The New Spirit

e of latent life, but we forget sometimes that there have been many such new expansions of the human spirit since that primitive outburst of C

at renascence of life, a hundred years later, in the wonderful thirteenth century, when Francis of Assisi revealed anew in his own person the ideal charm of Jesus, and a group of fine spirits, his fellows, who bore the Everlasting Gospel,—Jean de Parme, Pierre d’Olive, Fra Dolcino and the rest,—sought to rebuild the edifice of Christendom on the foundation of the Gospels, only in the end to deluge the world with a plague of grey friars. And then a great wave, with Luther on its crest, swept across Europe, reached at last the coast of England, and left on its shores, as a

ole of his long day was spent in crying out to a faithless and perverse generation. Therefore Carlyle never attained the serenity and hilarity of those two great spirits, Goethe and Emerson, between whom he stood midway. Nor is it surprising that he was often blinded by the smoke and heat of a land that had become one huge Black Country, and that he fought against freedom, and sometimes mistook his friends for e

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lution sought in what seems to me one of the most exquisite and significant books of the century, “Marius the Epicurean.” For Marius, life is made up of a few rare and lovely visions. All the rough sorrow and gladness of the world, its Dantesque bitterness or its Rabelaisian joy, only reaches him through a long succession of mirrors, and every strong human impulse as an attenuated echo. This seri

periods, and they meet with much contempt as[5] destructive of man’s finer and higher nature; but, in the end, it is by these that the finer and higher is lifted to new levels. No grea

Anthropologie of Paris in the same memorable year of 1859 which first saw “The Origin of Species.” Man has been brought into a line with the rest of life; a mysterious chasm has been filled up; a few fruitful hints have been received which help to make the development of all life more intelligible. This has, on the one hand, given a mighty impulse to the patient study of nature and to the accumulation of facts now seen to bear such infinite possibilities of farther advance; just as the discovery of America in the sixteenth century produced a like spirit of adventure which led men to all parts of the globe. On the other hand, this devotion to truth, this instinctive[7] search after the causes of things, has become what may be called a new faith. The fruits of this scientific spirit are sincerity, patience, humility, the love of nature and the love of man. “Wisdom is to speak truth and consciously to act according to nature.” So spake the old Ephesian, Heraclitus, to whom, rather than to Socrates, men are now beginning to look back as the exponent of the true Greek spirit; and so also speaks modern science. It is a faith that has become a living reality to many; Clifford, for instance, as revealed in his “Lectures and Essays,” has long been a brilliant and inspiring member, often called typical, of the company of those who are filled with the scientific spirit. Huxley, one of the most militant and indefatigable exponents of the scientific spirit during the past half century, has lately set forth its aim, which has been that of his own life:—“To promote the increase of natural knowledge and to forward the application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems of life to the best of my ability, in the conviction, which has grown with my growth and strengthened with my strength, t

ult human creature in a civilized democratic state. But many other changes will follow in the train of these very simple and matter-of-fact changes, and it is no wonder that many worthy people look with dread upon the slow invasion by women of all the concerns of life—which are, after all, as much their own concerns as anyone’s—as nothing less than a new irruption of barbarians. These good people are unquestionably right. The development of women means a reinvigo

Divine Comedies, the painting of Transfigurations, the construction of systems of metaphysic, the inauguration of new religions—men are without rivals; the more abstract and unsocial an art is, the easier it is for men to attain eminence in it; in music and in the art of erecting philosophies men have had, least of all,[11] any occasion to fear the rivalry of women. Such things are precious, although it may be that what we call “genius” is something abnormal and distorted, like those centres of irritation which result in the pearls we likewise count so precious. Women are comparatively free from “genius.” Yet it might probably be maintained that the average level of women’s intelligence is fully equal to that of men’s. Compare the men and women among settlers in the Australian bush, or wherever else men a

urns out to be full of attraction, and the historic development of the relationship between men and women as charming as any novel. In the same way the men of 1859, who were nurtured on “The Origin of Species,” naturally and rightly turned their militant energies against theology and fought over the book of Genesis. To-day, when social rather than theological questions seem to be the legitimate outcome of the scientific spirit, and when all things connected with social organization have become the matters of most vital interest to those who are real

prison—and democracy would be achieved. This crude notion has long since become ridiculous. We see now that the vote and the ballot-box do not make the voter free from even external pressure; and, which is of much more consequence, they do not necessarily free him from his own slavish instincts. We see that enfranchisement does not mean freedom, since the enfranchised are capable of running in a brainless and compact mob after any man who is clever enough to gain despotic[14] influence over

lectual nor moral subjection, two processes at least are needed to render democracy possible—on

y uneducated person. Education, as we understand it now, must be founded on the harmonious exercise of body, senses, and emotions, as well as intellect; the whole environment is the agent of education. That is why we are now extending the meaning of the word indefinitely. Fresh air, good food, manual training, the cultivation of the art instincts, physical exercise and abundant recreation, wholesome home relationships—these are a few of the things which we now recognize as essential parts of the rational education of every boy and girl, and which we are seeking to obtain for all. Nor is education in this sense incompatible with intellectual development; on the contrary, it is the only sound foundation for such development. There is here no ne

and go hand in hand. The average working man, in England at all events, is not an enthusiast for schemes of technical education; as things stand, such schemes constitute a method for supplying the capitalist with cheap instruments, and the working man cannot be expected

unions have been one of the most potent influences in this direction. All our factory legislation has been a sign of its growth, and the same movement has given enthusiasm to the County Council. There are very few things in our daily life which this spirit of social organization is not embracing or promising to embrace. The old bugbear of “State interference” (a real danger under so many circumstances) vanishes when a community approaches the point at which the indi

gotten that the former is but the means to secure the latter. While we are socializing all those things of which all have equal common need, we are more and more tending to leave to the individual the con

hod of dispute rapidly becoming antiquated. Twenty-eight millions of men, ready to be put into the field (is not this a suggestive euphemism?) at a moment’s notice, in a corner of the world! Take a plébiscite of the adult population of Europe, of whose life-blood these twenty-eight millions are, to-morrow—and what would the régime of militarism be worth? We must certainly expect to see the same process repeated between nations which has everywhere ta

e of war. In the profoundly interesting movement, witnessed to-day in the direction of trusts and syndicates, we see the natural and inevitable transition to a new era. Like all transitions, it can only be effected with much friction. From one point of view it i

rime. No progress is possible if every little redeemed patch is at once flooded from over sea. It must be remembered also, that the dykes necessary to regulate the floating population are required even in the interests of the poorer countries. We are approaching a time when the general spread of information, especially by means of newspapers, will render it impossi

for its great mission of dominating Asia. To the English it has never been easy to find a modus vivendi with lower races, or races which we are pleased to consider lower; the very qualities which give us insular independence and toughness of fibre, unfit us for the other task. But the Russian temperament, as is now generally recognized, is peculiarly adapted for mingling harmoniously even with the fiercest yellow races and bringing them into relation with the best European influences; all those who care for humanity view with satisfaction the growing influence of Russia in the East, an influence which, we may reasonably hope, will overspread the continent. A very large field indeed is still left for the other great expanding race of the world. The English-speaking races have in their hands the greater[22] part of North America, and nearly all Australia, and here their special qualities find ample scope. This division gives no ground for quarrel; the Russians have never had much ca

ountry outside their own land. England has, during the present century, owing to special conditions, occupied a position in the world enormously disproportioned to its size. These special conditions are now rapidly ceasing; the Suez Canal, which has dealt so decisive a blow to the com[24]mercial greatness of England, has made it more difficult than ever for us to maintain the artificial position of advantage which we possessed as distributors; so that England, as a distributing power, is being reduced by the failure of the Cape route to the same condition as Venice was reduced to by its discovery. Nor is it merely as a distributing power that England is losing its position; it is losing its position—relatively, that is—as one of the great producing powers of the world. There will soon be no reason why the coarse products of a great part of the earth should be sent all the way to a small northern country to be returned in a more or less ugly and adulterate manufactured condition. We witness to-day the wonderful development of India as a centre of production. In the colonies the beginnings are small, but they are rapidly increasing; in these matters it is the first step that costs; while a well-marked tendency to protection, not likely on the whole to diminish, tends to m

It has become one of the chief tasks of science to attain unity, unity of standard[26] and measure and nomenclature; this has been the object of numberless conferences. It is to attain this end that the efforts to manufacture a universal language have obtained some support, fruitless as they have hitherto been. It was by a wholesome instinct that men formerly clung to Latin as the universal language of educated Christendom; the

d there among us, a reasonable reaction, a reaction against the hurry and excitement of m

deed of our own blood—at which we slake our thirst when our[27] hearts are torn by personal misery, or weary and distracted by life’s heat and restless hurry. At times, the great motor instincts of our nature, impelling us by a force that we cannot measure or co

sought and found, and moulded into the sweet harmonics of his prose, the things that make for rest and for consolation—and who is not sometimes weary and distracted, and in need of rest? We English, it is[28] true, are not an aboriginally religious people; we are great in practical life, and we are marvellous poets; but while we have an immense appetite for imported religion, we have never ourselves even produced one of those manuals of piety which, since the days of Lao-tsze, have become the common possession of the devout everywhere. One little Encheiridion alone there is, so far as I know, in which, during recent years, an English writer has brought echoes of old times, of exhilaration or of peace, into

ssions, or exclusive absorption in a single sense, but as a many-sided and active delight in the wholeness of things, is the great restorer of health and rest to the energies distracted by our turbulent modern movements. Thus understood, it has the firmest of scientific foundations; it is but the reasonable satisfaction of the instinctive cravings of the organism, cravings that are not the less real for being often unconscious. Its satisfaction means the presence of joy in our daily life, and joy is the prime tonic of life. It is the gratification of the art-instinct that makes the wholesome stimulation of labour joyous; it is in the gratification of the art-instinct that repose becomes joyous. The fanatical commercialism that has filled so much of our centur

kely to be realized, for some time to come. There is a very large and wonderful and little-read collection of fiction, the “Acta Sanctorum,” in which the whole life and soul of a remote period are laid bare to us. It is, like our own fiction, a fiction that is more than half reality, and it has[31] often seemed to me that the novels of this century will in the fut

pular art. Yet, by a wholesome instinct. For fiction is, more than any other art, the art of a period of repression. The world’s great ages hav

arly personal tenderness. Whitman represents, for the first time since Christianity swept over the world, the re-integration, in a sane and whole-hearted form, of the instincts of the entire man, and therefore he has a significance which we can scarcely over-estimate. Goethe had done something of this in a more artistic and intellectual shape; it is from no lack of love or reverence for Goethe that I have chosen the American, a democrat rather than an aristocrat, the very roughness of whose grasp of life serves but to reveal the genuine instinct of the modern Greek. All that is finest in aristocracy we see revealed in Ibsen, a keen and sombre figure that reminds one perpetually of Dante—the same curt and awful contempt for

of former life. We marvel at the prodigality of nature, but how marvellous, too, the economy! The old cycles are for ever renewed, and it is no paradox that he who would advance can never cling too close to the past. The thing that has been is the thing that will be again; if we realize