,boon1 ,the ,mind of the ,race1 ,the ,wild ,asses of the ,devil1 and ,the ,last ,trump ,being a ,first ,selection from the ,literary ,remains of ,george ,boon1 ,appropriate to the ,times ,prepared for ,publication by ,,reginald ,,bliss ,,author ,,of ,,the ,,cousins ,,of ,,charlotte ,,bronte1 ,a ,,child',s ,,history ,,of ,,the ,,crystal ,,palace1 ,,firelight ,,rambles1 ,,edible ,,fungi1 ,,whales ,,in ,,captivity1 ,,and ,,other ,,works ,,with ,an ,ambiguous ,introduction by ,h4 ,g4 ,,wells ,t4 ,,fisher ,,unwin1 ,,ltd4 ,,london2 ,,adelphi ,,terrace ,first published in #aiae 7,all rights reserved7 ,,introduction ,whenever a publisher gets a book by one author he wants an ,introduction written to it by another1 and ,mr4 ,fisher ,unwin is no exception to the rule4 ,nobody reads ,introductions1 they serve no useful purpose1 and they give no pleasure1 but they appeal to the business mind1 ,i think1 because as a rule they cost nothing4 ,at any rate1 by the pressure of a certain inseparable intimacy between ,mr4 ,reginald ,bliss and myself1 this ,introduction has been extracted from me4 ,i will confess that ,i have not read his book through1 though ,i have a kind of first-hand knowledge of its contents1 and that it seems to me an indiscreet1 ill-advised book4444 ,i have a very strong suspicion that this ,introduction idea is designed to entangle me in the responsibility for the book4 ,in ,america1 at any rate1 ,the ,life of ,george ,meek1 ,bath ,chairman1 was ascribed to me upon no better evidence4 ,yet any one who likes may go to ,eastbourne and find ,meek with chair and all complete4 ,but in view of the complications of the book market and the large simplicities of the public mind1 ,i do hope that the reader--and by that ,i mean the reviewer--will be able to see the reasonableness and the necessity of distinguishing between me and ,mr4 ,reginald ,bliss4 ,i do not wish to escape the penalties of thus participating in1 and endorsing1 his manifest breaches of good taste1 literary decorum1 and friendly obligation1 but as a writer whose reputation is already too crowded and confused and who is for the ordinary purposes of every day known mainly as a novelist1 ,i should be glad if ,i could escape the public identification ,i am now repudiating4 ,bliss is ,bliss and ,wells is ,wells4 ,and ,bliss can write all sorts of things that ,wells could not do4 ,this ,introduction has really no more to say than that4 ,h4 ,g4 ,,wells4 ,,contents ,,introduction ,,chapter ,,the ,,first ,,the ,,back ,,of ,,miss ,,bathwick ,,and ,,george ,,boon ,,chapter ,,the ,,second ,,being ,,the ,,first ,,chapter ,,of ,,the ,,mind ,,of ,,the ,,race ,,chapter ,,the ,,third ,,the ,,great ,,slump1 ,,the ,,revival ,,of ,,letters1 ,,and ,,the ,,garden ,,by ,,the ,,sea ,,chapter ,,the ,,fourth ,,of ,,art1 ,,of ,,literature1 ,,of ,,mr ,,henry ,,james ,,chapter ,,the ,,fifth ,,of ,,the ,,assembling ,,and ,,opening ,,of ,,the ,,world ,,conference ,,on ,,the ,,mind ,,of ,,the ,,race ,,chapter ,,the ,,sixth ,,of ,,not ,,liking ,,hallery ,,and ,,the ,,royal ,,society ,,for ,,the ,,discouragement ,,of ,,literature ,,chapter ,,the ,,seventh ,,wilkins ,,makes ,,certain ,,objections ,,chapter ,,the ,,eighth ,,the ,,beginning ,,of ,,the ,,wild ,,asses ,,of ,,the ,,devil ,,chapter ,,the ,,ninth ,,the ,,hunting ,,of ,,the ,,wild ,,asses ,,of ,,the ,,devil ,,chapter ,,the ,,tenth ,,the ,,story ,,of ,,the ,,last ,,trump ,,boon1 ,,the ,,mind ,,of ,,the ,,race1 ,,the ,,wild ,,asses ,,of ,,the ,,devil1 and ,,the ,,last ,,trump ,,chapter ,,the ,,first ,the ,back of ,miss ,bathwick and ,george ,boon ,sec4 #a ,it is quite probable that the reader does not know of the death of ,george ,boon1 and that remains before his name upon the title-page will be greeted with a certain astonishment4 ,in the ordinary course of things1 before the explosion of the war1 the death of ,george ,boon would have been an event--oh6 a three-quarters of a column or more in the ,times event1 and articles in the monthlies and reminiscences4 ,as it is1 he is not so much dead as missing4 ,something happened at the eleventh hour--,i think it was chiefly the ,admiralty report of the fight off the ,falkland ,islands--that blew his obituary notices clean out of the papers4 ,and yet he was one of our most popular writers1 and in ,america ,i am told he was in the hundred thousand class4 ,but now we think only of ,lord ,kitchener's hundred thousands4 ,it is no good pretending about it4 ,the war has ended all that4 ,boon died with his age4 ,after the war there will be a new sort of book-trade and a crop of new writers and a fresh tone1 and everything will be different4 ,this is an obituary1 of more than ,george ,boon4444 ,i regard the outlook with profound dismay4 ,i try to keep my mind off it by drilling with the ,shrewsbury last line of volunteers and training down the excrescences of my physical style4 ,when the war is over will be time enough to consider the prospects of a superannuated man of letters4 ,we ,national ,volunteers are now no mere soldiers on paper2 we have fairly washable badges by way of uniform2 we have bought ourselves dummy rifles2 we have persuaded the ,war ,office to give us a reluctant recognition on the distinct understanding that we have neither officers nor authority4 ,in the event of an invasion1 ,i understand1 we are to mobilize and 444 do quite a number of useful things4 ,but until there is an invasion in actual progress1 nothing is to be decided more precisely than what this whiff of printer's shrapnel1 these four full stops1 conveys4444 ,sec4 #b ,i must confess ,i was monstrously disappointed when at last ,i could get my hands into those barrels in the attic in which ,boon had stored his secret writings4 ,there was more perhaps than ,i had expected2 ,i do not complain of the quantity1 but of the disorder1 the incompleteness1 the want of discipline and forethought4 ,boon had talked so often and so convincingly of these secret books he was writing1 he had alluded so frequently to this or that great project1 he would begin so airily with ,in the seventeenth chapter of my ',wild ,asses of the ,devil1' or ,i have been recasting the third part of our ',mind of the ,race1' that it came as an enormous shock to me to find there was no seventeenth chapter2 there was not even a completed first chapter to the former work1 and as for the latter1 there seems nothing really finished or settled at all beyond the fragments ,i am now issuing1 except a series of sketches of ,lord ,rosebery1 for the most part in a toga and a wreath1 engaged in a lettered retirement at his villa at ,epsom1 and labelled ,patrician ,dignity1 the ,last ,phase--sketches ,i suppress as of no present interest--and a complete gallery of imaginary portraits 7with several duplicates7 of the ,academic ,committee that has done so much for ,british literature 7the ,polignac prize1 for example1 and ,sir ,henry ,newbolt's professorship7 in the last four or five years4 ,so incredulous was ,i that this was all1 that ,i pushed my inquiries from their original field in the attic into other parts of the house1 pushed them1 indeed1 to the very verge of ransacking1 and in that ,i greatly deepened the want of sympathy already separating me from ,mrs4 ,boon4 ,but ,i was stung by a thwarted sense of duty1 and quite resolved that no ill-advised interference should stand between me and the publication of what ,boon has always represented to me as the most intimate productions of his mind4 ,yet now the first rush of executorial emotion is over ,i can begin to doubt about ,boon's intention in making me his literary executor4 ,did he1 after all1 intend these pencilled scraps1 these marginal caricatures1 and--what seems to me most objectionable--annotated letters from harmless prominent people for publication8 ,or was his selection of me his last effort to prolong what was1 ,i think1 if one of the slightest1 one also of the most sustained interests of his life1 and that was a prolonged faint jeering at my expense8 ,because always--it was never hidden from me--in his most earnest moments ,boon jeered at me4 ,i do not know why he jeered at me1 it was always rather pointless jeering and far below his usual level1 but jeer he did4 ,even while we talked most earnestly and brewed our most intoxicating draughts of project and conviction1 there was always this scarce perceptible blossom and flavour of ridicule floating like a drowning sprig of blue borage in the cup4 ,his was indeed essentially one of those suspended minds that float above the will and action2 when at last reality could be evaded no longer it killed him2 he never really believed nor felt the urgent need that goads my more accurate nature to believe and do4 ,always when ,i think of us together1 ,i feel that ,i am on my legs and that he sits about4 ,and yet he could tell me things ,i sought to know1 prove what ,i sought to believe1 shape beliefs to a conviction in me that ,i alone could never attain4 ,he took life as it came1 let his fancy play upon it1 selected1 elucidated1 ignored1 threw the result in jest or observation or elaborate mystification at us1 and would have no more of it4444 ,he would be earnest for a time and then break away4 ,the ,last ,trump is quite typical of the way in which he would turn upon himself4 ,it sets out so straight for magnificence2 it breaks off so abominably4 ,you will read it4 ,yet he took things more seriously than he seemed to do4 ,this war1 ,i repeat1 killed him4 ,he could not escape it4 ,it bore him down4 ,he did his best to disregard it4 ,but its worst stresses caught him in the climax of a struggle with a fit of pneumonia brought on by a freak of bathing by moonlight--in an ,english ,october1 a thing he did to distract his mind from the tension after the ,marne--and it destroyed him4 ,the last news they told him was that the ,germans had made their shoot and scuttle raid upon ,whitby and ,scarborough4 ,there was much circumstantial description in the morning's paper4 ,they had smashed up a number of houses and killed some hundreds of people1 chiefly women and children4 ,ten little children had been killed or mutilated in a bunch on their way to school1 two old ladies at a boarding-house had had their legs smashed1 and so on4 ,take this newspaper1 he said1 and held it out to his nurse4 ,take it1 he repeated irritably1 and shook it at her4 ,he stared at it as it receded4 ,then he seemed to be staring at distant things4 ,wild ,asses of the ,devil1 he said at last4 ,oh6 ,wild ,asses of the ,devil6 ,i thought somehow it was a joke4 ,it wasn't a joke4 ,there they are1 and the world is theirs4 ,and he turned his face to the wall and never spoke again4 ,sec4 #c ,but before ,i go on it is necessary to explain that the ,george ,boon ,i speak of is not exactly the same person as the ,george ,boon1 the ,great ,writer1 whose fame has reached to every bookshop in the world4 ,the same bodily presence perhaps they had1 but that is all4 ,except when he chose to allude to them1 those great works on which that great fame rests1 those books and plays of his that have made him a household word in half a dozen continents1 those books with their style as perfect and obvious as the gloss upon a new silk hat1 with their flat narrative trajectory that nothing could turn aside1 their unsubdued and apparently unsubduable healthy note1 their unavoidable humour1 and their robust pathos1 never came between us4 ,we talked perpetually of literature and creative projects1 but never of that output of his4 ,we talked as men must talk who talk at all1 with an untrammelled freedom2 now we were sublime and now curious1 now we pursued subtleties and now we were utterly trivial1 but always it was in an undisciplined1 irregular style quite unsuitable for publication4 ,that1 indeed1 was the whole effect of the ,george ,boon ,i am now trying to convey1 that he was indeed essentially not for publication4 ,and this effect was in no degree diminished by the fact that the photograph of his beautiful castellated house1 and of that extraordinarily irrelevant person ,mrs4 ,boon--for ,i must speak my mind of her--and of her two dogs 7,binkie and ,chum71 whom he detested1 were1 so to speak1 the poulet and salade in the menu of every illustrated magazine4 ,the fact of it is he was one of those people who will not photograph2 so much of him was movement1 gesture1 expression1 atmosphere1 and colour1 and so little of him was form4 ,his was the exact converse of that semi-mineral physical quality that men call handsome1 and now that his career has come to its sad truncation ,i see no reason why ,i should further conceal the secret of the clear1 emphatic1 solid impression he made upon all who had not met him4 ,it was1 indeed1 a very simple secret2-- ,he never wrote anything for his public with his own hand4 ,he did this of set intention4 ,he distrusted a certain freakishness of his finger-tips that he thought might have injured him with his multitudinous master4 ,he knew his holograph manuscript would certainly get him into trouble4 ,he employed a lady1 the lady who figures in his will1 ,miss ,bathwick1 as his amanuensis4 ,in ,miss ,bathwick was all his security4 ,she was a large1 cool1 fresh-coloured1 permanently young lady1 full of serious enthusiasms2 she had been faultlessly educated in a girls' high school of a not too modern type1 and she regarded ,boon with an invincible respect4 ,she wrote down his sentences 7spelling without blemish in all the ,european languages7 as they came from his lips1 with the aid of a bright1 efficient1 new-looking typewriter4 ,if he used a rare word or a whimsical construction1 she would say1 ,i beg your pardon1 ,mr4 ,boon1 and he would at once correct it2 and if by any lapse of an always rather too nimble imagination he carried his thoughts into regions outside the tastes and interests of that enormous ante-bellum public it was his fortune to please1 then1 according to the nature of his divagation1 she would either cough or sigh or--in certain eventualities--get up and leave the room4 ,by this ingenious device--if one may be permitted to use the expression for so pleasant and trustworthy an assistant--he did to a large extent free himself from the haunting dread of losing his public by some eccentricity of behaviour1 some quirk of thought or fluctuation of attitude that has pursued him ever since the great success of ,captain ,clayball1 a book he wrote to poke fun at the crude imaginings of a particularly stupid schoolboy he liked1 had put him into the forefront of our literary world4 ,sec4 #d ,he had a peculiar1 and1 ,i think1 a groundless terror of the public of the ,united ,states of ,america1 from which country he derived the larger moiety of his income4 ,in spite of our remonstrances1 he subscribed to the ,new ,york ,nation to the very end1 and he insisted1 in spite of fact1 reason1 and my earnest entreaties 7having regard to the future unification of the ,english-speaking race71 in figuring that continental empire as a vain1 garrulous1 and prosperous female of uncertain age1 and still more uncertain temper1 with unfounded pretensions to intellectuality and an ideal of refinement of the most negative description1 entirely on the strength of that one sample4 ,one might as well judge ,england by the ,spectator4 ,my protests seemed only to intensify his zest in his personification of ,columbia as the ,aunt ,errant of ,christendom1 as a wild1 sentimental1 and advanced maiden lady of inconceivable courage and enterprise1 whom everything might offend and nothing cow4 ,i know1 he used to say1 something will be said or done and she'll have hysterics2 the temptation to smuggle something through ,miss ,bathwick's back is getting almost too much for me4 ,i could1 you know4 ,or some one will come along with something a little harder and purer and emptier and more emphatically handsome than ,i can hope to do4 ,i shall lose her one of these days4444 ,how can ,i hope to keep for ever that proud and fickle heart8 ,and then ,i remember he suddenly went off at a tangent to sketch out a great novel he was to call ,aunt ,columbia4 ,no1 he said1 they would suspect that--',aunt ,dove4' ,she was to be a lady of great1 unpremeditated wealth1 living on a vast estate near a rather crowded and troublesome village4 ,everything she did and said affected the village enormously4 ,she took the people's children into her employment2 they lived on her surplus vegetables4 ,she was to have a particularly troublesome and dishonest household of servants and a spoiled nephew called ,teddy4 ,and whenever she felt dull or energetic she drove down into the village and lectured and blamed the villagers--for being overcrowded1 for being quarrelsome1 for being poor and numerous1 for not1 in fact1 being spinster ladies of enormous good fortune4444 ,that was only the beginning of one of those vast schemes of his that have left no trace now in all the collection4 ,his fear of shocking ,america was1 ,i think1 unfounded2 at any rate1 he succeeded in the necessary suppressions every time1 and until the day of his death it was rare for the ,american press-cuttings that were removed in basketfuls almost daily with the other debris of his breakfast-table to speak of him in anything but quasi-amorous tones4 ,he died for them the most spiritual as well as the most intellectual of men2 not simply intellectual1 but lovable4 ,they spoke of his pensive eyes1 though1 indeed1 when he was not glaring at a camera they were as pensive as champagne1 and when the robust pathos bumped against the unavoidable humour as they were swept along the narrow torrent of his story they said with all the pleasure of an apt quotation that indeed in his wonderful heart laughter mingled with tears4 ,sec4 #e ,i think ,george ,boon did on the whole enjoy the remarkable setting of his philosophical detachment very keenly2 the monstrous fame of him that rolled about the world1 that set out east and came back circumferentially from the west and beat again upon his doors4 ,he laughed irresponsibly1 spent the resulting money with an intelligent generosity1 and talked of other things4 ,it is the quality of life1 he said1 and ,the people love to have it so4 ,i seem to see him still1 hurrying but not dismayed1 in flight from the camera of an intrusive admirer--an admirer not so much of him as of his popularity--up one of his garden walks towards his agreeable study4 ,i recall his round1 enigmatical face1 an affair of rosy rotundities1 his very bright1 active eyes1 his queer1 wiry1 black hair that went out to every point in the heavens1 his ankles and neck and wrists all protruding from his garments in their own peculiar way1 protruding a little more in the stress of flight4 ,i recall1 too1 his general effect of careless and1 on the whole1 commendable dirtiness1 accentuated rather than corrected by the vivid tie of soft orange-coloured silk he invariably wore1 and how his light paces danced along the turf4 7,he affected in his private dominions trousers of faint drab corduroy that were always too short1 braced up with vehement tightness1 and displaying claret-coloured socks above his easy1 square-toed shoes47 ,and ,i know that even that lumbering camera coming clumsily to its tripod ambush neither disgusted nor vulgarized him4 ,he liked his game2 he liked his success and the opulent stateliness it gave to the absurdities of ,mrs4 ,boon and all the circumstances of his profoundly philosophical existence2 and he liked it all none the worse because it was indeed nothing of himself at all1 because he in his essence was to dull intelligences and commonplace minds a man invisible1 a man who left no impression upon the camera-plate or moved by a hair's breadth the scale of a materialist balance4 ,sec4 #f ,but ,i will confess the state of the remains did surprise and disappoint me4 ,his story of great literary enterprises1 holograph and conducted in the profoundest secrecy1 tallied so completely with1 for example1 certain reservations1 withdrawals that took him out of one's company and gave him his evident best companionship1 as it were1 when he was alone4 ,it was so entirely like him to concoct lengthy books away from his neatly ordered study1 from the wise limitations of ,miss ,bathwick's significant cough and her still more significant back1 that we all1 ,i think1 believed in these unseen volumes unquestioningly4 ,while those fine romances1 those large1 bright plays1 were being conceived in a publicity about as scandalous as a royal gestation1 publicly planned and announced1 developed1 written1 boomed1 applauded1 there was1 we knew1 this undercurrent of imaginative activity going on1 concealed from ,miss ,bathwick's guardian knowledge1 withdrawn from the stately rhythm of her keys4 ,what more natural than to believe he was also writing it down8 ,alas6 ,i found nothing but fragments4 ,the work upon which his present fame is founded was methodical1 punctual and careful1 and it progressed with a sort of inevitable precision from beginning to end1 and so on to another beginning4 ,not only in tone and spirit but in length 7that most important consideration7 he was absolutely trustworthy2 his hundred thousand words of good1 healthy1 straightforward story came out in five months with a precision almost astronomical4 ,in that sense he took his public very seriously4 ,to have missed his morning's exercises behind ,miss ,bathwick's back would have seemed to him the most immoral--nay1 worse1 the most uncivil of proceedings4 ,she wouldn't understand it1 he would say1 and sigh and go4 ,but these scraps and fragments are of an irregularity diametrically contrasting with this4 ,they seem to have been begun upon impulse at any time1 and abandoned with an equal impulsiveness1 and they are written upon stationery of a variety and nature that alone would condemn them in the eyes of an alienist4 ,the handwriting is always atrocious and frequently illegible1 the spelling is strange1 and sometimes indecently bad1 the punctuation is sporadic1 and many of the fragments would be at once put out of court as modern literature by the fact that they are written in pencil on both sides of the paper6 ,such of the beginnings as achieve a qualified completeness are of impossible lengths2 the longest is a piece--allowing for gaps--of fourteen thousand words1 and another a fragment shaping at about eleven4 ,these are1 of course1 quite impossible sizes1 neither essay nor short story nor novel1 and no editor or publisher would venture to annoy the public with writings of so bizarre a dimension4 ,in addition there are fragments of verse4 ,but ,i look in vain for anything beyond the first chapter of that tremendous serial1 ,the ,wild ,asses of the ,devil1 that kept on day by day through ,june and ,july to the very outbreak of the war1 and only a first chapter and a few illustrations and memoranda and fragments for our ,mind of the ,race1 that went on intermittently for several years4 ,whole volumes of that great hotchpotch of criticism are lost in the sandbanks of my treacherous memory for ever4 ,much of the matter1 including a small ,,ms4 volume of those brief verses called ,limericks 7personal always1 generally actionable1 and frequently lacking in refinement71 ,i set aside at an early date4 ,much else also ,i rejected as too disjointed and unfinished1 or too eccentric4 ,two bizarre fragments called respectively ,jane in ,heaven and ,an ,account of a ,play1 ,i may perhaps find occasion to issue at a later date1 and there were also several brief imitations of ,villiers de l',isle ,adam quite alien to contemporary ,anglo-,saxon taste1 which also ,i hold over4 ,sometimes upon separate sheets1 sometimes in the margins of other compositions1 and frequently at the end of letters received by him ,i found a curious abundance of queer little drawings1 caricatures of his correspondents1 burlesque renderings of occurrences1 disrespectful sidenotes to grave and pregnant utterances1 and the like4 ,if ever the correspondence of ,george ,boon is published1 it will have to be done in fac-simile4 ,there is a considerable number of impressions of the back of ,miss ,bathwick's head1 with and without the thread of velvet she sometimes wore about her neck1 and quite a number of curiously idealized studies of that ,american reading public he would always so grotesquely and annoyingly insist on calling ,her4 ,and among other things ,i found a rendering of myself as a short1 flattened little object that has a touch of malignity in it ,i had no reason to expect4 ,few or none of these quaint comments are drawn with ,indian ink upon millboard in a manner suitable for reproduction1 and even were they so1 ,i doubt whether the public would care for very many of them4 7,i give my own portrait--it is singularly unlike me--to show the style of thing he did47 ,illustration ,of the ,mind of the ,race ,i may perhaps tell first4 ,i find he had written out and greatly embellished the singularly vivid and detailed and happily quite imaginary account of the murder of that eminent litterateur1 ,dr4 ,tomlinson ,keyhole1 with which the ,mind of the ,race was to have concluded2 and there are an extraordinarily offensive interview with ,mr4 ,raymond ,blathwayt 7which1 since it now dates so markedly1 ,i have decided to suppress altogether7 and an unfinished study of the ,literary ,statesmen of the ,transition ,years from the ,nineteenth to the ,twentieth ,centuries 7including a lengthy comparison of the greatness of ,lords ,bryce and ,morley1 a eulogy of ,lord ,morley and a discussion whether he has wit or humour7 that were new to me4 ,and perhaps ,i may note at this point the twenty sixpenny washing books in which ,boon had commenced what ,i am firmly convinced is a general index of the works of ,plato and ,aristotle4 ,it is conceivable he did this merely as an aid to his private reading1 though the idea of a popular romancer reading anything will come to the general reader with a little shock of surprise4 ,illustration3 ,boon's idea of ,aristotle 7in modern dress71 from the washing books4 7,when asked1 ,why in modern dress8 ,boon replied simply that he would be47 ,for my own part and having in memory his subtle and elusive talk1 ,i am rather inclined to think that at one time he did go so far as to contemplate a familiar and humorous commentary upon these two pillars of the world's thought4 ,an edition of them edited and copiously illustrated by him would1 ,i feel sure1 have been a remarkable addition to any gentleman's library4 ,if he did turn his mind to anything of the sort he speedily abandoned the idea again1 and with this mention and the note that he detested ,aristotle1 those six and twenty washing books may very well follow the bulk of the drawings and most of the verse back into their original oblivion4444 ,illustration3 ,boon's idea of ,plato1 from the washing books4 7,boon absolutely rejected the ,indian ,bacchus bust as a portrait of ,plato4 ,when asked why1 he remarked merely that it wasn't like him47 ,sec4 #g ,but now you will begin to understand the nature of the task that lies before me4 ,if ,i am to do any justice to the cryptic ,george ,boon1 if indeed ,i am to publish anything at all about him1 ,i must set myself to edit and convey these books whose only publication was in fact by word of mouth in his garden arbours1 using these few fragments as the merest accessories to that4 ,i have hesitated1 ,i have collected unfavourable advice1 but at last ,i have resolved to make at least one experimental volume of ,boon's remains4 ,after all1 whatever we have of ,aristotle and ,socrates and all that we most value of ,johnson comes through the testimony of hearers4 ,and though ,i cannot venture to compare myself with ,boswell4444 ,i know the dangers ,i shall run in this attempt to save my friend from the devastating expurgations of his written ostensible career4 ,i confess ,i cannot conceal from myself that1 for example1 ,i must needs show ,boon1 by the standards of every day1 a little treacherous4 ,when ,i thrust an arm into one or other of the scores of densely packed bins of press cuttings that cumber the attics of his castellated mansion and extract a sample clutch1 ,i find almost invariably praise1 not judicious or intelligent praise perhaps1 but slab and generous praise1 paragraphs1 advice1 photographs1 notices1 notes1 allusions and comparisons1 praise of the unparalleled gloss on his style by ,doctor ,tomlinson ,keyhole under the pseudonym of ,simon up to ,snuff1 praise of the healthiness of the tone by ,doctor ,tomlinson ,keyhole under the pseudonym of ,the ,silver ,fish1 inspired announcements of some forthcoming venture made by ,doctor ,tomlinson ,keyhole under the pseudonym of ,the ,true-,born ,englishman1 and interesting and exalting speculations as to the precise figure of ,boon's income over ,dr4 ,tomlinson ,keyhole's own signature2 ,i find chatty1 if a little incoherent1 notices by ,braybourne of the most friendly and helpful sort1 and interviews of the most flattering description by this well-known litterateur and that4 ,and ,i reflect that while all this was going on1 there was ,boon on the other side of ,miss ,bathwick's rampart mind1 not only not taking them and himself seriously1 not only not controlling his disrespectful internal commentary on these excellent men1 but positively writing it down1 regaling himself with the imagined murder of this leader of thought and the forcible abduction to sinister and melancholy surroundings of that6 ,and yet ,i find it hard to do even this measure of justice to my friend4 ,he was treacherous1 it must be written1 and yet he was1 one must confess1 a singularly attractive man4 ,there was a certain quality in his life--it was pleasant4 ,when ,i think of doing him justice ,i am at once dashed and consoled by the thought of how little he cared how ,i judged him4 ,and ,i recall him very vividly as ,i came upon him on one occasion4 ,he is seated on a garden roller--an implement which makes a faultless outdoor seat when the handle is adjusted at a suitable angle against a tree1 and one has taken the precaution to skid the apparatus with a piece of rockery or other convenient object4 ,his back is against the handle1 his legs lie in a boneless curve over the roller1 and an inch or so of native buff shows between the corduroy trousers and the claret-coloured socks4 ,he appears to be engaged partly in the degustation of an unappetizing lead pencil1 and partly in the contemplation of a half-quire of notepaper4 ,the expression of his rubicund face is distinctly a happy one4 ,at the sound of my approach he looks up4 ,i've been drawing old ,keyhole again6 he says like a schoolboy4 ,illustration ,nevertheless1 if critics of standing are to be drawn like this by authors of position1 then it seems to me that there is nothing before us but to say ,good-bye for ever to the ,dignity of ,letters4 ,,chapter ,,the ,,second ,being the ,first ,chapter of ,the ,mind of the ,race ,sec4 #a ,it was one of ,boon's peculiarities to maintain a legend about every one he knew1 and to me it was his humour to ascribe a degree of moral earnestness that ,i admit only too sadly is altogether above my quality4 ,having himself invented this great project of a book upon the ,mind of the ,race which formed always at least the thread of the discourse when ,i was present1 he next went some way towards foisting it upon me4 ,he would talk to me about it in a tone of remonstrance1 raise imaginary difficulties to propositions ,i was supposed to make and superstitions ,i entertained1 speak of it as this book ,bliss is going to write2 and at the utmost admit no more than collaboration4 ,possibly ,i contributed ideas2 but ,i do not remember doing so now very distinctly4 ,possibly my influence was quasi-moral4 ,the proposition itself fluctuated in his mind to suit this presentation and that1 it had more steadfastness in mine4 ,but if ,i was the anchorage he was the ship4 ,at any rate we planned and discussed a book that ,boon pretended that ,i was writing and that ,i believed him to be writing1 in entire concealment from ,miss ,bathwick1 about the collective mind of the whole human race4 ,edwin ,dodd was with us1 ,i remember1 in one of those early talks1 when the thing was still taking form1 and he sat on a large inverted flowerpot--we had camped in the greenhouse after lunch--and he was smiling1 with his head slightly on one side and a wonderfully foxy expression of being on his guard that he always wore with ,boon4 ,dodd is a leading member of the ,rationalist ,press ,association1 a militant agnostic1 and a dear1 compact man1 one of those ,middle ,victorians who go about with a preoccupied1 caulking air1 as though1 after having been at great cost and pains to banish ,god from the ,universe1 they were resolved not to permit ,him back on any terms whatever4 ,he has constituted himself a sort of alert customs officer of a materialistic age1 saying suspiciously1 ,here1 now1 what's this rapping under the table here8 and examining every proposition to see that the ,creator wasn't being smuggled back under some specious new generalization4 ,boon used to declare that every night ,dodd looked under his bed for the ,deity1 and slept with a large revolver under his pillow for fear of a revelation4444 ,from the first ,dodd had his suspicions about this collective mind of ,boon's4 ,most unjustifiable they seemed to me then1 but he had them4 ,you must admit1 my dear ,dodd---- began ,boon4 ,i admit nothing1 said ,dodd smartly4 ,you perceive something more extensive than individual wills and individual processes of reasoning in mankind1 a body of thought1 a trend of ideas and purposes1 a thing made up of the synthesis of all the individual instances1 something more than their algebraic sum1 losing the old as they fall out1 taking up the young1 a common ,mind expressing the species---- ,oh--figuratively1 perhaps6 said ,dodd4 ,sec4 #b ,for my own part ,i could not see where ,dodd's figuratively comes in4 ,the mind of the race is as real to me as the mind of ,dodd or my own4 ,because ,dodd is completely made up of ,dodd's right leg plus ,dodd's left leg1 plus ,dodd's right arm plus ,dodd's left arm plus ,dodd's head and ,dodd's trunk1 it doesn't follow that ,dodd is a mere figurative expression4444 ,dodd1 ,i remember1 protested he had a self-consciousness that held all these constituents together1 but there was a time when ,dodd was six months old1 let us say1 and there are times now when ,dodd sleeps or is lost in some vivid sensation or action1 when that clear sense of self is in abeyance4 ,there is no reason why the collective mind of the world should not presently become at least as self-conscious as ,dodd4 ,boon1 indeed1 argued that that was happening even now1 that our very talk in the greenhouse was to that synthetic over-brain like a child's first intimations of the idea of me4 ,it's a fantastic notion1 said ,dodd1 shaking his head4 ,but ,boon was fairly launched now upon his topic1 and from the first1 ,i will confess1 it took hold of me4 ,you mustn't push the analogy of ,dodd's mind too far1 said ,boon4 ,these great ,over-minds---- ,so there are several6 said ,dodd4 ,they fuse1 they divide4 ,these great ,over-minds1 these race minds1 share nothing of the cyclic fate of the individual life2 there is no birth for them1 no pairing and breeding1 no inevitable death4 ,that is the lot of such intermediate experimental creatures as ourselves4 ,the creatures below us1 like the creatures above us1 are free from beginnings and ends4 ,the ,amoeba never dies2 it divides at times1 parts of it die here and there1 it has no sex1 no begetting4 7,existence without a love interest4 ,my ,god6 how it sets a novelist craving67 ,neither has the germ plasm4 ,these ,over-minds1 which for the most part clothe themselves in separate languages and maintain a sort of distinction1 stand to us as we stand to the amoebae or the germ cells we carry2 they are the next higher order of being2 they emerge above the intense1 intensely defined struggle of individuals which is the more obvious substance of lives at the rank of ours2 they grow1 they divide1 they feed upon one another1 they coalesce and rejuvenate4 ,so far they are like amoebae4 ,but they think1 they accumulate experiences1 they manifest a collective will4 ,nonsense6 said ,dodd1 shaking his head from side to side4 ,but the thing is manifest6 ,i've never met it4 ,you met it1 my dear ,dodd1 the moment you were born4 ,who taught you to talk8 ,your mother1 you say4 ,but whence the language8 ,who made the language that gives a bias to all your thoughts8 ,and who taught you to think1 ,dodd8 ,whence came your habits of conduct8 ,your mother1 your schoolmaster were but mouthpieces1 the books you read the mere forefront of that great being of ,voices6 ,there it is--your antagonist to-day4 ,you are struggling against it with tracts and arguments4444 ,but now ,boon was fairly going4 ,physically1 perhaps1 we were the children of our ancestors1 but mentally we were the offspring of the race mind4 ,it was clear as daylight4 ,how could ,dodd dare to argue8 ,we emerged into a brief independence of will1 made our personal innovation1 became1 as it were1 new thoughts in that great intelligence1 new elements of effort and purpose1 and were presently incorporated or forgotten or both in its immortal growth4 ,would the ,race ,mind incorporate ,dodd or dismiss him8 ,dodd sat on his flowerpot1 shaking his head and saying ,pooh6 to the cinerarias2 and ,i listened1 never doubting that ,boon felt the truth he told so well4 ,he came near making the ,race soul incarnate4 ,one felt it about us1 receptive and responsive to ,boon's words4 ,he achieved personification4 ,he spoke of wars that peoples have made1 of the roads and cities that grow and the routes that develop1 no man planning them4 ,he mentioned styles of architecture and styles of living2 the gothic cathedral1 ,i remember1 he dwelt upon1 a beauty1 that arose like an exhalation out of scattered multitudes of men4 ,he instanced the secular abolition of slavery and the establishment of monogamy as a development of ,christian teaching1 as things untraceable to any individual's purpose4 ,he passed to the mysterious consecutiveness of scientific research1 the sudden determination of the ,european race mind to know more than chance thoughts could tell it4444 ,francis ,bacon8 said ,dodd4 ,men like ,bacon are no more than bright moments1 happy thoughts1 the discovery of the inevitable word2 the race mind it was took it up1 the race mind it was carried it on4 ,mysticism6 said ,dodd4 ,give me the ,rock of ,fact6 ,he shook his head so violently that suddenly his balance was disturbed2 clap went his feet1 the flowerpot broke beneath him1 and our talk was lost in the consequent solicitudes4 ,illustration3 ,dodd the ,agnostic just before the flowerpot broke4 ,sec4 #c ,now that ,i have been searching my memory1 ,i incline rather more than ,i did to the opinion that the bare suggestion at any rate of this particular ,book did come from me4 ,i probably went to ,boon soon after this talk with ,dodd and said a fine book might be written about the ,mind of ,humanity1 and in all likelihood ,i gave some outline--,i have forgotten what4 ,i wanted a larger picture of that great ,being his imagination had struck out4 ,i remember at any1 rate ,boon taking me into his study1 picking out ,goldsmith's ,inquiry into the ,present ,state of ,polite ,learning1 turning it over and reading from it4 ,something in this line8 he said1 and read3 ',complaints of our degeneracy in literature as well as in morals ,i own have been frequently exhibited of late4444 ,the dullest critic who strives at a reputation for delicacy1 by showing he cannot be pleased 444' ,the old1 old thing1 you see6 ,the weak protest of the living4 ,he turned over the pages4 ,he shows a proper feeling1 but he's a little thin4444 ,he says some good things4 ,but--',the age of ,louis ,,xiv1 notwithstanding these respectable names1 is still vastly1 superior4' ,is it8 ,guess the respectable names that age of ,louis ,,xiv could override6--,voltaire1 ,rousseau1 ,diderot1 ,montesquieu1 ,d',alembert6 ,and now tell me the respectable names of the age of ,louis ,,xiv4 ,and the conclusion of the whole matter-- ',thus the man who1 under the patronage of the great might have done honour to humanity1 when only patronized by the bookseller becomes a thing a little superior to the fellow who works at the press4' ',the patronage of the great'6 ',fellow who works at the press'6 ,goldsmith was a damnably genteel person at times in spite of the ',vicar'6 ,it's printed with the long 's1' you see4 ,it all helps to remind one that times have changed4 444 ,i followed his careless footsteps into the garden2 he went gesticulating before me1 repeating1 ',an ,inquiry into the ,state of ,polite ,learning'6 ,that's what your ',mind of the ,race' means4 ,suppose one did it now1 we should do it differently in every way1 from that4 ,yes1 but how should we do it8 said ,i4 ,the project had laid hold upon me4 ,i wanted a broad outline of the whole apparatus of thinking and determination in the modern ,state2 something that should bring together all its various activities1 which go on now in a sort of deliberate ignorance of one another1 which would synthesize research1 education1 philosophical discussion1 moral training1 public policy4 ,there is1 ,i said1 a disorganized abundance now4 ,it's a sort of subconscious mind1 said ,boon1 seeming to take me quite seriously1 with a half instinctive will4444 ,we discussed what would come into the book4 ,one got an impression of the enormous range and volume of intellectual activity that pours along now1 in comparison with the jejune trickle of ,goldsmith's days4 ,then the world had--what8 ,a few ,english writers1 a few men in ,france1 the ,royal ,society1 the new ,berlin ,academy 7conducting its transactions in ,french71 all resting more or less upon the insecure patronage of the ,great2 a few schools1 public and private1 a couple of dozen of universities in all the world1 a press of which ,the ,gentleman's ,magazine was the brightest ornament4 ,now---- ,it is a curious thing that it came to us both as a new effect1 this enormously greater size of the intellectual world of to-day4 ,we didn't at first grasp the implications of that difference1 we simply found it necessitated an enlargement of our conception4 ,and then a man's thoughts lived too in a world that had been created1 lock1 stock1 and barrel1 a trifle under six thousand years ago6444 ,we fell to discussing the range and divisions of our subject4 ,the main stream1 we settled1 was all that one calls literature in its broader sense4 ,we should have to discuss that principally4 ,but almost as important as the actual development of ideas1 suggestions1 ideals1 is the way they are distributed through the body of humanity1 developed1 rendered1 brought into touch with young minds and fresh minds1 who are drawn so into participation1 who themselves light up and become new thoughts4 ,one had to consider journalism1 libraries1 book distribution1 lecturing1 teaching4 ,then there is the effect of laws1 of inventions4444 ,done in a large1 dull1 half-abstract way1 said ,boon1 one might fill volumes4 ,one might become an ,eminent ,sociologist4 ,you might even invent terminology4 ,it's a chance---- ,we let it pass4 ,he went on almost at once to suggest a more congenial form1 a conversational novel4 ,i followed reluctantly4 ,i share the general distrust of fiction as a vehicle of discussion4 ,we would1 he insisted1 invent a personality who would embody our ,idea1 who should be fanatically obsessed by this idea of the ,mind of the ,race1 who should preach it on all occasions and be brought into illuminating contact with all the existing mental apparatus and organization of the world4 ,something of your deep1 moral earnestness1 you know1 only a little more presentable and not quite so vindictive1 said ,boon1 and without your--lapses4 ,i seem to see him rather like ,leo ,maxse3 the same white face1 the same bright eyes1 the same pervading suggestion of nervous intensity1 the same earnest1 quasi-reasonable voice--but instead of that anti-,german obsession of his1 an intelligent passion for the racial thought4 ,he must be altogether a fanatic4 ,he must think of the ,mind of the ,race in season and out of season4 ,collective thought will be no joke to him2 it will be the supremely important thing4 ,he will be passionately a patriot1 entirely convinced of your proposition that 'the thought of a community is the life of a community1' and almost as certain that the tide of our thought is ebbing4 ,is it8 said ,i4 ,i've never thought4 ,the ',encyclopaedia ,britannica' says it is4 ,we must call the ',encyclopaedia ,britannica4' ,as a witness--in the book--rather6 ,but1 anyhow1 this man of ours will believe it and struggle against it4 ,it will make him ill2 it will spoil the common things of life for him altogether4 ,i seem to see him interrupting some nice1 bright1 clean ,english people at tennis4 ',look here1 you know1' he will say1 'this is all very well4 ,but have you thought to-day8 ,they tell me the ,germans are thinking1 the ,japanese4' ,i see him going in a sort of agony round and about ,canterbury ,cathedral4 ',here are all these beautiful1 tranquil residences clustering round this supremely beautiful thing1 all these well-dressed1 excellent1 fresh-coloured ,englishmen in their beautiful clerical raiment--deans1 canons--and what have they thought1 any of them8 ,i keep my ear to the ,hibbert ,journal1 but is it enough8' ,imagine him going through ,london on an omnibus4 ,he will see as clear as the advertisements on the hoardings the signs of the formal breaking up of the old ,victorian ,church of ,england and ,dissenting cultures that have held us together so long4 ,he will see that the faith has gone1 the habits no longer hold1 the traditions lie lax like cut string--there is nothing to replace these things4 ,people do this and that dispersedly2 there is democracy in beliefs even1 and any notion is as good as another4 ,and there is ,america4 ,like a burst ,haggis4 ,intellectually4 ,the ,mind is confused1 the ,race in the violent ferment of new ideas1 in the explosive development of its own contrivances1 has lost its head4 ,it isn't thinking any more2 it's stupefied one moment and the next it's diving about---- ,it will be as clear as day to him that a great effort of intellectual self-control must come if the race is to be saved from utter confusion and dementia4 ,and nobody seems to see it but he4 ,he will go about wringing his hands1 so to speak4 ,i fancy him at last at a writing-desk1 nervous white fingers clutched in his black hair4 ',how can ,i put it so that they must attend and see8' ,so we settled on our method and principal character right away4 ,but we got no farther because ,boon insisted before doing anything else on drawing a fancy portrait of this leading character of ours and choosing his name4 ,we decided to call him ,hallery1 and that he should look something like this-- ,illustration3 ,hallery preparing to contradict4 ,that was how ,the ,mind of the ,race began1 the book that was to have ended at last in grim burlesque with ,hallery's murder of ,dr4 ,tomlinson ,keyhole in his villa at ,hampstead1 and the conversation at dawn with that incredulous but literate policeman at ,highgate--he was reading a ,world's ,classic--to whom ,hallery gave himself up4 ,,chapter ,,the ,,third ,the ,great ,slump1 the ,revival of ,letters1 and the ,garden by the ,sea ,sec4 #a ,the story1 as ,boon planned it1 was to begin with a spacious ,introduction4 ,we were to tell of the profound decadence of letters at the opening of the ,twentieth ,century and how a movement of revival began4 ,a few notes in pencil of this opening do exist among the ,remains1 and to those ,i have referred4 ,he read them over to me4444 ',we begin1' he said1 'in a minor key4 ,the impetus of the ,romantic movement we declare is exhausted2 the ,race ,mind1 not only of the ,english-speaking peoples but of the whole world1 has come upon a period of lethargy4 ,the ,giants of the ,victorian age----' ,my eye discovered a familiar binding among the flower-pots4 ,you have been consulting the ',encyclopaedia ,britannica1' ,i said4 ,he admitted it without embarrassment4 ,i have prigged the whole thing from the last ,victorian ,edition--with some slight variations4444 ',the ,giants of the ,victorian age had passed4 ,men looked in vain for their successors4 ,for a time there was an evident effort to fill the vacant thrones2 for a time it seemed that the unstinted exertions of ,miss ,marie ,corelli1 ,mr4 ,hall ,caine1 ,mrs4 ,humphry ,ward1 and the friends of ,mr4 ,stephen ,phillips might go some way towards obliterating these magnificent gaps4 ,and then1 slowly but surely1 it crept into men's minds that the game was up----' ,you will alter that phrase8 ,i said4 ,certainly4 ,but it must serve now 444 'that1 humanly speaking1 it was impossible that anything1 at once so large1 so copious1 so broadly and unhesitatingly popular1 so nobly cumulative as the ,great ,victorian ,reputations could ever exist again4 ,the ,race seemed threatened with intellectual barrenness2 it had dropped its great blossoms1 and stood amidst the pile of their wilting but still showy petals1 budless and bare4 ,it is curious to recall the public utterances upon literature that distinguished this desolate and melancholy time4 ,it is a chorus of despair4 ,there is in the comments of such admirable but ageing critics as still survived1 of ,mr4 ,gosse1 for example1 and the venerable ,sir ,sidney ,colvin and ,mr4 ,mumchance1 an inevitable suggestion of widowhood2 the judges1 bishops1 statesmen who are called to speak upon literature speak in the same reminiscent1 inconsolable note as of a thing that is dead4 ,year after year one finds the speakers at the ,dinner of the ,royal ,literary ,fund admitting the impudence of their appeal4 ,i remember at one of these festivities hearing the voice of ,mr4 ,justice ,gummidge break4444 ,the strain1 it is needless to say1 found its echo in ,dr4 ,tomlinson ,keyhole2 he confessed he never read anything that is less than thirty years old with the slightest enjoyment1 and threw out the suggestion that nothing new should be published--at least for a considerable time--unless it was clearly shown to be posthumous4444 ',except for a few irresistible volumes of facetiousness1 the reading public very obediently followed the indications of authority in these matters1 just as it had followed authority and sustained the ,giants in the great ,victorian days4 ,it bought the long-neglected classics--anything was adjudged a classic that was out of copyright--it did its best to read them1 to find a rare smack in their faded allusions1 an immediate application for their forgotten topics4 ,it made believe that architects were still like ,mr4 ,pecksniff and schoolmasters like ,squeers1 that there were no different women from ,jane ,austen's women1 and that social wisdom ended in ,ruskin's fine disorder4 ,but with the decay1 of any intellectual observation of the present these past things had lost their vitality4 ,a few resolute people maintained an artificial interest in them by participation in quotation-hunting competitions and the like1 but the great bulk of the educated classes ceased presently to read anything whatever4 ,the classics were still bought by habit1 as people who have lost faith will still go to church2 but it is only necessary to examine some surviving volume of this period to mark the coruscation of printer's errors1 the sheets bound in upside down or accidentally not inked in printing or transferred from some sister classic in the same series1 to realize that these volumes were mere receipts for the tribute paid by the pockets of stupidity to the ancient prestige of thought4444 ',an air of completion rested upon the whole world of letters4 ,a movement led by ,professor ,armstrong1 the eminent educationist1 had even gone some way towards banishing books from the schoolroom--their last refuge4 ,people went about in the newly invented automobile and played open-air games2 they diverted what attention they had once given to their minds to the more rational treatment of their stomachs4 ,reading became the last resort of those too sluggish or too poor to play games2 one had recourse to it as a substitute for the ashes of more strenuous times in the earlier weeks of mourning for a near relative1 and even the sale of classics began at last to decline4 ,an altogether more satisfying and alluring occupation for the human intelligence was found in the game of ,bridge4 ,this was presently improved into ,auction ,bridge4 ,preparations were made for the erection of a richly decorative memorial in ,london to preserve the memory of ,shakespeare1 an ,english ,taj ,mahal2 an ,academy of uncreative literature was established under the ,presidency of ,lord ,reay 7who had never written anything at all71 and it seemed but the matter of a few years before the goal of a complete and final mental quiet would be attained by the whole ,english-speaking community4444' ,sec4 #b ,you know1 ,i said1 that doesn't exactly represent---- ,hush6 said ,boon4 ,it was but a resting phase6 ,and at this point ,i part company with the ',encyclopaedia4' ,but you didn't get all that out of the ',encyclopaedia'8 ,practically--yes4 ,i may have rearranged it a little4 ,the ,encyclopaedist is a most interesting and representative person4 ,he takes up an almost eighteenth-century attitude1 holds out hopes of a revival of ,taste under an ,academy1 declares the interest of the great mass of men in literature is always 'empirical1' regards the great ,victorian boom in letters as quite abnormal1 and seems to ignore what you would call that necessary element of vitalizing thought4444 ,it's just here that ,hallery will have to dispute with him4 ,we shall have to bring them together in our book somehow4444 ,into this impressive scene of decline and the ebb of all thinking comes this fanatic ,hallery of ours1 reciting with passionate conviction1 'the thought of a nation is the life of a nation4' ,you see our leading effect8 ,he paused4 ,we have to represent ,hallery as a voice crying in the wilderness4 ,we have to present him in a scene of infinite intellectual bleakness1 with the thinnest scrub of second-rate books growing contemptibly1 and patches of what the ,encyclopaedist calls tares--wind-wilted tares--about him4 ,a mournful ,encyclopaedist like some lone bird circling in the empty air beneath the fading stars4444 ,well1 something of that effect1 anyhow6 ,and then1 you know1 suddenly1 mysteriously one grows aware of light1 of something coming1 of something definitely coming1 of the dawn of a great ,literary ,revival4444 ,how does it come8 ,oh6 ,in the promiscuous way of these things4 ,the swing of the pendulum1 it may be4 ,some eminent person gets bored at the prospect of repeating that rigmarole about the great ,victorians and our present slackness for all the rest of his life1 and takes a leaf from one of ,hallery's books4 ,we might have something after the fashion of the ,efficiency and ,wake-up-,england affair4 ,have you ever heard guinea-fowl at dawn8 ,i've heard them at twilight4 ,they say1 ',come back4 ,come back4' ,but what has that to do with---- ,nothing4 ,there's a movement1 a stir1 a twittering1 and then a sudden promiscuous uproar1 articles in the reviews1 articles in the newspapers1 paragraphs1 letters1 associations1 societies1 leagues4 ,i imagine a very great personality indeed in the most extraordinary and unexpected way coming in4444 7,it was one of ,boon's less amiable habits to impute strange and uncanny enterprises1 the sudden adoption of movements1 manias1 propagandas1 adhesion to vegetarianism1 socialism1 the strangest eccentricities1 to the ,british royal family47 ,as a result ,hallery finds himself perforce a person of importance4 ',the thought of a nation is the life of a nation1' one hears it from royal lips2 'a literature1 a living soul1 adequate to this vast empire1' turns up in the speech of a statesman of the greatest literary pretensions4 ,arnold ,white responds to the new note4 ,the ,daily ,express starts a ,literary ,revival on its magazine page and offers a prize4 ,the ,times follows suit4 ,reports of what is afoot reach social circles in ,new ,york4444 ,the illumination passes with a dawnlike swiftness right across the broad expanse of ,british life1 east and west flash together2 the ladies' papers and the motoring journals devote whole pages to ',new ,literature1' and there is an enormous revival of ,book ,teas4444 ,that sort of thing1 you know--extensively4 ,sec4 #c ,so much by way of prelude4 ,now picture to yourself the immediate setting of my conference4 ,just hand me that book by the ',encyclopaedia4' ,it was ,mallock's ,new ,republic4 ,he took it1 turned a page or so1 stuck a finger in it1 and resumed4 ,it is in a narrow1 ill-kept road by the seaside1 ,bliss4 ,a long wall1 plaster-faced1 blotched and peeling1 crested with uncivil glass against the lower orders1 is pierced by cast-iron gates clumsily classical1 and through the iron bars of these there is visible the deserted gatekeeper's lodge1 its cracked windows opaque with immemorial dirt1 and a rich undergrowth of nettles beneath the rusty cypresses and stone-pines that border the carriage-way4 ,an automobile throbs in the road2 its occupants regard a board leaning all askew above the parapet1 and hesitate to descend4 ,on the board1 which has been enriched by the attentions of the passing boy with innumerable radiant mud pellets1 one reads with difficulty-- ---------------------------------------- ------------- ,,this ,,classical ,,villa with magnificent gardens in the ,victorian-,italian style reaching down to the sea1 and replete with ,latin and ,greek inscriptions1 a garden study1 literary associations1 fully matured ,oxford allusions1 and a great number of conveniently arranged bedrooms1 to be ,,let ,,or ,,sold4 ,apply to the owner1 ,mr4 ,w4 ,h4 ,,mallock1 original author of ,the ,new ,republic4 ,key within4 ---------------------------------------- ------------- ',this must be it1 my dear ,archer1' says one of the occupants of the motor-car1 and he rises1 throws aside his furs1 and reveals--the urbane presence of the ,encyclopaedist4 ,he descends1 and rings a clangorous bell4444 ,eh8 ,it's the garden of the ',new ,republic'8 ,exactly4 ,revisited4 ,it's an astonishing thing4 ,do you know the date of the ',new ,republic'8 ,the book's nearly forty years old6 ,about the time of ,matthew ,arnold's ',friendship's ,garland1' and since that time there's been nothing like a systematic stocktaking of the ,english-speaking mind--until the ,encyclopaedist reported 'no effects4' ,and ,i propose to make this little party in the motor-car a sort of scratch expedition1 under the impetus of the proposed ,revival of ,thought4 ,they are prospecting for a ,summer ,congress1 which is to go into the state of the republic of letters thoroughly4 ,it isn't perhaps quite ,gosse's style1 but he has to be there--in a way he's the official ,british man of letters--but we shall do what we can for him1 we shall make him show a strong disposition towards protective ironies and confess himself not a little bothered at being dragged into the horrid business4 ,and ,i think we must have ,george ,moore1 who has played uncle to so many movements and been so uniformly disappointed in his nephews4 ,and ,william ,archer1 with that face of his which is so exactly like his mind1 a remarkably fine face mysteriously marred by an expression of unscrupulous integrity4 ,and lastly1 ,keyhole4 ,why ,keyhole8 ,i asked4 ,hallery has to murder some one4 ,i've planned that--and who would he murder but ,keyhole8444 ,and we have to hold the first meeting in ,mallock's garden to preserve the continuity of ,english thought4 ,very well6 ,then we invent a morose1 elderly caretaker1 greatly embittered at this irruption4 ,he parleys for a time through the gate with all the loyalty of his class1 mentions a number of discouraging defects1 more particularly in the drainage1 alleges the whole place is clammy1 and only at ,gosse's clearly enunciated determination to enter produces the key4 ,boon consulted his text4 ,naturally one would give a chapter to the ,villa by the ,sea and ,mallock generally4 ,our visitors explore4 ,they visit one scene after another familiar to the good ,mallockite2 they descend 'the broad flights of steps flanked by ,gods and ,goddesses' that lead from one to another of the 'long1 straight terraces set with vases and ,irish yews1' and the yews1 you know1 have suffered from the want of water1 the vases are empty1 and ivy1 under the benediction of our modest climate1 has already veiled the classical freedom--the conscientious nudity1 one might say--of the statuary4 ,the laurels have either grown inordinately or perished1 and the 'busts of orators1 poets1 and philosophers' 'with ,latin inscriptions1' stand either bleakly exposed or else swallowed up1 in a thicket4 ,there is a pleasing struggle to translate the legends1 and one gathers scholarship is not extinct in ,england4 ,the one oasis in a universal weediness is the pond about the 'scaly ,triton1' which has been devoted to the culture of spring onions1 a vegetable to which the aged custodian quite superfluously avows himself very 'partial4' ,the visitors return to the house1 walk along its terrace1 survey its shuttered front1 and they spend some time going through its musty rooms4 ,dr4 ,keyhole distinguishes himself by the feverish eagerness of his curiosity about where ,leslie slept and where was the boudoir of ,mrs4 ,sinclair4 ,he insists that a very sad and painful scandal about these two underlies the ,new ,republic1 and professes a thirsty desire to draw a veil over it as conspicuously as possible4 ,the others drag him away to the summer dining-room1 now a great brier tangle1 where once ,lady ,grace so pleasantly dined her guests4 ,the little arena about the fountain in a porphyry basin they do not find1 but the garden study they peer into1 and see its inkpot in the shape of a classical temple1 just as ,mr4 ,mallock has described it1 and the windowless theatre1 and1 in addition1 they find a small private gas-works that served it4 ,the old man lets them in1 and by the light of uplifted vestas they see the decaying1 rat-disordered ruins of the scene before which ,jenkinson who was ,jowett1 and ,herbert who was ,ruskin1 preached4 ,it is as like a gorge in the ,indian ,caucasus as need be4 ,the ,brocken act-drop above hangs low enough to show the toes of the young witch1 still brightly pink4444 ,they go down to the beach1 and the old man1 with evil chuckles1 recalls a hitherto unpublished anecdote of mixed bathing in the 'seventies1 in which ,mrs4 ,sinclair and a flushed and startled ,dr4 ,jenkinson1 ,greek in thought rather than action1 play the chief parts1 and then they wade through a nettle-bed to that 'small classical portico' which leads to the locked enclosure containing the three tombs1 with effigies after the fashion of ,genoa ,cemetery4 ,but the key of the gate is lost1 so that they cannot go in to examine them1 and the weeds have hidden the figures altogether4 ',that's a pity1' some one remarks1 'for it's here1 no doubt1 that old ,laurence lies1 with his first mistress and his last--under these cypresses4' ,the aged custodian makes a derisive noise1 and every one turns to him4 ',i gather you throw some doubt8' the ,encyclopaedist begins in his urbane way4 ',buried--under the cypresses--first mistress and last6' ,the old man makes his manner invincibly suggestive of scornful merriment4 ',but isn't it so8' ',bless y'r 'art1 no6 ,mr4 ,laurence--buried6 ,mr4 ,laurence worn't never alive6' ',but there was a young ,mr4 ,laurence8' ',that was ,mr4 ,mallup 'imself1 that was6 ',e was a great mistifier was ,mr4 ,mallup1 and sometimes 'e went about pretendin' to be ,mr4 ,laurence and sometimes he was ,mr4 ,leslie1 and sometimes----,but there1 you'd 'ardly believe4 ',e got all this up--cypresses1 chumes1 everythink--out of 'is 'ed4 ,po'try4 ,why6 ',ere6 ,jest come along 'ere1 gents6' ,he leads the way along a narrow privet alley that winds its surreptitious way towards an alcove4 ',miss ,merton1' he says1 flinging the door of this open4 ',the ,roman ,catholic young person8' says ,dr4 ,tomlinson ,keyhole4 ',quite right1 sir1' says the aged custodian4 ,they peer in4 ,hanging from a peg the four visitors behold a pale blue dress cut in the fashion of the 'seventies1 a copious 'chignon' of fair hair1 large earrings1 and on the marble bench a pair of open-work stockings and other articles of feminine apparel4 ,a tall mirror hangs opposite these garments1 and in a little recess convenient to the hand are the dusty and decaying materials for a hasty 'make-up4' ,the old custodian watches the effect of this display upon the others with masked enjoyment4 ',you mean ,miss ,merton painted8' said the ,encyclopaedist1 knitting his brows4 ',mr4 ,mallup did1' says the aged custodian4 ',you mean----8' ',mr4 ,mallup was ,miss ,merton4 ',e got 'er up too4 ,parst 'er orf as a young lady1 'e did4 ,oh1 'e was a great mistifier was ,mr4 ,mallup4 ,none of the three of 'em wasn't real people1 really2 he got 'em all up4' ',she had sad-looking eyes1 a delicate1 proud mouth1 and a worn1 melancholy look1' muses ,mr4 ,archer4 ',and young ,laurence was in love with her1' adds the ,encyclopaedist4444 ',they was all ,mr4 ,mallup1' says the aged custodian4 ',made up out of 'is 'ed4 ,and the gents that pretended they was ,mr4 ',uxley and ,mr4 ,tyndall in disguise1 one was ,bill ,smithers1 the chemist's assistant1 and the other was the chap that used to write and print the ,margate ,advertiser before the noo papers come4' ,,chapter ,,the ,,fourth ,of ,art1 of ,literature1 of ,mr4 ,henry ,james ,sec4 #a ,the ,garden by the ,sea chapter was to have gone on discursively with a discussion upon this project of a conference upon the ,mind of the ,race4 ,the automobile-ful of gentlemen who had first arrived was to have supplied the opening interlocutors1 but presently they were to have been supplemented by the most unexpected accessories4 ,it would have been an enormously big dialogue if it had ever been written1 and ,boon's essentially lazy temperament was all against its ever getting written4 ,there were to have been disputes from the outset as to the very purpose that had brought them all together4 ,a sort of literary stocktaking was to have been ,mr4 ,archer's phrase4 ,repeated4 ,unhappily1 its commercialism was to upset ,mr4 ,gosse extremely2 he was to say something passionately bitter about its utter lack of dignity4 ,then relenting a little1 he was to urge as an alternative some controlling influence1 some standard and restraint1 a new and better ,academic influence4 ,dr4 ,keyhole was to offer his journalistic services in organizing an ,academic plebiscite1 a suggestion which was to have exasperated ,mr4 ,gosse to the pitch of a gleaming silence4 ,in the midst of this conversation the party is joined by ,hallery and an ,american friend1 a quiet ,harvard sort of man speaking meticulously accurate ,english1 and still later by emissaries of ,lord ,northcliffe and ,mr4 ,hearst1 by ,mr4 ,henry ,james1 rather led into it by a distinguished hostess1 by ,mr4 ,w4 ,b4 ,yeats1 late but keen1 and by that ,sir ,henry ,lunn who organizes the ,swiss winter sports hotels4 ,all these people drift in with an all too manifestly simulated accidentalness that at last arouses the distrust of the elderly custodian1 so that ,mr4 ,orage1 the gifted editor of the ,new ,age1 arriving last1 is refused admission4 ,the sounds of the conflict at the gates do but faintly perturb the conference within1 which is now really getting to business1 but afterwards ,mr4 ,orage1 slightly wounded in the face by a dexterously plied rake and incurably embittered1 makes his existence felt by a number of unpleasant missiles discharged from over the wall in the direction of any audible voices4 ,ultimately ,mr4 ,orage gets into a point of vantage in a small pine-tree overlooking the seaward corner of the premises1 and from this he contributes a number of comments that are rarely helpful1 always unamiable1 and frequently in the worst possible taste4 ,such was ,boon's plan for the second chapter of ,the ,mind of the ,race4 ,but that chapter he never completely planned4 ,at various times ,boon gave us a number of colloquies1 never joining them together in any regular order4 ,the project of taking up the discussion of the ,mind of the ,race at the exact point ,mr4 ,mallock had laid it down1 and taking the villa by the sea for the meeting-place1 was at once opposed by ,hallery and his ,american friend with an evidently preconcerted readiness4 ,they pointed out the entire democratization of thought and literature that had been going on for the past four decades4 ,it was no longer possible to deal with such matters in the old aristocratic country-house style2 it was no longer possible to take them up from that sort of beginning2 the centre of mental gravity among the ,english-speaking community had shifted socially and geographically2 what was needed now was something wider and ampler1 something more in the nature of such a conference as the annual meeting of the ,british ,association4 ,science left the gentleman's mansion long ago2 literature must follow it--had followed it4 ,to come back to ,mr4 ,lankester's ,villa by the sea was to come back to a beaten covert4 ,the ,hearst representative took up a strongly supporting position1 and suggested that if indeed we wished to move with the times the thing to do was to strike out boldly for a special annex of the ,panama ,exhibition at ,san ,francisco and for organization upon sound ,american lines4 ,it was a case1 he said1 even for exhibits4 ,sir ,henry ,lunn1 however1 objected that in ,america the ,anglo-,saxon note was almost certain to be too exclusively sounded2 that we had to remember there were vigorous cultures growing up and growing up more and more detachedly upon the continent of ,europe2 we wanted1 at least1 their reflected lights 444 some more central position4444 ,in fact1 ,switzerland 444 where also numerous convenient hotels 444 patronized1 he gathered from the illustrated papers1 by ,lord ,lytton1 ,mrs4 ,asquith1 ,mr4 ,f4 ,r4 ,benson 444 and all sorts of helpful leading people4 ,sec4 #b ,meanwhile ,boon's plan was to make ,mr4 ,george ,moore and ,mr4 ,henry ,james wander off from the general dispute1 and he invented a dialogue that even at the time struck me as improbable1 in which both gentlemen pursue entirely independent trains of thought4 ,mr4 ,moore's conception of the projected symposium was something rather in the vein of the journeyings of ,shelley1 ,byron1 and their charming companions through ,france to ,italy1 but magnified to the dimensions of an enormous pilgrimage1 enlarged to the scale of a stream of refugees4 ,what1 my dear ,james1 he asked1 is this mind of humanity at all without a certain touch of romance1 of adventure8 ,even ,mallock appreciated the significance of frou-frou2 but these fellows behind here4444 ,to illustrate his meaning better1 he was to have told1 with an extraordinary and loving mastery of detail1 of a glowing little experience that had been almost forced upon him at ,nismes by a pretty little woman from ,nebraska1 and the peculiar effect it had had1 and particularly the peculiar effect that the coincidence that both ,nebraska and ,nismes begin with an ,n and end so very differently1 had had upon his imagination4444 ,meanwhile ,mr4 ,james1 being anxious not merely to state but also to ignore1 laboured through the long cadences of his companion as an indefatigable steam-tug might labour endlessly against a rolling sea1 elaborating his own particular point about the proposed conference4 ,owing it as we do1 he said1 very1 very largely to our friend ,gosse1 to that peculiar1 that honest but restless and1 as it were1 at times almost malignantly ambitious organizing energy of our friend1 ,i cannot altogether--altogether1 even if in any case ,i should have taken so extreme1 so devastatingly isolating a step as1 to put it violently1 stand out2 yet ,i must confess to a considerable anxiety1 a kind of distress1 an apprehension1 the terror1 so to speak1 of the kerbstone1 at all this stream of intellectual trafficking1 of going to and fro1 in a superb and towering manner enough no doubt1 but still essentially going to and fro rather than in any of the completed senses of the word getting there1 that does so largely constitute the aggregations and activities we are invited to traverse4 ,my poor head1 such as it is and as much as it can and upon such legs--save the mark6--as it can claim1 must1 ,i suppose1 play its inconsiderable part among the wheels and the rearings and the toots and the whistles and all this uproar1 this--,mm1 ,mm6--let us say1 this infernal uproar1 of the occasion2 and if at times one has one's doubts before plunging in1 whether after all1 after the plunging and the dodging and the close shaves and narrow squeaks1 one does begin to feel that one is getting through1 whether after all one will get through1 and whether indeed there is any getting through1 whether1 to deepen and enlarge and display one's doubt quite openly1 there is in truth any sort of ostensible and recognizable other side attainable and definable at all1 whether to put this thing with a lucidity that verges on the brutal1 whether our amiable and in most respects our adorable ,gosse isn't indeed preparing here and now1 not the gathering together of a conference but the assembling1 the meet1 so to speak1 of a wild-goose chase of an entirely desperate and hopeless description4 ,at that moment ,mr4 ,george ,moore was saying3 ,little exquisite shoulders without a touch of colour and with just that suggestion of rare old ivory in an old shop window in some out-of-the-way corner of ,paris that only the most patent abstinence from baths and the brutality of soaping---- ,each gentleman stopped simultaneously4 ,ahead the path led between box-hedges to a wall1 and above the wall was a pine-tree1 and the ,editor of the ,new ,age was reascending the pine-tree in a laborious and resolute manner1 gripping with some difficulty in his hand a large and very formidable lump of unpleasantness4444 ,with a common impulse the two gentlemen turned back towards the house4 ,mr4 ,james was the first to break the momentary silence4 ,and so1 my dear ,moore1 and so--to put it shortly--without any sort of positive engagement or entanglement or pledge or pressure--,i came4 ,and at the proper time and again with an entirely individual detachment and as little implication as possible ,i shall go4444 ,subsequently ,mr4 ,james was to have buttonholed ,hallery's ,american1 and in the warm bath of his sympathy to have opened and bled slowly from another vein of thought4 ,i admit the abundance of--what shall ,i say8--activities that our friend is summoning1 the tremendous wealth of matter1 of material for literature and art1 that has accumulated during the last few decades4 ,no one could appreciate1 could savour and watch and respond1 more than myself to the tremendous growing clangour of the mental process as the last half-century has exhibited it4 ,but when it comes to the enterprise of gathering it together1 and not simply just gathering it together1 but gathering it all together1 then surely one must at some stage ask the question1 ,why all8 ,why1 in short1 attempt to a comprehensiveness that must be overwhelming when in fact the need is for a selection that shall not merely represent but elucidate and lead4 ,aren't we1 after all1 all of us after some such indicating projection of a leading digit1 after such an insistence on the outstandingly essential in face of this abundance1 this saturation1 this fluid chaos that perpetually increases8 ,here we are gathering together to celebrate and summarize literature in some sort of undefined and unprecedented fashion1 and for the life of me ,i find it impossible to determine what among my numerous associates and friends and--to embrace still larger quantities of the stuff in hand--my contemporaries is considered to be the literature in question4 ,so confused now are we between matter and treatment1 between what is stated and documented and what is prepared and presented1 that for the life of me ,i do not yet see whether we are supposed to be building an ark or whether by immersion and the meekest of submersions and an altogether complete submission of our distended and quite helpless carcasses to its incalculable caprice we are supposed to be celebrating and1 in the whirling uncomfortable fashion of flotsam at large1 indicating and making visible the whole tremendous cosmic inundation4444 ,illustration3 ,mr4 ,james converses with ,mr4 ,george ,moore upon matters of vital importance to both of them4 ,sec4 #c ,it was entirely in the quality of ,boon's intellectual untidiness that for a time he should go off at a tangent in pursuit of ,mr4 ,henry ,james and leave his literary picnic disseminated about the grounds of ,mr4 ,mallock's villa4 ,there1 indeed1 they remained4 ,the story when he took it up again picked up at quite a different point4 ,i remember how ,boon sat on the wall of his vegetable garden and discoursed upon ,james1 while several of us squatted about on the cucumber-frames and big flowerpots and suchlike seats1 and how over the wall ,ford ,madox ,hueffer was beating ,wilkins at ,badminton4 ,hueffer wanted to come and talk too2 ,james is one of his countless subjects--and what an omniscient man he is too6--but ,wilkins was too cross to let him off4444 ,so that all that ,hueffer was able to contribute was an exhortation not to forget that ,henry ,james knew ,turgenev and that he had known them both1 and a flat denial that ,dickens was a novelist4 ,this last was the tail of that ,pre-,raphaelite feud begun in ,household ,words1 oh6 generations ago4444 ,got you there1 my boy6 said ,wilkins4 ,seven1 twelve4 ,we heard no more from ,hueffer4 ,you see1 ,boon said1 you can't now talk of literature without going through ,james4 ,james is unavoidable4 ,james is to criticism what ,immanuel ,kant is to philosophy--a partially comprehensible essential1 an inevitable introduction4 ,if you understand what ,james is up to and if you understand what ,james is not up to1 then you are placed4 ,you are in the middle of the critical arena4 ,you are in a position to lay about you with significance4 ,otherwise4444 ,i want to get this ,hallery of mine1 who is to be the hero of ',the ,mind of the ,race1' into a discussion with ,henry ,james1 but that1 you know1 is easier said than imagined4 ,hallery is to be one of those enthusiastic thinkers who emit highly concentrated opinion in gobbets1 suddenly4 ,james--isn't4444 ,boon meditated upon his difficulties4 ,hallery's idea of literature is something tremendously comprehensive1 something that pierces always down towards the core of things1 something that carries and changes all the activities of the race4 ,this sort of thing4 ,he read from a scrap of paper-- ',the thought of a community is the life of that community1 and if the collective thought of a community is disconnected and fragmentary1 then the community is collectively vain and weak4 ,that does not constitute an incidental defect but essential failure4 ,though that community have cities such as the world has never seen before1 fleets and hosts and glories1 though it count its soldiers by the army corps and its children by the million1 yet if it hold not to the reality of thought and formulated will beneath these outward things1 it will pass1 and all its glories will pass1 like smoke before the wind1 like mist beneath the sun2 it will become at last only one more vague and fading dream upon the scroll of time1 a heap of mounds and pointless history1 even as are ,babylon and ,nineveh4' ,i've heard that before somewhere1 said ,dodd4 ,most of this dialogue will have to be quotation1 said ,boon4 ,he makes literature include philosophy8 ,everything4 ,it's all the central things4 ,it's the larger ,bible to him1 a thing about which all the conscious direction of life revolves4 ,it's alive with passion and will4 ,or if it isn't1 then it ought to be4444 ,and then as the antagonist comes this artist1 this man who seems to regard the whole seething brew of life as a vat from which you skim1 with slow1 dignified gestures1 works of art4 444 ,works of art whose only claim is their art4444 ,hallery is going to be very impatient about art4 ,ought there to be such a thing as a literary artist8 some one said4 ,ought there1 in fact1 to be ,henry ,james8 said ,dodd4 ,i don't think so4 ,hallery won't think so4 ,you see1 the discussion will be very fundamental4 ,there's contributory art1 of course1 and a way of doing things better or worse4 ,just as there is in war1 or cooking4 ,but the way of doing isn't the end4 ,first the end must be judged--and then if you like talk of how it is done4 ,get there as splendidly as possible4 ,but get there4 ,james and ,george ,moore1 neither of them take it like that4 ,they leave out getting there1 or the thing they get to is so trivial as to amount to scarcely more than an omission4444 ,boon reflected4 ,in early life both these men poisoned their minds in studios4 ,thought about pictures even might be less studio-ridden than it is4 ,but ,james has never discovered that a novel isn't a picture4444 ,that life isn't a studio4444 ,he wants a novel to be simply and completely done4 ,he wants it to have a unity1 he demands homogeneity4444 ,why should a book have that8 ,for a picture it's reasonable1 because you have to see it all at once4 ,but there's no need to see a book all at once4 ,it's like wanting to have a whole county done in one style and period of architecture4 ,it's like insisting that a walking tour must stick to one valley4444 ,but ,james begins by taking it for granted that a novel is a work of art that must be judged by its oneness4 ,judged first by its oneness4 ,some one gave him that idea in the beginning of things and he has never found it out4 ,he doesn't find things out4 ,he doesn't even seem to want to find things out4 ,you can see that in him2 he is eager to accept things--elaborately4 ,you can see from his books that he accepts etiquettes1 precedences1 associations1 claims4 ,that is his peculiarity4 ,he accepts very readily and then--elaborates4 ,he has1 ,i am convinced1 one of the strongest1 most abundant minds alive in the whole world1 and he has the smallest penetration4 ,indeed1 he has no penetration4 ,he is the culmination of the ,superficial type4 ,or else he would have gone into philosophy and been greater even than his wonderful brother4444 ,but here he is1 spinning about1 like the most tremendous of water-boatmen--you know those insects8--kept up by surface tension4 ,as if1 when once he pierced the surface1 he would drown4 ,it's incredible4 ,a water-boatman as big as an elephant4 ,i was reading him only yesterday ',the ,golden ,bowl'2 it's dazzling how never for a moment does he go through4 ,recently he's been explaining himself1 said ,dodd4 ,his ',notes on ,novelists4' ,it's one sustained demand for the picture effect4 ,which is the denial of the sweet complexity of life1 of the pointing this way and that1 of the spider on the throne4 ,philosophy aims at a unity and never gets there4444 ,that true unity which we all suspect1 and which no one attains1 if it is to be got at all it is to be got by penetrating1 penetrating down and through4 ,the picture1 on the other hand1 is forced to a unity because it can see only one aspect at a time4 ,i am doubtful even about that4 ,think of ,hogarth or ,carpaccio4 ,but if the novel is to follow life it must be various and discursive4 ,life is diversity and entertainment1 not completeness and satisfaction4 ,all actions are half-hearted1 shot delightfully with wandering thoughts--about something else4 ,all true stories are a felt of irrelevances4 ,but ,james sets out to make his novels with the presupposition that they can be made continuously relevant4 ,and perceiving the discordant things1 he tries to get rid of them4 ,he sets himself to pick the straws out of the hair of ,life before he paints her4 ,but without the straws she is no longer the mad woman we love4 ,he talks of 'selection1' and of making all of a novel definitely about a theme4 ,he objects to a 'saturation' that isn't oriented4 ,and he objects1 if you go into it1 for no clear reason at all4 ,following up his conception of selection1 see what in his own practice he omits4 ,in practice ,james's selection becomes just omission and nothing more4 ,he omits everything that demands digressive treatment or collateral statement4 ,for example1 he omits opinions4 ,in all his novels you will find no people with defined political opinions1 no people with religious opinions1 none with clear partisanships or with lusts or whims1 none definitely up to any specific impersonal thing4 ,there are no poor people dominated by the imperatives of ,saturday night and ,monday morning1 no dreaming types--and don't we all more or less live dreaming8 ,and none are ever decently forgetful4 ,all that much of humanity he clears out before he begins his story4 ,it's like cleaning rabbits for the table4 ,but you see how relentlessly it follows from the supposition that the novel is a work of art aiming at pictorial unities6 ,all art too acutely self-centred comes to this sort of thing4 ,james's denatured people are only the equivalent in fiction of those egg-faced1 black-haired ladies1 who sit and sit1 in the ,japanese colour-prints1 the unresisting stuff for an arrangement of blacks4444 ,then with the eviscerated people he has invented he begins to make up stories4 ,what stories they are6 ,concentrated on suspicion1 on a gift1 on possessing a 'piece' of old furniture1 on what a little girl may or may not have noted in an emotional situation4 ,these people cleared for artistic treatment never make lusty love1 never go to angry war1 never shout at an election or perspire at poker2 never in any way date4444 ,and upon the petty residuum of human interest left to them they focus minds of a ,jamesian calibre4444 ,the only living human motives left in the novels of ,henry ,james are a certain avidity1 and an entirely superficial curiosity4 ,even when relations are irregular or when sins are hinted at1 you feel that these are merely attitudes taken up1 gambits before the game of attainment and over-perception begins4444 ,his people nose out suspicions1 hint by hint1 link by link4 ,have you ever known living human beings do that8 ,the thing his novel is about is always there4 ,it is like a church lit but without a congregation to distract you1 with every light and line focused on the high altar4 ,and on the altar1 very reverently placed1 intensely there1 is a dead kitten1 an egg-shell1 a bit of string4444 ,like his ',altar of the ,dead1' with nothing to the dead at all4444 ,for if there was they couldn't all be candles and the effect would vanish4444 ,and the elaborate1 copious emptiness of the whole ,henry ,james exploit is only redeemed and made endurable by the elaborate1 copious wit4 ,upon the desert his selection has made ,henry ,james erects palatial metaphors4444 ,the chief fun1 the only exercise1 in reading ,henry ,james is this clambering over vast metaphors4444 ,having first made sure that he has scarcely anything left to express1 he then sets to work to express it1 with an industry1 a wealth of intellectual stuff that dwarfs ,newton4 ,he spares no resource in the telling of his dead inventions4 ,he brings up every device of language to state and define4 ,bare verbs he rarely tolerates4 ,he splits his infinitives and fills them up with adverbial stuffing4 ,he presses the passing colloquialism into his service4 ,his vast paragraphs sweat and struggle2 they could not sweat and elbow and struggle more if ,god ,himself was the processional meaning to which they sought to come4 ,and all for tales of nothingness4444 ,it is leviathan retrieving pebbles4 ,it is a magnificent but painful hippopotamus resolved at any cost1 even at the cost of its dignity1 upon picking up a pea which has got into a corner of its den4 ,most things1 it insists1 are beyond it1 but it can1 at any rate1 modestly1 and with an artistic singleness of mind1 pick up that pea4444 ,sec4 #d ,a little while ago1 said ,boon1 suddenly struggling with his trouser pocket and producing some pieces of paper1 ,i sketched out a novel1 and as it was rather in the manner of ,henry ,james ,i think perhaps you might be interested by it now4 ,so much1 that is1 as there is of it4 ,it is to be called ',the ,spoils of ,mr4 ,blandish1' and it is all about this particular business of the selective life4 ,mr4 ,blandish1 as ,i saw him1 was pretty completely taken from the ,james ideal4444 ,he was a man with an exquisite apprehension of particulars1 with just that sense of there being a rightness attainable1 a fitness1 a charm1 a finish4444 ,in any little affair4444 ,he believed that in speech and still more that in writing there was an inevitable right word1 in actions great and small a mellowed etiquette1 in everything a possible perfection4 ,he was1 in fact1 the very soul of ,henry ,james--as ,i understand it4444 ,this sort of man-- ,illustration3 ,mr4 ,blandish going delicately through life4 ,oh no6 oh no6 ,but ,yes6 and ,this is it6 ,going delicately4 ,i was able to secure the sketch4 ,he didn't marry1 he didn't go upon adventures2 lust1 avarice1 ambition1 all these things that as ,milton says are to be got 'not without dust and heat1' were not for him4 ,blood and dust and heat--he ruled them out4 ,but he had independent means1 he could live freely and delicately and charmingly1 he could travel and meet and be delighted by all the best sorts of people in the best sorts of places4 ,so for years he enriched his resonances1 as an admirable violin grows richer with every note it sounds4 ,he went about elaborately1 avoiding ugliness1 death1 suffering1 industrialism1 politics1 sport1 the thought of war1 the red blaze of passion4 ,he travelled widely in the more settled parts of the world4 ,chiefly he visited interesting and ancient places1 putting his ever more exquisite sensorium at them1 consciously taking delicate impressions upon the refined wax of his being4 ,in a manner most carefully occasional1 he wrote4 ,always of faded places4 ,his ',ypres' was wonderful4 ,his ',bruges' and his ',hour of ,van ,eyk'4444 ,such1 said ,boon1 is the hero4 ,the story begins1 oh6 quite in the ,james manner with---- ,he read-- ',at times it seemed inaccessible1 a thing beyond hope1 beyond imagining1 and then at times it became so concrete an imagination1 a desire so specific1 so nearly expressed1 as to grow if not to the exact particulars of longitude and latitude1 yet at any rate so far as county and district and atmosphere were concerned1 so far indeed as an intuition of proximity was concerned1 an intimation that made it seem at last at certain moments as if it could not possibly be very much farther than just round the corner or over the crest4444' ,but ,i've left a good bit of that to write up4 ,in the book there will be pages and sheets of that sentence4 ,the gist is that ,mr4 ,blandish wants a house to live in and that he has an idea of the kind of house he wants4 ,and the chapter1 the long1 unresting1 progressing chapter1 expands and expands2 it never jumps you forward1 it never lets you off1 you can't skip and you can't escape1 until there comes at last a culminating distension of statement in which you realize more and more clearly1 until you realize it with the unforgettable certainty of a thing long fought for and won at last1 that ,mr4 ,blandish has actually come upon the house and with a vigour of decision as vivid as a flash of lightning in a wilderness of troubled clouds1 as vivid indeed as the loud1 sonorous bursting of a long blown bladder1 has said ',this is it6' ,on that ',this is it' my chapter ends1 with an effect of enormous relief1 with something of the beautiful serenity that follows a difficult parturition4 ,the story is born4 ,and then we leap forward to possession4 ',and here he was1 in the warmest reality1 in the very heart of the materialization of his dream----' ,he has1 in fact1 got the house4 ,for a year or so from its first accidental discovery he had done nothing but just covet the house2 too fearful of an overwhelming disappointment even to make a definite inquiry as to its accessibility4 ,but he has1 you will gather1 taken apartments in the neighbourhood1 thither he visits frequently1 and almost every day when he walks abroad the coveted house draws him4 ,it is in a little seaside place on the east coast1 and the only available walks are along the shore or inland across the golf-links4 ,either path offers tempting digressions towards it4 ,he comes to know it from a hundred aspects and under a thousand conditions of light and atmosphere4444 ,and while still in the early stage he began a curious and delicious secret practice in relationship4 ,you have heard of the ,spaniard in love1 in love with a woman he had seen but once1 whom he might never see again1 a princess1 etiquette-defended1 a goddess1 and who yet1 seeing a necklace that became her1 bought it for the joy of owning something that was at least by fitness hers4 ,even so did ,mr4 ,blandish begin to buy first one little article and then1 the fancy growing upon him more and more1 things1 'pieces' they call them1 that were in the vein of ,samphire ,house4 ,and then came the day1 the wonderful day1 when as he took his afternoon feast of the eye1 the door opened1 some one came out towards him4444 ,it was incredible4 ,they were giving him tea with hot1 inadvisable scones--but their hotness1 their close heaviness1 he accepted with a ready devotion1 would have accepted had they been ten times as hot and close and heavy1 not heedlessly1 indeed1 but gratefully1 willingly paying his price for these astonishing revelations that without an effort1 serenely1 calmly1 dropped in between her gentle demands whether he would have milk and her mild inquiries as to the exact quantity of sugar his habits and hygienic outlook demanded1 that his hostess so casually made4 ,these generous1 heedless people were talking of departures1 of abandonments1 of1 so they put it1 selling the dear old place1 if indeed any one could be found to buy a place so old and so remote and--she pointed her intention with a laugh--so very1 very dear4 ,repletion of scones were a small price to pay for such a glowing1 such an incredible gift of opportunity1 thrust thus straight into the willing1 amazed hands4444 ,he gets the house4 ,he has it done up4 ,he furnishes it1 and every article of furniture seems a stroke of luck too good to be true4 ,and to crown it all ,i am going to write one of those long crescendo passages that ,james loves1 a sentence1 pages of it1 of happy event linking to happy event until at last the incredible completion1 a butler1 unquestionably ,early ,georgian1 respectability1 competence equally unquestionable1 a wife who could cook1 and cook well1 no children1 no thought or possibility of children1 and to crown all1 the perfect name--,mutimer6 ,illustration3 ,mutimer at first4 ,all this you must understand is told retrospectively as ,blandish installs himself in ,samphire ,house4 ,it is told to the refrain1 ',still1 fresh every morning1 came the persuasion ,this is too good to be true4' ,and as it is told1 something else1 by the most imperceptible degrees1 by a gathering up of hints and allusions and pointing details1 gets itself told too1 and that is the growing realization in the mind of ,blandish of a something extra1 of something not quite bargained for1--the hoard and the haunting4 ,about the house hangs a presence4444 ,he had taken it at first as a mere picturesque accessory to the whole picturesque and delightful wreathing of association and tradition about the place1 that there should be this ancient flavour of the cutlass and the keg1 this faint aroma of buried doubloons and ,stevensonian experiences4 ,he had assumed1 etc4444 ,he had gathered1 etc4444 ,and it was in the most imperceptible manner that beyond his sense of these takings and assumptions and gatherings there grew his perception that the delicate quiver of appreciation1 at first his utmost tribute to these illegal and adventurous and sanguinary associations1 was broadening and strengthening1 was1 one hardly knew whether to say developing or degenerating1 into a nervous reaction1 more spinal and less equivocally agreeable1 into the question1 sensed rather than actually thought or asked1 whether in fact the place didn't in certain lights and certain aspects and at certain unfavourable moments come near to evoking the ghost--if such sorites are permissible in the world of delicate shades--of the ghost1 of the ghost of a shiver--of aversion4444 ,and so at page a hundred and fifty or thereabouts we begin to get into the story1 said ,boon4 ,you wade through endless marshes of subtle intimation1 to a sense of a ,presence in ,samphire ,house4 ,for a number of pages you are quite unable to tell whether this is a ghost or a legend or a foreboding or simply old-fashioned dreams that are being allusively placed before you4 ,but there is an effect piled up very wonderfully1 of ,mr4 ,blandish1 obsessed1 uneasy1 watching furtively and steadfastly his guests1 his callers1 his domestics1 continually asking himself1 ',do they note it8 ,are they feeling it8' ,we break at last into incidents4 ,a young friend of the impossible name of ,deshman helps evolve the story2 he comes to stay2 he seems to feel the influence from the outset1 he cannot sleep1 he wanders about the house4444 ,do others know8 ,others8444 ,the gardener takes to revisiting the gardens after nightfall4 ,he is met in the shrubbery with an unaccountable spade in his hand and answers huskily4 ,why should a gardener carry a spade8 ,why should he answer huskily8 ,why should the presence1 the doubt1 the sense of something else elusively in the air about them1 become intensified at the encounter8 ,oh6 conceivably of course in many places1 but just there6 ,as some sort of protection1 it may be4444 ,then suddenly as ,mr4 ,blandish sits at his lonely but beautifully served dinner he becomes aware for the first time of a change in ,mutimer4 ,illustration3 ,mutimer at the end of a year4 ,something told him in that instant that ,mutimer also knew4444 ,deshman comes again with a new and disconcerting habit of tapping the panelling and measuring the thickness of the walls when he thinks no one is looking1 and then a sister of ,mr4 ,blandish and a friend1 a woman1 yet not so much a woman as a disembodied intelligence in a feminine costume with one of those impalpable relationships with ,deshman that people have with one another in the world of ,henry ,james1 an association of shadows1 an atmospheric liaison4 ,follow some almost sentenceless conversations4 ,mr4 ,blandish walks about the shrubbery with the friend1 elaborately getting at it--whatever it is--and in front of them1 now hidden by the yew hedges1 now fully in view1 walks ,deshman with the married and settled sister of ,mr4 ,blandish4444 ',so1' said ,mr4 ,blandish1 pressing the point down towards the newly discovered sensitiveness1 'where we feel1 he it seems knows4' ,she seemed to consider4 ',he doesn't know completely1' was her qualification4 ',but he has something--something tangible4' ',if he can make it tangible4' ,on that the mind of ,mr4 ,blandish played for a time4 ',then it isn't altogether tangible yet8' ',it isn't tangible enough for him to go upon4' ',definitely something4' ,her assent was mutely concise4 ',that we on our part----8' ,the we seemed to trouble her4 ',he knows more than you do1' she yielded4 ,the gesture1 the half turn1 the momentary halt in the paces of ,mr4 ,blandish1 plied her further4 ',more1 ,i think1 than he has admitted--to any one4' ',even to you8' ,he perceived an interesting wave of irritation4 ',even to me1' he had wrung from her1 but at the price of all further discussion4 ,putting the thing crassly1 said ,boon1 ,deshman has got wind of a hoard1 of a treasure1 of something--,heaven as yet only knows what something--buried1 imbedded1 in some as yet unexplained way incorporated with ,samphire ,house4 ,on the whole the stress lies rather on treasure1 the treasure of smuggling1 of longshore practices1 of illegality on the high seas4 ,and still clearer is it that the amiable ,deshman wants to get at it without the participation of ,mr4 ,blandish4 ,until the very end you are never quite satisfied why ,deshman wants to get at it in so private a fashion4 ,as the plot thickens you are played about between the conviction that ,deshman wants the stuff for himself and the firm belief of the lady that against the possible intervention of the ,treasury1 he wants to secure it for ,mr4 ,blandish1 to secure it at least generously if nefariously1 lest perhaps it should fall under the accepted definition and all the consequent confiscations of treasure trove4 ,and there are further beautiful subtleties as to whether she really believes in this more kindly interpretation of the refined but dubitable ,deshman4444 ,a friend of ,deshman's1 shameless under the incredible name of ,mimbleton1 becomes entangled in this thick1 sweet flow of narrative--the ,james method of introducing a character always reminds me of going round with the lantern when one is treacling for moths4 ,mimbleton has energy4 ,he presses4 ,under a summer dawn of delicious sweetness ,mimbleton is found insensible on the croquet lawn by ,mr4 ,blandish1 who1 like most of the characters in the narrative from first to last1 has been unable to sleep4 ,and at the near corner of the house1 close to a never before remarked ventilator1 is a hastily and inaccurately refilled excavation4444 ,then events come hurrying in a sort of tangled haste--making sibyl-like gestures4 ,at the doorway ,mutimer appears--swaying with some profound emotion4 ,he is still in his evening attire4 ,he has not yet gone to bed4 ,in spite of the dawn he carried a burning candle--obliquely4 ,at the sight of his master he withdraws--backwards and with difficulty4444 ,then1 said ,boon1 ,i get my crowning chapter3 the breakfast1 a peculiar something1 something almost palpable in the atmosphere--,deshman hoarse and a little talkative1 ,mimbleton with a possibly nervous headache1 husky also and demanding tea in a thick voice1 ,mutimer waiting uneasily1 and ,mr4 ,blandish1 outwardly calm1 yet noting every particular1 thinking meanings into every word and movement1 and growing more and more clear in his conviction that ,mutimer knows--knows everything4444 ,illustration3 ,mutimer as the plot thickens4 ,book two opens with ,mr4 ,blandish practically in possession of the facts4 ,putting the thing coarsely1 the treasure is--#ahac brandy1 in considerable quantities bricked up in a disused cellar of ,samphire ,house4 ,samphire ,house1 instead of being the fine claret of a refuge ,mr4 ,blandish supposed1 is a loaded port4 ,but of course in the novel we shall not put things coarsely1 and for a long time you will be by no means clear what the 'spirit' is that ,mr4 ,blandish is now resolved to exorcise4 ,he is1 in fact1 engaged in trying to get that brandy away1 trying to de-alcoholize his existence1 trying--if one must put the thing in all the concrete crudity of his fundamental intention--to sell the stuff4444 ,now in real life you would just go and sell it4 ,but people in the novels of ,henry ,james do not do things in the inattentive1 offhand1 rather confused1 and partial way of reality3 they bring enormous brains to bear upon the minutest particulars of existence4 ,mr4 ,blandish1 following the laws of that world1 has not simply to sell his brandy3 he has to sell it subtly1 intricately1 interminably1 with a delicacy1 with a dignity4444 ,he consults friends--impalpable1 intricate1 inexhaustible friends4 ,there are misunderstandings4 ,one old and trusted intimate concludes rather hastily that ,mr4 ,blandish is confessing that he has written a poem1 another that he is making a proposal of marriage1 another that he wishes an introduction to the secretary of the ,psychical ,research ,society4444 ,all this1 said ,boon1 remains1 perhaps indefinitely1 to be worked out4 ,only the end1 the end1 comes with a rush4 ,deshman has found for him--one never gets nearer to it than the 'real right people4' ,the real right people send their agent down1 a curious blend of gentleman and commercial person he is1 to investigate1 to verify1 to estimate quantities4 ,ultimately he will--shall we say it8--make an offer4 ,with a sense of immense culmination the reader at last approaches the hoard4444 ,you are never told the thing exactly4 ,it is by indefinable suggestions1 by exquisite approaches and startings back1 by circumlocution the most delicate1 that your mind at last shapes its realization1 that--the last drop of the last barrel has gone and that ,mutimer1 the butler1 lies dead or at least helpless--in the inner cellar4 ,and a beautiful flavour1 ripe and yet rare1 rich without opulence1 hangs--diminuendo morendo--in the air4444 ,,chapter ,,the ,,fifth ,of the ,assembling and ,opening of the ,world ,conference on the ,mind of the ,race ,sec4 #a ,it must be borne in mind that not even the opening chapter of this huge book1 ,the ,mind of the ,race1 was ever completely written4 ,the discussion in the ,garden by the ,sea existed merely so far as the fragment of dialogue ,i have quoted took it4 ,i do not know what ,mr4 ,gosse contributed except that it was something bright1 and that presently he again lost his temper and washed his hands of the whole affair and went off with ,mr4 ,yeats to do a little ,academy thing of their own round a corner1 and ,i do not know what became of the emissaries of ,lord ,northcliffe and ,mr4 ,hearst4 ,one conversation drops out of mind and another begins2 it is like the battle of the ,aisne passing slowly into the battle of the ,yser4 ,the idea develops into the holding of a definite congress upon the ,mind of the ,race at some central place4 ,i don't think ,boon was ever very clear whether that place was ,chautauqua1 or ,grindelwald1 or ,stratford1 or ,oxford during the ,long ,vacation1 or the ,exhibition grounds at ,san ,francisco4 ,it was1 at any rate1 some such place1 and it was a place that was speedily placarded with all sorts of bills and notices and counsels1 such as1 ,to the ,central ,hall1 or ,section ,b3 ,criticism and ,reviewing1 or ,section ,m3 ,prose ,style1 or ,authors' ,society 7,british7 ,solicitors' ,department1 or ,exhibit of the ,reading ,room of the ,british ,museum4 ,manifestly the model of a meeting of the ,british ,association for the ,advancement of ,science dominated his mind more and more1 until at last he began to concoct a presidential address4 ,and he invented a man called ,j4 ,b4 ,pondlebury1 very active and illiterate1 but an excellent organizer1 trained by ,selfridge1 that ,marshal ,field of ,london1 who is very directive throughout4 ,j4 ,b4 ,pondlebury orders the special trains1 contrives impossible excursions1 organizes garden fetes and water parties1 keeps people together who would prefer to be separated1 and breaks up people who have been getting together4 ,through all these things drifts ,hallery1 whose writings started the idea1 and sometimes he is almost1 as it were1 leader and sometimes he is like a drowned body in the torrent below ,niagara--,pondlebury being ,niagara4 ,on the whole the atmosphere of the great conference was ,american1 and yet ,i distinctly remember that it was the ,special ,train to ,bale of which he gave us an account one afternoon2 it was a night journey of considerable eventfulness1 with two adjacent carriages de luxe labelled respectively ,specially ,reserved for ,miss ,marie ,corelli1 and ,specially ,reserved for ,mr4 and ,mrs4 ,george ,bernard ,shaw1 with conspicuous reiterations4 ,the other compartments were less exclusive1 and contained curious minglings of greatness1 activity1 and reputation4 ,sir ,j4 ,m4 ,barrie had an upper berth in a wagon-lit1 where he remained sympathetically silent above a crowd of younger reputations1 a crowd too numerous to permit the making of the lower berth and overflowing into the corridor4 ,i remember ,boon kept jamming new people into that congestion4 ,the whole train1 indeed1 was to be fearfully overcrowded4 ,that was part of the joke4 ,james ,joyce ,i recall as a novelist strange to me that ,boon insisted was a first-rater4 ,he represented him as being of immense size but extreme bashfulness4 ,and he talked about ,d4 ,h4 ,lawrence1 ,st4 ,john ,ervine1 ,reginald ,wright ,kauffman1 ,leonard ,merrick1 ,viola ,meynell1 ,rose ,macaulay1 ,katherine ,mansfield1 ,mary ,austin1 ,clutton ,brock1 ,robert ,lynd1 ,james ,stephens1 ,philip ,guedalla1 ,h4 ,m4 ,tomlinson1 ,denis ,garstin1 ,dixon ,scott1 ,rupert ,brooke1 ,geoffrey ,young1 ,f4 ,s4 ,flint1 ,marmaduke ,pickthall1 ,randolph ,s4 ,bourne1 ,james ,milne---- ,through all the jam1 ,i think we must have ,ford ,madox ,hueffer1 wandering to and fro up and down the corridor1 with distraught blue eyes1 laying his hands on heads and shoulders1 the ,only ,uncle of the ,gifted ,young1 talking in a languid1 plangent tenor1 now boasting about trivialities1 and now making familiar criticisms 7which are invariably ill-received71 and occasionally quite absent-mindedly producing splendid poetry4444 ,like most authors who have made their way to prominence and profit1 ,boon was keenly sympathetic with any new writer who promised to do interesting work1 and very ready with his praise and recognition4 ,that disposition in these writing1 prolific times would alone have choked the corridor4 ,and he liked young people even when their promises were not exactly convincing4 ,he hated to see a good book neglected1 and was for ever ramming ,the ,crystal ,age and ,said the ,fisherman and ,tony ,drum and ,george's ,mother and ,a ,hind ,let ,loose and ,growing ,pains down the throats of his visitors4 ,but there were very human and definite limits to his appreciations4 ,conspicuous success1 and particularly conspicuous respectable success1 chilled his generosity4 ,conrad he could not endure4 ,i do him no wrong in mentioning that2 it is the way with most of us2 and a score of flourishing contemporaries who might have liked tickets for the ,conference special would have found great difficulty in getting them4 ,there is a fascination in passing judgements and drawing up class lists4 ,for a time the high intention of the ,mind of the ,race was forgotten while we talked the narrow shop of ,london literary journalism1 and discovered and weighed and log-rolled and--in the case of the more established--blamed and condemned4 ,that ,bale train became less and less like a train and more and more like a descriptive catalogue4 ,for the best part of an afternoon we talked of the young and the new1 and then we fell into a discussion about such reputations as ,pickthall's and ,w4 ,h4 ,hudson's and the late ,stephen ,crane's1 reputations ridiculously less than they ought to be1 so that these writers1 who are certainly as securely classic as ,beckford or ,herrick1 are still unknown to half the educated ,english reading public4 ,was it due to the haste of criticism or the illiteracy of publishers8 ,that question led us so far away from the special ,bale train that we never returned to it4 ,but ,i know that we decided that the real and significant writers were to be only a small portion of the crowd that congested the train2 there were also to be endless impostors1 imitators1 editors1 raiders of the world of print4444 ,at every important station there was to be a frightful row about all these people's tickets1 and violent attempts to remove doubtful cases4444 ,then ,mr4 ,clement ,k4 ,shorter was to come in to advise and help the conductor4444 ,ultimately this led to trouble about ,mr4 ,shorter's own credentials4444 ,some of ,boon's jokes about this train were1 to say the best of them1 obvious4 ,mr4 ,compton ,mackenzie was in trouble about his excess luggage1 for example4 ,mr4 ,upton ,sinclair1 having carried out his ideal of an innocent frankness to a logical completeness in his travelling equipment1 was forcibly wrapped in blankets by the train officials4 ,mr4 ,thomas ,hardy had a first-class ticket but travelled by choice or mistake in a second-class compartment1 his deserted place being subsequently occupied by that promising young novelist ,mr4 ,hugh ,walpole1 provided with a beautiful fur rug1 a fitted dressing-bag1 a writing slope1 a gold-nibbed fountain pen1 innumerable introductions1 and everything that a promising young novelist can need4 ,the brothers ,chesterton1 ,mr4 ,maurice ,baring1 and ,mr4 ,belloc sat up all night in the wagon-restaurant consuming beer enormously and conversing upon immortality and whether it extends to ,semitic and ,oriental persons4 ,at the end of the train1 ,i remember1 there was to have been a horse-van containing ,mr4 ,maurice ,hewlett's charger--,mr4 ,hewlett himself1 ,i believe1 was left behind by accident at the ,gare de ,lyons--,mr4 ,cunninghame ,graham's ,arab steed1 and a large1 quiet sheep1 the inseparable pet of ,mr4 ,arthur ,christopher ,benson4444 ,there was also1 ,i remember1 a description of the whole party running for early coffee1 which gave ,boon ample and regrettable opportunities for speculations upon the deshabille of his contemporaries4 ,much of the detail of that invention ,i prefer to forget1 but ,i remember ,mr4 ,shaw was fully prepared for the emerging with hand-painted pyjamas1 over which he was wearing a saffron dressing-gown decorated in green and purple scrolls by one of the bolder artists associated with ,mr4 ,roger ,fry1 and as these special train allusions are all that ,i can ever remember ,boon saying about ,shaw1 and as the drawing does in itself amount to a criticism1 ,i give it here4444 ,illustration3 ,how ,mr4 ,shaw knocked them all on ,bale platform1 and got right into the middle of the picture4 ,remark his earnest face4 ,this surely is no mountebank4 ,sec4 #b ,boon was greatly exercised over the problem of a president4 ,why have a president8 ,dodd helped4 ,there must be a ,presidential ,address1 said ,boon1 and these things always do have a president4 ,lord ,rosebery1 suggested ,wilkins4 ,lord ,morley1 said ,dodd4 ,lord ,bryce4 ,then we looked at one another4 ,for my own part1 said ,boon1 if we are going in for that sort of thing1 ,i favour ,lord ,reay4 ,you see1 ,lord ,reay has never done anything at all connected with literature4 ,morley and ,bryce and ,rosebery have at any rate written things--historical studies1 addresses1 things like that--but ,reay has never written anything1 and he let ,gollancz make him president of the ,british ,academy without a murmur4 ,this seems to mark him out for this further distinction4 ,he is just the sort of man who would be made--and who would let himself be made--president of a ,british affair of this sort1 and they would hoist him up and he would talk for two or three hours without a blush4 ,just like that other confounded peer--what was his name8--who bored and bored and bored at the ,anatole ,france dinner4444 ,in the natural course of things it would be one of these literary lords4444 ,what would he say8 asked ,dodd4 ,maunderings1 of course4 ,it will make the book rather dull4 ,i doubt if ,i can report him at length4444 ,he will speak upon contemporary letters1 the lack of current achievement4444 ,i doubt if a man like ,lord ,reay ever reads at all4 ,one wonders sometimes what these ,british literary aristocrats do with all their time4 ,probably he left off reading somewhere in the eighties4 ,he won't have noted it1 of course1 and he will be under the impression that nothing has been written for the past thirty years4 ,good ,lord6 said ,wilkins4 ,and he'll say that4 ,slowly4 ,steadily4 ,endlessly4 ,then he will thank ,god for the ,english classics1 ask where now is our ,thackeray8 where now our ,burns8 our ,charlotte ,bronte8 our ,tennyson8 say a good word for our immortal bard1 and sit down amidst the loud applause of thousands of speechlessly furious ,british and ,american writers4444 ,i don't see that this will help your book forward1 said ,dodd4 ,no1 but it's a proper way of beginning4 ,like ,family ,prayers4 ,i suppose1 said ,wilkins1 if you told a man of that sort that there were more and better poets writing in ,english beautifully in #aiad than ever before he wouldn't believe it4 ,i suppose if you said that ,ford ,madox ,hueffer1 for example1 had produced sweeter and deeper poetry than ,alfred1 ,lord ,tennyson1 he'd have a fit4 ,he'd have nothing of the kind4 ,you could no more get such an idea into the head of one of these great vestiges of our ,gladstonian days than you could get it into the seat of a ,windsor chair4444 ,and people don't have fits unless something has got into them4444 ,no1 he'd reflect quite calmly that first of all he'd never heard of this ,hueffer1 then that probably he was a very young man4 ,and1 anyhow1 one didn't meet him in important places4444 ,and after inquiry he would find out he was a journalist4444 ,and then probably he'd cease to cerebrate upon the question4444 ,sec4 #c ,besides1 said ,boon1 we must have one of our literary peers because of ,america4 ,you're unjust to ,america1 ,i said4 ,no1 said ,boon4 ,but ,aunt ,dove--,i know her ways4 ,that led to a long1 rambling discussion about the ,american literary atmosphere4 ,nothing that ,i could say would make him relent from his emphatic assertion that it is a spinster atmosphere1 an atmosphere in which you can't say all sorts of things and where all sorts of things have to be specially phrased4 ,and she can't stand young things and crude things---- ,america6 said ,wilkins4 ,the ,america ,i mean4 ,the sort of ,america that ought to supply young new writers with caresses and--nourishment4 444,instead of which you get the ,nation4444 ,that bleak acidity1 that refined appeal to take the child away4 ,but they don't produce new young writers6 said ,wilkins4 ,but they do6 said ,boon4 ,and they strangle them6 ,it was extraordinary what a power metaphors and fancies had upon ,boon4 ,only those who knew him intimately can understand how necessary ,miss ,bathwick was to him4 ,he would touch a metaphor and then return and sip it1 and then sip and drink and swill until it had intoxicated him hopelessly4 ,america1 said ,boon1 can produce such a supreme writer as ,stephen ,crane--the best writer of ,english for the last half-century--or ,mary ,austin1 who used to write---- ,what other woman could touch her8 ,but ,america won't own such children4 ,it's amazing4 ,it's a case of concealment of birth4 ,she exposes them4 ,whether it's ,shame--or a ,chinese trick4444 ,she'll sit never knowing she's had a ,stephen ,crane1 adoring the ,european reputation1 the florid mental gestures of a ,conrad4 ,you see1 she can tell ,conrad 'writes4' ,it shows4 ,and she'll let ,mary ,austin die of neglect1 while she worships the 'art' of ,mary ,ward4 ,it's like turning from the feet of a goddess to a pair of goloshes4 ,she firmly believes that old quack ,bergson is a bigger man than her own unapproachable ,william ,james4444 ,she's incredible4 ,i tell you it's only conceivable on one supposition4444 ,i'd never thought before about these disgraceful sidelights on ,miss ,dove's career4444 ,we ,english do make foundlings of some of her little victims1 anyhow4444 ,but why hasn't she any natural instinct in the matter8 ,now1 if one represented that peculiar ,bostonian intellectual gentility1 the ,nation kind of thing1 as a very wicked1 sour lady's-maid with a tremendous influence over the ,spinster's conduct4444 ,his mind was running on4 ,i begin to see a melodramatic strain in this great novel1 ',miss ,dove4'444 ',miss ,dove's ,derelicts4'444 ,too broad1 ,i am afraid4 ,if one were to represent ,sargent and ,henry ,james as two children left out one cold night in a basket at a cottage in the village by a mysterious stranger1 with nothing but a roll of dollars and a rough drawing of the ,washington coat-of-arms to indicate their parentage4444 ,then when they grow up they go back to the big house and she's almost kind to them4444 ,have you ever read the critical articles of ,edgar ,allan ,poe8 ,they're very remarkable4 ,he is always demanding an ,american ,literature4 ,it is like a deserted baby left to die in its cradle1 weeping and wailing for its bottle4444 ,what he wanted1 of course1 was honest and intelligent criticism4 ,to this day ,america kills her ,poes4444 ,but confound it6 said ,wilkins1 ,america does make discoveries for herself4 ,hasn't she discovered ,lowes ,dickinson8 ,but that merely helps my case4 ,lowes ,dickinson has just the qualities that take the ,american judgement2 he carries the shadow of ,king's ,college ,chapel about with him wherever he goes2 he has an unobtrusive air of being doubly starred in ,baedeker and not thinking anything of it4 ,and also she took ,noyes to her bosom4 ,but when has ,american criticism ever had the intellectual pluck to proclaim an ,american8 ,and so1 you see1 he remarked1 going off again at a tangent1 if we are going to bid for ,american adhesions there's only one course open to us in the matter of this presidential address4444 ,lord ,morley4444 ,you're a little difficult to follow at times1 said ,wilkins4 ,because he's the man who's safest not to say anything about babies or--anything alive4444 ,obviously a literary congress in ,america must be a festival in honour of sterility4 ,aunt ,dove demands it4 ,like celebrating the virginity of ,queen ,elizabeth4444 ,sec4 #d ,i find among the fragments of my departed friend some notes that seem to me to be more or less relevant here4 ,they are an incomplete report of the proceedings of a section ,s1 devoted to ,poiometry1 apparently the scientific measurement of literary greatness4 ,it seems to have been under the control of a special committee1 including ,mr4 ,james ,huneker1 ,mr4 ,slosson1 ,sir ,thomas ,seccombe1 ,mr4 ,james ,douglas1 ,mr4 ,clement ,k4 ,shorter1 the acting editor of the ,bookman1 and the competition editress of the ,westminster ,gazette4444 ,apparently the notes refer to some paper read before the section4 ,its authorship is not stated1 nor is there any account of its reception4 ,but the title is ,the ,natural ,history of ,greatness1 with especial reference to ,literary ,reputations4 ,the opening was evidently one of those rapid historical sketches frequent in such papers4 ,persuasion that human beings are sometimes of disproportionate size appears first in the ,egyptian and ,syrian wall paintings4444 ,probably innate4444 ,the discouragement of the young a social necessity in all early societies4 ,in all societies8444 ,exaggerated stories about the departed4444 ,golden ages4 ,heroic ages4 ,ancestor worship4444 ,dead dogs better than living lions4444 ,abraham4 ,moses4 ,the ,homeric reputation1 the first great literary cant4 ,resentment against ,homer's exaggerated claims on the part of intelligent people4 ,zoilus4 ,caricature of the ,homerists in the ,satyricon4 ,other instances of unorthodox ancient criticism4444 ,shakespeare as an intellectual nuisance4444 ,extreme suffering caused to contemporary writers by the ,shakespeare legend4444 ,another form of opposition to these obsessions is the creation of countervailing reputations4 ,certain people in certain ages have resolved to set up ,great ,men of their own to put beside these ,brocken spectres from the past4 ,this marks a certain stage of social development1 the beginning of self-consciousness in a civilized community4 ,self-criticism always begins in self-flattery4 ,virgil as an early instance of a ,great ,man of set intentions2 deliberately put up as the ,latin ,homer4444 ,evolution of the greatness of ,aristotle during the ,middle ,ages4 ,little sense of contemporary ,greatness among the ,elizabethans4 ,comparison with the past the prelude to ,great-,man-,making1 begins with such a work as ,swift's ',battle of the ,books4' ,concurrently the decline in religious feeling robs the past of its half-mystical prestige4 ,the ,western world ripe for ,great ,men in the early nineteenth century4 ,the ,germans as a highly competitive and envious people take the lead4 ,the inflation of ,schiller4 ,the greatness of ,goethe4 ,incredible dullness of ,elective ,affinities1 of ,werther1 of ,wilhelm ,meister's ,apprenticeship4 ,the second part of ,faust a tiresome muddle4 ,large pretentiousness of the man's career4 ,resolve of the ,germans to have a ,great ,fleet1 a ,great ,empire1 a ,great ,man4 ,difficulty in finding a suitable ,german for ,greatening4 ,expansion of the ,goethe legend4 ,german efficiency brought to bear on the task4 ,lectures4 ,professors4 ,goethe compared to ,shakespeare4 ,compared to ,homer4 ,compared to ,christ4 ,compared to ,god4 ,discovered to be incomparable4444 ,stimulation of ,scotch activities4 ,the ,scotch also passionately and aggressively patriotic4 ,fortunate smallness of ,scotland and lack of adjacent docile ,germans has alone saved the world from another ,prussia4 ,desperation of the search for a real ,scotch ,first ,rater4 ,the discovery that ,burns was as great as ,shakespeare4 ,greater4 ,the booming of ,sir ,walter ,scott4 ,wake up1 ,england6 ,the production of ,dickens4 ,the slow but enormous discovery of ,wordsworth4 ,victorian age sets up as a rival to the ,augustine4 ,selection of ,great ,men in every department4 ,the ,great ,victorian painters4 ,sir ,frederick ,leighton1 compared with ,titian and ,michael ,angelo4 ,tennyson as ,virgil4 ,lord ,tennyson at the crest of the ,victorian ,greatness wave4 ,his hair4 ,his cloak4 ,his noble bearing4 ,his aloofness4 ,his ,great ,pipe4 ,his price per word4 ,his intellectual familiarities with ,queen ,victoria4444 ,longfellow essentially an ,american repartee4444 ,ingratitude of ,british ,royal ,family to those who contributed to the ,victorian ,greatness period1 shown in the absence of representative ,great ,men from the ,buckingham ,palace ,monument4 ,victoria did not do it all4 ,compare the ,albert ,memorial4444 ,interesting task to plan an alternative pedestal4 ,proposal to make designs for a monument to our own times4 ,symbolic corner groups by ,will ,dyson4 ,frieze of representative men by ,max4 ,canopy by ,wyndham ,lewis4 ,lost opportunity for much bright discussion4444 ,analysis of literary greatness4 ,is any literary achievement essential to greatness8 ,probably a minute minimum indispensable4 ,burns4 ,fitzgerald4 ,but compare ,lord ,acton and ,lord ,reay4 ,necessity of a marked personality4 ,weaknesses1 but no unpopular vices4 ,greatness blighted by want of dignity4 ,laurence ,sterne4 ,reciprocal duty of those made ,great not to distress their ,public4 ,but imperfectly established scandal or complexity of relationship may give scope for vindications and research4 ,or a certain irregularity of life may create a loyal and devoted following of sympathizers4 ,shelley4444 ,then capable advocacy is needed and a critical world large enough to be effective but small enough to be unanimous4 ,part an able publisher may play in establishing and developing a ,great ,man4444 ,quiet ,push1 not ,noisy ,push4 ,injury done by tactless advertisement4444 ,the element of luck4444 ,these are the seeds of greatness1 but the growth depends upon the soil4 ,the best soil is a large uncritical public newly come to reading1 a little suspicious of the propriety of the practice and in a state of intellectual snobbishness4 ,it must also be fairly uniform and on some common basis of ideas4 ,ideally represented by the reading publics of ,germany1 ,britain1 the ,united ,states1 and ,france in the middle nineteenth century4444 ,decline in the output of ,greatness towards the end of the ,victorian time4 ,probably due in all cases to an enlargement of the reading public to unmanageable dimensions4 ,no reputation sufficiently elastic to cover it4 ,the growth of ,chicago1 ,new ,york1 and the ,west destroyed the preponderance of ,boston in ,america1 and the ,civil ,war broke the succession of ,american ,great ,men4 ,rarity of new ,american-born ,greatnesses after the war4 ,dumping of established greatnesses from ,england gave no chance to the native market4 ,no ,protection for ,america in this respect4 ,in ,great ,britain the board schools create big masses of intelligent people inaccessible to the existing machinery by which ,greatness is imposed4 ,the ,greatness output in ,britain declines also in consequence4 ,mrs4 ,humphry ,ward1 the last of the ,british ,victorian ,great4 ,expressed admiration of ,mr4 ,gladstone for her work4 ,support of the ,spectator4 ,profound respect of the ,american people4 ,rumour that she is represented as a sea goddess at the base of the ,queen ,victoria ,memorial unfounded4 ,nobody is represented on the ,queen ,victoria ,memorial except ,queen ,victoria4444 ,necessity after the epoch of ,mrs4 ,ward of more and more flagrant advertisement to reach the enlarged public1 so that at last touch is lost with the critical centres4 ,great ,men beyond the ,limit4 ,self-exploded candidates for ,greatness4 ,boomsters4 ,best ,sellers4 ,mr4 ,hall ,caine as the shocking example4444 ,other causes contributing to the decay of ,greatness among literary men4 ,competition of politicians1 princes1 personages generally for the prestige of the literary man4 ,superior initial advantage in conspicuousness4 ,the genuine writer handicapped4 ,the process already beginning at the crest of the period4 ,queen ,victoria's ',leaves from a ,highland ,diary4' ,mr4 ,gladstone and the higher windiness4 ,later developments4 ,the ,kaiser as a man of letters4 ,mr4 ,roosevelt as writer and critic4 ,the ,essays of ,president ,wilson4 ,the case of ,lord ,rosebery4 ,mr4 ,haldane as a philosopher4 ,as a critic4 ,his opinion of ,goethe4 ,compare the royal and noble authors of ,byzantium4 ,compare the ,roman ,emperor becoming ,pontifex ,maximus4 ,compare the cannibal chief in a general's hat4444 ,return of the literary men as such to a decent obscurity4 ,from which they are unlikely to emerge again4 ,this an unmixed blessing4 ,so long as good writing and sound thinking are still appreciated the less we hear about authors the better4 ,never so little recognized ,greatness and never so much wise1 subtle1 sweet1 and boldly conceived literary work as now4 ,this will probably continue4 ,he was writing before the war4 ,the ,english-reading literary world too large now for the operations of ,greatening4 ,doubtful case of ,rabindranath ,tagore4 ,discuss this4 ,special suitability of ,india as a basis for ,greatness4 ,india probably on the verge of a ,greatness period4444 ,disrespect a natural disposition in the young4 ,checked and subdued in small societies1 but now happily rampant in the uncontrollable ,english-speaking communities4 ,the new 7undignified7 criticism4 ,the ,english ,review4 ,mr4 ,austin ,harrison and the street-boy style4 ,the literature of the chalked fence4 ,the ,new ,age4 ,literary carbolic acid--with an occasional substitution of vitriol4444 ,insurrection of the feminine mind against worship4 ,miss ,rebecca ,west as the last birth of time4 ,a virile-minded generation of young women indicated4 ,mrs4 ,humphry ,ward blushes publicly for the ,freewoman in the ,times4 ,hitherto ,greatness has demanded the applause of youth and feminine worship as necessary conditions4 ,as necessary to its early stages as down to an eider chick4 ,impossible to imagine ,incipient ,greatness nestling comfortably upon ,orage1 ,austin ,harrison1 and ,rebecca ,west4 ,dearth of young ,sidney ,colvins4444 ,unhappy position of various derelict and still imperfectly developed ,great surviving from the old times4 ,arnold ,bennett as an aborted ,great ,man4 ,would have made a ,great ,victorian and had a crowd of satellite helpers4 ,now no one will ever treasure his old hats and pipes4444 ,idea of an experimental resurrection of those who still live in our hearts4 ,if ,goethe had a second time on earth----8 ,could he do it now8 ,would ,lord ,haldane perceive him8 ,imaginary description of ,lord ,haldane's recognition of a youthful ,goethe4 ,they meet by accident during a walking tour in ,germany4 ,amiable aloofness of ,lord ,haldane4 ,his gradual discovery of an intellectual superior in his modest companion4 ,public proclamation of his find4444 ,doubts4444 ,peroration4 ,will the world be happy without ,literary ,greatnesses8 ,improvise and take a cheerful line upon this question4 ,illustration3 ,miss ,rebecca ,west1 pensive1 after writing her well-known opinion of that ,great ,good ,woman-,soul1 ,miss ,ellen ,key4 ,sec4 #e ,ultimately1 against every possibility of the case1 ,boon decided that the ,president of his conference must be ,hallery4 ,and he wrote his presidential address4 ,but he never read that address to us4 ,some shyness ,i think restrained him4 ,i dig it out here now for the first time1 a little astonished at it1 disposed to admire something in its spirit4444 ,but yet one has to admit that it shows an extraordinary lapse from ,boon's accustomed mocking humour4 ,here is the opening4 ,hallery then advanced to the edge of the platform and fumbled with his manuscript4 ,his face was very white and his expression bitterly earnest4 ,with an appearance of effort he began1 omitting in his nervousness any form of address to his audience-- ',for the most part1 the life of human communities has been as unconscious as the life of animals4 ,they have been born as unknowingly as the beasts2 they have followed unforeseen and unheeded destinies1 and destruction has come to them from forces scarcely anticipated and not understood4 ,tribes1 nations beyond counting1 have come and passed1 with scarcely a mental activity beyond a few legends1 a priestly guess at cosmogony1 a few rumours and traditions1 a list of kings as bare as a schoolboy's diary1 a war or so1 a triumph or so4444 ,we are still only in the beginning of history--in the development1 that is1 of a racial memory2 we have as yet hardly begun to inquire into our racial origins1 our racial conditions1 our racial future4444 ,philosophy1 which is the discussion of the relation of the general to the particular1 of the whole to the part1 of the great and yet vague life of the race to the intense yet manifestly incomplete life of the individual1 is still not three thousand years old4 ,man has lived consciously as man it may be for hundreds of thousands of years1 he has learnt of himself by talking to his fellows1 he has expressed personal love and many personal feelings with a truth and beauty that are well nigh final1 but the race does but begin to live as a conscious being4 ,it begins to live as a conscious being1 and as it does so1 the individual too begins to live in a new way1 a greater1 more understanding1 and more satisfying way4 ,his thoughts apprehend interests beyond himself and beyond his particular life4444' ,at this point ,hallery became so acutely aware of his audience that for some seconds he could not go on reading4 ,a number of people in various parts of the hall had suddenly given way to their coughs1 a bald-headed gentleman about the middle of the assembly had discovered a draught1 and was silently but conspicuously negotiating for the closing of a window by an attendant1 and at the back a cultivated-looking young gentleman was stealing out on tiptoe4 ,illustration3 ,the first departure4 ,for a moment ,hallery was distressed by the thought that perhaps he might have taken a more amusing line than the one he had chosen1 and then1 realizing how vain were such regrets and rather quickening his pace1 he resumed the reading of his address-- ',you see that ,i am beginning upon a very comprehensive scale1 for ,i propose to bring within the scope of this conference all that arises out of these two things1 out of the realization of the incompleteness of man's individual life on the one hand and out of the realization of a greater being in which man lives1 of a larger racial life and ampler references upon the other4 ,all this much--and with a full awareness of just how much it is--,i am going to claim as literature and our province4 ,religion1 ,i hold1 every religion so far as it establishes and carries ideas1 is literature1 philosophy is literature1 science is literature2 a pamphlet or a leading article4 ,i put all these things together----' ,at this point there was a second departure4 ,illustration3 ,the second departure4 ,almost immediately followed by a third4 ,illustration3 ,the third departure4 ,hallery halted for a second time and then gripped the reading-desk with both hands1 and1 reading now with a steadily accelerated velocity1 heeded his audience no more-- ',i put all these things together because1 indeed1 it is only associations of antiquity and prescription and prestige can separate them4 ,altogether they constitute the great vague body of man's super-personal mental life1 his unselfish life1 his growing life1 as a premeditating1 self-conscious race and destiny4 ,here in growing volume1 in this comprehensive literature of ours1 preserved1 selected1 criticized1 re-stated1 continually rather more fined1 continually rather more clarified1 we have the mind1 not of a mortal but of an immortal adventurer4 ,whom for the moment1 fractionally1 infinitesimally1 whenever we can forget ourselves in pure feeling1 in service1 in creative effort or disinterested thought1 we are privileged in that measure to become4 ,this wonder that we celebrate1 this literature1 is the dawn of human divinity4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4' ,but though ,hallery went on1 ,i do not1 on reflection1 think that ,i will4 ,i doubt if ,boon ever decided to incorporate this extraordinary ,presidential ,address in our book2 ,i think perhaps he meant to revise it or substitute something else4 ,he wanted to state a case for the extreme importance of literature1 and to my mind he carried his statement into regions mystical1 to say the least of it1 and likely to be considered blasphemous by many quite right-minded people4 ,for instance1 he made ,hallery speak of the ,word that links men's minds4 ,he brings our poor1 mortal1 mental activities into the most extraordinary relationship with those greater things outside our lives which it is our duty to revere as much as possible and to think about as little as possible2 he draws no line between them4444 ,he never1 ,i say1 read the paper to us4444 ,i cannot guess whether he did not read it to us because he doubted himself or because he doubted us1 and ,i do not even care to examine my own mind to know whether ,i do or do not believe in the thesis he sets so unhesitatingly down4 ,in a sense it is no doubt true that literature is a kind of over-mind of the race1 and in a sense1 no doubt1 the ,bible and the ,koran1 the ,talmud and the ,prayer ,book are literature4 ,in a sense ,mr4 ,upton ,sinclair's ,bible for ,socialists of bits from ancient and modern writings is literature4 ,in a sense1 too1 literature does go on rather like a continuous mind thinking4444 ,but ,i feel that all this is just in a sense4444 ,i don't really believe it4 ,i am not quite sure what ,i do really believe1 but ,i certainly recoil from anything so crudely positive as ,hallery's wild assertions4444 ,it would mean worshipping literature4 ,or at least worshipping the truth in literature4444 ,of course1 one knows that real literature is something that has to do with leisure and cultivated people and books and shaded lamps and all that sort of thing4 ,but ,hallery wants to drag in not only cathedrals and sanctuaries1 but sky-signs and hoardings4444 ,he wants literature to embrace whatever is in or whatever changes the mind of the race1 except purely personal particulars4 ,and ,i think ,boon was going to make ,hallery claim this1 just in order to show up against these tremendous significances the pettiness of the contemporary literary life1 the poverty and levity of criticism1 the mean business side of modern book-making and book-selling4444 ,turning over the pages of this rejected address1 which ,i am sure the reader would not thank me for printing1 ,i do come upon this presentable passage1 which illustrates what ,i am saying-- ,so that every man who writes to express or change or criticize an idea1 every man who observes and records a fact in the making of a research1 every man who hazards or tests a theory1 every artist of any sort who really expresses1 does thereby1 in that very act1 participate1 share in1 become for just that instant when he is novel and authentically true1 the ,mind of the ,race1 the thinking divinity4 ,do you not see1 then1 what an arrogant worship1 what a sacramental thing it is to lift up brain and hand and say1 ',i too will add'8 ,we bring our little thoughts as the priest brings a piece of common bread to consecration1 and though we have produced but a couplet or a dozen lines of prose1 we have nevertheless done the parallel miracle4 ,and all reading that is reading with the mind1 all conscious subjugation of our attention to expressed beauty1 or expressed truth1 is sacramental1 is communion with the immortal being4 ,we lift up our thoughts out of the little festering pit of desire and vanity which is one's individual self into that greater self4444 ,so he talks1 and again presently of that world-wide immortal communion incessant as the march of sun and planets amidst the stars4444 ,and then1 going on with his vast comparison1 for ,i cannot believe this is more than a fantastic parallelism3 ,and if the mind that does1 as we say1 create is like the wafer that has become miraculously divine1 then though you may not like to think of it1 all you who give out books1 who print books and collect books1 and sell books and lend them1 who bring pictures to people's eyes1 set things forth in theatres1 hand out thought in any way from the thinking to the attentive mind1 all you are priests1 you do a priestly office1 and every bookstall and hoarding is a wayside shrine1 offering consolation and release to men and women from the intolerable prison of their narrow selves4444 ,sec4 #f ,that1 ,i think1 is what ,boon really at the bottom of his heart felt and believed about literature4 ,and yet in some way he could also not believe it2 he could recognize something about it that made him fill the margin of the manuscript of this address with grotesque figures of an imaginary audience going out4 ,they were1 ,i know1 as necessary to his whole conception as his swinging reference to the stars2 both were as much part of his profound belief as the gargoyle on the spire and the high altar are necessary parts of a ,gothic cathedral4 ,and among other figures ,i am amused rather than hurt to find near the end this of myself-- ,illustration3 ,too high-pitched even for ,reginald4 ,,chapter ,,the ,,sixth ,of not liking ,hallery and the ,royal ,society for the ,discouragement of ,literature ,sec4 #a ,in the same peculiar receptacle in which ,i find this presidential address ,i found a quantity of other papers and scraps of paper1 upon which ,boon1 ,i should judge1 had been thinking about that address and why he was ashamed to produce it to us1 and why he perceived that this audience would dislike ,hallery so much that he was obliged to admit that they would go out before his lecture was finished1 and why he himself didn't somehow like this ,hallery that he had made4 ,all these writings are in the nature of fragments1 some are illegible and more are incomprehensible2 but it is clear that his mind attacked these questions with a most extraordinary width of reference4 ,i find him writing about the ,one and the ,many1 the ,general and the ,particular1 the ,species and the ,individual1 declaring that it is through the dimensions 7sic7 of space and time that individuation becomes possible1 and citing ,darwin1 ,heraclitus1 ,kant1 ,plato1 and ,tagore1 all with a view to determining just exactly what it was that irritated people in the breadth and height and expression of ,hallery's views4 ,or to be more exact1 what he knew would have irritated people with these views if they had ever been expressed4 ,here is the sort of thing that ,i invite the intelligent reader to link up if he can with the very natural phenomenon of a number of quite ordinary sensible people hostile and in retreat before a tedious1 perplexing1 and presumptuous discourse-- ,the individual human mind spends itself about equally in headlong flight from the ,universal1 which it dreads as something that will envelop and subjugate it1 and in headlong flight to the ,universal1 which it seeks as a refuge from its own loneliness and silliness4 ,it knows very certainly that the ,universal will ultimately comprehend and incorporate it1 yet it desires always that the ,universal should mother it1 take it up without injuring it in the slightest degree1 foment and nourish its egotism1 cherish fondly all its distinctions1 give it all the kingdoms of existence to play with4444 ,ordinary people snuggle up to ,god as a lost leveret in a freezing wilderness might snuggle up to a ,siberian tiger4444 ,you see that man who flies and seeks1 who needs and does not want1 does at last get to a kind of subconscious compromise over the matter4 ,couldn't he perhaps get the ,infinite with the chill off8 ,couldn't he perhaps find a warm stuffed tiger8 ,he cheats himself by hiding in what he can pretend is the goal4 ,so he tries to escape from the pursuit of the living ,god to dead gods1 evades religion in a church1 does his best to insist upon time-honoured formulae2 ,god must have a button on the point4 ,and it is our instinctive protection of the subconscious arrangement that makes us so passionately resentful at raw religion1 at crude spiritual realities1 at people who come at us saying harsh understandable things about these awful matters4444 ,they may wake the tiger6444 ,we like to think of religion as something safely specialized1 codified1 and put away4 ,then we can learn the rules and kick about a bit4 ,but when some one comes along saying that science is religion1 literature is religion1 business--they'll come to that presently6--business is religion6444 ,it spoils the afternoon4444 ,but that alone does not explain why ,hallery1 delivering his insistent presidential address1 is detestable to his audience--for it is quite clear that he is detestable4 ,i'm certain of it4 ,no1 what is the matter there is that the aggression of the universal is pointed and embittered by an all too justifiable suspicion that the individual who maintains it is still more aggressive1 has but armed himself with the universal in order to achieve our discomfiture4444 ,it's no good his being modest2 that only embitters it4 ,it is no good his making disavowals2 that only shows that he is aware of it4444 ,of course ,i invented ,hallery only to get this burthen off myself4444 ,all spiritual truths ought to be conveyed by a voice speaking out of a dark void4 ,as ,hardy wants his spirits to speak in the ',dynasts4' ,failing that1 why should we not deal with these questions through the anonymity of a gramophone8444 ,a modern religion founded on a mysterious gramophone which was discovered carefully packed in a box of peculiar construction on a seat upon ,primrose ,hill4444 ,how well the great organized religions have understood this6 ,how sound is the effort to meet it by shaving a priest's head or obliging him to grow a beard1 putting him into canonicals1 drilling him and regimenting him1 so as to make him into a mere type4444 ,if ,i were to found a religion1 ,i think ,i should insist upon masked priests4444 ,sec4 #b ,this idea that the defensive instinct of the individuality1 ,jealousy1 is constantly at war not only with other individualities but with all the great de-individualizing things1 with ,faith1 with ,science1 with ,truth1 with ,beauty2 that out of its resentments and intricate devices one may draw the explanation of most of the perplexities and humours of the intellectual life1 indeed the explanation of most life and of most motives1 is the quintessence of ,boon4 ,the ,mind of the ,race toils through this jungle of jealous individuality to emerge4 ,and the individual1 knowing that single-handed he hasn't a chance against the immortal1 allies himself with this and that1 with sham immortalities1 and partially effaced and partially confuted general things4 ,and so it sets up its ,greatnesses1 to save it from greatness1 its solemnities to preserve it from the overwhelming gravity of truth4 ,see1 it can say1 ,i have my gods already1 thank you4 ,i do not think we will discuss this matter further4 ,i admit the difficulty of following ,boon in this4 ,i admit1 too1 that ,i am puzzled about his ,mind of the ,race4 ,does he mean by that expression a ,great ,wisdom and ,will that must be1 or a ,great ,wisdom and ,will that might be8 ,but here he goes on with the topic of ,hallery again4 ,i invented ,hallery to get rid of myself1 but1 after all1 ,hallery is really no more than the shadow of myself1 and if ,i were impersonal and well bred1 and if ,i spoke behind a black screen1 it would still be as much my voice as ever4 ,i do not see how it is possible to prevent the impersonal things coming by and through persons2 but at any rate we can begin to recognize that the person who brings the message is only in his way like the messenger-boy who brings the telegrams4 ,the writer may have a sensitive mind1 the messenger-boy may have nimble heels2 that does not make him the creator of the thing that comes4 ,then ,i think people will be able to listen to such lectures as this of ,hallery's without remembering all the time that it's a particular human being with a white face and a lisp4444 ,and perhaps they will be able to respect literature and fine thought for the sake of the general human mind for which they live and for the sake of their own receptiveness4444 ,sec4 #c ,and from that ,boon suddenly went off into absurdities4 ,should all literature be anonymous8 he asks at the head of a sheet of notes4 ,but one wants an author's name as a brand4 ,perhaps a number would suffice4 ,would authors write if they remained unknown8 ,mixed motives4 ,could one run a church with an unsalaried priesthood8 ,but certainly now the rewards are too irregular1 successful authors are absurdly flattered and provoked to impossible ambitions4 ,could we imitate the modern constitutional ,state by permitting limited ambitions but retaining all the higher positions inaccessible to mere enterprise and merit8 ,hereditary ,novelists1 ,poets1 and ,philosophers1 for example4 ,the real ones undistinguished4 ,hereditary ,historians and ,scientific ,men are already practical reality4 ,then such mischievous rewards and singlings out as the ,nobel ,prize could be distributed among these ,official ,intellectuals by lot or 7better7 by seniority4 ,it would prevent much heartburning4444 ,these last notes strike me as an extraordinary declension from the1 at least1 exalted argument of the preceding memoranda4 ,but they do serve to emphasize the essence of--what shall ,i call it8--,boonism1 the idea that there is a great collective mental process going on in many minds1 and that it is impertinent and distracting to single out persons1 great men1 groups and schools1 coteries and ,academies4 ,the flame burns wide and free4 ,it is here2 it is gone4 ,you had it2 you have it not4 ,and again you see it plainly1 stretching wide across the horizon4444 ,sec4 #d ,but after these scrappy notes about ,jealousy and how people protect their minds against ideas1 and especially the idea which is ,god1 and against the mental intrusions of their fellow-creatures conveying ideas1 ,i understand better the purport of that uninvited society1 which he declared insisted upon coming to the ,great ,conference upon the ,mind of the ,race1 and which held such enthusiastic and crowded meetings that at last it swamped all the rest of the enterprise4 ,it was1 he declared1 to the bitter offence of ,dodd1 a society with very much the same attitude towards all impersonal mental activities that the ,rationalist ,press ,association has to ,religion1 and it was called the ,royal ,society for the ,discouragement of ,literature4 ,why ',royal'8 ,i asked4 ,oh--obviously1 he said4444 ,this ,royal ,society was essentially an organization of the conservative instincts of man4 ,its aim was to stop all this thinking4444 ,and yet in some extraordinary way that either ,i did not note at the time or that he never explained1 it became presently the whole ,conference6 ,the various handbills1 pamphlets in outline1 notes for lectures1 and so forth1 that accompanied his notes of the ,proceedings of the ,royal ,society may either be intended as part of the sectional proceedings of the great conference or as the production of this hostile organization4 ,i will make a few extracts from the more legible of these memoranda which render the point clearer4 ,sec4 #e ,publishers and ,book ,distributors 7,comparable to the ,priest who hands the ,elements and as much upon their ,honour47 ,the ,publisher regrets that the copy for this section is missing1 and fears that the substance of it must be left to the imagination of the reader4 ,this is the more regrettable as the section was probably of a highly technical nature4 ,sec4 #f ,the ,young ,reviewer ,here1 again1 ,mr4 ,boon's notes are not to be found1 and repeated applications to ,mr4 ,bliss have produced nothing but a vague telegram to go ahead4 ,sec4 #g ,the ,schoolmaster and ,literature ,essentially the work of the schoolmaster is to prepare the young and naturally over-individualized mind for communion with the ,mind of the ,race4 ,essentially his curriculum deals with modes of expression1 with languages1 grammar1 the mathematical system of statement1 the various scientific systems of statement1 the common legend of history4 ,all leads up1 as the scholar approaches adolescence1 to the introduction to living literature1 living thought1 criticism1 and religion4 ,but when we consider how literature is taught in schools---- ,here the writing leaves off abruptly1 and then there is written in very minute letters far down the page and apparently after an interval for reflection-- ,scholastic humour ,o ,god6 ,,chapter ,,the ,,seventh ,wilkins makes ,certain ,objections ,sec4 #a ,wilkins the author began to think about the ,mind of the ,race quite suddenly4 ,he made an attack upon ,boon as we sat in the rose-arbour smoking after lunch4 ,wilkins is a man of a peculiar mental constitution2 he alternates between a brooding sentimental egotism and a brutal realism1 and he is as weak and false in the former mood as he is uncompromising in the latter4 ,i think the attraction that certainly existed between him and ,boon must have been the attraction of opposites1 for ,boon is as emotional and sentimental in relation to the impersonal aspects of life as he is pitiless in relation to himself4 ,wilkins still spends large portions of his time thinking solemnly about some ancient trouble in which he was treated unjustly2 ,i believe ,i once knew what it was1 but ,i have long since forgotten4 ,yet when his mind does get loose from his own case for a bit it is1 ,i think1 a very penetrating mind indeed4 ,and1 at any rate1 he gave a lot of exercise to ,boon4 ,all through this book1 ,boon1 he began4 ,what book8 asked ,dodd4 ,this one we are in4 ,all through this book you keep on at the idea of the ,mind of the ,race4 ,it is what the book is about2 it is its theme4 ,yet ,i don't see exactly what you are driving at4 ,sometimes you seem to be making out this ,mind of the ,race to be a kind of ,god---- ,a synthetic ,god1 said ,boon4 ,if it is to be called a ,god at all4 ,dodd nodded as one whose worst suspicions are confirmed4 ,then one has to assume it is a continuing1 coherent mind1 that is slowly becoming wider1 saner1 profounder1 more powerful8 ,boon never likes to be pressed back upon exact statements4 ,yes1 he said reluctantly4 ,in general--on the whole--yes4 ,what are you driving at8 ,it includes all methods of expression from the poster when a play is produced at ,his ,majesty's ,theatre1 from the cheering of the crowd when a fireman rescues a baby1 up to--,walter ,pater4 ,so far as ,pater expresses anything1 said ,boon4 ,then you go on from the elevation this idea of a secular quasi-divine racial mental progress gives you1 to judge and condemn all sorts of decent artistic and literary activities that don't fall in or don't admit that they fall in4444 ,something of that idea1 said ,boon1 growing a little testy--something of that idea4 ,it gives you an opportunity of annoying a number of people you don't like4 ,if ,i offend1 it is their fault6 said ,boon hotly4 ,criticism can have no friendships4 ,if they like to take it ill4444 ,my criticism is absolutely1 honest4444 ,some of them are my dearest friends4 ,they won't be1 said ,wilkins1 when all this comes out4444 ,but1 anyhow1 your whole case1 your justification1 your thesis is that there is this ,mind of the ,race1 overriding1 dominating---- ,and that you are its ,prophet4 ,because a man confesses a belief1 ,wilkins1 that doesn't make him a ,prophet4 ,i don't set up--,i express4 ,your ,mind of the ,race theory has an elegance1 a plausibility1 ,i admit1 said ,wilkins4 ,dodd's expression indicated that it didn't take him in4 ,he compressed his lips4 ,not a bit of it4 ,but is this in reality true8 ,is this what exists and goes on8 ,we people who sit in studies and put in whole hours of our days thinking and joining things together do get a kind of coherence into our ideas about the world4 ,just because there is leisure and time for us to think4 ,but are you sure that is the ,race at all8 ,that is my point4 ,aren't we intellectually just a by-product8 ,if you went back to the time of ,plato1 you would say that the idea of his ,republic was what was going on in the ,mind of the ,race then4 ,but ,i object that that was only the futile fancy of a gentleman of leisure4 ,what was really going on was the gathering up of the ,macedonian power to smash through ,greece1 and then make ,greece conquer ,asia4 ,your literature and philosophy are really just the private entertainment of old gentlemen out of the hurly-burly and ambitious young men too delicate to hunt or shoot4 ,thought is nothing in the world until it begins to operate in will and act1 and the history of mankind doesn't show now1 and it never has shown1 any consecutive relation to human thinking4 ,the real ,mind of the ,race is1 ,i submit1 something not literary at all1 not consecutive1 but like the inconsecutive incoherences of an idiot---- ,no1 said ,boon1 of a child4 ,you have wars1 you have great waves of religious excitement1 you have patriotic and imperial delusions1 you have ill-conceived and surprising economic changes---- ,as if humanity as a whole were a mere creature of chance and instinct1 said ,boon4 ,exactly1 said ,wilkins4 ,i admit that1 said ,boon4 ,but my case is that sanity grows4 ,that what was ceases to be4 ,the mind of reason gets now out of the study into the market-place4 ,you mean really1 ,boon1 that the ,mind of the ,race isn't a mind that is1 it is just a mind that becomes4 ,that's what it's all about1 said ,boon4 ,and that is where ,i want to take you up1 said ,wilkins4 ,i want to suggest that the ,mind of the ,race may be just a gleam of conscious realization that passes from darkness to darkness---- ,no1 said ,boon4 ,why not8 ,because ,i will not have it so1 said ,boon4 ,sec4 #b ,there can be no denying that from quite an early stage in the discussion ,boon was excited and presently on the verge of ill-temper4 ,this dragging of his will into a question of fact showed1 ,i think1 the beginning of his irritation4 ,and he was short and presently rather uncivil in his replies to ,wilkins4 ,boon argued that behind the individualities and immediacies of life there was in reality a consecutive growth of wisdom1 that larger numbers of people and a larger proportion of people than ever before were taking part in the ,world ,mind process1 and that presently this would become a great conscious general thinking of the race together4 ,wilkins admitted that there had been a number of starts in the direction of impersonal understanding and explanation2 indeed1 there was something of the sort in every fresh religious beginning2 but he argued that these starts do not show a regular progressive movement1 and that none of them had ever achieved any real directive and unifying power over their adherents2 that only a few ,christians had ever grasped ,christianity1 that ,brahminism fell to intellectual powder before it touched the crowd1 that nowadays there was less sign than ever of the honest intellectuals getting any hold whatever upon the minds and movements of the popular mass4444 ,the ,mind of the ,race1 said ,wilkins1 seems at times to me much more like a scared child cowering in the corner of a cage full of apes4 ,boon was extraordinarily disconcerted by these contradictions4 ,it will grow up1 he snatched4 ,if the apes let it1 said ,wilkins4 ,you can see how completely the thinkers and poets and all this stuff of literature and the study don't represent the real ,mind1 such as it is1 of ,humanity1 when you note how the mass of mankind turns naturally to make and dominate its own organs of expression4 ,take the popular press1 take the popular theatre1 take popular religion1 take current fiction1 take the music-hall1 watch the development of the cinematograph4 ,there you have the real body of mankind expressing itself4 ,if you are right1 these things should fall in a kind of relationship to the intellectual hierarchy4 ,but the intellectual hierarchy goes and hides away in country houses and beautiful retreats and provincial universities and stuffy high-class periodicals4 ,it's afraid of the mass of men1 it dislikes and dreads the mass of men1 and it affects a pride and aloofness to cover it4 ,plato wanted to reorganize social order and the common life2 the young man in the twopenny tube was the man he was after4 ,he wanted to exercise him and teach him exactly what to do with the young woman beside him4 ,instead of which poor ,plato has become just an occasion for some ,oxford don to bleat about his unapproachable style and wisdom4444 ,i admit we're not connected up yet1 said ,boon4 ,you're more disconnected than ever you were4 ,in the ,middle ,ages there was something like a connected system of ideas in ,christendom1 so that the ,pope and the devout fishwife did in a sense march together4444 ,you see the wrangling argument on which they were launched4 ,boon maintained that there was a spreading thought process1 clearly perceptible nowadays1 and that those detachments of ,wilkins' were not complete4 ,he instanced the cheap editions of broad-thinking books1 the variety of articles in the modern newspaper1 the signs of wide discussions4 ,wilkins1 on the other hand1 asserted a predominant intellectual degeneration4444 ,moreover1 ,wilkins declared1 with the murmurous approval of ,dodd1 that much even of the ,academic thought process was going wrong1 that ,bergson's ,pragmatism for ,ladies was a poor substitute even for ,herbert ,spencer1 that the boom about ,mendelism was a triumph of weak thinking over comprehensive ideas4 ,even if we leave the masses out of account1 it is still rather more than doubtful if there is any secular intellectual growth4 ,and it is curious to recall now that as an instance of a degenerative thought process among educated people ,wilkins instanced modern ,germany4 ,here1 he said1 in the case of a ,mind covering over a hundred million people altogether1 was a real retrocession of intellectual freedom4 ,the pretentious expression of instinctive crudity had always been the peculiar weakness of the ,german mind4 ,it had become more and more manifest1 he said1 as nationalism had ousted foreign influence4 ,you see what pretty scope for mutual contradiction there was in all this4 ,let me get books1 cried ,wilkins1 and ,i will read you samples of the sort of thing that passes for thinking in ,germany4 ,i will read you some of ,houston ,stewart ,chamberlain1 some of ,nietzsche's boiling utterance1 some of ,schopenhauer4 ,let me1 said ,wilkins1 read a passage ,i have picked almost haphazard from ,schopenhauer4 ,one gets ,schopenhauer rammed down one's throat as a philosopher1 as a deep thinker1 as the only alternative to the ,hegelian dose4 ,and just listen---- ,he began to read in a voice of deliberate malice1 letting his voice italicize the more scandalous transitions of what was certainly a very foolish and ill-knit piece of assertion4 ',little men have a decided inclination for big women1 and vice versa2 and indeed in a little man the preference for big women will be so much the more passionate if he himself was begotten by a big father1 and only remains little through the influence of his mother2 because he has inherited from his father the vascular system and its energy which was able to supply a large body with blood4 ,if1 on the other hand1 his father and grandfather were both little1 that inclination will make itself less felt4 ,at the foundation of the aversion of a big woman to big men lies the intention of ,nature to avoid too big a race4444 ,further1 the consideration as to the complexion is very decided4 ,blondes prefer dark persons or brunettes2 but the latter seldom prefer the former4 ,the reason is1 that fair hair and blue eyes are in themselves a variation from the type1 almost an abnormity1 analogous to white mice1 or at least to grey horses4 ,in no part of the world1 not even in the vicinity of the ,pole1 are they indigenous1 except in ,europe1 and are clearly of ,scandinavian origin4 ,i may here express my opinion in passing that the white colour of the skin is not natural to man1 but that by nature he has a black or brown skin1 like our forefathers the ,hindus2 that consequently a white man has never originally sprung from the womb of ,nature1 and that thus there is no such thing as a white race1 much as this is talked of1 but every white man is a faded or bleached one4 ,forced into this strange world1 where he only exists like an exotic plant1 and like this requires in winter the hothouse1 in the course of thousands of years man became white4 ,the gipsies1 an ,indian race which immigrated only about four centuries ago1 show the transition from the complexion of the ,hindu to our own4 ,therefore in sexual love ,nature strives to return to dark hair and brown eyes as the primitive type2 but the white colour of the skin has become second nature1 though not so that the brown of the ,hindu repels us4 ,finally1 each one also seeks in the particular parts of the body the corrective of his own defects and aberrations1 and does so the more decidedly the more important the part is4 ,therefore snub-nosed individuals have an inexpressible liking for hook-noses1 parrot-faces2 and it is the same with regard to all other parts4 ,men with excessively slim1 long bodies and limbs can find beauty in a body which is even beyond measure stumpy and short4444 ,whoever is himself in some respects very perfect does not indeed seek and love imperfection in this respect1 but is yet more easily reconciled to it than others2 because he himself insures the children against great imperfection of this part4 ,for example1 whoever is himself very white will not object to a yellow complexion2 but whoever has the latter will find dazzling whiteness divinely beautiful4' 7,you will note that he perceives he has practically contradicted this a few lines before1 and that evidently he has gone back and stuck in that saving clause about a white skin being second nature47 ',the rare case in which a man falls in love with a decidedly ugly woman occurs when1 beside the exact harmony of the degree of sex explained above1 the whole of her abnormities are precisely the opposite1 and thus the corrective1 of his4 ,the love is then wont to reach a high degree4444' ,and so on and so on1 said ,wilkins4 ,just a foolish1 irresponsible saying of things4 ,and all this stuff1 this celibate cerebration1 you must remember1 is not even fresh2 it was said far more funnily and pleasantly by old ,campanella in his ',city of the ,sun4' ,and1 mind you1 this isn't a side issue ,schopenhauer is upon2 it isn't a moment of relaxation2 this argument is essential to the whole argument of his philosophy4444 ,but after all1 said ,boon1 ,schopenhauer is hardly to be considered a modern4 ,he was pre-,darwinian4 ,exactly why ,i begin with him1 said ,wilkins4 ,he was a contemporary of ,darwin1 and it was while ,darwin was patiently and industriously building up evidence1 that this nonsense1 a whole torrent of it1 a complete doctrine about the ,will to ,live1 was being poured out4 ,but what ,i want you to notice is that while the sort of cautious massing of evidence1 the close reasoning1 the honesty and veracity1 that distinguished the method of ,darwin and ,huxley1 are scarcely to be met with anywhere to-day1 this spouting style of doing things is everywhere4 ,take any of the stuff of that intellectual jackdaw1 ,bernard ,shaw1 and you will find the ,schopenhauer method in full development2 caught-up ideas1 glib1 irrational transitions1 wild assertions about the ,life ,force1 about the effects of alcohol1 about 'fear-poisoned' meat1 about medical science1 about economic processes1 about ,russia1 about the ,irish temperament and the ,english intelligence1 about the thoughts and mental processes of everybody and every sort of mind1 stuff too incoherent and recklessly positive ever to be systematically answered4 ,and yet half at least of the ,english-speaking intelligenzia regards ,shaw as a part of the thought process of the world4 ,schopenhauer was a pioneer in the game of impudent assertion1 very properly disregarded by his own generation2 ,shaw's dementia samples this age4 ,you see my case8 ,in any rationally trained1 clear-headed period ,shaw would have been looked into1 dissected1 and disposed of long ago4444 ,and here ,i have two other of the voices that this time respects4 ,it is all my argument that they are respected now enormously1 ,boon2 not merely that they exist4 ,men to talk and write foolishly1 to make groundless positive statements and to misapprehend an opponent there have always been1 but this age now tolerates and accepts them4 ,here is that invalid ,englishman1 ,houston ,stewart ,chamberlain1 who found a more congenial1 intellectual atmosphere in ,germany1 and this is his great book1 ',the ,foundations of the ,nineteenth ,century4' ,this book has been received with the utmost solemnity in the highest quarters2 nowhere has it been handed over to the derision which is its only proper treatment4 ,you remember a rather readable and rather pretentious history we had in our schooldays1 full of bad ethnology about ,kelts and ,anglo-,saxons1 called ,j4 ,r4 ,green's ',history of the ,english ,people'2 it was part of that movement of professorial barbarity1 of braggart race-,imperialism and anti-,irishism1 of which ,froude and ,freeman were leaders2 it smelt of ,carlyle and ,germany1 it helped provoke the ,keltic ,renascence4 ,well1 that was evidently1 the germ of ,herr ,chamberlain4 ,here---- ,wilkins turned over the pages4 ,here he is1 in fairly good form4 ,it is a section called ',the ,turning ,point1' and it's quite on all fours with ,schopenhauer's 'our ancestors the ,hindus4' ,it is part of a sketch in outline of the history of the past4 ',the important thing1' he says1 is to 'fix the turning-point of the history of ,europe4' ,while he was at it he might just as well have fixed the equator of the history of ,europe and its sparking-plug and the position of its liver4 ,now1 listen-- ',the awakening of the ,teutonic peoples to the consciousness of their all-important vocation as the founders of a completely new civilization and culture marks the turning-point2 the year #abjj can be designated the central moment of this awakening4' ,just consider that4 ,he does not even trouble to remind us of the very considerable literature that must exist1 of course1 as evidence of that awakening4 ,he just flings the statement out1 knowing that his sort of follower swallows all such statements blind1 and then1 possibly with some qualms of doubt about what may have been happening in ,spain and ,italy and ,india and ,china and ,japan1 he goes on-- ',scarcely any one will have the hardihood to deny that the inhabitants of ,northern ,europe have become the makers of the world's history4 ,at no time have they stood alone 444 others1 too1 have exercised influence--indeed great influence--upon the destinies of mankind1 but then always merely as opponents of the men from the north4444' ,poor ,jenghiz ,khan1 who had founded the ,mogul ,empire in ,india just about that time1 and was to lay the foundations of the ,yuen dynasty1 and prepare the way for the great days of the ,mings1 never knew how mere his relations were with these marvellous 'men from the north4' ,the ,tartars1 it is true1 were sacking ,moscow somewhere about twelve hundred4444 ,but let us get on to more of the recital of ,teutonic glories4 ',if1 however1 the ,teutons were not the only people who moulded the world's history' 7generous admission7 'they unquestionably' 7that unquestionably67 'deserve the first place2 all those who appear as genuine shapers of the destinies of mankind1 whether as builders of ,states or as discoverers of new thoughts and of original art' 7oh ,japan6 oh ,ming dynasty6 oh art and life of ,india67 'belong to the ,teutonic race4 ,the impulse given by the ,arabs is short lived' 7astronomy1 chemistry1 mathematics1 modern science generally672 'the ,mongolians destroy but do not create anything' 7,samarkand1 ,delhi1 ,pekin72 'the great ,italians of the rinascimento were all born either in the north1 saturated with ,lombardic1 ,gothic1 and ,frankish blood1 or in the extreme ,germano-,hellenic south2 in ,spain it was the ,western ,goths who formed the element of life2 the ,jews are working out their ,renaissance of to-day by following in every sphere as closely as possible the example of the ,teutonic peoples4' ,that dodge of claiming all the great figures of the non-,teutonic nations as ,teutons is carried out to magnificent extremes4 ,dante is a ,teuton on the strength of his profile and his surname1 and there is some fine play about the race of ,christ4 ,he came from ,galilee1 notoriously non-,jewish1 and so on2 but ,lord ,redesdale1 who writes a sympathetic ,introduction1 sets the seal on the ,teutonic nationality of ,christ by reminding us that ,joseph was only the putative father4444 ,it makes a born ,teuton like myself feel his divinity1 said ,wilkins1 and read1 browsing3 ',from the moment the ,teuton awakes a new world begins to open out----' ,um6 ,um6444 ,oh1 here we are again6-- ',it is equally untrue that our culture is a renaissance of the ,hellenic and the ,roman2 it was only after the birth of the ,teutonic peoples that the renaissance of past achievements was possible and not vice versa4'444 ,i wonder what exactly vice versa means there6444 ',the mightiest creators of that epoch--a ,shakespeare1 a ,michael ,angelo--do not know a word of ,greek or ,latin4' ,the stalwart ignorance of it6 ,little ,latin and less ,greek even ,ben ,jonson allowed our ,william1 and manifestly he was fed on ,tudor translations4 ,and the illiteracy of ,michael ,angelo is just an inspiration of ,chamberlain's4 ,he knows his readers4 ,now1 in itself there is no marvel in this assertive1 prejudiced1 garrulous ignorance2 it is semi-sober ,bierhalle chatter1 written down2 and1 ,god forgive us6 most of us have talked in this way at one time or another2 the sign and the wonder for you1 ,boon1 is that this stuff has been taken quite seriously by all ,germany and ,england and ,america1 that it is accepted as first-rank stuff1 that it has never been challenged1 cut up1 and sent to the butterman4 ,it is ,modern ,thought4 ,it is my second sample of the contemporary ,mind of the ,race4 ,and now1 gentlemen1 we come to the third great intellectual high-kicker1 ,nietzsche4 ,nietzsche1 ,i admit1 had once a real and valid idea1 and his work is built upon that real and valid idea2 it is an idea that comes into the head of every intelligent person who grasps the idea of the secular change of species1 the idea of ,darwinism1 in the course of five or six minutes after the effective grasping4 ,this is the idea that man is not final4 ,but ,nietzsche was so constituted that to get an idea was to receive a revelation2 this step1 that every bright mind does under certain circumstances take1 seemed a gigantic stride to him1 a stride only possible to him1 and for the rest of his lucid existence he resounded variations1 he wrote epigrammatic cracker-mottoes and sham ,indian apophthegms1 round and about his amazing discovery4 ,and the whole thing is summed up in the title of ,dr4 ,alexander ,tille's ',von ,darwin bis ,nietzsche1' in which this miracle of the obvious1 this necessary corollary1 is treated as a huge advance of the mind of mankind4 ,no one slays this kind of thing nowadays4 ,it goes on and goes on1 a perpetually reinforced torrent of unreason washing through the brain of the race4 ,there was a time when the general intelligence would have resisted and rejected ,schopenhauer1 ,nietzsche1 ,chamberlain1 ,shaw2 now it resists such invasions less and less4 ,that1 ,boon1 is my case4 ,wilkins1 with his little pile of books for reference1 his sombre manner1 and his persistence1 was indeed curiously suggestive of an advocate opening a trial4 ,the ,mind of the ,race was far less of a continuity than it was when a generally recognized and understood orthodox ,christianity held it together1 as a backbone holds together the ribs and limbs and head of a body4 ,that manifestly was what he was driving at1 as ,dodd presently complained4 ,in those stabler days every one with ideas1 willingly or unwillingly1 had to refer to that doctrinal core1 had to link up to it even if the connection was used only as a point of departure4 ,now more and more1 as in these three examples1 people began irresponsibly in the air1 with rash assertions about life and race and the tendency of things4 ,and the louder they shouted1 the more fantastic and remarkable they were1 the more likely they were to gather a following and establish a fresh vortex in the deliquescent confusion4 ,on the whole1 ,boon was disposed to tolerate these dispersed beginnings4 ,we attack truth in open order1 he said1 instead of in column4 ,i don't mind fresh beginnings1 said ,wilkins2 ,i don't mind open order1 but ,i do object to blank ignorance and sheer misconception4 ,it isn't a new beginning for ,schopenhauer to say we are descended from ,hindus2 it is just stupidity and mental retrogression4 ,we are no more descended from ,hindus than ,hindus are descended from us2 that we may have a common ancestry is quite a different thing4 ,one might as well say that the chimpanzee is descended from a gorilla or a gorilla from a chimpanzee4 ,and it isn't any sort of truth1 it is just a loud lie1 that the ',germanic' peoples realized anything whatever in the year #abjj4 ,but all these--what shall ,i call them8--moderns are more and more up to that kind of thing1 stating plausible things that have already been disproved1 stating things erroneously1 inventing pseudo-facts1 and so getting off with a flourish4 ,in the fields of ideas1 and presently in the fields of action1 these wildly kicking personalities have swamped any orderly progress2 they have arrested and disowned all that clearing up of thought and all that patient1 triumphant arrangement of proven fact which characterized the late eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century4 ,during that time the great analysis of biological science went on1 which culminated in an entire revision of our conceptions of species1 which opened a conceivable and hitherto undreamed-of past and future to the human imagination1 which seemed to have revised and relaid the very foundations of philosophical discussion4 ,and on that foundation1 what has been done8 ,naturally1 cried ,boon1 after a great achievement there must be a pause4 ,the ,mind of the ,race must have its digestive interludes4 ,but this is indigestion6 ,first comes ,herbert ,spencer1 with his misconception of the life process as a struggle of individuals to survive4 ,his word ',evolution' is the quintessence of the misunderstanding2 his image of a steadfast1 mechanical unfolding through selfishness1 masked plausibly and disastrously the intricate1 perplexing vision of the truth4 ,from that sort of thing we go at a stride to the inevitable ,super ,man1 the megatherium individual of futurity1 the large egoist1 and all that nonsense4 ,then comes a swarm of shallow1 incontinent thinkers1 anxious to find a simple driving force with a simple name for the whole process2 the ',life ,force' and ',will1' and so on4 ,these things1 my dear ,boon1 are just the appalling bubbles of gas that show how completely the ,mind of the ,race has failed to assimilate4444 ,it is remarkable1 said ,boon1 how a metaphor may run away with the clearest of thinkers4 ,the ,mind of the ,race is not so consistently gastric as all that4 ,you started the metaphor1 said ,wilkins4 ,and you mounted it and it bolted with you4 ,to these unpleasant consequences4444 ,well1 ,i hold1 on the contrary1 that after the superficialities of the sixties and seventies and eighties people's minds have been getting a firmer and firmer grip upon the reality of specific instability4 ,the new body of intellectual experiment1 which isn't indigestion at all but only a preliminary attack1 is all that mass of trial thinking that one lumps together in one's mind when one speaks of ,pragmatism4 ,with the breakdown of specific boundaries the validity of the logical process beyond finite ends breaks down4 ,we make our truth for our visible purposes as we go along1 and if it does not work we make it afresh4 ,we see life once more as gallant experiment4 ,the boundaries of our universe recede not only in time and space but thought4 ,the hard-and-fast line between the scientific and the poetic method disappears4444 ,and you get ,bergson1 said ,wilkins triumphantly4 ,bergson is of that class and type that exploits the affairs of thought4 ,but ,i refuse to have ,pragmatism judged by ,bergson4 ,he takes hold of the unfinished inquiries that constitute the movement of ,pragmatism and he makes a soft scepticism for delicate minds with easy ways back to any old-established orthodoxy they may regret4 ,but here is my case again1 said ,wilkins4 ,it is only through ,bergson that the ,mind of the ,race1 the great operating mass mind out there1 can take hold of this new system of ideas4444 ,sec4 #c ,but now ,boon and ,wilkins were fairly launched upon a vital and entirely inconclusive controversy4 ,was the thought process of the world growing1 spreading1 progressing1 or was it going to pieces8 ,the one produced a hundred instances of the enlarging and quickening of men's minds1 the other replied by instancing vulgarities1 distortions1 wide acceptance of nonsense4 ,did public advertisements make a more intelligent or less intelligent appeal now than they used to do8 ,for half an afternoon they fought over the alleged degeneration of the ,times1 multiplying instances1 comparing the ,parnellism and ,crime pamphlet with ,lord ,northcliffe's war indiscretions1 and discussing the comparative merits of ,mr4 ,moberly ,bell's campaign to sell the twenty-year-old ,encyclopaedia ,britannica and found a ,book ,club that should abolish booksellers1 with the displayed and illustrated advertisements of the new period4 ,the talk1 you see1 went high and low and came to no conclusion2 but ,i think that on the whole ,wilkins did succeed in shaking ,boon's half-mystical confidence in the inevitableness of human wisdom4 ,the honours1 ,i think1 lay with ,wilkins4 ,boon did seem to establish that in physical science there had been1 and was still1 a great and growing process2 but he was not able to prove1 he could only express his faith1 that the empire of sanity was spreading to greater and more human issues4 ,he had to fall back upon prophecy4 ,presently there would be another big lunge forward1 and so forth4 ,but ,wilkins1 on his side1 was able to make a case for a steady rotting in political life1 an increase in loudness1 emptiness1 and violence in the last twenty years3 he instanced ,carsonism1 the methods of ,tariff ,reform1 the vehement ,feminist movement1 the malignant silliness of the rebel ,labour ,press1 the rankness of ,german patriotism4444 ,but there are young people thinking1 said ,boon at last4 ,it isn't just these matured showings4 ,where one youth thought thirty years ago1 fifty are thinking now4 ,these wild1 loud things are just an irruption4 ,just an irruption4444 ,the mocker was distressed4 ,the idea of active intellectual wrongness distressed him so much that he cast aside all his detachment from ,hallery1 and showed plainly that to this imaginary ,hallery's idea of a secular growth of wisdom in mankind he himself was quite passionately clinging4444 ,sec4 #d ,he was so distressed that one day he talked about it to me alone for some time4 ,wilkins1 he said1 insists on ,facts4 ,it is difficult to argue with him on that basis4 ,you see1 ,i don't intend ,hallery's view to be an induction from facts4 ,it's a conviction1 an intuition4 ,it is not the sort of thing one perceives after reading the newspaper placards or looking at the bookshelves in the ,british ,museum4 ,it's something one knows for certain in the middle of the night4 ,there is the ,mind of the ,race1 ,i mean4 ,it is something ,general2 it is a refuge from the ,particular and it is in the nature of ,god4 ,that's plain1 isn't it8 ,and through it there is ,communion4 ,these phases1 these irruptions are incidents4 ,if all the world went frantic2 if presently some horrible thing1 some monstrous war smashed all books and thinking and civilization1 still the mind would be there4 ,it would immediately go on again and presently it would pick up all that had been done before--just as a philosopher would presently go on reading again after the servant-girl had fallen downstairs with the crockery4444 ,it keeps on anyhow4444 ,oh6 ,i don't know how1 my dear fellow4 ,i can't explain4 ,i'm not telling you of something ,i've reasoned out and discovered2 ,i'm telling you of something ,i know4 ,it's faith if you like4 ,it keeps on and ,i know it keeps on--although ,i can't for the life of me tell how4444 ,he stopped4 ,he flushed4 ,that1 you see1 is ,hallery's point of view1 he said awkwardly4 ,but ,wilkins perhaps wouldn't contradict that4 ,his point is merely that to be exact about words1 that ,god-,mind1 that ,general ,mind of yours1 isn't exactly to be called the ,mind of the ,race4 ,but it is the ,mind of the ,race1 said ,boon4 ,it is the ,mind of the ,race4 ,most of the ,race is out of touch with it1 lost to it4 ,much of the ,race is talking and doing nonsense and cruelty2 astray1 absurd4 ,that does not matter to the ,truth1 ,bliss4 ,it matters to ,literature4 ,it matters because ,literature1 the clearing of minds1 the release of minds1 the food and guidance of minds1 is the way1 ,literature is illumination1 the salvation of ourselves and of every one from isolations4444 ,might be1 ,i suggested4 ,must be1 he said4 ,oh6 ,i know ,i've lived behind ,miss ,bathwick4444 ,but ,i'm breaking out4444 ,one of these days ,i will begin to dictate to her--and not mind what she does4444 ,i'm a successful nobody--superficially--and it's only through my private thoughts and private jeering that ,i've come to see these things4444 ,,chapter ,,the ,,eighth ,the ,beginning of ,the ,wild ,asses of the ,devil ,sec4 #a ,one day a little time after the argument with ,wilkins1 ,boon told me he would read me a story4 ,he read it from a pencilled manuscript4 ,after some anxious seeking ,i have found most of it again and put it together4 ,only a few pages are missing4 ,here is the story4 ,i am sorry to say it was never finished4 ,but he gave me a very clear conception of the contemplated end4 ,that ,i will indicate in its place4 ,and ,i think you will see how its idea springs from the talk with ,wilkins ,i have had to render in the previous chapter4 ,sec4 #b ,there was once an ,author who pursued fame and prosperity in a pleasant villa on the south coast of ,england4 ,he wrote stories of an acceptable nature and rejoiced in a growing public esteem1 carefully offending no one and seeking only to please4 ,he had married under circumstances of qualified and tolerable romance a lady who wrote occasional but otherwise regular verse1 he was the father of a little daughter1 whose reported sayings added much to his popularity1 and some of the very best people in the land asked him to dinner4 ,he was a deputy-lieutenant and a friend of the ,prime ,minister1 a literary knighthood was no remote possibility for him1 and even the ,nobel prize1 given a sufficient longevity1 was not altogether beyond his hopes4 ,and this amount of prosperity had not betrayed him into any un-,english pride4 ,he remembered that manliness and simplicity which are expected from authors4 ,he smoked pipes and not the excellent cigars he could have afforded4 ,he kept his hair cut and never posed4 ,he did not hold himself aloof from people of the inferior and less successful classes4 ,he habitually travelled third class in order to study the characters he put into his delightful novels2 he went for long walks and sat in inns1 accosting people2 he drew out his gardener4 ,and though he worked steadily1 he did not give up the care of his body1 which threatened a certain plumpness and what is more to the point1 a localized plumpness1 not generally spread over the system but exaggerating the anterior equator4 ,this expansion was his only care4 ,he thought about fitness and played tennis1 and every day1 wet or fine1 he went for at least an hour's walk4444 ,yet this man1 so representative of ,edwardian literature--for it is in the reign of good ,king ,edward the story begins--in spite of his enviable achievements and prospects1 was doomed to the most exhausting and dubious adventures before his life came to its unhonoured end4444 ,because ,i have not told you everything about him4 ,sometimes--in the morning sometimes--he would be irritable and have quarrels with his shaving things1 and there were extraordinary moods when it would seem to him that living quite beautifully in a pleasant villa and being well-off and famous1 and writing books that were always good-humoured and grammatical and a little distinguished in an inoffensive way1 was about as boring and intolerable a life as any creature with a soul to be damned could possibly pursue4 ,which shows only that ,god in putting him together had not forgotten that viscus the liver which is usual on such occasions4444 ,illustration ,the winter at the seaside is less agreeable and more bracing than the summer1 and there were days when this ,author had almost to force himself through the wholesome1 necessary routines of his life1 when the south-west wind savaged his villa and roared in the chimneys and slapped its windows with gustsful of rain and promised to wet that ,author thoroughly and exasperatingly down his neck and round his wrists and ankles directly he put his nose outside his door4 ,and the grey waves he saw from his window came rolling inshore under the hurrying grey rain-bursts1 line after line1 to smash along the undercliff into vast1 feathering fountains of foam and sud and send a salt-tasting spin-drift into his eyes4 ,but manfully he would put on his puttees and his water-proof cape and his biggest brierwood pipe1 and out he would go into the whurryballoo of it all1 knowing that so he would be all the brighter for his nice story-writing after tea4 ,on such a day he went out4 ,he went out very resolutely along the seaside gardens of gravel and tamarisk and privet1 resolved to oblige himself to go right past the harbour and up to the top of the east cliff before ever he turned his face back to the comforts of fire and wife and tea and buttered toast4444 ,and somewhere1 perhaps half a mile away from home1 he became aware of a queer character trying to keep abreast of him4 ,his impression was of a very miserable black man in the greasy1 blue-black garments of a stoker1 a lascar probably from a steamship in the harbour1 and going with a sort of lame hobble4 ,as he passed this individual the ,author had a transitory thought of how much ,authors don't know in the world1 how much1 for instance1 this shivering1 cringing body might be hiding within itself1 of inestimable value as local colour if only one could get hold of it for putting into one's large acceptable novels4 ,why doesn't one sometimes tap these sources8 ,kipling1 for example1 used to do so1 with most successful results4444 ,and then the ,author became aware that this enigma was hurrying to overtake him4 ,he slackened his pace4444 ,the creature wasn't asking for a light2 it was begging for a box of matches4 ,and1 what was odd1 in quite good ,english4 ,the ,author surveyed the beggar and slapped his pockets4 ,never had he seen so miserable a face4 ,it was by no means a prepossessing face1 with its aquiline nose1 its sloping brows1 its dark1 deep1 bloodshot eyes much too close together1 its ,v-shaped1 dishonest mouth and drenched chin-tuft4 ,and yet it was attractively animal and pitiful4 ,the idea flashed suddenly into the ,author's head3 ,why not1 instead of going on1 thinking emptily1 through this beastly weather--why not take this man back home now1 to the warm1 dry study1 and give him a hot drink and something to smoke1 and draw him out8 ,get something technical and first-hand that would rather score off ,kipling4 ,its damnably cold6 he shouted1 in a sort of hearty1 forecastle voice4 ,it's worse than that1 said the strange stoker4 ,it's a hell of a day6 said the ,author1 more forcible than ever4 ,don't remind me of hell1 said the stoker1 in a voice of inappeasable regret4 ,the ,author slapped his pockets again4 ,you've got an infernal cold4 ,look here1 my man--confound it6 would you like a hot grog8444 ,illustration ,sec4 #c ,the scene shifts to the ,author's study--a blazing coal fire1 the stoker sitting dripping and steaming before it1 with his feet inside the fender1 while the ,author fusses about the room1 directing the preparation of hot drinks4 ,the ,author is acutely aware not only of the stoker but of himself4 ,the stoker has probably never been in the home of an ,author before2 he is probably awe-stricken at the array of books1 at the comfort1 convenience1 and efficiency of the home1 at the pleasant personality entertaining him4444 ,meanwhile the ,author does not forget that the stoker is material1 is copy1 is being watched1 observed4 ,so he poses and watches1 until presently he forgets to pose in his astonishment at the thing he is observing4 ,because this stoker is rummier than a stoker ought to be---- ,he does not simply accept a hot drink2 he informs his host just how hot the drink must be to satisfy him4 ,isn't there something you could put in it--something called red pepper8 ,i've tasted that once or twice4 ,it's good4 ,if you could put in a bit of red pepper4 ,if you can stand that sort of thing8 ,and if there isn't much water1 can't you set light to the stuff8 ,or let me drink it boiling1 out of a pannikin or something8 ,pepper and all4 ,wonderful fellows1 these stokers6 ,the ,author went to the bell and asked for red pepper4 ,and then as he came back to the fire he saw something that he instantly dismissed as an optical illusion1 as a mirage effect of the clouds of steam his guest was disengaging4 ,the stoker was sitting1 all crouched up1 as close over the fire as he could contrive2 and he was holding his black hands1 not to the fire but in the fire1 holding them pressed flat against two red1 glowing masses of coal4444 ,he glanced over his shoulder at the ,author with a guilty start1 and then instantly the ,author perceived that the hands were five or six inches away from the coal4 ,then came smoking4 ,the ,author produced one of his big cigars--for although a conscientious pipe-smoker himself he gave people cigars2 and then1 again struck by something odd1 he went off into a corner of the room where a little oval mirror gave him a means of watching the stoker undetected4 ,and this is what he saw4 ,he saw the stoker1 after a furtive glance at him1 deliberately turn the cigar round1 place the lighted end in his mouth1 inhale strongly1 and blow a torrent of sparks and smoke out of his nose4 ,his firelit face as he did this expressed a diabolical relief4 ,then very hastily he reversed the cigar again1 and turned round to look at the ,author4 ,the ,author turned slowly towards him4 ,you like that cigar8 he asked1 after one of those mutual pauses that break down a pretence4 ,it's admirable4 ,why do you smoke it the other way round8 ,the stoker perceived he was caught4 ,it's a stokehole trick1 he said4 ,do you mind if ,i do it8 ,i didn't think you saw4 ,pray smoke just as you like1 said the ,author1 and advanced to watch the operation4 ,it was exactly like the fire-eater at a village fair4 ,the man stuck the burning cigar into his mouth and blew sparks out of his nostrils4 ,ah6 he said1 with a note of genuine satisfaction4 ,and then1 with the cigar still burning in the corner of his mouth1 he turned to the fire and began to rearrange the burning coals with his hands so as to pile up a great glowing mass4 ,he picked up flaming and white-hot lumps as one might pick up lumps of sugar4 ,the ,author watched him1 dumbfounded4 ,i say6 he cried4 ,you stokers get a bit tough4 ,the stoker dropped the glowing piece of coal in his hand4 ,i forgot1 he said1 and sat back a little4 ,isn't that a bit--extra8 asked the ,author1 regarding him4 ,isn't that some sort of trick8 ,we get so tough down there1 said the stoker1 and paused discreetly as the servant came in with the red pepper4 ,now you can drink1 said the ,author1 and set himself to mix a drink of a pungency that he would have considered murderous ten minutes before4 ,when he had done the stoker reached over and added more red pepper4 ,i don't quite see how it is your hand doesn't burn1 said the ,author as the stoker drank4 ,the stoker shook his head over the uptilted glass4 ,incombustible1 he said1 putting it down4 ,could ,i have just a tiny drop more8 ,just brandy and pepper1 if you don't mind4 ,set alight4 ,i don't care for water except when it's super-heated steam4 ,and as the ,author poured out another stiff glass of this incandescent brew1 the stoker put up his hand and scratched the matted black hair over his temple4 ,then instantly he desisted and sat looking wickedly at the ,author1 while the ,author stared at him aghast4 ,for at the corner of his square1 high1 narrow forehead1 revealed for an instant by the thrusting back of the hair1 a curious stumpy excrescence had been visible2 and the top of his ear--he had a pointed top to his ear6 ,a-a-a-a-h6 said the ,author1 with dilated eyes4 ,a-a-a-a-h6 said the stoker1 in hopeless distress4 ,but you aren't----6 ,i know--,i know ,i'm not4 ,i know4444 ,i'm a devil4 ,a poor1 lost1 homeless devil4 ,and suddenly1 with a gesture of indescribable despair1 the apparent stoker buried his face in his hands and burst into tears4 ,only man who's ever been decently kind to me1 he sobbed4 ,and now--you'll chuck me out again into the beastly wet and cold4444 ,beautiful fire4444 ,nice drink4444 ,almost homelike4444 ,just to torment me4444 ,boo-ooh6 ,and let it be recorded to the credit of our little ,author1 that he did overcome his momentary horror1 that he did go quickly round the table1 and that he patted that dirty stoker's shoulder4 ,there6 he said4 ,there6 ,don't mind my rudeness4 ,have another nice drink4 ,have a hell of a drink4 ,i won't turn you out if you're unhappy--on a day like this4 ,have just a mouthful of pepper1 man1 and pull yourself together4 ,and suddenly the poor devil caught hold of his arm4 ,nobody good to me1 he sobbed4 ,nobody good to me4 ,and his tears ran down over the ,author's plump little hand--scalding tears4 ,sec4 #d ,all really wonderful things happen rather suddenly and without any great emphasis upon their wonderfulness1 and this was no exception to the general rule4 ,this ,author went on comforting his devil as though this was nothing more than a chance encounter with an unhappy child1 and the devil let his grief and discomfort have vent in a manner that seemed at the time as natural as anything could be4 ,he was clearly a devil of feeble character and uncertain purpose1 much broken down by harshness and cruelty1 and it throws a curious light upon the general state of misconception with regard to matters diabolical that it came as a quite pitiful discovery to our ,author that a devil could be unhappy and heart-broken4 ,for a long time his most earnest and persistent questioning could gather nothing except that his guest was an exile from a land of great warmth and considerable entertainment1 and it was only after considerable further applications of brandy and pepper that the sobbing confidences of the poor creature grew into the form of a coherent and understandable narrative4 ,and then it became apparent that this person was one of the very lowest types of infernal denizen1 and that his role in the dark realms of ,dis had been that of watcher and minder of a herd of sinister beings hitherto unknown to our ,author1 the ,devil's ,wild ,asses1 which pastured in a stretch of meadows near the ,styx4 ,they were1 he gathered1 unruly1 dangerous1 and enterprising beasts1 amenable only to a certain formula of expletives1 which instantly reduced them to obedience4 ,these expletives the stoker-devil would not repeat2 to do so except when actually addressing one of the ,wild ,asses would1 he explained1 involve torments of the most terrible description4 ,the bare thought of them gave him a shivering fit4 ,but he gave the ,author to understand that to crack these curses as one drove the ,wild ,asses to and from their grazing on the ,elysian fields was a by no means disagreeable amusement4 ,the ass-herds would try who could crack the loudest until the welkin rang4 ,and speaking of these things1 the poor creature gave a picture of diabolical life that impressed the ,author as by no means unpleasant for any one with a suitable constitution4 ,it was like the ,idylls of ,theocritus done in fire2 the devils drove their charges along burning lanes and sat gossiping in hedges of flames1 rejoicing in the warm1 dry breezes 7which it seems are rendered peculiarly bracing by the faint flavour of brimstone in the air71 and watching the harpies and furies and witches circling in the perpetual afterglow of that inferior sky4 ,and ever and again there would be holidays1 and one would take one's lunch and wander over the sulphur craters picking flowers of sulphur or fishing for the souls of usurers and publishers and house-agents and land-agents in the lakes of boiling pitch4 ,it was good sport1 for the usurers and publishers and house-agents and land-agents were always eager to be caught2 they crowded round the hooks and fought violently for the bait1 and protested vehemently and entertainingly against the ,rules and ,regulations that compelled their instant return to the lake of fire4 ,and sometimes when he was on holiday this particular devil would go through the saltpetre dunes1 where the witches-brooms grow and the blasted heath is in flower1 to the landing-place of the ferry whence the ,great ,road runs through the shops and banks of the ,via ,dolorosa to the ,new ,judgement ,hall1 and watch the crowds of damned arriving by the steam ferry-boats of the ,consolidated ,charon ,company4 ,this steamboat-gazing seems about as popular down there as it is at ,folkestone4 ,almost every day notable people arrive1 and1 as the devils are very well informed about terrestrial affairs--for of course all the earthly newspapers go straight to hell--whatever else could one expect8--they get ovations of an almost undergraduate intensity4 ,at times you can hear their cheering or booing1 as the case may be1 right away on the pastures where the ,wild ,asses feed4 ,and that had been this particular devil's undoing4 ,he had always been interested in the career of the ,rt4 ,hon4 ,w4 ,e4 ,gladstone4444 ,he was minding the ,wild ,asses4 ,he knew the risks4 ,he knew the penalties4 ,but when he heard the vast uproar1 when he heard the eager voices in the lane of fire saying1 ,it's ,gladstone at last6 when he saw how quietly and unsuspiciously the ,wild ,asses cropped their pasture1 the temptation was too much4 ,he slipped away4 ,he saw the great ,englishman landed after a slight struggle4 ,he joined in the outcry of ,speech6 ,speech6 ,he heard the first delicious promise of a ,home ,rule movement which should break the last feeble links of ,celestial ,control4444 ,and meanwhile the ,wild ,asses escaped--according to the rules and the prophecies4444 ,sec4 #e ,the little ,author sat and listened to this tale of a wonder that never for a moment struck him as incredible4 ,and outside his rain-lashed window the strung-out fishing smacks pitched and rolled on their way home to ,folkestone harbour4444 ,the ,wild ,asses escaped4 ,they got away to the world4 ,and his superior officers took the poor herdsman and tried him and bullied him and passed this judgement upon him3 that he must go to the earth and find the ,wild ,asses1 and say to them that certain string of oaths that otherwise must never be repeated1 and so control them and bring them back to hell4 ,that--or else one pinch of salt on their tails4 ,it did not matter which4 ,one by one he must bring them back1 driving them by spell and curse to the cattle-boat of the ferry4 ,and until he had caught and brought them all back he might never return again to the warmth and comfort of his accustomed life4 ,that was his sentence and punishment4 ,and they put him into a shrapnel shell and fired him out among the stars1 and when he had a little recovered he pulled himself together and made his way to the world4 ,but he never found his ,wild ,asses and after a little time he gave up trying4 ,he gave up trying because the ,wild ,asses1 once they had got out of control1 developed the most amazing gifts4 ,they could1 for instance1 disguise themselves with any sort of human shape1 and the only way in which they differed then from a normal human being was--according to the printed paper of instructions that had been given to their custodian when he was fired out--that their general conduct remains that of a ,wild ,ass of the ,devil4 ,and what interpretation can we put upon that8 he asked the listening ,author4 ,and there was one night in the year--,walpurgis ,night1 when the ,wild ,asses became visibly great black wild asses and kicked up their hind legs and brayed4 ,they had to4 ,but then1 of course1 said the devil1 they would take care to shut themselves up somewhere when they felt that coming on4 ,like most weak characters1 the stoker devil was intensely egotistical4 ,he was anxious to dwell upon his own miseries and discomforts and difficulties and the general injustice of his treatment1 and he was careless and casually indicative about the peculiarities of the ,wild ,asses1 the matter which most excited and interested the ,author4 ,he bored on with his doleful story1 and the ,author had to interrupt with questions again and again in order to get any clear idea of the situation4 ,the devil's main excuse for his nervelessness was his profound ignorance of human nature4 ,so far as ,i can see1 he said1 they might all be ,wild ,asses4 ,i tried it once---- ,tried what8 ,the formula4 ,you know4 ,yes8 ,on a man named ,sir ,edward ,carson4 ,well8 ,ugh6 said the devil4 ,punishment8 ,don't speak of it4 ,he was just a professional lawyer-politician who had lost his sense of values4444 ,how was ,i to know8444 ,but our people certainly know how to hurt4444 ,after that it would seem this poor devil desisted absolutely from any attempt to recover his lost charges4 ,he just tried to live for the moment and make his earthly existence as tolerable as possible4 ,it was clear he hated the world4 ,he found it cold1 wet1 draughty4444 ,i can't understand why everybody insists upon living outside of it1 he said4 ,if you went inside---- ,he sought warmth and dryness4 ,for a time he found a kind of contentment in charge of the upcast furnace of a mine1 and then he was superseded by an electric-fan4 ,while in this position he read a vivid account of the intense heat in the ,red ,sea1 and he was struck by the idea that if he could get a job as stoker upon an ,indian liner he might snatch some days of real happiness during that portion of the voyage4 ,for some time his natural ineptitude prevented his realizing this project1 but at last1 after some bitter experiences of homelessness during a ,london ,december1 he had been able to ship on an ,indiaward boat--only to get stranded in ,folkestone in consequence of a propeller breakdown4 ,and so here he was6 ,he paused4 ,but about these ,wild ,asses8 said the ,author4 ,the mournful1 dark eyes looked at him hopelessly4 ,mightn't they do a lot of mischief8 asked the ,author4 ,they'll do no end of mischief1 said the despondent devil4 ,ultimately you'll catch it for that8 ,ugh6 said the stoker1 trying not to think of it4 ,sec4 #f ,now the spirit of romantic adventure slumbers in the most unexpected places1 and ,i have already told you of our plump ,author's discontents4 ,he had been like a smouldering bomb for some years4 ,now1 he burst out4 ,he suddenly became excited1 energetic1 stimulating1 uplifting4 ,illustration3 ,the ,author uplifts the devil4 ,he stood over the drooping devil4 ,but my dear chap6 he said4 ,you must pull yourself together4 ,you must do better than this4 ,these confounded brutes may be doing all sorts of mischief4 ,while you--shirk4444 ,and so on4 ,real ginger4 ,if ,i had some one to go with me4 ,some one who knew his way about4 ,the ,author took whisky in the excitement of the moment4 ,he began to move very rapidly about his room and make short1 sharp gestures4 ,you know how this sort of emotion wells up at times4 ,we must work from some central place1 said the ,author4 ,to begin with1 ,london perhaps4 ,it was not two hours later that they started1 this ,author and this devil he had taken to himself1 upon a mission4 ,they went out in overcoats and warm underclothing--the ,author gave the devil a thorough outfit1 a double lot of ,jaeger's extra thick--and they were resolved to find the ,wild ,asses of the ,devil and send them back to hell1 or at least the ,author was1 in the shortest possible time4 ,in the picture you will see him with a field-glass slung under his arm1 the better to watch suspected cases2 in his pocket1 wrapped in oiled paper1 is a lot of salt to use if by chance he finds a ,wild ,ass when the devil and his string of oaths is not at hand4 ,so he started4 ,and when he had caught and done for the ,wild ,asses1 then the ,author supposed that he would come back to his nice little villa and his nice little wife1 and to his little daughter who said the amusing things1 and to his popularity1 his large gilt-edged popularity1 and--except for an added prestige--be just exactly the man he had always been4 ,little knowing that whosoever takes unto himself a devil and goes out upon a quest1 goes out upon a quest from which there is no returning---- ,nevermore4 ,illustration3 ,precipitate start of the ,wild ,ass hunters4 ,,chapter ,,the ,,ninth ,the ,hunting of the ,wild ,asses of the ,devil ,sec4 #a ,at this point the surviving manuscript comes to an abrupt end4 ,but ,boon read or extemporized far beyond this point4 ,he made a figure that was at once absurd and pitiful of his little ,author making this raid upon the world1 resolved to detect and exorcise these suspected ,wild ,asses1 and he told us at great length of how steadily and inevitably the poor enthusiast entangled himself in feuds and false accusations1 libels and denunciations1 free fights1 burglaries1 and so to universal execration in a perpetually tightening coil4 ,i'll stick to it1 he squeaks1 with every fresh blow of ,fate4 ,behind him1 with a developing incurable bronchitis that could never be fatal1 toiled the devil1 more and more despondent1 more and more draggle-tailed1 voiceless and unhelpful4 ,after a time he was perpetually trying to give his ,author the slip4 ,but continually it is clearer that there were diabolical ,wild ,asses loose and active in the affairs of the world4444 ,one day the ,author had an inspiration4 ,was your lot the only lot that ever escaped8 ,oh no6 said the devil4 ,ages before--there were some4 ,it led to an awful row4 ,just before the ,flood4 ,they had to be drowned out4 ,that's why they've been so stiff with me4444 ,i'm not quite sure whether they didn't interbreed4 ,they say in hell that the world has never been quite the same place since4444 ,you see the scope this story gave ,boon's disposition to derision4 ,there were endless things that ,boon hated1 movements that seemed to him wanton and mischievous1 outbreaks of disastrous violence1 evil ideas4 ,i should get myself into as much hot water as his ,author did if ,i were to tell all this poor man's adventures4 ,he went to ,ulster1 he pursued prominent ,tariff ,reformers1 he started off to ,mexico and came back to investigate ,pan-,germanism4 ,i seem to remember his hanging for days about the entrance to ,printing ,house ,square4444 ,and there was a scene in the ,house of ,commons4 ,the ,author and the devil had been tracking a prominent politician--never mind whom--with the growing belief that here at last they had one of them4 ,and ,walpurgis ,night grew near4 ,walpurgis ,night came4 ,we must not lose sight of him1 said the ,author1 very alert and ruthless4 ,if necessary we must smash the windows1 blow open doors4 ,but the great man went down to the ,house as though nothing could possibly happen4 ,they followed him4 ,he will certainly rush home1 said the ,author1 as the clock crept round to half-past eleven4 ,but anyhow let us get into the ,strangers' ,gallery and keep our eyes on him to the last4 ,they managed it with difficulty4 ,i remember how vividly ,boon drew the picture for us3 the rather bored ,house1 a coming and going of a few inattentive ,members1 the nodding ,speaker and the clerks1 the silent watchers in the gallery1 a little flicker of white behind the grille4 ,and then at five minutes to twelve the honourable ,member arose4444 ,we were wrong1 said the ,author4 ,the draught here is fearful1 said the devil4 ,hadn't we better go8 ,the honourable ,member went on speaking showy1 memorable1 mischievous things4 ,the seconds ticked away4 ,and then--then it happened4 ,the ,author made a faint rattling sound in his throat and clung to the rail before him4 ,the devil broke into a cold sweat4 ,there1 visible to all men1 was a large black ,wild ,ass1 kicking up its heels upon the floor of the ,house4 ,and braying4 ,and nobody was minding6 ,the ,speaker listened patiently1 one long finger against his cheek4 ,the clerks bowed over the papers4 ,the honourable ,member's two colleagues listened like men under an anaesthetic1 each sideways1 each with his arm over the back of the seat4 ,across the ,house one ,member was furtively writing a letter and three others were whispering together4 ,the ,author felt for the salt1 then he gripped the devil's wrist4 ,say those words6 he shouted quite loudly--say those words6 ,say them now4 ,then--we shall have him4 ,but you know those ,house of ,commons ushers4 ,and at that time their usual alertness had been much quickened by several ,suffragette outrages4 ,before the devil had got through his second sentence or the ,author could get his salt out of his pocket both devil and ,author were travelling violently1 scruff and pant-seat irresistibly gripped1 down ,saint ,stephen's ,hall4444 ,sec4 #b ,and you really begin to think1 said ,wilkins1 that there has been an increase in violence and unreasonableness in the world8 ,my case is that it is an irruption1 said ,boon4 ,but ,i do begin to see a sort of violence of mind and act growing in the world4 ,there has always been something convulsive and extravagant in human affairs1 said ,wilkins4 ,no public thing1 no collective thing1 has ever had the sanity of men thinking quietly in a study4 ,and so we fell to discussing the ,mind of the ,race again1 and whether there was indeed any sanity growing systematically out of human affairs1 or whether this ,mind of the ,race was just a poor tormented rag of partial understanding that would never control the blind forces that had made and would destroy it4 ,and it was inevitable that such a talk should presently drift to the crowning human folly1 to that crowned ,wild ,ass of the ,devil1 aggressive militarism4 ,that talk was going on1 ,i remember1 one very bright1 warm1 sunny day in ,may1 or it may be in ,june1 of #aiad4 ,and we talked of militarism as a flourish1 as a kicking up of the national heels1 as extravagance and waste2 but1 what seems to me so singular now1 we none of us spoke of it or thought of it as a thing that could lead to the full horror of a universal war4 ,human memory is so strange and treacherous a thing that ,i doubt now if many ,english people will recall our habitual disregard in those days of war as a probability4 ,we thought of it as a costly1 foolish threatening1 but that it could actually happen----6 ,sec4 #c ,some things are so shocking that they seem to have given no shock at all1 just as there are noises that are silences because they burst the ears4 ,and for some days after the declaration of war against ,germany the whole business seemed a vast burlesque4 ,it was incredible that this great people1 for whom all ,western ,europe has mingled1 and will to the end of time mingle1 admiration with a certain humorous contempt1 was really advancing upon civilization1 enormously armed1 scrupulously prepared1 bellowing1 ,deutschland1 ,deutschland ueber ,alles6 smashing1 destroying1 killing4 ,we felt for a time1 in spite of reason1 that it was a joke1 that presently ,michael would laugh4444 ,but by ,jove6 the idiot wasn't laughing4444 ,for some weeks nobody in the circle about ,boon talked of anything but the war4 ,the ,wild ,asses of the ,devil became an allusion1 to indicate all this that was kicking ,europe to splinters4 ,we got maps1 and still more maps2 we sent into the town for newspapers and got special intelligence by telephone2 we repeated and discussed rumours4 ,the ,belgians were showing pluck and resource1 but the ,french were obviously shockingly unprepared4 ,there were weeks--one may confess it now that they have so abundantly proved the contrary--when the ,french seemed crumpling up like pasteboard4 ,they were failing to save the line of the ,meuse1 ,maubeuge1 ,lille1 ,laon2 there were surrenders1 there was talk of treachery1 and ,general ,french1 left with his flank exposed1 made a costly retreat4 ,it was one ,sunday in early ,september that ,wilkins came to us with a ,sunday ,observer4 ,look1 he said1 they are down on the ,seine6 ,they are sweeping right round behind the ,eastern line4 ,they have broken the ,french in two4 ,here at ,senlis they are almost within sight of ,paris4444 ,then some ,london eavesdropper talked of the ,british retreat4 ,kitchener says our ,army has lost half its fighting value4 ,our base is to be moved again from ,havre to ,la ,rochelle4444 ,boon sat on the edge of his hammock4 ,the ,germans must be beaten1 he said4 ,the new world is killed2 we go back ten thousand years2 there is no light1 no hope1 no thought nor freedom any more unless the ,germans are beaten4444 ,until the ,germans are beaten there is nothing more to be done in art1 in literature1 in life4 ,they are a dull1 envious1 greedy1 cunning1 vulgar1 interfering1 and intolerably conceited people4 ,a world under their dominance will be intolerable4 ,i will not live in it4444 ,i had never believed they would do it1 said ,wilkins4444 ,both my boys1 said ,dodd1 have gone into the ,officers' ,training ,corps4 ,they were in their cadet corps at school4 ,wasn't one an engineer8 asked ,boon4 ,the other was beginning to paint rather well1 said ,dodd4 ,but it all has to stop4 ,i suppose ,i shall have to do something1 said the ,london eavesdropper4 ,i'm thirty-eight4444 ,i can ride and ,i'm pretty fit4444 ,it's a nuisance4 ,what is a man of my kind to do8 asked ,wilkins4 ,i'm forty-eight4 ,i can't believe the ,french are as bad as they seem1 said ,boon4 ,but1 anyhow1 we've no business to lean on the ,french4444 ,but ,i wonder now---- ,pass me that map4 ,sec4 #d ,next week things had mended1 and the ,french and ,british were pushing the ,germans back from the ,marne to the ,aisne4 ,whatever doubts we had felt about the ,french were dispelled in that swift week of recovery4 ,they were all right4 ,it was a stupendous relief1 for if ,france had gone down1 if her spirit had failed us1 then we felt all liberalism1 all republicanism1 all freedom and light would have gone out in this world for centuries4 ,but then again at the ,aisne the ,germans stood1 and our brisk rush of hope sobered down towards anxiety as the long flanking movement stretched towards the sea and the ,antwerp situation developed4444 ,by imperceptible degrees our minds began to free themselves from the immediate struggle of the war1 from strategy and movements1 from the daily attempt to unriddle from reluctant and ambiguous dispatches1 ,dutch rumours1 censored gaps1 and uninforming maps what was happening4 ,it became clear to us that there were to be no particular dramatic strokes1 no sudden1 decisive battles1 no swift and clear conclusions4 ,the struggle began to assume in our minds its true proportions1 its true extent1 in time1 in space1 in historical consequence4 ,we had thought of a dramatic three months' conflict and a redrawn map of ,europe2 we perceived we were in the beginnings of a far vaster conflict2 the end of an age2 the slow1 murderous testing and condemnation of whole systems of ideas that had bound men uneasily in communities for all our lives4 ,we discussed--as all the world was discussing--the huge organization of sentiment and teaching that had produced this aggressive ,german patriotism1 this tremendous national unanimity4 ,ford ,madox ,hueffer came in to tell us stories of a disciplined professoriate1 of all education turned into a war propaganda1 of the deliberate official mental moulding of a whole people that was at once fascinating and incredible4 ,we went over ,bernhardi and ,treitschke2 we weighed ,nietzsche's share in that mental growth4 ,our talk drifted with the changing season and ,boon's sudden illness after his chill1 from his garden to his sitting-room1 where he lay wrapped up upon a sofa1 irritable and impatient with this unaccustomed experience of ill-health4 ,you see how much easier it is to grow an evil weed than a wholesome plant1 he said4 ,while this great strong wickedness has developed in ,germany1 what thought have we had in our ,english-speaking community8 ,what does our world of letters amount to8 ,clowns and dons and prigs1 cults of the precious and cults of style1 a few squeaking author-journalists and such time-serving scoundrels as ,i1 with my patent ,bathwick filter1 my twenty editions1 and my thousands a year4 ,none of us with any sense of a whole community or a common purpose6 ,where is our strength to go against that strength of the heavy ,german mind8 ,where is the ,mind of our ,race8 ,he looked at me with tired eyes4 ,it has been a joke with us1 he said4 ,is there no power of thought among free men strong enough to swing them into armies that can take this monster by the neck8 ,must men be bullied for ever8 ,are there no men to think at least as earnestly as one climbs a mountain1 and to write with their uttermost pride8 ,are there no men to face truth as those boys at ,mons faced shrapnel1 and to stick for the honour of the mind and for truth and beauty as those lads stuck to their trenches8 ,bliss and ,i have tried to write of all the world of letters1 and we have found nothing to write about but posturing and competition and sham reputations1 and of dullness and impudence hiding and sheltering in the very sheath of the sword of thought4444 ,for a little while after the war began our people seemed noble and dignified2 but see now how all ,britain breaks after its first quiet into chatter about spies1 sentimentality about the architecture of ,louvain1 invasion scares1 the bitter persecution of stray ,germans1 and petty disputes and recriminations like a pool under a breeze4 ,and below that nothing4 ,while still the big thing goes on1 ungrasped1 day after day1 a monstrous struggle of our world against the thing it will not have4444 ,no one is clear about what sort of thing we will have4 ,it is a nightmare in which we try continually to escape and have no-whither to escape4444 ,what is to come out of this struggle8 ,just anything that may come out of it1 or something we mean shall come out of it8 ,he sat up in his bed2 his eyes were bright and he had little red spots in his cheeks4 ,at least the ,germans stand for something4 ,it may be brutal1 stupid1 intolerable1 but there it is--a definite intention1 a scheme of living1 an order1 ,germanic ,kultur4 ,but what the devil do we stand for8 ,was there anything that amounted to an intellectual life at all in all our beastly welter of writing1 of nice-young-man poetry1 of stylish fiction and fiction without style1 of lazy history1 popular philosophy1 slobbering criticism1 ,academic civilities8 ,is there anything here to hold a people together8 ,is there anything to make a new world8 ,a literature ought to dominate the mind of its people4 ,yet here comes the gale1 and all we have to show for our racial thought1 all the fastness we have made for our souls1 is a flying scud of paper scraps1 poems1 such poems6 casual articles1 whirling headlong in the air1 a few novels drowning in the floods4444 ,sec4 #e ,there were times during his illness and depression when we sat about ,boon very much after the fashion of ,job's ,comforters4 ,and ,i remember an occasion when ,wilkins took upon himself the responsibility for a hopeful view4 ,there was about ,wilkins's realistic sentimentality something at once akin and repugnant to ,boon's intellectual mysticism1 so that for a time ,boon listened resentfully1 and then was moved to spirited contradiction4 ,wilkins declared that the war was like one of those great illnesses that purge the system of a multitude of minor ills4 ,it was changing the spirit of life about us2 it would end a vast amount of mere pleasure-seeking and aimless extravagance2 it was giving people a sterner sense of duty and a more vivid apprehension of human brotherhood4 ,this ineffective triviality in so much of our literary life of which ,boon complained would give place to a sense of urgent purpose4444 ,war1 said ,boon1 turning his face towards ,wilkins1 does nothing but destroy4 ,all making is destructive1 said ,wilkins1 while ,boon moved impatiently2 the sculptor destroys a block of marble1 the painter scatters a tube of paint4444 ,boon's eye had something of the expression of a man who watches another ride his favourite horse4 ,see already the new gravity in people's faces1 the generosities1 the pacification of a thousand stupid squabbles---- ,if you mean ,carsonism1 said ,boon1 it's only sulking until it can cut in again4 ,i deny it1 said ,wilkins1 warming to his faith4 ,this is the firing of the clay of ,western ,european life4 ,it stops our little arts perhaps--but see the new beauty that comes4444 ,we can well spare our professional books and professional writing for a time to get such humour and wonder as one can find in the soldiers' letters from the front4 ,think of all the people whose lives would have been slack and ignoble from the cradle to the grave1 who are being twisted up now to the stern question of enlistment2 think of the tragedies of separation and danger and suffering that are throwing a stern bright light upon ten thousand obscure existences4444 ,and the noble procession of poor devils tramping through the slush from their burning homes1 ,god knows whither6 ,and the light of fire appearing through the cracks of falling walls1 and charred bits of old people in the slush of the roadside1 and the screams of men disembowelled1 and the crying of a dying baby1 in a wet shed full of starving refugees who do not know whither to go4 ,go on1 ,wilkins4 ,oh1 if you choose to dwell on the horrors----6 ,the one decent thing that we men who sit at home in the warm can do is to dwell on the horrors and do our little best to make sure that never1 never shall this thing happen again4 ,and that won't be done1 ,wilkins1 by leaving ,war alone4 ,war1 war with modern machines1 is a damned great horrible trampling monster1 a filthy thing1 an indecency2 we aren't doing anything heroic1 we are trying to lift a foul stupidity off the earth1 we are engaged in a colossal sanitary job4 ,these men who go for us into the trenches1 they come back with no illusions4 ,they know how dirty and monstrous it is4 ,they are like men who have gone down for the sake of the people they love to clear out a choked drain4 ,they have no illusions about being glorified4 ,they only hope they aren't blood-poisoned and their bodies altogether ruined4 ,and as for the bracing stir of it1 they tell me1 ,wilkins1 that their favourite song now in the trenches is-- ',nobody knows how bored we are1 ,bored we are1 ,bored we are1 ,nobody knows how bored we are1 ,and nobody seems to care4' ,meanwhile you sit at home and feel vicariously ennobled4 ,he laid his hand on a daily newspaper beside him4 ,oh1 you're not the only one4 ,i will make you ashamed of yourself1 ,wilkins4 ,here's the superlative to your positive4 ,here's the sort of man ,i should like to hold for five minutes head downwards in the bilge of a trench1 writing on the ,heroic ,spirit in the ,morning ,post4 ,he's one of your gentlemen who sit in a room full of books and promise themselves much moral benefit from the bloodshed in ,france4 ,coleridge1 he says1 ,coleridge--the heroic1 self-controlled ,spartan ,coleridge was of his opinion and very hard on ,pacificism--,coleridge complained of peace-time in such words as these3 ',all individual dignity and power1 engulfed in courts1 committees1 institutions4444 ,one benefit-club for mutual flattery4'444 ,and then1 ,i suppose1 the old loafer went off to sponge on somebody4444 ,and here's the stuff the heroic1 spirited ,osborn1 the ,morning ,post gentleman--unhappily not a ,german1 and unhappily too old for trench work--quotes with delight now--now6--after ,belgium6-- ',my spear1 my sword1 my shaggy shield6 ,with these ,i till1 with these ,i sow1 ,with these ,i reap my harvest field-- ,no other wealth the gods bestow3 ,with these ,i plant the fertile vine1 ,with these ,i press the luscious wine4 ,my spear1 my sword1 my shaggy shield6 ,they make me lord of all below-- ,for those who dread my spear to wield1 ,before my shaggy shield must bow4 ,their fields1 their vineyards1 they resign1 ,and all that cowards have is mine4' ,he goes on to this-- ',it is in vain that the ,pacificist rages at such staunch braggadocio4 ,it blares out a political truth of timeless validity in words that are by no means politic4 ,sparta was the working model in ancient times of the ,state that lives by and for warfare1 though never despising the rewards of an astute diplomacy2 she was the ,prussia of antiquity4444 ',spartan ideal of duty and discipline4'444 ,you see the spirit of him6 ,you see what has got loose6 ,it is a real and potent spirit2 you have to reckon with it through all this business4 ,to this sort of mind the ',pacificist' is a hateful fool4 ,the ,pacificist prefers making vineyards1 painting pictures1 building ,gothic cathedrals1 thinking clear thoughts to bawling ,bruteland1 ,bruteland1 over all6 and killing people and smashing things up4 ,he is a maker4 ,that is what is intended here by a 'coward4' ,all real creative activity is hateful to a certain ugly1 influential1 aggressive type of mind1 to this type of mind that expresses itself here in ,england through the ,morning ,post and ,spectator4 ,both these papers are soaked through and through with a genuine detestation of all fine creation1 all beauty1 all novelty1 all frank1 generous1 and pleasant things4 ,in peace-time they maintain an attitude of dyspeptic hostility to free art1 to free literature1 to fresh thought4 ,they stand uncompromisingly for ugliness1 dullness1 and restriction--as ends in themselves4 ,when you talk1 ,wilkins1 of the intellectual good of the war1 ,i ask you to note the new exultation that has come into these evil papers4 ,when they speak of the 'moral benefits' of war they mean the smashing up of everything that they hate and we care for4 ,they mean reaction4 ,this good man ,osborn1 whom ,i have never seen or heard of before1 seems to be quintessential of all that side4 ,i can imagine him4 ,i believe ,i could reconstruct him from this article ,i have here1 just as anatomists have reconstructed extinct monsters from a single bone4 ,he is1 ,i am certain1 a don4 ,the emotional note suggests ,oxford4 ,he is a classical scholar4 ,and that is the extent of his knowledge4 ,something in this way4 ,he began to sketch rapidly4 ,illustration3 ,fancy portrait of ,mr4 ,e4 ,b4 ,osborn1 singing about his sword and his shield and his ruthless virility1 and all that sort of thing4 ,you have to realize that while the ,pacificists talk of the horrible ugliness of war and the necessity of establishing an everlasting world-peace1 whiskered old ladies in hydropaths1 dons on the ,morning ,post1 chattering district visitors and blustering1 bellowing parsons1 people who are ever so much more representative of general humanity than we literary oddities--all that sort of people tucked away somewhere safe1 are in a state of belligerent lustfulness and prepared--oh1 prepared to give the very eyes of everybody else in this country1 prepared to sacrifice the lives of all their servants and see the poor taxed to the devil1 first for a victory over ,germany and then for the closest1 silliest1 loudest imitation of ,prussian swagger on our part 7with them1 of course1 on the very top of it all7 that we can contrive4 ,that spirit is loose1 ,wilkins4 ,all the dowagers are mewing for blood1 all the male old women who teach classics and dream of re-action at ,oxford and ,cambridge1 are having the time of their lives4 ,they trust to panic1 to loud accusations1 to that fear of complexity that comes with fatigue4 ,they trust to the exhaustion of delicate purposes and sensitive nerves4 ,and this force-loving1 bullying silliness is far more likely to come out on top1 after the distresses of this war1 after the decent men are dead in the trenches and the wise ones shouted to silence1 than any finely intellectual1 necessarily difficult plan to put an end for ever to all such senseless brutalities4 ,i think you underrate the power of--well1 modern sanity1 said ,wilkins4 ,time will show1 said ,boon4 ,i hope ,i do4 ,this man ,osborn1 whoever he may be1 must be just a fantastic extremist4444 ,i do not see that he is an answer to my suggestion that for the whole mass of people this war means graver thought1 steadier thought1 a firmer collective purpose4 ,it isn't only by books and formal literature that people think4 ,there is the tremendous effect of realized and accumulated facts---- ,wilkins1 said ,boon1 do not cuddle such illusions4 ,it is only in books and writings that facts get assembled4 ,people are not grasping any comprehensive effects at all at the present time4 ,one day one monstrous thing batters on our minds--a battleship is blown up or a hundred villagers murdered--and next day it is another4 ,we do not so much think about it as get mentally scarred4444 ,you can see in this spy hunt that is going on and in the increasing denunciations and wrangling of the papers how the strain is telling4444 ,attention is overstrained and warms into violence4 ,people are reading no books4 ,they are following out no conclusions4 ,no intellectual force whatever is evident dominating the situation4 ,no organization is at work for a sane peace4 ,where is any power for ,pacificism8 ,where is any strength on its side8 ,america is far too superior to do anything but trade1 the liberals here sniff at each other and quarrel gently but firmly on minor points1 ,mr4 ,norman ,angell advertises himself in a small magazine and resents any other work for peace as though it were an infringement of his copyright4 ,read the daily papers2 go and listen to the talk of people6 ,don't theorize1 but watch4 ,the mind you will meet is not in the least like a mind doing something slowly but steadfastly2 far more is it like a mind being cruelly smashed about and worried and sticking to its immediate purpose with a narrower and narrower intensity4 ,until at last it is a pointed intensity4 ,it is like a dying man strangling a robber in his death-grip4444 ,we shall beat them1 but we shall be dead beat doing it4444 ,you see1 ,wilkins1 ,i have tried to think as you do4 ,in a sort of way this war has inverted our relations4 ,i say these things now because they force themselves upon me4444 ,wilkins considered for some moments4 ,even if nothing new appears1 he said at last1 the mere beating down and discrediting of the militarist system leaves a world released4444 ,but will it be broken down8 said ,boon4 ,think of the ,osborns4 ,and then he cried in a voice of infinite despair3 ,no6 ,war is just the killing of things and the smashing of things4 ,and when it is all over1 then literature and civilization will have to begin all over again4 ,they will have to begin lower down and against a heavier load1 and the days of our jesting are done4 ,the ,wild ,asses of the ,devil are loose and there is no restraining them4 ,what is the good1 ,wilkins1 of pretending that the ,wild ,asses are the instruments of ,providence kicking better than we know8 ,it is all evil4 ,evil4 ,an evil year4 ,and ,i lie here helpless1 spitting and spluttering1 with this chill upon my chest4444 ,i cannot say or write what ,i would4444 ,and in the days of my sunshine there were things ,i should have written1 things ,i should have understood4444 ,sec4 #f ,afterwards ,boon consoled himself very much for a time by making further speculative sketches of ,mr4 ,osborn1 as the embodiment of the ,heroic ,spirit4 ,i append one or two of the least offensive of these drawings4 ,illustration3 ,fancy sketch of ,mr4 ,osborn 7the ,heroic ,spirit7 compelling his tailor to make him trousers for nothing4 ,my weapon with my tailor speaks1 ,it cuts my coat and sews my breeks4 ,illustration3 ,mr4 ,osborn1 in a moment of virile indignation1 swiping ,st4 ,francis of ,assisi one with a club4 ,illustration3 ,the soul of ,mr4 ,osborn doing a war dance 7as a ,spartan ,red ,indian7 in order to work itself up for a ,morning ,post article4 ,illustration3 ,mr4 ,osborn's dream of himself as a ,prussian ,spartan refreshing himself with ,hero's food 7fresh human liver7 and drink 7blood and champagne7 after a good ,go ,in at some ,pacificist softs4 ,sec4 #g ,boon's pessimistic outlook on the war had a profoundly depressing effect upon me4 ,i do all in my power to believe that ,wilkins is right1 and that the hopelessness that darkened ,boon's last days was due to the overshadowing of his mind by his illness4 ,it was not simply that he despaired of the world at large2 so far as ,i am concerned1 he pointed and barbed his opinion by showing how inevitable it was that the existing publishing and book trade would be shattered to fragments4 ,adapted as ,i am now to the necessities of that trade1 incapable as ,i am of the fresh exertions needed to bring me into a successful relationship to the unknown exigencies of the future1 the sense of complete personal ruin mingled with and intensified the vision he imposed upon me of a world laid waste4 ,i lay awake through long stretches of the night contemplating now my own life1 no longer in its first vigour1 pinched by harsh necessities and the fiercer competition of a young and needy generation1 and now all life with its habits and traditions strained and broken4 ,my daily fatigues at drill and the universal heavy cold in the head that has oppressed all ,britain this winter almost more than the war1 have added their quota to my nightly discomfort4 ,and when at last ,i have slept ,i have been oppressed with peculiar and melancholy dreams4 ,one is so vividly in my mind that ,i am obliged to tell it here1 although ,i am doubtful whether1 except by a very extreme stretching of the meaning of words1 we can really consider it among the ,remains of ,george ,boon4 ,it was one of those dreams of which the scenery is not so much a desolate place as desolation itself1 and ,i was there toiling up great steepnesses with a little box of something in my hand4 ,and ,i knew1 in that queer confused way that is peculiar to dreams1 that ,i was not myself but that ,i was the ,author who is the hero of the ,wild ,asses of the ,devil1 and also that ,i was neither he nor ,i1 but all sorts of authors1 the spirit of authorship1 no ,author in particular but the ,author at large1 and that1 since the melancholy devil had deserted me--he had sneaked off ,heaven knows whither--it rested with me and with me alone to discover and catch and send out of this tormented world those same ,wild ,asses of the ,devil of which you have read4 ,and so ,i had salt in my box1 ,attic ,salt1 a precious trust1 the one thing in all the universe with which ,i could subdue them4 ,and then suddenly there ,i was amidst all those very asses of which ,i have told you4 ,there they were all about me1 and they were more wild and horrible than ,i can describe to you4 ,it was not that they were horrible in any particular way1 they were just horrible1 and they kicked up far over head1 and leapt and did not even seem to trouble to elude my poor ineffectual efforts to get within salting distance of them4 ,i toiled and ,i pursued amidst mad mountains that were suddenly marble flights of stairs that sloped and slid me down to precipices over which ,i floated2 and then we were in soft places knee-deep in blood-red mud2 and then they were close to my face1 eye to eye1 enormous revolving eyes1 like the lanterns of lighthouses2 and then they swept away1 and always ,i grew smaller and feebler and more breathless1 and always they grew larger1 until only their vast legs danced about me on the sward1 and all the rest was hidden4 ,and all the while ,i was tugging at my box of ,attic ,salt1 to get it open1 to get a pinch4 ,suddenly ,i saw they were all coming down upon me1 and all the magic salt ,i had was in the box that would not open4444 ,i saw the sward they trampled1 and it was not sward1 it was living beings1 men hurt by dreadful wounds1 and poor people who ran in streaming multitudes under the beating hoofs1 and a lichenous growth of tender things and beautiful and sweet and right things on which they beat1 splashing it all to blood and dirt4 ,i could not open my box4 ,i could not open my box4 ,and a voice said3 ,your box6 ,your box6 ,laugh at them for the fools they are1 and at the salt sting of laughter back they will fly to hell6 ,but ,i could not open my box1 for ,i thought of my friend's sons and dear friends of my own1 and there was no more spirit in me4 ,we cannot laugh6 ,i cried4 ,we cannot laugh6 ,another generation6 ,another generation may have the heart to do what we cannot do4 ,and the voice said3 ,courage6 ,only your poor courage can save us6 ,but in my dream ,i could do no more than weep pitifully and weep1 and when ,i woke up my eyes were wet with tears4 ,,chapter ,,the ,,tenth ,the ,story of the ,last ,trump ,sec4 #a ,after this war1 said ,wilkins1 after its revelation of horrors and waste and destruction1 it is impossible that people will tolerate any longer that system of diplomacy and armaments and national aggression that has brought this catastrophe upon mankind4 ,this is the war that will end war4 ,osborn1 said ,boon1 ,osborn4 ,but after all the world has seen----6 ,the world doesn't see1 said ,boon4444 ,boon's story of the ,last ,trump may well come after this to terminate my book4 ,it has been by no means an easy task to assemble the various portions of this manuscript4 ,it is written almost entirely in pencil1 and sometimes the writing is so bad as to be almost illegible4 ,but here at last it is1 as complete1 ,i think1 as ,boon meant it to be4 ,it is his epitaph upon his dream of the ,mind of the ,race4 ,sec4 #b ,the ,story of the ,last ,trump ,the story of the ,last ,trump begins in ,heaven and it ends in all sorts of places round about the world4444 ,heaven1 you must know1 is a kindly place1 and the blessed ones do not go on for ever singing ,alleluia1 whatever you may have been told4 ,for they too are finite creatures1 and must be fed with their eternity in little bits1 as one feeds a chick or a child4 ,so that there are mornings and changes and freshness1 there is time to condition their lives4 ,and the children are still children1 gravely eager about their playing and ready always for new things2 just children they are1 but blessed as you see them in the pictures beneath the careless feet of the ,lord ,god4 ,and one of these blessed children routing about in an attic--for ,heaven is1 of course1 full of the most heavenly attics1 seeing that it has children--came upon a number of instruments stored away1 and laid its little chubby hands upon them4444 ,now indeed ,i cannot tell what these instruments were1 for to do so would be to invade mysteries4444 ,but one ,i may tell of1 and that was a great brazen trumpet which the ,lord ,god had made when ,he made the world--for the ,lord ,god finishes all ,his jobs--to blow when the time for our ,judgement came round4 ,and ,he had made it and left it2 there it was1 and everything was settled exactly as the ,doctrine of ,predestination declares4 ,and this blessed child conceived one of those unaccountable passions of childhood for its smoothness and brassiness1 and he played with it and tried to blow it1 and trailed it about with him out of the attic into the gay and golden streets1 and1 after many fitful wanderings1 to those celestial battlements of crystal of which you have doubtless read4 ,and there the blessed child fell to counting the stars1 and forgot all about the ,trumpet beside him until a flourish of his elbow sent it over4444 ,down fell the trump1 spinning as it fell1 and for a day or so1 which seemed but moments in heaven1 the blessed child watched its fall until it was a glittering little speck of brightness4444 ,when it looked a second time the trump was gone4444 ,i do not know what happened to that child when at last it was time for ,judgement ,day and that shining trumpet was missed4 ,i know that ,judgement ,day is long overpassed1 because of the wickedness of the world2 ,i think perhaps it was in ,a4,d4 #ajjj when the expected ,day should have dawned that never came1 but no other heavenly particulars do ,i know at all1 because now my scene changes to the narrow ways of this ,earth4444 ,and the ,prologue in ,heaven ends4 ,sec4 #c ,and now the scene is a dingy little shop in ,caledonian ,market1 where things of an incredible worthlessness lie in wait for such as seek after an impossible cheapness4 ,in the window1 as though it had always been there and never anywhere else1 lies a long1 battered1 discoloured trumpet of brass that no prospective purchaser has ever been able to sound4 ,in it mice shelter1 and dust and fluff have gathered after the fashion of this world4 ,the keeper of the shop is a very old man1 and he bought the shop long ago1 but already this trumpet was there2 he has no idea whence it came1 nor its country or origin1 nor anything about it4 ,but once in a moment of enterprise that led to nothing he decided to call it an ,ancient ,ceremonial ,shawm1 though he ought to have known that whatever a shawm may be the last thing it was likely to be is a trumpet1 seeing that they are always mentioned together4 ,and above it hung concertinas and melodeons and cornets and tin whistles and mouth-organs and all that rubbish of musical instruments which delight the hearts of the poor4 ,until one day two blackened young men from the big motor works in the ,pansophist ,road stood outside the window and argued4 ,they argued about these instruments in stock and how you made these instruments sound1 because they were fond of argument1 and one asserted and the other denied that he could make every instrument in the place sound a note4 ,and the argument rose high1 and led to a bet4 ,supposing1 of course1 that the instrument is in order1 said ,hoskin1 who was betting he could4 ,that's understood1 said ,briggs4 ,and then they called as witnesses certain other young and black and greasy men in the same employment1 and after much argument and discussion that lasted through the afternoon1 they went in to the little old dealer about teatime1 just as he was putting a blear-eyed1 stinking paraffin-lamp to throw an unfavourable light upon his always very unattractive window4 ,and after great difficulty they arranged that for the sum of one shilling1 paid in advance1 ,hoskin should have a try at every instrument in the shop that ,briggs chose to indicate4 ,and the trial began4 ,the third instrument that was pitched upon by ,briggs for the trial was the strange trumpet that lay at the bottom of the window1 the trumpet that you1 who have read the ,introduction1 know was the trumpet for the ,last ,trump4 ,and ,hoskin tried and tried again1 and then1 blowing desperately1 hurt his ears4 ,but he could get no sound from the trumpet4 ,then he examined the trumpet more carefully and discovered the mice and fluff and other things in it1 and demanded that it should be cleaned2 and the old dealer1 nothing loth1 knowing they were used to automobile-horns and such-like instruments1 agreed to let them clean it on condition that they left it shiney4 ,so the young men1 after making a suitable deposit 7which1 as you shall hear1 was presently confiscated71 went off with the trumpet1 proposing to clean it next day at the works and polish it with the peculiarly excellent brass polish employed upon the honk-honk horns of the firm4 ,and this they did1 and ,hoskin tried again4 ,but he tried in vain4 ,whereupon there arose a great argument about the trumpet1 whether it was in order or not1 whether it was possible for any one to sound it4 ,for if not1 then clearly it was outside the condition of the bet4 ,others among the young men tried it1 including two who played wind instruments in a band and were musically knowing men4 ,after their own failure they were strongly on the side of ,hoskin and strongly against ,briggs1 and most of the other young men were of the same opinion4 ,not a bit of it1 said ,briggs1 who was a man of resource4 ,i'll show you that it can be sounded4 ,and taking the instrument in his hand1 he went towards a peculiarly powerful foot blow-pipe that stood at the far end of the toolshed4 ,good old ,briggs6 said one of the other young men1 and opinion veered about4 ,briggs removed the blow-pipe from its bellows and tube1 and then adjusted the tube very carefully to the mouthpiece of the trumpet4 ,then with great deliberation he produced a piece of bees-waxed string from a number of other strange and filthy contents in his pocket and tied the tube to the mouthpiece4 ,and then he began to work the treadle of the bellows4 ,good old ,briggs6 said the one who had previously admired him4 ,and then something incomprehensible happened4 ,it was a flash4 ,whatever else it was1 it was a flash4 ,and a sound that seemed to coincide exactly with the flash4 ,afterwards the young men agreed to it that the trumpet blew to bits4 ,it blew to bits and vanished1 and they were all flung upon their faces--not backward1 be it noted1 but on their faces--and ,briggs was stunned and scared4 ,the toolshed windows were broken and the various apparatus and cars around were much displaced1 and no traces of the trumpet were ever discovered4 ,that last particular puzzled and perplexed poor ,briggs very much4 ,it puzzled and perplexed him the more because he had had an impression1 so extraordinary1 so incredible1 that he was never able to describe it to any other living person4 ,but his impression was this3 that the flash that came with the sound came1 not from the trumpet but to it1 that it smote down to it and took it1 and that its shape was in the exact likeness of a hand and arm of fire4 ,sec4 #d ,and that was not all1 that was not the only strange thing about the disappearance of that battered trumpet4 ,there was something else1 even more difficult to describe1 an effect as though for one instant something opened4444 ,the young men who worked with ,hoskin and ,briggs had that clearness of mind which comes of dealing with machinery1 and they all felt this indescribable something else1 as if for an instant the world wasn't the world1 but something lit and wonderful1 larger---- ,this is what one of them said of it4 ,i felt1 he said1 just for a minute--as though ,i was blown to ,kingdom ,come4 ,it is just how it took me1 said another4 ',lord1' ,i says1 'here's ,judgement ,day6' and then there ,i was sprawling among the flies4444 ,but none of the others felt that they could say anything more definite than that4 ,sec4 #e ,moreover1 there was a storm4 ,all over the world there was a storm that puzzled meteorology1 a moment's gale that left the atmosphere in a state of wild swaygog1 rains1 tornadoes1 depressions1 irregularities for weeks4 ,news came of it from all the quarters of the earth4 ,all over ,china1 for example1 that land of cherished graves1 there was a dust-storm1 dust leaped into the air4 ,a kind of earthquake shook ,europe--an earthquake that seemed to have at heart the peculiar interests of ,mr4 ,algernon ,ashton2 everywhere it cracked mausoleums and shivered the pavements of cathedrals1 swished the flower-beds of cemeteries1 and tossed tombstones aside4 ,a crematorium in ,texas blew up4 ,the sea was greatly agitated1 and the beautiful harbour of ,sydney1 in ,australia1 was seen to be littered with sharks floating upside down in manifest distress4444 ,and all about the world a sound was heard like the sound of a trumpet instantly cut short4 ,sec4 #f ,but this much is only the superficial dressing of the story4 ,the reality is something different4 ,it is this3 that in an instant1 and for an instant1 the dead lived1 and all that are alive in the world did for a moment see the ,lord ,god and all ,his powers1 ,his hosts of angels1 and all ,his array looking down upon them4 ,they saw ,him as one sees by a flash of lightning in the darkness1 and then instantly the world was opaque again1 limited1 petty1 habitual4 ,that is the tremendous reality of this story4 ,such glimpses have happened in individual cases before4 ,the ,lives of the saints abound in them4 ,such a glimpse it was that came to ,devindranath ,tagore upon the burning ghat at ,benares4 ,but this was not an individual but a world experience2 the flash came to every one4 ,not always was it quite the same1 and thereby the doubter found his denials1 when presently a sort of discussion broke out in the obscurer ,press4 ,for this one testified that it seemed that ,one stood very near to me1 and another saw all the hosts of heaven flame up towards the ,throne4 ,and there were others who had a vision of brooding watchers1 and others who imagined great sentinels before a veiled figure1 and some one who felt nothing more divine than a sensation of happiness and freedom such as one gets from a sudden burst of sunshine in the spring4444 ,so that one is forced to believe that something more than wonderfully wonderful1 something altogether strange1 was seen1 and that all these various things that people thought they saw were only interpretations drawn from their experiences and their imaginations4 ,it was a light1 it was beauty1 it was high and solemn1 it made this world seem a flimsy transparency4444 ,then it had vanished4444 ,and people were left with the question of what they had seen1 and just how much it mattered4 ,sec4 #g ,a little old lady sat by the fire in a small sitting-room in ,west ,kensington4 ,her cat was in her lap1 her spectacles were on her nose2 she was reading the morning's paper1 and beside her1 on a little occasional table1 was her tea and a buttered muffin4 ,she had finished the crimes and she was reading about the ,royal ,family4 ,when she had read all there was to read about the ,royal ,family1 she put down the paper1 deposited the cat on the hearthrug1 and turned to her tea4 ,she had poured out her first cup and she had just taken up a quadrant of muffin when the trump and the flash came4 ,through its instant duration she remained motionless with the quadrant of muffin poised halfway to her mouth4 ,then very slowly she put the morsel down4 ,now what was that8 she said4 ,she surveyed the cat1 but the cat was quite calm4 ,then she looked very1 very hard at her lamp4 ,it was a patent safety lamp1 and had always behaved very well4 ,then she stared at the window1 but the curtains were drawn and everything was in order4 ,one might think ,i was going to be ill1 she said1 and resumed her toast4 ,sec4 #h ,not far away from this old lady1 not more than three-quarters of a mile at most1 sat ,mr4 ,parchester in his luxurious study1 writing a perfectly beautiful1 sustaining sermon about the ,need of ,faith in ,god4 ,he was a handsome1 earnest1 modern preacher1 he was rector of one of our big ,west ,end churches1 and he had amassed a large1 fashionable congregation4 ,every ,sunday1 and at convenient intervals during the week1 he fought against ,modern ,materialism1 ,scientific ,education1 ,excessive ,puritanism1 ,pragmatism1 ,doubt1 ,levity1 ,selfish ,individualism1 ,further ,relaxation of the ,divorce ,laws1 all the ,evils of our ,time--and anything else that was unpopular4 ,he believed quite simply1 he said1 in all the old1 simple1 kindly things4 ,he had the face of a saint1 but he had rendered this generally acceptable by growing side whiskers4 ,and nothing could tame the beauty of his voice4 ,he was an enormous asset in the spiritual life of the metropolis--to give it no harsher name--and his fluent periods had restored faith and courage to many a poor soul hovering on the brink of the dark river of thought4444 ,and just as beautiful ,christian maidens played a wonderful part in the last days of ,pompeii1 in winning proud ,roman hearts to a hated and despised faith1 so ,mr4 ,parchester's naturally graceful gestures1 and his simple1 melodious1 trumpet voice won back scores of our half-pagan rich women to church attendance and the social work of which his church was the centre4444 ,and now by the light of an exquisitely shaded electric lamp he was writing this sermon of quiet1 confident belief 7with occasional hard smacks1 perfect stingers in fact1 at current unbelief and rival leaders of opinion7 in the simple1 divine faith of our fathers4444 ,when there came this truncated trump and this vision4444 ,sec4 #i ,of all the innumerable multitudes who for the infinitesimal fraction of a second had this glimpse of the ,divinity1 none were so blankly and profoundly astonished as ,mr4 ,parchester4 ,for--it may be because of his subtly spiritual nature--he saw1 and seeing believed4 ,he dropped his pen and let it roll across his manuscript1 he sat stunned1 every drop of blood fled from his face and his lips and his eyes dilated4 ,while he had just been writing and arguing about ,god1 there was ,god6 ,the curtain had been snatched back for an instant2 it had fallen again2 but his mind had taken a photographic impression of everything that he had seen--the grave presences1 the hierarchy1 the effulgence1 the vast concourse1 the terrible1 gentle eyes4 ,he felt it1 as though the vision still continued1 behind the bookcases1 behind the pictured wall and the curtained window3 even now there was judgement6 ,for quite a long time he sat1 incapable of more than apprehending this supreme realization4 ,his hands were held out limply upon the desk before him4 ,and then very slowly his staring eyes came back to immediate things1 and fell upon the scattered manuscript on which he had been engaged4 ,he read an unfinished sentence and slowly recovered its intention4 ,as he did so1 a picture of his congregation came to him as he saw it from the pulpit during his evening sermon1 as he had intended to see it on the ,sunday evening that was at hand1 with ,lady ,rupert in her sitting and ,lady ,blex in hers and ,mrs4 ,munbridge1 the rich and in her ,jewish way very attractive ,mrs4 ,munbridge1 running them close in her adoration1 and each with one or two friends they had brought to adore him1 and behind them the ,hexhams and the ,wassinghams and behind them others and others and others1 ranks and ranks of people1 and the galleries on either side packed with worshippers of a less dominant class1 and the great organ and his magnificent choir waiting to support him and supplement him1 and the great altar to the left of him1 and the beautiful new ,lady ,chapel1 done by ,roger ,fry and ,wyndham ,lewis and all the latest people in ,art1 to the right4 ,he thought of the listening multitude1 seen through the haze of the thousand electric candles1 and how he had planned the paragraphs of his discourse so that the notes of his beautiful voice should float slowly down1 like golden leaves in autumn1 into the smooth tarn of their silence1 word by word1 phrase by phrase1 until he came to-- ,now to ,god the ,father1 ,god the ,son---- ,and all the time he knew that ,lady ,blex would watch his face and ,mrs4 ,munbridge1 leaning those graceful shoulders of hers a little forward1 would watch his face4444 ,many people would watch his face4 ,all sorts of people would come to ,mr4 ,parchester's services at times4 ,once it was said ,mr4 ,balfour had come4 ,just to hear him4 ,after his sermons1 the strangest people would come and make confessions in the beautifully furnished reception-room beyond the vestry4 ,all sorts of people4 ,once or twice he had asked people to come and listen to him2 and one of them had been a very beautiful woman4 ,and often he had dreamt of the people who might come3 prominent people1 influential people1 remarkable people4 ,but never before had it occurred to ,mr4 ,parchester that1 a little hidden from the rest of the congregation1 behind the thin veil of this material world1 there was another auditorium4 ,and that ,god also1 ,god also1 watched his face4 ,and watched him through and through4 ,terror seized upon ,mr4 ,parchester4 ,he stood up1 as though ,divinity had come into the room before him4 ,he was trembling4 ,he felt smitten and about to be smitten4 ,he perceived that it was hopeless to try and hide what he had written1 what he had thought1 the unclean egotism he had become4 ,i did not know1 he said at last4 ,the click of the door behind him warned him that he was not alone4 ,he turned and saw ,miss ,skelton1 his typist1 for it was her time to come for his manuscript and copy it out in the specially legible type he used4 ,for a moment he stared at her strangely4 ,she looked at him with those deep1 adoring eyes of hers4 ,am ,i too soon1 sir8 she asked in her slow1 unhappy voice1 and seemed prepared for a noiseless departure4 ,he did not answer immediately4 ,then he said3 ,miss ,skelton1 the ,judgement of ,god is close at hand6 ,and seeing she stood perplexed1 he said-- ,miss ,skelton1 how can you expect me to go on acting and mouthing this ,tosh when the ,sword of ,truth hangs over us8 ,something in her face made him ask a question4 ,did you see anything8 he asked4 ,i thought it was because ,i was rubbing my eyes4 ,then indeed there is a ,god6 ,and ,he is watching us now4 ,and all this about us1 this sinful room1 this foolish costume1 this preposterous life of blasphemous pretension----6 ,he stopped short1 with a kind of horror on his face4 ,with a hopeless gesture he rushed by her4 ,he appeared wild-eyed upon the landing before his manservant1 who was carrying a scuttle of coal upstairs4 ,brompton1 he said1 what are you doing8 ,coal1 sir4 ,put it down1 man6 he said4 ,are you not an immortal soul8 ,god is here6 ,as close as my hand6 ,repent6 ,turn to ,him6 ,the ,kingdom of ,heaven is at hand6 ,sec4 #aj ,now if you are a policeman perplexed by a sudden and unaccountable collision between a taxicab and an electric standard1 complicated by a blinding flash and a sound like an abbreviated trump from an automobile horn1 you do not want to be bothered by a hatless clerical gentleman suddenly rushing out of a handsome private house and telling you that the ,kingdom of ,heaven is at hand6 ,you are respectful to him because it is the duty of a policeman to be respectful to ,gentlemen1 but you say to him1 ,sorry ,i can't attend to that now1 sir4 ,one thing at a time4 ,i've got this little accident to see to4 ,and if he persists in dancing round the gathering crowd and coming at you again1 you say3 ,i'm afraid ,i must ask you just to get away from here1 sir4 ,you aren't being a 'elp1 sir4 ,and if1 on the other hand1 you are a well-trained clerical gentleman1 who knows his way about in the world1 you do not go on pestering a policeman on duty after he has said that1 even although you think ,god is looking at you and ,judgement is close at hand4 ,you turn away and go on1 a little damped1 looking for some one else more likely to pay attention to your tremendous tidings4 ,and so it happened to the ,reverend ,mr4 ,parchester4 ,he experienced a curious little recession of confidence4 ,he went on past quite a number of people without saying anything further1 and the next person he accosted was a flower-woman sitting by her basket at the corner of ,chexington ,square4 ,she was unable to stop him at once when he began to talk to her because she was tying up a big bundle of white chrysanthemums and had an end of string behind her teeth4 ,and her daughter who stood beside her was the sort of girl who wouldn't say ,bo6 to a goose4 ,do you know1 my good woman1 said ,mr4 ,parchester1 that while we poor creatures of earth go about our poor business here1 while we sin and blunder and follow every sort of base end1 close to us1 above us1 around us1 watching us1 judging us1 are ,god and ,his holy angels8 ,i have had a vision1 and ,i am not the only one4 ,i have seen4 ,we are in the ,kingdom of ,heaven now and here1 and ,judgement is all about us now6 ,have you seen nothing8 ,no light8 ,no sound8 ,no warning8 ,by this time the old flower-seller had finished her bunch of flowers and could speak4 ,i saw it1 she said4 ,and ,mary--she saw it4 ,well8 said ,mr4 ,parchester4 ,but1 ,lord6 ,it don't mean nothing6 said the old flower-seller4 ,sec4 #aa ,at that a kind of chill fell upon ,mr4 ,parchester4 ,he went on across ,chexington ,square by his own inertia4 ,he was still about as sure that he had seen ,god as he had been in his study1 but now he was no longer sure that the world would believe that he had4 ,he felt perhaps that this idea of rushing out to tell people was precipitate and inadvisable4 ,after all1 a priest in the ,church of ,england is only one unit in a great machine2 and in a world-wide spiritual crisis it should be the task of that great machine to act as one resolute body4 ,this isolated crying aloud in the street was unworthy of a consecrated priest4 ,it was a dissenting kind of thing to do4 ,a vulgar individualistic screaming4 ,he thought suddenly that he would go and tell his ,bishop--the great ,bishop ,wampach4 ,he called a taxicab1 and within half an hour he was in the presence of his commanding officer4 ,it was an extraordinarily difficult and painful interview4444 ,you see1 ,mr4 ,parchester believed4 ,the ,bishop impressed him as being quite angrily resolved not to believe4 ,and for the first time in his career ,mr4 ,parchester realized just how much jealous hostility a beautiful1 fluent1 and popular preacher may arouse in the minds of the hierarchy4 ,it wasn't1 he felt1 a conversation4 ,it was like flinging oneself into the paddock of a bull that has long been anxious to gore one4 ,inevitably1 said the ,bishop1 this theatricalism1 this star-turn business1 with its extreme spiritual excitements1 its exaggerated soul crises and all the rest of it1 leads to such a breakdown as afflicts you4 ,inevitably6 ,you were at least wise to come to me4 ,i can see you are only in the beginning of your trouble1 that already in your mind fresh hallucinations are gathering to overwhelm you1 voices1 special charges and missions1 strange revelations4444 ,i wish ,i had the power to suspend you right away1 to send you into retreat4444 ,mr4 ,parchester made a violent effort to control himself4 ,but ,i tell you1 he said1 that ,i saw ,god6 ,he added1 as if to reassure himself3 ,more plainly1 more certainly1 than ,i see you4 ,of course1 said the ,bishop1 this is how strange new sects come into existence2 this is how false prophets spring out of the bosom of the ,church4 ,loose-minded1 excitable men of your stamp---- ,mr4 ,parchester1 to his own astonishment1 burst into tears4 ,but ,i tell you1 he wept1 ,he is here4 ,i have seen4 ,i know4 ,don't talk such nonsense6 said the ,bishop4 ,there is no one here but you and ,i6 ,mr4 ,parchester expostulated4 ,but1 he protested1 ,he is omnipresent4 ,the ,bishop controlled an expression of impatience4 ,it is characteristic of your condition1 he said1 that you are unable to distinguish between a matter of fact and a spiritual truth4444 ,now listen to me4 ,if you value your sanity and public decency and the discipline of the ,church1 go right home from here and go to bed4 ,send for ,broadhays1 who will prescribe a safe sedative4 ,and read something calming and graceful and purifying4 ,for my own part1 ,i should be disposed to recommend the ',life of ,saint ,francis of ,assisi4'4444 ,sec4 #ab ,unhappily ,mr4 ,parchester did not go home4 ,he went out from the ,bishop's residence stunned and amazed1 and suddenly upon his desolation came the thought of ,mrs4 ,munbridge4444 ,she would understand4444 ,he was shown up to her own little sitting-room4 ,she had already gone up to her room to dress1 but when she heard that he had called1 and wanted very greatly to see her1 she slipped on a loose1 beautiful tea-gown neglige thing1 and hurried to him4 ,he tried to tell her everything1 but she only kept saying ,there6 there6 ,she was sure he wanted a cup of tea1 he looked so pale and exhausted4 ,she rang to have the tea equipage brought back2 she put the dear saint in an arm-chair by the fire2 she put cushions about him1 and ministered to him4 ,and when she began partially to comprehend what he had experienced1 she suddenly realized that she too had experienced it4 ,that vision had been a brain-wave between their two linked and sympathetic brains4 ,and that thought glowed in her as she brewed his tea with her own hands4 ,he had been weeping6 ,how tenderly he felt all these things6 ,he was more sensitive than a woman4 ,what madness to have expected understanding from the ,bishop6 ,but that was just like his unworldliness4 ,he was not fit to take care of himself4 ,a wave of tenderness carried her away4 ,here is your tea6 she said1 bending over him1 and fully conscious of her fragrant warmth and sweetness1 and suddenly1 she could never afterwards explain why she was so1 she was moved to kiss him on his brow4444 ,how indescribable is the comfort of a true-hearted womanly friend6 ,the safety of it6 ,the consolation6444 ,about half-past seven that evening ,mr4 ,parchester returned to his own home1 and ,brompton admitted him4 ,brompton was relieved to find his employer looking quite restored and ordinary again4 ,brompton1 said ,mr4 ,parchester1 ,i will not have the usual dinner to-night4 ,just a single mutton cutlet and one of those quarter-bottles of ,perrier ,jouet on a tray in my study4 ,i shall have to finish my sermon to-night4 7,and he had promised ,mrs4 ,munbridge he would preach that sermon specially for her47 ,sec4 #ac ,and as it was with ,mr4 ,parchester and ,brompton and ,mrs4 ,munbridge1 and the taxi-driver and the policeman and the little old lady and the automobile mechanics and ,mr4 ,parchester's secretary and the ,bishop1 so it was with all the rest of the world4 ,if a thing is sufficiently strange and great no one will perceive it4 ,men will go on in their own ways though one rose from the dead to tell them that the ,kingdom of ,heaven was at hand1 though the ,kingdom itself and all its glory became visible1 blinding their eyes4 ,they and their ways are one4 ,men will go on in their ways as rabbits will go on feeding in their hutches within a hundred yards of a battery of artillery4 ,for rabbits are rabbits1 and made to eat and breed1 and men are human beings and creatures of habit and custom and prejudice2 and what has made them1 what will judge them1 what will destroy them--they may turn their eyes to it at times as the rabbits will glance at the concussion of the guns1 but it will never draw them away from eating their lettuce and sniffing after their does4444 ,sec4 #ad ,there was something of invalid peevishness even in the handwriting of ,boon's last story1 the ,story of the ,last ,trump4 ,of course1 ,i see exactly what ,boon is driving at in this fragment4 ,the distresses of the war had for a time broken down his faith in the ,mind of the ,race1 and so he mocked at the idea that under any sort of threat or warning whatever men's minds can move out of the grooves in which they run4 ,and yet in happier moods that was his own idea1 and my belief in it came from him4 ,that he should1 in his illness1 fall away from that saving confidence which he could give to me1 and that he should die before his courage returned1 seems just a part of the inexplicable tragedy of life4 ,because clearly this end of the ,story of the ,last ,trump is forced and false1 is unjust to life4 ,i know how feebly we apprehend things1 ,i know how we forget1 but because we forget it does not follow that we never remember1 because we fail to apprehend perfectly it does not follow that we have no understanding4 ,and so ,i feel that the true course of the ,story of the ,last ,trump should have been far larger and much more wonderful and subtle than ,boon made it4 ,that instant vision of ,god would not have been dismissed altogether4 ,people might have gone on1 as ,boon tells us they went on1 but they would have been haunted nevertheless by a new sense of deep1 tremendous things4444 ,cynicism is humour in ill-health4 ,it would have been far more difficult to tell the story of how a multitude of commonplace people were changed by a half-dubious perception that ,god was indeed close at hand to them1 a perception that they would sometimes struggle with and deny1 sometimes realize overwhelmingly2 it would have been a beautiful1 pitiful1 wonderful story1 and it may be if ,boon had lived he would have written it4 ,he could have written it4 ,but he was too ill for that much of writing1 and the tired pencil turned to the easier course4444 ,i can't believe after all ,i know of him1 and particularly after the intimate talk ,i have repeated1 that he would have remained in this mood4 ,he would1 ,i am certain1 have altered the ,story of the ,last ,trump4 ,he must have done so4 ,and so1 too1 about this war1 this dreadful outbreak of brutish violence which has darkened all our lives1 ,i do not think he would have remained despairful4 ,as his health mended1 as the braveries of spring drew near1 he would have risen again to the assurance he gave me that the ,mind is immortal and invincible4 ,of course there is no denying the evil1 the black evils of this war2 many of us are impoverished and ruined1 many of us are wounded1 almost all of us have lost friends and suffered indirectly in a hundred ways4 ,and all that is going on yet4 ,the black stream of consequence will flow for centuries4 ,but all this multitudinous individual unhappiness is still compatible with a great progressive movement in the general mind4 ,being wounded and impoverished1 being hurt and seeing things destroyed1 is as much living and learning as anything else in the world4 ,the tremendous present disaster of ,europe may not be1 after all1 a disaster for mankind4 ,horrible possibilities have to be realized1 and they can be realized only by experience2 complacencies1 fatuities have to be destroyed2 we have to learn and relearn what ,boon once called the bitter need for honesty4 ,we must see these things from the standpoint of the ,race ,life1 whose days are hundreds of years4444 ,nevertheless1 such belief cannot alter for me the fact that ,boon is dead and our little circle is scattered4 ,i feel that no personal comfort nor any further happiness of the mind remains in store for me4 ,my duties as his literary executor still give me access to the dear old house and the garden of our security1 and1 in spite of a considerable coolness between myself and ,mrs4 ,boon--who would willingly have all this material destroyed and his reputation rest upon his better-known works--,i make my duty my excuse to go there nearly every day and think4 ,i am really in doubt about many matters4 ,i cannot determine1 for example1 whether it may not be possible to make another volume from the fragments still remaining over after this one4 ,there are great quantities of sketches1 several long pieces of ,vers ,libre1 the story of ,jane in ,heaven1 the draft of a novel4 ,and so ,i go there and take out the papers and fall into fits of thinking4 ,i turn the untidy pages and think about ,boon and of all the stream of nonsense and fancy that was so much more serious to him and to me than the serious business of life4 ,i go there1 ,i know1 very much as a cat hangs about its home after its people have departed--that is to say1 a little incredulously and with the gleam of a reasonless hope4444 ,there must1 ,i suppose1 come a limit to these visitations1 and ,i shall have to go about my own business4 ,i can see in ,mrs4 ,boon's eye that she will presently demand conclusive decisions4 ,in a world that has grown suddenly chilly and lonely ,i know ,i must go on with my work under difficult and novel conditions 7and now well into the routines of middle age7 as if there were no such things as loss and disappointment4 ,i am1 ,i learned long ago1 an uncreative1 unimportant man4 ,and yet1 ,i suppose1 ,i do something2 ,i count2 it is better that ,i should help than not in the great task of literature1 the great task of becoming the thought and the expressed intention of the race1 the task of taming violence1 organizing the aimless1 destroying error1 the task of waylaying the ,wild ,asses of the ,devil and sending them back to ,hell4 ,it does not matter how individually feeble we writers and disseminators are2 we have to hunt the ,wild ,asses4 ,as the feeblest puppy has to bark at cats and burglars4 ,and we have to do it because we know1 in spite of the darkness1 the wickedness1 the haste and hate1 we know in our hearts1 though no momentary trumpeting has shown it to us1 that judgement is all about us and ,god stands close at hand4 ,yes1 we go on4 ,but ,i wish that ,george ,boon were still in the world with me1 and ,i wish that he could have written a different ending to the ,story of the ,last ,trump4 ,the ,gresham ,press ,,unwin ,,brothers1 ,,limited ,,woking ,,and ,,london