No More Learning

Rosette-Alas, your Lordship is very learned; but I will love
you as well as I know how!


## p. 10501 (#373) ##########################################

ALFRED DE MUSSET
10501
Perdican-Yes, as well as you know how; and learned as I
am, and rustic as you are, you will love me better than one of
those pale statues manufactured by the nuns, with a head instead
of a heart, who issue from their cloisters to poison the vital air
with the damp reek of their cells. You don't know anything;
you can't read the prayer your mother taught you, which she
learned from her mother before her; you don't even understand
the words you repeat as you kneel at your bedside: but you
understand that you are praying, and that is all God requires.
Rosette-How your Lordship talks!
Perdican - You don't know how to read; but you know the
language of these woods and meadows, these warm banks, yon
fair harvest-fields, and of all this glorious young Nature! You
know them for your thousand brothers, and me for one of them.
Come, let us go; you shall be my wife, and we will strike root
into the genial heart of omnipotent creation.
[Exit with Rosette.
Scene: Camille's apartment. Enter Camille and Dame Pluche.
Camille-You say he took my letter?
Dame Pluche - Yes, dear, he said he would post it.
Camille-Be good enough to go to the drawing-room, Dame
Pluche, and tell Perdican that I wish to speak to him here.
[Exit Dame Pluche. ] He has undoubtedly read my letter; that
scene in the wood was revenge, and so is all his love-making
to Rosette. He wished to convince me that he loved somebody
else, and to hide his mortification under a show of indifference.
Does he love me after all, I wonder? [She raises the tapestry. ]
Is that you, Rosette?
Rosette [as she enters]- Yes: may I come in?
Camille - Listen to me, my dear: has not Lord Perdican been
making love to you?
Rosette-Alas, yes!
Camille-What do you think of what he said this morning?
Rosette-This morning? Why, where?
Don't be a hypocrite. This morning at the spring
Camille
in the wood.
-
Rosette - Then you saw me!
Camille-Poor little innocent! No, I did not see you. He
made all sorts of fine speeches, didn't he? I would wager he
promised to marry you.


## p. 10502 (#374) ##########################################

10502
ALFRED DE MUSSET
Rosette - Why, how do you know?
Camille-Never mind: do you believe his promises, Rosette?
How can I help it? He wouldn't deceive me. Why
Rosette
should he?
Camille Perdican does not mean to marry you, my child.
Rosette Alas, perhaps not!
Camille - You love him, you poor girl. He does not mean
to marry you, and I will give you the proof: hide behind this
curtain; you have nothing to do but to listen, and come when
I call you.
-
-
-
[Exit Rosette. ]
1
Camille-I thought to do an act of vengeance, but may it
not be one of humanity? The poor child has lost her heart.
[Enter Perdican. ] Good morning, cousin; sit down.
Perdican- How beautifully you are dressed, Camille! On
whom have you designs?
Camille-On you, perhaps. I am very sorry that I could not
meet you as you asked: had you anything to say?
Perdican [aside] - Upon my word, that's rather a big fib for
a spotless lamb! I saw her under the trees. [Aloud. ] I had
nothing to say but good-by, Camille,-I thought you were going;
but your horse is in the stable, and you do not seem to be
dressed for traveling.
Camille-I am fond of discussion, and I am not sure that I
did not wish for another quarrel with you.
Perdican-What object can there be in quarreling when there
is no possibility of making up? The pleasure of disputes is in
making peace.
Camille - Are you so sure I wouldn't make peace?
Perdican Don't jest: I am not equal to answering you.
Camille-I want to be made love to! I don't know whether
it is because I have on a new gown, but I wish to be amused.
You proposed our going to the village: well, I am ready. Let
us row; I should like to dine on the grass, or to ramble in the
forest. Will it be moonlight this evening? How odd! you have
not on the ring I gave you.
Perdican-I lost it.
Camille-So I found it: here it is, Perdican.
Perdican-Is it possible! Where did you find it?
Camille- You are looking to see whether my hands are
wet? To tell the truth, I spoiled my convent dress in getting


## p. 10503 (#375) ##########################################

ALFRED DE MUSSET
10503
this trinket out of the spring. That is why I put another on,
and I tell you it has changed me; so put that ring upon your
finger.
Perdican-You got this out of the water at the risk of falling
in, Camille? Am I dreaming? Here it is again, and you put it
on my finger. O Camille, why do you give me back this sad
relic of my lost happiness? Tell me, you foolish and fickle girl,
why you go away? Why do you stay? Why do you change.
every hour like this stone in each new light?
Camille - Do you know woman's heart, Perdican?
Are you
convinced of her inconstancy, and that she really changes her
mind whenever she changes her mood? Some say not. Un-
doubtedly we are often forced to play a part, even to tell lies —
I am frank, you see; but are you sure that everything in a
woman lies when her tongue lies? Have you ever reflected on
the nature of this weak and undisciplined creature, and on the
severity with which she is judged, and the part that she is
compelled to play? Who knows whether, constrained by the
world to continual deceit, the head of this brainless being may
not finally learn to take a certain pleasure in it; may she not tell
lies for amusement sometimes, as she is so often forced to tell
them for necessity?
Perdican -I understand none of this; I never lie; I love you,
Camille, and that is all I know.
Camille- You say you love me, and that you never lie?
Perdican-Never!
Camille-Yet here's somebody who says that accident befalls
you occasionally. [She raises the tapestry, and shows Rosette
fainting in a chair. ] What will you say to this child, Perdican,
when she asks you to account for your words? If you never
lie, why has she fainted on hearing you say that you love me?
I leave her with you: try and bring her to life. [Is about to go. ]
One moment, Camille! Hear me!
Perdican
Camille-What have you to say
me? It is to Rosette you
must answer. I do not love you; I did not seek this hapless
child in her cottage to use her as a toy, a foil; I did not reck-
lessly repeat to her the burning words I had addressed to others;
I did not feign to cast to the winds the tokens of a cherished
attachment, for her sake; I did not put my chain round her
neck; I did not promise to marry her!
Perdican-Listen to me! listen to me!
-


## p. 10504 (#376) ##########################################

ALFRED DE MUSSET
10504
Camille-I saw you smile just now when I said I had not
been able to go to the fountain. Yes, I was there and heard it
all; but God is my witness that I would not have done as you
did. What will you do with that girl now, when, with your
kisses still burning on her lips, she weeps and points to the
wound you have dealt her? You wished to revenge yourself
upon me, did you not, for a letter I wrote to my convent? You
were bent on piercing my soul at any cost, not caring whether
your poisoned dart wounded this child, if it but struck me
through her. I had boasted of having made you love me, and
of causing you regret. Did that wound your noble pride? Well
then, hear me say it,-you love me, but you will marry that girl
or you are a poor creature.
Perdican-Yes, I will marry her.
Camille-You will do well.
Perdican-Very well, and much better than if I married you.
What excites you to such a degree, Camille? The child has
fainted; we can easily bring her to,-we only need a smelling-
bottle. You wish to convict me of having lied once in my life,
and you have done so; but I think you are rather self-confident
in deciding when. Come, help me to restore Rosette. [Exeunt.
Scene: An oratory. Enter Camille, and throws herself at the foot of the
altar.
Camille O my God, hast thou abandoned me? Thou know-
est that I came hither faithful to thee; when I refused to take
another spouse, thou knowest that I spoke in all sincerity before
thee and my own soul; thou knowest it, O Father! and wilt
thou no longer accept me? Oh, wherefore hast thou made truth
itself to lie? Why am I so weak? Ah, wretched girl! I can-
not even pray.
Enter Perdican
Perdican-Pride, most fatal of all the counselors of human-
ity, why have you come between me and this girl? See her,
pale and distraught, pressing her face and breast against these
senseless stones. She could have loved me, and we were born
for one another. O pride! what brought you to our lips when
our hands were ready to be joined?
Camille-Who has followed me? Whose voice do I hear
beneath this vault? Is it you, Perdican?


## p. 10505 (#377) ##########################################

ALFRED DE MUSSET
10505
Perdican - Fools that we are! We love each other! What
have you been dreaming, Camille? What futile speech, what
wretched folly has swept between us like a blast from the tombs?
Which of us tried to deceive the other? Alas, when life itself is
such a painful dream, why seek to fill it with worse ones of our
own? O God! happiness is a pearl so rarely found in this stormy
sea! Thou hadst given it to us, thou hadst rescued this treasure
from the abyss for us; and like spoiled children as we are, we
treated it as a plaything. The green path which led us toward
each other sloped so gently, and was so strewn with flowers, it
vanished in such a calm horizon -needs was that words, and
vanity, and anger should hurl their shapeless crags across this
celestial path, which would have led us to thee in an embrace!
Needs was that we should wrong and wound each other, for we
are human! O fools! and we love each other! [He clasps her in
his arms. ]
Camille - Yes, Perdican, we love each other! Let me feel it
on your heart.
The God who sees us will not be angry: he
wills that I should love you; he has known it these fifteen years.
Perdican-Dearest being, you are mine! [He kisses her; a
shriek is heard from behind the altar. ]
Camille- My foster-sister's voice!
Perdican How came she here? I left her on the staircase
when you sent for me. She must have followed me without my
knowledge.
Camille - Come this way: the cry came from here.
Perdican What do I fear? my hands seem bathed in blood.
Camille - The poor child must have overheard us, and she
has fainted again: come and help her! Ah, it is all too cruel!
Perdican-No, I cannot go,—I am numb with mortal terror.
Go, Camille, and try to help her. [Exit Camille. ] O God, I
beseech thee, make me not a murderer! Thou seest our hearts:
we are two senseless children who have been playing with life
and death. God of justice, do not let Rosette die! I will find
her a husband, I will repair the evil I have done; - she is
young, she shall be rich and happy. Oh, do not refuse me
this, my God! thou canst bless four of thy children! [Re-enter
Camille. ] Well, Camille?
Camille-She is dead. Farewell, Perdican.
-
―
-
From Selections from the Prose and Poetry of Alfred de Musset,' Copy-
right 1870, by Hurd & Houghton


## p. 10506 (#378) ##########################################

10506
ALFRED DE MUSSET
VERGISS MEIN NICHT
R
EMEMBER! when the morn with sweet affright
Opens her portals to the king of day;
Remember! when the melancholy night
All silver-veiled pursues her darkling way;
Or when thy pulses wake at pleasure's tone:
When twilight shades to gentle dreams invite,
List to a voice which from the forest lone
Murmurs, Remember!
Remember! When inexorable fate
Hath parted finally my lot from thine,
When absence, grief, and time have laid their weight
With crushing power on this heart of mine,—
Think of my love, think of my last farewell;
Absence nor time can constancy abate:
While my heart beats, its every throb shall tell,
Remember!
Remember! When beneath the chilling ground
My weary heart has found a lasting sleep,
And when in after time, above the mound,
The pale blue flower its gentle watch doth keep,—
I shall not see thee more; but ever nigh,
Like sister true my soul will hover round:
List to a voice which through the night will sigh,
Remember!
From Selections from the Prose and Poetry of Alfred de Musset. '
right 1870, by Hurd & Houghton
FROM TO A COMRADE›
THE
HE joy of meeting makes us love farewell;
We gather once again around the hearth,
And thou wilt tell
All that thy keen experience has been
Of pleasure, danger, misadventure, mirth,
And unforeseen.
And all without an angry word the while,
Or self-compassion,- naught dost thou recall
Save for a smile;
Copy-


## p. 10507 (#379) ##########################################

ALFRED DE MUSSET
Thou knowest how to lend good fortune grace,
And how to mock what'er ill luck befall
With laughing face.
But friend, go not again so far away;
In need of some small help I always stand,
Come whatso may;
I know not whither leads this path of mine,
But I can tread it better when my hand
Is clasped in thine.
FROM ON A SLAB OF ROSE MARBLE'
ET, despite myself, I trow
Other destiny was thine:
Far away from cloudy France,
Where a warmer sun doth shine,
YET
Near some temple, Greek or Latin;
The fair daughters of the clime,
With the scent of heath and thyme
Clinging to their sandaled feet
Beating thee in rhythmic dance,
Were a burden far more sweet
Than court ladies shod with satin.
Could it be for this alone
Nature formed thee in the earth,
In whose beauteous virgin stone
Genius might have wrought a birth
Every age had joyed to own?
•
•
There should have come forth of thee
Some new-born divinity.
When the marble-cutters hewed
Through thy noble block their way,
They broke in with footsteps rude
Where a Venus sleeping lay,
And the goddess's wounded veins
Colored thee with roseate stains.
Alas!
and must we hold it truth
That every rare and precious thing
Flung forth at random without ruth
Trodden under foot may lie?
The crag where, in sublime repose,
The eagle stoops to rest his wing,
10507


## p. 10508 (#380) ##########################################

10508
ALFRED DE MUSSET
OFT
No less than any wayside rose,
Dropped in the common dust to die?
Can the mother of us all
Leave her work, to fullness brought,
Lost in the gulf of chance to fall,
As oblivion swallows thought?
Torn away from ocean's rim
To be fashioned by a whim,
Does the briny tempest whirl
To the workman's feet the pearl?
Shall the vulgar, idle crowd
For all ages be allowed
To degrade earth's choicest treasure
At the arbitrary pleasure
Of a mason or a churl?
FROM THE WILD MARE IN THE DESERT›
FT in the waste, the Arab mare untamed,
After three days' wild course awaits the storm
To drain the rain-drops from the thirsty palms;
The sun is leaden, and the silent palms
Droop their long tresses 'neath a fiery sky.
She seeks her well amid the boundless wilds:
The sun has dried it; on the burning rock
Lie shaggy lions growling low in sleep.
Her forces fail; her bleeding nostrils wide
Plunge eager in the sand,- the thirsty sand
Drinks greedily her life's discolored stream.
Then stretches she at length, her great eyes film,
And the wan desert rolls upon its child
In silent folds its ever moving shroud.
She knew not, she, that when the caravan
With all its camels passed beneath the planes,
That, would she follow, bowing her proud neck,
In Bagdad she would find cool stable-stalls,
With gilded mangers, dewy clover turf,
And wells whose depths have never seen the sky.


## p. 10509 (#381) ##########################################

ALFRED DE MUSSET
10509
TO PÉPA
ÉPA! when the night has come,
And mamma has bid good-night,
By thy light, half-clad and dumb,
As thou kneelest out of sight;
PEPAA
Laid by, cap and sweeping vest
Ere thou sinkest to repose,
At the hour when half at rest
Folds thy soul as folds a rose;
When sweet Sleep, the sovereign mild,
Peace to all the house has brought,-
Pépita! my charming child!
What, oh, what is then thy thought?
Who knows? Haply dreamest thou
Of some lady doomed to sigh;
All that Hope a truth deems now,
All that Truth shall prove, a lie.
Haply of those mountains grand
That produce-alas! but mice;
Castles in Spain; a prince's hand;
Bon-bons, lovers, or cream-ice.
Haply of soft whispers breathed
'Mid the mazes of a ball;
Robes, or flowers, or hair enwreathed;
Me; or nothing, dear! at all.
-
A
JUANA
GAIN I see you, ah, my queen,-
Of all my old loves that have been,
The first love and the tenderest;
Do you remember or forget —
Ah me, for I remember yet-
How the last summer days were blest?
Ah, lady, when we think of this,-
The foolish hours of youth and bliss,
How fleet, how sweet, how hard to hold!


## p. 10510 (#382) ##########################################

ALFRED DE MUSSET
10510
How old we are, ere spring be green!
You touch the limit of eighteen,
And I am twenty winters old.
My rose, that mid the red roses
Was brightest, ah, how pale she is!
Yet keeps the beauty of her prime;
Child, never Spanish lady's face
Was lovely with so wild a grace;
Remember the dead summer-time.
Think of our loves, our feuds of old,
And how you gave your chain of gold
To me for a peace-offering;
And how all night I lay awake
To touch and kiss it for your sake,-
To touch and kiss the lifeless thing.
Lady, beware, for all we say,
This Love shall live another day,
Awakened from his deathly sleep:
The heart that once has been your shrine
For other loves is too divine;
A home, my dear, too wide and deep.
What did I say - why do I dream?
Why should I struggle with the stream
Whose waves return not any day?
Close heart, and eyes, and arms from me;
Farewell, farewell! so must it be,
So runs, so runs, the world away.
The season bears upon its wing
The swallows and the songs of spring,
And days that were, and days that flit:
The loved lost hours are far away;
And hope and fame are scattered spray
For me, that gave you love a day,
For you that not remember it.
Translation of Andrew Lang.


## p. 10511 (#383) ##########################################

10511
FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY MYERS
(1843-)
M
UCH of what is most subtle and penetrative in contempo-
rary English criticism is embodied in the writings of certain
men of letters whose names are familiar only to a special
and limited circle. Frederic W. H. Myers is one of those critics
whose work, while not in any sense popular, obtains well-established
recognition for its literary finish, and pre-eminently for its originality
and suggestiveness. The complex forces of the end of the century
inay not be favorable to the production of creative genius, but they
are favorable to the birth and growth of a sensitive critical spirit.
Mr. Myers's Modern and Classical Essays are the work of one to
whom the revelations of science in all its branches have been a
source of enlightenment on subjects with which it would seem that
science primarily had nothing to do. He is of the number of those
who would wed the materialistic knowledge of the age to an ideal-
ism the more intense because it is denied the outlet of a definite
religious faith. He would judge of literature, of personality, of the
various phenomena of his own and of a past age, by the new lights
of science, and at the same time by the light that never was on
sea or land. It is this combination of the idealistic with the exact
spirit which gives to the essays of Mr. Myers their peculiar charm,
and which fits him to write with such exquisite appreciation of Mar-
cus Aurelius and Virgil, of Rossetti and George Eliot. In his heart
he has all the romance of a poet,- his desire to live by admiration,
hope, and love, his sensitiveness to the beautiful, his passionate belief
in the soul and its great destinies; but his brain rules his heart with
typical modern caution. In his efforts to reconcile these elements in
his nature, Mr. Myers has infused into his essays, whatever their sub-
jects, the speculative thought of his generation concerning the unseen.
world and man's relation to it; and especially of that great question
of personal immortality, which forever haunts and forever baffles the
minds of men. He is drawn naturally to a consideration of such men
as Marcus Aurelius. The fitful dejection of the philosophic emperor,
his resolve to learn and to endure, his hopeless hope, his calm in
the face of the veil which cuts man off from the paradise of certain-
ties, seem to Mr. Myers to prefigure the attitude of the modern mind
toward its mysterious environment. Yet he himself has gone beyond
the negativity of Stoicism. He believes that love is the gateway to


## p. 10512 (#384) ##########################################

10512
FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY MYERS
the unseen universe, being of those who, "while accepting to the full
the methods and the results of science, will not yet surrender the
ancient hopes of the race. "
In 'Modern Poets and Cosmic Law' he traces the influence of Ten-
nyson and Wordsworth on modern religious thought; a regenerating
influence, because they have realized "with extraordinary intuition,"
and promulgated "with commanding genius, the interpenetration of
the spiritual and the material world. " Mr. Myers's deep sympathy
with Wordsworth is completely expressed in his luminous biography
of the poet. His sympathy with George Eliot is less keen, or rather
it is less that of the mind than of the heart. His depression in the
presence of her hopelessness is well described in the essay of which
she is the subject:-
"I remember how, at Cambridge, I walked with her once in the Fellows'
Garden of Trinity, on an evening of rainy May; and she, stirred somewhat
beyond her wont, and taking as her text the three words which have been
used so often as the inspiring trumpet-calls of men,- the words God, Immor-
tality, Duty,- pronounced with terrible earnestness how inconceivable was
the first, how unbelievable the second, and yet how peremptory and absolute
the third. Never, perhaps, have sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of
impersonal and unrecompensing law. I listened, and night fell; her grave,
majestic countenance turned towards me like a Sibyl's in the gloom; it was
as though she withdrew from my grasp, one by one, the two scrolls of prom-
ise, and left me the third scroll only, awful with inevitable fates. »
Mr. Myers's essays on Science and a Future Life,' on 'Darwin and
Agnosticism,' on Tennyson as a Prophet,' on 'A New Eirenicon,'
on Modern Poets and Cosmic Law,' are concerned chiefly with
the modern answers to the old eternal problems. Even his essays
on Mazzini, on George Sand, on Renan, and on the present political
and social influences in France, are not without their background of
philosophical contemplation of the end and aims of man. Mr. Myers's
conclusion of the whole matter is hopeful, sane, temperate. He is
confident of the golden branch in the grove of cypress; confident that
darkness must eventually become revelation. In his verse, which,
while not of the first order, is melodious and graceful, he exhibits
the same spiritual intuition. His value as a critic is largely the
result of this recognition, based on no ephemeral conclusions, of the
spiritual element in the destiny of man. Mr. Myers was born in
1843, in Duffield, England. He is the son of a clergyman of some
note as a writer, and a brother of Ernest Myers, whose classical trans-
lations are of great literary excellence.


## p. 10513 (#385) ##########################################

FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY MYERS
10513
THE DISENCHANTMENT OF FRANCE
From Science and a Future Life >
IT
HAS fallen to the lot of the French people to point more
morals, to emphasize more lessons from their own experience,
than any other nation in modern history. Parties and creeds
of the most conflicting types have appealed to Paris in turn for
their brightest example, their most significant warning. The
strength of monarchy and the risks of despotism; the nobility of
faith and the cruel cowardice of bigotry; the ardor of republican
fraternity and the terrors of anarchic disintegration-the most
famous instance of any and every extreme is to be found in the
long annals of France. And so long as the French mind, at
once logical and mobile, continues to be the first to catch and
focus the influences which are slowly beginning to tell on neigh-
boring States, so long will its evolution possess for us the unique
interest of a glimpse into stages of development through which
our own national mind also may be destined ere long to pass.
Yet there has of late been a kind of reluctance on the part of
other civilized countries to take to themselves the lessons which
French history still can teach. In Germany there has been a
tone of reprobation, an opposition of French vice to Teuton vir-
tue; and in England there has been some aloofness of feeling,
some disposition to think that the French have fallen, through
their own fault, into a decadence which our robuster nation need
not fear.
In the brief review, however, which this essay will contain
of certain gloomy symptoms in the spiritual state of France, we
shall keep entirely clear of any disparaging comparisons or insin-
uated blame. Rather, we shall regard France as the most sensi-
tive organ of the European body politic; we shall feel that her
dangers of to-day are ours of to-morrow, and that unless there
still be salvation for her, our own prospects are dark indeed.
But in the first place, it may be asked, what right have we
to speak of France as decadent at all? The word, indeed, is so
constantly employed by French authors of the day, that the for-
eigner may assume without impertinence that there is some fit-
ness in its use. Yet have we here much more than a fashion of
speaking? the humor of men who are "sad as night for very
wantonness," who play with the notion of national decline as a
XVIII-658


## p. 10514 (#386) ##########################################

10514
FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY MYERS
rich man in temporary embarrassment may play with the notion
of ruin? France is richer and more populous than ever before;
her soldiers still fight bravely; and the mass of her population,
as judged by the statistics of crime, or by the colorless half-sheet
which forms the only national newspaper, is at any rate tranquil
and orderly. Compare the state of France now with her state
just a century since, before the outbreak of the Revolution. Ob-
servers who noted that misgovernment and misery, those hordes
of bandits prowling over the untilled fields, assumed it as mani-
fest that not the French monarchy only, but France herself, was
crumbling in irremediable decay. And yet a few years later, the
very children reared as half slaves, half beggars, on black bread
and ditch-water, were marching with banners flying into Vienna
and Moscow. One must be wary in predicting the decline of a
nation which holds in reserve a spring of energy such as this.
Once more. Not physically alone but intellectually, France
has never, perhaps, been stronger than she is now. She is lack-
ing indeed in statesmen of the first order, in poets and artists
of lofty achievement; and if our diagnosis be correct, she must
inevitably lack such men as these. But on the other hand, her
living savants probably form as wise, as disinterested a group
of intellectual leaders as any epoch of her history has known.
And she listens to them with a new deference; she receives re-
spectfully even the bitter home-truths of M. Taine; she honors.
M. Renan instead of persecuting him; she makes M. Pasteur her
national hero. These men and men like these are virtually at
the head of France; and if the love of truth, the search for
truth, fortifies a nation, then assuredly France should be stronger
now than under any of her kings or her Cæsars.
Yet here we come to the very crux of the whole inquiry. If
we maintain that an increasing knowledge of truth is necessarily
a strength or advantage to a nation or an individual, we are as-
suming an affirmative answer to two weighty questions: the first,
whether the scheme of the universe is on the whole good rather
than evil; the second, whether, even granting that the sum of
things is good, each advancing step of our knowledge of the uni-
verse brings with it an increased realization of that ultimate
goodness.
Of course if we return to the first question the pes-
simistic answer,- if the world is a bad place, and cosmic suicide
the only reasonable thing,—the present discussion may at once
be closed. For in that case there is no such thing as progress,


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FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY MYERS
10515
no such thing as recovery; and the moral discouragement of
France does but indicate her advance upon the road which we
must all inevitably travel.
Let us assume, however, as is commonly assumed without too
curious question, that the universe is good, and that to know the
truth about it is on the whole an invigorating thing. Yet even
thus, it is by no means clear that each onward step we make
in learning that truth will in itself be felt as invigorating. All
analogy is against such a supposition: whether we turn to the
history of philosophy, and the depression repeatedly following on
the collapse of specious but premature conceptions, or to the
history of individual minds, and the despair of the beginner in
every art or study when he recognizes that he has made a false.
start, that he knows almost nothing, that the problems are far
more difficult than his ignorance had suspected.
Now I think it is not hard to show that France, even on
the most hopeful view of her, is at present passing through a
moment of spiritual reaction such as this. In that country, where
the pure dicta of science reign in the intellectual classes with.
less interference from custom, sentiment, tradition, than even in
Germany itself, we shall find that science, at her present point,
is a depressing, a disintegrating energy.
And therefore, when we compare the present state of France
with her state a century ago, we must not rank her dominant
savants as a source of national strength. Rather, they are a
source of disenchantment, of disillusionment, to use the phrase of
commonest recurrence in modern French literature and speech.
Personally indeed the class of savants includes many an example
of unselfish diligence, of stoical candor; but their virtues are per-
sonal to themselves, and the upshot of their teaching affords no
stable basis for virtue.
We may say, then, that in 1888 France possesses everything
except illusions; in 1788 she possessed illusions and nothing else.
The Reign of Reason, the Return to Nature, the Social Contract,
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity-the whole air of that wild time
buzzed with new-hatched Chimeras, while at the same time the
old traditions of Catholicism, Loyalty, Honor, were still living in
many an ardent heart.
What then is, in effect, the disenchantment which France
has undergone? What are the illusions-the so-called, so-judged
illusions — which are fading now before the influence of science?


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FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY MYERS
How is a foreigner to analyze the confused changes in a great
people's spiritual life? Must not his own personal acquaintance
with Frenchmen, which is sure to be slight and shallow, unduly
influence his judgment of the nation? It seems to me that
he must set aside his personal acquaintanceships, and form his
opinion from current literature and current events; endeavoring
so far as may be to elicit such general views of life as may be
latent in the varying utterances of novelist, essayist, politician,
philosopher, and poet. Thus reading and thus comparing, we
shall discern a gradual atrophy of certain habits of thought, cer-
tain traditional notions; and if we class as illusions these old
conceptions from which the French people seem gradually to be
awakening, we find them reducible to four main heads: the reli-
gious, the political, the sexual, and the personal illusions.
By the "religious illusion, "-speaking, it will be remem-
bered, from the point of view of the Frenchman of the type now
under discussion,-I mean a belief in the moral government of
the world, generally involving a belief in man's future life; in
which life we may suppose virtue victorious, and earth's injust-
ices redressed. These cardinal beliefs, now everywhere on the
defensive, are plainly losing ground in France more rapidly than
elsewhere. And the strange thing is, that while Christianity thus
declines, it seems to leave in France so little regret behind it
that its disappearance is signalized only by loud battles between
"Liberalism" and "Clericalism"; not, as in England, by sad
attempts at reconciliation, by the regrets and appeals of slowly
severing men. A book like Châteaubriand's 'Génie du Christian-
isme,' nay, even a book like Lamennais's 'Paroles d'un Croyant,'
would now be felt to be an anachronism. Militant Catholicism
seems almost to have died out with M. Veuillot's article in the
Univers; and an application to a high ecclesiastical authority for
recent defenses of the faith brought to me only a recommendation
to read the Bishops' Charges, the mandements d'évêque. Paradox
as it may seem, M. Renan is almost the only French writer of
influence who believes that Christianity—of course a Christianity
without miracles-will be in any sense the religion of the future;
and his recent utterances show that pious sentiment, in his hands,
is liable to sudden and unexpected transformations.
Let us pass on to the second class of illusions from which
France seems finally to have awakened Under the title of the
"political illusion" we may include two divergent yet not wholly


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FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY MYERS
10517
disparate emotions, the enthusiasm of loyalty and the enthu-
siasm of equality. Each of these enthusiasms has done in old
times great things for France; each in turn has seemed to offer
a self-evident, nay, a Divine organization of the perplexed affairs
of men.
But each in turn has lost its efficacy. There is now
scarcely a name but General Boulanger's in France which will
raise a cheer; scarcely even a Socialistic Utopia for which a man.
would care to die. The younger nations, accustomed to look to
France for inspiration, feel the dryness of that ancient source.
"Ils ne croient à rien," said a Russian of the Nihilists,
" mais
ils ont besoin du martyre" (They believe in nothing, but they
must have martyrdom). The Nihilists, indeed, are like the lem-
mings, which swim out to sea in obedience to an instinct that
bids them seek a continent long since sunk beneath the waves.
Gentle anarchists, pious atheists, they follow the blind instinct
of self-devotion which makes the force of a naïve, an unworldly
people. But there is now no intelligible object of devotion left
for them to seek; and they go to the mines and to the gib-
bet without grasping a single principle or formulating a single
hope. These are the pupils of modern France; but in France
herself the nihilistic disillusionment works itself out unhindered by
the old impulse to die for an idea. The French have died for
too many ideas already; and just as they have ceased to idealize
man's relationship to God, so have they ceased at last to idealize
his relationship to his fellow-men.
But the process of disillusionment can be traced deeper still.
Closer to us, in one sense, than our relation to the universe as a
whole, more intimate than our relation to our fellow-citizens, is
the mutual relation between the sexes. An emotion such as love,
at once vague, complex, and absorbing, is eminently open to fresh
interpretation as the result of modern analysis. And on compar-
ing what may be called the enchanted and disenchanted estimates
of this passion,-the view of Plato, for instance, and the view
of Schopenhauer,—we find that the discordance goes to the very
root of the conception; that what in Plato's view is the accident,
is in Schopenhauer's the essential; that what Plato esteemed as
the very aim and essence is for Schopenhauer a delusive fig-
ment, a witchery cast over man's young inexperience, from which
adult reason should shake itself wholly free. For Plato the act
of idealization which constitutes love is closely akin to the act of
idealization which constitutes worship. The sudden passion which
―


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10518
FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY MYERS
carries the lover beyond all thought of self is the result of a
memory and a yearning which the beloved one's presence stirs
within him; a memory of ante-natal visions, a yearning towards
the home of the soul. The true end of love is mutual ennoble-
ment; its fruition lies in the unseen. Or if we look to its earthly
issue, it is not children only who are born from such unions as
these, but from that fusion of earnest spirits, great thoughts, just
laws, noble institutions spring,-"a fairer progeny than any child
of man. "
Not one of the speculations of antiquity outdid in lofty origi
nality this theme of Plato's. And however deeply the changing.
conditions of civilization might modify the outward forms or set-
ting of love, this far-reaching conception has been immanent in
the poet's mind, and has made of love an integral element in the
spiritual scheme of things. "Love was given," says Wordsworth,
in a poem which strangely harmonizes the antique and the mod-
ern ideal,-
"Love was given,
Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end:
For this the passion to excess was driven,—
That self might be annulled; her bondage prove
The fetters of a dream, opposed to Love. "
And even when the passion has not been thus directly linked
with ethical aims, it has been credited with a heaven-sent, a mys-
terious charm; like the beauty and scent of flowers, it has been
regarded as a joy given to us for the mere end of joy.
In recent years, however, a wholly different aspect of the pas-
sion of love has been raised into prominence. This new theory-
for it is hardly less-is something much deeper than the mere
satirical depreciation, the mere ascetic horror, of the female sex.
It recognizes the mystery, the illusion, the potency of love: but
it urges that this dominating illusion is no heaven-descended
charm of life, but the result of terrene evolution; and that, so far
from being salutary to the individual, it is expressly designed
to entrap him into subserving the ends of the race, even when
death to himself (or herself) is the immediate consequence. It
was in England that the facts in natural history which point to
this conclusion were first set forth; it was in Germany that a
philosophical theory was founded (even before most of those facts.
were known) upon these blind efforts of the race, working through
the passions of the individual, yet often to his ruin: but it is in


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FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY MYERS
10519
France that we witness the actual entry of this theory into the
affairs of life,- the gradual dissipation of the "sexual illusion"
which nature has so long been weaving with unconscious magic
around the senses and the imagination of man.
In the first place, then, human attractiveness has suffered some-
thing of the same loss of romance which has fallen upon the
scent and color of flowers, since we have realized that these have
been developed as an attraction to moths and other insects, whose
visits to the flower are necessary to secure effective fertilization.
Our own attractiveness in each other's eyes seems no longer to
point to some Divine reminiscence; rather, it is a character which
natural and sexual selection must needs have developed, if our
race was to persist at all: and it is paralleled by elaborate and
often grotesque æsthetic allurements throughout the range of
organized creatures of separate sex.
Once more. The great Roman poet of "wheat and woodland,
tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd," insisted long ago
on the divergence, throughout animated nature, of the prompt-
ings of amorous passion and of self-preservation. Passing beyond
the facile optimism of pastoral singers, he showed the peace, the
strength, the life of the animal creation at the mercy of an
instinct which they can neither comprehend nor disobey. In
furias ignemque ruunt. Advancing science has both confirmed
and explained this profound observation. She has discovered
instances where the instinct in question conducts not merely to a
remote and contingent but to an immediate and inevitable death,
and where yet it works itself out with unfailing punctuality. And
she has demonstrated that in the race of races the individual
must not pause for breath; his happiness, his length of days
must be subordinated to the supreme purpose of leaving a pro-
geny which can successfully prolong the endless struggle. And
here the bitter philosophy of Schopenhauer steps in, and shows
that as man rises from the savage state, the form of the illusive
witchery changes, but the witchery is still the same. Nature is
still prompting us to subserve the advantage of the race,—an
advantage which is not our own,- though she uses now such del-
icate baits as artistic admiration, spiritual sympathy, the union
of kindred souls. Behind and beneath all these is still her old
unconscious striving; but she can scarcely any longer outwit us:
we now desire neither the pangs of passion, nor the restraints
of marriage, nor the burden of offspring; while for the race we


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10520
FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY MYERS
need care nothing, or may even deem it best and most merciful
that the race itself should lapse and pass away.
The insensible advance of this sexual disenchantment will
show itself first and most obviously in the imaginative literature
of a nation. And the transition from romanticism to so-called
naturalism in fiction, which is the conspicuous fact of the day in
France, is ill understood if it be taken to be a mere change in
literary fashion, a mere reaction against sentimental and stylistic
extravagance. The naturalists claim-and the claim is just-
that they seek at least a closer analogy with the methods of
science herself; that they rest not on fantastic fancies, but on
the documents humains which are furnished by the actual life
of every day. But on the other hand, the very fact that this is
all which they desire to do, is enough to prove that even this
will scarcely be worth the doing. The fact that they thus shrink
from idealizing bespeaks an epoch barren in ideal. Schopen-
hauer boasted that he had destroyed "die Dame," the chivalrous
conception of woman. as a superior being; and such novels
as those of Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant, exhibit the world with
this illusion gone. If, moreover, the relations between men and
women are not kept, in a sense, above the relations between men
and men, they will rapidly fall below them. We are led into a
world of joyless vice from the sheer decay of the conception of
virtue.
-
And thus we are brought, by a natural transition, to the
fourth and last illusion from which French thought is shaking
itself free, the illusion which pervades man more profoundly
than any other: the dream of his own free-will, and of his psy-
chical unity. It is in the analysis of this personal illusion that
much of the acutest French work has lately been done; it is here
that ordinary French opinion is perhaps furthest removed from
the English type; and it is here, moreover, as I shall presently
indicate,—it is on this field of experimental psychology,- that
the decisive battles of the next century seem likely to be fought.
In this essay, however, I must keep clear of detail, and must
touch only on the general effect of the mass of teaching.
As regards the freedom of the will, indeed, it might have
been supposed that the controversy had now been waged too long
to admit of much accession of novel argument. Nor, of course,
can any theory which we hold as to human free-will reasonably
influence our actions one way or the other. Yet we know that


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FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY MYERS
10521
as
a matter of actual observation, Mahommedan fatalism does
influence conduct; and the determinism which is becoming defi-
nitely the creed of France may similarly be traced throughout
their modern pictures of life and character, as a paralyzing influ-
ence in moments of decisive choice, of moral crisis.
I have now, though in a very brief and imperfect way, ac-
complished the task which seemed to me to have some promise
of instruction.