * * * * The same brand of counsel which expounds to the " poor " how the true and inevitable economy of production is that which must lead the majority of the populace to the electrocuting chair, also expounds to them the doctrine of " ought." The Editor of the " New Age " must recently have frightened the capitalist press greatly by giving them a good talking to—administering rebukes all round, ranging from the "Booming impertinence" for the "Times," "omniscient twaddle" for the "Nation," "yap" for something else, down to one which he distinguishes as being the " meanest jackal-pup of the litter " because forsooth all these have not interpreted the true truth of the South African business for the proletariat as they " ought " and because even its untrue truth when supplied was late—the old dodge of leading the poor to expect outrageous philanthropy from the enemy, but not the spunk of a chicken from themselves. The Capitalist press is the Capitalists' press, the lips and tongue of the Capitalist body. It is the mouthpiece contrived, bought and set working for the one purpose of telling forth their praise and aiding their own schemes. Why should it give utterance to anything that would make difficulties for capitalists or give away the secret where their strength lies? If it can give the impression that their supremacy pivots round a question of "Right" or " Wrong " and can keep their journals such as the " New Age " busy debating it, why not? The Editor of the " New Age " would do well by himself if he were to re-read the story of Samson and Delilah, which applies very pertinently to the situation. No one we think from the day that story was written through the thousands of years down to this has seen anything but wisdom in the giant's fictions concerning the withes, the plaited ropes and what not. Where men have seen folly plainly visible was in finally putting an enemy in possession of the truth. The capitalist press is quite capable of learning a lesson like that even if the " humanitarian " journals are not. If the poor want true descriptions prompt and to time they must become articulate and supply themselves with a mouthpiece of their own. At present they have neither the brains to conceive nor the strength to produce nor the intelligence to devise the like. If such a one were created and run in their interests they would look on at its slow strangling as calmly as they would regard a military garrison. Both phenomena would be to them equally devoid of significance. It is not the poor who maintain such scattered shreds as exist of a poor man's press. Then why whine because they are not told what it would be very good for them to know, but not so good for those upon whom they rely to do the telling. VIEWS AND COMMENTS. THE CHASTITY OF WOMEN. We have just finished reading Miss Christabel Pankhurst's magnum opus " The Hidden Scourge and how to end it." The scourge is venereal disease and the end of it is Votes for Women as for men, and Chastity for Men as for women : a reasonable attitude of give and take apparently. As throughout the length of her hundred and fifty pages Miss Pankhurst does not once venture the indiscretion of an individual February 2nd, 1914. THE EGOIST 45 observation, but contents herself with the repetition of the tale of social illnesses such as the maiden of sixteen on the orange-box at the corner has for a long time made us familiar with, alongside generous extracts from various medical works which the reader can consult for himself, we need do no more than summarise the argument and by preference in the manner which Miss Pankhurst herself has chosen— the ingenious manner of the compiler of the rhyme " This is the House that Jack built." Omitting the cumulative renderings and repetitions the tale of " The Hidden Scourge and How to end it " stands on this wise : These are the Doctors Who told the Tale Of the Scrofulous Child Of the Infected Wife Of the Lustful Man Who before his Marriage Visited the Women Whom Poverty led To wander the Streets To Minister to Fiends Who contracted the Disease Which was the Scourge Which destroyed the " Spiritual Ideals" Of the " Normal Woman who regards the Sex Act as the Final Pledge of her Faith and her Love." Miss Pankhurst, risking no observations, limits herself to pronouncing judgment, the which is that of the " pure " woman, and runs to the effect that it is all very wicked and has got to be stopped. Thus : First get votes for women, then get chastity for men by grafting them with the sexual habits of women. It sounds simple : though the author is not very explicit as to the manner in which the remedy is to be applied : whether inwardly or outwardly for instance, though she does in one place suggest a "dose." The manner of application however we may leave, and limit our attention to the remedy : the chastity of women administered to men. The chastity of women is an exceedingly interesting subject. It appears useless to try to define chastity. Chastity is the generalisation and means nothing. We can however arrive at the mental attitude of those who speak of chastity as a virtue relating to themselves and others : who actually think of themselves and others as being chaste : and virtuous on that account. To such, to be chaste means to give an inner intellectual or emotional assent to the absence of an experience which outwardly is indicated by the physical state known under the name of virgin. To be chaste is the inner invisible spiritual side of the outward evident physical state of being a virgin. We need not linger over the fact that though there are many virgins there are but few who are chaste. The flesh is strong and intact, but the spirit is confused and stricken : considering which circumstances it would have been less perplexing had the author in offering the sexual habits of women for the emulation of men spoken of her panacea as " Virginity. " Perhaps such was her intention and the distinction is nothing more than a linguistic nicety which Miss Pankhurst does not think it worth while to make. That it is to be " virgin " rather than chaste she has in mind is supported by the fact that the word she uses in developing her argument is " untouched," which is speaking enough and might be taken to be conclusive. Now once the " chastity " argument comes down to the mere virginal, to conditions of being "touched" or "untouched," it shrinks to very measurable dimensions. Its " moral " thunders die away at once or change to cheerful laughter. For the cult of the virginal is on all fours with the cult of many other odd emphases which have made their way into an ancient and sophisticated civilisation. The emphasis which allows of a distinction of importance between the virginal and non-virginal condition entails—or rather it follows from—the quite arbitrary concentration of attention on a fixed point—the question whether it is fixed in repulsion or attraction emotionally being of little importance. Both forms fundamentally are made up of attraction : superficially there may appear to be some qualitative difference, but it would be hard to define : which explains why ordinary fastidious persons feel that an atmosphere turns sniffy immediately a female speaks in terms other than scoffing of the " pure " or the " chaste " or the "virginal." Why it does so they themselves would probably be at a loss to explain. The explanation is that the woman who calls herself—or others—" pure " is objectionable because she appears stupid : stupid in the precise way that the followers of the " unnatural " practices Miss Pankhurst refers to, in speaking of that now famous Piccadilly Flat which figured recently in the Police Courts are stupid. Such practices are due to quite identical psychological vagaries with those which cause women suffragists to concentrate on virginity, the only degree of " unnaturalness " which distinguishes such persons from the suffragists lying in the fact that the former had become bored with the nob of attention which now holds the suffragists, having fixed it in quite as arbitrary a spirit, on other "nobs." To call such persons " foul " is silly—and shirks the question. The explanation appears to be that there are parts of the body more sensitive than other parts, which may be stimulated into sensation by fixing attention on them. The vicious amuse themselves by imagining and thereafter " touching " ; the " pure " prolong the excitement by imagining and thereafter refraining. Fundamentally there is nothing to choose between them : but in the sequel, owing to this difference of treatment, the " vicious " put the image to the test of experience and for the time being destroy it : the " pure " " suppress " it and turn it inward where it grows into an atmosphere and a permanent obsession. To compare, for instance, the value of the two methods few people would disallow that the occupants of the Flat in question derived far less feverish excitement out of the stupid exploits than did the " pure " ladies who got wind of the affair and clamoured for their blood. These considerations explain why erotic emotion is a more permanent part of a " pure " woman's life than it ever is or has been of a used-up rake's. He has intermittently his " unfixed " moments: the "pure" woman has none: it is the essence of her creed of " purity that her attention should always remain fixed at a point. The mark of the stupid which these share in common with one another is attached to them because they allot an excessive importance pertaining either one way or another to a stimulation roused by excitation of sensitive points of the body from outside. None would hesitate to call a person (well-meaning possibly) who found his pleasure in having the soles of his feet tickled, stupid. Yet the difference between his mode and that of the " pure " and of the " rake " is only a slight difference in degree : none in kind : which explains why the " rakes " demand the " pure." It is the instinctive appreciation of like for like. It is clear why as long as the " pure " women persist there can be no abatement of "lust." It is not merely that by their very distinction they stand pointer in hand as it were stimulating it first by concentration and then by a refusal which is in itself a further stimulation, a retiring which is flight inviting chase; they make the error, as negative persons, of mistaking for lust love itself when it is offered to them. We have already elsewhere made the distinction between the two, and the phrases in which the " pure " refer to their conduct in marriage unmistakably show which of the two they are looking forward to in anticipation. They "give" themselves in marriage: that is, they permit : as negatives they submit themselves to a positive will : they feel in short that a deed is done to them which they, in virtue of the consideration that they are now married, allow. They are the true " womanly "; the attitude they adopt is not that of persons who satisfy their own desires, but of those who in kindness allow others to satisfy theirs. 46 February 2nd, 1914 THE EGOIST Having held back during the requisite period which serves to keep up their value as saleable goods before marriage, the bargain being struck they allow themselves to be " touched " as Miss Pankhurst would put it, that is, they submit to what to them, is lust. That is why they feel that they in " giving " themselves have given so much : given so much in fact that they have a reasonable claim for a lifetime of devotion : and a sound grievance if they do not get it : quite naturally too, since they have for so long set such unparalleled importance on it. During their fleeing period they have kept themselves in good countenance by imagining a sentimental heaven as an inevitable return to be made for what is so persistently sought. That is why the " pure " women are always disappointed with marriage. They find themselves in the position of the remnants of a dinner after a hungry person has dined ; a position which is the Nemesis of the womanly woman : the person who thinks it of more importance to charm than to be charmed : to be the repast rather than the diner. They make the mistake of commiserating too much, and putting too much weight upon the outcry and woes of the person with an appetite : of putting the value of the request and the refusal on the same footing : whereas they are of as wholly differing orders as are the appetite and the dinner, for the latter of which almost anything will serve, provided the appetite can be maintained. However—to get rid of this material metaphor—let us rather say that the temperament which seeks first and foremost to be charmed is of an altogether higher order than that which seeks first and foremost to charm. To have someone who charms us is a matter of infinite importance to us : as to whom we charm, provided we can keep our special magnet sufficiently within our vicinity as to keep hope alive, is of little importance at all—to us. It is the question of what we want, not of what others want—even though it happens to turn out that we are the wanted article—that is of material importance to the positive, dominating selfish master mind. Those who charm us we adore because they mean so much to our own life and growth. It is not their growth or their convenience that matters : the reason that gifts are lavished on them and their conveniences and wishes served as soon as they are spoken, is to keep them fixed where they will be serviceable to us and as token of how much they mean to us. When therefore Miss Pankhurst with a toss of the head speaks thus : " There can be no mating between the spiritually-developed women of this new day and the men who in thought or in conduct with regard to sex affairs are their inferiors," she speaks —true, to the womanly woman—in the terms of one who rebuts the efforts to win her to that which she allows but does not desire. She speaks as one who is administering a rebuff to someone else, not as one who is obstructing the satisfaction of her own needs. Nor is she. Womanly women do not pretend to love : they are loved. Their attitude of pride is strongly illuminating : in love we are humble, in miserably-happy fear of our fate ; but the " pure " women having no desire in the matter fear nothing, having nothing at stake. Their pride is the subtle expression of their nothingness : the unconscious expression of self-contempt. If they knew anything of the positive element of love, of being charmed, they would understand that it is the most valuable thing in the world : the one which stimulates growth from within, increases capacity and stimulates effort. With the verdict of the world in general in view, one does work just sufficiently well to escape its active censure for scamping. Our best work we do to satisfy ourselves : but the work which we achieve by a sort of inspiration beyond our best, by the establishing of a new record, we do it under the influence and to please the one or two people in the world who have the power to charm us—for the sake of an " It's rather good " from them. It is not so much that the charm they exert helps to surmount effort : it removes the sense of effort ; it is a lubricant : or a powerful magnet capable of drawing one up a steep place. Why then this hoity-toity " Spiritual women will not mate with "... any whatsoever? The personal value of charm to oneself is such that were a tree or a lamp-post capable of exerting it, women would mate with these. The " health" or " record " of men and women does not enter into the matter : the only question is : whether they can do it ; the charming, to wit. It is a question of power, not of an adjunct intellectually considered desirable, and the vision of " suitors " with aspect as wholesome as sound field-turnips each having a doctor's certificate in his pockets is powerfully unalluring : because, one must suppose, the efficiency of one to charm must be proved by the sole fact of charming. It is the failure to appreciate the fact about life that it is only its positive aspect that matters, which causes such radically different attitudes towards life. All the negative things, fear, hopeless misery, all forms of the thing called " disease " are specific forms of weak vitality. It is more important to heighten vitality than to combat disease : which as a matter of fact can only be overcome by increased vitality, and there is more danger to " health " to be awaited from the misery of renunciation and the dull heats of virginity than from the ills of syphilis and gonorrhoea. There can be no disease of "matter" : it can be broken but it is incapable of contracting disease. There can only be such a breaking down of the spiritual unitary stream as to render it incapable of penetrating the material which it has assimilated and organised into a body. The sole thing which can be called a "cause" of disease is low vitality and of all the things which tend to lower it, the chief is dulness. (Miss Pankhurst should have referred to the " health " of the virgins as also to our vigorous"virgin" civilisation.)Both the "pure" and the " vicious " are in and to themselves dull and stupid : they are duller still to those associated with them : the obsession in their interests of necessity makes them so. The " pure " moreover add to their lack of interest a pose of virtue which creates the close atmosphere to which we have referred : they assume the pose instinctively for a defence because fundamentally they know they are not genuine. They cannot be truthful and by contrast with their theatricality the frank bargaining of the prostitute is a relief. So the " purity" atmosphere lays a pall of dulness all about : no one escapes it : whatever the rôle we adopt we are caught in its folds. Dulness is death in life : disease has at least the relative advantage of being discomfort. In disease life is afflicted, but it is petrified by dulness ; any form of torture is preferable to it ; any small " vice " which offers a trivial variation of sense perception. The seeking after the " vicious " is a small ineffectual wriggle which life makes to escape the boredom of the "pure," but "vice" cannot throw off its " pure " character. The two are one— related to each other as the observe and reverse of a coin : the under and over of the same psychological condition : as the prostitute is the twin-trader of the legally-protected "pure" woman. Where there are excise officials there are smugglers. Let therefore the womanly women abandon the " privileges " which enable them to make a corner in a commodity the demand for which they sedulously stimulate, and the pirate brigs which ply on the outskirts of the trade will become purposeless. The entreaty of the cry " Virginity for men " coming from so favoured a class as those of the " pure " women has a comical sound, and Miss Pankhurst's disease-story is overdone. If seventy-five per cent. of men have one form of venereal disease and twenty per cent. have another and both kinds are contagious and possibly ineradicable, it follows that the number of those who are free from it neither means nor matters : that we are all tainted and presumably all inoculated in fact. If Miss Pankhurst desires in the interests of a fad successfully to exploit human boredom and the ravages of dirt she will require to call in the aid of a more subtle intelligence than she herself appears to possess, February 2nd, 1914. THE EGOIST 47 The Plain Person. " Let dogs delight to bark and bite, For God hath made them so ; Let bears and lions growl and fight, For 'tis their nature, too." —I. Watts, " Divine Songs," xvi. WITHOUT presuming to inquire why Providence in Its wisdom should have endowed some of Its creatures with such particularly objectionable habits, I venture to say that these lines contain more sound philosophy and sociology than most modern treatises on either subject. Under the spell of Rousseau most of our ideologists, as Napoleon named them, assume as their fundamental postulate that God has not made men so, and that it is not human nature, too, to growl and fight. The perusal of a single copy of any paper, and especially any one devoted to the cause of Humanity, ought to teach them the contrary. This widespread delusion seems to me to result from the initial absurdity of supposing that man is a species. I cannot myself understand how any thinking being who has accepted the Darwinian revelation can believe that the natural process of evolution stopped at the moment when the first anthropoid ape stood up on its hind legs, and began to bark in articulate syllables. Not even a missionary, nor a member of the Fabian Society, can seriously believe that all men are alike externally. The most rabid philanthropist has not dared to assert in so many words that all men look alike. But he foams at the mouth if anyone insinuates in his hearing that they do not feel and think alike. I should have thought it self-evident that the natural gap between the pygmy and, let us say, Plato is greater than the gap between the chimpanzee and the pygmy. But so far from this being generally recognised, it is taken for granted, on the contrary, that Plato and the pygmy are united by the straitest bonds of brotherhood. If both have the misfortune to dwell in any " civilised " country, each is given a vote, and as the pygmies are generally in the majority, they legislate for Plato, instead of his legislating for them. It is only due to the sheer mental incompetence of the pygmies that the British Empire is not at this moment being governed by a Pygmy Ministry. As it is we have a Pygmy Insurance Act. The secret of all this absurdity, so far as I can make out, is that recent evolution—the evolution of the last few thousand years—has gone on mainly in the nervous system. That is, of course, the only important part of the human anatomy, the seat of life itself, as well as of all the moral and mental faculties. But because it is less obvious to the ordinary senses than the skin or bones, it is utterly ignored in every attempt at classifying the human races. Properly speaking, we ought not to say the race or species, but the kingdom of man, in order to emphasise the fact that mankind has as many divisions and subdivisions as the animal kingdom, or the vegetable one. Another and more fatal reason is the difficulty of classification according to the nervous system. The average scientist is as much a dunce as the average scholar. The scholar devotes himself to the grammar of Homer and the punctuation of Shakespeare because he is too stupid to understand and criticise their poetry. In the same way the ethnologist measures skulls and, literally, splits hairs, because he is too stupid to appreciate the psychical characteristics that really make the difference between races. (The hair is actually the most fashionable test among recent ethnographers.) Yet it so happens that among their now discarded methods of classification these blind leaders of the blind once stumbled upon a classification which symbolises a truth. The dolichocephalic and brachycephalic skulls (as they call them in their absurd jargon) of the ethnologists—that is to say, the longheads and broadheads, really correspond to the narrow and broad minds. Unfortunately this fairly obvious characterisation is never apparent to the longheads themselves. One powerful party among them has adopted as its badge the word "Catholic," while another boasts of the description "Liberal." But the title in which they most rejoice is that of "the plain person." They use this expression in hypocritical modesty. The plain people of America believe themselves the salt of the earth. They believe that Jesus Christ was really a plain person, and a good American. They believe that Almighty God is a plain God. A longhead is always able to see the mental perversity and intolerance of the longhead who is opposed to him, but because his own monomania happens to take a hostile form, he labours under the extraordinary delusion that he himself must be a broadhead. A conspicuous case of this delusion is the educational obstructionist, Dr. Clifford. The accredited leader of the most narrow-minded and intolerant of Christian sects, because he happens to object to the burning of Baptists by Roman Catholics, and the boycotting of Baptists by Anglicans, he persuades himself that he and his friends are since rely in favour of religious toleration. He is deeply pained because the Bishop of London will not let him preach in St. Paul's Cathedral; and he would go to the stake rather than let me preach at Westbourne Park. It is not the opinion a man holds, but the temper in which he holds it, that marks him as a longhead or broadhead. The scribe is always with us, and to convert him from one ism to another is not to change his nature, but merely to enlist bigotry and fanaticism under a new standard. We see this very plainly in the case of Paul of Tarsus. The result of his celebrated sunstroke was not to make him a wise man, but merely to make Christianity, under his auspices, as intolerant and extravagant at Judaism. A very similar phenomenon is to be observed in the case of the modern sects who style themselves Secularists, Freethinkers, Agnostics, or by some other name intended to convey that they are broad-minded. They are, as a rule, longheads of the most pronounced type. They carry the spirit of Dr. Clifford into the work of opposing Dr. Clifford. Doubtless they are more honest and respectable men, but many of them are not a whit more tolerant. The Socialists are less hypocritical, because their name commits them to the extermination of the entire class of broadheads, as well as of all longheads whose axis of insanity is not parallel with the Socialist axis. Yet it is quite plain from their writings that many of them claim to reason, and even to understand facts. Moreover, like the Christians, they love their enemies-—their motto is " Brotherhood or Death !" But for the fact that they suffer from a full share of that mutual animosity which proverbially prevails between brothers, they would have reduced mankind already beneath a yoke like that of the Incas of Peru, and the Jesuits of Paraguay. As it is they have gone a great way in converting our anonymous bureaucracy into a species of Jesuit Order, the more formidable because the plain person has not yet noticed its existence. The Insurance Act is a faint foretaste of what he has to expect. It is becoming notorious that science has fallen under the same evil influence, and that new specialist is but old scribe writ large. The class of men who formerly entered the church, and tried to put down geology, now enter the laboratory and try to put down imagination. Huxley had the physiognomy of a Dominican, and he was a favourable specimen of his class. The most objectionable feature of the longhead is his dishonesty. His idea of controversy is that of the Old Bailey attorney, or of the American athlete's 48 THE EGOIST February 2nd, 1914 famous advice—" Win, tie or wrangle." The correspondence columns of the provincial press are the happy hunting-ground of this class. You will see the Papist correspondent, primed by his Catholic Truth Society, demanding " proofs " that such a body as the Inquisition ever existed, or that the Church has ever shown itself unfriendly to the progress of freedom and science. The Bishop of London won his ecclesiastical spurs by taking advantage of his college training to bully the poor ignorant " free-thinkers " who lecture in our public parks—or used to, before the revival of the blasphemy laws by Dr. Clifford's " Liberal " Government. His lordship is still possessed by the same evil spirit. Mr. Harold Begbie recently published a well-written account of some spiritual cures wrought by the Salvation Army. The Bishop, of course, would clap the whole Army in prison, if he had the power. As he hasn't, he adroitly claims the benefit of their achievements. " Your sceptical friend has got to answer that "—is his comment on Mr. Begbie's narrative. We see that the Bishop is mentally incapable of understanding that a sceptic may be a broad-minded and reverent philosopher, anxious only to discern truth from falsehood, and perfectly willing to accept Mr. Begbie's miracles for what they are worth, as interesting psychical phenomena—phenomena of course not peculiar to the Christian religion, and not affording the faintest support to a single one of the Thirty-Nine Articles. Indeed, the most striking thing in Mr. Begbie's book is the scanty reference to Christ. The Salvation Army might almost be Deists. But that is the typical attitude of the longhead. For this bishop, Christianity is a legal system, to be wrangled over by attorneys in the true forensic spirit, to which truth is a matter of complete indifference, and every technical point is to be seized upon for the sake of gaining a verdict. A novelist believed to enjoy the episcopal patronage published a romance the plot of which turned on a forgery committed by an eminent scientist in the interest of infidelity. Mr. Gilbert Chesterton has written a short story showing the same animus. An anti-christian Frenchman is made to commit a murder in order to prevent the Roman Church coming into possession of certain funds. The pages of history are black with such crimes committed by Christians in support of their party, but it is at least premature on their part to credit their opponents with wickedness equal to their own. Nevertheless it is by no means certain that the Bishop and his literary henchmen will turn out to be false prophets. Because these crimes are not typical of the Christian as such, they are typical of the longhead. And as soon as there is as much money in science or in rationalism as there is in Christianity, the same order of minds will bring their baleful energies to the antichristian side. With every new endowment of a laboratory or professorial chair, some undeveloped longhead is tempted to choose science as his career, instead of the underpaid pulpit ; and party spirit will do the rest. A glaring instance of this kind came under my notice last year. An anonymous person advertised in a London paper for evidence that would stand the test of cross-examination on the subject of telepathy. I regard telepathy as a purely physical phenomenon, essentially of the same kind as wireless telegraphy ; and I am not greatly interested in it. However I happened to have some evidence on the subject, which I have since given in a published volume, and I wrote to the solicitor whose name figured in the advertisement. I received a reply which appeared to me at once evasive and impudent. The writer pretended that the replies he had received were too numerous to be dealt with thoroughly, and required, if I recollect rightly, that I should set out my evidence for his consideration, and put some price upon it. I could only infer that the advertiser was a crank of the same species as the late John Hampden, who made a bet that the earth was flat, and when the question was decided by actual measurement, and decided against him, took advantage of the Gaming Act to recover his stake. This anonymous person's tactics were calculated to make him the judge as to the value of the evidence submitted, thereby enabling him to shirk the proffered payment. It is clear that the only fair and reasonable procedure would have been the appointment of a tribunal, if possible containing an expert in sleight-of-hand, like Mr. Maskelyne, whose verdict would be more satisfactory to a sensible inquirer than that of professors inexperienced in such tests. To such a tribunal I was prepared to submit my evidence, and I was equally willing to repeat my experiments under any test that could be devised. I was the more ready to do this because I still have an open mind on the question, and think it quite possible that I may have been misled. My offer having led to nothing, I could only draw the obvious conclusion that I was dealing, not with an honourable inquirer, but with a fanatic, whose only object was to boast that no one could " prove " the reality of the phenomena. Accordingly I was not altogether surprised to read in a review called Bedrock an article, still anonymous, in which this egregious person asserted that he had offered a thousand pounds for evidence on the subject of telepathy without receiving a single satisfactory response. Bedrock purports to be a scientific organ, and to be edited by Sir Bryan Donkin, M.D., Dr. E. B. Poulton, Dr. H. H. Turner, and G. Archdall Reid, M.B., &c, two of these gentlemen being professors in the university of Oxford. I am unable to say who owns the review, but as its profits do not appear to be sufficient to pay four editorial salaries to men of such eminence, the inference is perhaps warranted that Bedrock is privately subsidised by some person too modest to let his name appear, and animated by a zeal for what is sometimes called Materialism, hardly inferior to that of the anonymous contributor whose tactics I have exposed. Be that as it may, I addressed a letter to the distinguished editors, informing them of my previous response to their contributor, renewing my offer to submit my evidence to any responsible tribunal, and expressing a hope that they would either require their anonymous collaborator to behave like an honest man, or repudiate him. At the end of two months I received a letter, again anonymous, being signed mystically "The Editor," as though the four distinguished gentlemen I have named were combined, like the four creatures in Ezekiel's vision, to form a unique editorial monster. " The Editor " contented itself with stating that it had seen copies of the former correspondence, and that I was mistaken in stating that " no notice was taken " of my offer. It is the typical Old Bailey point. " The Editor " does not, because it dares not, defend its contributor. It does not, for reasons I am content to leave to the reader's conjecture, repudiate him, or call upon him to deal with me in the spirit of an honourable man. It takes its technical point, and nonsuits me. It is exactly the kind of letter I should have expected to receive from the able secretary of the Catholic Truth Society. It is the longhead on his defence. The moral of all this is very simple. The Ethiop does not change his skin by changing his name to Abyssinian. The longhead is just as objectionable and dangerous in the professorial chair as in the pulpit. We are dealing with a law of nature, which we cannot abrogate, and which we must therefore learn and understand. I trust there is no presumption on my part in expressing a hope that this paper in its new atavar as The Egoist will continue to afford a refuge for those of us who have some pretension to be broadheads. If it be true to say that every definition is a not, it would seem to follow that each self can only define itself in opposition to other selves. So much February 2nd, 1914. THE EGOIST 49 " interference with the environment " seems an inevitable condition of existence and growth. But I would venture to express a hope that, if controversy be part of our life, it may be conducted in a different spirit from that which characterises the longheads. The practice of raking up old utterances, and trying to put one's opponent in the wrong on logical grounds is very suitable for a debate in the House of Commons. But it is deteriorating in its nature to the very faculty of truthfulness. Nearly all argument resolves itself into a misunderstanding in words, concealing an opposition in sentiment. Let us cultivate the art of putting our own case fairly, without trying to put anyone else's case unfairly. I do not always find myself in full agreement with the Editor of The Egoist. But I want to read her, and agree with as much as I can. I want her to write for her friends, and not for people who are standing by with note-books, ready to take advantage of any apparent carelessness or contradiction, to score points, as they suppose, against her. That sort of thing is anthropoid. Let us leave it to the Plain Person. Allen Upward. Books and Papers. THE middle class is always with us. Miss May Sinclair* is determined to prove that it is always with us and to prove also that we should admire it. Her Combined Maze is an affectionate study in minor mediocrity, with nothing golden about it, the kind of mediocrity which would have shocked Marcus Aurelius into murder and rapine. Miss Sinclair treats her subject from within ; I believe this is an ancient allegation, but it is quite true. There is nothing artistically wrong about it; if your mind is emotional and not scientific it is absurd to try and write scientifically. And that is what bothers me in the Combined Maze. I feel all the time that Miss Sinclair is striving conscientiously and earnestly to do something which is against her nature—to write a novel from the outside, scientifically, à la Madame Bovary. It is useless; Ranny she loved and Winifred she loved and Violet she hated, and a scientific author must not hate and love his characters. There is no need to abolish the emotional manner of novel-writing; it is the English method, and Miss Sinclair is English. It is the method of Dickens, and one has to be marvellously cynical and marvellously calm to write successfully in the other way. Miss Sinclair's earnestness makes her work really interesting. She is obviously anxious to write something fine, to make a novel which is not clap-trap or mild pornography or some other form of popular amusement, but to create a real work of art. I think she has failed to accomplish her purpose, but at the same time there is in the Combined Maze something of the power which comes from a personality sincerely trying to render itself and its emotions—not its impressions. Yet this sincerity does not eliminate rhetoric—the emotional manner naturally becomes rhetorical even when it is trying to be scientific— thus, I should call this passage rhetorical—"Her life had in it the wonder and beauty and mystery of religion. All the religion that she knew was in each service that she did for Ranny in his house. Acacia Avenue, with its tufted trees, with its rows of absurd and pathetic and diminutive villas, was for Winny a shining walk between heavenly mansions. She handled each one of Ranny's prize cups as if it had been the Holy Grail." It is just as rhetorical as Francis Thompson, as exaggerated as the amiable Dickens. In creating the character of Winny Dymond, Miss Sinclair has done something which Aristotle would have found too horrible to contemplate : she has shown us the spectacle of one blameless in pain. The scarification of Winifred Dymond's soul has in it all the horror of the Protestant misinterpretation of the Christ story. I sometimes wonder in a disinterested sort of way whether high tragedy can really be made out of the lives of the middle classes. It seems to me that people like Miss Sinclair always lend their own sensitive emotions to their characters, and make a realism which is quite unreal. It is incredible that these drab personages really feel the exquisite emotions that the novelists assure us they do, incredible that they should make noble sacrifices, while they are earning thirty shillings a week in a furniture shop, and surpass the passion of Lancelot between the Scenic Railway and the Water Chute at Earl's Court. I do not mean by this that we should at once revert to the picturesque nonsense of the post-Scott novelists. I do mean that I think these noble sacrifices and exquisite emotions belong entirely to the region of the ideal. Antigone to those who knew her was probably only an unfortunate princess with ordinary faults like everybody else. In Sophocles she becomes an entirely ideal person with ideal virtues and characteristics, and because she acts in an ideal world—and not because she is a Greek and a princess—we accept her and no violence is done to our sense of fitness. When the French give us life crude and as we know it, we admit their truth. But the finding of ideal situations, or rather ideal motives and emotions in the life of the "basso popolo" seems to be rather like imitating the monster in Horace's Ars Poetica. Mr. W. L. George* is also interested in the middle classes, though he leans to the correct upper and the flashy lower. Moreover in The Making of an Englishman he has some entertaining criticisms on England and English people. He is not bitter enough for me, who hate the English, but he has discovered some of their faults. The worst of it is that to make the book saleable Mr. George has been compelled to smear it plentifully with sentiment and also to come down from his pinnacle of denunciation so that his hero may end up as a buttress of the British Empire. I like to think of the things Mr. George would have said if he had not wished to be a popular success. For that he will be, since he is clever as the devil and has made up his mind, apparently, to have immediate success. (Alas, George, that you are not one of us, who do marvellous things for no remuneration and receive our reward in the next world since assuredly we get nothing in this!) Mr. George, describing his hero, remarks that he is better at synthesis than analysis. The same thing applies to the author. The most valuable parts of his book are the three syntheses of English character called " Creeds "; here, for example is the CREED OF A MIDDLE CLASS MAN. I believe in the suburbs of London. I believe they are enough for me. I believe that I must shave every evening and take a bath every morning, unless I have overslept myself, wear dark suits as is seemly * " The Combined Maze." By May Sinclair. (Hutchinson & Co. 6/-.) * "The Making of an Englishman." By W. L. George. (Constable. 6/-.) 50 THE EGOIST February 2nd, 1914 in the City. I believe in drawing-rooms for the use of callers, semi-detached villas, nasturtiums in season and dogs with aristocratic, if distant, relatives. I believe that public school-boys, University men (who must not be called Varsity men), and commissioned officers are snobs. I believe that the West End is a gilded haunt of vice. I believe in sober worship once a week, regular payments to the clergy. I believe in temperance, saving an occasional bust, a spree, a night on the tiles (when the wife is in the country), but even then I believe I mustn't go too far. I believe in a bit of fun with a lady now and then, being a dog and all that, so long as there's no harm in it. I believe that I am a gentleman and must be genteel, not too toney though, for it must not be said that I swank. And I believe enough to be saved with. I believe that my wife loves me and that I must reward her by insuring my life; I believe that my sons should be clerks and that my daughters should wait until clerks marry them. I believe that, when I die, the neighbours must approve of my funereal pageant. I believe that I must be honest, that I must not swear in mixed company, that I must visit the upper classes whom I despise. I believe that I am the backbone of England. I am a middle-class man." I think comment on that valuable document would be supererogatory. Mr. George, having exposed the English in this and two other creeds, became so delighted with them that he wrote a novel to give them a proper setting. Let no one object, but rather sympathise ; these syntheses become more effective, if anything, when they are surrounded by particular instances. It was a happy idea to imagine the southern French boy mad on England, mad to be English, and to use him for purposes of indirect satire. And the fact that the exigencies of the market caused all this fine insult and just denunciation to fade away into the sickening strains of Rule Britannia I have already lamented. What more is there to be said? Mr. George had the power of writing a great satire—which would be read rapturously by a few people now, and by a few more in fifty years' time—and he has chosen to mix up his satire with a very clever novel of the ordinary kind. The fastidious of the earth will delight in his satire and ignore the rest ; the people who subscribe to circulation libraries will wallow in the bosom and adjacent parts of Edith, and possibly not notice the satire. When Mr. George dies he will go to hell and rest among those who were neither for God nor his enemies. The Effort Libre has taken to Suffragettism, and therefore concerns us not. It contains an article on one Nazi, who is dead, and who, had he lived, would have reformed the world. "Some Ideas on George Brandes," by Henri Albert, Beauduin on the Poesie de l'Epoque, an article on Artificial Cold, and Mlle. Henriette Charasson on Dowson—that is the Mercure de France. Richard Aldington.

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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. By James Joyce. " Et ignotas animum dimlttit in artes." Ovid, Metamorphoses, VIII., 18. I. ONCE upon a time and a very good time it was, there was a moo-cow coming down along the road, and this moo-cow that was down along the road met a niceus little boy named baby tuckoo. His father told him that story : his father looked at him through a glass : he had a hairy face. He was baby tuckoo. The moo-cow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived : she sold lemon platt. O, the wild rose blossoms On the little green place. He sang that song. That was his song. O, the green wothe botheth. When you wet the bed, first it is warm then it gets cold. His mother put on the oilsheet. That had the queer smell. His mother had a nicer smell than his father. She played on the piano the sailor's hornpipe for him to dance. He danced : Tralala lala, Tralala tralaladdy, Tralala lala, Tralala lala. Uncle Charles and Dante clapped. They were older than his father and mother, but Uncle Charles was older than Dante. Dante had two brushes in her press. The brush with the maroon velvet back was for Michael Davitt and the brush with the green velvet back was for Parnell. Dante gave him a cachou every time he brought her a piece of tissue paper. The Vances lived in number seven. They had a different father and mother. They were Eileen's father and mother. When they were grown up he was going to marry Eileen. He hid under the table. His mother said : — O, Stephen will apologise. Dante said : — O, if not, the eagles will come and pull out his eyes.— Pull out his eyes, Apologise, Apologise, Pull out his eyes. Apologise, Pull out his eyes, Pull out his eyes, Apologise, * * * * The wide playgrounds were swarming with boys. All were shouting and the prefects urged them on with strong cries. The evening air was pale and chilly, and after every charge and thud of the footballers the greasy leather orb flew like a heavy bird through the grey light. He kept on the fringe of his line, out of sight of his prefect, out of the reach of the rude feet, feigning to run now and then. He felt his body small and weak amid the throng of players, February 2nd, 1914. THE EGOIST 51 and his eyes were weak and watery. Rody Kickham was not like that : he would be captain of the third line, all the fellows said. Rody Kickham was a decent fellow, but Nasty Roche was a stink. Rody Kickham had greaves in his number and a hamper in the refectory. Nasty Roche had big hands. He called the Friday pudding dog-in-the-blanket. And one day he had asked : — What is your name? Stephen had answered : Stephen Dedalus. The Nasty Roche had said : — What kind of a name is that? And when Stephen had not been able to answer Nasty Roche had asked : — What is your father? Stephen had answered : — A gentleman. Then Nasty Roche had asked : — Is he a magistrate? He crept about from point to point on the fringe of his line, making little runs now and then. But his hands were bluish with cold. He kept his hands in the side pockets of his belted grey suit. That was a belt round his pocket. And belt was also to give a fellow a belt. One day a fellow had said to Cantwell : — I'd give you such a belt in a second. Cantwell had answered : — Go and fight your match. Give Cecil Thunder a belt. I'd like to see you. He'd give you a toe in the rump for yourself. That was not a nice expression. His mother had told him not to speak with the rough boys in the college. Nice mother ! The first day in the hall of the castle when she had said good-bye she had put up her veil double to her nose to kiss him : and her nose and eyes were red. But he had pretended not to see that she was going to cry. She was a nice mother but she was not so nice when she cried. And his father had given him two five-shilling pieces for pocket money. And his father had told him if he wanted anything to write home to him and, whatever he did, never to peach on a fellow. Then at the door of the castle the rector had shaken hands with his father and mother, his soutane fluttering in the breeze, and the car had driven off with his father and mother on it. They had cried to him from the car, waving their hands : — Good-bye, Stephen, good-bye ! — Good-bye, Stephen, good-bye ! He was caught in the whirl of a scrimmage and, fearful of the flashing eyes and muddy boots, bent down to look through the legs. The fellows were struggling and groaning and their legs were rubbing and kicking and stamping. Then Jack Lawton's yellow boots dodged out the ball and all the other boots and legs ran after. He ran after them a little way and then stopped. It was useless to run on. Soon they would be going home for the holidays. After supper in the study hall he would change the number posted up inside his desk from seventy-seven to seventy-six. It would be better to be in the study hall than out there in the cold. The sky was pale and cold, but there were lights in the castle. He wondered from which window Hamilton Rowan had jumped and had there been flowerbeds at that time under the windows. One day when he had been called to the castle the butler had shown him the marks of the soldiers' slugs in the wood of the door and had given him a piece of shortbread, that the community ate. It was nice and warm to see the lights in the castle. It was like something in a book. Perhaps Leicester Abbey was like that. And there were nice sentences in Doctor Cornwell's Spelling Book. They were like poetry but they were only sentences to learn the spelling from. Wolsey died in Leicester Abbey, Where the abbots buried him. Canker is a disease of plants, Cancer one of animals. It would be nice to lie on the hearthrug before the fire, leaning his head upon his hands, and think on those sentences. He shivered as if he had cold slimy water next his skin. That was mean of Wells to shoulder him into the square ditch because he would not swop his little snuffbox for Wells' seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of forty. How cold and slimy the water had been ! A fellow had once seen a big rat jump into the scum. Mother was sitting at the fire with Dante waiting for Brigid to bring in the tea. She had her feet on the fender and her javelly slippers were so hot and they had such a lovely warm smell ! Dante knew a lot of things. She had taught him where the Mozambique Channel was and what was the longest river in America and what was the name of the highest mountain in the moon. Father Arnall knew more than Dante because he was a priest, but both his father and Uncle Charles said that Dante was a clever woman and a well-read woman. And when Dante made that noise after dinner and then put up her hand to her mouth : that was heartburn. A voice cried far out in the playground : — All in ! Then other voices cried from the lower and third lines : — All in ! All in ! The players closed around, flushed and muddy, and he went among them, glad to go in. Rody Kickham held the ball by its greasy lace. A fellow asked him to give it one last : but he walked on without even answering the fellow. Simon Mangan told him not to because the prefect was looking. The fellow turned to Simon Mangan and said : — We all know why you speak. You are McGlade's suck. Suck was a queer word. The fellow called Simon Mangan that name because Simon Mangan used to tie the prefect's false sleeves behind his back and the prefect used to let on to be angry. But the sound was ugly. Once he had washed his hands in the lavatory of the Wicklow Hotel and his father pulled the stopper up by the chain after and the dirty water went down through the hole in the basin. And when it had all gone down slowly the hole in the basin had made a sound like that : suck. Only louder. To remember that and the white look of the lavatory made him feel cold and then hot. There were two cocks that you turned and water came out : cold and hot. He felt cold and then a little hot : and he could see the names printed on the cocks. That was a very queer thing. And the air in the corridor chilled him too. It was queer and wettish. But soon the gas would be lit and in burning it made a light noise like a little song. Always the same : and when the fellows stopped talking in the playroom you could hear it. It was the hour for sums. Father Arnall wrote a hard sum on the board and then said : — Now then, who will win? Go ahead, York ! Go ahead, Lancaster ! Stephen tried his best but the sum was too hard and he felt confused. The little silk badge with the white rose on it that was pinned on the breast of his jacket began to flutter. He was no good at sums but he tried his best so that York might not lose. Father Arnall's face looked very black but he was not in a wax : he was laughing. Then Jack Lawton crooked his fingers and Father Arnall looked at his copybook and said : — Right. Bravo Lancaster ! The red rose wins. Come on now, York ! Forge ahead ! Jack Lawton looked over from his side. The little silk badge with the red rose on it looked very rich because he had a blue sailor top on. Stephen felt his own face red too, thinking of all the bets about who would get first place in Elements, Jack Lawton or he. Some weeks Jack Lawton got the card for first and some weeks he got the card for first. His white silk badge fluttered and fluttered 52 THE EGOIST February 2nd, 1914 as he worked at the next sum, and heard Father Arnall's voice. Then all his eagerness passed away and he felt his face quite cool. He thought his face must be white because it felt so cool. He could not get out the answer for the sum but it did not matter. White roses and red roses : those were beautiful colours to think of. And the cards for first place and third place were beautiful colours too : pink and cream and lavender. Lavender and cream and pink roses were beautiful to think of. Perhaps a wild rose might be like those colours and he remembered the song about the wild rose blossoms on the little green place. But you could not have a green rose. But perhaps somewhere in the world you could. The bell rang and then the classes began to file out of the rooms and along the corridors towards the refectory. He sat looking at the two prints of butter on his plate but could not eat the damp bread. The tablecloth was damp and limp. But he drank off the hot weak tea which the clumsy scullion, girt with a white apron, poured into his cup. He wondered whether the scullion's apron was damp too or whether all white things were cold and damp. Nasty Roche and Saurin drank cocoa that their people sent them in tins. They said they could not drink the tea ; that it was hogwash. Their fathers were magistrates, the fellows said. All the boys seemed to him very strange. They had all fathers and mothers and different clothes and voices. He longed to be at home and lay his head on his mother's lap. But he could not : and so he longed for the play and study and prayers to be over and to be in bed. He drank another cut of hot tea and Fleming said : — What's up? Have you a pain or what's up with you? — I don't know, Stephen said. — Sick in your bread basket—Fleming said— because your face looks white. It will go away. — O yes, Stephen said. But he was not sick there. He thought that he was sick in his heart if you could be sick in that place. Fleming was very decent to ask him. He wanted to cry. He leaned his elbows on the table and shut and opened the flaps of his ears. Then he heard the noise of the refectory every time he opened the flaps of his ears. It made a roar like a train at night. And when he closed the flaps the roar was shut off like a train going into a tunnel. That night at Dalkey the train had roared like that and then, when it went into the tunnel, the roar stopped. He closed his eyes and the train went on, roaring and then stopping; roaring again, stopping. It was nice to hear it roar and stop and then roar out of the tunnel again and then stop. Then the higher line fellows began to come down along the matting in the middle of the refectory, Paddy Rath and Jimmy Magee and the Spaniard who was allowed to smoke cigars and the little Portuguese who wore the woolly cap. And then the lower line tables and the tables of the third line. And every single fellow had a different way of walking. He sat in a corner of the playroom pretending to watch a game of dominos and once or twice he was able to hear for an instant the little song of the gas. The prefect was at the door with some boys and Simon Mangan was knotting his false sleeves. He was telling him something about Tullabeg. Then he went away from the door and Wells came over to Stephen and said : — Tell us, Dedalus, do you kiss your mother before you go to bed? Stephen answered : — I do. Wells turned to the other fellows and said : — O, I say, here's a fellow says he kisses his mother every night before he goes to bed. The other fellows stopped their game and turned round, laughing. Stephen blushed under their eyes and said : — I do not. Wells said : — O, I say, here's a fellow says he doesn't kiss his mother before he goes to bed. They all laughed again. Stephen tried to laugh with them. He felt his whole body hot and confused in a moment. What was the right answer to the question? He had given two and still Wells laughed. But Wells must know the right answer for he was in Third of Grammar. He tried to think of Wells' mother, but he did not dare to raise his eyes to Wells' face. He did not like Wells' face. It was Wells who had shouldered him into the square ditch the day before because he would not swop his little snuffbox for Wells' seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of forty. It was a mean thing to do; all the fellows said it was. And how cold and slimy the water had been ! And a fellow had once seen a big rat jump plop into the scum. The cold slime of the ditch covered his whole body ; and, when the bell rang for study and the lines filed out of the playrooms, he felt the cold air of the corridor and staircase inside his clothes. He still tried to think what was the right answer. Was it right to kiss his mother or wrong to kiss his mother? What did that mean, to kiss? You put your face up like that to say good-night and then his mother put her face down. That was to kiss. His mother put her lips on his cheek; her lips were soft and they wetted his cheek ; and they made a tiny little noise : kiss. Why did people do that with their two faces? Sitting in the study hall he opened the lid of his desk and changed the number pasted up inside from seventy-seven to seventy-six. But the Christmas vacation was very far away: but one time it would come because the earth moved round always. There was a picture of the earth on the first page of his geography : a big ball in the middle of clouds. Fleming had a box of crayons and one night during free study he had coloured the earth green and the clouds maroon. That was like the two brushes in Dante's press, the brush with the green velvet back for Parnell and the brush with the maroon velvet back for Michael Davitt. But he had not told Fleming to colour them those colours. Fleming had done it himself. He opened the geography to study the lesson ; but he could not learn the names of places in America. Still they were all different places that had different names. They were all in different countries and the countries were in continents and the continents were in the world and the world was in the universe. He turned to the flyleaf of the geography and read what he had written there : himself, his name and where he was. Stephen Dedalus Class of Elements Clongowes Wood College Sallins County Kildare Ireland Europe The World The Universe That was in his writing : and Fleming one night for a cod had written on the opposite page : Stephen Dedalus is my name, Ireland is my nation, Clongowes is my dwelling-place And heaven my expectation. He read the verses backwards but then they were not poetry. Then he read the flyleaf from the bottom to the top till he came to his own name. That was he : and he read down the page again. What was February 2nd, 1914. THE EGOIST S3 after the universe? Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began? It could not be a wall but there could be a thin thin line there all round everything. It was very big to think about everything and everywhere. Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought that must be but he could think only of God. God was God's name just as his name was Stephen. Dieu was the French for God and that was God's name too ; and when anyone prayed to God and said Dieu then God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying. But though there were different names for God in all the different languages in the world and God understood what all the people who prayed said in their different languages, still God remained always the same God and God's real name was God. It made him very tired to think that way. It made him feel his head very big. He turned over the flyleaf and looked wearily at the green round earth in the middle of the maroon clouds. He wondered which was right, to be for the green or for the maroon, because Dante had ripped the green velvet back off the brush that was for Parnell one day with her scissors and had told him that Parnell was a bad man. He wondered if they were arguing at home about that. That was called politics. There were two sides in it : Dante was on one side and his father and Mr. Casey were on the other side, but his mother and Uncle Charles were on no side. Every day there was something in the paper about it. It pained him that he did not know well what politics meant, and that he did not know where the universe ended. He felt small and weak. When would he be like the fellows in Poetry and Rhetoric? They had big voices and big boots and they studied trigonometry. That was very far away. First came the vacation and then the next term and then vacation again and then again another term and then again the vacation. It was like a train going in and out of tunnels and that was like the noise of the boys eating in the refectory when you opened and closed the flaps of the ears. Term, vacation; tunnel, out; noise, stop. How far away it was ! It was better to go to bed to sleep. Only prayers in the chapel and then bed. He shivered and yawned. It would be lovely in bed after the sheets got a bit hot. First they were so cold to get into. He shivered to think how cold they were first. But then they got hot and then he could sleep. It was lovely to be tired. He yawned again. Night prayers and then bed : he shivered and wanted to yawn. It would be lovely in a few minutes. He felt a warm glow creeping up from the cold shivering sheets, warmer and warmer till he felt warm all over, ever so warm and yet he shivered a little and still wanted to yawn. (To be continued.)

The Bourgeois. ONE of the boudoir school of journalists, or rather I should say "bedroom journalists" for the term "boudoir" suggests the lightness of a rather higher phase of the social order, at any rate one of those illegitimate descendants of Suetonius has made a rather interesting error. He has attacked Mr. Yeats because Mr. Yeats has, according to him, attacked the bourgeoisie. As a matter of fact Mr. Yeats was, in the particular speech referred to, attacking the aristocracy, which needs it, but no matter. The journalist has given his impression. He says that Mr. Yeats attacked the bourgeoisie and that Mr. Yeats talks as if he wasn't born of the bourgeoisie, to wit the middle classes. And with our timorous laureate chattering about pure English, and especially about the adoption of foreign words we feel it is necessary to assist, at this point, the lexicographers. The word " bourgeois " is not applied to the middle classes to distinguish them from the aristocracy. It might be but that is scarcely its historical usage. The bourgeoisie is a state of mind. It is as a term of opprobrium, used by the bohemian, or the artist in contempt of the citizen. The bourgeoisie is digestive. The bourgeois is the lineal descendant of the " honest citizen " of the Elizabethan. The " honest citizen " was the person who was so overjoyed when he found out that Ben Jonson had made him a cuckold. He gained in distinction not because Ben Jonson was a great author, but because Ben Jonson sometimes appeared at court. The bourgeois is, roughly, a person who is concerned solely with his own comfort or advancement. He is, in brief, digestive. He is the stomach and gross intestines of the body politic and social, as distinct from the artist, who is the nostrils and the invisible antennas. I do not mean to say that there never was an ideal bourgeois who was a notable person, a power in the Hanseatic league, a lesser Cosimo, an upholder of liberties, a senator of Strasbourg, qui porte sa bourgeoisie comme une marquise. I mean simply that the word is scarcely ever used with this honorific significance. It has become a term of contempt. It has replaced the term épicier, or rather it has not replaced that term of contempt, for " épicier " was used by the aristocracy as a term of contempt, whereas "bourgeois," as a discourtesy, has come from the artist. So that our journalist is as inaccurate in his language as in his facts. He has mistaken a term which is the censure of a whole code of morals and of ethics for a term of social snobbery, which is perhaps natural, as he himself would fall under either censure. Bastien von Helmholtz. John Synge and the Habits of Criticism. "SHE was so fine, and she was so healthy that you could have cracked a flea on either one of her breasts," said the old sea captain bragging about the loves of his youth. It seems a shame that the only man who could have made any real use of that glorious phrase in literature, is dead. He has fallen prey to a dull and scholastic biographer who has gathered facts from the very parasites and detractors whom Synge has so causticly described as attending his funeral, "small but select." It is a comment on the general passion for the perfectly innocuous that this writer of theses should have listened to all witnesses irrespective of their vigour or sympathy or intelligence, and that he should have taken, not those salient details which are in accord with, or in a sort of complimentary antithesis to the man Synge as manifest in his work, but that he should have presented a sort of drab least common denominator. It is not important. It is not surprising. It will do not particular harm to Synge's memory. It is a tabulation of certain facts and dates and as such might be left to the museum catalogue without comment, were it not a symptom of the scholastic process everywhere at work obscuring the vitality of literature and bringing comfort to mediocrity. Rousseau in the hands of his disciples has become as pestilent almost, as Christ in the hands of the empire created christians. The " Confessions " having done their work have left a field for Bergson and for a democracy of commentators who believe not only that every man is created free 54 THE EGOIST February 2nd, 1914 and equal with a divine right to become an insignificant part of a social system but that all books are created equal and that all minds are created equal and that any distinct and distinguishing faculty should be curtailed and restricted. Carlyle idealized the hero. The Victorian age went in for great figures and the world was overrun with people pretending to be great figures. Our decade has reacted against great figures and the scholast has become ashamed. The publicist has become apologist. They are now pretending that there never were any great figures and they are trying to prevent the possibility of recurrence. The mediocre have set up a cult of mediocrity, and deal in disparagement. And the party that should be making opposition, the indignant, have lost their clear-sightedness, they are so honest that they can only express their bitterness in abuse. They have not yet conspired. There is no truce between art and the vulgo. There is a constant and irrefutable alliance between art and the oppressed. The people have never objected to obscurity in ballads. The bitterest and most poignant songs have been often written in cypher—of necessity. It is not for nothing that Verdi's name was cheered hysterically after his operas ; was cheered for its half secret anagram V.E.R.D.I., Vittorio Ëmanuele Re d'Italia, cheered in cities where in Verdi's obscure, but not quite sufficiently obscure, chorus " Liberta " had been changed by the censors to "lealta." The oppressed have never set a hand against their artists but the half taught have always done so, the bureaucracy have always done so, and a bureaucracy is not only political but literary, it demands the semi-efficient. There is a bond between the artist and the inventor and the able man in a system. Each is feared by the inefficient man who holds the administrative grade just above him. I have seen an inventor treated by capitalists exactly as a good writer before he is "recognized," is treated by inefficient editors. It is not a question of profession but of temperament. The consumer, the digestive man fears the dynamic man. He is perfectly right to do so. The dynamic man exists. Nothing can inhibit his existence. He exists on a desert island. Starve him, you give edge to his style and double the acidity of his will force. Against him society has but the one weapon, seduction. The static man has no existence apart from his system. Let us take the anonymous " Times " reviewer, or better still Mr. Gosse who is what every "Times" reviewer would like to be, or Dr. Nicoll who is a degraded sort of Gosse. Consider any one of these people apart from their automatic position. Mr. Gosse would exist as the author of " Father and Son " and be universally respected. The rest would disappear, they would have not even that ephemeral and faintly stuffy and venomous existence which is now permitted them. Hence their necessity for hanging together. Hence their necessity of keeping the administrative power out of the hands of an occasional genius who would see through them and sweep them out of "published opinion." Here is an unconscious revelation in the "Times" : "Among the best things in the Cambridge anthology is Mr. Brooke's ' Grantchester ' and Mr. Flecker's ' Golden Journey to Samarkand.' But we are most concerned with the younger men." Now that appears to say very little apart from being slightly ridiculous, for one would suppose that Mr. Brooke was about as near to puberty as any man producing serious poetry could be expected to be. The press having no ambition for literature, having no ideal that it is willing to work for save an ideal of mediocrity, welcomes about twenty per cent. of new writers indiscriminately. It praises the first book or so and damns the rest. That is, it tries to swell the numbers and importance of the lower literary world. It wishes the young men to enter and remain expectant of press favours. It wants a proletariat of young writers who still believe in the intelligence or potential intelligence of reviewers. The " Times " is a particularly poisonous source for the very reason that it is still, despite its Haws, the best of the dailies. A " Times " reviewer knows more than most men. As the Japanese ambassador said of Gladstone : " He seems so very well informed about all countries except Japan." The " Times " reporter fools you until he tackles a subject that you really know something about. Ever after you discount him. He knows the accepted platitudes of every subject. He is therefore against the discoverer. He is like the professor who rejects new facts because they would make it necessary for him to rewrite his lectures. Having nothing at stake he is placid. He writes better than the believer for he has nothing to think about save his paragraphs. He is stupid, he is even ridiculous but he is never discomposed. He is suave and unreliable and credible, and he is therefore a menace. Bastien von Helmholtz.

Poems. By H. D. HERMES of the ways. I. THE hard sand breaks, And the grains of it Are clear as wine. Far off over the leagues of it, The wind, Playing on the wide shore, Piles little ridges, And the great waves Break over it. But more than the many-foamed ways Of the sea, I know him Of the triple path-ways, Hermes, Who awaiteth. Dubious, Facing three ways, Welcoming wayfarers, He whom the sea-orchard Shelters from the west, From the east Weathers sea-wind ; Fronts the great dunes. Wind rushes Over the dunes, And the coarse, salt-crusted grass Answers. Heu, It whips round my ankles ! II. Small is This white stream, Flowing below ground From the poplar-shaded hill, But the water is sweet. Apples on the small trees Are hard, Too small, Too late ripened By a desperate sun That struggles through sea-mist. February 2nd, 1914. THE EGOIST 55 The boughs of the trees Are twisted By many bafflings ; Twisted are The small-leafed boughs. But the shadow of them Is not the shadow of the mast head Nor of the torn sails. Hermes, Hermes, The great sea foamed, Gnashed its teeth about me ; But you have waited, Where sea-grass tangles with Shore-grass. incantation. (Artemis over the body of Orion.) I. The cornel-trees Uplift from the furrows. The copper roots at their bases Strike lower through the barley sprays. " Arise And face me. I am poisoned with rage of song. The cornel-wool blazes And strikes through the barley sprays, But I have lost heart for this. I will break a staff. I break the tough branch. I know no light in the woods. I have lost pace with the winds. II. I once tore the flesh Of the wild deer. Now am I afraid to touch The blue And the gold-veined hyacinths? I will tear the full flowers And the little heads of the grape-hyacinths. I will strip the life from the bulb, Until The ivory layers lie Like narcissus petals On the black earth. Arise, Lest I bend my staff Into a taut bow, And slay, And tear all the roots from the earth. oread. Whirl up, sea— Whirl your pointed pines, Splash your great pines On our rocks, Hurl your green over us, Cover us with your pools of fir. priapus (Keeper-of-Orchards). I saw the first pear As it fell. The honey-seeking, golden-banded, The yellow swarm Was not more fleet than I, (Spare us from loveliness!) And I fell prostrate, Crying, Thou hast flayed us with thy blossoms ; Spare us the beauty Of fruit-trees ! The honey-seeking Paused not, The air thundered their song, And I alone was prostrate. O rough-hewn God of the orchard, I bring thee an offering ; Do thou, alone unbeautiful (Son of the god), Spare us from loveliness. The fallen hazel-nuts, Stripped late of their green sheaths, The grapes, red-purple, Their berries Dripping with wine, Pomegranates already broken, And shrunken fig, And quinces untouched, I bring thee as offering.

"The Horses of Diomedes." By Remy de Gourmont. (Translated by C. Sartoris.) XX.—CLOUDS. Beams of light are passing, Clouds are passing. There are arabesques on the walls. — What, said Cyrène, you have let Néo go away? — She is free. — Then she loves you no more? — I do not know. — And you? — I do not know. — You are free. — I hope so. — I mean free not to answer me. — But I know nothing really, my friend, resumed Diomedes, very gently. Of Néo, nothing. Of myself, nothing. I never know anything of myself. Gleams of light are passing, clouds are passing, there are arabesques on the walls, small faces are outlined, grow, burst, die. ... I have forgotten what their eyes said, and, if the wall becomes luminous again, I ignore what they will say or whether they will wish to speak once more. Truly, Cyrène, if Néo wished, as women would express it, to subject me to a test, she mistook the man ; her absence causes me no torment. If our meeting is to have social consequences, I accept them without displeasure, that is all. If circumstances are such that I seem to have acted according to an egoism wantonly termed criminal, I still accept. At last, I am in her hands. I had every reason to fear her, since I loved her. One should never remove the draperies of the statue one adores, or of the woman one loves : the hangings drop like a trap door. — She is your mistress? — You knew it, Cyrène, and it was the sole motive of your questions. — I knew it. — She wrote to you? — No. A confidence before leaving. — Surprised? — Who? 56 THE EGOIST February 2nd, 1914 — You. — Hardly. — Of course. -— Don't abuse me, Diomedes, because after all, at this hour, I might abuse you in return. — Hardly. Besides which both sorts are hypocritical and quite allowed. . . We don't believe in them. As in us there is nothing social, we can smile at each other without bitterness. — Nothing social? In us, perhaps, but the question is Néo. How little you can love her, knowing her so badly. She is almost as unknown to you as to herself. And yet you have sapped her will, slowly, day by day, and your ideas have become the motives of the actions of that passionate intelligence. Reserved and ironical, Néo had always seemed to me heedless of sentimentalities, the creature made to stand erect, the woman the least doomed to an abrupt alcove adventure. If she did give herself, it was out of literary pleasure, out of curiosity of mind, to assert her right to the act, to the gesture of freedom—to astonish you, my dear, and not to please you. I am therefore angry with you for having only conquered her intellectual vanity. — How do you know? — She is to marry Lord Grouchy in a fortnight. — Ah ! — That is all ? But go after her ! Let her see you and she will follow you. — Cyrène, how melodramatic you are ! Seventh tableau : Flowerbury Manor. — What you knew where she is, and you stayed in Paris playing at being the friend of little courtesans ! — Pellegrin has told you of Fanette's death? It was edifying and it grieved me. As to Néo, if I know her but ill ; she is hardly ignorant of my character, for she told me of her departure knowing quite will that no whim would entice me to go on a steamer. I shall not go to Flowerbury. Ah ! She is going to marry? I think it is vulgar, that is all. The act is ugly, like an untruth . . . temporary opinion. ... I will reflect on this. There is much to be reflected on. Abundant meditations. Pleasant afternoons under the trees at the Luxembourg amongst the children, the ducks and the playing waters. . . . Shall we go? — No. I also, I wish to reflect. My life is being troubled and my heart hardened. . . . From hour to hour, I wish for fewer things and the wishes I realise give me each time diminished joys. I had so hoped to see you marry Néo and live with her and me, and us, the broad life of an ironic philosopher. You two, I and Cyran, it was a world in four personages ; from the height of our planet, we would have judged mankind with amiable and almost divine disdain. Cyran everlasting dreams, I everlasting heart, Néo everlasting mind and you everlasting soul and bond of the other souls. ... It would have lasted but a few years, yes, I know : Cyran has let himself grow old, his fate lies in wait for me. . . . But we should have lived in you beyond the grave. Absurd, is it not? Everything is absurd, except sensation. I believe men will become animals, once more. . . . Finally, I renounce Cyran. Ha ! Diomedes, the little sentimental bourgeoisie, she is fading, she is becoming obsolete, she is going, she is going. . . . Diomedes scarcely answered. Yet, satisfied that she should turn away from Cyran, he delicately praised such a sacrifice. Then : — It is necessary that he should die alone, as he wishes to, with fear, but in beauty. What could you have given him? Not even a companion. Images guard the door of his cell and let nothing pass but what is incorporeal. Leave him, and let us love him as he is, old with his young dream. So then? — I still have this, said Cyrène, crushing her bosom, my body, the mother-of-pearl case. Diomedes seemed so uninterested that Cyrène ceased talking, as well as crushing her complacent breasts. Perhaps would she offer herself, wish to substitute an hour of love to the stroll they were to take? He feared it. But that fear was localised in his flesh and he realised that a temptation, even a commonplace one, might overthrow the most violent scruples. So as to benefit by experience, he wished himself the woman before the adoring male, the virtuous woman who will neither fall, nor flee. In that psychological state, he wished to hear things of love and then to answer by disconcerting laughter, and yet hi must start the game. He said absent-mindedly: — The mother of pearl case, the mother of pearl case ! Cyrène was surprised. Emotion was written in blushes on her pale cheeks. She had perceived no shade of doubt in Diomedes' exclamation, she thought therefore the words " mother of pearl case " had evoked in him a sensual image ; by a revulsion of thought, she saw herself disrobed. She thought it necessary to be explanatory : — My dear, I have not changed at all since I belonged to you ; my breasts are slightly heavier, but my figure is the same, the same hips; and my body has not a crease, also my legs are straight as twin trees. . . . Diomedes followed as on the sheet of a magic lantern ; each word came as a picture into the circle of light. The limbs were those of Néo, her white knees dimpled all round with pretty holes filled with shadows, knees like those of a plump strong child. At that moment had he been a woman, he would have been conquered by the slightest touching; he would have closed his eyes but to reopen them in harmony with the lips and the hands. Cyrène continued, slightly oppressed, telling her joy when for the first time she stood erect and unveiled before a man. "If I do not make love to her, mused Diomedes, she will think herself despised and because of her age, she will suffer despite the certitude that so many young men give her. Being further advanced on the pathway, I am more difficult to tempt especially by a fruit whose flavour is known to me. Oh God ! how disinclined I am to rejoice with Cyrène!" He came nearer, took her hands, but Cyrène, made happy by this gesture, refused herself : — No, no, my dear, Néo is perhaps thinking of you at this moment. Adieu. (To be continued.)

Presentation to Mr. W. S. Blunt. AT Newbuildings Place, Sussex, on Sunday, a committee of poets consisting of W. B. Yeats, Sturge Moore, John Masefield, Victor Plarr, Frederic Manning, Ezra Pound, F. S. Flint, and Richard Aldington, presented to Mr. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, in token of homage for his poetry, a carved reliquary of Pentelican marble, the work of the sculptor Gaudier Brzeska. It bears a recumbent female figure and an inscription. The committee had intended to give a dinner in Mr. Blunt's honour, but he preferred to receive them at Newbuildings. The following verses of address were read:— "TO WILFRID BLUNT. " Because you have gone your individual gait, " Written fine verses, made mock of the world, " Swung the grand style, not made a trade of art, " Upheld Mazzini and detested institutions; " We, who are little given to respect, " Respect you, and having no better way to show it " Bring you this stone to be some record of it." February 2nd, 1914. THE EGOIST 57 The poem of address having been read, Mr. Blunt said : Well, I suppose I must say a few words of thanks. The only thing I feel about this visit—which flatters me immensely—is that I am to a certain extent an impostor. I have really never been a poet. I have been all sorts of other things. I have never been a poet. I was not brought up that way at all. I was never at a public school nor at a college. I never met a literary man who had so much as written a letter to a paper or an article for a magazine until I was twenty-five, I had not written any verse, I never published a single thing—prose or verse—with my name till I was past forty. I think it is very difficult to call a man a poet who has that sort of record behind him. I have written a certain amount of verse ; but I have only done it when I was rather down on my luck and made mistakes either in love or politics or some branch of active life. I found that it relieved my feelings. But I never wrote any of it with the least idea of getting it published. I did not even show it to my friends. My first little anonymous work published was when I was thirty-five or thirty-six, and it was not much of a thing then. I did not publish a single verse with my name till I was, I think, about 43. My life has been an active one in various connections ; and people write to me sometimes : " We have a great admiration for you." But it is never about poetry. It is the first time in my life that I have ever had any admiration for my poetry expressed to me. It is either because I have taken up the cause of the Indian or the Egyptian, or more generally because I bred horses. That is what I am generally known as—a breeder of horses. So when I received your flattering invitation, and there was nothing expressed about what kind of admiration it was, I was very much puzzled. I did not know whether it was from some of my horsey friends or political admirers. When I learned that it was for my poetry, I was all the more flattered and astonished. It was so very unusual. This is to a great extent my fault. I think it is because in one of the very first things I wrote, I was ill-advised enough to say, " I would not if I could be called a poet," and that has stuck to me ever since. If anybody has thought of me as a poet, they have always had that answer : I did not think myself a poet. It was quite incidental. However, I have come round from that now. Within the last year I have entirely washed my hands of politics and all forms of public life ; and even withdrawn to some extent from horse-breeding ; and having nothing to do I have taken up again with verse-writing, to console me for a new disappointment. I have been writing a certain amount in the last year, and I am very pleased now to be considered a poet. It is quite a novelty to me. I am seventy-three years of age, and it is late to begin. That is all I can say in my excuse. I very much appreciate the verses that you have written to me—if they are verses. I could not quite make out whether they were or not. I waited for a rhyme that did not seem to come. I am old-fashioned enough rather to expect rhyme in verse. I believe it is coming into fashion again. Spanish poetry runs a good deal into assonance, which I admire very much, and I have tried to write things in assonance. I am a great believer in assonance. I must say with all respect to Mr. Yeats that I do not like blank verse. To me it is quite a black beast —a thing I quarrel with. Mr. Yeats is a great advocate of blank verse. I recollect on one occasion he had asked me to write a play for the Abbey Theatre—or perhaps it was before the time of the Abbey Theatre. I sent him the play. He approved of it ; but he said it would have been very much better if it had been in blank verse. I had put it into rhyme. He was good enough to offer to turn it into blank verse. (Laughter.) Attempt at contradiction on the part of Mr. Yeats.) I should have been most flattered and pleased to have had it turned into blank verse by Mr. Yeats. But as it was an Irish play, I wrote to him my objections, or views, I think in a letter. I said : I am an Englishman ; I do not pretend to have anything Celtic in my composition. I was asked to write a play about Ireland, and I wrote it in what I conceived to be something approximating to an Irish metre. And I said that it was a curious thing that Mr. Yeats—who was a representative of Ireland and of Celtic culture and literature—should have chosen such an essentially Anglo-Saxon metre as blank verse. He writes blank verse very much as Shakespeare did and people of that day ; and I believe quite as well, if not better. But still it is an English metre, and I thought in very inappropriate for the occasion. That was my objection. Not that I did not appreciate the kind motive. (Laughter.) I maintain that rhymed metre is better than blank verse. I think that blank verse is the essence of dulness. (Vigorous agreement from the author of the lines of salutation.) However, I will not say anything more, because I feel that I am treading on dangerous ground. I can only add that I thank you most heartily, and that I hope that you have enjoyed your lunch. Mr. Yeats in reply said : When you published your first work, sir, it was the very height of the Victorian period. The abstract poet was in a state of glory. One no longer wrote as a human being with an address, living in a London street, having a definite income, and a definite tradition, but one wrote as an abstract personality. One was expected to be very much wiser than other people. The only objection to such a conception of the poet is that it was impossible to believe that he had existed. This abstraction was the result of the unreal culture of Victorian romance. Now, sir, instead of abstract poetry, you wrote verses which were good poetry because they were first of all fine things to have thought and said in some real situation of life. They had behind them the drama of actual life. We are now at the end of Victorian romance—completely at an end. One may admire Tennyson, but one cannot read him. The whole movement is over, but the work that survives is this work which does not speak out of the life of an impossible abstract poet, but out of the life of a man who is simply giving the thoughts which he had in some definite situation in life, or persuades us that he had ; so that behind his work we find some definite impulse of life itself. If I take up to-day some of the things that interested me in the past, I find that I can no longer use them. They bore me. Every year some part of my poetical machinery suddenly becomes of no use. As the tide of romance recedes I am driven back simply on myself and my thoughts in actual life, and my work becomes more and more like your earlier work, which seems fascinating and wonderful to me. A great many of us feel the same. Just as the Victorian time recedes, your work becomes younger and more fascinating to us. I say that for myself. We represent different schools and interests. To Sturge Moore, for instance, the world is impersonal. He does not dramatise himself, but centaurs and great beings of that kind— he is neither the Victorian abstract poet nor the definite poet. Ezra Pound has a desire personally to insult the world. He has a volume of manuscript at present in which his insults to the world are so deadly that it is rather a complicated publishing problem. The discussion at this point became general. Richard Aldington. 58 THE EGOIST February 2nd, 1914 Art-Passion, Patronage & Pay. I REACHED this point in my previous article:— as a result of public ownership of the Artist, he has become de-individualised. He has been moulded to produce and sell Art-form as a commodity, and is now artist in name only., I suggested that the annihilation of the Artist by civilisation demands an analysis, and that the normal explanation involves the assumption that the Artist was once individual, and not as now a mass-man. Set beside this my homely definition of the Artist as primitive Man and the deduction is, primitive Man is individual. * * * * To continue my experience. I have expressed a doubt whether the influence on the arrival of the germ-seed of my guess at a human aesthetic came before or after my birth. Next after the seed came the fertilising influences. As I was born of artists there was not much beyond the Old Masters at Hampton Court Palace, where I spent my early days, to check the right direction of these influences. For one thing being born of artists (and therefore a natural aristocrat by birth) I arrived in a greater state of purity than the society I was born in. For another, I escaped the deformation of being trained to a life-long cowardice, for I was free from the first from conventional forms of education and faith. Owing to my parents' wisdom in allowing me to run to waste I had the feeling of having accomplished something. Accident had revealed to me that my purpose was to adventure in a new world which, however, was not yet clearly to view. So at twelve I had reached a point where I had outlined my life's work. I will not stop to discuss this work ; I know I took it very seriously. For years every moment and every penny I could pinch here and there were devoted to it. Till at last my temple was so far advanced it really looked as though I was going to complete it. Then the house where I resided was burnt down and all my results were destroyed. It was a bitter set-back. I remember telling Mr. Bernard Shaw of my loss. He sniggered and remarked, " Perhaps it is a good job." I thought, " this Shaw is a buffoon who laughs at sacred things." I suppose he burst into a guffaw when he read my big romantic play " Catherine the Great." He has made a pantomime of the subject. * * * * At twelve then, I found myself at a fresh starting-point of the extension of my individuality. My parents were dead and I had voluntarily cut myself off from all blood ties and associations. I had set up experience as an ideal. I wanted the fullest experience of the new world in which my senses had cradled me. For my adventure the time was long and the way was rude. Young as I was I realised that the path I had chosen was lonely and flinty. I saw it would be serpentine, with perhaps a triumphal arch or two here and there and a sudden lift for my initiation into the mysteries. And so it has been— except for the triumphal arch. It seems that Civilisation has no triumphal arch for the man or woman who stands alone. To-day I am as lonely as ever, not from lack of sympathy but from the lifelong habit of looking within myself and from the disillusionment inevitable upon keeping the eyes set inward. * * * * One of the earliest stages of experience in the making was a stage at which I began to realise my universal life. It was before I had brought my mind into relation with activities that are limited to those of mechanism—the practical activities of the will and understanding, before I had got into the painful philosophical habit of telling the Universe of substance what I thought about it (as though the universe cares what drivelling philosophers think or say about itself), and while I was yet eager to know what the universe had to tell me about myself. One day the feeling of " I " arose, and from that moment I began to face the universe with the questions, WHO AM I? and WHY? I thought I knew who Huntly Carter was. I could account for an ephemeral shell labelled to differentiate it from another ephemeral shell. But the identity of the " I " puzzled me. It tortured me. I struggled with the problem for years. Sometimes I varied my position and came to intellectual ground. Then the struggle was hopeless. I merely realised that the intellect had mistaken its profession. Being evolved by matter to deal with matter how could it possibly explain the infinite? It was when I threw the servile intellect overboard and said, " I must make what I can by My-self " that a sense of the desired identity came to me. Then under the influence of some power or powers companioning each other of whose nature I was ignorant, something did come out of myself. At such moments there was a sensation of unfolding and projection. I could only explain my experience in terms of individual sensation, for I knew nothing about aggregations, unities, clusters, the One and All, the great Self, self-consciousness in the bulk, the great White Brotherhood, Race as an organism, and so forth. My parents and those councillors whose words I valued had wisely neglected to set me thinking in combinations usually associated with the hashish habit. So it did not matter to me in the least what these fatalistic, democratic and socialistic labels meant. All that mattered to me was that I did feel what was going on within and without me. And I did feel precisely that the " I had gone forth at the bidding of some power to adventure in the great elemental, undying and continuous world of reality leaving its shell on the threshold of appearance. I did feel too that the " I " had gone forth to the main stream of experience flowing from the source of reality to gather experiences belonging to its own self and having a relation and identity with its own self. And having gathered its store of experience it would take the metaphysical precaution of returning whence it came. At each flowing out of the " I " and at each flowing in of the " I " with its own, I tried to summon a vision of it into definiteness ; the result being that eventually I saw that my "I" was something separate from all other " I's " and not to be entangled with them by pseudo-mystics and the maudlin generally. So from watching these flowings I saw that the " I " was the sum of experience. But when I realised that experience is impression I summed up what I felt about the identity of the " I " in the sentence, the " I " is the sum of impression. The formula may be expressed thus:—Experience = Impression = Activity. All activities are impressions. Expression is impression ; expression being but a fusion of impressions. Impressions are of two classes, the Noumenon and the Phenomena, or those of the Universe of substance variously labelled, life power, force, intelligence, infinity, extension—and those of the world of matter. But the thing of capital importance to me was the discovery that all fundamental activities are comprised within the term impression. The next thing of importance was that I could not comprehend the "I" and its activities except in terms of impression. The effort to think of its activities, to translate them into the language of science, ethics, philosophy or economics, gave me the sensation of groping blind and paralysed in darkness. I was only aware of receiving spiritual impressions and that such impressions were within me demanding to be released as my particular type of spiritual impressions. Moreover each impression demanded to be released as an activity and not to be transformed by curious mental processes associated with logic and memory into an impure and imperfect emptiness and passivity. In short these impressions February 2nd, 1914. THE EGOIST 59 awakened in me a creative sense and told me quite plainly that when my " I " went forth it went in search of aesthetic adventure, and therefore of this there can be no reasonable doubt :—Art is the first movement in the world of spiritual reality, as it is the first movement that the conscious entity makes. * * * * I next come to my experience of the de-individualisation of the Artist, which embodies the story of how the Artist was sold into slavery and became public property. The story falls into three parts which I will call Art-passion, Art-patronage and Art-pay. It shows how Art-impression was first a necessity, became a pleasure and degenerated into a luxury, and how the Artist rose as individualist and fell amongst—mercantile patrons. Huntly Carter.

Correspondence. Note to Correspondents. — While quite willing to publish letters under noms de plume, we make it a condition of publication that the name and address of each correspondent should be supplied to the Editor.—Ed. A DULL PLAY. To the Editor of The Egoist. Madam, In reply to " Viator's " letter published in the number for January 15th of The Egoist, an Individualist Review, I would point out that The Egoist is an individualist review. If you (the Editor) had not wished me to express my individual opinion of Haywood's play " A Woman Killed with Kindness," you could have quoted from the writings of J. A. Symonds or " the comforting words of Professor A. W. Ward." "Viator's" opinion is that of the two gentlemen she mentions. Your opinion may be the same. On the other hand, you do not try to limit my freedom of expression, as does " Viator." My opinion was that the play in question is dull. I said so. I still think so. This opinion may be a poor thing but it is, at least, my own. Why, may I ask, does " Viator " assume that the opinions of Symons and Ward are unimpeachable? Can there, then, be no fluidity of thought, no shifting of values? Is there a fixed standard for measuring the worth of a play? If so, I would like " Viator " to explain it to me. I am sure that, unaided, I could never find it. In my article (which appeared considerably shortened) I said that the discovery scene was splendid and big with terror, and that the scene in which Mrs. Frankford's forgotten lute was returned to her was exquisite, and that I had seldom seen two more effiective scenes than these. I am still of that belief. I would suggest that before "being rude," " Viator " should study the statues by Konenkoff and Epstein, the music by Ducasse and Stravinsky, the plays by J. M. Synge, the paintings by Blake, Gaugin and Van Gogh, and Walt Whitman's poetry. The difference between modern art and that of a century ago, is as full of meaning in its way as the chasm between the loveliness of Greece and the grim, stone majesty of Egypt and of Assyria. In the past fifty or sixty years values have shifted and thought has run like molten iron. H. S. C. P.S.—I am very sorry that I misquoted the title of Haywood's play, but nearly all my books are at home. For this error, I sincerely apologise to " Viator " and the Editor. To the Editor of The Egoist. Madam, As a reader of your publication, and an admirer of the lucidity of your editorial utterances, I wonder what sort of comment, if any, you would care to make anent the revolutionary programme outlined in the enclosed "Proclamation." You will, of course, observe that its emphasis is on Defence— the defence of users of the earth. A. G. WAGNER. A PROCLAMATION. We, the undersigned representatives of " the changing order " in conference assembled at Henning, Minnesota, this fourth day of July, 1913, being firmly impressed with the conviction that the time is now ripe for a more harmonious, tranquil and symmetrical basis of social inter-relationships, do hereby issue a call for a MASS CONVENTION to assemble at Minneapolis, Minnesota, at noon on the third day of July, 1914, for the purpose of considering, modifying, amending or adopting the following preamble and resolutions : " WHEREAS, the progress of human intelligence from primitive superstitions toward enlightenment has consisted always of a growing ability to discriminate between what is real and what is false, and WHEREAS the securing to every human being an undisputed foothold upon the earth will make all other social problems easier of solution, and, WHEREAS the common illusion that land can be owned has already persisted too long to the detriment of every individual resident upon this planet and to the entire destruction of satisfactory social relations : HE IT RESOLVED by all the men and women hereunto subscribing that from and after the first day of January, 1920, we will no longer recognise the validity of any land title howsoever granted except such as is based upon occupancy and use of land ; AND FURTHERMORE we pledge ourselves from said date to stand by for the protection of the tenure of all who then are, and shall thereafter become occupiers and users of land against invasion of any and every kind, to the full extent that the force of an awakened and enlightened public opinion shall be available and effective." All men and women who have sufficiently developed the sense of humour to perceive the gigantic fallacy of vested rights to land by any tenure save that of occupancy and use are invited to attend this convention. Attendance upon and participation in the deliberations of the conference does not necessarily involve the severance of any political, religious or other allegiance. The place of meeting will be announced later. Further information and copies of this proclamation can be had by addressing the provisional secretary. A. G. Wagner, 708, Central Avenue, Minneapolis, Minn. (Signed by A. E. Melander and A. M. Wilton, Mondak, Montana ; George A. Totten, Bowman. North Dakota; Geo. C. Waters, Fergus Falls, Minn. ; W. P. Tubbs, Jos. J. Neuner, Ella Tubbs, Henning, Minn. ; A. C. Weeker, Alexandria, Minn. ; Albert Steinhauser, New Ulm, Minn. ; Herman Kuehn and A. G. Wagner, Minneapolis, Minn., and others.) [As involving a plan of campaign the above document provides a very cheering variation from the unending stream of pious resolutions. An opinion on the value of the campaign planned would raise the entire question of property-holding and would require more space than we have here at our disposal. The subject will be dealt with at length later.— Ed.]

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60 THE EGOIST February 2nd, 1914 The Divine Mystery A READING in the History of Christianity down to the Time of Christ. By ALLEN UPWARD, AUTHOR of THE NEW WORD. The author's New Word is the only work on science and religion that has ever been accepted by both sides. In the present volume the history of religion is presented as the history of science, the story of the Virgin Mother, though only an episode in the narration, will be read with especial interest by reformers of the relation between the sexes. Garden City Press, Letchworth. Price 10s. 6d. It is requested that the work may be ordered through a Bookseller. READERS THE EGOIST are asked to become SUBSCRIBERS. This is the most effectual way of helping the Paper. SUBSCRIPTIONS must be sent to Miss HARRIET SHAW WEAVER, Oakley House Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C. All Cheques, Money Orders and Postal Orders should be crossed "Parr's Bank, Bloomsbury Branch," and made payable to The New Freewoman Ltd. For Terms of Subscription see page 59. LA VIE DES LETTRES Direction et Administration : 20, rue de Chartres, PARIS, NEUILLY. Dès l'apparition de ses premiers volumes, La Vie des Lettres s'est placée incontestablement à la tête des principales revues littéraires de langue française. Elle s'adresse tout particulièrement à Y élite intellectuelle, amie des belles lettres. Elle est, par excellence, l'organe de la haute littérature, et ses sommaires résument tout l'effort des œuvres maîtresses de ce temps. Les esthétiques des arts modernes et les manifestations les plus récentes des lettres contemporaines y sont traitées avec la plus grande compétence. Les littératures étrangères (Européennes, américaines et sud américaines) y sont étudiées par les meilleurs techniciens de ces pays. De plus, dans sa rubrique intitulée : Revue internationale des Lettres et des Arts, sont signalés et discutés au besoin, les articles les plus significatifs parus dans les périodiques classés ou d'avant garde de l'ancien et du nouveau monde. LA VIE DES LETTRES est la revue française la plus vivante et la plus moderne qui soit. A ses sommaires des pages de— G. d'Annunzio, Paul Adam, Maurice Barrés, Louis Bertrand, Nicolas Beauduin, Paul Claudel, André Gide, Francis Jammes, Jules Lemaître, A. Mercereau, Frédéric Mistral, Comtesse de Noailles Henri de Régnier, Auguste Rodin, Romain Rolland, J. H. Rosny, aîné, Viélé Griffin, Emile Verhaeren, etc., et des traductions des grands écrivians anglais, allemands, russes, etc. LA VIE DES LETTRES parait tous es trois mois par volumes de deux cents pages, grand format, beau papier. Le prix de l'abonnement est de 12 frs 'an. Printed by Robert Johnson & Co., Ltd., 28, Tulketh Street, Sauthport, and published by the Proprietors. The New Freewoman, Ltd., at Oakley House, Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C.