No More Learning

―――
ON BOOKS AND READING
IT
T IS in literature as in life: wherever you turn, you stumble at
once upon the incorrigible mob of humanity, swarming in all
directions, crowding and soiling everything, like flies in sum-
mer. Hence the number, which no man can count, of bad books;
those rank weeds of literature, which draw nourishment from the
corn and choke it. The time, money, and attention of the pub-
lic, which rightfully belong to good books and their noble aims,
they take for themselves: they are written for the mere pur-
pose of making money or procuring places. So they are not only
useless: they do positive mischief. Nine tenths of the whole of
our present literature has no other aim than to get a few shil-
lings out of the pockets of the public; and to this end author,
publisher, and reviewer are in league.
Let me mention a crafty and wicked trick, albeit a profita-
ble and successful one, practiced by littérateurs, hack writers, and
voluminous authors. In complete disregard of good taste and the
true culture of the period, they have succeeded in getting the
whole of the world of fashion into leading-strings, so that they
are all trained to read in time, and all the same thing,—viz. ,
the newest books; and that for the purpose of getting food for
conversation in the circles in which they move. This is the
aim served by bad novels, produced by writers who were once
celebrated, as Spindler, Bulwer-Lytton, Eugene Sue. What can
be more miserable than the lot of a reading public like this,-
always bound to peruse the latest works of extremely common-


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ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
12945
place persons who write for money only, and who are therefore
never few in number? And for this advantage they are content
to know by name only, the works of the few superior minds of
all ages and all countries. Literary newspapers too are a singu-
larly cunning device for robbing the reading public of the time
which, if culture is to be attained, should be devoted to the gen-
uine productions of literature, instead of being occupied by the
daily bungling of commonplace persons.
ence.
Hence, in regard to reading, it is a very important thing to
be able to refrain. Skill in doing so consists in not taking into
one's hands any book merely because at the time it happens
to be extensively read,- such as political or religious pamphlets,
novels, poetry, and the like, which make a noise, and may even
attain to several editions in the first and last year of their exist-
Consider, rather, that the man who writes for fools is
always sure of a large audience; be careful to limit your time
for reading, and devote it exclusively to the works of those great
minds of all times and countries who o'ertop the rest of human-
ity,- those whom the voice of fame points to as such. These
alone really educate and instruct. You can never read bad liter-
ature too little, nor good literature too much. Bad books are
intellectual poison: they destroy the mind. Because people
always read what is new instead of the best of all ages, writers
remain in the narrow circle of the ideas which happen to prevail
in their time; and so the period sinks deeper and deeper into its
own mire.
There are at all times two literatures in progress, running
side by side, but little known to each other: the one real, the
other only apparent. The former grows into permanent litera-
ture; it is pursued by those who live for science or poetry: its
course is sober and quiet, but extremely slow, and it produces
in Europe scarcely a dozen works in a century; these, however,
are permanent. The other kind is pursued by people who live
on science or poetry: it goes at a gallop, with much noise and
shouting of partisans; and every twelvemonth puts a thousand
works on the market. But after a few years one asks, Where are
they? where is the glory which came so soon and made so much
clamor? This kind may be called fleeting, and the other perma-
nent literature.
XXII-810
Translation of T. Bailey Saunders.


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12946
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
-
ON CRITICISM
HE source of all pleasure and delight is the feeling of kin-
Tship. Even with the sense of beauty, it is unquestionably
our own species in the animal world, and then again our
own race, that appears to us the fairest. So too in intercourse
with others: every man shows a decided preference for those who
resemble him; and a blockhead will find the society of another
blockhead incomparably more pleasant than that of any number
of great minds put together. Every man must necessarily take
his chief pleasure in his own work, because it is the mirror of
his own mind, the echo of his own thought; and next in order
will come the work of people like him. That is to say, a dull,
shallow, and perverse man, a dealer in mere words, will give his
sincere and hearty applause only to that which is dull, shallow,
perverse, or merely verbose: on the other hand, he will allow
merit to the work of great minds only on the score of authority,
-in other words, because he is ashamed to speak his opinion, for
in reality they give him no pleasure at all; they do not appeal
to him,- nay, they repel him: and he will not confess this even
to himself. The works of genius cannot be fully enjoyed except
by those who are themselves of the privileged order. The first
recognition of them, however, when they exist without authority
to support them, demands considerable superiority of mind.
When the reader takes all this into consideration, he should
be surprised, not that great work is so late in winning reputa-
tion, but that it wins it at all. And as a matter of fact, fame
comes only by a slow and complex process. The stupid person
is by degrees forced, and as it were tamed, into recognizing the
superiority of one who stands immediately above him; this one in
his turn bows before some one else; and so it goes on until the
weight of the votes gradually prevails over their number: and this
is just the condition of all genuine-in other words, deserved-
fame. But until then, the greatest genius, even after he has
passed his time of trial, stands like a king amidst a crowd of his
own subjects who do not know him by sight, and therefore will
not do his behests, unless indeed his chief ministers of State are
in his train. For no subordinate official can be the direct recipi-
ent of the royal commands, as he knows only the signature of
his immediate superior; and this is repeated all the way up into
the highest ranks, where the under-secretary attests the minister's
-


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ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
12947
signature, and the minister that of the king. There are analogous
stages to be passed before a genius can attain wide-spread fame.
This is why his reputation most easily comes to a standstill at
the very outset,- because the highest authorities, of whom there
can be but few, are most frequently not to be found; but the
further down he goes in the scale, the more numerous are those
who take the word from above, so that his fame is no more
arrested.
We must console ourselves for this state of things by reflect-
ing that it is really fortunate that the greater number of men
do not form a judgment on their own responsibility, but merely
take it on authority. For what sort of criticism should we have
on Plato and Kant, Homer, Shakespeare, and Goethe, if every
man were to form his opinion by what he really has and enjoys
of these writers, instead of being forced by authority to speak of
them in a fit and proper way, however little he may really feel
what he says? Unless something of this kind took place, it
would be impossible for true merit, in any high sphere, to attain
fame at all. At the same time, it is also fortunate that every
man has just so much critical power of his own as is necessary
for recognizing the superiority of those who are placed immedi-
ately over him, and for following their lead. This means that
the many come in the end to submit to the authority of the few;
and there results that hierarchy of critical judgments, on which
is based the possibility of a steady and eventually wide-spreading
fame.
The lowest class in the community is quite impervious to the
merits of a great genius; and for these people there is nothing
left but the monument raised to him, which, by the impression
it produces on their senses, awakens in them a dim idea of the
man's greatness.
Literary journals should be a dam against the unconscionable
scribbling of the age, and the ever-increasing deluge of bad and
useless books. Their judgments should be uncorrupted, just, and
rigorous; and every piece of bad work done by an incapable
person, every device by which the empty head tries to come to
the assistance of the empty purse, that is to say, about nine
tenths of all existing books,- should be mercilessly scourged. Lit-
erary journals would then perform their duty; which is to keep
down the craving for writing, and put a check upon the decep-
tion of the public, instead of furthering these evils by a miserable


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12948
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
toleration which plays into the hands of author and publisher,
and robs the reader of his time and his money.
If there were such a paper as I mean, every bad writer, every
brainless compiler, every plagiarist from others' books, every hol-
low and incapable place-hunter, every sham philosopher, every
vain and languishing poetaster, would shudder at the prospect
of the pillory in which his bad work would inevitably have to
stand soon after publication. This would paralyze his twitching
fingers, to the true welfare of literature; in which what is bad is
not only useless but positively pernicious. Now, most books are
bad and ought to have remained unwritten. Consequently praise
should be as rare as is now the case with blame; which is with-
held under the influence of personal considerations, coupled with
the maxim, "Accedas socius, laudes lauderis ut absens. "*
It is quite wrong to try to introduce into literature the same
toleration as must necessarily prevail in society towards those
stupid, brainless people who everywhere swarm in it. In liter-
ature such people are impudent intruders; and to disparage the
bad is here duty towards the good, for he who thinks nothing
bad will think nothing good either. Politeness, which has its
source in social relations, is in literature an alien and often in-
jurious element; because it exacts that bad work shall be called
good.
In this way the very aim of science and art is directly
frustrated.
This ideal journal could, to be sure, be written only by peo-
ple who joined incorruptible honesty with rare knowledge and
still rarer power of judgment: so that perhaps there could at the
very most be one, and even hardly one, in the whole country;
but there it would stand, like a just Areopagus, every member
of which would have to be elected by all the others. Under the
system that prevails at present, literary journals are carried on
by a clique, and secretly perhaps also by booksellers for the
good of the trade; and they are often nothing but coalitions of
bad heads to prevent the good ones succeeding. As Goethe once
remarked to me, nowhere is there so much dishonesty as in lit-
erature.
But above all, anonymity, that shield of all literary rascality,
would have to disappear. It was introduced under the pretext
of protecting the honest critic, who warned the public, against the
*"Agree as a companion, praise that when absent you may be yourself
praised. »


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12949
resentment of the author and his friends. But where there is
one case of this sort, there will be a hundred where it merely
serves to take all responsibility from the man who cannot stand
by what he has said; or possibly to conceal the shame of one
who has been cowardly and base enough to recommend a book
to the public for the purpose of putting money into his own
pocket. Often enough it is only a cloak for covering the obscur-
ity, incompetence, and insignificance of the critic. It is incredi-
ble what impudence these fellows will show, and what literary
trickery they will venture to commit, as soon as they know they
are safe under the shadow of anonymity. Let me recommend a
general Anticriticism, a universal medicine or panacea, to put a
stop to all anonymous reviewing, whether it praises the bad or
blames the good: Rascal, your name! For a man to wrap himself
up and draw his hat over his face, and then fall upon people
who are walking about without any disguise,- this is not the part
of a gentleman: it is the part of a scoundrel and a knave.
An anonymous review has no more authority than an anony-
mous letter; and one should be received with the same mistrust
as the other. Or shall we take the name of the man who con-
sents to preside over what is, in the strict sense of the word,
une société anonyme, as a guarantee for the veracity of his col-
leagues?
«<
Even Rousseau, in the preface to the 'Nouvelle Héloïse,'
declares, "Tout honnête homme doit avouer les livres qu'il pub-
lie;" which in plain language means that every honorable man
ought to sign his articles, and that no one is honorable who does
not do so. How much truer this is of polemical writing, which
is the general character of reviews! Riemer was quite right in
the opinion he gives in his 'Reminiscences of Goethe': “An
overt enemy," he says, an enemy who meets you face to face,
is an honorable man, who will treat you fairly, and with whom
you can come to terms and be reconciled: but an enemy who
conceals himself is a base, cowardly scoundrel, who has not cour-
age enough to avow his own judgment; it is not his opinion
that he cares about, but only the secret pleasure of wreaking his
anger without being found out or punished. " This must also
have been Goethe's opinion, as he was generally the source from
which Riemer drew his observations. And indeed, Rousseau's
* "Every honest man ought to acknowledge the books he publishes. "


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12950
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
maxim applies to every line that is printed. Would a man in a
mask ever be allowed to harangue a mob, or speak in any assem-
bly, and that too when he was going to attack others and over-
whelm them with abuse?
Anonymity is the refuge for all literary and journalistic ras-
cality. It is a practice which must be completely stopped.
Every article, even in a newspaper, should be accompanied by
the name of its author; and the editor should be made strictly
responsible for the accuracy of the signature. The freedom of
the press should be thus far restricted: so that what a man pub-
licly proclaims through the far-sounding trumpet of the news-
paper, he should be answerable for at any rate with his honor,
if he has any; and if he has none, let his name neutralize the
effect of his words. And since even the most insignificant person
is known in his own circle, the result of such a measure would
be to put an end to two thirds of the newspaper lies, and to
restrain the audacity of many a poisonous tongue.
Translation of T. Bailey Saunders.
―
ON AUTHORSHIP
THE
-
HERE are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write
for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's
sake. While the one have had thoughts or experiences
which seem to them worth communicating, the others want
money; and so they write
- for money. Their thinking is part
of the business of writing. They may be recognized by the way
in which they spin out their thoughts to the greatest possible
length; then too, by the very nature of their thoughts, which are
only half true, perverse, forced, vacillating; again, by the aversion
they generally show to saying anything straight out, so that they
may seem other than they are. Hence their writing is deficient
in clearness and definiteness, and it is not long before they betray
that their only object in writing at all is to cover paper. This
sometimes happens with the best authors; now and then, for
example, with Lessing in his 'Dramaturgie,' and even in many
of Jean Paul's romances. As soon as the reader perceives this,
let him throw the book away; for time is precious. The truth is
that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering


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ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
12951
paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the
pretext that he has something to say.
Writing for money and reservation of copyright are at bot-
tom the ruin of literature. No one writes anything that is worth
writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.
What an inestimable boon it would be, if in every branch of lit-
erature there were only a few books, but those excellent! This
can never happen as long as money is to be made by writing.
It seems
as though the money lay under a curse; for every
author degenerates as soon as he begins to put pen to paper in
any way for the sake of gain. The best works of the greatest
men all come from the time when they had to write for nothing
or for very little. And here too that Spanish proverb holds
good, which declares that honor and money are not to be found
in the same purse,-"Honra y provecho no caben en un saco.
The reason why literature is in such a bad plight nowadays is
simply and solely that people write books to make money. A
man who is in want sits down and writes a book, and the public
is stupid enough to buy it. The secondary effect of this is the
ruin of language.
>>
T
A great many bad writers make their whole living by that
foolish mania of the public for reading nothing but what has just
been printed,—journalists, I mean. Truly, a most appropriate
In plain language it is journeymen, day-laborers!
name.
Again, it may be said that there are three kinds of authors.
First come those who write without thinking. They write from
a full memory, from reminiscences; it may be, even straight
out of other people's books. This class is the most numerous.
Then come those who do their thinking whilst they are writing,—
they think in order to write; and there is no lack of them. Last
of all come those authors who think before they begin to write:
they are rare.
Authors of the second class, who put off their thinking until
they come to write, are like a sportsman who goes forth at ran-
dom and is not likely to bring very much home. On the other
hand, when an author of the third or rare class writes, it is like
a battue. Here the game has been previously captured and shut
up within a very small space; from which it is afterwards let
out, so many at a time, into another space, also confined. The
game cannot possibly escape the sportsman; he has nothing to
do but aim and fire,- in other words, write down his thoughts.


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ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
12952
This is a kind of sport from which a man has something to
show.
But even though the number of those who really think seri-
ously before they begin to write is small, extremely few of them
think about the subject itself: the remainder think only about
the books that have been written on the subject, and what has
been said by others. In order to think at all, such writers need
the more direct and powerful stimulus of having other people's
thoughts before them. These become their immediate theme;
and the result is that they are always under their influence, and
so never, in any real sense of the word, original. But the former
are roused to thought by the subject itself, to which their think-
ing is thus immediately directed. This is the only class that
produces writers of abiding fame.
It must of course be understood that I am speaking here of
writers who treat of great subjects; not of writers on the art of
making brandy.
Unless an author takes the material on which he writes out of
his own head,- that is to say, from his own observation,— he is
not worth reading. Book manufacturers, compilers, the common
run of history writers, and many others of the same class, take
their material immediately out of books; and the material goes
straight to their finger-tips without even paying freight or under-
going examination as it passes through their heads, to say noth-
ing of elaboration or revision. How very learned many a man
would be if he knew everything that was in his own books! The
consequence of this is, that these writers talk in such a loose
and vague manner that the reader puzzles his brains in vain to
understand what it is of which they are really thinking. They
are thinking of nothing. It may now and then be the case that
the book from which they copy has been composed exactly in the
same way; so that writing of this sort is like a plaster cast of a
cast, and in the end the bare outline of the face- and that too
hardly recognizable—is all that is left of your Antinoüs. Let
compilations be read as seldom as possible. It is difficult to
avoid them altogether, since compilations also include those text-
books which contain in a small space the accumulated knowledge
of centuries.
There is no greater mistake than to suppose that the last
work is always the more correct; that what is written later on is
in every case an improvement on what was written before; and


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12953
that change always means progress. Real thinkers, men of right
judgment, people who are in earnest with their subject, these
are all exceptions only. Vermin is the rule everywhere in the
world: it is always on the alert, taking the mature opinions of
the thinkers, and industriously seeking to improve upon them
(save the mark! ) in its own peculiar way.
If the reader wishes to study any subject, let him beware of
rushing to the newest books upon it, and confining his attention.
to them alone, under the notion that science is always advancing,
and that the old books have been drawn upon in the writing of
the new. They have been drawn upon, it is true; but how? The
writer of the new book often does not understand the old books
thoroughly, and yet he is unwilling to take their exact words; so
he bungles them, and says in his own bad way that which has
been said very much better and more clearly by the old writers
who wrote from their own lively knowledge of the subject. The
new writer frequently omits the best things they say, their most
striking illustrations, their happiest remarks, because he does not
see their value or feel how pregnant they are. The only thing
that appeals to him is what is shallow and insipid.
Translation of T. Bailey Saunders.
THE ALUE OF PERSONALITY
―――
A
RISTOTLE divides the blessings of life into three classes: those
which come to us from without, those of the soul, and those
of the body. Keeping nothing of this division but the num-
ber, I observe that the fundamental differences in human lot may
be reduced to three distinct classes:
(1) What a man is: that is to say, personality, in the widest
sense of the word; under which are included health, strength,
beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence, and education.
(2) What a man has: that is, property and possessions of
every kind.
(3) How a man stands in the estimation of others: by which
is to be understood, as everybody knows, what a man is in the
eyes of his fellow-men,- or more strictly, the light in which they
regard him. This is shown by their opinion of him; and their


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12954
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
opinion is in its turn manifested by the honor in which he is
held, and by his rank and reputation.
The differences which come under the first head are those
which nature herself has set between man and man; and from
this fact alone we may at once infer that they influence the hap-
piness or unhappiness of mankind in a much more vital and
radical way than those contained under the two following heads,
which are merely the effect of human arrangements. Compared
with genuine personal advantages, such as a great mind or a
great heart, all the privileges of rank or birth, even of royal birth,
are but as kings on the stage to kings in real life. The same
thing was said long ago by Metrodorus, the earliest disciple
of Epicurus, who wrote as the title of one of his chapters, "The
happiness we receive from ourselves is greater than that which
we obtain from our surroundings. " And it is an obvious fact,
which cannot be called in question, that the principal element
in a man's well-being- indeed, in the whole tenor of his exist-
ence is what he is made of, his inner constitution. For this
is the immediate source of that inward satisfaction or dissatis-
faction resulting from the sum total of his sensations, desires, and
thoughts; whilst his surroundings, on the other hand, exert only
a mediate or indirect influence upon him. This is why the same
external events or circumstances affect no two people alike:
even with perfectly similar surroundings, every one lives in a
world of his own. For a man has immediate apprehension only
of his own ideas, feelings, and volitions; the outer world can
influence him only in so far as it brings these to life. The world
in which a man lives, shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he
looks at it, and so it proves different to different men: to one it is
barren, dull, and superficial; to another rich, interesting, and full
of meaning. On hearing of the interesting events which have
happened in the course of a man's experience, many people will
wish that similar things had happened in their lives too; com-
pletely forgetting that they should be envious rather of the mental
aptitude which lent those events the significance they possess
when he describes them: to a man of genius they were interest-
ing adventures; but to the dull perceptions of an ordinary indi-
vidual they would have been stale, every-day occurrences. This
is in the highest degree the case with many of Goethe's and
Byron's poems, which are obviously founded upon actual facts;


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ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
12955
where it is open to a foolish reader to envy the poet because so
many delightful things happened to him, instead of envying that
mighty power of fantasy which was capable of turning a fairly
common experience into something so great and beautiful.
In the same way, a person of melancholy temperament will
make a scene in a tragedy out of what appears to the sanguine
man only in the light of an interesting conflict, and to a phleg-
matic soul as something without any meaning; - all of which
rests upon the fact that every event, in order to be realized and
appreciated, requires the co-operation of two factors,- namely, a
subject and an object; although these are as closely and neces-
sarily connected as oxygen and hydrogen in water. When there-
fore the objective or external factor in an experience is actually
the same, but the subjective or personal appreciation of it varies,
the event is just as much a different one in the eyes of differ-
ent persons as if the objective factors had not been alike; for
to a blunt intelligence the fairest and best object in the world
presents only a poor reality, and is therefore only poorly appre-
ciated,—like a fine landscape in dull weather, or in the reflection
of a bad camera oscura. In plain language, every man is pent
up within the limits of his own consciousness, and cannot directly
get beyond those limits any more than he can get beyond his
own skin; so external aid is not of much use to him. On the
stage, one man is a prince, another a minister, a third a servant
or a soldier or a general, and so on,- mere external differences:
the inner reality, the kernel of all these appearances, is the same,
a poor player, with all the anxieties of his lot. In life it is
just the same. Differences of rank and wealth give every man
his part to play, but this by no means implies a difference of
inward happiness and pleasure; here too there is the same being
in all, a poor mortal, with his hardships and troubles. Though
these may, indeed, in every case proceed from dissimilar causes,
they are in their essential nature much the same in all their
forms; with degrees of intensity which vary, no doubt, but in no
wise correspond to the part a man has to play,-to the pres-
ence or absence of position and wealth. Since everything which
exists or happens for a man exists only in his consciousness, and
happens for it alone, the most essential thing for a man is the
constitution of this consciousness, which is in most cases far more
important than the circumstances which go to form its contents.
All the pride and pleasure of the world, mirrored in the dull
-


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12956
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
consciousness of a fool, is poor indeed compared with the imagi-
nation of Cervantes writing his 'Don Quixote' in a miserable
prison. The objective half of life and reality is in the hand of
fate, and accordingly takes various forms in different cases; the
subjective half is ourself, and in essentials it always remains the
same.
Hence the life of every man is stamped with the same char-
acter throughout, however much his external circumstances may
alter: it is like a series of variations on a single theme. No one
can get beyond his own individuality. An animal, under what-
ever circumstances it is placed, remains within the narrow limits
to which nature has irrevocably consigned it; so that our endeav
ors to make a pet happy must always keep within the compass of
its nature, and be restricted to what it can feel. So it is with
man: the measure of the happiness he can attain is determined
beforehand by his individuality. More especially is this the case
with the mental powers, which fix once for all his capacity for
the higher kinds of pleasure. If these powers are small, no efforts
from without, nothing that his fellow-men or that fortune can do
for him, will suffice to raise him above the ordinary degree of
human happiness and pleasure, half animal though it be: his only
resources are his sensual appetite,- a cozy and cheerful family
life at the most, low company and vulgar pastime; even education,
on the whole, can avail little if anything for the enlargement of
his horizon. For the highest, most varied, and lasting pleasures
are those of the mind, however much our youth may deceive us
on this point; and the pleasures of the mind turn chiefly on the
powers of the mind. It is clear, then, that our happiness depends
in a great degree upon what we are, upon our individuality;
whilst lot or destiny is generally taken to mean only what we
have, or our reputation. Our lot, in this sense, may improve; but
we do not ask much of it if we are inwardly rich: on the other
hand, a fool remains a fool, a dull blockhead, to his last hour,
even though he were surrounded by houris in Paradise. This is
why Goethe, in the West-östlicher Divan,' says that every man,
whether he occupy a low position in life or emerge as its victor,
testifies to personality as the greatest factor in happiness.
Translation of T. Bailey Saunders.


## p. 12957 (#387) ##########################################

12957
OLIVE SCHREINER
(1863-)
N THE Summer of 1883 a little unheralded book, by an un-
known author, appeared in the rank and file of contempo-
rary fiction. Its title, The Story of an African Farm,'
arrested attention, for the ostrich farm of South Africa was then
virgin soil; not only virgin in its solemn monotony of unbroken
plain and fierce sunlight, but virgin in its traditions and its customs.
The most cursory glance at the first chapter was enough to show
the author of The Story of an African Farm' to be a virile and
dramatic genius, independent of her choice
of setting. Two facts, somewhat disguised
(for the book was written under the pen-
name of "Ralph Iron," and incident and
character were treated with masculine bold-
ness), betrayed to the omniscient critic that
the writer was a woman and young. Miss
Schreiner has a remarkable intuition regard-
ing the thoughts and feelings of men; but
she reveals her sex by her profound pre-
occupation with the problem of its relation
to the world. Moreover, only a girlish Am-
azon of the pen could have written a story
so harsh and hopeless. Only to eyes of
youthful intolerance could compromise and
extenuation (qualities rich in the temperance which Hamlet loved)
have been so immeasurably remote.
The girl author, it is plain, was enamored with the bottom of
things; she had made straight for the central mysteries of life and
faith, and looked, unblinking, at naked truths that wrest the soul.
So far and no farther, however, do age and sex affect the story.
There is none of the negligent superiority to the received dictums of
style, in which her literary kinswoman, Emily Bronté, expressed the
conventionally impossible. In strong, brief words and telling phrase
the tale is told. A few bold, masterly strokes-as though from very
familiarity she had wearied of local color, or disdained to use it-
indicate the hueless, treeless, monotonous landscape of the ostrich
farm, the grotesque, terrible caricature of deity that broods over it,

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and the strange, vulgar, elementary people who live there. These she
draws with bitter and cynical humor, sparing nothing of coarseness
or repulsiveness in the broad, high-light portraits. The rose has scent
and thorn, but she takes the thorn; and line by line sets down the
mean, ugly life, its commonplaceness, its gross content. Walsingham
wrote, "Her Majesty counts much on fortune, I wish she would trust
more to the Almighty;" and as we read this young girl's story, we
feel her to be another Elizabeth. The horoscope of her characters
once cast, they have no more power to divert it than to reverse the
laws of gravitation.
To three unhappy beings- unhappy because they are of finer
mold, physically and mentally, than the rest-she commits the task
of showing the relentlessness of fate. The boy Waldo worships the
fetish he has been taught to call God, and pours out his whole inno-
cent, ignorant soul into its deaf ear; the little English girl, Em,
begs for love; the beautiful, proud child Lyndall asks only for
freedom to experience-to know. They beat their wings against
the bars and fall back, the one despairing, the other rebellious,
the third exhausted; but all fall back on the dull animal existence,
wounded unto death.
-
Only at the last does a certain drowsy calm rest on their tired
eyelids. In the author's hopeless creed there is a single sweet nar-
cotic for the soul's unrest. "Come," she says, "to Nature, the great
healer, the celestial surgeon, who, before quenching forever conscious
identity, will, if thou wilt, fold thee in her kind arms. "
The dramatic power of 'The Story of an African Farm' takes
hold of the reader from the first chapter-when the African moon
pours its light from the blue sky to the wide lonely plain, and the
boy Waldo cries out in agony, "O God, save thy people, save a few
of thy people"-to the sculpturesque scene where the dying Lyn-
dall fights her last fight, inch by inch, along the weary road. In her
gospel, ardor and hope are put to shame, and all men are equal only
in the pity of their limitations and the terror of their doom. The
austere young dramatist fights a dark and sinister world with incal-
culable and unclassified energy.
A period of characteristic silence followed the immense popular
success of The Story of an African Farm. ' In 1890 the curiously
effective but unequal 'Dreams' appeared; and in 1893 'Dream Life
and Real Life,' a little African story, whose theme was the self-
sacrifice, the martyrdom, the aspirations of woman. Trooper Peter
Halket' was published in 1897. More than an exercise in polemics,
it is a scornful presentment of the policy and methods of the Char-
tered Company in South Africa. The experiment of writing a mod-
ern gospel is ambitious work, even for so bold and original a writer


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as Olive Schreiner: but it must be conceded that she has blended
the baldest realism and the ideal and the supernatural with such
powerful dramatic handling, that the struggle between the forces
of good and evil, between Christian obligation and the way of the
world, becomes an absorbing, exciting conflict; while the tragedy
of the end, the old hopelessness that bounded and pervaded The
Story of an African Farm,' is its most pathetic episode. The author
of these remarkable books is as artistic in construction as she is
strong in dramatic power.
Olive Schreiner was born in 1863 in Cape Town, Africa. She
was the daughter of a Lutheran minister, and at twenty years of
age published her first book. In 1890 she married Mr. Cronwright,
an Anglo-African resident of her native colony.
SHADOWS FROM CHILD LIFE
From the Story of an African Farm›
THE WATCH
THE
HE full African moon poured down its light from the blue
sky into the wide, lonely plain. The dry, sandy earth,
with its coating of stunted "karroo" bushes a few inches
high, the low hills that skirted the plain, the milk-bushes with
their long finger-like leaves, all were touched by a weird and
an almost oppressive beauty as they lay in the white light.
In one spot only was the solemn monotony of the plain
broken. Near the centre a small solitary "kopje " rose. Alone
it lay there, a heap of round ironstones piled one upon another,
as over some giant's grave. Here and there a few tufts of
grass or small succulent plants had sprung up among its stones;
and on the very summit a clump of prickly pears lifted thei
thorny arms, and reflected, as from mirrors, the moonlight on
their broad fleshy leaves. At the foot of the "kopje" lay the
homestead. First, the stone-walled sheep kraals and Kaffir huts;
beyond them the dwelling-house,-a square red brick building
with thatched roof. Even on its bare red walls, and the wooden
ladder that led up to the loft, the moonlight cast a kind of
dreamy beauty; and quite etherealized the low brick wall that
ran before the house, and which inclosed a bare patch of sand
and two straggling sunflowers. On the zinc roof of the great


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open wagon-house, on the roofs of the outbuildings that jutted
from its side, the moonlight glinted with a quite peculiar bright-
ness, till it seemed that every rib in the metal was of burnished
silver.
Sleep ruled everywhere, and the homestead was not less quiet
than the solitary plain.
In the farm-house, on her great wooden bedstead, Tant' San-
nie, the Boer-woman, rolled heavily in her sleep.
She had gone to bed, as she always did, in her clothes; and
the night was warm, and the room close: and she dreamed bad
dreams,—not of the ghosts and devils that so haunted her waking
thoughts; not of her second husband, the consumptive English-
man, whose grave lay away beyond the ostrich camps, nor of
her first, the young Boer, but only of the sheep's trotters she had
eaten for supper that night. She dreamed that one stuck fast in
her throat, and she rolled her huge form from side to side and
snorted horribly.
In the next room, where the maid had forgotten to close the
shutter, the white moonlight fell in in a flood, and made it light as
day. There were two small beds against the wall. In one lay a
yellow-haired child, with a low forehead and a freckled face; but
the loving moonlight hid defects here as elsewhere, and showed
only the innocent face of a child in its first sweet sleep.
The figure in the companion bed belonged of right to the
moonlight, for it was of quite elfin-like beauty. The child had
dropped her cover on the floor, and the moonlight looked in at
the naked little limbs. Presently she opened her eyes, and looked
at the moonlight that was bathing her.
"Em! " she called to the sleeper in the other bed, but re-
ceived no answer. Then she drew the cover from the floor,
turned her pillow, and pulling the sheet over her head, went to
sleep again.
Only in one of the outbuildings that jutted from the wagon-
house, there was some one who was not asleep. The room was
dark; door and shutter were closed; not a ray of light entered
anywhere. The German overseer, to whom the room belonged,
lay sleeping soundly on his bed in the corner, his great arms
folded, and his bushy gray-and-black beard rising and falling on
his breast. But one in the room was not asleep. Two large
eyes looked about in the darkness, and two small hands were
smoothing the patchwork quilt. The boy, who slept on a box


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under the window, had just awakened from his first sleep. He
drew the quilt up to his chin, so that little peered above it but
a great head of silky black curls, and the two black eyes. He
stared about in the darkness. Nothing was visible; not even the
outline of one worm-eaten rafter, nor of the deal table on which
lay the Bible from which his father had read before they went
to bed. No one could tell where the tool-box was, and where
the fireplace. There was something very impressive to the child
in the complete darkness.
At the head of his father's bed hung a great silver hunting-
watch. It ticked loudly. The boy listened to it, and began
mechanically to count. Tick-tick-tick! one, two, three, four!
He lost count presently, and only listened. Tick-tick - tick-
tick!
It never waited; it went on inexorably; and every time it
ticked, a man died! He raised himself a little on his elbow
and listened. He wished it would leave off.
How many times had it ticked since he came to lie down ? A
thousand times, a million times, perhaps.
He tried to count again, and sat up to listen better.
“Dying, dying, dying! " said the watch; "dying, dying, dy-
ing! "
Where were they going to, all those
He heard it distinctly.
people?
He lay down quickly, and pulled the cover up over his head;
but presently the silky curls reappeared.
"Dying, dying, dying! " said the watch; "dying, dying, dy-
ing! "
He thought of the words his father had read that evening:
"For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to
destruction, and many there be which go in thereat. "
"Many, many, many! " said the watch.
"Because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, that
leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. "
"Few, few, few! " said the watch.
The boy lay with his eyes wide open. He saw before him
a long stream of people, a great dark multitude, that moved in
one direction; then they came to the dark edge of the world,
and went over. He saw them passing on before him, and there
was nothing that could stop them. He thought of how that
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stream had rolled on through all the long ages of the past
how the old Greeks and Romans had gone over; the countless
millions of China and India, they were going over now. Since
he had come to bed, how many had gone!
And the watch said, "Eternity, eternity, eternity! "
"Stop them! stop them! " cried the child.
And all the while the watch kept ticking on; just like God's
will, that never changes or alters, you may do what you please.
Great beads of perspiration stood on the boy's forehead. He
climbed out of bed, and lay with his face turned to the mud
floor.
"O God, God! save them! " he cried in agony. "Only some;
only a few! Only, for each moment I am praying here, one! "
He folded his little hands upon his head. "God! God! save
them! "
He groveled on the floor.
over!
Oh, the long, long ages of the past, in which they had gone
Oh, the long, long future, in which they would pass
away! O God! the long, long, long eternity, which has no end!
The child wept, and crept closer to the ground.
THE SACRIFICE
THE farm by daylight was not as the farm by moonlight.
The plain was a weary flat of loose red sand, sparsely covered
by dry karroo bushes, that cracked beneath the tread like tinder,
and showed the red earth everywhere. Here and there a milk-
bush lifted its pale-colored rods, and in every direction the ants
and beetles ran about in the blazing sand. The red walls of the
farm-house, the zinc roofs of the outbuildings, the stone walls of
the kraals, all reflected the fierce sunlight, till the eye ached and
blenched. No tree or shrub was to be seen far or near. The
two sunflowers that stood before the door, outstared by the sun,
drooped their brazen faces to the sand; and the little cicada-like
insects cried aloud among the stones of, the "kopje. "
The Boer-woman seen by daylight was even less lovely than
when, in bed, she rolled and dreamed. She sat on a chair in
the great front room, with her feet on a wooden stove, and
wiped her flat face with the corner of her apron, and drank
coffee, and in Cape Dutch swore that the beloved weather was


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damned. L lovely, too, by daylight was the dead English-
man's child, her little stepdaughter, upon whose freckles and low
wrinkled forehead the sunlight had no mercy.
"Lyndall," the child said to her little orphan cousin, who
sat with her on the floor threading beads, "how is it your beads
never fall off your needle ? »
"I try," said the little one gravely, moistening her tiny finger,
"That is why. "
The overseer, seen by daylight, was a huge German, wearing
a shabby suit, and with a childish habit of rubbing his hands
and nodding his head prodigiously when pleased at anything. He
stood out at the kraals, in the blazing sun, explaining to two
Kaffir boys the approaching end of the world. The boys, as
they cut the cakes of dung, winked at each other, and worked as
slowly as they possibly could; but the German never saw it.
Away beyond the "kopje," Waldo, his son, herded the ewes
and lambs, a small and dusty herd,-powdered all over from
head to foot with red sand, wearing a ragged coat, and shoes
of undressed leather, through whose holes the toes looked out.
His hat was too large, and had sunk down to his eyes, concealing
completely the silky black curls. It was a curious small figure.
His flock gave him little trouble. It was too hot for them to
move far; they gathered round every little milk-bush as though
they hoped to find shade, and stood there motionless in clumps.
He himself crept under a shelving rock that lay at the foot of
the "kopje," stretched himself on his stomach, and waved his
dilapidated little shoes in the air.
Soon, from the blue bag where he kept his dinner, he pro-
duced a fragment of slate, an arithmetic, and a pencil. Proceed-
ing to put down a sum with solemn and earnest demeanor, he
began to add it up aloud: "Six and two is eight, and four is
twelve, and two is fourteen, and four is eighteen. " Here he
paused. "And four is eighteen-and-four — is eighteen. "
—
The last was very much drawled. Slowly the pencil slipped
from his fingers, and the slate followed it into the sand. For
a while he lay motionless; then began muttering to himself,
folded his little arms, laid his head down upon them, and might
have been asleep but for a muttering sound that from time to
time proceeded from him. A curious old ewe came to sniff at
him; but it was long before he raised his head. When he did,
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"Ye shall receive, ye shall receive,-shall, shall, shall," he
muttered.
He sat up then. Slowly the dullness and heaviness melted
from his face; it became radiant. Midday had come now, and
the sun's rays were poured down vertically; the earth throbbed
before the eye.
The boy stood up quickly, and cleared a small space from the
bushes which covered it. Looking carefully, he found twelve
small stones of somewhat the same size; kneeling down, he
arranged them carefully on the cleared space in a square pile,
in shape like an altar. Then he walked to the bag where his
dinner was kept; in it was a mutton chop and a large slice
of brown bread. The boy took them out, and turned the bread
over in his hand, deeply considering it. Finally he threw it
away, and walked to the altar with the meat, and laid it down
on the stones. Close by, in the red sand, he knelt down. Sure,
never since the beginning of the world was there so ragged
and so small a priest. He took off his great hat and placed it
solemnly on the ground, then closed his eyes and folded his
hands. He prayed aloud:
"O God, my Father, I have made thee a sacrifice. I have
only twopence, so I cannot buy a lamb. If the lambs were mine
I would give thee one: but now I have only this meat; it is my
dinner-meat. Please, my Father, send fire down from heaven to
burn it. Thou hast said, Whosoever shall say unto this mount-
ain, Be thou cast into the sea, nothing doubting, it shall be done.
I ask for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen. "
He knelt down with his face upon the ground, and he folded
his hands upon his curls. The fierce sun poured down its heat
upon his head and upon his altar. When he looked up he
knew what he should see, the glory of God! For fear, his very
heart stood still, his breath came heavily; he was half suffocated.
He dared not look up. Then at last he raised himself. Above
him was the quiet blue sky, about him the red earth; there
were the clumps of silent ewes and his altar-that was all.
He looked up: nothing broke the intense stillness of the blue
overhead. He looked round in astonishment; then he bowed again,
and this time longer than before.
When he raised himself the second time, all was unaltered.
Only the sun had melted the fat of the little mutton-chop, and it
ran down upon the stones.
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Then the third time he bowed himself. When at last he
looked up, some ants had come to the meat on the altar. He
stood up, and drove them away. Then he put his hat on his
hot curls, and sat in the shade. He clasped his hands about his
knees. He sat to watch what would come to pass.
The glory
of the Lord God Almighty! He knew he should see it.
"My dear God is trying me," he said; and he sat there through
the fierce heat of the afternoon. Still he watched and waited
when the sun began to slope; and when it neared the horizon
and the sheep began to cast long shadows across the karroo,
he still sat there. He hoped when the first rays touched the
hills, till the sun dipped behind them and was gone. Then he
called his ewes together, and broke down the altar, and threw the
meat far, far away into the field.
He walked home behind his flock. His heart was heavy. He
reasoned so: "God cannot lie. I had faith. No fire came.
I am
like Cain, I am not his. He will not hear my prayer.