direct intuition, but according to an alllevelling abstraction, which from its very nature must also mean putting other people in our stead. Both are fictions, which take place in our head alone, and have no reality. Every man feels differently, and grosso modo one might say that every nation and every class feels differently. This ignoring of natural limits has led in political life to pretending to and granting rights which those whom they concern do not know how to use; in social life, to a dislocating of fixed relations and wandering from the natural atmosphere, which must always be a painful sensation; in literature, to lending to their dramatis persona thoughts and feelings which they cannot have, but especially to requiring them to be something different from what they really are, since they must correspond to the abstract moral type which we have constructed. Completely isolated are the writers who know how to divine to the reader the sensations of uncultivated people — as e.g., Jeremiah Gottholf; the large majority of readers properly so-called, prefer ideal figures in George Sand's style, which have nothing of the present but the certain.

our wood, without even asking ourselves why our father had nothing of that kind to do. In this sense, almost all men before the Revolution remained children, as nine-tenths of them remain children to this day. And it is good that it should be so; for the whole machinery of humanity would stop if we wanted continually to put ourselves into the place of others and to endeavor to ensure for every one, according to the exigencies of an abstract equality, the same conditions of life. So in consequence we stop short at good wishes, sufficient to make men, who formerly were quite happy in this limited existence, and reflected but little upon it, discontented with their lot, but insufficient to change this lot. "For there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so," says Hamlet. When man ceases thinking on what he has to do in order to think that he has to do it, good-bye to all content. Now, this is the clearest result of principle which underlies modern philanthropy as opposed to Christian charity, although it has called into existence many things which have alleviated and improved the life of the working classes within their station, helping them in illness, old age, and want of work, without

pictures of a better condition. Besides, the positive wrong is, I repeat, much less than one might suppose, precisely because the mass of mankind continues taking the world as it is and does not demand that the sun should henceforth rise in the west.

In political and social life such aspirations do mischief enough, without, how-spoiling their normal existence by illusive ever, being able to change the essence of either state or society. In literature, where we treat not with live people on actual ground but with the docile creations of our imagination on much-enduring paper, the new view of the world has worked as its consequence a much deeper revolution. It is true that the pretensions In fact, it is only with men of letters, of rationalism to regulate legislation ac- who are in quite a different relation with cording to preconceived ideas of equality the world from other people, that the new and justice have not remained without in- way of thinking has become predominant; fluence; on the whole, however, States but then their number has wonderfully have continued in our century, as in all increased in the last three hundred years. former ones, to register and codify exist. As the whole of our culture has become ing customs and to regulate newly-formed a literary one, a book culture, all we who interests and relations. It is true that in call ourselves cultured (Gebildete) are at most countries each citizen has been rec-bottom men of letters. The cultivated ognized as of equal right and equal value, but in fact power has remained in the hands of the man of culture and property. It is true that people have tried to bestow on Egypt and Turkey the blessing of Western constitutions; but not a year was required to show that one thing does not suit all. The same is the case in society. It never enters the heads of children to find social order, in so far as they know it, unjust or even unnatural. We have seen the mason join his bricks, the peasant mow his grass, the woodcutter saw

man of former times, who had been formed by commerce with men, for whom a book had interest, not as a book but only in so far as it reflected life, becomes rarer and rarer. Our whole civilization is influenced by literature; readers and authors live in the same atmosphere of unreality, or, to speak more accurately, they divide life into two halves, that of practical activity - the bookmaking of the author is also a practical activity and that of intellectual activity, two spheres which touch each other nowhere, not even where the intel

lectual one borrows its object from the practical one; for it divests them immediately of their reality and shapes them only after having falsified them.

mind how Kant has scientifically estab lished these unconscious ethics by his doctrine of the intelligible character, and Schopenhauer by his theory of compasTocqueville has a chapter headed: sion; suffice it to state that the morals of "How the men of letters became, towards our authors have another origin and anthe middle of the eighteenth century, the other aim, and that these are as incomprincipal politicians." This is now uni- patible with art as the older ones are versally the case in one sense; for even fitted to accommodate themselves to it. in England political life has been infected Now, modern morais may apparently dif with the spirit of the men of letters, fer as much from one another as Žola's through the advance of the Radical on from Howells'; but they have the same the one hand, and the reform of Toryism family feature-discontent with this world by Disraeli on the other; the fact remains, as it is; and the direct consequence of it however, particularly true of France, is the sombre tone of all this literature. where the whole polity suffers cruelly under it. Nevertheless, art and literature are always the two activities most affected by it, and it is with them that we are here concerned.

III.

Ernst ist das Leben, heiter ist die Kunst, thought Schiller; to-day, art is to be earnest, a species of worship for Richard Wagner, a moral or political lesson for Gustav Freytag. And how could it be otherwise? If one compares unceasingly this world and human nature with a high, arbitrary, self-created ideal, void of all reality, they must appear very insufficient, and may well lead to bitter judgments. How morose at bottom are all the novels of George Eliot, in what one might call their keynote; how bitter Charlotte Brontë's, how infinitely sad Miss Poynter's "Among the Hills," - to instance a little-known masterpiece of this sombre moralo-psychological art. All great narrators of former times, from Homer to Cervantes, and from Chaucer to Walter Scott, unchain our hearts by their good humor; even the tragic muse has always

das düstre Spiel

THE novels of our time in which the moral point of view does not absolutely predominate may be counted on the fingers. Even where unveiled immorality, or at least indecency, displays itself, there is from beginning to end, with or without the author's consciousness, a certain didactic tendency. In the apparently most objectionable of all modern works of fiction, in "Madame Bovary," one feels that the writer has an intention which is not purely artistic, the intention to warn us against certain modes of education and kinds of readings. In M. Zola it is clear that his workmen and work women who perish in the mud are to serve as deter-known how to translate rent instances. Neither do so. The German novelists conceal the moral standard which they use in their novels, the English and North Americans even boast of it. Certainly morals, as well as any other human interest, have their right of citizenship in art. Only it is important to know what is understood by morals: the natural and sound ones which culminate in the worship of truth, or the artificial, made up, unhealthy ones, whose mother is human vanity, whose godmother is falsehood. It is sound morals when Prince Hal leaves his pet favorite in the lurch as soon as, with the responsibility of the crown, the earnest of life begins for him; it is unhealthy morals when Victor Hugo disturbs the ideas of right and wrong by glorifying a galley-slave who has become the victim of an error of justice. This is not the place to examine at length what were the instinctive morals of men before the victory of rationalism, nor to recall to

Der Wahrheit in das heitre Reich der Kunst. Here, on the contrary, we always feel oppressed by the long face and the lugubrious tone which our authors take when they relate things our ancestors were prone to laugh over. Sensuality even, which formerly used to present itself with ingenuousness, healthy and naked, or forced its entrance into literature by a smile, is now grave, reflective, a product of corrupt intelligence rather than of overstreaming force and fulness. In defer ence to truth it must, however, be said that the modern novel has on the whole kept itself freer than poetry from this unwholesome and over-refined sensuality. On the other hand, it has become more sentimentally charitable towards all those phenomena and types which were formerly the object of mirth. Who would dare nowadays to treat comically poor

stammering Bridoison? Compassion for | rather expected that the adder should lose his infirmity would get the better of us; her venom, than that Blifil should cease full of human tenderness, we should "put to be a scoundrel. ourselves in his stead," and forthwith make a tragical figure of him. The dry savant whom the world has laughed at for centuries as an awkward or vain book worm, becomes in George Eliot's hands an unfortunate, who sighing for a false ideal, is on the other hand seen by the noblest of women herself as an ideal. For whatever is comical objectively becomes tragical when it is taken subjec tively our tender little self suffers, and no wonder it pities itself.

I spoke of Howells taking part against his own hero in the most perfect of his works. You will find something similar in almost every novel of our time. It seems as if the authors could not refrain from persecuting in an odious type certain persons whom they have learned to know and to hate in life — a disposition of mind which is the most contrary to the artist's disposition which could be thought out; for he neither hates nor loves his objects personally, and to him Richard III. is as interesting as Antonio, "one in whom the ancient Roman honor more appears than any that draws breath in Italy." Remember only George Eliot's character, Rosamond, and with what really feminine perfidy she tries to discredit her. How differently Abbé Prévost treats his Manon! Even if Richardson, and, in our time, Jer. Gottholf, do take a moralizing tone, and begin with ever so many preachments and good lessons, the artist runs away with them; they forget that they wanted to teach and paint their objects with artistic indifference: sine ira nec studio, not to speak of their morals being of a kind which have nothing in them rebellious to art. With George Eliot and W. D. Howells it is the contrary: they want to be objective, but the moralist soon gets the better of the artist.

How rudely would all the serene figures which live in our imagination be destroyed, if we were to put them under the discipline of our conscientious authors! Only fancy poor Manon under the birchrod of Jane Eyre, the schoolmistress! Imagine Squire Western in M. Zola's clinique : “If you continue getting drunk every night, whilst your daughter is play ing the harpsichord, a terrible end is awaiting you, Mr. Western. Shall I describe it to you? I have accurately studied several cases of delirium tremens potatorum, the punishment which is in store for all alcoholized persons as you are." And our old friend Falstaff, whom that losel Shakespeare treated so indulgently, what lessons George Eliot would have read to him! "For really, Sir John, you have no excuse whatever. If you were a poor devil who had never had any but bad exam- I hope the reader has observed that I ples before your eyes; but you have had choose only novels and novelists of first all the advantages which destiny can give rank, in order to compare them with those to man on his way through life! Are you of former times, such indeed as might, not born of a good family? have not you perhaps, come out victoriously from such had, at Oxford, the best education En- a comparison, if they were not infected by gland is able to give to her children? the moral epidemic of our time. How have you not had the highest connections? deeply our generation is steeped in it we And, nevertheless, how low you are fall- generally forget, because habit makes apen! Do you know why? I have warned pear as nature what is only a moral conmy Tito over and over against it: because vention. Other times have advocated you have always done that only which was more severe conventions, but they reagreeable to you, and have shunned mained on the surface; ours seem lighter, everything that was unpleasant." "And more accommodating, but they penetrate you, Miss Phillis," Mr. Howells would to our marrow. It is incredible how great say, "if you go on being naughty I shall write a writ against you, as I did against my hero Bartley, who, too, won every body's heart, but at bottom was a very frivolous fellow; or I shall deliver you up to my friend James, who will analyze you until nobody knows you again. That will teach you to enter into yourself and to become another." "Become another," is that not the first requirement of a novel hero of our days? Fielding would have VOL. XLVI. 2351

LIVING AGE.

a mass of artificial feelings, interests, and duties we carry about, how our language and our actions are dominated by them. Fine scenery, fine arts, philanthropy, etc., without any inner want, fill our intellec tual life; we believe in the reality of sensations we never experienced; or we drive out nature by culture. Shakespeare would not be able nowadays to create an Othello who would listen to Iago's insinuations, because no gentleman nowadays would