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 Cornell university Library 
 PR 5453.S65M5 
 The melancholx,of.S|tephen Wlajjl, a P|iva 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 3551 993 
 
THE 
 MELANCHOLY OF STEPHEN ALLARD 
 
,^>fm. 
 
The 
 
 Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 A PRIVATE DIARY 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 GARNET SMITH 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND LONDON 
 1895 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
Copyright, 1894, 
 By MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 30 9 ^:^^£ 
 
 NotSnool! 3|rEiiB: 
 
 J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 
 
 Boston. Mass., U.S.A. 
 
PREFATORIAL NOTE 
 
 In publishing this private diary of a dead friend 
 I transgress his manifest intention. My plea and, 
 I hope, sufficient excuse must be the interest with 
 which I have read it, and with which, possibly, 
 others will read it. Lacking a2ithority and special 
 competency for the task, I have restricted my 
 functions as editor to their narrowest limits ; I 
 have m.erely divided the diary into parts, and 
 placed marginal summaries at the head of each 
 section. T add no portrait of m.y friend drawn from 
 my own recollections of his personality, no criticcd 
 essay ; I do not presume to offer a clue towards the 
 better comprehension of the book, or to deduce a 
 moral : Stephen Allard must speak for himself. 
 I will only state that such of his acquaintances as 
 I have consulted had little or no suspicion of his 
 melancholy, and briefly account for the coming of 
 the diary into my possession. 
 
 I first became acquainted with Stephen Allard 
 at Oxford. He was quiet, gentle, reserved, more 
 C V ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 ready to make music than sustain a part m conver- 
 sation. An indefatigable student, he was possibly 
 too interested in subjects that lie outside the ordi- 
 nary curriculum ; his copious and varied learning 
 was known barely, if at all. With the end of our 
 University careers, our intercourse almost ceased. 
 We were separated by distance, and he was not a 
 frequent correspondent. The letters I received from 
 him were curiously impersonal ; he pleasantly dis- 
 cussed matters suggested, but told little or nothing 
 of his own fortunes. I could gather at most that he 
 was in some very subordinate position and did not 
 expect any change. He seemed to have become more 
 retiring than ever ; but I judged him versatile, and 
 ample company to himself. About four years ago, 
 after a brief visit to the South Coast, he inclosed in 
 a letter some little lyrics which caused me to ask for 
 more of the kind, and from time to ti'>ne during the 
 space of a year or so he sent me fresh i7istalments, 
 but never spoke of them in the accompanying letters, 
 though I endeavoured to make him break his silence 
 by critical praise and censure. I now discover in 
 these lyi'ics the first slender draught, as it were, of 
 the present diary. A year and a half ago he sur- 
 prised me by the information that he was going to 
 live in Devonshire for a year, and that he was able 
 to do so without detriment to his fortunes. During 
 eight m.onths T received occasional letters from him 
 containing agreeable descriptions of scenery and 
 [ vi ] 
 
Prefatorial Note 
 
 kindly inquiries. But there came a letter from the 
 farm at which he was staying with news that m.y 
 friend was dangerously ill. I was his sole cor- 
 respondent, it would seem ; and they had made out 
 my address from my last letter. I arrived only to 
 find that pneumonia had proved fatal in a few 
 days. In his writing desk I discovered this diary 
 and a small sum of money, which sufficed to defray 
 the unhappy expenses and to reward in some m.eas- 
 ure the kindly people whose care seemed to have 
 been all that could be desired, and whose expressions 
 of sorrow were most affecting. After inquiry, T 
 handed over his effects to some distant relatives, 
 and was allowed to retain his desk, the diary it 
 contained, and the books he had brought with him. 
 
 Finally, I coUld wish that he should not be 
 judged by a single phrase, or paj'agraph, or section. 
 Though the method of its composition necessarily 
 precluded anything like an organic evolution, this 
 diary is still an orderly whole, not a collection of 
 separate, chance entries ; the same questio7ts recur 
 again and again, in different forms, the sections 
 reach backwards and forwards, presupposing in a 
 m.anner all that precedes, heralding all that suc- 
 ceeds. He is examining the causes and the possible 
 remedies of his melancholy, and censure, if it must 
 be censure, should at least be based on a careful 
 and complete study and inter-comparison of the 
 whole diary. He is his own critic ; " lucid self- 
 [ vii J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 examiner,'' he " discovers and applies to himself all 
 the charges that other men are like to bring against 
 him " ; he " amply scorns " himself. Perchance the 
 reader will agree that he is not to be altogether 
 scorned. It may even be that the " weaker breth- 
 ren," instead of deploring the publication of such a 
 book, should rather find in its very negations new 
 ground for simple faith , while, on the other hand, 
 those who deem themselves strong should possibly 
 find cause to distrust their presumed strength. But 
 I seem to see Stephen Allard preparing to criticise 
 this last sentence of m.ine, and rem,inding me that I 
 am in the way of infringing my declared intejition 
 to abstain from comment. 
 
 GARNET SMITH. 
 
 May 1894. 
 
 [ viii ] 
 
PART I 
 
 I, Stephen Allard, aged thirty, hansel my year of His retire- 
 liberty by this first entry in the diary that is to reveal ™^p' f™™ 
 me to myself. I am come from Babylon. I have fled 
 from Vanity Fair to take sanctuary among the hills. 
 This bare single room is my "tower of ivory," my 
 Pliny's retreat, my ce/Za pauperis. In Imperial Rome, 
 delicate voluptuaries and dilettante Stoics retired at 
 times to a little room secreted in their sumptuous 
 palaces, there to taste the joys of contrast and the 
 sweets of feigned poverty. But here is no make- : 
 believe; this is in all truth a cella pauperis, this bare 
 farmhouse chamber that is to be mine for a year of 
 days and nights. A table, a chair, a little bed, a few 
 shelves roughly joined to hold my books. Most of 
 them, indeed, dead weight of erudition, monuments of 
 my past curiosities, sometime treasures though they 
 were, and won at the cost of many privations, I have 
 left behind. But I am rich in the very lacking of 
 undesired superfluities, for these books that I have 
 brought with me resume the wisdom of the ages. 
 These are my teachers and friends, these are the typical 
 [ I ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 sages of humanity and the golden-voiced high priests 
 of melancholy. Through the window, I descry the 
 wooded hills, fair even now in wintry desolation. And 
 with the spring, roses and honeysuckle will trail across 
 my casement, and the deep-lying orchard beneath will 
 laugh with its rosy snow of bloom, and the feathered 
 choristers will wake me with morning music. No 
 longer shall I need to mute the strings of my violin as 
 heretofore, lest the sound penetrate thin partitions and 
 disturb my work-worn, town-dwelling neighbours. I 
 will bear it with me to the woods, verum secretumque, 
 fx.ov<Tdov, or to the quiet hills, and there, seated on a 
 knoll, mock Raphael's Apollo — doubtless with silly 
 sheep for attendant nymphs. ... Oh! to lie in the 
 chequered shade on the marge of summer woods, and 
 listen to the hum of insects, children of the Sun. To 
 breast the autumn breezes on the purple moors! . . . 
 But then comes sad winter once again, and my year 
 will be a-dying, my year of liberty. In the months of 
 flowers and birds, shall I live all too nonchalant, too much 
 in harmony with the hours of placid peace? Ere then, 
 at least, I shall have striven to obey the golden-lettered 
 Delphic precept, hearkening in the night-watches to 
 the mournful music of the wind among the shivering 
 trees, seeking to know myself, to read my destiny in 
 the glow of the embers. Destiny? . . . Providence? 
 . . . two aspects of the same mystery. . . . Chance ? 
 — still another name, less august, which the ignorance of 
 man employs to express those unexpected issues, those 
 so-called accidents that seem too trivial for Destiny to 
 be invoked as their cause,-— as though aught were trivial 
 or human measures of great or less were other than 
 human and relative. . . . Submission, in any case ■ for 
 
 [ 2 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 struggle is but agitated submission; the needle wavers, 
 but wavers to the pole. Submission, final word of 
 human wisdom; for all submit, and must submit — 
 oriental fatalists, in slavish resignation; Stoics, in para- 
 doxical serenity; Epicureans disillusioned, artful once to 
 snatch delight, in weary indifference; Christians, confi- 
 dent in the guidance of a loving hand, in cheerful acqui- 
 escence. . . . Nay, I will not wander to-night in distress 
 on the borders of the darkness that bounds the narrow 
 realm of the human intellect. This first evening of 
 freedom, long desired, almost unhoped, shall be con- 
 secrated to peace and joy, such joy as the shipwrecked 
 sailor must feel when he has reached the strand of some 
 isle of spring. In his joy, he thinks not of what the 
 future veils, nor will I. 
 
 I have fled to Nature for consolation. But such The causes 
 
 flight is mainly cowardice if more be sought than °*^ ^'^ ^^' 
 . . , , , ° tirement. 
 
 recreation of energy, than restful change of habit and 
 
 scene. Prolonged communion with Nature deepens 
 melancholy, unless one be a Wordsworth, self-centred, 
 invulnerable in lofty egoism; for the consciousness of 
 estrangement fails not to awake; we come to realise 
 acutely that there is a gulf between unhappy man and 
 impassive Nature, that, if we are her children, we are 
 yet inevitably her foes. 
 
 I have come hither to rediscover, if may be, my 
 personality, that personality which seems almost dis- 
 solved into a series of impressions, emotions, and reflec- 
 tions, devoid of unity; to discern, if possible, an aim 
 in my life, in universal life; to reason out a faith. 
 But self-analysis presupposes and aggravates disease. 
 Can I regain simplicity by self-analysis? Is self- 
 
 [ 3 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 knowledge possible; and, if possible, desirable? And 
 in what can reason avail me? By reasoning I should 
 at most comprehend the incomprehensibility of all 
 problems, from those of God, Immortality, Freedom, 
 downwards, and the necessity of "sceptical solutions 
 of (sceptical doubts." To lift the veil of Isis, of Maya, 
 to discover that anthropomorphical, teleological, moral 
 
 conceptions are necessary, and withal illusions ! 
 
 I fled hither, when flight was first possible, that I 
 might read clear in my heart, and decide how I shall 
 bear myself in this prosaic, mysterious world. And let 
 me ever remember that this year of liberty and leisure 
 for calm thought is due to a slender legacy that entered 
 not, and could not enter, into my calculations. Have 
 I exercised the wisdom of the serpent, of the prudent 
 man of the world, in thus employing it? I sought no 
 counsel; for he that is proud in indigence must cherish 
 isolation. He can give no joy, and must make shift 
 to congratulate himself that he is virtuous, if but neg- 
 atively virtuous, that his life is hidden, and of con- 
 sequence to none. I have abandoned the trivial post 
 and scanty pay of which, it would seem, I was worthy; 
 and the little sum of my legacy will be absorbed in the 
 charges of my sojourn here. But, when the time 
 comes that I must needs re-enter the world, I cannot 
 surely fare worse than I have already done these last 
 six years. By my flight I am a benefactor of society, 
 to the extent of one year's salary; for who can occupy 
 a post in this world without depriving another of it, 
 however little, or however much it be coveted? Yet 
 I must needs re-enter the world. Is action possible for 
 me, other than the nightmare action of these past 
 years? Sordid, unavailing, the very contradiction of 
 [ 4 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 that happiness which Aristotle, Goethe, and their kin 
 consider the true aim of life. Harmonious develop- 
 ment of self, the strenuous realisation and perfection 
 of innate capabilities, without haste, yet without rest, 
 through life ! A very satire of my condition. And the 
 joy that crowns perfect action, the joy of free, sj5on- 
 taneous, appropriate action ! Harmonious balance of self 
 and environment ! . . . I was but a modern slave; free 
 to do that which I must; free, at most, in my wearied 
 hours of leisure, with the aesthetic freedom of Schopen- 
 hauer. But I am a man of the resolute North, and 
 know that freedom, if an illusion, is a necessary illusion. 
 I must, and will struggle with destiny; for that is 
 heroism, and heroism laughs at fate. . . . Nay, heroic 
 virtue is devotion to others. But in the poverty which 
 was, which will be mine to the end, such devotion was, 
 and will be prevented. Devotion to ideas, then? for 
 that also is heroic virtue. But ideas are ever antago- 
 nistic; "all things are double one against another," 
 says Ecclesiastes. The partisan is necessarily narrow- 
 minded; at best a tragic hero, fitted for the drama- 
 tist; even then a subject for the humorist's pitiful 
 smile. . . . Would that I might live and die in 
 this sweet solitude, a contemplative quietist! But it 
 cannot be. . . . 
 
 It is due to self-respect, it is merest politeness, not An attempt 
 to obtrude one's personality on others, and least of all ^''^iturr'' 
 to speak of one's miseries, material, bodily, or mental. 
 Even here and now, in solitude, I shrink from confession, 
 though it be but to myself. But is it pride that makes 
 me tongue-tied; do I fear to incur self-condemnation; 
 do I fondly cling to the flattering belief that I merit a 
 [ 5 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 better lot, that I am humiliated by destiny? Surely, 
 to dwell on self is hateful; yet I must "know" myself, 
 and self-analysis is the sole method of such knowledge. 
 
 Externally, then, my life readily divides itself into 
 two halves. Till the age of twenty-four I was a 
 " poor scholar, " in Mediaeval phrase, and, in accordance 
 with present usage, free from material care. I was 
 absorbed in my passion for comprehension, and left the 
 future — to be the future till such time as it should be 
 the present. So far, the world had shown itself ready 
 to smooth the path of knowledge before me; it could 
 not fail to recognise merit and conduct when the hour 
 for entering on practical life should have come. . . . 
 But perchance, after all, I was not greatly surprised to 
 find for how little the scholar counted in the world of 
 men, when the gates of his University were finally closed 
 upon him. Within, there had been kindly smiles and 
 gracious encouragements; without, I was but one more 
 among the feverish suitors for place. Society (let me 
 personify for once) seemed to say : " We have done well 
 by you; how comes it, then, that you need a place in 
 the world? We have showered our gifts on you, and yet 
 you present yourself for further favours; you must needs 
 wish to intrude — where intrusion is impossible. Do 
 you not know that all posts are filled? And, for such 
 vacancies as occur, have we not eager relatives, friends, 
 dependants?" Yet I was not greatly surprised. He 
 is a fool who requires to be taught by experience, as 
 Plato would say. 
 
 This divination of coming material ill was clearly 
 
 due to the development of that inner life, which I 
 
 cannot resume so briefly as my external fortunes. My 
 
 native melancholy, hidden from me by my boyish 
 
 [ 6 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 energy and eagerness for knowledge, gracious and 
 dreamy in the rustic solitude and summer holidays that 
 crowned my boyish toil and success, developed itself in 
 the days of the University. Long before I was flung on 
 the indifferent world, knowledge had turned to sorrow. 
 I had learned to doubt. Nay, I did not learn; doubt 
 was as a natural development, a necessary phase of my 
 ardent zeal for comprehension. Yet, by my birth, I 
 was heir of generations that had doubted not, that had 
 taken life as it came with its joys and sorrows, that 
 knew not Isis was veiled, and knowing, would not have 
 cared or dared to lift her veil. And these simple, strong- 
 hearted, single-minded generations struggled stubbornly 
 within me against the legionaries of Doubt. It was 
 a dolorous internecine strife between heart and head. 
 Even now I hesitate to think of those days and nights 
 of agony, the while the spiritual forces clashed in con- 
 fused contention. Even now these combats are renewed 
 in ghostly fashion during sleep, and I wake in the 
 cold sweats of anguish, wake to rejoice that those years 
 are past. ... At length, from very weariness, a truce 
 ensued. Had not others made their -peace with the 
 enemy, and even called him friend? . . . And I 
 turned to consider the life of the men about me. Had 
 I not been long mad, thus absorbed in questions that 
 should be delayed till I had won some footing in this 
 strange world, and conquered leisure for such thoughts? 
 I could not fail to observe the one ambition that reigned 
 in the University. Was it not meet that I also should 
 train ascetically till success allowed elegant dilettante 
 ease, slay competitors without remorse, and take unctu- 
 ous credit to myself that I was fittest, forsooth because 
 I had survived? But I was no longer able, as these, 
 [ 7 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 to press forward to the goal, with never a truant excur- 
 sion from the way, with never a doubt. At times, 
 indeed, I sought to silence my troubled, chaotic heart, 
 and essayed to gird myself up for the appointed race 
 that I could not but despise. Often did I resolve to 
 quit the darkling forest of Truth and Error along whose 
 briar-strewn labyrinthine ways I toiled, to fling hurried 
 answers to the grim importunate sphinxes, should they 
 oppose departure, or mock them in turn with scornful 
 enigmas of my own posing. And once the forest 
 quitted, and the wonted arena gained, my eyes should 
 never swerve from the prize to be won; I would re-act 
 my boyhood and claim garlands of. victory in proud 
 consciousness of superior knowledge, with never a 
 thought that my success meant others' loss. ... It 
 could not be. Heart and head refused to postpone 
 their spiritual problems till the problem of material 
 success should be solved. Doubt rose to bar my passage, 
 and won its last fell victory. Doubting all, I ended 
 in doubt of self. What wonder if I sank exhausted, 
 outworn, ere the prize was reached? 
 
 Let me proceed to my six latest years. But, first, 
 I should duly take into account my innate complexity. 
 Viewed as a whole, indeed, my life seems a troubled 
 yet constant quest for Knowledge and Truth. Yet 
 there was that in me which, if developed, would have 
 made a "general artist," as Fuller terms it. As Botti- 
 celli sacrificed half his art to follow Savonarola, so I, in 
 humble fashion, offered up my store, such as it was, of 
 partially-developed faculties at the shrine of Wisdom, 
 guarded myself from all undue practice of what Goethe 
 calls "half-talents." Nature had set two souls within 
 [ 8 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 me; but the artist voluntarily died that his brother, the 
 scholar, might live. I judged with Plato that the 
 philosophic life was the life of the god-like on earth. 
 I made my "choice of Hercules"; even in boyhood I 
 was sure that while the artist, if he would be worthy 
 of the name, must live from the first amid fair and 
 appropriate surroundings, must possess that sufificiency 
 of external goods which allows of free development, 
 the scholar is less dependent on happy environment. 
 Victory for the artist, you say, in spite of difficulties! 
 Genius not to be repressed! Possibly; but the artist, 
 thus victorious, ever bears the mark of early constraint. 
 He is as a tree that has been warped, and can never be 
 as that shapely palm of Delos, untrammelled in its 
 growth, which Ulysses knew. And further, the potential 
 artist — I counted not, nor count, the musician in me 
 — was one who could not promptly have gained popu- 
 lar suffrage, and glory coined in ready gold. But had 
 I genius? That I could ask the question was sufficient 
 proof to the contrary; for the veritable artist stays 
 not to question, but bodies forth his imperative visions. 
 Genius is largely unconscious; self-analysis imports 
 an incapacity of creation. Be this as it may, the 
 two natures within me inevitably warred together. I 
 could not long breathe on the arid heights of philo- 
 sophy, a "spectator of all time and existence" — 
 spectator, moreover, rid of eyes and ears, if I was to 
 fulfil Plato's requirements — without yearning for the 
 gracious sights and sounds of the sunlit, laughing plain. 
 Nor yet could I rest contented in the plain; I must 
 needs aloft to the regions where "The Mothers" dwelt, 
 guardians of the unembodied types of which the fair 
 forms of the plain were but shadows. . . . And now, 
 [ 9 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 baffled thinker, bankrupt idealist, am I not the sport of 
 the mirage of contrast; do I not fondly idealise the 
 artist's life as the sole life wherein toil and delight are 
 one ? Has not the scholar who scorned to be an artist 
 almost come to count philosophic problems as mere 
 insoluble puzzles for grave children? Like a very 
 Roman, is he not like to abandon the " Pure Reason " 
 for the "Practical Reason," to seek for consolation, not 
 for truth? 
 
 But to proceed: — Thrust upon the world, I fared 
 — even as it was natural that I should fare. "What 
 did Destiny purpose with me? Presumptuous question, 
 since with most of us it purposes little," as Goethe 
 would warn me. After all, the inany of the University 
 who may not linger in the shady colonnades fare but 
 little better than I have done. I even marvelled that 
 I was offered enough to enable me to live; enough, 
 in short, to live "temperately," as Plato says in the 
 Laws. Whereon the shrewd Aristotle remarks that 
 "temperate" living may be necessitated by hardship 
 and penury. Therefore he improves to "temperately 
 and liberally"; which notable improvement is to be 
 desired by me, rather than realised. However, no 
 thought of impotent revolt entered my head; I was 
 not surprised at my lot. I knew that the world owed 
 me nothing, not even sustenance, and, much less, deli- 
 cacies. I was not in possession of anything it cared 
 to purchase ; it concerned no one that my development 
 was arrested. I was resigned perforce to poverty and 
 obscurity; easy, the former, perchance, in comparison 
 with the poverty of many; welcome, almost, the latter. 
 But the future was black, and my resignation but 
 a fitful mood, no constant temperature of the heart. 
 [ lo ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 In those six years, then, which I have passed in 
 the world, I was uninteresting to others, and con- 
 sequently to myself. How could it be otherwise? 
 Self-respect holds proportion with the respect shown 
 by others. Latent faculties count for nothing; and 
 these were all I had. I could point to no performance, 
 and credit for capacity of performance was hardly to be 
 expected. Indeed, I was too proud to sue for indulgent 
 or doubting credit for what I might effect, had I but 
 leisure and opportunity. I was elevated on no pedestal 
 of wealth and position, I caught the eye of none. 
 Lost already to others in the undistinguished crowd, 
 I laboured to lose myself. Ignored, I sought in turn 
 to ignore myself.; Whensoever I was released from toil, 
 I drugged consciousness of personality with the opiates 
 of literature. I made shift to forget myself in the 
 contemplation of the human tragi-comedy played 
 throughout the ages. Austere philosophers lent me 
 their aid to live in the eternal order, and rethink the 
 thoughts of God. And when I was all too toil-worn 
 for such abstract thinking, I ate the lotus proffered 
 by poets, lived the lives of lovers fabled by cunning 
 masters. By day a Stoic, nightly was I an intellectual 
 Epicurean. . . . But though the world, past and pres- 
 ent, was to me a "spectacle dans un fauteuil," as 
 Alfred de Musset would say, I was altogether unhappy. 
 - Imlac, friend of Rasselas ! I was not less unhappy 
 than the rest because I had a mind replete with images 
 which I could vary and combine at pleasure. I could 
 find no "perennial" happiness, despite John Stuart 
 Mill, in " states of feeling, and of thought coloured by 
 feeling, under the excitement of beauty." Nay, rather, 
 I could fain cry with Meleager : " My soul, whose love 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 A second 
 attempt at 
 self-por- 
 traiture. 
 
 is pain, cease, oh! cease to joy in dream-phantoms of 
 beauty ! " 
 
 But was I not in some degree more noble than I have 
 delineated myself? If I was melancholy, this melan- 
 choly was not merely the result of adverse circum- 
 stance, of baffled selfishness. I have lived laborious 
 days; my heart and life have been pure. Let me 
 essay yet once again to recall these past years. Such 
 is the human passion for consistency, that reminis- 
 cence is ever Dichtung and Wahrheit; we read of 
 necessity the past by the present; unconscious artists, 
 we make the youth the father of the man. Let me 
 balance portrait by portrait; haply, by comparison, 
 I shall rightly discern that which I was and am: 
 — A boyhood, then, of constant emulation and con- 
 stant success, followed by a long moral agony and 
 constant worldly failure. I was one of those " liberal- 
 minded young men " of whose rarity Aristotle speaks. 
 I duly possessed the "generous disposition" that 
 instinctively loves all that is fair and noble and of 
 good report. But I also perceive in this modest boy, 
 this liberal-minded youth, a tendency towards self- 
 effacement, a latent scorn to enter into the sphere of 
 conflicting interests, that were to be developed, to be 
 exaggerated, by circumstance. The school-boy was 
 almost unconscious of his poverty, isolated voluiitarily 
 that he might lose no hour, that to the docile acquire- 
 ment of prescribed knowledge he might add the 
 cultivation of arts and studies virgin of prescription, 
 uncontaminated by use and wont and competition. 
 Docile as he was, he would have revolted, had he been 
 coerced to waste his hours, as he would have said, in 
 [ i^ ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 playgrounds. The university youth isolated himself 
 also. Perchance, he was too conscious of his poverty. 
 Forsooth, fastidious artist, he pleaded to himself that 
 his chamber was no index of his mind, and therefore 
 not to be visited by others. But, more than this, he 
 isolated himself that he might widen, deepen his 
 knowledge. It seemed to him that conversation with 
 chance acquaintances was a poor substitute for con- 
 versation with " the masters of them that know " — 
 purblind and self -deluded masters, I now should hold, 
 yet happy, perchance, in their presumption that they 
 know. 
 
 With most of us the poet dies, and the man survives. 
 And by poet I mean one who would fain make his life 
 a poem, order his career in conformity with his know- 
 ledge of his own capacity. With me the poet is dead. 
 I have said that, as a boy, I divined that the painter in 
 me needed independence, needed an ample and perma- 
 nent supply of "external goods." But I loved know- 
 ledge, and as this love was crowned by external success, 
 my course seemed directed, a career lay open before me. 
 But the youthful haunter of the University found (I 
 realise with difficulty the vague, emotional chagrin of 
 those days) that modern education is a mere form of 
 business, a rude struggle for prizes. He found, and 
 could not bear to find, that he must study for the satis- 
 faction of others, not for his own, must equip himself 
 with a multitude of ready, succinct answers to questions 
 which did not interest him, must occupy and desecrate 
 his treasure-house with all manner of cumbersome 
 lumber which is valued in the market. Woe to the 
 student if he dares to wander from the prescribed track, 
 if he gives his heart to knowledge that does not "pay," 
 
 [ n ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 as the phrase has it! Woe to him if he is troubled 
 by divine questionings and haunted by the infinite, if 
 he is wholly unable to adjourn his "mental crisis," his 
 moral anguish, till such time as his position in the 
 world is secured — adjourn to the Greek Calends, in 
 a word; for, his position once secured, he is like to 
 acquiesce in comfortable conventions. Let him strive, 
 as I did, to serve two masters, outward Success and 
 inward Truth, and he shall fail. Nay, did I not serve 
 the latter only too well, and at the cost of the other? 
 And, as a bankrupt idealist, I inevitably, fondly desire 
 that I had followed the contrary course. But such 
 regrets, such "had-I-wist," is the merest lesson of 
 Greek, nay all tragedies. And does not the old scorn 
 survive? Strange that the object of scorn can still 
 be desired! Ah well, happy is he who is so dowered 
 with the worldly goods which allow freedom that he 
 may follow the path of natural development, though it 
 lead away from the miry arena ! But they who are 
 so dowered with the material of freedom almost ever 
 seem unworthy of the gift. 
 
 On failure followed resolute endeavour, renewed 
 and ever renewed in spite, in defiance of constant 
 monotonous failure. Failures that, at length, could 
 not surprise; nay, with success, I should have been 
 surprised into a Phocion-like "what have I done amiss, 
 that I should win applause?" Keenest incentive had 
 I to noble endeavour, to self-sacrifice and self-forgetful- 
 ness. For my parents' sake I sank my pride and 
 dignity and fronted defeat, entered into collision with 
 interests that were stronger than my own. Ardent was 
 my hope to cheer them, — and they died uncheered. 
 
 A youth, then, of innate nobleness and generosity, — 
 [ 14 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 I can let pass this vaunt, for my youth is gone, for he 
 that was I is dead. A moral, mental crisis supervenes, 
 changing simplicity to complexity. Four years of 
 ineffectual effort to win the means to cheer my nearest 
 and dearest. Finally, complete isolation : I "drudged" 
 by day, with Stoic endurance, for my "outer covering," 
 toiled that I might eat and "make misfortune live"; I 
 fleeted the hours of leisure in Epicurean contemplation. 
 I swerved not from my old unreasoned habitude of 
 goodness, but my heart grew cold in these two latest 
 years. I sank to the apathy and indifference of the 
 sage. I came to accept facts — "Facts still are facts, 
 resent them as you may," says Euripides; I saw the 
 world as it was, and recognised unpalatableness as the 
 criterion of truth — that was true which was the least 
 ideal, the most contrary to the postulates of the heart. 
 It was vain to take sanctuary in the mind, for reason 
 turned inevitably to scepticism. I fared no better if 
 I sought to escape my own narrow personality: the 
 vision of the world which I evoked from the pages of 
 scientists was a nightmare phantasmagoria of the endless, 
 fatal metamorphoses of mechanical or unconsciously 
 artistic force; the vision of human thought and action 
 which I evoked from histories of philosophy and phi- 
 losophies of history chilled me through and through. 
 Even aesthetic contemplation was marred, for the remem- 
 brance of the real inevitably obtruded, and beauty shrank 
 to a specious lie. The generous disposition, " bestowed 
 by divine agency upon the truly fortunate," was clouded. 
 Gone was the poetry of my early youth, its candid 
 simplicity, its calm trust that to him who merits and 
 waits in patience all things accrue. Experience had 
 done its work. 
 
 [ rs ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 The strife I am weather-bound, and all day, in place of stern 
 and°^hi[o converse with my sages, I have listened solely to my 
 sophy. poets of melancholy. Should I ascribe to weakness of 
 intellect this love of mine for the singers of melancholy, 
 to undue predominance of heart over head, to mere 
 lack of vitality? . . . How often in the days of the 
 University, after a long upward flight into the Empy- 
 rean, after mounting to the regions where the Ideas, 
 divested of fair human drapery, reveal themselves but as 
 algebraical formulae, have I sunk back dazed, blinded 
 with excess of light, a Phaethon humiliated after mad 
 presumption, a Vulcan flung to earth from the banquet 
 of the gods, limping and smarting from his fall! Or 
 was I as the lark that returns in timid joy to its lowly 
 nest on the bosomed earth? Was I a mere intrusive 
 poet or painter that must decline to the level of his art, 
 decline from the One to the Many, from the world of 
 Ideas to the world of Sense, — a poet who sang not, a 
 painter who painted not? ... I would clutch some 
 object on my table, rejoicing in the form and colour and 
 substance that had been abstracted there aloft, and rest 
 my grateful eyes on some flower, some branch of red 
 hawthorn, pilfered to set in a simple jar of turquoise 
 blue, some golden chrysanthemum or twig of holly, rich 
 in varnished sombre green and berries of coral that 
 glowed in the soft light of shaded lamp. An exile from 
 the Heaven of Ideas, but exiled as from some Italian 
 community of mediaeval days, exiled, and therefore free 
 to resume the personal will that was necessarily abdicated 
 within the city bounds, free from the turmoil and strife 
 of parties, — free also to languish in poverty as a fuoris- 
 cito was free. But not long, and I yearned to return 
 to the City of Philosophy, and wandered about the 
 [ i6 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 walls, seeking entrance. Fierce was the strife of op- 
 posing ideas within, — no haven of peace, this City of 
 Philosophy, — and entrance won, I yearned again for 
 exile speedily. 
 
 I sought knowledge, and yet desired that knowledge 
 should be tinged with emotion, humanised. Even now, 
 like a child, I crave myths and allegories, images 
 clothed in sense, and not cold, shapeless, colourless 
 Ideas. And thus my chosen brethren are the poets of 
 melancholy, poets in prose and verse. I dare to call 
 them brethren; in that they are dead, they disclaim not 
 my company. But of these poets there is an inner 
 circle of the humble and sincere who are most my 
 brethren. They of the outer circle were wont to pose 
 before the gaping multitude which repaid their lofty 
 scorn with adulatory acclamations. Insensate victims 
 of mad selfishness, fanatics of insatiate egoism, they 
 scorched both hands before the fire of life; they drained 
 the brimming cup, and then complained of its bitterness. 
 They demanded more than life can give, and railed in 
 impotent revolt. But these passed in life almost unknown, 
 sadly conscious of their inability to tread the common 
 ways, and died ere fame could visit them. Fame? If 
 I were logical, I should seek an inmost circle, and 
 claim for truest brethren those whom fame visited not 
 in life or death. There are saints conspicuous, named 
 and famed; but the numberless, nameless throng of 
 All Saints also have their festival. Sweetest, perchance, 
 are the melodies unheard, and sweetest the poems that 
 were only dreamt, that were never prisoned in shape; 
 sweetest also the poem-lives that passed unmarked. 
 
 But I will no longer continue as heretofore in the 
 nightly hours of my Epicurean leisure to read in the 
 c [ 17 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 glow of fire and lamp some page of these my chosen 
 poets of melancholy, poets in verse or prose, and then 
 allow its influence to widen and disperse in reverie, like 
 the agitation of a pebble-ruffled pool. Nor will I 
 wander forth by day, now that I am free, with book in 
 hand, wholly content to hearken to the music of these 
 my brethren, and then gaze vaguely on the meads and 
 woods, as one that has heard a symphony, and is still 
 beneath a spirit-spell. For I am here to wrestle with 
 the problem of destiny; haply, by drawing their melan- 
 choly to a focus, I shall better comprehend my own. 
 It is true that kindred natures meet with different 
 destinies, and that the fashion of melancholy varies 
 with the fashiofi of fortune. And more than this, 
 personality is a clear-obscure; we know not ourselves, 
 and are not known to others. But these, illustrious 
 brethren of one wholly obscure and inarticulate, were 
 gifted to express, if not the whole secret of their 
 personalities, at least their sorrows; let me, then, 
 read mine by the light of theirs. Thus, indeed, I 
 shall be essaying that homoeopathic remedy of which 
 the Stagirite enigmatically spoke. And it may be that, 
 comprehending their melancholy and mine, I shall 
 be roused to reaction, roused to a healthy scorn of 
 melancholy. 
 
 The poets It may be that Maurice de Gu^rin is a " child of 
 °^'f'i'^"' t'^s century," a victim of self-analysis, of morbid 
 Maurice de egoism. But his melancholy, his egoism, is not of 
 the grandiose, theatrical order; on the contrary, he 
 voluntarily effaces himself and desires obscurity. Ex- 
 treme in self-depreciation, he cannot bear that his 
 friends should value him at more than his own valua- 
 [ i8 ] 
 
 Gu6rin. 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen ^llard 
 
 tion; he would have them remember that, sounding 
 the depths of his personality, he can discover no faculty 
 worthy or capable of development, no vital germ of 
 will and energy. In so far, he is a brother of Ober- 
 mann; but, unlike his elder brother, he is not dead to 
 desire, not calm because completely conscious of his 
 helplessness and hopelessness. He would fain act, and 
 bear himself as a man in the world, — but he is timid, 
 refined, incapable of sanguine self-assertion and rude 
 combat. He would fain love, — but how can he expect 
 that he should be loved, or even pitied? Thrust back 
 upon himself, he laments in low-toned, unheard mono- 
 dies that his life is nothing more than an alternation 
 of brief efforts and long exhaustions, of ardent dreams 
 and chill awakenings. Enthusiasm and discpuragement 
 succeed each other in the void; for he is shouldered 
 aside from the press of men, he has no position 
 in the world, and cannot even discover the rdle he 
 is called upon to play. Resolution is forced on 
 him by circumstance; yet of what use to resolve, 
 since he cannot count on energy to execute his resolve. 
 He clings to those whom he deems to be stronger than 
 himself. He is willing, eager that others shall decide 
 for him, and obediently joins the little band of theo- 
 logical students which Lamennais gathered round him 
 in his Brittany retreat of La Chenaie before his final 
 rupture with Rome. By his choice, by his ratification 
 of the choice made for him of a priestly career, he 
 trusts, with many a misgiving, that he may reconcile 
 and equally satisfy the contrary desires for action and 
 contemplation that war within him; and bows to 
 discipline, in vain hope that prolonged habitude will 
 in time conform his inner to his outward life. But 
 [ 19 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 no shadow of "vocation" is he able to discern; he 
 languishes in his cloister life, and "has need of the 
 open air," poet as he is, and therefore pantheist more 
 or less unconsciously. The qualities which his master 
 could desire in him are not his; he passes uncom- 
 prehended, unvalued by master and comrades alike. 
 At most he takes courage to interchange with friends 
 the familiar, pedestrian verses which he fashions in 
 mistaken application of "Lakist" theories, confiding 
 all that was truly personal and rare to his diary and 
 chance letters. Timidly chafing against fixed, mo- 
 nastic rules, timidly resisting the influence of his strenu- 
 ous, passionate master, he is released at length by 
 the breaking up of the little community; is free to 
 fling himself into the whirlpool of that Paris which 
 dismays and fascinates him in the anticipation. Free 
 to be prisoned in obscurity, free to fail in the attempt 
 to secure a livelihood and succour his nearest and 
 dearest by chance articles in struggling reviews and 
 scantily-recompensed labours of tuition which preclude 
 all leisure for thought. But is he not incapable of 
 logical, abstract thought, he asks himself? is not such 
 thought as he can think self-torture merely? If only, 
 by self-sacrifice, by moulding himself to the fashion of 
 the world, he could attain and fill some modest sphere 
 of duty ! 
 
 Solicited by desires of action, by the mirage of 
 contrast, his paramount desire is yet for the quietistic, 
 country life. Dolorously striving to accommodate him- 
 self to the ways of social toil, he cannot refrain from 
 desiring release from bondage, from recalling the charm 
 of rural solitude, which charm is past definition, which 
 yet he endeavours to define as "a combination, an 
 [ 20 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 inmost fusion of the broadest sentiment of liberty and 
 the impressions of natural beauties." In that all too 
 brief breathing-space of his at Val d'Arguenon, home 
 of his friend, that interval of peace between his hapless 
 struggles at La Chenaie and in Paris, "this fusion of 
 the calm impressions of nature with the stormy reveries 
 of my heart brought about a condition of mind that 
 I would fain prolong as the fittest for a dreamer like 
 me. It is, as it were, a temperate, calm ecstasy which 
 ravishes the soul out of itself without removing the 
 consciousness of a permanent, somewhat stormy sad- 
 ness. Moreover, in this frame of mind, one is gradu- 
 ally permeated with a languor that tempers the vivacity 
 of the intellectual faculties, and lulls the heart into 
 a semi-slumber void of thought and yet permitting the 
 fairest dreams." Would that it had been his to have 
 prolonged his sojourn and his dreams, and recounted 
 them as he knew well to recount, amply, fluently! 
 But this nature-remedy is all dubious. The vision 
 of Nature is subjective, and moods are transitory, 
 swiftly changing from joy to pain. Enthusiasm is a 
 fire that spends itself the sooner that it is intense; he 
 that is sensitive is prone to melancholy in proportion 
 to his sensitiveness. The victim of melancholy delves 
 in his own heart, and stirs up pestilential vapours. 
 He vainly seeks to die to himself that he may live in 
 Nature. Not only must he wonder, with Maurice de 
 Gu6rin, " how comes it that my rest is disturbed by the 
 state of the air, that the peace of my soul is thus 
 abandoned to the caprice of the winds?" but he must 
 also find himself again and again, and for long periods, 
 wholly inaccessible to external impressions, or cast into 
 deepest despondency by the consciousness of the contrast 
 [ 21 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 between the disquiet of his heart and the calm of 
 Nature. Another step, and he will come to fear and 
 hate, like Lamartine or Lenau, its impassibility. 
 
 Of the last brief period of his short life we know 
 next to nothing. He is said to have overcome his 
 timidity and irresolution. Fortune seemed to smile; 
 there is a marriage which releases him from penury. 
 "Thanks to this delightful freak of fate, my life will 
 henceforth be more uniform, and I shall find at length 
 that leisure I have craved so long." ... In less than 
 a year he has fallen into a consumption, and has died 
 before the completion of his thirtieth summer. . . . 
 
 Was there a radical change of character and creed in 
 his last years? Had Maurice the melancholy, the writer 
 of the Journal, died that Maurice the artist, the writer 
 of the Centaur, might live? Had he definitely over- 
 come the malady of introspection, won his way from 
 the morbid disquiet of melancholy to the sane serenity 
 of art? Would the Centaur have been followed by 
 worthy successors, or had he given us all that it was 
 in his power to give ? In default of documents, confi- 
 dent answer is impossible. The posthumous publi- 
 cation of the Centaur provoked admiration of its 
 pantheistic spirit; his relatives and friends, distressed 
 to learn that he is eulogised as being more truly 
 Greek than Andr6 Ch^nier himself, maintained that 
 his childhood's faith, if abandoned at all, was aban- 
 doned only for a brief season, and pointed to the 
 retractions made after he was brought home to die, 
 to his piety and Christian end. To be an artist, to 
 write a Centaur after a visit to the Greek antiquities 
 in the Louvre, is not necessarily to be a " great pagan " 
 like Goethe; pantheism is an inevitable element of 
 
 [ 22 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 poetry, and Wordsworth scruples not to be a poet, a 
 pantheist. Maurice was timid throughout, sure of his 
 mental incapacity to deal with final problems, con- 
 vinced of "the impenetrability of destiny"; dying, why 
 should he reject proffered consolation, and cause chagrin 
 to his friends? But his friends publish few letters of 
 his later years in Paris, and omit those which George 
 Sand published, with their marks of a reaction from 
 asceticism. Similar doubts present themselves against 
 any assumption that, in his later years, his character was 
 largely changed, that he became reconciled to life, that 
 he turned from the vague to the positive and practical. 
 His early lack of will, his inability to act, resulted from 
 the activity of thought, from the equilibrium of opposite 
 tendencies; yet, constrained by the stern necessity of 
 winning daily bread, he found that it is possible, that 
 there is strength forthcoming to duly execute task work. 
 But melancholy will remain, though it be expressed less 
 often. There are brave words, magnanimous expres- 
 sions of disdain of his past melancholy, to be found 
 in his latest letters, but these cannot accurately be taken 
 as representing a permanent state of mind, any more 
 than the courageous phrases with which Keats met ill- 
 fortune. It is not a question of sincerity. He, and 
 Keats, and their like, are writing or conversing with 
 friends who naturally delight in such intimations of 
 courage. They desire to be even as their friends would 
 have them be; they hope to become permanently that 
 which, in moods of reaction, they believe themselves in 
 the way of becoming. In these very letters which are 
 adduced in proof of the change in his character melan- 
 choly finds as poignant expression as ever in the earlier, 
 wholly rsit[3.nc]\o\y Journal ; he points out in these days 
 [ 23 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 of supposed reconciliation with the world that he is 
 understating his melancholy as he overstated it in the 
 old days. But what of his ill-health, that ill-health 
 which was apparently intermittent, which developed 
 dangerously only when fortune had begun to smile upon 
 him? There are those who confidently, crudely attribute 
 melancholy to deficient vitality, as they attribute hypo- 
 chondria to dyspepsia, and weakness of will to weakness 
 of body. Why should they not proceed further, and 
 maintain that he was melancholy, that he clung to 
 his troubled faith, that he was sick of mind, just so 
 long as he was sick of body; and that he was serenely 
 pagan, practical, artistic, just so long as he was sane 
 of body. But this would be to forget the melancholy 
 of paganism, of art, and of strength; and it would be 
 equally reasonable, more reasonable, to maintain that 
 his melancholy was connate, and aggravated at most 
 by weakness of frame and adverse circumstance, that 
 he was an artist in virtue of his melancholy. The 
 melancholy writer of the Journal, the emotional land- 
 scapist, with his keen perception of moral symbolism 
 in nature, his Aryan, spontaneous power of personifica- 
 tion, is at least an artist as rare as the writer of the 
 Centaur, the recorder of the aged Centaur's regretful, 
 melancholy recollections of his puissant, impressible 
 youth. Doubtless, the change in Maurice de Gudrin, 
 such as it was, was due to added years. With most 
 of us the poet dies, and the man survives. In some 
 few cases the poet, if he be articulate, makes shift to 
 survive; but he too must learn to regard his dreams as 
 dreams only, to expect no confirmation of them, to 
 smile ironically at his own idealism, his visionary land 
 of Faery, as, at most, a "Sweet inn from pain and 
 [ 24 1 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 wearisome turmoil." The world is what it is, and he 
 who, in youth, disdains to pursue the wonted paths 
 that lead to worldly success, or is debarred from pur- 
 suit by adverse chance, is dedicated to soul-consuming 
 poverty and melancholy solitude. 
 
 I ask of Maurice de Gu^rin what happiness may be. The prob- 
 "The sweet, fine rain that penetrates the heart and, J^"* °f 
 
 ' happiness. 
 
 later, wells forth in tears." In like manner, Alfred de 
 Musset regards as his sole wealth the memory of his 
 . tears. In like manner, again, Goethe assures that he 
 alone knows the "Heavenly Powers" who has eaten 
 his bread in tears. Must I, then, make shift to vaunt 
 with Fletcher that "there's nought in this life sweet, 
 save only melancholy," to conclude, in a word, that 
 melancholy is happiness ? 
 
 The intellectual life, indeed, and the moral life alike 
 require that individuality shall be transcended; he whose 
 eye is ever fixed upon himself and his own fortunes may 
 not behold the universal order and judge impartially. 
 But before I essay to behold "under the aspect of 
 eternity " the eternal effort of man to compass that 
 which goes by the name of happiness, let me cast about 
 to consider its conditions. ... It is best for a mortal 
 to be in health; next best, to be fair and noble of form 
 and nature; next, to enjoy wealth that is not ill-gotten; 
 and the next, to be young amid youthful comrades. 
 Such are the conditions according to Simonides, or at 
 least some Greek whose gnomic quatrain was judged 
 worthy of Simonides — Simonides, hedonistic pessimist, 
 ready to express the Hellenic sentiment that not to be 
 born is best, sure that our days are few and evil, that 
 man's strength is slight and his cares invincible, that 
 [ 2S ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 life is but a round of toil and trouble, and that, therefore, 
 it is high time to enjoy while yet enjoyment is possible. 
 It is barely worth while to consider them in relation to 
 myself. As to the first, indeed, long before I entered 
 on my lonely struggle with the world, an acquaintance 
 styled me "a hot-house plant," doubtless meaning that I 
 could only flourish under favouring circumstances; but 
 yet the "will-to-live," the "perseverance in being," is 
 strong within me, that endurance and tenacity which the 
 Greeks well knew long before they gave it a philosophi- 
 cal name. Fair and noble of form and nature; — one 
 self-same word to express all this. Truly Greek, this 
 presumed correlation between beauty of the mind and 
 body, this instinctive belief that the beauty of the body 
 was ample guarantee for that of the mind. And 
 Socrates! Apollo's intelligence in the rude semblance 
 of Silenus! Nay, he willingly confirms the presump- 
 tion, and hastens to explain that his original nature 
 fully corresponded to his ignoble form. Virgil is a 
 modern when he makes a distinction between the merit 
 and the graceful bearing of his Euryalus. Yet our 
 novelists — always excepting the Russians, who care 
 not to charm or console by presentations of ideal action, 
 ideal joys, ideal sorrows — our novelists, as artists, are 
 naturally of the Greek belief; they insist, and must 
 insist, on personal fascination, on charm. Desire of 
 novelty may, indeed, lead them to an antithesis in the 
 same person, to a Quasimodo, a Becky Sharp. If they 
 condescend to a hero or heroine whose fairness is of 
 mind alone, they still insist, and must insist, that inner 
 fairness is revealed in expression, and that there are 
 those who are capable of appreciating this revelation. 
 It may be so, for we moderns not only sacrifice the form 
 [ 26 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 to the face, but the face to the expression. The sense 
 of beauty is become rare ; we are either too spiritual, or, 
 more commonly, too vulgar and material to care for 
 beauty. Lovers count not, for love is blind; men and 
 women are the sport of hidden affinities, are prompted 
 by instinct to desire their complements; their sole 
 reason of choice, if reason were called for, could only 
 be, "this man or woman pleases me," not "this man or 
 woman is fair." And interests of Mammon supervene 
 and counteract. If, then, you are cursed with this 
 rare sense of beauty, and have not store of gold — how 
 if property is theft, if there is no wealth that is not 
 ill-gotten? but let this pass for the moment — you are 
 not like to joy in youth with youthful friends. Friends! 
 But to us moderns friendship is as unknown; we direct 
 not our love to adolescents, as the Greeks did, holding 
 them fairer than women both in mind and form. And 
 yet Montaigne tells long and lovingly of his friend La 
 Boeotie, and is almost as silent as an Athenian about his 
 wife; and Sir Philip Sidney was the mirror of friendship 
 — what fairer than the simple epitaph that Sir Fulke 
 Greville let inscribe upon his tomb: "Friend to Sir 
 Philip Sydney " ? But even sweet Sir Philip, melancholy 
 Sir Philip, was a modern. Friendship paled; he loved, 
 and loved too late, for Penelope Devereux had passed 
 into the keeping of a "rich fool." Penelope yet gives 
 him of her high heart the monarchy; but guarded by 
 "tyrant honour" is cruelly kind, kind, because cruel. 
 At length he renounces; he may, must, can, will, does 
 "leave following that which it is gain to miss"; he 
 indites two sorrowing sonnets on Desire and Love, com- 
 parable with the twain of Shakespeare on Lust and 
 Death, adding, as epigraph, Splendidis Longe Valedico 
 [ 27 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Nugis, — ^ and then he marries Frances Walsingham. No 
 song for her j and, a widow, speedily she hies to a second 
 bond, and presently to a third. And the high-souled, 
 virtuous Stella-Penelope sinks to the dishonoured para- 
 mour of Blount. Truly, friendship is better far than 
 love. ... I have loved, and love to love; I have 
 sought and seek an object of my love. Perchance I 
 have hidden, untouched treasures of friendship to lavish, 
 since I dare not, will not love. But, as a boy, disin- 
 terested, enthusiastic, reserved, I cared for knowledge 
 only, and disdained all else. A youth, I shrank humbly, 
 proudly from the society of my fellows. Who and what 
 was I to merit friendship? I had none of the external 
 conditions of happiness. Externals? Who can despise 
 them? Montaigne owns that his heart was gentlest in 
 prosperity. So, in my pride, I remained alone, absorbed 
 in ambition. One day, and men would welcome the 
 friendship I proffered. And when ambition reaped no 
 fruit, there was but still greater cause to remain alone, 
 in voluntary isolation. From pride, from dignity, I 
 have not loved. From pride, from dignity, I have never 
 opened my heart to a friend. Trouble a friend, who 
 could not be proud of me, with faltering narratives of 
 continuous disappointments, with forlorn complaints! 
 To be a friend is to be an equal; but I could only 
 inspire pity. Pars malt audire solatia — Seneca is right; 
 it would doubly increase my unhappiness to be the 
 object of a condescending phrase, of a pitying glance. 
 
 From Greek, let me turn to Roman testimony as 
 
 to the conditions of happiness. Quintus Metellus, 
 
 pronouncing a funeral eulogy two hundred years before 
 
 our era, proudly maintained that his father had enjoyed 
 
 [ 28 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 in their fulness the ten chiefest and best goods of for- 
 tune that the wise spend their lives in seeking. It is a 
 confused list, for Quintus is hampered by his chosen 
 number. However, this Lucius Metellus was equally 
 successful in war and oratory, had passed through the 
 various magistracies and proceeded at length chief of 
 the Senate. He had acquired a vast fortune by honest 
 means, and had left many children. In brief, he was 
 pre-eminent in all that a primitive Roman could value. 
 When Cicero laid down the rules of panegyric, he 
 pointed out that the eulogist must rehearse the goods 
 of fortune, such as birth, wealth, power, beauty, genius. 
 If the dead man possessed these, he is to be praised for 
 having well employed them. If he lacked them, for 
 having wisely known how to do without them. If he 
 lost them, for having temperately borne their loss. " If 
 he lacked them, he is to be praised for having wisely 
 known how to do without them." There is the moral 
 progress; or rather, the more lucid and discriminating 
 expression of the moral sentiment. Epictetus is ready 
 to turn to account whatsoever circumstances may befall 
 him; and Seneca's Demetrius will only complain of 
 the gods that they have held his readiness to renounce 
 and resign, his eager obedience, to need trial. In the 
 last degree of moral refinement, we shall have the just 
 man whom poverty and privation of the goods of fortune 
 exposes to ridicule, who is misjudged in life, and 
 receives no eulogy in death. Thus, happiness would be 
 unreserved submission, renunciation complete and once 
 for all of "distempered, discontented thoughts, vain 
 hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires." 
 
 But this acceptance, not only of the conditions of 
 general life, but of one's own life! Non pareo Deo, 
 
 C 29 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 sed assentior, I more than obey, I adhere to the will of 
 God, wrote Seneca as a counsel of perfection. And 
 Marcus Aurelius, mournfully serene, he at least winning 
 credit for sincerity, accepted whatever was with a mystic 
 optimism. "O world, whatever seems fitting to thee, 
 seems fitting to me." But this acceptance, this con- 
 tinual gratias ago, this unfaltering thankfulness for for- 
 tune and misfortune, presupposes a . nature that is 
 inclined to acceptance, as religion can only make a 
 man good, if he be good already. How and if the 
 mood is fitful? You may desire, and yet be incapable 
 of constancy in resignation, as in faith. "As for the 
 goodness that comes by nature, it is plain that it is not 
 within our control, but is bestowed by some divine 
 agency on those who truly deserve to be called fortu- 
 nate." So writes Aristotle, and I have but to change 
 "goodness" into "joyful, grateful acceptance of priva- 
 tion." But Cicero gives expression to the other half 
 of truth when he says that goodness is our own, virtutem 
 nemo unquam acceptam deo retulit, that men thank the 
 gods for good fortune, not for wisdom, which we must 
 seek within ourselves. The theologian, like Aristotle, 
 would speak of grace as a gift. The goods of fortune, 
 at least, are gifts, though it seems impossible to discover 
 any principle of distribution; they fall, like the rain 
 and the sunshine, on the just and unjust alike. The 
 suitors are many, but apparently the number of gifts to 
 be bestowed is limited. In similar fashion, the Cal- 
 vinist restricts the gifts of grace to a small minority. 
 Moreover, as they that receive the gifts of fortune 
 mainly misuse them, so there have been many who 
 believed themselves in the receipt of grace, but knew 
 not how to profit by it, or even regarded grace and 
 C 30 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 action as having nothing in common. In short, the 
 notion of grace as a gift is implicitly immoral; the 
 Deity is made capricious, or resolved into Necessity. 
 . . . But to reason high of grace and fate, of will and 
 providence, is to discourse with Milton's devils and 
 "find no end, in wandering mazes lost." We must 
 accept, then, submit with a gratias agimus, hold loose to, 
 or scorn, all that Fortune can give or take away. What- 
 ever is, is best. So the optimists of all ages. Spinoza's 
 " perfection is reality," Hegel's " the real is the rational," 
 come to the same thing : what is, is in accordance with 
 the eternal order. But after eliminating "good" and 
 "bad" as merely human conceptions and altogether 
 inadequate, Spinoza goes on, "nevertheless, though this 
 be so, the terms s8buld still be retained. ... By good 
 I mean that which we certainly know to be the means of 
 approaching more nearly to the type of human nature 
 which we have set before ourselves; by bad, that which 
 we certainly know to be a hindrance to us in approaching 
 that type." The whole question is thus reopened. 
 
 Happiness ! The definition, even as the thing, is 
 not to be discovered. The extremes of hedonism and 
 asceticism meet in despair; a Luther proclaims the 
 vanity of all effort to compass felicity by self-perfecting 
 asceticism, as a Solomon proclaims the vanity of all 
 effort to pass from a lesser to a greater perfection by 
 sensuous delights. Voluptuaries of all ages, foiled as 
 they cannot but be foiled in the pursuit of pleasure, 
 have declared happiness impossible of attainment. 
 Stoics of all ages have schooled themselves to disregard 
 it. The Christian postpones his happiness to a future 
 state, striving the while to deserve; the . Buddhist 
 endeavours to merit a future happiness of annihilation. 
 
 [ 31 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Is it not folly to consider happiness at all? Increased 
 intelligence implies increased capacity for sorrow. The 
 sweetest happiness is merely subtlest pain; we weep 
 for joy when joy is given. He who deems himself 
 happy is self-deluded, and usurps the name. " We are 
 long," said Imlac to Rasselas, "before we are convinced 
 that happiness is never to be found, and each believes 
 it possessed by others to keep alive the hope of obtain- 
 ing it for himself." And yet it is an open secret, this 
 impossibility of happiness. We pursue happiness in- 
 deed, for the desire of happiness is ineradicable from 
 human nature; but happiness can hardly be realised, 
 and, if realised, we cannot acquiesce in possession. 
 Rousseau, desirous that mankind shall return to nature 
 and happiness, is constrained to discover that health and 
 imbecility are the two chief elements of happiness, and 
 to recognise an arch-philanthropist in the Indian sage 
 who first taught the application of cranium-compressors 
 to new-born infants. Moralists may well cast about for 
 another term to express the aim of human desire and 
 endeavour. It is not a question in life of happiness, 
 but of duty, or of approximation to perfection, they 
 insist, thereby posing insoluble problems and exposing 
 themselves to ever-renewed failures in the attempt to 
 reconcile natural and moral tendencies, determination 
 and self-determination. 
 
 Who, indeed, can dare to deem himself happy, un- 
 less he be utterly selfish and verily blind to the world 
 around him? The spectacle of the world is like to 
 wring from us a non cura deis as from Tacitus; to 
 compel us to infer with Newman that "either there 
 is no Creator, or he has disowned his creatures." Per- 
 chance, as Menander and Schiller bade us remember, 
 
 C 32 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 we suffer no more than we deserve, and the history of 
 the world is the judgment of the world. And yet 
 mankind ever clings to the illusion of happiness; the 
 ancients tried to believe that happiness was possible for 
 the individual here and now; the men of the middle 
 ages tried to believe that happiness was postponed 
 to a future life; the rnoderns, despairing alike of the 
 ancient and mediaeval creeds, try to believe that some- 
 how the species (the individual is dropped from view) 
 will be blessed on earth in a Golden Age that is to come. 
 
 That qualities imply defects, that possessions and Happiness 
 posts entail proportionate cares and responsibilities are ^"^ '^°."'" 
 
 ^ ^ '^ '^ pensation. 
 
 facile commonplaces. Starting with such premises, I The poets 
 
 have at times wondered if it were possible to conclude °^ melan- 
 choly : 
 that, in a man's life, his advantages and disadvantages Lenau. 
 
 balance exactly. Nay, to push the paradox still further, 
 I have speculated whether it might not be that not 
 only is there compensation to the individual, but the 
 balance-sheets of all men, rightly calculated, are equiva- 
 lent, their fortunes equal. But the paradoxes remained 
 paradoxes to me; a thousand objections presented them- 
 selves — the impossibility of measuring pleasures and 
 pains; of defining happiness, which is conscious or 
 unconscious, which accompanies energy and results from 
 energy; of co-ordinating all the elements of happiness; 
 of relating its various aspects, duty, love, faith, know- 
 ledge. The possible combinations, again, of fortunes 
 and temperaments were infinite. I could strike no exact 
 balance of compensation in the case of any individual 
 on whose life-record I experimented, still less find 
 equivalence between any two men's lives. 
 
 In these last days I have re-read Lenau. Should I 
 D [ 33 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 essay experiment on this Nicolaus Niembsch, Count 
 of Strehlenau? ... He is nobly born, but he is saved 
 from the perils of high position by his comparative 
 poverty. His father is a gamester and libertine, but he 
 speedily departs "to his own place"; and, moreover, 
 as proverbs aver, he is fortunate whose father is addicted 
 to evil courses, since sons are wont to run counter to 
 the examples of their fathers. His widowed mother, 
 tender and pious, is devoted to her child. But such 
 devotion is injudicious, and implies that the child shall 
 be spoiled and become self-willed. Lenau is to be a 
 poet, and the hereditary factors of his genius are appro- 
 priately, admirably rich and complex. He is at once 
 a Slav, a Magyar, a German. He can express in turn 
 the resigned melancholy of the Slav, the fiery independ- 
 ence of the mobile Hungarian, the earnest profundity 
 of the philosophic German. But the gentle melancholy 
 of the Slav is based on apathy and weak surrender to 
 the force of circumstances; the fire and fervour of the 
 Magyar is short-lived in proportion to its intensity, de- 
 pression following hard on the heels of enthusiasm; the 
 German ^ — -the German as he was till twenty years ago 
 — is nebulous, unpractical. Moreover, the nature that 
 is rich, if capable of intense joy, is also capable of intense 
 suffering. And the nature that is complex is like to 
 fail of that success which is reserved to the simple and 
 single-minded. And if Lenau possessed to the highest 
 degree the qualities of his nationalities, he similarly 
 possessed the defects. Lenau is a poet; but, then, if the 
 poet is iK^piov, mad, he is also Iv^eos, inspired; if the 
 poet must envy the comfortable habits of the " Philis- 
 tine," he yet can vaunt that he lives more in an hour 
 than the Philistine in a year. Lenau is confident in his 
 [ 34 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 poetical powers, justly confident, — and happy is he who 
 is even unjustly confident in his own abilities; but then, 
 again, he doubts the value of poetry, and sighs that he 
 did not adopt some useful profession. "My life is a 
 folly; for what have I done? written merely a few fine 
 poems." Poetry is a safety-valve for oppressive thought 
 and emotion; the poet wins calm by confessing his 
 agitation; the confession ended, the poet is consoled. 
 But such "vehement mental agitations" are H'dllen- 
 stuff, he is "a musical instrument for devils to play 
 upon." To his gift of poetry is added that of music; 
 "in music lies all that is sweet," his Guarnerius is ever 
 at hand to console. But music may act as an irritant 
 rather than a sedative; his nerves are strings that vibrate 
 to the touch of the demon of melancholy. The poet 
 is one who knows how to find peace in the contempla- 
 tion of Nature; but Lenau, poet of Nature, skilled to 
 interpret her moods and match them with his own, 
 discovers that her calm is but cruel monotony, that 
 there is an impassable gulf between Nature and Man, 
 that Man, child of Nature, is in irreconcilable conflict 
 with her. Poetry and poverty are wont to dwell 
 together, and the grim brother too often plays the part 
 of Cain; but Lenau is in possession of a sufficient 
 competency, and therefore of freedom from material 
 care. Fame smiles early upon him; he is kindly, 
 fascinating in aspect and manner, the cynosure of 
 admiring friends, the object of feminine worship. But 
 implacable doubt will not allow him to find joy in fame; 
 he saddens his friends by his waywardness, alienates his 
 brother-poets by clear-sighted satire; the love that he 
 inspires in women and returns brings little but pain and 
 finds no " earthly close." 
 
 [ 35 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Nay, the balance-sheet can merely be one of forced 
 antitheses. And I am constrained to omit all considera- 
 tion of his last three years of life, to regard insanity as 
 non-existence. Collins, harassed by want and debt, 
 can still sing with pensive purity of note; Collins, 
 , freed from material care, sickens speedily, and his brain 
 is clouded to the end. Here is a grim compensation, 
 at least. But Lenau, distraught to frenzy, muttering 
 at most in moments of calm that "poor Niembsch is 
 very unhappy," dimly compassionating himself, sinking 
 to the level of the gibbering foul simian, object of 
 shuddering to his friends! Unless, indeed, I decide 
 crudely, off-hand, that he was responsible for his mad- 
 ness, that he brought retribution, compensation, on 
 himself. But what of constitutional predisposition to 
 melancholy madness? or how are the degrees of respon- 
 sibility in love chagrins, in excesses of thought, to be 
 measured? Love, it may be, is already a species of 
 madness, a fatal visitation in itself — as the Greeks 
 held. He early divines that his heart is incapable of 
 happiness, that he is " governed by a gravitation towards 
 misery," and resolves to renounce. But he is love's 
 victim, in spite of resolve, and cannot but stretch out 
 his hand to grasp the happiness that seems within his 
 reach. Yet, throughout his life, his budding hopes are 
 dashed; he ever renounces, wisely, judiciously, it may 
 be, — and his last renunciation costs him his reason, is 
 the occasion, if not the cause, of his madness. 
 
 Might it not, indeed, be urged that he was diseased 
 throughout his life ; insane, since his character was not 
 in equilibrium? Act followed not on decision, for 
 decision came too late; opportune decision was pre- 
 cluded by scrupulosity and doubt; if doubt could have 
 [ 36 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 been resolved, will-power, the mediator between thought 
 and act, would still have been lacking. He was sorrow- 
 fully, deeply conscious of his powerlessness to act, his 
 inability to make right calculation in advance, to choose 
 an end and the appropriate means to this end, to carry 
 out such choice into execution. He was clear-sighted 
 in the diagnosis of his case; but can the sick gain 
 health by knowledge of their sickness? Could he be 
 other than he was, passive,' devoid of will? There is a 
 doom on instability. He was unstable; but this was 
 due in large measure to his devotion to truth, he passed 
 from professional study to professional study in vain 
 search for satisfaction. He was unstable because he 
 loved liberty; growing distrustful of liberty, he deter- 
 mines not to be " exceptional, " and avows his detestation 
 of "this liberty of fools and poets," but he is unable to 
 discover the due limits of liberty, and elect a course. 
 Lover of political liberty, he abandons Germany for 
 America; but, speedily discovering that forms of govern- 
 ment have little bearing on liberty, he returns disillu- 
 sioned. Lover of truth, he is led inevitably to doubt. 
 He identifies himself in turn with his sceptical Faust, 
 his believing Savonarola, his sceptical-believing Albi- 
 genses. Faust, in his indomitable pride, essays to fol- 
 low Mephistopheles's counsel and sever himself not only 
 from Christ but from Nature, that so he may no longer 
 be the slave of law, of either law. He fails not to dis- 
 cover that the temple of godlike autonomy is a mere 
 prison-house, that severance implies desire for union, 
 that the completest knowledge of Nature and Self would 
 avail him little, for Self and Nature, the Creature and 
 the Creator, are inevitably opposed, and not to be All 
 is to be nothing worth the being. But is not the All, 
 [ 37 j 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 the One, a mere dream, and he himself a dream within 
 a dream ? Despairing, he dreams a dagger to his heart, 
 vainly dreaming to have ended all strife. Faust-Lenau, 
 weary of Pantheism and reason, turns for consolation 
 to his childhood's faith. He has felt to the full, so he 
 tells a friend, that there is an abyss between man and 
 nature, and that the creature needs a mediator, lest he 
 despair and perish; he has "driven the old pantheistic 
 demon thither from whence he came — to the Devil." 
 He is Savonarola now, mystic, ascetic, lowly of heart, 
 preaching against Florentine neo-paganism and German 
 transcendentalism, martyr of faith and liberty. But 
 despite himself, he has given the fairer argument to 
 Savonarola's opponent, Mariano, missionary of neo- 
 paganism and the pope, and ere long he is singing of 
 the Albigenses, martyrs they also of liberty and faith, 
 martyrs of "free thought," dying to maintain their 
 creed that man has one life only, dualists, Manichaeans, 
 or if not Manichaeans, forerunners of that Joachimite 
 and Franciscan "Eternal Gospel" which proclaimed 
 the advent of the third and final dispensation when 
 men shall be "knights of the Holy Ghost," and 
 humanity shall be God. And thus he returns to that 
 doubt and vain inquiry from which he momentarily 
 thought to have freed himself. He cannot but dare to 
 "gaze into the maw of the World-Secret," hoping 
 against hope to discover Unity and Truth, and vertigo 
 seized him at last. 
 
 Remedies Lenau, despairing of happiness, sought wisdom and 
 
 ch^'^'^"' peace, but found neither. Peace, indeed, wrote Phile- 
 
 Imitation mon, is the good that is vainly sought by the wise. Yet 
 
 of Moujiks jjjgjg ig ^ specific against the malady of melancholy, a 
 an ammas. ^ ^^ ^ 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 drastic remedy of mental disquiet, lately recommended 
 in a new form by Russian moralists. To end melancholy, 
 to be at peace, nay, to be happy, we need but cease to 
 think, to reason. All our sufferings are due to the fool- 
 ish, fatal exercise of reason. Contemplate the Moujiks, 
 the simple poor; model your life on theirs, and you 
 shall attain peace. Dostoievsky, when not occupied in 
 nightmare analyses of the state of mind of the demon- 
 iacally possessed, weeps in sympathy with the oppressed, 
 the disinherited, the victims of society, the humble, the 
 resigned. Tolstoi's heroes Bezouchof and Levine win 
 peace after the storm and stress of scepticism by chance- 
 meetings with the Moujiks Karataief and Fedor. Tol- 
 stoi himself is at length converted by Sutaief, and wins 
 the peace of — fatalistic resignation. Buddhistic Chris- 
 tianity. The ideal for which men yearn, he cries, is 
 not before us, but behind. Culture is anarchy, civilisa- 
 tion is barbarity. Truth and goodness are of the vege- 
 tative life, are realised by the vaguely fraternal, naively 
 socialistic, wholly resigned peasants of burden. 
 
 It is Rousseau's doctrine grafted on Buddhism. 
 Reflection, declaimed Rousseau, is a revolt against 
 Nature. The man who meditates is lost, is a depraved 
 animal. Utopia lies behind us. . . . As though the 
 return to nature was possible or desirable; as though 
 nature and spirit were not parted by a gulf. The state of 
 nature, the historical Utopia, was, and is, Hobbes's state 
 of war; and civilisation, one might hold, is most natural, 
 precisely because the struggle for life is therein at the 
 acutest. . . . Well, Kant, mindful of Rousseau, de- 
 fended Moscati's paradox that man, misled by reason, 
 has diverged to his cost from his natural four-footed 
 mode of motion, or at least is inconvenienced by the 
 C 39 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 change. Goldsmith, after Buffon, painted the enviable 
 state of animals, solely occupied with present good; 
 and Buffon was but repeating Pliny. And Pliny was 
 merely expanding Menander's 
 
 All creatures are more blessed in their condition, 
 And in their natures worthier than man. 
 Look on yon ass ! 
 
 Leopardi, indeed, preferred to envy the birds, who bear 
 witness in song to the delusive gladness of the world, 
 who are imaginative and happy like children, while 
 animals are grave and melancholy like savages. But 
 those wise ancients whom he eulogised and envied were 
 content to envy the race of animals as a whole. Seneca 
 proposed for human imitation their speedy oblivion of 
 distress; Plato their continence. The Epicureans bade 
 us copy their prudence in avoiding pain, and Metro- 
 dorus, Epicurean "of the sty," failed not in due admira- 
 tion of his unconscious teachers. How wrongheaded 
 of Giordano Bruno to indite a satirical sonnet against 
 Asininity; of John Stuart Mill, Epicureo-Utilitarian, 
 to invalidate his doctrine by introducing degrees in 
 pleasure, to prefer being a discontented Socrates to being 
 a contented pig ! For the envy of animals is a common- 
 place, a truism; and a truth is no less true for often rep- 
 etition. Aristotle, indeed, congratulates men on being 
 men, since animals are incapable of the pleasures of 
 contemplation. But the life of the contemplative 
 Buddhist is the ideal of the vegetative life. And the 
 Russian peasants, models for our imitation, are un- 
 conscious Buddhists. . . . Moreover, since Descartes 
 showed that animals — and men, so far as regards their 
 animal nature — are automata, and modern scientists, 
 [ 40 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 with a more stringent application of the law of par- 
 cimony, show that men are automata, wholly, and not 
 in part, it logically follows that we are as happy as the 
 animals we envy, that we are already that which we 
 desire to be ! 
 
 Foiled in the quest of happiness, men apply for con- Methods 
 solation to reason, and learn at most, it would seem, that °. '^°"^° ^' 
 
 ' ' ' tion. 
 
 in a little while, say fifty years, their present misery will 
 matter not. Look, for instance, at Horace's common- 
 place that pale death knocks alike at the door of the 
 palace and the hut. It is the burden of Villon's songs; 
 where is Flora the light-of-love, and the thrice sage 
 Hdloise, Queen Blanche, and Joan of Arc ? . . " but 
 where are the snows of yester-year?" It is the oft- 
 recurring refrain of Marcus Aurelius: these men of 
 fame made a great noise and figure formerly, but what 
 is become of them now ? They took but a turn in the 
 world, and are long since gone. Some of them sank at 
 once, and left no memory behind them. The history 
 of others is overcast, and dwindled into fables, and a 
 third sort have dropped even out of fables. All things 
 are transitory, and quickly become as a tale that is told. 
 He uses this refrain, indeed, to exhort us to cease caring, 
 about trifles, to cleave to that which perisheth not, to 
 "bear an honest mind and act for the good of society." 
 But "the good that men do is oft interred with their 
 bones." And if good results from evil, so evil results 
 from good. Every action brings its train of mingled 
 good and evil; the very Gospel was to bring a sword, 
 and not peace, was to bring peace, and yet a sword. 
 
 Similar is the mocking consolation offered by Lucian 
 and Fontenelle, by those who exercise their wit in 
 [ 41 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 laying bare the vanities of life. Men are unequal in life, 
 but equal after death. " For equality reigns in Hades, 
 and all fare alike." Nireus, the comeliest of those that 
 came to Troy, and the vile Thersites, differ no longer, 
 and care not to be discerned each from each. And 
 Chiron, gifted with immortal life on earth, longed for 
 death — like a Swif tian Struldbrug — from very weariness 
 of the daily round ; and gaining death, finds the same 
 monotony in the realm below. The conversing dead 
 are not otherwise reported by Fontenelle. Fame and 
 success are accidents; great action springs from folly, 
 and not reason; the sage practises death in life, and 
 suffers ennui both in life and death, for man is born to 
 aspire to all, and enjoy nothing. Equally, in Lucian 
 and Fontenelle, if a great soul comes vaunting to the 
 shades, they that have preceded his advent reveal to him 
 his nothingness, his self-deceit, in trusting that he was 
 some great one. Dark to himself in life, as we might 
 say, as he was dark to others; for 
 
 What heart knows another's, 
 Ah ! who knows his own ? 
 
 They that possess, or rather are possessed by genius 
 need not sue, vainly sue, reason for consolation. Have 
 we it not, indeed, on the best authorities that genius is 
 allied to madness, that the poet is Iv^eos koI iK(f)pwv? 
 Theirs is the consolation that comes from soiling fair 
 white paper with spider-scrawls — " What does not paper 
 suffer? " smiles old Plutarch. Antimachus, bereft of his 
 wife, dulled chagrin with a melodious elegy that was 
 to be a bead-roll of illustrious sorrows like to his. 
 And thus the Black Knight of Chaucer, in his heavy 
 complaint "for that he cannot win his ladle's grace," 
 [ 42 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 takes record of Palamedes and Hercules, of young 
 Piramus and true Tristram — heroes that were foredone 
 by love. ... In brief, others and greater ones have 
 suffered even as we; solamen miseris socios habuisse 
 doloris. Frail consolation this, to "commit," as Sir 
 Thomas Browne would say, " that natural fallacy of man, 
 to take comfort of society, and think adversities less 
 because others suffer them." Frail consolation also, to 
 bid, Ulysses-like, the heart endure, for that it has en- 
 dured worse fortune, or to rehearse the present sum of 
 negative happinesses. . . . But to return. The poets 
 pluck the flower of sorrow, lull for a while their grief with 
 word-music of their own making, felicitous in the ex- 
 pression of their infelicity. A Shelley finds that the 
 world is a hideous nightmare; but then he can evoke 
 dreams that are fair, and more real, he maintains, than 
 "life's unquiet dream." A Landor needs not to fret 
 because of evil-doers, for he can wholly console himself 
 by chastising them in Latin epigrams which they will 
 not see, or seeing, not understand. But, alas ! these 
 happily unreasonable poets, though they think to eternise 
 their sorrows and their wrath, are not to be consoled by 
 an eternity of fame. How could it be otherwise? They 
 are self-conscious, and self-consciousness is melancholy. 
 Ren6 and Manfred, Rolla and Jocelyn, tread the broad 
 stage and exhale their laments to tearful auditors. 
 What beauty of appropriate scenery! What harmony 
 of phrase! murmur applauding multitudes. And the 
 poet, acclaimed, bows in proud scorn. Chateaubriand, 
 Lamartine, Byron, weary of poetic fame, fling them- 
 selves on action, seeking self-forgetfulness, or at least 
 diversion. Alfred de Musset, indeed, essays not action, 
 wholly paralysed by the apparition of the " spectre of 
 
 [ 43 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Debauch." But for all of them, the lethal arrow 
 cleaves to the wound; the gangrene of egoism is not 
 to be healed. And the lyrists? There was no con- 
 solation for Lenau or Keats or Nekrassof or Leopardi. 
 The singer of the Buck der Lieder, Heine the god- 
 like, the devilish, found no solace in his many tears, 
 nor in his " world-shattering " irony. Burns could not 
 comprehend why his manifest inferiors were blessed with 
 rank and fortune, and not he; but, we are told, he should 
 have held that "his allotted and sufficient portion" 
 was his genius, and recognised that Burns, the man, was 
 treated according to his deserts. . . . Nay, had they 
 been consolable, had they been merely sentimentalists, 
 making a luxury of grief, they would have (gained no 
 lasting fame and sympathy. 
 
 Coleridge, when the poet in him was dead, sought 
 refuge and consolation in metaphysical research, " which 
 exercised the strength and subtlety of the understanding 
 without awakening the feelings of the heart," keeping 
 alive the while "the heart in the head" by the study 
 of the mystic Pantheists, who enabled him "to skirt, 
 without crossing, the sandy deserts of unbelief." Sainte- 
 Beuve, after the dolorous storm and stress of the days 
 when he was Joseph Delorme and Amaury, wrote, ere the 
 poet died in him, those " Les Confessions " which con- 
 soled him not, and then sought refuge in the study of 
 Pascal and the Jansenists, which caused him definitely 
 to abandon the thorny pillow of faith for Montaigne's 
 "soft pillow of doubt." Thus, by the aid of theological 
 metaphysics, the one found consolation in faith, and the 
 other in doubt. And, withal, Coleridge grieved that he 
 needs must lapse from poetry to "mental disease," must 
 [ 44 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 delve" " in the unwholesome quicksilver mines of meta- 
 physic depths," must strive to "steal from his own nature 
 all the natural man." Ought I to adventure once more, 
 as in time past, in the "holy jungle" of metaphysics? 
 Would my adventuring end in faith; or would doubt be 
 confirmed? Should I be comforted by the presumption 
 that I knew; or fall into deeper despair by the increased 
 conviction that all presumption of metaphysical, theo- 
 logical knowledge is illusion? 
 
 From time to time I ceased to listen to the singers 
 of Melancholy during the hours of my secret, nightly 
 solitude in Babylon, ceased to live other and fairer lives 
 fabled by poets and novelists, ceased to regard the 
 symbolic frescoes of the ages that rose before me from 
 the pages of artist-historians, and hied me to the ram- 
 part of my tower of ivory. Thence I could pass in 
 review the contending contemporary combatants. I 
 reviewed them disinterestedly. Here was I, poor and 
 obscure; and yet these champions, priding in their 
 chosen badges, had toiled and strained that they might 
 worthily parade before me on their way to death. I 
 beheld their internecine strife, marked how they sought 
 in cunning fence the joints of each other's armour. 
 Each proclaimed his blazon, the merit of his cause; his 
 tale was good till that of his opponent was heard. I 
 knew the lineage of each; it mattered little whether 
 they vaunted or ignored it. . . . Nay, it was a mourn- 
 ful spectacle. Were they not brethren? was it not 
 ever a Polynices matched with an Eteocles? Each 
 fought for Truth; Thebes, in the interests of Truth, 
 must be preserved against attack, Thebes, in the inter- 
 ests of Truth, must be won from its oppressors that men 
 might dwell in peace. Deadly each to each, for the 
 [ 45 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 weapons on either side were drawn from the armoury 
 of Reason. Hapless Polynices, that, fighting for the 
 Eternal City, he must trust in weapons of Reason, that 
 are like to wound the wielder, that are dangerous to 
 friends as well as foes! Hapless Eteocles, who must 
 stifle the voice of his heart, if he is to resolutely press 
 onward to the capture of the citadel! And there are 
 priestly men on the side of the aggressive Argives, men 
 like Amphiaraus, fair in the integrity of their lives, 
 devoted to truth, and worthy of reverence, while, too 
 often, they that defend the altar, Polynices and his like, 
 are enemies of the gods. 
 
 Armour of faith alone befits the champions of 
 Thebes. Le cosur a des raisons que la raison ignore, the 
 heart has reasons that reason knows not of. Nothing 
 can be proved, nor disproved, by reason, that is worth 
 the proving. Let the champions of Thebes gird on 
 the armour of reason, and the direful result is fore- 
 seen. Luther will reason out his faith, and it is Lessing 
 who applies his principles. The Rationalists, in turn, 
 are the heirs of Lessing; they draw the logical conclu- 
 sions of the data he bequeathed them. Reason, indeed, 
 as Butler says, is the only faculty we have wherewith to 
 judge concerning anything, even religion itself. Butler 
 will give reason for his faith. And in time it is held 
 that Butler's defence is one of the most terrible 
 persuasives to atheism ever produced. Newman puts 
 faith before reason, and yet reasons. His inferences 
 can but result in probability, and needs must he, yearn- 
 ing for certitude, seek refuge once again in faith. As 
 well not reason at all. His opponents also have their, 
 probabilities based on reason, probabilities contrary to 
 his. Is it worth while to reason? What does the 
 [ 46 1 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 thinker demonstrate, except the fashion of his own 
 temperament? 
 
 But he who should don the armour of faith is like 
 to be taunted as an obscurantist, a coward. He is 
 invited, bidden, to dare the combat, armed even as his 
 foes. . . . And yet these Knights of Reason who 
 summon him to stand ground and maintain it are, they 
 also, bondsmen of faith. They assent to hypotheses, 
 give credence to that which is merely probable. They 
 believe in the unknowable, in anthropomorphical ab- 
 stractions, in theological — -that is to say, anthropo- 
 morphical — world processes ; they are dogmatic dualists 
 or ueterminists. 
 
 Reason, and your reason will lead you to join the 
 school of the Sceptics. For Epicureans, Stoics, Pyr- 
 rhonists, and Neo-Academicians are all alike Sceptics. 
 These and their modern representatives suspend judg- 
 ment, balance probabilities, distrust all reason save the 
 practical reason, Seek to attend solely to morality and 
 common-sense. But problems of ethics are inevitably 
 linked to problems of metaphysics; to reason on morals 
 is to reason on reason; and thereby the whole question 
 is again reopened. Reason! reason! what is it? what 
 can it do for us? asked the reasonable Madame du 
 Deffand in agony. It can prove our existence, Descartes 
 would have proudly rejoined, for I am enabled to 
 believe in my existence by doubting it, since doubt 
 is thought, and thought implies a thinker — cogito, ergo 
 sum. The same magnificent result could be obtained 
 from St. Augustine's fallor, ergo sum : self-deception, 
 illusion, implies existence. Thought, then, involves 
 doubt and self-deception. And how shall thought, rea- 
 son, prove that existence, life, is not death, or that 
 
 [ 47 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 death is not life? Who can know, indeed? asks Eurip- 
 ides. An Epicurean poet in the Anthology roundly 
 affirms that life and death are one. A Bichat can 
 only define existence, life, as the sum of the functions 
 which resist death — which is merely to say that life 
 is life, and that death is not life, and to leave us still 
 wondering what, then, is life, and wherein do they 
 differ. Shelley, indeed, finds comfort in the "modest" 
 and "pleasant" creed that death and life alike are 
 mockeries. And poetical faith is quite as respectable 
 as philosophic reason. 
 
 The con- 
 solation of 
 meta- 
 physics, 
 continued. 
 
 I cannot live in the present, cannot trust to present 
 appearances as a mortal should. Mutability, sang 
 Spenser, and died in the singing. Mutability,. I re- 
 echo, adding the strophe of my life to the endless 
 mournful song. Mutability and Illusion, sing our 
 occidental Buddhists. Idealism, the sense of the 
 limitations and relativity of human perceptions and 
 conceptions, the despair of knowing Truth, — if these 
 should be but recognitions of Illusion necessary and 
 inevitable, of the Eternal Ma'ia? Often have I quieted 
 myself with the thought that to raise, or dwell on, 
 such questions was otiose, for Death was near, and 
 Death would solve the enigma. Why not desist from 
 thought, make shift to rest content with the orderly 
 performance of daily duties, and patiently abide the 
 sure revelation of Death? But if Death also be merely 
 another phase of Illusion — a transition to another sphere 
 of illusions? ... If, at least, the change were from 
 dolorous to happy illusions! . . . Or, again, if Death 
 be simple annihilation, mere cessation of sense and 
 thought? 
 
 [ 48 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 If I cannot live in the moment, it should follow 
 forsooth that I am all the better prepared to live in 
 the Eternal. And for such life, I only need to be in 
 possession of "adequate ideas," to be a philosopher. 
 What, then, is i\A% philosophia perennis, — perennial, 
 despite all denial of Positivists — this Metaphysic ? The 
 science of sciences; the truth of science, as science is 
 the truth of common-sense; the universal explanation 
 of the "why" of things, as natural science is the 
 explanation of the "how"; the systematisation of the 
 principles of Being and Knowing? Or, on the other 
 hand, is it the science — of the unknowable ? Rightly 
 understood, the investigation, according to the methods 
 of physical science, of the phenomena of consciousness, 
 — psychology, in short? Shall I be critical with 
 Kant, and discover an impassable abyss between the 
 phenomenal and the real; or shall I criticise Kant with 
 Fichte and Schelling and Hegel? Shall I be an 
 Idealist, with Fichte, restate Spinoza's dogmatism in 
 terms of Kant, hold that Ich ist Alles ; or a mystic 
 Intuitionalist, with Schelling, discover the Absolute 
 Unity, the pure Indifference of which Nature and 
 Spirit are coequal manifestations, hold that Alles ist 
 Ich; or a Gnostic, with Hegel, discover the absolute 
 correspondence of the laws of Thought and the laws of 
 Nature, hold that the objective world is the manifesta- 
 tion of the same spiritual principle of which we are 
 conscious in ourselves, that spiritual principle which 
 is unity in difference, permanence in change, which 
 develops itself by antagonisms, and realises itself by 
 self-alienation? Or, on the other hand, shall I be a 
 Positivist and Agnostic? Shall I bid the metaphysi- 
 cians postpone their explanation of the "why" till such 
 
 E [ 49 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Altar d 
 
 time (the Greek Calends, I suppose) as the "how" shall 
 be completely known, as Jouffroy, metaphysician though 
 he was, was for postponing all metaphysical research as 
 to the nature of the soul till the experimental science 
 of psychology should be complete? . . . Nay, I am 
 with the Gnostics against the Agnostics, and with the 
 Agnostics against the Gnostics, content with neither. 
 
 Joubert styled Metaphysics the poetry of the intellect; 
 which definition resembles Novalis's "philosophy is the 
 poem of the understanding." Poetry, indeed, is crea- 
 tion, and the metaphysician, like the poet, is a fanciful 
 creator from given materials. His poetic is geometrical, 
 algebraical; his method is amplification by deduction 
 from first principles. He is a poet with a personal, and 
 therefore limited view of things. Merely a poet, for his 
 first principles are personal beliefs, beliefs congruous 
 with his temperarhent. To understand his time and 
 his temperament, congenital and moulded by circum- 
 stance, is to understand his system. His given tempera- 
 ment is congruous with a given aspect of truth; the 
 laborious system he presents to the world is but the logical 
 development, the lengthy expression of his view of life. 
 Hence the lack of finality in all systems of philosophy. 
 A system is but a more or less stately structure fashioned 
 out of the materials to hand by a new architect. Dis- 
 ciples discover that the structure is inharmonious and 
 incomplete, ruin it, and divert some chosen portion 
 of the materials to raise an edifice of their own. The 
 palace of the Idea is like the web of Penelope, for ever 
 being constructed, destroyed, and reconstructed. 
 
 The same, Werden, Devenir, Development — that is the master- 
 Devdop-'^' ^°^*^ °^ present-day philosophy. Evolution is the 
 
 ment. [ 5° ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Hegelian Werden modified to the requirements and 
 methods of natural science. Heraclitus's flux, Empe- 
 docles's and Zoroaster's war of Love and Hate, of 
 Ormuzd and Ahriman, are dominated by an immanent 
 final cause, a principle of progress. All things progress 
 towards universal harmony; the Golden Age is before 
 us, not behind; God is in process of elaboration by 
 the human consciousness. . . . Yes, all things progress 
 towards universal annihilation; the Golden Age will be 
 attained when humanity in its consummate wisdom de- 
 cides to free nature and itself from the irrational " will- 
 to-live"; God when elaborated will be Nirvana — cry 
 the pessimistic Evolutionists, in equal exultation. And, 
 indeed, there is small ground for choice between the 
 hopes of the pessimistic and optimistic Evolutionists; 
 for, to the latter. Evolution is the "change from an 
 indefinite coherent homogeneity to a definite coherent 
 heterogeneity, through continuous differentiations and 
 integrations"; and "equilibration" once attained, the 
 reverse process must needs set in, — the goal is merely 
 the starting-point, the "indefinite coherent homoge- 
 neity " of Nothingness. And the whole pother is to be 
 renewed in another cycle, I suppose. In similar fashion, 
 Origen, Christian Evolutionist, maintained that the end, 
 the restitution of all things, is always like the beginning, 
 though he modestly allowed that neither men nor angels 
 can apprehend the beginning or consummation. Nor, 
 assuredly, can men, angels, and Kegels apprehend the 
 necessity of such evolution. But what is this philo- 
 sophy of Hegel, of Spencer, of Origen, but an old-world 
 tale? Thought, Being, the One, for some unknowable 
 reason produces, degenerates into. Existence, Becoming, 
 Nature ; and the world-process is the constant retrogres- 
 [ SI ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 sion of the Multiple to the One. Brahma, floating from 
 all eternity in the lotus-chalice, Infinite holding converse 
 with Infinite in the silence of Non-Being, falls prey to 
 infinite melancholy. He desires to be no longer One, 
 craves self-sacrifice. Being limits himself in Becoming. 
 But to be life is to be death; that which is finite aspires 
 to return again to the infinite, to be lost in Nothingness. 
 Existence is but the trinal rhythm of renascence, zenith, 
 decadence. 
 
 And if this be all too vertiginous, if the vision be 
 narrowed, the thinker, divining the future, will comfort 
 you by signalising the advent of triumphant democracy, 
 latter-day invasion of barbarians who need not travel to 
 invade. Or by way of consolation, you may foresee the 
 subjugation of the democrat barbarians by the yellow 
 or black barbarians of inferior races. Or you may 
 gratefully listen to the scientist who prophesies, after 
 due induction, that the future man will be bald, purblind, 
 and mainly paralytic, glad to be released from existence 
 by a kindly erratic comet, or a renewed Age of Ice. 
 
 The same, There is no consolation for me in Metaphysics. 
 Should I then abandon Metaphysics for Ethics, like the 
 ancient Sceptics whom I have mentioned in passing, 
 that is to say, like the Epicureans, Stoics, Pyrrhonists, 
 and Neo-Academicians; turn with Kant from the 
 "Pure" to the "Practical" Reason, with Fichte from 
 the Wissenschaftslehre to the Sittenlehre ? But in no 
 wise should I escape Metaphysics, for all ethical, like 
 scientifical, systems are inevitably based on metaphysical 
 assumptions, on transcendental denials and affirmations 
 — witness the anti-metaphysical Positivists and the 
 would-be non-metaphysical adherents of "La Morale 
 [ 52 ] 
 
 continued : 
 Ethics. 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Ind^pendante." The man of science, indeed, may 
 deduce a system of ethics from his lirst principles to 
 complement and crown his scheme; while the man of 
 action, intent on his own self-preservation, or his own 
 and that of others, may go on his way not caring to 
 criticise the principles he has assumed — but each and 
 all are involved in circuitous reasoning; as Spinoza knew, 
 ethics must be based on metaphysics, and also meta- 
 physics must be based on ethics. There is' no escape. 
 
 Moreover, as in the case of metaphysical systems, 
 systems of ethics are reducible to types. And to 
 comprehend the systematiser is to comprehend the 
 system. I am thus thrown back on melancholy; 
 for if I discover the type to which I approximate, 
 I discover my isolation, my one-sidedness, my incom- 
 pleteness. 
 
 Again, whether I adopt as congruous with my tem- 
 perament subjective principles of ethics, or legal, or 
 political, or transcendental, or religious; whether I hold 
 with Kant and Fichte that philosophy, the rational, 
 supersedes religion, the pictorial, or with Hegel that 
 the rational and the pictorial are but two aspects of the 
 same unity, or with Matthew Arnold and Boccaccio 
 that philosophy and religion alike are merely poetry — 
 I end in mystery. And how reason on mystery? 
 
 This much at least I can say: my scepticism has 
 had no influence on my conduct. It is indeed held, 
 and with truth, that, once scepticism admitted to the 
 head, it must needs penetrate to the heart; but, still, 
 conduct may not be affected. "Passions come first, 
 and doubts follow," preached Massillon. Not in my 
 case; doubts came first, and passions neither accom- 
 panied nor followed. I was born gentle; I was not 
 [ S3 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 passionate, not blind and therefore selfish'; I was 
 dowered from the first with an anima naturaliter 
 Christiana, as Tertullian said of Marcus Aurelius — 
 Marcus Aurelius, who counted gentleness among the 
 fairest virtues, who counted gentleness and kindness as 
 fit not only for women, but for men also. Questions 
 of practical morality barely affected me; goodness 
 came easy to me. And circumstances made my con- 
 duct still more easy, by removing opportunity for 
 transgression, by forcing Stoicism on me. So easy, 
 that verily there was no merit in my goodness. " It is 
 one thing to be tempted, Escalus; another thing to 
 fall." How if, so far from falling, you are not even 
 tempted! Butler, I suppose, would tell me that, this 
 being so, my "probation " would take the form of specu- 
 lative difficulties. But " probation " ? . . . In any case, 
 I have not been exposed to any conflict between duty 
 and passion. In early youth, it was but knowledge, 
 knowledge that I desired. Thrown upon the world, 
 it was but eager self-sacrifice for my nearest and dearest, 
 vain self-sacrifice. And in my final solitude, it was 
 but Abstine, sustine ; Sustine, abstine. It cost me no 
 effort to be courteous, modest, reserved, obedient. I 
 fulfilled my duties, gave as little trouble as possible to 
 those who served my needs of food and lodging. Other 
 relations with the world of men I had not. I hid my 
 wounds, and smiled when I was addressed. At least I 
 did no harm, if I could do no good. 
 
 The To resume in a sentence these last entries in my 
 
 action^ °^ diary : — Philosophy, so far from bringing consolation, 
 
 is like to deepen my need of it; and though ethical 
 
 practice may be based on no theory, but merely on 
 
 [ 54 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 temperament and habit, ethical problems cannot be 
 separated from metaphysical, nor the " Practical " Rea- 
 son from the "Pure." How then should I separate 
 Action from Contemplation? Or how, finding no con- 
 solation in the Contemplative Life, hope to find conso- 
 lation in the Practical? Doubtless by nature I am a 
 contemplative quietist; moreover, by force of circum- 
 stances, action is debarred me; and still again, were 
 action allowed me, I could not refrain from criticising 
 action. Hamlet is incapable of other than spasmodical 
 action, precisely because he is contemplative, because 
 he ever sees that there are more sides than one to any 
 and every question. Your Laertes is a man of action, 
 precisely because he is thoughtless. And again, is the 
 man of action less exposed to melancholy than the man 
 of contemplation? Hercules is the typical herb of 
 action to the Stoics, and yet the worthy Plutarch finds 
 that he can adduce no more conspicuous example of the 
 melancholic temperament than Hercules. Of a truth 
 this Hercules, this active philanthropist, this universal 
 justiciary, is the typical man of action, for his life is 
 one ceaseless succession of involuntary crimes and vain 
 endeavours to expiate the irreparable. 
 
 And yet how is it possible for me not to be the sport 
 of the mirage of contrast, not to desire to essay the 
 remedy and consolation of action? How should I not 
 envy the man of action, ardent, prompt, indefatigable, 
 ever accommodating himself to the present, passing from 
 task to task, from conquest to conquest, with good- 
 humoured ease? To such is given the joy of living, 
 the joy that accompanies the free, spontaneous play of 
 natural energy; is given courage, self-confidence, im- 
 periousness. It is a malady, doubtless, this desire to 
 C 55 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 be other than one is; yet there is an affinity between 
 contrasts, between contraries. The contemplative would 
 fain return to the Cave of Shadows, if only because he is 
 weary of contemplation. If he can consider his exercise 
 of intellect as truest action, yet he resorts, and must 
 resort, for change, for contrast, to some lower occupa- 
 tion, manual, lingual. The body he trails with him 
 craves its satisfaction; he will exchange social nothings 
 with acquaintances. Hegel unbent to the small-talk of 
 society, and I doubt not Spinoza would still have sought 
 to fleet the hours by chattering with homely Van der 
 Spycks and Tydemans, by making little drawings; would 
 still have found some equivalent to lens-grinding, had 
 he been independent of manufacturing opticians, and 
 free to dwell in complete solitude. 
 
 Why do I resent being driven on a Stoic quietism, 
 — driven, because my action is narrowed by the force of 
 circumstance to mere bread-winning action? There 
 are fatalities of temperament; we make our own 
 fortunes even by being what we are. I could not have 
 been driven on quietism, had I not been a quietist in 
 advance, any more than the soil can receive the good 
 seed unless it be already prepared and fitted to receive 
 it. Not only must I perforce return to the world 
 when the year is over, and " drudge for my outer cover- 
 ing " once more, but such return, such petty action, is 
 desirable. 
 
 In any case, what a poor thing this action is, even 
 on the grandest scale. A fitful fever, at the best. 
 " The greater part of what we say and do is unneces- 
 sary," as Marcus Aurelius tells us. And, when not 
 indifferent, unnecessary, our actions are harmful, in 
 part, if not mainly, one might add. To act, you 
 [ 56 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 must be purblind; the man of action is no critic, no 
 calm observer. He pursues his aim as a bull pursues 
 a single toreador. No matter that there are twenty 
 toreadors plying their goads, he is blind to nineteen of 
 them. He must be prejudiced, be certain that there is 
 only one. He must be a fanatic, a man of one idea, if 
 he is to accomplish anything. Panurge had a simple 
 action before him. He began to reflect, and the action 
 seemed no longer simple. Rabelais was laughing, after 
 his manner, at Panurge, resolved to marry and resolved 
 not to marry turn by turn; but laughter implies tears, 
 and it is tearful enough to know that there are as many 
 reasons for not doing as for doing. All action is 
 guilt, since it is necessarily one-sided, says Hegel. 
 More than this, whatever you do shall have mixed 
 results; good and evil are ever conjoined, says Euri- 
 pides. Es irrt der Mensch so lang' er strebt ; when 
 Faust and Wilhelm Meister cease to act, and therefore 
 to err, their history must cease. And Goethe's moral 
 of Saul seeking his father's asses and finding a kingdom 
 serves but to justify all manner of actions which are 
 not, like Saul's, rightful in themselves, justly com- 
 manded and complied with, but selfish only. Moreover, 
 nemo sibi tantum errat, as Seneca says; our errors 
 cause others to err, the blind falls not into the ditch 
 alone. 
 
 "Good and evil are ever conjoined." So much so 
 that moralists are compelled to take for criterion the 
 motive, the intent of action, and not the result. Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer, reducing the good to the pleasurable, 
 and measuring the goodness of actions by their con- 
 sequences, does but expose his flank to the critic. On 
 the other hand, the motive, the intent, justifies your 
 [ 57 ] 
 
ne Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Inquisitors. They meant well by society. So did the 
 enthusiastic thinkers that preluded the French Revolu- 
 tion; and a deluge of blood followed on the universal 
 preaching of benevolence and philanthropy. Puritan 
 action undfer Cromwell brought about a correspond- 
 ing reaction. Why act at all since reaction must 
 follow? . . . But even Hartmann's philosophy bids us 
 act, bids us co-operate with Evolution. For pessimist 
 philosophers must needs turn practical, turn to the side 
 of action; and the aim of all practical philosophies, 
 even the pessimistic, is happiness. We must act, must 
 aid in the concentration, the capitalisation, as far as 
 possible, of cosmic intelligence in humanity, that 
 humanity may be able not only to end its own exist- 
 ence, but also that of the unreasonable, evil world, 
 and thus bring about the "negative absolute happi- 
 ness." Truly a glorious consummation, and one de- 
 voutly to be wished ! How the devout pessimist must 
 mourn at the opportunity forgone in the youth of the 
 world ! For was not there a Brahman ascetic who dire- 
 fuUy allowed himself to be diverted from his purpose of 
 winning the peace of Nirvana for all things? By virtue 
 of extremest austerities he had nigh brought on a general 
 cataclysm. A little more, and the will-to-live had been 
 snuffed out. And yet he listened to the appeals of gods 
 and men to desist ! 
 
 Mephistopheles reaches over my shoulder and whis- 
 pers: Thou fearest and scornest action because thy 
 action has been unsuccessful. Is it so ? I am, indeed, 
 weaned from hope, and almost from desire, of suc- 
 cess, and count myself among the vanquished. And I 
 look, or strive "to look, upon the vanquished with the 
 eyes of Browning or the Russian novelists. It is the 
 [ 58 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 vanquished whom we should love. With a pitying 
 love? Nay, perchance it is the successful we should 
 pity, since these eat not their bread in tears, and there- 
 fore know not "the heavenly Powers," to use Goethe's 
 words. These know not that Beauty, whose other 
 name is Sorrow; for "beauty in the mind leaves 
 hearths cold, and love-refined ambitions make the 
 world unkind." Only too often, the first are last, 
 their victory is defeat; for in their elation, they are 
 deaf to the groaning and travailing of all creation, are 
 blind victims of selfishness. They have achieved a 
 "successful adjustment"; but then "a successful ad- 
 justment made by one creature involves an unsuccess- 
 ful adjustment made by another," as Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer duly informs us. In any case, the successful 
 are hapless, for they condemn themselves to a speciality, 
 and the development of one aptitude implies the atrophy 
 of all the rest, le metier deforme. It is impossible for 
 the specialist not to "desire this man's art, and that 
 man's scope." Homer, indeed, might feign that 
 Achilles was content to excel in courage, and minded 
 not that others were praised for eloquence ; but Horace 
 knew well that no specialist is ever content with his 
 lot. 
 
 Swift, passionate pessimist, anxious to escape Con- The 
 templation, since he beheld in the world a hideous remedy of 
 
 ^ ' action, con- 
 
 chaos, conscious that "his mind was like a conjured tinued. 
 
 spirit that needed employment if he did not give it 
 employment," essayed Pindaric odes and took sides in 
 book-quarrels as to the respective merits of Ancients and 
 Moderns. But such action as this could not console or 
 content him, indifferent as he was to literary fame. 
 [ 59 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 He needs must turn polemist and politician; he is 
 borne for a while on the crest of the wave, and then 
 flung back on solitude and contemplation, to weave 
 ropes of sand, to trivially play on words and cry vive la 
 bagatelle, to unmask corruption and express his detesta- 
 tion of "that animal named man," of Yahoo-humanity. 
 On the other hand, Bacon, knowing himself "by 
 inward calling to be fitter to hold a book than to play 
 a part," nevertheless held it necessary for the further- 
 ance of his contemplative designs to win place and 
 gold. Vainly he sought to combine action and con- 
 templation; long distrusted as a mere man of letters, 
 he wins place and gold and enemies at length by 
 devious courses and fawning flatteries, and delights all 
 too well in the prosperous pomp of his state-craft. And 
 yet he yearns the while for "leisure with honour," and 
 winning leisure with dishonour writes of science " like 
 a Lord Chancellor." 
 
 Indeed, as Plato knew, temperance and courage, 
 , quietude and energy, contemplation and action are 
 antagonistic, incompatible; though he would fain 
 discover the "royal science" which should link to- 
 gether the opposing qualities, alike in rulers and 
 subjects. But surely Goethe discovered this "royal 
 science"? ... "I have been ever spoken of as one 
 of Fortune's chiefest favourites; and I will not 
 complain, nor find fault with my career. But, at 
 bottom, my life has been nothing but toil and moil, 
 and I can say with truth that, in my seventy years and 
 five, not four weeks of real well-being have I enjoyed. 
 It was the eternal rolling of a Sisyphus-stone, ever to 
 be pushed uphill again. Too many were the calls on 
 my activity, within and without. My real happiness 
 [ 60 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 was my poetic thought and creation. But how greatly 
 was this narrowed, hindered, hampered by my position 
 in the world ! Had I been able more to withdraw my- 
 self from public and private action, and more to live in 
 solitude, I had been happier and my poetical production 
 larger." So the Olympian Goethe to his Wagner- 
 Boswell Eckermann. This supreme exemplar of Aris- 
 totle's ideal, this "magnanimous man," this philoso- 
 pher and governor of men, this Goethe who possessed 
 pre-eminently the Aristotelian conditions alike of 
 the Contemplative and the Practical Life, sighed 
 that he had not chosen solitude alone; re-echoed 
 Luther, Luther the devotee of ideas, Luther who 
 abandoned solitude for world-shaking action, who 
 trembled at the results of his impassioned crusade, and 
 sighed " I know not that in all my life I have ever felt 
 real happiness." 
 
 Yes, the practical life is secondary in point of happi- 
 ness. The more contemplative, the more happy is life. 
 To contemplate is to be one's truest self. Contempla- 
 tion is the divine life, and therefore the blessed life, 
 though the vulgar think not so. Such happiness needs 
 less supply of external goods than the active life, 
 requires but leisure. ... I do but resume Aristotle. 
 Professor, leisured university lecturer, he lacks not for 
 arguments to exalt the Contemplative Life over the 
 Practical, fails not to shape his system to suit his tem- 
 perament. Forsooth, it is ■ the Contemplative Life 
 itself which is the most practical, for to think is to act 
 in the highest sense. . . . Would that I could live my 
 length of days in this fair solitude, even without the 
 virtuous wife — " the fairest garden in her looks, and in 
 her mind the choicest books" — whom Cowley bestows 
 
 [ 6i ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 on his happy solitary. Even without the friends whose 
 conversation, added to knowledge, constitutes to Plato 
 the happiness of private life. But if such happiness 
 were mine, — and it cannot be — my contemplation 
 would be no action, and therefore not virtuous. Nay, 
 my contemplation would be veriest misery, for know- 
 ledge is but sorrow to me. It were best to act — if 
 action were possible. 
 
 The same, 
 continued : 
 The action 
 of men of 
 letters. 
 
 On Aristotelian principles the man of letters is a 
 man of action. He defaces leaves of virgin paper with 
 ink-stains, and these leaves gathered together are 
 opera, are works. His words are equivalent to actions. 
 Now, the disinterested — or uninterested — observer of 
 my case would incontinently class me with the dedasses, 
 the superfluous products of modern- education. The 
 aim of education in a utilitarian age, he might say, is 
 apparently to produce gentlemen of liberal culture ; but 
 the vast majority of these " gentlemen " are constrained 
 to seek a livelihood, and they find to their dismay that 
 " every gate is thronged with suitors, and the markets 
 overflow," that demand is anything but equivalent to 
 supply. "Too old,"' as Diderot said, to begin to 
 learn some useful art, "they become actors, soldiers, 
 thieves, gamblers, rogues, and vagabonds." Or, lacking 
 talent for such professions, these descendants of the 
 mediaeval "poor scholar" resort in final desperation to 
 literature, would-be purveyors of mental provender to a 
 glutted, indifferent public. 
 
 Nay, it is calm, it is placida ^pax, that I desire. 
 
 Happily, I am untouched by the malady of genius. 
 
 The malady of genius is usually complicated with that 
 
 of poverty, and it is quite enough to be victim of 
 
 [ 62 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 poverty alone. It should be a matter of consolation 
 that no zeal consumes me to add another example to a 
 revised edition of the Calamities of Authors. Your 
 genius, your Keats, must pathetically cry, "O that 
 something fortunate had ever happened to me ! then I 
 might hope, but despair is forced upon me like a habit." 
 But the biography of poets is an endless martyrology. 
 To be a poet is to be emotional, passionate ; and " no 
 joining others in their wailing, no violent emotion," is 
 the command of the sage to himself. Your Lessing, 
 then, sanguine, militant? He, well equipped for the 
 struggle, must sigh at thirty-seven that none will hire 
 him, literary man of all work though he be, "doubtless 
 because nobody knows what use to put me to"; 
 his melancholy deepens with added years, and at the 
 end, though like Constance, he "instructs his sorrows 
 to be proud," he must whisper, "I have had no luck." 
 But thinkers are necessarily "unpopular." Thackeray, 
 then, shall summarise for me : " Better break stones 
 than be a popular author " — even a popular author, one 
 who can amuse, and share the ample rewards of all 
 amusement-providers. ... In any case, I am a child 
 of Obermann, conscious of impotence, unimpelled by a 
 fatality of temperament to seek a garret in Grub Street. 
 But were I a child of Ren^, conscious of power, I 
 should disdain to use it. For I fain would dwell in the 
 temple of Peace; and woe to him who breaks silence, 
 who attracts attention by strenuous original utterance ! 
 His days are no longer his own; he is object of idealisa- 
 tion and depreciation; he is misjudged and misjudges 
 himself. He learns in suffering what he teaches in 
 song or prose. If he confesses his own sorrows, he 
 does despite to his own dignity; he violates the dignity 
 [ 63 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 of others, if he takes them for his unconscious models. 
 If he extends his range, and holds the mirror up to 
 contemporary society, he shocks by truth, and is sus- 
 pected of cynicism. If he trusts to fancy and imagina- 
 tion, he is a purveyor of anodynes, an artist, blind to the 
 realities of life in the interests of his art. . . . Silence 
 is best, even were I capable of breaking silence. Silent 
 resignation is the profoundest criticism of life. 
 
 The same, If Swift, conscious that he was born to be a ruler 
 continued : ^f ^ scomful of all literature that should not be an 
 
 Vauven- 
 
 argues. act in words, held dictatorship for at least a season, 
 Vauvenargues, with like consciousness and scorn, was 
 wholly baffled in his desire to compass the felicity — if 
 it be felicity — of action. Now, for long the Marquis 
 de Vauvenargues was little more than a name to me, 
 the writer of a century of closely-printed, mainly arid, 
 pages bound together with my La Rochefoucauld 
 Thoughts and Maxims! I dismissed them with a curt 
 latet dolus in generalibus. Fragments of an Intro- 
 duction to the Science of the Human Mind ! Your 
 eighteenth-century psychologists were confident enough, 
 but I congratulated Vauvenargues on his release by death 
 from the continuance of such a task. Delineations 
 of social types; appreciations of French "Augustan" 
 writers, proceeding by way of parallels and antitheses ! 
 Negligeable imitations, these, of La Bruy^re; a student's 
 exercises in rhetoric. 
 
 Yet when I chanced to set about reading him I 
 speedily discovered the man behind the work, and 
 shaped a Vauvenargues in accordance with the legend. 
 Evidently a lofty, ardent soul, hampered by adverse 
 circumstance; a Stoic because he must, yet not em- 
 
 C 64 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 bittered; serenely heroic under continuous disappoint- 
 ment and increasing malady; solitary, in reaction against 
 and in advance of his age, yet by his candid tender- 
 ness commanding respect from the few that knew him, 
 even the respect of the Voltaire to whom he addressed 
 himself. An impoverished noble and a subaltern soldier 
 who had gained nothing but disease by his campaigns, 
 who published a single anonymous volume — a volume of 
 veiled protests against ill-fortune, barely discussed and 
 speedily dismissed to an oblivion of fifty years — and 
 died in pain and destitution at the age of thirty-one. 
 
 At length I came across those letters of his that saw 
 not the light for a hundred years, and was enabled to 
 penetrate his reserve. The closer vision thus permitted 
 had its usual effect; the charm of the vague was dis- 
 pelled; the ideal figure solidified into human propor- 
 tions and imperfections. I found that his period of 
 confident pagan Stoicism was but a brief one, ending in 
 distrust; that it was doubtful whether at any time he had 
 been a Christian Stoic, as was suppoE3d, doubtful that 
 the loss of faith had even cost him so much as a struggle, 
 so early and so firm was his neutrality. I could but 
 regard him with unrelated sympathy, in impersonal com- 
 prehension. Nor had he failed to sow wild oats, to soil 
 his dignity with facile amours, though, indeed, these 
 errors, which he charges to his early intemperate love 
 of liberty, soon yielded to renunciation — renunciation, 
 since he cannot hope to be comprehended by ordinary 
 women, and they who could inspire in him desire to be 
 comprehended would not deign to cast a glance upon 
 him. With such renunciation I could sympathise, and 
 the spectacle of his high-soaring ambition, his consum- 
 ing desire for glory, so constantly, so wholly thwarted, 
 ^^ [ 65 ] 
 
77?^ Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 could not leave me unmoved. Had I not also cherished 
 vain ambitions and ideals? Proudly, invincibly self- 
 confident, sure that he was born to be a leader of men, 
 he vainly sought and sued for a fitting sphere of action. 
 Hopeful to the last, he is yet compelled to doubt at 
 times whether it had not been better to proportionate 
 his hopes and designs to his circumstances. He recom- 
 mends self-investigation, and consequent accommoda- 
 tion of desires to powers; in moments of despondency 
 he recognises that there is no harmony between his 
 desires and his powers, his head and his heart, his heart 
 and his fortunes; but, then, he cannot renounce his 
 desires, he suffers less from their domination than if he 
 were to endeavour to suppress them, it is a point of 
 honour and a principle to let his heart have its way, 
 though Stoicism and his actual situation counsel con- 
 straint. At length, Voltaire made interest to procure 
 him a diplomatic post, object of his moderated desire, 
 now that he must cease to hope for a warrior's glory; 
 but the offer came too late; an attack of smallpox 
 consummated the ruin of his health; there was nothing 
 left him but a year-long agony, a reluctant declension 
 to the sole sphere of action which was still open, that 
 of literature, and an exhibition of reserved serenity 
 under poverty and pain which called forth the wonder 
 of his new associates. . . . All this is tragic enough; 
 but what if his self-confidence was self-deceit? Action 
 was debarred him, indeed; but was he not self-deluded 
 in the belief of his capacity for action on a grand scale? 
 Chafing against his bonds; depreciating the action of 
 thought; sharing the prejudice of his rank against men 
 of letters, and scorning them further from moral and 
 intellectual reasons; an author only by compulsion, for 
 [ 66 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 men write faute de mieux, he is convinced, write 
 because they may not act — it is yet most doubtful 
 whether he could have been other than he was, a 
 moralist, a man of contemplation. 
 
 Liberty of action he craved, ample opportunity to 
 employ his whole soul in a limitless career ! Fired by 
 Plutarch, he would fain be a Cassar, or at least an 
 Alcibiades. In his first enthusiastic admiration of 
 energy, he can admit a Catiline, and look back with 
 regret on the times when men were free to be brilliant 
 criminals. Unscrupulous energy was better far than 
 mediocrity. "Liberty," he feverishly writes, "reveals, 
 even in the excess of crime, the true greatness of our 
 soul. In the ' happy centuries ' of Greece and Rome, 
 the energy of nature glows in the midst of corruption; 
 manliness presents itself without restraint, pleasures 
 know no infamy, wit no affectation, haughtiness no 
 vanity, vice no meanness or hypocrisy." . . . One is 
 almost inclined to turn away from him as a hopeless 
 victim of an all-mastering passion. He learns, however, 
 to moderate his idea of liberty, or at least to recognise 
 that such liberty was not for him. Driven back upon 
 himself, that sombre self from which he yearned to 
 escape by grandiose action, he thinks to discern another 
 form of "true grandeur of soul" more appropriate to 
 his case. "It is not easy to change one's heart, but it 
 is still more difficult to stem the rapid, forceful tide of 
 things, and therefore it is chiefly to self-perfection that 
 we should direct our energies, and true grandeur is to 
 be found in such a task. . . . The soul is great in 
 virtue of its thoughts and sentiments; the rest is 
 beyond our power. When outward action is refused, 
 it turns upon itself." He will thank Nature that she 
 [ 67 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 has made virtue independent of happiness, and will front 
 adversity undismayed, though he must fear that true 
 greatness of soul is incompatible as a permanent state 
 with meanness of fortune, that such meanness tends 
 to degradation. But, as an advocate of the passions, 
 as an avowed determinist, he is unwilling, unable to 
 forgo his ardent desire for glory. He is ready to admit 
 that a lofty soul needs no external glory, no mouthings 
 of fame, but "at least, glory confirms a man in his 
 grandeur, conceals from him his meanness, satisfies his 
 heart, in a word, bestows happiness upon him." He 
 discovers, however, that the quality of the passions 
 depends on the quality of the heart which conceives 
 them, and that his own heart is of a lofty quality. 
 Therefore he is led to " aspire to honour, that he may 
 diffuse good around him." 
 
 Indeed, he is never weary of proclaiming that to his 
 heart he owes his nobleness, his strength, his serenity. 
 The heart is the source of lofty sentiments; to be 
 dominated by lofty sentiments is to be in the way 
 of glorious action; consciousness of the capacity for 
 glorious action is a safeguard of magnanimity under 
 adverse fortune. The heart is not only the supreme 
 arbiter of taste, but the source of truth; sentimental, 
 emotional knowledge is the highest knowledge; the 
 intuitional method alone is infallible. Like Pascal, 
 like Jacobi, like Schleiermacher, he holds a brief for the 
 heart against the head. Reason is the enemy; the 
 esprit which his contemporaries idolised served only 
 to mislead and corrupt sentiment, to confuse clear 
 issues. "The effect of a multiplicity of ideas is to 
 entangle weak minds in contradictions." The logical 
 result of reasoning is scepticism, and scepticism is a bar 
 
 [ 68 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 to action. . . . Vauvenargues, the sentimentalist, evi- 
 dently presupposes that his heart is always in the right 
 place, that its impulses are uniform. More than this; 
 because, listening to his own heart, he hears sweet 
 music, he must needs infer that the hearts of others 
 are equally musical. Because his own heart is generous, 
 he must needs protest against the doctrine of the natural 
 depravity of the human heart which the saintly Pascal 
 and the worldly La Rochefoucauld held. In the ardour 
 of his reaction, in his zeal for rehabilitation, he de- 
 fends the passions too passionately, not as a Butler or 
 a Spinoza, who, also, are endeavouring to reckon with 
 human nature as it is. They and Leibnitz are as 
 anxious as he to essay the reconciliation of disparities; 
 but they do not set about their vain task by dogmati- 
 cally premising that "there are no contradictions in 
 nature." As though Vauvenargues was not himself in 
 perpetual self-contradiction! He is ardent, sponta- 
 neous, emotional, and therefore prone to self-contradic- 
 tion. He formulates his own temperament, conceiving 
 the while that he is elaborating a science of the 
 human mind. He is pathetic in his struggle against 
 adversity; and, also, pathetic in his ignorance. Yet, 
 had he possessed a wider acquaintance with specula- 
 tion, a deeper sense of the difificulties of the problem, 
 would not his melancholy have been deeper still? 
 Would he not have been the less able to bear up against 
 adversity? 
 
 I turn again to Vauvenargues — this French Lord vauven- 
 Shaftesbury, but a Shaftesbury who is melancholy, ex- argues, 
 
 . 1 -1 1 • , r continued: 
 
 posed to continuous adversity, charged with a fervent "Proba- 
 ambition which can find no outlet, this Rousseau with- t'O"-" 
 [ 69 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 out Rousseau's love of nature and mistrust of man. 
 His natal stars were in hostile conjunction, the astrolo- 
 ger would have opined, fondly thinking to have solved 
 the problem. If life were what the moralist would 
 fain have it be, a sphere of moral training, haply 
 Vauvenargues might serve for illustration; he was ever 
 placed in the way of quelling desire, of learning re- 
 nunciation and resignation. But what of those who 
 are placed in the way of accomplishing their desires? 
 Are they not also worthy of moral training, worthy of 
 being favoured with opportunities of poverty and pri- 
 vation and bodily malady ? Or again, if an ever-hapless 
 Vauvenargues, and, say, an ever-fortunate Fontenelle, 
 are extreme opposites, either of them half-educated, as 
 not having experienced the contrary lot, why are there 
 men who are favoured more than these, who experi- 
 ence vicissitude, are acquainted with adversity and 
 prosperity alike ? Or still again, why of these last are 
 some chosen to taste the sweets of adversity in youth, 
 and to be comforted in age by prosperity, while others 
 are chosen to be endangered in youth by prosperity, 
 and when they have learnt due lessons, to be oppressed 
 by adversity in age? The fortunes of the individual 
 are inexplicable; but, if we turn in despair from the 
 individual to the race, the problem is of no readier 
 solution. To say that the race is in the way of 
 moral training, of moral progress, is to presume 
 that Nature has a moral end. The disinterested 
 observer might remark that the moralist is a victim of 
 anthropomorphism, and colours his vision of the 
 universe by his subjective desire. He might point to 
 the example of animals, who, like men, are vessels of 
 honour or dishonour, according as chance, the unknown 
 [ 70 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 cause, will have it, are favoured or oppressed by 
 environment, are exposed to vicissitude; might ask if 
 they also are in the way of moral training. Presuma- 
 bly, they know it not; but, surely, such unconscious- 
 ness strengthens the "moral postulate" for retribution, 
 since they may not comfort themselves with the belief 
 that their sufferings are educational. And the dis- 
 interested observer, again, might urge on the Evolu- 
 tionist, who discerns in Nature a progress in the 
 direction of the better, to take care lest he also be not 
 a victim of anthropomorphic teleology. 
 
 If, in renewed despair, we revert from the race to 
 the individual, it is of small use or comfort to be in- 
 formed by the scientific preacher that life is a game 
 of skill played against Nature. Surely a losing game 
 at the best, and played against an opponent whose 
 indifference seems ruthlessness. And at any moment 
 she may beckon her sister Death to stay the game — 
 an interruption which is often welcome. Moreover, 
 our moves on the chess-board are not our own. She 
 dictates them; we move only as she allows. . . . Are 
 we the puppets of Nature, are our affections the strings 
 wherewith she moves us that she may vent her ca- 
 pricious humour, her tragi-comic jests? Or are we 
 the playthings of the gods, created with a purpose — 
 which is the best construction that can be placed on 
 the case, thought Plato. If this be so, we are still none 
 the less puppets, and our motions are not our own. Or 
 are God, Nature, Chance, Fate, Necessity, so many 
 names and aspects of the unknown power — nay, power 
 is also a human conception — of the Ineffable which 
 determines us. . . . " Dost thou think that which is 
 necessary has no merit?" asked Vauvenargues, making 
 [ 71 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 a virtue of necessity. Perchance we should seek such 
 comfort as we may in the determinist's belief that the 
 good is none the less good for being determined. Or we 
 should embrace the illusion of free-will, accepting any 
 justification of our belief, be it grotesque as that of 
 Epicurus. Necessary illusion of the freedom of the will ? 
 But philosophers deem themselves necessitated to strip 
 the veil from the illusion. And yet the man of action, 
 and the man of sentiment, protest in favour of the illu- 
 sion. Surely, it is a necessary " state-lie, " which all must 
 believe, though they believe that they do not believe. 
 
 The What of the consolation, the remedy of love? But 
 
 remedy \oye., like action, is debarred me. I can but re-echo 
 
 of love. 
 
 the love renunciations of Maurice de Gu6rin and Lenau 
 
 and Vauvenargues. Sweet Spenser, whose "spirit out 
 
 of dust was raised " by the Elizabeth he espoused, had 
 
 yet first sung of Rosalind and unrequited love, and worn 
 
 the chains of still another, second Rosalind; and, poet of 
 
 Mutability, he must "retract" and "reform" his hymns 
 
 of earthly love and beauty — after that his loved bride 
 
 was won. "The error, and I confess it is not easy for 
 
 spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in 
 
 seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, 
 
 perhaps, eternal." So wrote Shelley, conscious at length 
 
 that the poet of Alastor and Epipsychidion had erred 
 
 in hoping for perfect sympathy, in desiring to behold 
 
 and possess a realisation of his ideal. Desires for the 
 
 sympathy of a woman, desires to be loved, desires to 
 
 be comprehended! How could I be comprehended, 
 
 since I was a creature of moods, and comprehended not 
 
 myself? I smile at my boyish dream of some "not 
 
 impossible she," a dream that was dispelled by the 
 
 [ n ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 waking of reason. The Love-god sparing me his 
 dread visitation, I have been enabled to look on women 
 as pictures only, more or less fair, more or less success- 
 ful in design and execution. I who was poor, and like 
 to remain so always, could not hope to possess a picture 
 either fair, tolerable, or indifferent; and I cared only 
 for the fairest. A fair picture, also, should be duly 
 enshrined in fair setting, harboured fittingly. I could 
 command nor picture, nor setting. Therefore women 
 have been to me but as pictures to be admired a moment 
 in reverent silence, pictures that would pass from my 
 sight into others' keeping, pictures whose images alone 
 I might treasure in my memory. . . . 
 ' A lover of the beautiful, why, in place of dulling my 
 eyes over futile philosophies and arid commentaries, 
 did I not continue to train my hand to shape ideal 
 women on canvas after the suggestions that reality 
 afforded? My ardent, untiring quest after knowledge, 
 my distrust of dalliance with half-talents, have brought 
 me no sustenance, bodily or spiritual. I might have 
 draped my chamber with my visions, embodied on 
 canvases, and spared myself the pain of their gradual 
 effacement on the tablets of memory. And this 
 assuredly without detriment to my worldly fortunes, 
 since I could have fared little worse than I have fared. 
 I would have painted these fair women as I saw them, 
 that is to say, as they were not, but as I saw them 
 with transfiguring eyes. Though not one of these 
 unconscious models had addressed to me so much as 
 one of the words that living creatures use, though I 
 had but beheld them at a distance, I should have heard 
 their voices in the music I made before their pictured 
 semblances. . . . But how should I have been furthered? 
 [ 73 1 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 The adroitest painter is weary of his accomplished 
 work, and rids himself of it as soon as may be, conscious 
 of its inadequacy. Ever with him it is a fresh con- 
 ception, a renewed attempt to fuse the mediocre reality 
 and the elusive ideal, a repeated discontent with the 
 results of his latest essay. 
 
 The same, 
 continued. 
 The love 
 of the 
 beautiful : 
 Rossetti. 
 
 Lest Prince Gautama should fulfil the Brahman's 
 prophecy, his father caused him to be secluded in a 
 bower of delight beyond experience and unhappiness. 
 But Guatama came to scorn the joys within his reach; 
 he wept, and knew not why; he yearned, and knew 
 not the object of his yearning. At length he stole 
 away from his hated Paradise, and hastened he knew 
 not whither. Soon, and he was shuddering in the way- 
 side at spectacles of Age, and Malady, and Death. And 
 thereupon he renounced deceitful joys, and fulfilled the 
 Brahman's prophecy. Now, to the lover of the beauti- 
 ful, Buddha's fortunes are, as it were, reversed. Dis- 
 traught by his vision of the world, he seeks sanctuary 
 in an imaginary paradise. He knows that life is 
 mutability, that life is sickness and sorrow, and would 
 fain forget his knowledge. He builds him a bower 
 from which he strives to banish imperfection. But 
 it is not given him to taste of the fountain of oblivion; 
 he is master of no spell whereby to ward off thoughts 
 and images of finite misery. 
 
 How, indeed, is it possible that lovers of the beautiful 
 should escape melancholy? Romanticists, whether we 
 will or no, we are unable to wholly harmonise sense 
 and spirit, we cannot acquiesce in beauty incarnated. 
 Wheresoever the mind, as Plotinus wrote, perceives a 
 form, it is conscious that there is something beyond to 
 [ 74 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 be desired. Beauty suggests the infinite, and we are 
 thereby exposed to the pain that is born of contrast. 
 Beauty is infinite, therefore elusive; it awakens 
 momentary credence in the possession of complete 
 felicity, but credence fades speedily away into baffled 
 aspiration; the felicity that seemed in our possession 
 mocks us ever in the distance. We thrill at the sight 
 or thought of beauty, our hearts beat in heightened 
 measure, we are erected above ourselves; but soon 
 emotion flags; to joy that was brief succeeds indifference 
 if not despondency that endures; we sink to littleness, 
 sadly conscious of the narrow limits of our sensibility 
 to delight. Again, Beauty stirs us to our depths; but 
 in these depths lie countless recollections, ready to 
 quicken at the slightest impulse; we inevitably con- 
 front the present with the past, and are melancholy, for 
 the past is the past, and the present — which passes in 
 the very thinking — is but, as it were, the nearest past. 
 Nor do we escape melancholy by disinterestedness. 
 Disinterested, we desire that others shall share our 
 emotions, and yet we must needs encounter common 
 coldness and indifference. We are constrained to dis- 
 cover that there is no possible catholicity in the love of 
 the beautiful, that we are lonely sectaries. It is borne 
 in upon us that the vast majority of men are almost 
 wholly destitute of the sense of beauty, and even plume 
 themselves on their privation; that there is little agree- 
 ment even among professed lovers, since each of these 
 desires a varying more or less of realism. And to 
 the disinterested lover there is still a further, final reach 
 of melancholy. We desire to hold, in spite of doubt, 
 that beauty is the symbol of goodness, and as we crave 
 that all should love the beautiful, so we crave that all 
 [ 75 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 should love the good. And thereby arise dolorous 
 scruples whether devotion to art be more than elegant 
 trifling, nay, whether it be not culpable trifling. We 
 look around on an evil world, and are inclined to con- 
 clude that allegiance to the beautiful is incompatible 
 with allegiance to the good. "Was it right, we begin 
 to ask with Coleridge, while our unnumbered brethren 
 toiled and bled, that we should dream away the entrusted 
 hours on rose-leaf beds? " The joys and pains and 
 problems of art come to seem negligeable, con- 
 temptible. ... It is this final, deepest melancholy of 
 the lovers of the beautiful which causes a Plato to turn 
 morosely Puritan, and a Ruskin to join hands with 
 Carlyle. Even Rossetti cannot wholly escape it — ■ 
 witness his "Hand and Soul" — Rossetti who, in any 
 case, knew all too well the protean melancholy that besets 
 the egoistic lover of the beautiful. For beauty is but 
 an accidental, momentary harmony in a world of almost 
 constant discord; and woe to him who cannot make 
 shift to endure discord. 
 
 And yet at first sight it would seem unreasonable 
 to assign Rossetti's love of the beautiful as cause of his 
 melancholy. Was not his a case of inverse develop- 
 ment, of progress that is a gradual decline from breadth 
 to narrowness, from health to malady, from expansive 
 buoyancy to concentrated melancholy? Here is an 
 inspirer and leader of men, virile and strenuous, 
 conscious from the first of his vocation, armed with 
 robust convictions, ranging freely within his happy 
 limitations. But Death bereaves him of his Muse, of 
 his wife long wooed, and won only to be lost; his 
 sorrow is proportionate to his love; he is beset by 
 insomnia and fears of failing eyesight; he essays a 
 
 C 76 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 remedy for insomnia that is more baneful than the 
 disease, becomes a victim of chloral as Coleridge of 
 opium, and though, unlike Coleridge, he has not to 
 mourn the consequent death of his poetic faculty, of 
 his "shaping spirit of Imagination," his sensitiveness 
 and legitimate isolation are aggravated into suspicious 
 nervousness and jealous seclusion. Thus his melan- 
 choly would be attributable not to his love of beauty, 
 but to sorrow and ill-health. In similar fashion it 
 might be maintained that, from the same causes, 
 Rossetti the painter narrowed gradually from sym- 
 pathetic to egoistic passion, from wealth of romantic 
 invention to poverty of portraiture; and Rossetti the 
 poet from the pictorial definiteness of dramatic ballads 
 to the lyrical vagueness of the "House of Life." But 
 such a comprehensible, parallel evolution of the man, 
 the painter, and the poet is merely ideal, fanciful. The 
 poet did not end with the "House of Life," he returned 
 with increased vigour and clearness to romantic ballads 
 and poems; there is no reason to suppose that the 
 painter, with health and length of years, could not 
 have carried into execution his earlier romantic designs, 
 despite the insistence of his patrons for single-figure 
 canvases; and, as for the man, melancholy was implicit 
 in the temperament of his faculties, and adverse cir- 
 cumstance served but to deepen, not to originate it. 
 Given the temperament, melancholy was inevitable. 
 He cared alone for poetry and painting, and for these 
 solely as expressive of mystic love, and for mystic love 
 only as directed towards woman. He is limited, and 
 limitation is power; but he is not simple, and therefore 
 not impervious to melancholy. He is preserved, indeed, 
 frgm the anguish of the altruistic lover of the beautiful 
 [ 77 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 by his consciousness that, as a creative artist, he is fully 
 justified in working from his own heart, simply, and in 
 doing that which is set in his heart to do — the lesson that 
 his Chiaro learns in dialogue with his soul; and yet there 
 is an eternal conflict of opposing tendencies within him, 
 and compromise alone, not reconcilation, is possible. 
 The history of his works is the history of this conflict, 
 of the passing supremacies of rival tendencies. From 
 the first he is a Realist, but also an Idealist. From 
 the first he is a Mystic, passionately sensuous, but also 
 passionately intellectual; like his revered Dante, he is 
 at once a child of the South and the North. A 
 Realist, he will sing at various periods his "Jenny," 
 his "Down Stream," his "Soothsay"; will begin in 
 youth to paint his Found, and keep it on his easel 
 to the end. An Idealist, he must yet present the ideal 
 as a fact, painfully conscious the while that it is a fact 
 alone in the land of dreams. Unable to reconcile 
 Realism and Idealism, he mars his poetry by his realism, 
 by his pictorial concreteness of vision; his arduous ful- 
 ness and richness of expression is too often accompanied 
 by poverty of content : and he mars his painting by his 
 idealism, by his abstract intellectuality; he strains to 
 make colour and line convey more than they possibly 
 can convey. Unable, again, to reconcile Realism and 
 Idealism, in poetry he drifts between objective, confident 
 supernaturalism and subjective, despairing positivism: 
 in painting he passes from illustration to portraiture, 
 exchanges that purity of colour and minute intricacy of 
 design which goes by the name of Pre-Raphaelitism for 
 a Venetian richness and simplicity, and yet the ideal 
 model and muse that has wholly mastered his heart is 
 environed with minutely definite realities, and if her 
 [ 78 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 gaze is spiritual and austere, her lips are sensuous; 
 and, finally, he sacrifices elaborate sumptuousness for 
 morbid, low-toned vagueness. A sensuous mystic, he 
 is preserved by his intellectual nobility and grave sense 
 of responsibility from any perverse mysticism of sensa- 
 tion such as that detailed by Friedrich Schlegel in 
 his Lucinde or Heinse in his Ardinghello, from that 
 voluntary heightening of pagan sensuality by actual 
 consciousness of, or imaginative belief in, the sinfulness 
 of sensuality which is the chosen theme of Baudelaire. 
 And yet he is striving, like these, though in far less 
 dubious fashion, to spiritualise the flesh, to reconcile 
 two widely different, if not wholly incompatible orders 
 of sentiment: and if at times his programme is almost 
 that of Marino's Adone, if the spirit is held to have 
 its perfection in bodily love, and Love knows not the 
 loved one's "body from her soul," at others his 
 programme is rather that of Dante's, the body is held 
 to be merely the veil of the spirit, and the " confident 
 heart's still fervour" is more than the "mouth's culled 
 sweetness." . . . Rossetti, then, is melancholy because 
 in the expression of mystic love he is unable to 
 reconcile Realism and Idealism, Mysticism and 
 Sensuousnessj but far more than this, he is melancholy 
 because Love himself and Lady Beauty are but aspects, 
 phases, of Mutability. Truth, hope, youth, fame, and 
 life — these " the heart finds fair," but Love is enthroned 
 above them, and apart from him they are naught; yet 
 Love, he finds, is but joint guardian with Death, 
 Terror and Mystery of Soul's Beauty. "I and this love 
 are one, and I am Death," he must learn in anguish. 
 The lover knows not the beloved from himself, " neither 
 our love from God"; yet what and if he must "look 
 [ 79 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 on himself witho);t,her"? "And weeping I said within 
 myself: 'Certainly it must some time come to pass that 
 the very gentle Beatrice will die,' " wrote Dante. What 
 and if he must lose her, and yet not dare to confide in an 
 imaginative belief that " severed selves " may be reunited, 
 that there is a passage "through death to love "? What 
 and if he must resolve to " gaze onward without claim of 
 hope, nor, gazing backward, court regret"; resolve to 
 inscribe in sombre colouring on the portal of the House 
 of Life, that is, the House of Love, these words, and these 
 alone: Youth and Change, Change and Fate? Well 
 might this lover's latest sonnets tell of Youth, and Man- 
 hood, and Age, and their vain interrogations of the Sphinx. 
 
 The There could be for me no help in love. Reason, 
 
 remedy indeed, may abdicate, confessing impotence to reconcile 
 continued, the war between my heart and head, war of the spirit 
 against the letter, of the ideal against the real, of the 
 moral order of man against the immoral order of nature; 
 but Love will not reign in his place. Love that is joy- 
 ously blind, voluntarily ignorant of the strife. ... I 
 remember a solitary, forced walk through the crowded 
 streets on a holiday of the people — the wonted distress 
 at the sight, the wonted "passage to a lesser perfection," 
 the iNonttA fas iidium quotidianaruni formarum. Nature 
 was unable to do what it would; it willed the perfect, 
 but the material was recalcitrant — said the would-be 
 calm philosopher in me, after Aristotle. Pity whispered : 
 "I have compassion on the multitude." But such 
 compassion as was mine rose from a dolorous sense of 
 disproportion, of outraged harmony. It was the pity of 
 a protesting artist, not the pity of a lover of humanity. 
 Pity that life should be inflicted so heedlessly, so care- 
 [ 80 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 lessly; pity that men should, be born of such unfit 
 parents. Pity that the conditions of their lives should 
 forcefully prevent the union of fair minds and bodies, 
 should dwarf the one and the other irreparably. ... A 
 veritable Christian would have seen in these of the crowd, 
 these unconscious caricatures, so many precious, price- 
 less souls, grossly enveloped in coarse clay, perhaps, but 
 bought with a great price; so many tabernacles, rude, 
 empty though they might be, or even occupied by devils, 
 yet tabernacles that might enshrine the spirit, taber- 
 nacles whereinto the spirit sought entrance, yearning 
 for invitation. . . . Soon, and I saw a graceful form 
 emerge in the crowd and pass across the street in 
 rhythmical movement. Superb of stature — for Pliny 
 the Younger is right in desiderating magnitude in beauty 
 — graceful exceedingly, her charm heightened by the 
 neatness of sombre, undistracting dress. I caught sight 
 of a profile carved boldly, exquisitely. Limpid, darkest 
 eyes; a complexion even-toned, warmly pale, unstained 
 with red; blackest hair in waves about a pure brow, 
 and gathered behind into a simple knot. Quickly she 
 was lost again in the crowd, I had but time to mark 
 that she passed unnoticed — this, of course. . . . Was 
 there any element of selfish desire in my deep, unknown 
 admiration, in my glad, voiceless gratitude? No, not 
 for a moment. As it was but an artist's pity for the 
 unlovely crowd, and not love of average humanity, so it 
 was a mere artist's delight in recognising, or rather — 
 since a hurried, passing glance alone was possible, a 
 glance that doubtless lent more than it received — in 
 divining an approximation to ideal beauty, delight that 
 was greater because of previous pain at sight of count- 
 less victims of imperfection. This disinterested delight 
 G [ 8i ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 was no more love for the one than my pity was love 
 for the many. . . . It is a hopeless problem. I am but 
 an artist after all, and the artist, says Renan, is " trans- 
 cendently immoral." I am but an artist, — and an 
 artist who can never subscribe a sculpsit or a pinxit or 
 a scripsit to an ideal realised by him. 
 
 The reme- Love, then, and Action are palliations at the most 
 dies of love ^j melancholy. Distractions rather, remedies that are 
 
 and action, -' 
 
 continued, worse, perchance, than the disease. It would seem 
 that the one is more appropriate to youth, the other to 
 manhood. The remedy of love failing in effect, the 
 remedy of ambition is essayed; the one passion, the 
 one fever yields place to the other. Love I have been 
 spared, nor am I like to fall victim to' ambition. Action 
 for glory's sake, for self-assertion? History is a night- 
 mare, as Shelley knew, a bead-roll of human crimes and 
 sufferings; and historical narratives are but so many 
 volumes of a De Contemptu Famae. Action for an 
 idea? The idea can only be realised by compromise; 
 gold, if it is to be useful, must needs be alloyed with 
 dross. The result never corresponds with the intent. 
 Witness Pope Hildebrand, who thought to establish 
 the Church by the masterly action which entailed its 
 fall. Or Luther, who draws back in dismay at the 
 action of the peasants who took him at his word. 
 Witness Anselm, defender of the faith, and thereby 
 father of Rationalism. Or Dante, passionate reaction- 
 ist, and unconscious herald of the Renaissance. . . . 
 And the politician? His action, at least, is less dubi- 
 ous than that of the aggressive conqueror. But the 
 politician is necessarily an opportunist, and a Machia- 
 vellian. A Bismarck, restorer of a nationality, must 
 [ 82 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 needs draw distinctions between political and private 
 morality, and justify the means by the end. The social 
 reformer, then? The politician of peaceful progress — 
 if peace is permitted him — must find that progress is but 
 an ever-renewed attempt to ameliorate the evils incident 
 on change, a profit and loss sheet, the balance of which 
 ever remains much the same, since each gain entails loss. 
 But happily, or unhappily, action is debarred me. 
 And were a career open, had I the talent of action, 
 would it not still be wisdom to refrain? There is 
 left, of course, the action of orderly duty, of ordinary 
 bread-winning. Moralists would aver that Werther's 
 cure depended on habitual daily toil; happiness is only 
 to be found in the common ways of life, says the aged 
 Chactas to Rend. I trod the common ways, accepted 
 the tyranny of facts, sadly recognised the right, because 
 the might, of facts. I accomplished my daily meed of 
 inglorious toil without reproof, vainly hoping to benefit 
 my nearest and dearest, to win success that they might 
 be cheered. But they passed away uncheered, and' my 
 hours of leisure and solitude were wholly given to 
 intellectual Epicureanism. I trusted that melancholy 
 would yield to curiosity. It was curious to travel in 
 my arm-chair; to live and think the lives and thoughts 
 of men of all ages, in irresponsible sympathy; to be 
 saint and sinner, Greek and barbarian, Oriental and 
 occidental; to be scientist and mystic, man of action 
 and man of contemplation. But I failed to compass 
 self-oblivion. And since habit becomes a second nature, 
 since the prisoner leaves his dungeon with a sigh, was 
 it well to have availed myself of this opportunity of 
 freedom from toil, freedom to think out the problem 
 of life, and fall into deeper misery? But need I regret 
 
 C 83 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 my bonds? Must I not speedily return to my dungeon, 
 when my furlough of freedom reaches its end? Must 
 I not weave my ropes of sand day by day as heretofore ? 
 . . . "Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with 
 thy might." It is Carlyle's gospel, but also that of the 
 Ecclesiast, who ironically smiles at his own imperative 
 fervour, questioning " what profit hath he that worketh 
 in that wherein he laboureth?" Work is a palliative 
 at most, a temporary anodyne. Pascal has demonstrated 
 sufficiently well that the circle of work and rest is a 
 "vicious" one: men toil that they may rest, but rest 
 when gained is unbearable. Men toil alike in business 
 and amusement, in order not to think, in hope to "kill 
 time," for life is short and yet all too long. "Let us 
 toil without thinking," says Martin in Candide, "it is 
 the only way to make life tolerable." 
 
 Happiness It were idle to seek tranquillity in place of happiness, 
 andim- Jq^ tranquillity is but a guise of happiness. Pleasure 
 is still another guise, an ignoble one, perchance; but 
 pleasure or happiness — Montaigne employs the one 
 word, Bossuet the other — is the aim of man. Bossuet 
 firmly avers that the whole doctrine of Christianity 
 tends solely to make men happy. But Bossuet, as a 
 Christian, postpones the realisation of this happiness to 
 another world, when the ideal that is merely suggested 
 and foreshadowed here and now, that is impossible under 
 the conditions of earthly existence, shall be real. And 
 meanwhile, the Christian is to find sufficient happiness 
 in the practice of virtue, in calm submission and resigna- 
 tion, in cheerful obedience to the voice of conscience. 
 The Stoics also claimed to possess a similar happiness, 
 resulting from joyful submission to the Eternal Order, 
 [ 84 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 claimed to be able to win by strenuous will this 
 security and tranquillity of the blessed life. . . . 
 
 But this wisdom is of the few, of the minority in 
 all ages; this serenity is scorned by the average man, 
 I'homme moyen sensuel, the sound and healthy man, as 
 lacking all attraction. He would brand it with the 
 opprobrium of asceticism, he would consider a constant 
 meditation and exercise of death a constant death in 
 life. Is, then, the difference between the sage and the 
 average man due to the fact that, to the one, the thought 
 of death and immortality is present often, and to the 
 other, seldom? But the Stoics thought of death as 
 absorption, annihilation. At most, personal immortality 
 was the privilege of a few great souls who should enjoy 
 lasting serenity, and learn the secrets of nature. But 
 Tacitus only hazards this as a pious hypothesis ap- 
 propriate to a biographical eulogy; and Seneca, when 
 most Stoical, calls death annihilation. As for the 
 average man, he seems little troubled by the thought of 
 death. While he is young, he thinks death possible, 
 but not probable for many years to come. He practises 
 unconsciously Goethe's Gedenke zu leben. Think not 
 of death, but of life. As he grows older, he stays not 
 to reflect that he has more friends beneath than above 
 the sod. He is sorry when death steals yet another 
 from him, — but " 'tis common." Time brings healing, 
 and the good things of life must be enjoyed while 
 enjoyment is still possible. His temperament allows 
 him to forget death; he regulates not his action by 
 reference to immortality. That is too far away, too 
 vague. He has his work to do. He has appropriate 
 amusements and pleasures of habitude, and thinks not 
 happiness is impossible, or only to be realised in another 
 [ 85 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 life. He may admit, in hours of sharp sorrow, that life 
 is a pilgrimage through a vale of tears; but he finds it 
 pleasant to loiter on the way, and does not wish his 
 journey at an end. Indeed, life is very tolerable to 
 him, whether there be another or not. Sufficient for 
 the day is the evil and good thereof; and doubtless all 
 will come right in the end. 
 
 What, then, is this happiness that men seek in life, 
 if, as Bossuet says, "we desire not immortality, we seek 
 but the felicities that time bears away"? Poverty is 
 the lot of the vast majority. It is only a few that are 
 capable of the disinterested pleasures of the imagina- 
 tion, or of the so-called pleasures of profound thought. 
 It is only a few who are gifted with both external and 
 inward conditions of happiness, who possess and are 
 able to practise the art of happiness, skilled in measur- 
 ing and balancing pleasures and pains, delicate eclectics. 
 And these latter would fall under Goethe's accusation 
 of frivolity, for sooner or later, as he assures, they will 
 cry that all is vanity, hapless in that they have not 
 early and once for all renoupced the perishable, the 
 ephemeral. . . . Suppose, then, that men consider 
 happiness to be possible, and the rich to possess the 
 means of happiness. The logic would be : the rich 
 are few; and we, the poor, the vast majority, are strong. 
 Why should we toil that a few may enjoy happiness. 
 Let us strip the rich, and share. They who can reason 
 thus will not resignedly re-echo paucis humanum vivii 
 genus, resignedly admit, with Kant, that the good of 
 the species is at the cost of the individual, that Nature 
 designs discord, the "unsocial sociability" of stressful, 
 distressful competition. Or suppose the idea of a 
 compensatory future life is relegated to the background, 
 [ 86 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 if not denied. The logic is the same : why should the 
 idle rich enjoy the fruit of our unhappy labour? But 
 the average man is not logical. And he objects to 
 socialism, if he possess aught earned or unearned. 
 
 It is natural to suppose that men would order their 
 lives differently, according as they believe in another 
 life or not. But, so far from this being the case, these 
 Stoics, whose precepts are greatly akin to those of 
 Christians, either believed in annihilation, or left the 
 question open. Marcus Aurelius is resigned to either 
 alternative, and never considers this alternative can 
 have any influence on the conduct of life. And the 
 Buddhists push asceticism to its utmost extreme in hope 
 that they may win extinction. The philosophic Romans 
 and Greeks in general found the prospect of a future life, 
 of life in Elysium, as represented by their mythologies, 
 little desirable, if not abhorrent. As to the life in Tar- 
 tarus, Lucretius declares that it is the very fear of such 
 future life that drives men to evil courses. Lactantius 
 presents the alternative : if there be no future life, let us 
 plunder, let us slay. That men have wallowed in pleasure 
 when death was visibly at hand is amply shown by the 
 narratives of the historic plagues and the memoirs of 
 prisoners during the French Revolution; but kindly 
 Plutarch, posing the case that a God or a King should 
 grant to a doomed man the respite of an hour, to be 
 employed at will, wonders if any could be found who; 
 on these conditions, prefer to employ the hour in 
 sensuality rather than in the performance of some 
 generous deed, or in the comforting of his friends. 
 There is no need to discount Plutarch's generous belief 
 in human nature, or to pit Lactantius against Plutarch. 
 It is clear that there are various classes of men, with 
 [ 87 ] 
 
continued. 
 
 The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 temperaments of varying degrees of ideality or sensu- 
 ality. Men act according as their instincts of justice, 
 of beauty, of dignity, are more or less imperious and 
 constant. And two men of the same order of tempera- 
 ment may act similarly, though the one believes, and 
 the other believes he does not believe in a future life. 
 
 The same, If I raise the problem of immortality, I raise a 
 problem that is insoluble. The instinctive demand for 
 immortality is a "moral postulate," a demand for a life 
 in which goodness and happiness shall coincide, a 
 demand for retributive justice, for compensation. . . . 
 Plato finds that justice is human perfection. Society, 
 then, will be the embodiment of justice. But there is 
 no justice in the present state of society. Accordingly, 
 Plato first reforms — on paper — present Hellenic society, 
 and then discovers that even this reformation is in- 
 sufficient. He devises an ideal society. But this 
 Utopia is hardly to be realised, and, if realised, would 
 speedily degenerate. Hence the necessity for his final 
 vision of another life, in which justice wholly reigns. 
 But he is obeying instinct, not reason; he is confident 
 in his faith, but not in his arguments; he can but body 
 forth his faith in poetic symbols. 
 
 As always, there is another side to the question. 
 The Stoics judged that Plato, in discoursing of a future 
 life of rewards and punishments, was discoursing as a 
 politician rather than as a moralist; and Leopardi's 
 Porphyry reprobates Plato for inspiring men with hopes 
 and fears and insoluble doubts as to a future life, since he 
 and his like must ever fail in their object of restraining 
 men thereby from iniquity. The demand for immor- 
 tality, it may be urged, is a morbid excess of the instinct 
 [ 88 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 of self-preservation. Sociologists recount for us the 
 development of ancestor-worship. Thus we find the 
 Aryan belief in the continuance of a dim, somnolent 
 life within the tomb passing into the belief in an 
 assemblage of souls in Elysium, living a timeless life 
 that is a pale copy of material existence in time, as 
 memories are pale copies of past sensations. We have 
 to reckon with anthropomorphism, with our inability 
 to conceive mind and matter not in conjunction, with 
 the necessary illusion of personality — which is, per- 
 chance, but a succession of sensations and ideas — with 
 the relativity of happiness and unhappiness, of good 
 and evil, — relativity, for happiness is only to be known 
 by contrast; the possibility of unhappiness removed, 
 happiness would be a blank. . . . Well, Kant shows 
 clearly enough that we can neither prove nor disprove 
 the immortality of the soul, or the freedom of the will, 
 or the existence of God, since there are no scientific 
 data on which to ground. 
 
 By reasoning, it is possible at most to dower our- 
 selves with the immortality of Aristotle and Averroes, 
 with an impersonal immortality. Forsooth, we are 
 immortal, because our " active intellect " is immortal. 
 But since we remember not our past existences, and 
 shall be unconscious of our present existence, such 
 immortality concerns us not. What, then, of the 
 "moral postulates"? Humanity materialises the vision 
 of Heaven, and protesting spiritualists in all ages hasten 
 to the other extreme. The vision of Hell is material- 
 ised, and present-day Christians must needs protest, 
 even as pagan moralists protested, against the scanty 
 justice implied in such materialisation. Human justice, 
 indeed, must punish summarily, but complete equity 
 [ 89 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 would pardon. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. 
 We know that a man cannot be judged apart from 
 his birth and circumstances, nay, nor by himself, for 
 humanity is solidary. Vice is pardonable if involuntary, 
 due to bodily conditions; pardonable also, if due to 
 involuntary ignorance. The "lie in the soul," the 
 inability to repent of Don Juan and the haughty heroes 
 of Dante's Inferno, the choice of evil as good by 
 Milton's fallen angel, is but a deeper depth of ignorance. 
 For the Socratic and Platonic attribution of vice to 
 ignorance is no mere paradox; Dante rightly holds 
 that ignorance is the parent of error, and error of evil, 
 Descartes that error is due to the disproportion between 
 our faculty of willing and our faculty of knowing, 
 Fichte and Buckle that the totality of human action 
 depends on the totality of human knowledge. No man 
 is fit for Heaven or fit for Hell; the good man is not 
 wholly good, the bad not wholly vile. As Plato said, 
 there is ever a remnant of justice in the evil; for, 
 wholly evil, they would be incapable of action at all. 
 Hence the "moral postulate " must needs take the form 
 of a demand for a possibility of progress for all men. 
 
 But the sages, haughty, careless as Nature of the 
 undeveloped germ, prone to disregard the commonalty, 
 as Plato eliminated the lowest order of his ideal state 
 from consideration, make the survival of the fittest a 
 leading principle of their doctrines of immortality. As 
 certain savage races are said to consider the possession 
 of a soul as an exclusive privilege of their chiefs, so Sen- 
 eca, Maimonides, Goethe bestow immortality on men of 
 supreme intellect alone, on those who have risen above 
 sense to the steady vision of the universal order. 
 Similarly, to the theologian, they that shall be saved 
 [ 90 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 are in a minority, are the few that have risen in this life 
 from selfishness to self-devotion and self-sacrifice, that 
 deserve immortality — unless, indeed, the theologian 
 sides with Faith against Works, and puts merit out of 
 court. But this aristocratic immortality! Who shall 
 explain Goethe's unwonted expansiveness on the occa- 
 sion of the death of Wieland, his Platonic, Leibnitzian, 
 Spinozistic dream of immortality? Could he have in- 
 terpreted his own dream, reconciled his own statements? 
 Wieland and he, of the first rank in the hierarchy of 
 souls, when their principal monads have disengaged 
 their inferior monads from faithful service, that is to 
 say, when he and Wieland voluntarily slip the mortal 
 coil, will take part in the joys of the gods, associate 
 eternally in the felicity the gods enjoy as creative forces. 
 He would not be surprised to meet Wieland again 
 and again in the course of the ages, ever radiating joy 
 and light. Wieland's monad is too worthy to perish, 
 and Goethe himself has visited and will visit the earth 
 again and again. Had he not assisted at the creation, 
 and were not the divinations of his genius remi- 
 niscences? As for the incidents of his previous exist- 
 ences, with the exception of a few great historic 
 moments, they were not worthy of remembrance; 
 indeed, did not Herder once tell him that he hoped 
 they would meet elsewhere, say in Uranus ? — but God 
 preserve him from remembering there his present in- 
 tolerable sojourn at Weimar! . . . And the immor- 
 tality of Spinoza, Goethe's master? It is facultative, 
 partial, like that of Aristotle and Averroes. It is an 
 impersonal immortality of the reason. We are eternal, 
 if we live in the eternal order. Your critic will find 
 many expressions at variance with the rest of the system, 
 [ 91 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 expressions which seem to propound a personal im- 
 mortality based on merit. He may compare these 
 expressions with the immortality of the Positivists, 
 immortality of fame, immortality in the race that 
 remembers famous originators of ideas. Or he may 
 point out that Spinoza distinguishes between im- 
 mortality and eternity, the latter being existence out 
 of the bounds of time, union with God, adequate 
 knowledge of the infinite and eternal essence of God — 
 who, or which, is impersonal, and only the sum of its 
 modes, is Nature. . . . Well might Goethe, waking 
 from his dream about Wieland's monad, smile and 
 insist that immortality was a matter of faith and not of 
 knowledge. But since immortality is of faith, and not 
 of knowledge, perchance I should listen to the con- 
 solation offered by a recent scientist. We are immortal 
 
 — that is to say, our constituent material atoms are im- 
 mortal. We have only to believe that atoms possess 
 consciousness — surely no hard belief — and then we 
 may rejoice in the thought that our present constituent 
 atoms will ever enjoy "the indifferent tranquillity of 
 inorganic repose, the sweet uniformity of elementary 
 sensations " in agreeable alternation with " the passionate 
 agitations of the organic state." The precious im- 
 mortality, the precious consolation ! 
 
 Immortal- It would be a strange method of attaining content- 
 
 ityandcon- jjjgjjj fgj. ^ jjjg^jj ^q recognise by the light of the doctrine 
 
 of Karma the exact justice of his present condition, 
 
 however miserable that may be. The Buddhist doctrine 
 
 of Karma offers a complete solution of the enigma of life 
 
 — to those who can accept it. It has the merit, such 
 as it is, of being irrefutable. Each is what he has made 
 
 [ 92 T 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 himself in his previous existencesj each presents in 
 himself an exact balance of his merits and demerits in 
 his previous lives. A man is the sum of his works, 
 his own Providence; he calls himself to that state of 
 life in which he finds himself. The wonderful ex- 
 planation! We are what we are, and are so because 
 we are so. . . . Plato offers us similar consolation and 
 satisfaction in his symbolical theodicy, his revelation of 
 Er, the son of Armenius. We are immortal, that is 
 to say, our immortal reason has been prisoned through 
 the ages in many bodies. After being punished or 
 rewarded during the space of a thousand years for the 
 deeds of our immediately previous lives, it was high time 
 to be born once more, and lots were cast at our feet. 
 We were warned by the Daughter of Necessity that 
 the first was not to be careless of choice, and the last 
 not to despair; that the responsibility of choice rested 
 entirely with ourselves. Most of the lives that cor- 
 responded to the lots were of mixed conditions; he 
 that had learnt wisdom in hi| previous careers was 
 warned to choose the life that is good whether ac- 
 companied by poverty or not. But many cared only 
 to avoid being once more what they had been already; 
 if they could be other than they had been, that sufficed. 
 Naturally, each of us repented of our choice when 
 made, and fondly envied the lots of others. And, of 
 course, we drank more or less copiously of the water 
 of Lethe before come to our present birth, and there- 
 fore do not remember, or remember barely, our fateful 
 choice. . . . After all, the Evolutionists tell us much 
 the same thing; their "hereditary conscience" and 
 "inherited tendencies" are but the doctrines of the 
 Buddhist Karma and Platonic Reminiscence rebaptized. 
 [ 93 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 The good man is he who has freed his soul as far as 
 may be in previous existences from the taint of matter 
 and desire, say Buddhists and Platonists. A man is 
 good, say the Evolutionists, because his ancestors have 
 been well whipped into orderly social ways, each in 
 turn, by his parents and his schoolmaster, Experience. 
 
 Contentment, did I write? A strange thing, verily, 
 this contentment. Plutarch, nay, the Stoics of all 
 schools, including the Epicurean Stoics, instruct us 
 that contentment consists in never desiring that which 
 we have not, that contentment springs from educated 
 reason. And this reason, this "active desire," directs 
 us, leads us, to acquiesce in Custom, — the immoral 
 custom of Nature, and the "anarch" custom of Society. 
 As Chrysippus says, it is necessary that we are disposed 
 in the way we are disposed, however we may be dis- 
 posed; as Goethe says, submission to the inevitable is 
 the theme of all religions. We cannot get beyond the 
 Stoic, Spinozistic acceptance of what is, beyond the old 
 "whatever is, is best." But why these anomalies, why 
 the world-old sense of injustice and perennial protest? 
 Nature has its elect; Society has its elect; God is said 
 to have His elect — -which bodies of elect do not by any 
 means coincide. The aristocratic moralist, — and what 
 moralist is not aristocratic? — with his disdain of the 
 majority, has also his elect, that is to say, his disciples, 
 and such of the dead as he recognises to have only 
 lacked his own clear apprehension of the Whole, the 
 Good, the Beautiful, to be his equals. "It is not 
 possible that all shall enjoy, that all shall be cultured, 
 delicate, or even virtuous in the refined sense; but 
 needs must there be people of leisure, learned, highly 
 cultured, virtuous, delicate, in whom and by whom the 
 [ 94 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 rest enjoy and taste the ideal. ... It is the coarseness 
 of many which allows the education of one, it is the 
 toil of the multitude which permits the noble life of a 
 few." So Renan, one of these aristocratic moralists. 
 So the aristocratic Greeks. So the various aristocratic, 
 plutocratic, timocratic societies which are always in- 
 cluded in democracies. . . . Well, there must be 
 degree. Shakespeare's Ulysses sings the paean of 
 Degree, Shakespeare, who contemns the populace, since 
 he is philosopher, and therefore aristocrat. There are 
 even degrees in Heaven, "degrees and differences of 
 glory laid up in Heaven," says Jeremy Taylor. But 
 he adds, laid up "for us, according to the degrees of 
 our care and piety and diligence." Degrees, in short, 
 that are rewards. But the Positivist prides himself on 
 his superiority over the Christian in that he exercises 
 care and piety and diligence without the hope of 
 personal reward in another world. Indeed, the sages 
 of all schools and the saints of all religions proudly 
 maintain that virtue is its own reward, that Heaven 
 and Hell is of our own making. Virtue, Justice, is 
 Happiness. Such is the judgment of the virtuous, the 
 just, and their judgment is Truth. Plato is convinced 
 of this. And then he hesitates, looking on the fashion 
 of the world, concerned as legislator. He concludes 
 that if the doctrine is false, that it is yet the best of 
 fictipns, a state-fiction to be sedulously inculcated. 
 But this subjective Heaven, these rewards given by 
 self to self, do not, cannot satisfy. "I myself am 
 Heaven and Hell," sings Omar Khayyam, in unison 
 with Lucretius. But to this doctrine that virtue is 
 happiness and vice is misery there is one all-sufificient 
 objection, namely, as Fielding puts it in a word, " that 
 
 [ 95 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 it is not true." Men must needs gaze wistfully back 
 on Golden Ages, and forward on Utopias, earthly or 
 heavenly. 
 
 The same, I would add to what I wrote yesterday. I would 
 continued, expand, correct, contradict. I would say: we who 
 suffer poverty, we who add to poverty distress of mind, 
 of ill-balanced faculties, are no slaves of Momus, bit- 
 terly jealous of the happy few whose fortune is the 
 fair setting of their virtues, whose form is the fair in- 
 dex of inward harmony. These truly are placed upon 
 a pedestal; these are dowered with a "degree" to 
 be admired, not envied. For Nature mocks at the 
 revolutionary, abstract religion of equality; we are but 
 clay in the hands of the potter, and there are vessels of 
 honour and dishonour. 
 
 "We," have I written? Doubtless to avoid self- 
 affirmation, conscious that the use of the first person 
 singular is morally detestable. Or was I unconsciously 
 hypocritical? . . . " I would correct, contradict. " In- 
 deed, what is there that I write, what is there that I read, 
 which does not require correction, contradiction? No 
 affirmation of the intellect is complete till you have 
 matched it, if not reconciled it, with its contrary. "All 
 things are double one against the other," says the 
 Ecclesiast. It is only when I think or write in the lan- 
 guage of the heart that antinomies do not present them- 
 selves. . . . But the heart is only a phase of the intellect. 
 Why, then, are the heart and head ever at war? 
 
 I would correct what I said of Shakespeare as an 
 
 aristocrat. He is all too wise, too sympathetic to 
 
 ignore the clothes-philosophy, a philosophy which is as 
 
 old, say, as Cimon, who exposed Persian spoil in the 
 
 [ 96 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 market. Matter for keen competition were the noble 
 trappings, sport for ridicule the nobles from whom they 
 were stripped. He would re-echo Dyer's "My mind 
 to me a kingdom is." . . . Alas! the mind can be 
 an anarchy. And, in any case, the moods of intellect- 
 ual sovereignty are transitory, uncertain, unsatisfactory, 
 even as sensuous pleasures. And what though his 
 favourite Harry the Fifth dilate upon the high advan- 
 tages of a lowly lot, and envy the slave of the soil who 
 is happy in that he is no slave of ceremony? His 
 Harry, his Elizabeth Woodville, his Anne Boleyn, 
 merely sigh to be other than they are, are the sport of 
 the mirage of contrast, suffer from the radical distress 
 of all that are human — 
 
 But whate'er I be. 
 Nor I nor any man that but man is 
 With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eas'd 
 With being nothing. 
 
 The most that can be positively stated of Shakespeare 
 the man, and not Shakespeare the dramatist, is that he 
 admired the parallel health and beauty of body and 
 mind, even as Taine, even as the Greeks. But such 
 admiration was, is, and shall be in proportion to the 
 sickness, the distress, of the admirers. For they that 
 are sound are sound unconsciously; even as children 
 and the pretty, sportive young of animals. To be a 
 man is to be self-conscious; and to be self-conscious is 
 to be diseased. They that are splendidly diseased, they 
 whose disease is further complicated with the disease 
 of genius, imaginatively incarnate health and harmony, 
 and are not altogether hapless, since their melancholy 
 is not impotent. 
 
 H [ 97 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Of what use to amplify, to correct what I wrote 
 yesterday? Yet I will humour myself. There was that 
 question of virtue for reward's sake, of virtue based 
 on hope and fear, the virtue that the sages and saints, 
 say, George Eliot and St. Francis Xavier agree in 
 reprobating. For instance, Plato insists that a pure 
 religion is one from which all motives of fear are 
 banished, and Spinoza adds, all motives of hope. Edu- 
 cation, says Plato, is vitiated by a capital error, namely, 
 that men are taught to be just for the sake of rewards, 
 though as a legislator, he must hold different language. 
 "Just though the world should fail," as the Latin adage 
 has it. Just, because justice is human perfection, says 
 Plato, and the ideal is none the worse for being im- 
 practicable. . . . Well, let me agree that the Stoic 
 sage is a king, that the kingdom of God is within us. 
 Schiller's epigram against the Kantians who fear to 
 delight in duty is justified; for pleasure is not the 
 reward, and not the cause, but the accessory, the 
 accompaniment of virtue. To be a flower is the re- 
 ward of the flower. The virtuous obey not outward 
 or inward laws, they are virtuous by a necessity of 
 their nature. But the consciousness of right conduct 
 is at best a mere negative happiness, for the sage, the 
 solitary, the Stoic — Spinoza is a Stoic, one of those who 
 preach the life according to Nature, informing us the 
 while that by Nature they mean the disinterested 
 Reason, reason that is moral and ever at war with 
 Nature that is immoral, or at most a-moral; and the 
 ethics of Stoics, as Vico says, are ethics of solitaries — ■ 
 as soon as ever he diverts his thoughts from his own 
 rational happiness to the spectacle of humanity, descends 
 from Unity to Dualism, to distinctions of good and evil, 
 [ 98 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 to Manichaeism. In anguish, he shapes Utopias for 
 coming generations, despairing of his own. Or saddened 
 and sobered by the spectacle of Nature's immortality, 
 by his vision of the history of man in. Nature, unable 
 to have optimistic faith in the perfectibility of man, 
 and of Nature through the agency of man, he postulates 
 in accordance with instinctive sentiment another life 
 for the virtuous, another life which shall repair the 
 injustice and deficiency of this. . . . But, once again, 
 to Buddhists oriental and occidental, and to the serene, 
 well-balanced Greeks, not to be is better than existence- 
 And to postulate another life for the just is to postu- 
 late another life for the unjust. Yet what saint — for 
 TertuUian is no saint ^ — would crave an immortality 
 of joy, if the unjust are to endure a corresponding 
 immortality of distress, whether recognised by the 
 guilty as just, inevitable punishment, or enforced upon 
 them. Unless, indeed, one take refuge in the sugges- 
 tion, say, of Spinzoa, or Renan, or Browning, that they 
 who have only lived in and for the perishable, shall perish. 
 Which extinction is precisely the reward desired by 
 Buddhist saints. Moreover, it would seem that the 
 " practical " man, living in the perishable, could well be 
 content with life as it is, with the perishable, were he 
 not troubled occasionally, even in the heyday of health, 
 by the thought that death is possibly not extinction. 
 
 What courage, what thoughtlessness I display in immor- 
 reasoning on immortality the while that personal '^'"^ ^"'^ 
 
 ° J J^ personal 
 
 identity is debatable, deniable. The question of per- identity, 
 sonality was barely raised by the Greeks, for they 
 absorbed the individual in the State, greatly to the ad- 
 miration of the youthful Hegel, the Hegel who was in 
 
 [ 99 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 full reaction against the excessive individualism of the 
 Eighteenth Century, and of Matthew Arnold, who would 
 have us attain harmony by losing ourselves in the 
 impersonal collective consciousness, in our "best self." 
 But Hegel, and Matthew Arnold, growing older, find 
 Hellenism and the idea of the State inadequate, revert 
 to personal conduct, to the idea of self-realisation by 
 antagonism. But, again, experimental psychologists 
 and physiologists denude me of my personality. Has 
 not a recent disciple of the school expressly apologised 
 for his employment of "I" and "me" in a treatise on 
 personality, pleading in excuse that men still talk of the 
 rising and the setting of the sun? Had I lived a century 
 ago, Hume would at least have offered me his " sceptical 
 solutions of sceptical doubts," and restored me my per- 
 sonality in some sort of working order, though it were 
 but a mere aggregate of perceptions succeeding one 
 another in a perpetual flux. But nowadays poor Michelet 
 had to cry out in agony that Taine and his like were rob- 
 bing him of his Ego. I suppose he resented the being 
 considered as a mere " polypi er," a coral-growth, "of 
 images." But perchance he was querulous and ungrate- 
 ful, for these same supposed robbers were ready to show 
 that the Ego is multiple, and Michelet, had he been 
 wise, might the rather have plumed himself on being 
 many men in one. Well, they storm our defences one 
 after the other; we cannot oppose the moral conscience, 
 for as matter is only the " permanent possibility " of 
 physical sensations, so God and the soul are but the 
 permanent possibilities of moral emotion; for respon- 
 sibility is a mere illusion due to social conditions; for 
 character is only a general habit of feeling due to 
 hereditary tendencies, bodily organisation, and environ- 
 
 [ loo ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 ment. Sword to throat, we are offered the choice of 
 materialism or spiritualism, the one of which reduces 
 the mind, the soul, to a function of the body, and the 
 other reduces the body to a habitude of the mind, the 
 soul. Nay, the alternative is speedily retracted. Since 
 we can know nothing of substance, material or spiritual, 
 we are bidden to hold that both the one and the other 
 are presumptuous hypotheses, that inward and outward 
 observation, observation of the motions of matter, and 
 observation of feelings and ideas of the mind, are irre- 
 concilable. Dualism is Lord, and to Dualism we must 
 bow the knee. 
 
 Moreover, if we dower ourselves with immortality, 
 it would seem that we cannot refuse it to animals. If 
 we pride ourselves on our conceptions of the universal, 
 the ideal, we are informed that these conceptions are 
 illusions, mere signs of the unknowable. The vaunted 
 Absolute is a mere abstraction, the Infinite is only the 
 Indefinite. We have to admit that aiymals are self- 
 conscious and active, that they exercise curiosity and 
 choice. Possessing a certain degree of intelligence, 
 they possess will; and if we claim free-will for ourselves, 
 we can hardly deny it to them. Descartes indeed bestows 
 on us an immortal soul situated in the pineal gland, and 
 denies it to animals; and thereby he and his Port-Royal 
 disciples were free to vivisect animal-machines without 
 a shudder. Should any objection be raised, he retorted 
 that if they were not merely machines, if they possessed 
 a soul, then " worms, oysters, and sponges " also possess 
 a soul. Yes, how exclude lower organisms, for Nature 
 is a whole, the higher is a development of the lower, 
 the complex of the simple, however much the higher, 
 the more perfect, may be previous in thought. There 
 [ loi ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 are no chasms in the order of development. And 
 thereupon I have the chance of beholding, with Goethe, 
 phantasmagorian metamorphoses of unity; or, with 
 Hugo, the prophet and mage, minerals yearning to be 
 plants, plants to be animals. Or I may indulge in an 
 Evolutionist's dream: since man is an animal, since 
 the fabric of his mind includes animal elements, the 
 souls of animals are immortal in and through man. In 
 any case, if we postulate compensation, retribution, 
 justice, we must postulate it also for animals, having 
 regard to their fortunes. 
 
 Kantian conditions and limitations of knowledge; 
 admission that positive science is unable to satisfy the 
 intellectual and moral aspirations of human nature, that 
 Immortality, Freedom, God, can neither be proved nor 
 disproved. Faith, then, is allowable, necessary, where 
 science fails. The data of science ever increasing with 
 the ages, due allowance being made for the possibility 
 of periods of retrogression and barbarity, increasing, say, 
 till the advent of an age of ice or a world-cataclysm; — 
 but the human mind and heart unable to rest content 
 with the given, the known. Faith and science ever 
 seeking to transcend the knowable, a ceaseless phantas- 
 magoria of creeds, equally vertiginous and delirious, 
 whether they be creeds of faith or science. . . . 
 
 If faith is probability, theoretical or practical, then 
 probability varies in degree according to the individual, 
 and according to the individual's season of life and 
 his various moods during these seasons. As Lessing 
 develops the analogy drawn by Pascal and Leibnitz 
 between the life of humanity and the life of the in- 
 dividual, so Goethe applies Cousin's theory of the 
 evolution of philosophy through four stages to the 
 
 [ I02 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 individual and his four ages. "As children, we are 
 Sensualists; Idealists, when we love and adorn the 
 beloved object with qualities not intrinsic. Love halts, 
 we doubt fidelity and become Sceptics ere we are aware. 
 The rest of our lives is passed in Indifference, we let 
 things be as they may, and end as Quietists, like the 
 Indian sages." Turgot and Comte make humanity pass 
 from theology through philosophy to positivism; and, 
 once more, humanity is only the larger man. Ideal, 
 unhistorical theories, these of Comte and Cousin; it 
 were equally, nay, more reasonable to maintain that 
 the various intellectual states exist, and have existed, 
 side by side. Ideal, also, is their application to 
 individual life. Idealist, Sceptic, Quietist, I have 
 passed through these stages before my youth is at an 
 end. Moreover, the Sceptic in me was still an Idealist, 
 and the Quietist is still Idealist and Sceptic. I am 
 each, am all, according to my mood; all, it may be, 
 at once. I am a positivist, even as all men are; a 
 theologian and metaphysician, even as all must be, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously. I know not what to love, 
 and yet I love; I doubt, and yet I doubt my doubts. 
 Goethe was never weary of rehearsing the duty of 
 gathering the appropriate fruits of each season of life. 
 But I am old in youth. Sir Thomas Browne sought 
 to console his friend on the premature death of his 
 friend's friend and his own patient by urging that to 
 be old in youth rendered length of days unnecessary; 
 already had their friend divined that "there are no 
 felicities in this world to satisfy a serious mind," and 
 " 'tis superfluous to live unto gray hairs when in a 
 precocious temper we anticipate the virtues of them." 
 Well indeed do I understand the impossibility of happi- 
 [ 103 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 ness, but, aged in youth, I possess not the virtues of 
 age. The virtues of age! Shall I, with increased 
 years, add virtuous cheerfulness to my resignation? 
 The aged are naturally Quietists, says Goethe, as I 
 wrote above; naturally Mystics, he avers in another 
 passage. Shall I, with increased years, add faith to 
 resignation; will my quietism grow more and more 
 suffused with gentle mysticism? But Alfred de Vigny 
 with age despaired ever more and more of Idealism, 
 and the aged Plato fell victim to a melancholy that was 
 morose and cynical. 
 
 The love I am baffled, and weary. Doubtless it is wisdom 
 
 ° ' *• not to raise insoluble problems. Doubtless it is wisdom 
 
 to obey Goethe's Gedenke zu leben, to think not of 
 death, but of life. The sage, the free man, thinks of 
 death least of all; and his wisdom is a meditation not 
 of death, but of life. So Spinoza. And Plato rejoins: 
 the separation and release of the soul from the body is 
 the study of philosophers, wisdom is the meditation of 
 death. Moreover, the meditation of death is equivalent 
 to the meditation of life. For the Christian meditates 
 on death that he may live, now and hereafter; the 
 Buddhist that he may cease to live now and hereafter; 
 the Spinozist, meditating on life, meditates on eternity, 
 seeks to transcend the finite and personal, seeks to lose 
 himself in the Infinite, the Impersonal. 
 
 Gedenke zu leben! Love to live ! In the eternal, 
 or the perishable? For the phrase leaves open the 
 choice of interpretations; for the advice might come 
 appropriately from either my good or my bad angel. 
 Instinct leads men to seek power, wealth, esteem. 
 Men grasp at the transitory; they strive to bind 
 [ 104 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Proteus; they imagine stability in the universal flux. 
 They are the slaves of inadequate ideas; they love to 
 live. Let them live their lives, let them strenuously 
 persist in being. And when age comes upon them, 
 then let them look back on their lives, and they will 
 resume their meditation in an "All is Vanity." They 
 will find that past joys remembered are pain. They 
 will congratulate themselves on their capacity of forget- 
 fulness. They will allow that happiness is always of 
 the future. Perchance they find that, if past joys re- 
 membered are pain, past pains remembered are joy. 
 In any case, they will allow that happiness is always of 
 the past or future, a mirage, an unconscious idealisation. 
 The present is all; but we are never happy in the present. 
 Gedenke zu leben! But one of the elements of nega- 
 tive happiness is this capacity of forgetfulness. As I 
 have already seen, for Herder, not least of the luminaries 
 of Athenian Weimar, remembrance of the detail of his 
 days at Weimar was the most exquisite of tortures. 
 Whensoever, like Dante, we enter upon a terrestrial 
 Paradise, needs must we first bathe in waters of Lethe, 
 that we may forget the evil we have done and suffered. 
 It is true that Dante is further privileged to taste of the 
 fount of Eunoe, which restores the memory of good 
 deeds done. Good deeds? But, once more, good 
 results from evil, evil from good, and good deeds have 
 good and evil consequences. Nor will Spinoza and 
 Spencer allow us to judge good deeds by intentions; 
 for that, says Spinoza, were to fall into the error of 
 popular, inadequate morality. The Good, good deeds 
 are those which procure a pleasurable emotion to the self, 
 and thus aid its conservation. But good deeds that are 
 executed with pleasure are not, rightly speaking, moral at 
 [ loS ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 all, says Kant. In any case, the distinction of good 
 and evil — absolute, not relative — is only a figment of the 
 human imagination, is not reasonable, insists Spinoza. 
 
 Gedenke zu leben, love to live in the eternal order! 
 Quit false goods for that which alone is good, which 
 alone is happiness! But the eternal is the neces- 
 sary, as the Greeks divined when they throned 
 Necessity above the gods, as the Egyptians, the 
 masters of our masters the Greeks, divined when 
 they proclaimed a "Nuter," a Power, a First Cause 
 — impersonal withal — with which any, or all, of the 
 gods can be identified, but which was other than 
 any god, or all the gods. It is possible, perchance, 
 to reverence the necessary, but how shall I love it? 
 And is not Order also a necessary figment of the human 
 imagination, an efflorescence of anthropomorphism? 
 There is a kind of theological comfort in the con- 
 ceptions of Order and Law. That which is easy to 
 imagine is pleasant, and the philosopher and the moral- 
 ist, who in this age of the world find it easy to imagine 
 law and order, readily and gladly think to perceive an- 
 alogies between Thought and Being, to perceive order 
 in that Nature which is a mockery of their order, 
 their laws of thought. 
 
 Gedenke zu leben ! Goethe means by his paroe- 
 netic maxim that we should cease to paralyse action 
 by self-analysis, that we should dismiss otiose and in- 
 soluble questions of metaphysics and religion, and think 
 only how to act, how to do our business in this life. 
 We are born for action; it is our business to do our 
 business. We are to act, and not to stay to consider 
 why we act. The solution, in short, of the problem 
 of life which Carlyle so gladly adopts from his master; 
 [ io6 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 solution, or rather, advice to resolutely avoid posing the 
 problem, advice which neither the adviser nor the 
 advised follows, or can follow. . . . Well, Plato, in 
 his search for the definition of justice, — search which 
 led him to postpone justice to another life — finds at 
 least a shadow of justice in the economic division of 
 labour which requires each man to do his business and 
 not another's. What, then, is my business? I am too 
 complicated J a very mosaic of tendencies, potentialities. 
 Yet I must return to the world of action at the end of 
 my year of liberty. . . . Nay, let me not be bitter, let 
 me not fall into the tone of them that are in revolt 
 against society and its conventions. It would seem 
 that the chafing yoke that I have borne these six long 
 years of the life called practical has left a sore that is 
 not yet healed, but let the prelude of this meditation 
 have its corresponding symphony, symphony of abstine, 
 sustine ; sustine, abstine. 
 
 I have been listening to-day to Epictetus, " friend of Physicians 
 the Gods," "assessor of Jove," to that Epictetus who, °f«hesoui. 
 in his eagerness to adhere to the will of Providence, 
 cries on Jove, on Providence, on Destiny, to guide him. 
 Destiny, Nature, Fortune — so many names of the 
 same god variously revealing his power, says Seneca; 
 so many names of the Unknown, say modern scientists. 
 I have been listening to Seneca, who was sincerely 
 unctuous when he reclined in his study to pen a moral 
 exhortation or consolation, relieved for the time from 
 his perilous, degrading, inconsistent opportunism as a 
 statesman and man of the world ; sincerely good as it is 
 easy to be good when the world and its claims and 
 necessary accommodations are set aside and forgotten. 
 [ 107 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 I have been listening to the Roman preachers who dis- 
 dained mere questions of metaphysics and cosmogony 
 as fit only for unpractical, logomachical Greeks, hair- 
 splitters, sectores cumini ; who employed indiscrimi- 
 nately the moral precepts of the conflicting schools, 
 precisely because these precepts were common to all, 
 and common to all, as due to the common judgment 
 of common sense. In short, I have been consulting 
 professional physicians of the soul. 
 
 Antiphon the orator, says Plutarch, driven from 
 Athens, not knowing how to apply his eloquence at 
 Corinth, turned to the cure of souls. He posted a 
 notice on his door that here dwelt one whose profession 
 it was to comfort the sorrowful, and heal their wounds 
 by words. Surely his practice, as moral physician, 
 should have been large. But it seems that, on trial, he 
 judged his new calling unworthy of his powers, and 
 abandoned it to give lessons in rhetoric once again. 
 Did no one need consolation, or were the Corinthians 
 sagely sceptical of mercenary rhetorical consolations? 
 Dion Chrysostom, popular lecturer and preacher errant 
 on permanent mission, consulting casuist, laments that 
 leeches of the soul, like those of the body, are only 
 called for in time of extremity. It is only when health 
 or wealth is gone, he sighs, that the thought of con- 
 sulting the moral philosopher occurs. Commonplace 
 that is ever appropriate for the preacher's use. But 
 there were professional ministers of comfort under the 
 Roman Empire who presented themselves, it would 
 seem, without waiting to be called, whensoever they 
 judged their services might be in requisition, pro- 
 fessional consolers who had at their finger's end fit 
 discourse for all circumstances and conditions of men, 
 [ io8 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 who were skilled in the Anatomy of Misfortune. 
 What a theme ! Grantor could not exhaust it; nay, 
 it was even a richer theme than flies and gnats and 
 baldness, whereon ingenious rhetoricians in prose and 
 verse were wont to discourse so copiously. But Cicero, 
 who could write the Consolation of Old Age, and who 
 professed to have in readiness the philosophic remedies 
 proper to console affliction, was inconsolable when his 
 Tullia died, and confessed as much. And was the wife 
 of Plutarch consoled when her philosophic husband 
 reasoned with her as thus : when we had no child, we 
 had no occasion for complaint against Fortune, and 
 now that we have lost our child we are but returned 
 to our former condition. Unanswerable was Solon's 
 retort to his friends who judged open grief unworthy 
 of the philosopher : I weep precisely because it is idle 
 to weep. 
 
 But I am fallen into Montaigne's or Burton's vein, 
 and all beside the purpose. Of what use to tell myself 
 that reason speedily declares its bankruptcy when the 
 heart calls on it? Time, indeed, may heal the wounds 
 that death of friends inflicts, but time is powerless to 
 cure the maladies of sensibility and thought. The good 
 man has his genius to console his heart's distress, says 
 Apuleius, — for genius, we moderns read conscience. 
 But it is not enough to possess a conscience guiltless 
 as human conscience can be guiltless; no modern can 
 so loftily, so serenely absolve himself at the tribunal of 
 his conscience as the Stoics did. These Stoics made laws 
 unto themselves, and sat at the tribunal as their own 
 judges. Good fortune was the gift of the gods, but 
 wisdom was of man's own fashioning. "Let Jove give 
 life and wealth, and I will give myself serenity." Such 
 [ 109 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 was their pride. But these were magnanimous vaunts 
 in moods of peace — that peace which is not of a man's 
 own making. 
 
 Utraque secia ad o Hum diver sa via mittit: the life of 
 serene tranquillity was to be attained alike by the disciples 
 of Zeno and Epicurus. The Stoic, with his voluntary 
 suiamission to the universal order, fronted death and 
 the thought of death in more virile fashion; the 
 Epicurean, with his theory of conventionality, could 
 not take sanctuary in his conscience and count on the 
 eternal laws of justice; the Stoic conceived himself 
 under the care of fatal Providence, while the Epicurean 
 claimed free-will and dismissed the gods from the 
 management of the universe — but, with principles at 
 variance, they were one in their desire for peace, for 
 tranquillity. Peace to be gained by effort; desire, 
 doubtless, rather than fruition of peace. In their con- 
 cessions to practical life, for life necessarily requires 
 compromise between principles and practice, they were 
 akin, — especially when Epicurus was interpreted by the 
 Romans, Stoical by instinct, wholly practical. And 
 they were alike in their ideal of life, in their religion — 
 a religion of the void. The austere, grave Epicureanism 
 of the Master was a conventual rule of life, an asylum 
 of quietism to the timid, the discouraged, the bafHed. 
 And as Leopardi insisted. Stoicism also was a doctrine 
 appropriate to the timid of head and faint of heart. 
 Indolence, innocent languor, indeed, is the note of 
 Epicureanism; but this indolence is only to be attained 
 by renunciation, by Stoical contentment with little, by 
 resolute restriction of desires and needs. Strip thyself 
 voluntarily of all that fortune can assail. If thou hast 
 
 [ "o ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 rank and wealth, and mayest not forego them for duty's 
 sake, live as though they were not thine. They are 
 not thou, and their loss cannot affect thee. So would 
 the Stoic speak. And the Epicurean way of life is only 
 an aesthetic Stoicism, a Stoical quietism based on the 
 conviction of the vanity of action. Happiness is the 
 health of body and soul, sanity — that is to say, exemp- 
 tion from bodily pain and mental disquiet, freedom from 
 insensate action and selfish passion. 
 
 Here was a doctrine that remained, in its Epicurean 
 form, virtually unchanged for seven hundred years, till 
 the invasion of the barbarians. A way of life, and not 
 a creed; for creeds must be capable of, must suffer, 
 development — -development which necessarily implies 
 an apogee, and a consequent decline, or constant refor- 
 mation. A positivistic way of life, in that the Master, 
 though he had availed him of the atomistic theory of 
 Democritus as a ready, convenient febrifuge, an oppor- 
 tune remedy against the fear of death, yet strenuously 
 advised the dismissal of all metaphysical questions as 
 painful, insoluble, inane. A quietistic way of life, in 
 that to quench not only the desires of the flesh, but also 
 of the heart, was proclaimed the beginning of wisdom. 
 
 But, after all, did Epicureanism escape the fate of 
 philosophies and creeds? Granted that there was an 
 Epicurean Church with fixed rules of life formulated in 
 manuals, all innovation in and interpretation of which, 
 says Numenius, was regarded as impiety. Still the 
 majority of Epicureans were secular and eclectic. The 
 Romans, for example. Stoic by instinct. Epicurean by 
 accident, shaped the doctrine to the fashion of their 
 temperaments. Atticus as past master in the timid 
 prudential morality of the school; but contrast the 
 
 [ III ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 sumptuous luxury of Atticus with the daily half-obol 
 which sufficed Epicurus. The doctrine, moreover, was 
 Janus-faced, and worldlings could find ready excuse for 
 their orgies in the interpretation of Metrodorus, 
 Epicurean "of the sty." Cassius is an Epicurean, and 
 yet a man of action, a hater of tyrants — like our God- 
 wins and Shelleys, Hazlitts and Landors, Hugos and 
 Swinburnes — but not content to slay the tyrant in words 
 only, doubtless because his attention was not divided, 
 like theirs, between tyrants of the throne and tyrants 
 of the altar. Carpe diem, enjoy the fleeting moment, 
 says Horace, thinking to be Epicurean; and turns 
 to Stoicism after a fit of superstition, — unless he is 
 laughing at the credulity of friend or reader, himself 
 incorrigibly Epicurean the while, playing with fancied 
 conversion. Petronius opens his veins theatrically, 
 jesting to the end, elegantly Epicurean, carelessly heroic. 
 And the moderns read their own spirit into the letter. 
 Montaigne reinforces Epicureanism with prolegomena 
 of Pyrrhonism. Gassendi sees in Epicureanism nothing 
 but the atomistic philosoplry. Moliere, disciple of Gas- 
 sendi, preaches and practises Epicureanism till sorrow 
 and disquiet impel him to write a "Misanthrope." 
 Voltaire is the contrary of Gassendi, he ridicules the 
 Epicurean physics and delightedly lauds the ethics. 
 The Epicureans of to-day are dilettanti, cosmopolitans, 
 pessimists, who find vivid pleasure the sweeter for 
 its very transitoriness, rare joy the brighter for its back- 
 ground of common human misery — Epicureans whom 
 the Master would have plied with his placid epigrams. 
 . . . But, of a truth, that marble in the Louvre is 
 fit symbol of Epicureanism — of any philosophy or 
 creed — that Janus-head, Epicurus on the one side, and 
 
 [ 112 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Metrodorus on the other. Homo duplex ; and the same 
 doctrine may serve the angel and the beast. 
 
 Be ye perfect, even as the gods who toil not, sorrow 
 not, are passionless. So spoke Epicurus. Be ye 
 perfect, worship the divinity with ye, voluntarily con- 
 form to the moral order, said the Stoics. Perfection 
 by asceticism, in either case. St. Jerome could offer 
 Epicurus as an example to Christians, Epicurus the 
 ascetic, the vegetarian. But he rejects the Epicurus 
 who would have us be simple and lowly of mind, 
 willingly ignorant and uncultured, content with right 
 conduct. For Christians, it would seem, must needs 
 taste the bitter fruit of the tree of knowledge; they 
 must needs resent the closing of the schools of 
 pagan Rhetoric against them by Julian the Emperor. 
 Epicurus counselled seclusion from the world, but 
 Dante the - Christian, he who knew only too well the 
 vanity of political action, yet branded Pope Celestine 
 the Franciscan quietist, che fece per viltade il gran 
 rifiuto, who shrank from tyranny because his heart was 
 gentle. . . . Alas, homo duplex, man is double, angel 
 and beast linked together. Double? Multiple, rather; 
 a very bundle of contradictions. Pagans have been 
 Christians, Christians are mainly pagan, materialistic, 
 least alien to their creed when only domestically 
 materialistic. If you renounce the world, you are 
 Christian and Pagan; if you act in the world, you 
 are also Christian and Pagan. You are child by 
 descent of the Barbarians who abandoned their austere 
 forests and primitive virtues to conquer and dwell among 
 decadent Christians that were Pagans, of the Bar- 
 barians who were more pagan than the Pagans when 
 they declared themselves Arians or Christians. You 
 I [ 113 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 are child by descent of the Barbarians, who linked in 
 loose fashion Feudalism and Chivalry and Christianity 
 together. And child, by education, of Puritanic Jews 
 and artistic Greeks. How reduce this tangled com- 
 plexity to order, how recognise my duty! . . . Sub- 
 mission, acceptance? Yes. Renunciation of personal 
 desires? — a further degree of perfection. Self-devo- 
 tion, self-sacrifice? — the last degree. But for whom? 
 For what idea? 
 
 The same, The conventual quietism of the Epicurean Church 
 L^c'eti^ could not content Lucretius. He could not linger in 
 the Garden; could not live the peaceful delitescent 
 life of kindliness and friendship, of nonchalance and 
 sanctity which his loved master advocated and practised. 
 That physical theory of which Epicurus indolently 
 availed himself as a ready, sufificient means to banish 
 all fear of the capricious providence of the gods, all fear 
 of immortality, that atomistic philosophy which the 
 Roman Stoics, intent on positive morality alone, could 
 adopt with little change, on condition that it should 
 remain in the background, Lucretius must explore, 
 not in doubt but in fervent conviction, must expand, 
 must chant even as a Parmenides, an Empedocles had 
 chanted the laws they discerned in Nature. It mat- 
 tered not that he was violating the rules of Epicu- 
 rus' s guild, that to study systems of philosophy was 
 to trouble serenity, that culture was a hindrance to 
 holy happiness. He fain would possess the peace 
 of which his master spoke, but the master's piercing, 
 relentless logic fascinated him all too much. Did 
 he hope that, by expounding the method, he would 
 sooner attain the result, the peace which the master 
 [ "4 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 won so readily, and of which the disciple despaired? 
 Did he hope that, by ardent preaching and proselytising, 
 he would know at length the peace which he pro- 
 claimed? Unhappy Lucretius! To be a tender, noble 
 poet was of itself to be dedicated to misery. But 
 to be a poet and a physicist at once was to be 
 doubly wretched. And he knew it not ! And he fondly 
 hoped that physics would heal him of his poetry, his 
 melancholy ! 
 
 He was convinced, indeed, that the method was 
 true; but had he won that happy, placid peace he 
 vaunts to have won, he had been surely silent. They 
 that are happy speak not of their happiness. Passion- 
 ately he pleads for nonchalance, immoderately for mod- 
 eration; stressfully he counsels calm, much as Carlyle 
 thunders a gospel of silence. With the air of a 
 Prometheus, chained but indomitable, exulting in un- 
 chartered liberty of thought, he prophesies the peace 
 which he himself cannot attain. Had not Epicurus 
 pointed out the path to peace, and was not peace 
 wholly lacking to himself, to his countrymen, lost as 
 they were in ambition and civil strife? Did not he 
 and they require to convince themselves of the dolorous 
 insanity of love, and superstition, and the restless desire 
 of happiness? Here was a doctrine that brought calm 
 to man and nature alike; to man, because its com- 
 prehension stilled perforce all mad desires, to nature, 
 to man's vision of nature, by its revelation of her fatal, 
 unchanging order. Man's passion, man's melancholy 
 would yield before the true knowledge of nature's laws; 
 to know nature was to know oneself. To know nature 
 was to be able to look on all things with a quiet mind, 
 was to free oneself from dread of death and immortality, 
 
 [ "5 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 from the passions that plunge men in a present,, un- 
 fabled Hell. . . . But his own sight is troubled; he 
 raves against superstition like a demoniac fearing 
 relapse into the power of the evil thing he hates. The 
 serene attitude of the Greeks is not his, nor yet the 
 facile incredulity of his compatriots, contemporaries, 
 or predecessors. It was idle to combat those errors and 
 terrors of the official religion to which no " old woman," 
 says Cicero, was subject, and yet he fearfully denounces 
 this religion of fear, and marshals arguments against the 
 dread of death that might well increase that dread. 
 Elate with the hope of annihilation, his hope is agony. 
 He is ever at war with himself and his creed, for he is a 
 poet. Intensely emotional, he appeals to humanity of 
 all time, and this because, as a poet, he cannot narrow 
 himself to a philosophic theory. He is a poet in spite 
 of his philosophy; a witness of truth just so long as he 
 is chanting his sorrow; inconsistent, self -refuting, pre- 
 cisely because a philosopher. 
 
 Lucretius seeks to comfort himself with the belief 
 that death is happy insensibility, that the fear of death 
 is wholly illogical, unreasonable. Since death, then, is 
 nothingness, needs must he "meditate on life," and love 
 to live; but he cannot love life, for the desire of happi- 
 ness is also- an unreasonable, illogical instinct, for passion 
 is pain, and all things, to the tranquil and the passionate 
 alike, are monotonous and wearisome. Nor does the 
 fatalistic Stoic fare better. The Stoic and the Epicurean 
 alike are individualists; their ethics are the ethics of 
 solitaries, of hermits. The Stoic and the Epicurean 
 are ascetics; they seek to take sanctuary from an evil 
 world in their own hearts, and find therein nothing 
 but vanity and emptiness. Thrust back upon them- 
 [ "6 ] 
 
solation of 
 Nature. 
 
 The Melancholy of Stephen AllarcL 
 
 selves, they vainly seek for self-deliverance ; their self- 
 consciousness is despair. 
 
 Self-conscious, I find no consolation in Nature. The con- 
 For I can only receive from her that which I give to 
 her; she is only myself "writ large," and unconscious 
 of warring antinomies. Yet as an artist, I fail not to 
 admire the great unconscious artist. It is mine to pay 
 glad homage to my Lady Nature; strange only that 
 this homage finds no expression in these pages ! It is 
 as though I were some Provencal Troubadour who 
 should mutely gaze upon his careless mistress all the 
 day, and celebrate her not in hours of night and 
 absence; for what am I that I should stammer her 
 praise even in secret? To shape a song in verse or 
 prose while in her presence were to gaze with less 
 attention, were to be less absorbed in ecstasy, were to 
 descend to a lower perfection. To phrase my reveries 
 would be to phrase and deepen pain; for my mistress 
 is cruel, cruel because indifferent. A little while, and 
 I shall be banished from her bower-court to the loveless 
 haunts of men, with seldom chances of brief return 
 from banishment. A few more years, and I shall 
 return no more; but if she be ever fair, she will be 
 ever indifferent to other loves then, as now to me. 
 And in these night-watches that part me from her 
 presence for but a few hours, I utter no word of love. 
 For thoughts of love are thoughts of death; death and 
 love are inseparable, one god with two aspects, name- 
 less in unity, hailed in diversity. In place of marvelling 
 at her beauty I put mad questions to the void. I 
 rehearse the myriad guesses of her courtiers dead and 
 living, myriad guesses that still are few and ever the 
 
 [ "7 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 same, a slender set of guesses that endlessly repeat, like 
 decimals, ad nauseam. She is the one that is all things, 
 is Love, is War, whisper modern pantheists and they 
 who wrote the Litany of Ra. Nay, she lives and acts 
 in accord with a moral principle, whisper Matthew 
 Arnold and they who wrote the Proverbs of Phtah- 
 hotep. We know not that, but surely she is creature, 
 emanation of a First Cause unknown, unknowable, 
 impersonal, ineffable, whisper Mr. Herbert Spencer and 
 they who wrote the Book of the Dead. 
 
 Tragic So long as I remained in sceculo, among the world 
 
 heroism. q£ j^gj^^ j ^^g ^ tragic hero struggling with an adverse 
 destiny, a tragic hero without an audience, unexposed 
 to sympathy or ridicule, a tragic hero who should be a 
 supernumerary. But now I am self-discharged and in 
 retreat, wondering to what end I was haled perforce 
 upon the stage, wondering what part I am to play on 
 my return. Nay, I am a tragic hero still, and my 
 tragic error, my "necessary error of a noble character " 
 — let the flattering epithet pass — is and was, doubtless, 
 my excess of thought. The drama of faith and doubt 
 ever proceeds within me. In sooth I should be less 
 hapless were I able, on the one hand, not to think, 
 able to harbour self-conceit and confidence, able to 
 believe, like other men, that I believe, able to believe 
 comfortable, appropriate beliefs, or, on the other hand, 
 able to be a frivolous, facile, self-satisfied sceptic. But 
 I am hero of a tragedy in which the chorus is all in all. 
 I exhale not my sorrows, all too eager to listen to the 
 consolations proffered by the chorus, chorus within my 
 heart of men that are dead and men that deem them- 
 selves alive. And this chorus is the voice of Nature, 
 [ "8 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 is a chorus that divides itself and stands apart this way 
 and that, voicing Nature's antinomies. Each thesis is 
 met by an antithesis; the antistrophe ever contradicts 
 the strophe : — 
 
 "Thou shouldst submit, for he that submits 'need 
 act no tragic part'; thou shouldst joyfully submit, 
 remembering the while that thy submission is 'sub- 
 mission to a government of the gods.' " Whereon the 
 semi-chorus rejoins: "Such Stoic counsel is idle; for 
 the government is an anarchy, for Ormuzd, Prince of 
 Good, is ever at war with Ahriman, Prince of Evil. 
 Thou must indeed be a strenuous, valiant partisan of 
 Ormuzd, but think not to escape the temptations of 
 Ahriman, and remember the while that the combat is 
 endless and undecisive, that Ormuzd can only exist so 
 long as his adversary wars against him." 
 
 "Thou art happy so long as thou art conscious of 
 right conduct." "Nay, thou art doomed, however 
 virtuous, to misery, for thou art a limitation of the 
 Idea, the One, and limitation is suffering. Thou art 
 impeded by thyself, by outer nature, and the world of 
 men; but to resent impediments is neither wise nor 
 holy." 
 
 "Seek diligently Truth, and thou shalt find Truth 
 and Happiness." "Nay, it is not given to the bounded 
 human mind to comprehend Truth, but only truths, 
 partial, contradictory, truths that are errors, necessary 
 errors. Thou shrinkest from limiting thyself to one 
 aspect of Truth, from narrowing thyself to some use- 
 ful, force-giving prejudice; thou fearest to be a dupe: 
 but canst thou hope to embrace and reconcile all 
 partial truths? Nor is it given to the human heart 
 to stay the fleeting moment of illusive happiness; for, 
 [ "9 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 once more, thou art finite and yet wouldst compass the 
 infinite; nothing but all can satisfy thee, and almost 
 nothing serves to make thee wretched." 
 
 "Think not of thyself, for self-love is ever baffled; 
 lose thyself that thou mayst find thyself in others, for 
 universal love is happiness and freedom; Nature, ever 
 straining towards the better and the best, designs the 
 happiness of all things, be thou her glad coadjutor, free 
 with the freedom of moral activity." "Yes, self-love 
 is ever baffled, but think not that altruistic love fares 
 better. Nature and Man are powerless to accomplish 
 their designs, to realise the infinite in the finite. And 
 further, do not fondly dower Nature with thy own 
 designs and thoughts; Nature has no designs. Nature 
 is Necessity, Nature is ever the same, balancing quality 
 by defect, gain by loss. Thou hast illusions of progress 
 and freedom, thou hast desires of self-sacrifice; and 
 needs must thou be the dupe of these illusions, needs 
 must thou renounce thyself." 
 
 The Baffled self- lover, let me arraign myself. . . . Isola- 
 
 remedy of ^:^ because of difference. Will that serve to formulate 
 
 solitude. 
 
 my solitude of the past years? I was humble, as con- 
 scious of defect; there was nothing "daemonic" in 
 me, no personal magnetism and fascination. None 
 sought me out, and I would not thrust myself on 
 another's tolerance. I was unable not to love fair sur- 
 roundings, and would not that my bare, unlovely retreat 
 should be visited. What was conversation? An inter- 
 change of trifling chatter on trifling subjects. The 
 rules of society, possibly with reason, preclude serious 
 discussion, and life was serious to me. Why should I 
 desire to discover a friend, a second self? One, of the 
 
 r 120 1 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 kind, was already quite sufficient. A friend, then, with 
 whom I could agree to differ? I needed none such; 
 a sophist, I could readily argue against myself. Nor 
 did I wish to teach or inspire doubts in another. 
 The masters of doubt were legion, and I cared not to 
 swell their train. "Leave thou thy sister, when she 
 prays, her early heaven, her happy views " — and also, 
 leave thou thy brother to his content and fancied surety. 
 It was better far to consume one's own smoke; argu- 
 ment was interminable, and only served to reveal the 
 temperament of the arguer. To quit the world for 
 my solitude was to exchange the slight possibility of 
 acquiring friends, whom, if acquired by whatsoever 
 unlikely accident, I could certainly not have aided in 
 their time of spiritual or material need, for the vast 
 society of the dead. Nay, I could converse in solitude 
 not only with the elect of humanity's dead, but with 
 the living whose bodily company could never be 
 mine. I needed not to be abashed. Nay, forsooth, the 
 greatest among them must wait in the anti-chamber 
 till such time as I should think good to grant them 
 audience, till I should have made my choice among 
 them. It was veritable madness to desire other 
 company. 
 
 Isolation, because of difference; though isolation is 
 severance, and severance is pain. I was tolerant wholly, 
 for men must be what they may. I expected no 
 sympathy; I was different, and it was folly to chafe 
 because difference implied isolation, to desire that 
 others should be in sympathy with me. How could 
 I wish that any should resemble me? . . . If I were 
 a lover, should I expect or desire another to see the 
 beauty that I saw in my mistress? I have loved certain 
 
 [ 121 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 pictures. Who saw in them the beauty that I saw? 
 Men deigned a passing glance, and then forgot. 
 Critics pointed out defects — what cared I; whatever is, 
 is necessarily limited, and qualities comport correspond- 
 ing defects. I knew the defects as well as they; but 
 I loved, and was therefore blind, voluntarily blind. As 
 with the beautiful, so with the good, which to me ever 
 presented itself under the aspect of the beautiful. How 
 expect sympathy in my creeds and cults? "Wide is 
 the range of words"; vast is the variety of tempera- 
 ments. Est-ce par raison que vous aimez, loving, do 
 we love on grounds of reason? asks Pascal. And to 
 essay an explanation of your love to another was but to 
 reason. I loved the Christian idea; but I could not 
 justify my love by reason. I shrank instinctively from 
 the society of those who did not dare to think; I was 
 different from them. But I shrank still more from 
 those who dared; reason is but scepticism, and I 
 was other than a cold, remorseless reasoner. Le 
 cceur a ties raisons que la raison ignore, the heart has 
 reasons which reason ignores, says Pascal again, and 
 I could not silence my heart. It was the heart that 
 made me a poet, though a voiceless poet. Pectus facit 
 theologum ; it was the heart that made me a Christian 
 — though a Christian without a creed. Solitude was 
 best, beata solitudo — sola beatitudo. In solitude alone 
 I could be in communion with those who had doubted 
 all things, had doubted their doubts, had listened to 
 their hearts which made them hope and trust, though 
 reason utterly denied. 
 
 But am I not involuntarily idealising my past? I 
 was to have denounced my solitude, and behold I could 
 fain wish that the present was as tolerable as the past. 
 
 [ 122 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 But I came hither because my life was intolerable. I 
 came hither to seek consolation, to reconstruct my 
 life, to reason out if might be a faith. But while I 
 am further confirmed in my belief that reason is vanity, 
 I have also learned to distrust my unreasonable faith 
 and love. I no longer blindly love; clear-sighted at 
 length, I love not at all. If it is folly to seek consola- 
 tion in philosophy, it is equal folly to pay heed to the 
 yearnings of my heart. The mind is shackled within 
 the dungeon of experience, and vainly strives to break 
 its bonds and pass into freedom. And the heart, like- 
 wise, only divines perfection because it is prisoned* for 
 all the hours of its beating in imperfection. The 
 heart contrasts that which should be, which cannot be, 
 with that which is; its wretchedness is nothing more 
 than the sense of will impeded, and to be impeded, to 
 the end. Perchance the wisdom of the mind would 
 be to recognise and accept its limits; the wisdom of 
 the heart, to renounce hope and desire. 
 
 But what of the salvation by altruism? I am The 
 isolated, necessarily isolated, as being different from ^teulsm." 
 others, as being "exceptional." But to consider one- 
 self an exception is to be in the way of cunning 
 self-flatteries and Jean-Jacques sophistries. Can any 
 one not wholly self-deluded, self-sophisticated, tolerate 
 self-contemplation for long? In probing the depths 
 of personality, do we not come upon a foul slough of 
 animality, of "will-to-live" at the expense of others, 
 and draw back in dismay and disgust? In my days 
 of youthful generosity, indeed, "I thought nobly of 
 the soul." So did Malvolio, ludicrously distraught by 
 egoism. How can I outstep the circle of selfishness? 
 [ 123 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Forsooth, on Spinozistic principles, to love self reason- 
 ably is to know self, to know self is to know God, to 
 know God is to love God, to love God is to love 
 humanity, to love humanity is — to love self. 
 
 Let me ascend in thought from the " den " of human 
 use and wont, pass from darkness to the light, and 
 gaze upon the Sun of the Idea, even at the risk of 
 being blinded by excess of light. There, in the dark- 
 ness, did I not fashion a bugbear of selfishness, and 
 shrink from it in abhorrence? But I cannot be 
 selfish, even if I would. Am I not a creature of 
 Nature, and does not Nature inevitably inspire us, 
 dupe us, with altruistic desires? Or look at the 
 matter from another point of view : as a natural being, 
 on Spinoza's showing, I am a mere ephemeral mode of 
 substance, mechanically determined, merged in the 
 natural order, lost precisely because I exist, a negation 
 in that I am determination; as a moral being, on 
 Spinoza's showing again, or that of the Spinozistic 
 Fichte, my self-consciqusness is lost in the universal 
 self-consciousness, my individuality absorbed in the 
 rational, moral order. 
 
 Saadi tells us that Abu Yezid heard a voice that 
 said, "Thy Thou is still with thee; if thou wilt attain 
 unto Me, quit thyself and come." Quit myself! 
 Strip myself of worldly goods? That were soon done. 
 I possess but a musical instrument, a few prints, a 
 thousand books. Well, "they do most by books who 
 could do much without them." But strip thyself of 
 learning, and even of understanding. Well, know- 
 ledge is pain, and understanding is vanity. In any 
 case, I shall soon cease to be selfish; a little while, and 
 I shall go, like the dying Plotinus, to " bear the divine 
 [ 124 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 within me to. the divine in the universe," that is to 
 say, I shall merge in the unconscious Absolute. Nay, 
 in life itself, as a moral being, I must seek deliverance 
 from the senses; and in proportion as I free myself 
 from this body of death, as I hate my life, I quit my- 
 self and come, I attain to death in life, to absorption. 
 ... To think that I desire peace, and yet resent 
 that annihilation of personality which is the necessary 
 condition of peace ! . . . 
 
 I am weary of this monody of vain search. Res- 
 ignation I know, but not serenity. Loneliness and im- 
 potence and poverty I can, and must, accept; but 
 how shall I endure discordancy of thought? "Men's 
 judgments are a parcel of their fortunes"; and haply, 
 I judge meanly because my lot is mean. Let me for- 
 get myself as far as may be, or at least disengage the 
 melancholy of thought from the melancholy of adverse 
 circumstance by ceasing to descant on my own ill- 
 fortunes. Let me renew the quest, and review, with 
 such impersonality and impartiality of judgment as is 
 possible, the causes and supposed remedies of melan- 
 choly; not shifting and drifting in despair from point 
 to point as heretofore, but progressing in some orderly 
 fashion — whither? . . . Nay, I cannot pose to my- 
 self in advance a plan, a method; for this would imply 
 presumption that I am able to pose the whole problem, 
 and thereby presumption that I am in the way of 
 solving it.^ 
 
 1 [It is to be understood that the division of this diary into parts is 
 not signified in the manuscript otherwise than by the intervention of a 
 blank page. — Editor.] 
 
 [ "5 ] 
 
PART II 
 
 At the beginning of this century men prided them- The 
 selves on their privileged possession of a moral malady, 'Tth'^'^'' 
 Ennui, Melancholy. To be weary of realities after century." 
 experience was to be distinguished from the common- 
 alty; to be weary, to be disenchanted, disillusioned 
 before experience, was to be distinguished among the 
 distinguished; to be weary of ideals, convinced that 
 ideals even if realised could not satisfy, was supreme 
 distinction. As the century advanced men grew weary 
 of their weariness, addicted themselves wholly to posi- 
 tive action, to the pursuit of wealth. Melancholy was 
 hushed under the reign of Utilitarianism and Industrial 
 Progress. The pursuit of wealth, the struggle for gold, 
 the strident demands for Panem et Circenses remains 
 unabated, nay, exasperated — witness contemporary Ger- 
 many, pessimistic and withal supremely positive — but 
 the malady has broken out once again, at the end of the 
 century we have returned, as in a cycle, to the state of 
 feeling that marked its beginning. But the malady 
 has returned in an aggravated form, it is above all a 
 malady of thought, it is the distress of men who logically 
 deduce the conclusions of the doctrines — hardly to be 
 gainsaid, so vast is the body of evidence — of the Natural 
 Scientists, doctrines, for example, of the relativity of 
 
 [ 127 1 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 knowledge, of determinism, which the Scientists- renew 
 and confirm by their own methods. 
 
 At the beginning of the century youths posed and 
 vapoured in imitation of Ren6 and Childe Harold. 
 They were victims of a mere affectation, which was 
 not deep-rooted, which passed away with youth. They 
 were furnished with models so superb, so colossal, so 
 beyond imitation, that would-be imitators inevitably en- 
 countered ridicule, and from fear of ridicule, from self- 
 love, more or less speedily accommodated themselves to 
 mediocrity. But I see no literary models of melancholy 
 like to inspire imitation nowadays. As Obermann had 
 no imitators, so Amiel can have none. It is the ideal 
 figure fashioned by a genius, the ideal figure who re- 
 sumes the confused aspirations and discouragements of 
 contemporary society that evokes imitation. A type is 
 more or less universal, is a work of art, is a portrait in 
 which the beholders can recognise some or many of 
 their own lineaments. But the self-portraiture of an 
 exceptional individual, an Obermann, a Maurice de 
 Gu^rin, an Amiel, is individual only. These and their 
 like have not only no imitators, but even no disciples, 
 such as any ethical philosopher, be he pessimistic or 
 optimistic, who propounds a scheme of salvation, is sure 
 to have. These do but express their own strange 
 idiosyncrasy, their unlikeness to other men. After their 
 death, not till after their death, some potent critic, dis- 
 covering in them a subject for the display of ingenuity,, 
 stirs a little wave of interest. The wave dies away; 
 attention is diverted to some newer moral, pathological 
 curiosity. In short, present-day melancholy is not due 
 to the imitation of any literary "type" in which is 
 resumed the " state of soul " of a generation. 
 [ 128 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 The "malady of the century" has been explained 
 as a vague distress due to the forced inaction that 
 followed the stirring martial years of the generation 
 which fought for, or against, the Empire. Was it not 
 rather the vague distress caused by the failure of the 
 Revolution to realise its principles of liberty, equality, 
 fraternity, the dolorous reaction after disillusioned 
 enthusiasm? And as the bankruptcy of social ideals 
 and aspirations cast a deep gloom over the men that 
 were young while the century was young, so they that 
 think in this generation of mine are saddened by the 
 bankruptcy of- the vaunted industrial progress which 
 has only accentuated the gulf between the "two na- 
 tions "of rich and. poor, of "those who have" and 
 "those who have not," which Plato and Machiavelli 
 marked as ever at war within Society. But the malady 
 of the century is rather the malady of all the centuries; 
 chronic, if varying in form. Ren6 is independent of 
 the Revolution, Ren6 is the brother of the pre-revolu- 
 tionary Werther and St. Preux. . . . Nay, that is a 
 short horizon. What of the world-haters of India, 
 oriental and occidental contemners of matter, of the 
 flesh, ascetic recluses of all times and climes? What 
 of Job's vain call on Jehovah to justify his ways, 
 Prometheus' s lofty scorn of the tyrant Zeus? A 
 Lucretius fled for refuge from religion to the study 
 of the laws of Nature. But we, heirs of all the ages, 
 vainly seek consolation and a refuge, now that nature's 
 laws are known, now that the world is discovered, they 
 say, to be godless, now that Necessity is enthroned. 
 
 Annaeus Serenus applies to Seneca, lay director of Roman 
 consciences and professional consoler, for spiritual help. ^"""'' 
 K [ 129 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Seneca sympathetically poses the case as though it were 
 his own; for the moral physician, like Plato's bodily 
 physician, must have experienced in himself the maladies 
 he would cure. Annseus Serenus is in a state of languor; 
 he is neither sound nor sick. He fears that continuance 
 of his distress does but make him cherish it the more. 
 His heart is in a constant state of hesitation, like the 
 wavering tongue of the balance, neither resolutely strain- 
 ing to the good, nor yet declining to evil. He loves, 
 he fain would love contentment, simplicity, mediocrity 
 of fortune; yet the sight of a rich man's magnificence 
 and splendour is wont to stir in him an envy that he 
 scorns to feel, but cannot banish. He returns to his 
 frugal home, not morally the worse, but sadder. Should 
 not he, also, pursue the active life which brings wealth 
 and consideration, he asks himself. His Stoic masters, 
 indeed, elect the contemplative life, but inconsistently 
 bid the disciple turn to action. But no sooner does he 
 essay action than he is convinced once more of the worth- 
 lessness and vanity of action, and is driven back again 
 on the contemplative life. He will attend to his own 
 concerns alone, and pursue a tranquil course. But in 
 solitude he reads of men who won glory in action, and 
 is fired with enthusiasm. He will emulate, even should 
 it profit nothing. He will place himself at the beck and 
 call of others, will combat in the senate-house, and war 
 against iniquity. But, he asks himself, is it not better, 
 after all, to study the nature of things, and, study ended, 
 to write an epoch-making book? Would not that be 
 noblest action? Yet to what end? Death is the in- 
 heritance of all, be they unknown or famous; and fame 
 brings care and trouble. Better to while away the hours 
 in busy idleness, in writing merely for one's gratifica- 
 [ 130 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 tion. . . . Nay, he confesses, he is weak of purpose, 
 unable to read his heart and discover his true desire. 
 Perchance men might attain to wisdom, he thinks, if 
 they would cease to suppose, in blind self-conceit, that 
 they had already attained it. But though conscious 
 that he lacks wisdom, and thus in the way of wisdom, 
 how is he yet to become wise, to reach the goal ? He 
 is out at sea, drifting hither and thither, sick or 
 apathetic, even though it is calm around him and no 
 storm threatens. How may he reach the haven of peace ? 
 
 Thereupon Seneca generalises the malady of ennui, 
 resuming many modern symptoms. Fickleness, insta- 
 bility, constant change of purpose; disgust of the 
 present good, idealisation of the past. A languor often 
 too deep to allow of fickleness, a listless continuation of 
 habits formed, an inability to change. Brooding self- 
 dissatisfaction, timidity of desire, speedy discouragement 
 at obstacles. Fitful confidence, fitful despondency. 
 Scrupulous fears of beginning, scrupulous repentance of 
 that which is begun. Resentful withdrawal from action; 
 inaction found to be a torment, solitude a burden. 
 Contempt of others succeeded by contempt of self. An 
 irritability of the soul, exasperated by any and every 
 remedy applied, as a wound is irritated by the handling 
 it craves. A restlessness as of one who ever turns from 
 side to side on his couch, vainly seeking repose. Vain 
 efforts to escape from self and self-torment by flight 
 from cities to natural solitude, by flight from solitude, 
 when reached, to the bustle of the cities that have been 
 left. Endless desires to be otherwhere and otherwise; 
 but change of scene not followed by change of self. 
 
 As remedy for Annaeus Serenus and his like, Seneca — 
 as might be expected — counsels action. But when a 
 
 [ 131 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Lucilius, a Paulinus, men of action, confess to him their 
 ennui, their weariness of action, he counsels seclusion 
 and contemplation. The Stoical system is assuredly 
 convenient — for professional consolers of others. 
 
 To end the endless fluctuations of uncertainty, the 
 vain attempts to win oblivion of self, knowledge of self 
 is all-sufficient, and knowledge of self is knowledge 
 of the laws of nature, say Lucretius and the modern 
 scientists. But the laws of nature are profoundly im- 
 moral. The Brahman myth of the creation of the 
 world by the Evil Spirit, the Persian myth of the eternal 
 combat of Ahriman and Ormuzd, are significant. Plato, 
 that he might justify God, must limit his omnipotence : 
 " far fewer are the goods of human life than its evils, 
 and it is the good only that we must set down to him, 
 — for the evil we must seek any cause rather than 
 God." A Bayle surreptitiously inclines to Manichaeism; 
 a John Stuart Mill posthumously acknowledges its 
 reasonableness. To know the laws of nature is to 
 know that we are necessary products, and in turn 
 necessary agents, causing only that which we must 
 cause. Our fairest morality is only a protest against 
 these laws; our fairest desires are baseless fantasies, not 
 to be realised; our deepest joy expresses itself in the 
 form of tears. Study nature, and a longing for deliver- 
 ance from nature, for death, is inevitable. What else 
 are the yearnings of poets but yearnings for deliverance 
 from the bounded ? But what a method of deliverance ! 
 Desire for existence, tanha, in Buddhist phrase, is to 
 be rooted out, the manie d'etre — in which Chateaubriand 
 found the secret of his own melancholy — the will-to- 
 live is to be extinguished; the heresy of personality is to 
 be renounced ! 
 
 [ 132 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Folly is a burden to itself, and wisdom is tranquillity, 
 announces Seneca to his patients. But the Stoic tran- 
 quillity, the tranquillity of the Epicureans, is an anticipa- 
 tion of death in life; philosophy is the meditation of 
 death, and death is oblivion. The panaceas of Stoics, 
 Epicureans, and Buddhists are one and the same. 
 
 I will turn to the century immediately preceding The ennui 
 this of ours which claims Melancholy for its special °^*f ., 
 
 -' "^ eighteenth 
 
 malady. Ennui, if not Melancholy — for ennui is the century. 
 
 disease of an aristocratic society, cloyed with the delights 
 of pleasure and wit, devoid of faith in ideals, while 
 melancholy is ennui become poetical and passionate — 
 ennui was endemic, chronic in the France of the 
 Eighteenth Century. The ennui of Serenus, in a time 
 of despotism and forced inaction, is the same as that 
 described by Lucretius, in a time of resolution and 
 boundless possibilities of action. The ennui of the 
 Eighteenth Century is much the same under the 
 Regent, when liberty is dreamed of only by a few 
 philosophers, as under Louis the Sixteenth, when liberty 
 is fermenting universally. Civilisation, aristocratic 
 culture, is far advanced; the pursuit of pleasure is 
 possible and widely practised. But these aristocrats of 
 wealth, birth, brain, report as their last word the vanity 
 of all things. Ecclesiastes had, indeed, deduced — 
 ironically? — a lesson from this vanity of all things, that 
 it was well to eat, drink, and be merry so long as might 
 be. But these, and Ecclesiastes, know that such merri- 
 ment is merest vanity. Intellectual pride ends in the 
 confession of boundless, intolerable ennui ; the malady, 
 the scourge of them that are deemed happy and enviable. 
 It is the highly cultured women of the century that 
 [ 133 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 express the universal ennui the most clearly, the most 
 persistently. Love is woman's whole existence? So 
 long as these women of the Eighteenth Century do 
 not loudly proclaim their amours, they are free to follow 
 the dictates of passion. But Donna Juana is necessarily 
 victim of ennui, of the impuissance d' aimer, is unable to 
 love either Creator or creature. In earliest youth she 
 is devote; when age forbids the hope of yet another 
 earthly lover, God is taken as last lover of all. But 
 ennui rides her still, since she is powerless to love. 
 
 But take the case of those women whose intellect 
 was clear and profound before and after the death of the 
 passions. Take Madame du Deffand, for example. In 
 youth, she had passed from love to love, that is, from 
 disappointment to disappointment. In age, she is ever 
 seeking new friends, now that lovers may not be. She 
 could no more endure banishment from her Parisian 
 salon than Ovid from Rome. Lovers, or friends, they 
 are but sought as solaces from ennui, as aids to avoid 
 solitude and reflection, and are won in vain, for she is 
 infinitely weary of herself and all others. Nothing can 
 interest her. Esprit — refinement and delicacy of wit, 
 intellectual vivacity — can no more console her than 
 like gifts could console Madame de Stael. Penetrating 
 analysis of the motives of human conduct, the malicious 
 joys of irony, are veriest misery to her. Foolish in 
 action, for she fain would love and be loved, in youth 
 and age she is the while clear-sighted, ever wise, ever 
 implacably reasonable, ever conscious of the vanity of 
 all things. She would fain be full of kindliness, but 
 her clearness of sight will only permit her to behold in 
 the chosen society around her so many varieties of the 
 fool, so many automata, each set in motion by a ruling 
 [ 134 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 passion. " There is not a single person to whom one 
 can confide one's sorrows without affording a malicious 
 joy." She must lament that she cannot live without 
 love, and yet is wholly incapable of love. Her malady 
 is la privation du sentiment, avec la douleur de ne s^en 
 pouvoir passer, destitution of sentiment with the pain of 
 not being able to endure such destitution. This desire 
 to love, coupled with powerlessness to love, strikes the 
 note of the coming "malady of the century." Ennui is 
 passing into Melancholy. 
 
 Poor Madame du Deffand! She attains her desire. 
 Hoping against hope, and in spite of reason, a septua- 
 genarian and half-blind, she loves at length, loves 
 with the whole love of a young girl, loves with 
 enthusiasm for another fifteen years, — striving to be 
 credulous that her love is returned. And she bestows 
 her love on — a Horace Walpole, a gay pessimist, he, 
 no victim of ennui, with his absorbing hobbies, with 
 his constant delight in the malign observation of the 
 follies and absurdities of others. And Walpole is 
 keenly conscious of ridicule, much embarrassed by the 
 bestowal, will he nill he, of such an ardent love. Her 
 secretary cannot restrain his grief when she dictates the 
 last letter to her Horace a little while before her death: 
 "Do you love me, then?" she inquires, yearning to 
 be loved, incredulous of love. 
 
 What of the wonted remedies of ennui? Pascal 
 long ago pointed out their vanity. Such is human 
 misery that men fly to action and amusement, to dis- 
 sipation and conversation, not hoping to find happiness 
 therein, but to escape solitude and thought. Such is 
 human life that nothing can content or console if it be 
 examined closely, but men fancy that life will be at 
 [ 135 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 least more tolerable if they can make shift to forget 
 life and its problems for a while, by whatsoever means. 
 Madame du Deffand essays such remedies in vain, even 
 as Chateaubriand who "yawns out his life," even as 
 Byron who knows not how to end his ennui, to end 
 "that awful yawn which sleep cannot abate." 
 
 The 
 
 " malady 
 of the 
 century " 
 again. 
 
 I recur to the "malady of the century," and its 
 remedies. . An age of Naturalism was duly succeeded, 
 since the pendulum swings from thesis to antithesis, 
 by an age of religion, in this case, an age of religiosity. 
 Chateaubriand, dowered with imaginative sensibility, 
 "believes, because he has wept." Alfred de Musset, a 
 little later, weeps; but belief, with him, does not 
 follow tears. He is too sincere to imitate the haughty 
 pose of Chateaubriand, — for, with Chateaubriand, to 
 believe was to be isolated in lofty dignity, to be the 
 precursor and leader of the revolt against the spirit of 
 the Eighteenth Century, — belief was a form of pride. 
 Alfred de Musset confesses his powerlessness to love, 
 his incapacity of belief; he is capable only of eloquently 
 tracing the consequences of such incapacity. Heine 
 also weeps; but he sterilises his tears by irony, turns 
 his keen wit against his own emotions. 
 
 Chateaubriand, proclaiming in proudest, magnilo- 
 quent tones the belief that was not really his, threw 
 himself on action, essaying to escape the ennui, the mel- 
 ancholy that dogged him. Disdainful of action, he yet 
 enters on the public life, accedii ad rempublicam, as the 
 Stoic sages counselled others, as Seneca advised on oc- 
 casion, and practised, courting thereby undying charges 
 of inconsistency, exposing himself to comparisons drawn 
 between the theoretical sage and the practical states- 
 [ 136 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 man, who must needs be an oppo;-tunist. Chateau- 
 briand the man of action, the statesman, glories that 
 he has saved the monarchy which, in his heart of hearts, 
 he judged not worth the saving, — to which he adhered 
 merely from motives of honour, of aristocratic pride — 
 by a war with Spain, forced on by cunhingest dis- 
 simulation and treachery solely that he may satisfy his 
 pride, that he may reap fame as a glorious saviour of 
 Society. But he conceives his rdle as saviour is not 
 sufficiently recognised, he cannot tolerate subordina- 
 tion to a colleague, provokes dismissal, sulks in his 
 tent, leaving it only to soothe his wounded pride by 
 aiding strenuously in the ruin of the monarchy he had 
 saved, and thus compel his former friends to repent that 
 they had cast aside an all-powerful instrument. The 
 ruin consummated, he retires from action, proclaiming 
 at once his fidelity to, and scorn of the fallen monarchy; 
 surrenders himself once more to his haughty melancholy. 
 Byron was too sincere, too much a child of the 
 Eighteenth Century to be a singer of sentimental faith; 
 he frankly doubts, but his doubts do not extend beyond 
 that popular theology which he never definitely rejects, 
 which is the subject of his curiosity to the end. Child 
 of the Eighteenth Century, he was yet a child of the 
 Revolution, a passionate individualist, melancholy in- 
 deed by inheritance, but gifted with intense vitality, 
 felicitously active of mind and body, supremely versatile. 
 Yet to be able to alternate gloom with boisterous buf- 
 foonery, and tears with triumphant jests; to be a 
 fallen angel, a tameless Titan, a weary voluptuary, but 
 withal generous, readily amenable to kindness, a hero 
 to his valets, despite the proverb, a cordial, if fickle, 
 friend to all who should pay the deference he claimed 
 [ 137 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 to that rank of his which he deemed his fairest pos- 
 ■session; to love the world, and when rejected by it, to 
 be able to avenge himself by brilliant satire, by scathing 
 denunciations of its hypocrisies, assemble an admiring 
 court in exile, command the rapt attention of his 
 banishers who were eager to outromance his romantic, 
 melodramatic rdk — this could not give him joy, could 
 not calm his fevered heart. Poetry, love, adventure, 
 domination could not avail him. Alcibiades-Timon, 
 he vainly flies to Nature for refuge; but Nature can 
 only re-echo his own despair. Nature cannot enable 
 him to lose his own "wretched identity." In the last 
 resort, he seeks to compass self-oblivion by glorious 
 action; an aristocrat, disdainful of the "profane mob," 
 eternally "of the opposition," from pilgrim and volupt- 
 uary he turns Carbonaro and crusader, and quits the 
 scene in hapless, noble fashion. 
 
 Lamartine, in turn, would fain escape from self- 
 consciousness, from melancholy. If Chateaubriand is 
 an artist in religious emotions, if he is rapturously 
 eloquent in praise of the moral beauties of Christianity 
 as others have been in praise of the moral beauties of 
 Paganism, so Lamartine is a seraphic chanter of sweet, 
 sonorous Harmonies and Meditations of Christian ten- 
 derness. He would fain convert Byron, and is more 
 Byronic himself than he well knows. Singer of the 
 Infinite, he is appalled, like Pascal, by the "eternal 
 silence" of the universe; he cannot but reject all 
 creeds and systems, though he knows not how to re- 
 place them; he alternates between despairing question- 
 ings and mournful resignation to the ignorance that is 
 imposed on man. He, too, like Chateaubriand and 
 Byron, weary, disdainful of his rdle as poet, must fling 
 [ 138 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 himself on political action for relief. A generous 
 democrat, inspired at least by a religion of humanity, 
 he aids in bringing about a fruitless Revolution, is 
 borne on the crest of the wave for a moment, and then 
 cast high and dry on the strand, must end his days of 
 ennui in rolling the Sisyphus-stone of literary hack- 
 work, in renewing efforts to liquidate the debts that 
 his pride, his very ideality, had brought upon him. 
 
 The women of the Eighteenth Century sought in The 
 love a remedy of ennui. But Chateaubriand is lucidly lo^^aga'in. 
 conscious of the vanity of all remedies, remedies of love 
 as well as of action. He allows himself to be adored; 
 but, like Ren6, on le fatiguait en raimant. Magnetic, 
 irresistible, he is yet incapable of returning the love 
 bestowed upon him, of losing himself in love for 
 another. His malady is that of Madame du Deffand : 
 destitution of sentiment with the pain of not being 
 able to endure such destitution. Lamartine allows him- 
 self to be loved by "Graziella," by "Elvire"; but he 
 reflects at most the fervour of his lover, reflects it in 
 the form of hysterical declamation. He loves the image 
 that he forms of love, loves to be enthroned, exalted in 
 a woman's heart, loves the mirrored, transfigured self 
 which he beholds in her love. Chateaubriand, Byron, 
 Lamartine vainly essay by love to fill the void of 
 their hearts; they repeat experiment after experi- 
 ment, but are incurable victims of indefeasible pride 
 and ineradicable egoism. And Goethe, the wise 
 Goethe! His successive loves are merely stages of 
 self-development, occasions of passionate reverie and 
 subsequent calm self-analysis. He too, like these, 
 objectifies in forms of art his momentarily intensified 
 [ 139 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 personality; and peace succeeds — till what time another 
 love-crisis, and its fresh opportunity for self-develop- 
 ment, supervenes. 
 
 What has George Sand, versed in the tnelancholy of 
 the century, to say of the love-remedy? . . . But why 
 do I raise the question of love at all? It concerns me 
 not. Yet let me listen to these lovers and their con- 
 fessions of melancholy, before I proceed to consider 
 the melancholy of thought. . . . Had she been young 
 a little later in the century, George Sand would 
 doubtless have set forth the theory that a state of war is 
 the natural relation between the sexes, that love is but 
 a brief, hollow truce enjoined by nature in her own 
 interests. As it is, she is content to retort men's charge 
 that women cannot love by changing the terms. Love 
 is woman's all in all; and woman's love — though its 
 objects are unworthy, are incapable of adequate return 
 — is heaven-descended, paramount, inevitable. The 
 conventions of society must be disregarded when love 
 commands, it is the highest duty to obey love's voice. 
 But Indiana must find that to exchange husband for amant 
 is to pass from Scylla to Charybdis. And if Valentine's 
 amant is possibly to be preferred to her husband, George 
 Sand is logically compelled to invoke fatality, to slay 
 the lover at the moment when fortune permits a lawful 
 love; for Benedict is a victim of melancholy, and 
 therefore powerless to love with calm constancy. In 
 any case, it is vain for woman to expect a worthy love, 
 for men are wholly egoistic. L^lia, declamatory, 
 dithyrambical Donna Juana, ever bafHed in her quest 
 of the ideal, spiritually sensual, sensually spiritual, must 
 needs despair of love. She will essay experiments, but 
 she knows in advance that each experiment will but 
 [ 140 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 confirm her conviction of the vanity of love. Edm6e 
 loves, indeed, within the bounds of the permitted, 
 breaks no laws of conscience or society; but, then, 
 since men are weak and selfish, she must submit her 
 lover to a lengthened course of education and trial, in 
 hope that he may prove worthy of her love. Jacques, 
 it is true, is strong and wise; but precisely because he 
 is wise, he knows that love bloweth where it listeth, 
 and lasts just so long as it can; but precisely because 
 he is strong, he seeks death that the Fernande who 
 had loved him, and now cannot but love another, may 
 suffer no impediment in her newest love. . . . Love 
 is woman's all; but love is sorrow. It were wisest 
 not to love, if that may be. Love is destined melan- 
 choly, and not its cure. Love is a fatal, disastrous 
 malady, as the Greeks knew, as Goethe and George 
 Eliot demonstrated by example of puppet victims of 
 elective affinities. 
 
 In the confessions of these puissant victims of Mel- The same, 
 ancholy, Chateaubriand, Byron, Lamartine, the part ^""^'^^j,?' 
 of artistic idealisation, that is to say, exaggeration, Musset. 
 is to be discriminated as best may be. They confess, 
 but their confessions are not so much Dichtung und 
 Wahrheit, Poetry and Truth, as Poetry and Pride. 
 But Alfred de Musset at least was sincere. Wholly 
 sincere? Never artist merely? Should I call to 
 memory his agonised confessions — if only to confirm 
 myself in my abhorrence of unholy love ? But is per- 
 mitted love other than short-lived illusion, or, at best, 
 short-lived reality? It must be so; I need no confir- 
 mation of experience. Well, what is actual, is rational, 
 says Hegel; and bases his philosophy thereon. What- 
 [ 141 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 ever must be, is right, is reasonable. Surely rather, in 
 accordance also with Hegel's system, whatever is, is 
 haplessly imperfect, and fraught with melancholy. 
 
 There is no elusive profundity in the sincere 
 melancholy of Alfred de Musset. The poet of youth, 
 to whom youth was love, and love the idolatry of the 
 creature, to whom there was nothing in life worth the 
 living after the age of thirty, nothing in thought worth 
 the thinking, unless it be the thought of past joys — 
 which, when present, were nigh on pain. A petulant, 
 spoilt child throughout, one might almost judge, 
 passionately breaking the toys from which he had 
 anticipated more delight than they could give, sulking 
 because he discovers that pleasure is only pleasure, and 
 not happiness. Mobile, of extreme sensitiveness, he is 
 yet prisoned within a narrow circle of ideas so passion- 
 ately conceived that they are sensations rather than 
 ideas, — a narrow, truly "vicious " circle of sensations, — 
 chafing against his bonds, but unable to do other than 
 drag his weary round, repeat his dolorous circuit. 
 Idolater, then iconoclast; iconoclast, then idolater; 
 changing, not passion, but only the object of his 
 passion. Eloquent, declamatorily eloquent, since he is 
 youthful, so long as he is youthful; finding in silent 
 tears, when youth was irrevocably gone, the supreme 
 limit of eloquence, the final criticism of life. Exorbitant 
 in pride, in egoism, exalting passion to be a law unto 
 itself, and hence in constant protest against society 
 that restrains, that demands compromise and hypocrisy 
 as the price of its favours. In protest, in the last 
 resort, against Nature, cruel, hypocritical as society, 
 equally outraging the ideal by its mean conditions. 
 
 Rien n'est ban que d' aimer ; nothing is good in life 
 [ 142 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 save love. But the lover, he must find, the lover's love, 
 and the objects of his love are in perpetual change. 
 Sensation is transitory, pleasure brings pain, passion 
 must run through its gamut of progress, zenith, and 
 decline. The eternal vows at which Jove smiles are 
 exchanged once more, and once again; but the vowers 
 are no longer the same, each of the twain has abandoned 
 an old for a new love and lover. The lover is like to 
 become a libertine, and the libertine cannot love. But 
 still the libertine, he that cannot love, amat amare, 
 loves to love, and endeavours to console himself with 
 the thought that the anticipation and the recollection 
 of love are sweet. Doubt, if you will, if you must, the 
 object of your love, be it a woman or a dog, but doubt 
 not love itself. Aimer est le grand point, qu'importe la 
 maitresse. But this consolation, this vain effort to 
 believe that love is independent of its manifestations, 
 is almost as transitory as sensation itself. Recollection 
 is sweet, but it is recollection of misery. Change is 
 sweet, as bringing momentary oblivion. Change is 
 dolorous, for it renews misery, but misery remembered 
 is happiness. . . . A "vicious " circle, truly ! 
 
 Well might Alfred de Musset, foiled in earthly 
 love, loving love, yet unable to love, hopelessly seeking 
 stability in change, turn in anguish to thoughts of the 
 God that is changeless, stable Love. If only the 
 thought of the Infinite was not inevitably an infinity 
 of doubt! Such is thought, that the heart and head 
 are irredeemiably divorced. He has suffered, indeed; 
 and suffering is much. Rien ne nous rend si grands 
 qu'une grande douleur, nothing makes us so noble as 
 a noble sorrow; and God should love such nobleness, 
 should pardon after punishment. Rien n'est vrai que 
 
 [ 143 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 de souffrir, nothing is true but suffering; doubt is the 
 shadow cast by pride of self, and true suffering excites 
 at least the wish to believe. But does God hear 
 prayers? — for his doubts are prayers. Why is God 
 indifferent to suffering, and deaf to tearful calls? God 
 is silent, — and faith is as transitory as pleasure. Doubt 
 succeeds faith, and oblivion is sought in the love that 
 brings fresh pain. But without religion there is no 
 love, but only the spectre of love; the libertine cannot 
 love, for the vision of the "Spectre of Debauch" has 
 petrified his heart. Pleasure is not love, is not happi- 
 ness; but pleasure is an illusion, and illusions are sweet. 
 Don Juan will not renounce his quest of love, though 
 in embracing illusive pleasure, he is embracing disgust. 
 II faut aimer sans cesse, apres avoir aime. The quest 
 of love is the sole possible religion; love, the illusion 
 of love, is tenderness, and tenderness is deliverance 
 from baneful pride and dolorous egoism. Unhappily, 
 he must confess, with wonted sincerity: "I am not 
 tender, but excessive." . . . And thus he cannot out- 
 step the weary round of his vicious circle. Circle of 
 egoism, for it is solely self that Don Juan loves in his 
 milk e ire; his illusions and disillusions spring from the 
 love of self, from the " heresy of individuality " of 
 which the Buddha speaks. Self must die that the true 
 self may live, says the Hegelian after the Christian. 
 
 To be unable to transcend self is to be weary of self. 
 And to be weary of self is to be weary of all men and 
 things. Lorenzaccio, the would-be philanthropist and 
 saviour of society, in losing self-respect, loses all faith 
 in man; the end of Don Juan must be that of Rolla. 
 To foiled self-love succeeds self-abandonment. Bacchus 
 is at length invoked in place of Venus; and the rites of 
 [ 144 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Bacchus are prolonged rites of self-suicide, whether 
 Bacchus be invoked to stimulate or to dull emotion. 
 Hapless Alfred de Musset! Even if age, with its 
 forced calm, had been granted him, he could neither 
 have turned dhwt, like his ancestors of the two pre- 
 ceding centuries, nor yet have rejoiced, with Sophocles, 
 that he was freed at length from the tyranny of love. 
 The Nessus-robe of passion had clung all too tightly 
 and corroded all too deeply. Moreover, he is incurably 
 dual. He is melancholy of heart and gay of wit, an 
 idealist and yet a materialist. He is Coelio, but also 
 Octave; Albert, but also Rodolphe; Don Juan, but 
 also Hassan. The angel and the beast, the dove and 
 the serpent, hold continual controversy within him; 
 there is no truce, still less a decisive victory. 
 
 These, and Alfred de Musset, found no remedy for The 
 Melancholy in love of women. How was it possible? remedies of 
 
 action and 
 
 It is not the love that men inspire, but the love they love, con- 
 feel, which satisfies the heart; and these were wholly ''nued. 
 incapable of transcending, forgetting self. Nor, with 
 the exception of Goethe, who restricted himself to 
 merely administrative functions, did they find relief in 
 action. Action was only distraction, entailing penalties. 
 How could it be otherwise? To what compromises 
 and compliances, to what self-imposed atrophy of thought 
 and conscience must the contemplative subject them- 
 selves when they abandon thought for action! The 
 idea can only be realised by gross means, and the 
 resulting imperfect realisation must obey the laws of 
 development — which necessarily include decline. That 
 which is accomplished with the best intent is doomed 
 to become a bar to future accomplishments, to provoke 
 
 L [ 145 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 revolt. Reform needs constant reformation; progress 
 is only change; and change, if it implies gain, also 
 implies corresponding loss. 
 
 But how stands the case of my own melancholy? 
 I must not for a moment allow myself to suppose that, 
 because I have been haunting for a while the company 
 of the puissant victims of Melancholy, I am their equal 
 
 — in unhappiness. Mine cannot be the degree of theirs. 
 Nor should I judge of the adequacy of remedies by their 
 failure in the case of genius, ultra-sensitive to joy and 
 pain, genius, moreover, which is wont to arrogate to 
 itself the right of licence as the necessary means of 
 self-development. 
 
 To begin with, I am in no revolt against society. 
 I expect nothing on her part, and therefore cannot chafe 
 against her negligence. I am not conscious of merit, 
 and therefore am not called to blame society indignantly 
 for refusing to duly recognise it. It follows also, by 
 way of corollary, that such consolation as results from 
 the consciousness of power, however impeded, cannot 
 be mine. . . . Unhappy, insensate Werther, who, 
 protected and encouraged, must needs lament, during 
 his brief trial of action within society, that he was 
 esteemed for his merits, his talents, and not for himself 
 
 — much as Mme. R^camier must needs lament that she 
 was admired for her beauty and not for her wit. 
 
 Were action truest panacea, were action permitted 
 me, action other than the mechanical action of one who 
 must congratulate himself if he be allowed to discharge 
 any humblest function in society, conscious, the while, 
 that, by occupying his almost unhoped-for post, he is 
 
 debarring another . . . . But what of those to whom 
 
 the widest action is permitted? Byron, aiding to free 
 [ 146 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 a nation, must find himself plunged in all the meanness 
 of reality, must witness the jealous illiberality of the 
 would-be liberators. How many have reaped deception 
 and disgust from the achievement of their ambition, 
 interested or disinterested ! And Shelley, aiding, so he 
 deemed, the development of intellectual freedom, finds 
 no better way of action than to cast pamphlets from 
 Dublin balconies and distribute them in Dublin streets, 
 or to enclose "Declarations" and "Devil's Walks" in 
 sea-tossed bottles! Given the power to conceive and 
 express ideas, the field of action is ample, is incalculably 
 wide. But Shelley could not wait for slow infiltrations; 
 and Chateaubriand, Byron, Lamartine eagerly abandoned 
 intellectual for political action. . . . But was not the 
 intellectual action of these men, is not intellectual 
 action in general, even more dangerous than political 
 action? Hapless Luther and Encyclopaedists, when 
 peasants and proletariat take them at their word ! 
 But also hapless, helpless Goethe, smiling ironically at 
 the victims of the maladies of Wertherism and Roman- 
 ticism which he had inoculated or fostered; hapless, 
 helpless Chateaubriand, disdainful of those that took his 
 Rend for an example and not a warning, for a type to 
 be imitated, and not a pathological abnormity ! ... It 
 is true that the literary genius may confine his action, 
 may content himself to play with fancy and imagination, 
 and furnish anodynes. Goethe can delight himself 
 and others by tracing the happy, lawful love and 
 healthy, ordered action of a Hermann and Dorothea. 
 Lamartine can write a Jocelyn; George Sand, grown 
 calm with age, a host of prettiest stories, guileless, in- 
 genuous. But it is not the Hermanns, the Jocelyns, 
 the Petite Fadettes that influence action, that command 
 [ 147 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 imitative practice. And, moreover, not only is it the 
 making of a poison, rather than of an anodyne, that 
 confers fame, but passion, mental disease, offers endless 
 scope for analysis and delineation, while tranquillity, 
 sanity, admits of only a few brief phrases of suggestion. 
 It is the rebels against laws divine and human that fas- 
 cinate; they that are moderate, they that err venially, 
 serve but as foils. It is in vain that a Balzac draws up 
 a balance-sheet of virtuous and vicious characters in his 
 "Human Comedy"; the vicious alone strike the atten- 
 tion and impress the memory. Thackeray's women, 
 if good, are stupid; if culpable, are clever, interesting. 
 A Major Dobbin is speedily portrayed and relegated to 
 the background; a Colonel Newcombe can only occupy 
 the stage as tragic victim of misfortune. . . . But why 
 proceed? In any case, the remedy of literary action, 
 whether it take the form of poison or anodyne manu- 
 facture, cannot be mine to essay. 
 
 And the remedy of love, vain as that of action? I 
 am not like to see the "Spectre of Debauch"; passion 
 has not, shall not, enter into my life. Passion can find 
 no happiness in the moral order, nor yet in the violation 
 of it. It demands more than life and love can give. 
 It is brief in proportion to its intensity. As pain, or 
 at best indifference, follows pleasure, so disillusion, or 
 indifference, succeeds to illusion. And since, passion 
 once tasted, the heart refuses to be nourished by other 
 food, illusion is craved in spite of disenchanting ex- 
 perience, and phantom is grasped after phantom, till age 
 brings final, hopeless weariness. It is enough to re- 
 member Alfred de Musset's melancholy. . . . But the 
 love that is worthy of the name? Love is child of 
 Idleness; Euphues's "cooling-card" addressed to lovers 
 [ 148 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 has no other text. But my youth was spent in ardent, 
 absorbing quest of knowledge — that knowledge which, 
 I find, is sorrow only. And Love is a matter of for- 
 tuitous "juxtaposition," as Clough would say. But I 
 have been isolated ever, in the years of study, as in the 
 years of slavery. Moreover, "Prosperity's the very 
 bond of love." So I have constantly re-echoed, have 
 rejoiced — with a strange joy — that I shall have no 
 comrade in privation, none to share with me the "uses 
 of adversity" which, forsooth, are "sweet." But, men 
 say, there is a love that is irresistible, child of Fate and 
 not of Idleness. Here also am I spared. I have been 
 no victim of an "elective affinity." There is nothing 
 of Goethe's "daemonic " in me; I exercise no "personal 
 magnetism." Nor have I been under any spell cast 
 willingly, indifferently, unwillingly or unconsciously by 
 another. Love plagues me not. 
 
 I could not if I would, I would not if I could, essay His own 
 these remedies of love or action — remedies which ">eian- 
 
 ,,. . , , 1 1 T. choly; the 
 
 aggravate, palliatives that exasperate, the malady. But melancholy 
 still the question confronts me: how shall I define the of thought. 
 fashion of my melancholy, and how assign its causes? 
 Is it the melancholy of Stagirius, whom St. Chrysostom 
 endeavoured to heal by dint of homilies, — Stagirius, 
 scorning and envying at once the crude simplicity of 
 the vulgar; admiring and deploring his lack of their 
 brutal, thoughtless strength of will; self-tormenting, 
 eating his own heart; drifting hither and thither, a 
 sport of vague passion and desire; unable to bear either 
 remedy or disease; cherishing his disease, and yet crav- 
 ing a remedy. Victim of fatal contemplation, he looks 
 upon the world, and sees the sinner blessed and the 
 [ 149 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 innocent stricken. But such antitheses are all too 
 simple to express the complexity of that which he must 
 behold. He looks upon the world, and sees that the 
 austere suffer melancholy even as the profligate. More 
 than this, he sees that it is not the austere, the upright, 
 but the sowers of wild oats, the culpable destroyers of 
 , their own peace and that of others, who are curable. . . . 
 Or is it the melancholy of Obermann, conscious that 
 he can have no part in the world of men, resigned to 
 his imperfection and powerlessness, resigned to solitude, 
 past desire, past desiring to desire, wholly disillusioned? 
 But why run through the list of my brethren in Melan- 
 choly? 
 
 The causes, then? Bodily defect, ill-health, weak- 
 ness of frame, count for something, for something only, 
 in the explanation of the melancholy of a Byron, a 
 Leopardi, an Obermann, a Novalis. And, as Ober- 
 mann says, " he who should see in poverty nothing more 
 than the direct consequences of the lack of money 
 would have no barest idea of its real misery." I am 
 neither weak nor strong; I suffer not the extremity of 
 poverty. Is my melancholy, then, due to a dispro- 
 portion of the sensitive and intellectual faculties, to the 
 exclusive employment of thought on the analysis of 
 personal emotion, to proud egoism, the incapacity to 
 transcend self ? " The man whose eye is ever on him- 
 self " — soon comes to scorn himself. But if introspec- 
 tion only deepens melancholy, if self-analysis is the 
 direst of maladies, yet introspection is only a phase of 
 wider, uni-*^ersal contemplation. To me, to the victims 
 of general contemplation, even more than to the victims 
 of egoism, is manifest the hopeless disproportion between 
 the ideal and the real, the endlessly unreconciled, irre- 
 
 C 150 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 concilable antinomies of the necessity of the ideal and 
 its impossibility. Nor does it serve to hold that to the 
 excess of egoism corresponds the excess of self-oblivion, 
 that either extreme is prone to melancholy; for the 
 desiderated mean is, as all means are, ideal, impossible. 
 
 In these last pages I have been often on the point 
 of deducing, of affirming, that the melancholy Egoist 
 cannot forget himself in the love of the creature because 
 he cannot forget himself in the love of God. But 
 melancholy is quite as much due to the predominance 
 of the intellectual faculties over the emotional, as to the 
 predominance of the emotional over the intellectual. 
 The victims of melancholy have sought God that they 
 may love him, and lose self in love, but cannot find him. 
 The world is his creation, but the frame of things is as 
 repugnant to reason as to sentiment. Not the heart 
 only, but the intellect protests. Who, what is God, 
 the Principle that has brought this world of misery into 
 being? Mere blind Necessity, with or without a plan, 
 an aim? The Anima Mundi ; the Immanent Energy, 
 the unknown Reality of which this world of things is 
 the efHorescence, of which inatter and mind are only 
 symbols; the eternal Substance of passing phenomena? 
 The Infinite, the Absolute, the Ineffable? The supra- 
 sensual cravings of the human heart, or intellectual 
 beauty, bodied forth, personified, decorated with in- 
 consistent attributes, by the necessarily anthropo- 
 morphistic forms of the human intellect? The "tribal 
 self"; "our father Humanity" who — or which — is 
 ever creating God in his own image? The Moral 
 Order? . . . 
 
 The victims of the Ideal are also the victims of 
 Truth. As the Ideal, so Truth is unattainable; their 
 [ iSi ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 melancholy is due to their life-long despair of attain- 
 ment. Their faculties are in disequilibrium, and 
 chiefly because of their poignant sense that harmony, 
 that equilibrium, is impossible. Melancholy is no 
 mere all-absorbing selfishness; it is born of disin- 
 terested questionings; questionings that impose them- 
 selves, that cannot be staved off. If the melancholy 
 of Don Juan results from his baffled quest of Infinite 
 Love, that of Faust results from the baffled quest of 
 Infinite Truth. Moreover, it is all in vain that men, 
 in the name of practical wisdom, counsel acceptance- 
 of, subordination to the real, rejection of, indifference 
 to, all that transcends experience; for Physics and 
 Ethics end inevitably in Metaphysics, the known and 
 knowable in the unknown, the unknowable — that is 
 chiefly, solely worthy of knowledge, — just as physical, 
 experimental morality is meaningless without the 
 standard and sanction of intuitional, supra- sensual, un- 
 experimental morality. We are inexplicable by any 
 explanation that experience can afford. As Benjamin 
 Constant said: "We feel ourselves destined for some- 
 thing of which we can form no idea; we are as watches 
 which should have no dial-plate, and whose wheels, 
 endowed with intelligence, should turn till they were 
 worn away, knowing not the wherefore and ever repeat- 
 ing; since I turn, there must be an aim in my turning." 
 We live, but wherefore do we live ? 
 
 Clough, Leopardi, Alfred de Vigny; these were 
 victims of the Weltschmei-z, of the Melancholy of 
 Thought, rather than of baneful Self-Love. These 
 cannot "rest contented with the Quia," as Dante's 
 Virgil, as Epicureans and Positivists, bid us mortals; 
 [ 152 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 these cannot acquiesce in knowing that the world is 
 what it is; they ask the wherefore, — and ask in vain, 
 yet cannot cease to ask. They are for ever haunted by 
 
 Those obstinate questionings 
 Of sense and outward things, . . . 
 Blank misgivings of a creature 
 Moving about in vi^orlds not realised. 
 
 — Questionings that are insoluble, but also inevitable. 
 
 The flower of a noble line not soiled by celebrity, 
 truly noble himself by nature, uncompromising devotee 
 of honour "the poetry of duty," fair of face and stately 
 of form, the most philosophical of the poets of his race 
 and time, in possession of a glory unprofaned by popu- 
 larity, just poor enough to be stimulated to win such 
 glory as might siififice to maintain his dignity un- 
 impaired, tenderly filial, bridled with Theages's bridle 
 of ill-health, delicate of mind and body, consistent 
 idealist, — and yet wholly melancholy, this Alfred de 
 Vigny, with a melancholy almost as despairing and 
 complete as that of Leopardi. 
 
 Refined and sensitive, his pride was wounded by the 
 neglect of public and politicians. Yet he knew that 
 refinement necessitates isolation, and isolation breeds 
 dislike. A Stoic born, he knew it was merest folly to 
 desire the suffrage of the many, suffrage which he 
 scorned; knew moreover that no man has the right to 
 despise another, though he be indifferent to his praise 
 or blame. Cynosure of a day, drawn into the world by 
 the success of a well-timed drama, he had violated the 
 ideal, indeed, by an earthly, guilty love; but he had 
 suffered proportionately to his offence in betraying 
 the ideal, he had repented and returned to his cult. 
 [ 153 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 If he must sing the wrath of Samson against treacherous, 
 unstable Delilah, against woman, enfant malade et douze 
 fois impur, he could still sing of the tender Eva, ideal 
 woman, ideal of poetry. If, like Vauvenargues, he 
 must at first lament forced inaction, he could still 
 learn to disdain action, and proclaim the superiority of 
 contemplation. He could judge it sufficient action to 
 be prophet of ideas, and such action to be fairer than 
 that of the politician, hampered by the passions and 
 interests of men — -and his own, — ever compromising 
 the ideal. 
 
 But to be an idealist, and yet unable to believe in 
 ideals; to be a disillusioned idealist! What fate more 
 unhappy, more inevitably persuasive of melancholy? 
 His mind, relentlessly logical, penetrates to the end 
 of each perspective, there to discover — nothingness. 
 Glory, Happiness, Love, are mere abstractions, void, 
 inane. To think, to write of these, is first to feign 
 that they exist, to create phantoms and then adore them 
 or blaspheme, exalt or debase. "We are sceptical 
 Don Quixotes, less excusable than Cervantes's hero, for 
 we know that our giants are but fulling-mills, and that 
 our illusions are self-induced." Nature? We work 
 on ourselves to believe she is a refuge and a consolation, 
 the while she is wholly inexorable, not supremely un- 
 just only because she is supremely indifferent. Man? 
 Clearly in a state of punishment, prisoned in the world 
 he knows not why. What, then, of God, the Jailer? 
 God listens not to the tearful questions and despairing 
 appeals of his prisoners. The very Christ, in the 
 agony of the Garden, implores in vain for answer. 
 "As price of my martyrdom, let doubt and evil cease 
 to triumph. At the least, let Lazarus reveal what he 
 [ 154 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 has seen." But God vouchsafes no answer; Heaven 
 is as silent as Earth. If there shall be a Judgment, it 
 is the Judge that shall be arraigned. 
 
 What then remains? The Good is ever mingled 
 with evil, good breeds evil, while evil breeds only evil. 
 What then should be the attitude of him that is wise? 
 Despair brings a despairing consolation. " Wisdom is 
 peaceful despair, without convulsions of anger or re- 
 proach. This once recognised, I accept with thank- 
 fulness the days that bring me pleasure, even the days 
 that bring at least no misfortune or sorrow." In brief, 
 he welcomes the negative happiness of Stoico- Epicurean 
 apathy. "It is good and salutary to be devoid of 
 hope." He that has ceased to hope is thereby in the 
 way of appreciating the surprises of accidental happi- 
 ness. "In this prison of life, whence death removes 
 us one by one, we must not count on freedom or 
 flowers. This known, the tiniest nosegay, the meanest 
 flower rejoices heart and sight, and we thank the Power 
 which has permitted us to find and gather it. It 
 is true that we know not why we are prisoners, know 
 not the charge against us; but we know assuredly 
 our penalty of prison-suffering and final death. Let 
 us not think of judge, of suit unknowable, but thank 
 the unknown jailer who allows us often joys that 
 are worthy of Heaven. ... We are not sure to 
 know all when we leave our prison, but we are sure we 
 shall know nothing within it. . . . It is sure that 
 our jailer, had he so willed, could have let us know 
 our suit and doom. Since he has not willed and 
 will not will, let us be content to thank him for 
 the lodging more or less comfortable that he has 
 given us; and since we cannot withdraw from the 
 [ 155 ] 
 
The^ Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 common misery, let us not increase it by endless com- 
 plaint. . . . There are those (would you believe it?) 
 to whom their prison becomes so dear, that they fear 
 deliverance." 
 
 Thus, with resignation, men can attain to peace. 
 But it is the resignation to ignorance that is the hardest 
 to Alfred de Vigny. "Why are we resigned to all 
 save ignorance of the mysteries of eternity? Because 
 of hope, which is the source of all our cowardice. We 
 fashion a faith, impose it on ourselves, essay to impose 
 it on others, constrain them at need by force. Why 
 not rather avow: I am weighed down beneath a con- 
 demnation to which I submit always, O Lord! sub- 
 missively languishing in prison, knowing not my crime. 
 I plait straws that I may forget my woe from time 
 to time : this is the sum of human toil. ... I hope 
 for nothing that this world can give, and thank thee 
 for that thou hast given me power to toil, that so I may 
 forget my ignorance." . . . 
 
 The Deists of the Eighteenth Century, like the 
 Epicureans, divorced God from Man. God is afar, 
 wholly indifferent, revealed at most in the ordered 
 mechanism of his works. And Alfred de Vigny, like 
 Alfred de Musset, is heir, as he must be, of the 
 Eighteenth Century and its attenuated beliefs. But 
 he also breathes the intellectual air — or, if you will, 
 struggles to breathe in the void — of his own century. 
 Belief, from attenuated, has become nebulous. God is 
 no longer the Mechanician, indifferent to his work, 
 but a mere unknown quantity, only winning a semblance 
 of personality when protested against. Man fashions 
 mythologies, Vigny might say, and is dismayed at his 
 own creations. Vignv is a poet, and therefore a 
 [ IS6 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 mythologist. But he is consciously mythical, therefore 
 ironical. He reverses his spell, and the vision fades, 
 leaving him in wonted darkness, groping in the 
 void. 
 
 But, though religion have no object, life without 
 religion is impossible. Man is a slave, says Vigny, 
 slave of Fate — Fate still, whether you call it Provi- 
 dence, with the Stoics, or Grace, with Christians. Man 
 is creature of Necessity ; yet man, yet Vigny, must 
 needs be religious, must needs embrace the illusions 
 of free-will, finding dignity in struggle and effort. 
 Honour, dignity, self-respect, is Vigny' s religion, the 
 sole possible religion of the manly, he deems. While 
 Musset, the poet of passion, hopes in spite of hopeless- 
 ness, protests with sobs that un grand espoir a traverse 
 la terre, Vigny, the poet of ideas, counsels abnegation 
 of all hope, judging it wisdom, so it would seem, not 
 even to harbour the "fair hope " with which a Socrates 
 could meet his death. To acquiesce is the loftiest 
 self-respect. And self-respect enjoins silence, silence 
 which is the fitting criticism of life, silence at most 
 to be broken by words of pity, by a song of Eloa, 
 woman-angel sprung from a tear of pity shed by the 
 Christ. . . . 
 
 Acquiescence, and silence ! How often have I 
 shared in Alfred de Vigny's creed. And is not pity 
 love? Eloa, tender woman-angel, pities Satan as 
 most pitiable, and her pity passes into love. Ill- 
 doing results from ignorance; ill-doers — "they know 
 not what they do" — are pitiable. But if I pity, 
 do I love? . . . And this religion of honour? 
 Vigny, all the Stoics, lean but on themselves, — on 
 broken reeds. Stoicism is a religion of the void. 
 [ 157 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 The Thinker is a Prometheus, an Adam. He has 
 tasted of the fruit of knowledge, he has ravished the 
 light of the gods. . . . And this light of reason is but 
 as a feeble camp-fire in a boundless prairie palled in 
 night, a narrow circle of flickering gleams which fade 
 fast into the limitless vast of impenetrable darkness, 
 serving at most to make this darkness all the darker. 
 They of the bivouac who are timid, people the sur- 
 rounding darkness with shapes of terror, and crowd 
 the closer for company's sake, feverishly simulating 
 mirth that so they may not heed the darkness. The 
 courageous sit apart, smiling at their comrades' fears. 
 By way of reassuring them, they maintain that dark- 
 ness is but the negation of light. They allow that 
 they are unable to demonstrate that the darkness is 
 unpeopled, but counsel their comrades to cease creating 
 phantoms, to attend solely to that which can be seen 
 and heard and known within the circuit of the light. 
 . . . And some counsel acquiescence in ignorance, 
 and silence — the while they seek to penetrate the 
 darkness, the while they protest against the prison- 
 limits of the camp-fire. Alfred de Vigny is hopeless, 
 therefore acquiescent. But he is not calm in acqui- 
 escence, and he breaks his silence in the posthumous 
 protests of his Journal and his Les Destins. He would 
 allow that blasphemy — or rather, since the word is 
 strong — reproach is cowardice, and yet utters reproaches, 
 even if posthumous reproaches. 
 
 Would Prometheus defy Zeus, if he did not fear 
 him? Would he not be silent, if completely confident? 
 A Shelley, a Mme. Ackermann proclaim the coming 
 dethronement of the established Gods; herald the dawn 
 of equality and love, the advent of Humanity autonomous 
 [ 158 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 and conscious that love is human only. Why then re- 
 new the defiances of Prometheus, since the tyrant is to 
 fall? Mme. Ackermann, like Alfred de Vigny, holds 
 that contemptuous silence is the severest condemnation 
 of the judge. But the twain break silence, and cry, 
 with Omar Khayyam, "man's forgiveness give — and 
 take ! " They bid the tyrant remember he is but a 
 vassal of Destiny, Necessity. They proudly avow they 
 
 will be no vassals of a vassal But this God of 
 
 the Dawn, this prior, fatal Necessity that the Greeks 
 throned above Zeus, this Nature, this Reign of Law of 
 Lucretius and modern scientists? Zeus shall be de- 
 throned, and the elder, rightful God shall reign, says 
 Mme. Ackermann. And saluting his advent, she must 
 needs sigh and sorrow; for " mournful and blind " is 
 this God of. the Dawn. When Zeus shall be dethroned 
 wrath will be needless, indeed; but melancholy will be 
 deepened. Nature, Necessity, is only endless imperfec- 
 tion, is only Death and Change. Nature can inspire 
 no psean that is not an elegy, if sincere. The new God 
 must be arraigned by contemptuous silence, even as the 
 old. And Mme. Ackermann fails not to ejaculate 
 cries of "agony and infinite horror," to break silence, 
 and curse the God whose advent she desired. 
 
 Goethe, to celebrate the moment of his revulsion 
 from the mystic pietism of Lavater to that hi kox wav 
 doctrine of Spinoza which he interpreted according to 
 his own needs, objectified his deliverance under the type 
 of Prometheus. " Let the gods keep that which is 
 theirs; they cannot rob me of my own. They have 
 their share, I mine." " What then, " asks Epimetheus, 
 "is thy share?" "The whole range of my activity." 
 But Goethe, according to his wont, was simply giving 
 
 [159] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 plastic form to his emotion of the moment. With him, 
 the idea of the moment was absolute, exclusive of all 
 others, as he confessed, till the advent of another idea, 
 equally paramount, exclusive. And moreover, disdaining 
 all painful effort to synthesise, to reconcile antinomies, 
 he stayed not to ask himself how there can be a " mine " 
 of man, and a "thine" of the Gods, how there can be 
 an imperium in imperio, how man shall wrest autonomy 
 from tyrannical Zeus, blind Destiny, heartless Nature, 
 indifferent Law. Goethe is an artist; it is enough 
 for the moment that Prometheus shall be eloquent in 
 defiance, shall superbly indict the heartless indifference 
 of Zeus to the cries of men, shall proclaim that Destiny 
 Eternal is Lord over Zeus, and that man for help must 
 look only to himself. Prometheus-Goethe, disillusioned 
 of childish faith and hope, proudly centres on himself, 
 proudly entrenches himself within the orbit of his 
 activity. "Didst thou think I should mourn and 
 languish, and fly to the desert because my childish faith 
 was gone, because my dream-flowers ripened not?" 
 But Alfred de Vigny fled to the desert, and sor- 
 rowed in the solitude of his "ivory tower." And we 
 that are weak and disinherited by Destiny, sorrow 
 in lonely silence, not tempted to break silence, not 
 poets. . . . 
 
 Well, Jehovah vouchsafes to Job no other answer 
 than the revelation of his majesty. It is not for 
 Job to know of the Prologue, of the compact with 
 the Evil One, of the mystery of permitted evil. At 
 the least, it is Job, despairing sincere questioner as 
 to the secrets of his prison-house, as to his crime, 
 who is "accepted"; while his friends, the sagacious 
 mouthers of common-places, are sent empty away. 
 [ i6o ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Man were God, if he could think the thoughts o* The 
 God. Vanini knew this well enough: "You ask of '■^medyof 
 me what God is? If I knew, I should be God." ''"°°°'"''" 
 Bruno, gott-betrunken even more, perchance, than 
 Spinoza, knows and confesses that unity is incom- 
 prehensible, that the mystic ecstasies of Idealistic 
 Pantheism are not science. Hegel, indeed, claimed to 
 rethink the thoughts of God; he was versed in all the 
 secrets of the Absolute, could recount to you the history, 
 and even the embryology, of the Absolute, and there- 
 fore was . However, Hegel did not presume on 
 
 his divinity, delegated it rather to humanity as a whole, 
 past, present, and to come — ■ humanity the Gott-Mensch. 
 Pity only that Heine, mistaking the sense of his master, 
 deified himself, and then speedily found all too good 
 reason to abdicate. Yet needs must humanity be 
 divine, and the individual autonomous. For has not 
 dogma and supernatural authority been "found out"; 
 is it not now fully realised, or rather, do not men 
 believe that they believe that humanity can have no 
 other object of reverence than itself idealised, that 
 creeds are merely morality objectified, expressed in 
 transitory forms? Humanity is divine, and the en- 
 lightened individual, knowing the conditions of human 
 thought and sentiment, no longer dupe of illusions, 
 is autonomous. The ancients knew this; Stoics, 
 Epicureans, and Neo-Academicians. Virtutem nemo 
 unquani acceptam deo tiilit, no one ever attributed 
 his own virtue to the gift of Heaven. A se ipso 
 sumendam sapientiam, each must derive his wisdom 
 from himself. Horace fashions, or rather is ever about 
 to fashion his own tranquillity. ... It is true that 
 history and personal observation hardly allow us to 
 M [ i6i ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 •recognise the beauty of man's divinity as revealed in 
 action, and that a Seneca must add : Nulla sine deo 
 mens bona est, human thoughts are prone to evil but 
 for the grace of God. Well, then, man is angel and 
 beast, divine so long as he is angelical, so long as he 
 subdues the beast within him, so long as his reason 
 reigns, as he is autonomous. 
 
 And yet the melancholy of these autonomous mor- 
 alists! Carlyle, no more than Alfred de Vigny, is 
 to be duped; they will be laws unto themselves. And 
 yet their melancholy only varies in degree, if the 
 melancholy of the disillusioned Idealist be more pro- 
 found, more paralysing than that of the Misanthrope. 
 Alfred de Vigny withdrew to the solitude of his " ivory 
 tower," to suffer in silence. Well might he do so, for 
 men are not tolerant of Stoical disdain, much less of pity. 
 Carlyle would not withdraw; he was too indignant 
 for silence. Besides, men do not object to being 
 denounced as " mostly fools " ; they recognise the truth 
 of the charge — as far as their neighbours are concerned. 
 Alfred de Vigny was hopeless of certainty, and broke 
 silence only in posthumous laments. Carlyle continually 
 thundered his commands for general silence. There is 
 no other certainty or blessedness than work ; and that men 
 may work they must silence their doubts once and for ever. 
 But the disillusioned idealist smiles at such certainty, 
 such blessedness; "one would be bestowing a benefit 
 on mankind in teaching them the method of playing 
 with ideas instead of playing with actions, which are 
 ever a source of misery." Pascal is dismayed at the 
 utter silence of Infinity, and can only smile with deepest 
 sorrow at the toil of men, the toil for toil's sake or the 
 toil of pleasure. Carlyle, armed with his certainty, can 
 [ 162 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 only write homilies of indignant despair that men so 
 doubt his certainty. The vast majority of men, he 
 finds, are incapable of autonomy. A Goethe, a Carlyle, 
 can be trusted to their own guidance ; but for the vast 
 majority, the "categorical imperative" must be incar- 
 nated in heroic slave-drivers. Men must be whipped 
 into submission, and forced to do the work that lies 
 nearest to their hand, even as, in the Golden Age to 
 come, of which Renan and Mr. Herbert Spencer dream, 
 they must delight to be the slaves of an aristocratic 
 body, a mandarinate of savants. 
 
 Was indeed Carlyle, this devotee of duty, with his 
 wrathful scorn of fools, whether pig-philosophers or 
 pantheists or votaries of the " ecclesiastical chimeeras 
 which roam the earth in a very lamentable manner," 
 less melancholy than Vigny, the devotee of honour, the 
 "poetry of duty," with his mingled disdain and pity? 
 Love frustrated of its object turns to bitterness, and 
 bitterness is proportionate in intensity to the foiled love 
 it succeeds; perchance his love, and therefore his mel- 
 ancholy, were deeper than those of Alfred de Vigny. 
 But perchance, again, he loved his melancholy, and 
 luxuriated in his grief far otherwise than Vigny. He 
 can be indignant, intolerant; and indignation, intoler- 
 ance, increase vitality. The world was to him the 
 eternal battle-field of Ormuzd and Ahriman, the Good 
 and the Evil Principles. He can fling away the 
 scabbard, and truculently side with his heroes, his suc- 
 cessive Avatars of Ormuzd — whose right should be 
 might, but whose victories are ever checked, counter- 
 balanced by victories of Ahriman. Supremely intolerant, 
 he would not have stayed to listen to another autonomous 
 moralist, to Marcus Aurelius admonishing with calm: 
 [ 163 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 " though the gods are immortal, and have their patience 
 tried through so many ages, yet they are not angry, 
 because for so long a time they will have to put up with 
 base and wretched mortals. . . . And are you, that are 
 just going off the stage, sick of the: company ? are you 
 tired with evil men already, and yet one of these un- 
 happy mortals yourself?" He had surely gorgonised 
 the citer of such a sentiment, taken the " Meditations " 
 from his hand, and cited in retort: "men are born to 
 be serviceable to one another, therefore either reform 
 the world, or bear with it," adding, with a lowering 
 brow, that if you are to aid in reforming it, you must 
 be indignant, must cease to "bear with it." And 
 thereupon, he would have exalted his masterful slave- 
 drivers, refusing to heed that " all manners of kingship 
 may fall into the worst hands"; would have fulminated 
 his gospel of labour, staying not to consider that "a man 
 has work enough to make himself tolerable to himself "; 
 would have held mystical discourse of Infinities, forget- 
 ful that mysticism is not autonomous morality. 
 
 The 
 
 subjective 
 melan- 
 choly of 
 Realists 
 and 
 Idealists. 
 
 Haply these two, Carlyle and Vigny, were melan- 
 choly because they were idealists, Utopians, pessi- 
 mistical optimists; melancholy because they refused 
 to accept, or could not see the world as it is. 
 " 'Tis idleness to fume against the world, which none 
 the less wags on its wonted course," says Euripides 
 in a Bellerophon fragment. Now, Machiavelli is a 
 positivist, an autonomous moralist who calmly studies 
 human nature in the scientific manner and does not 
 quarrel with facts. Men are neither wholly good nor 
 bad; blinded by illusions, they know not clearly their 
 desires. He is intelligent, is "virtuous" who rightly 
 [ 164 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 conceives the logic of things, who sets before him a 
 definite aim and correctly judges the means he must 
 employ to attain this aim. Therefore, according to 
 Machiavelli, he is vicious, is melancholy, who knows 
 not what he desires, who is too weak to select a precise 
 end and the appropriate means to this end, who hesi- 
 tates and doubts and frets at the disproportion between 
 the ideal and the real. . . . But this same practical 
 Machiavelli is regarded as a mere visionary by 
 Guicciardini, more practical still. Machiavelli, one 
 might say, dreams out Utopias of liberty and equality, 
 Utopian republics — whose citizens, by the way, are as 
 wholly annulled by and absorbed in the State as Plato's 
 republicans; — and then, like Plato again, recognising 
 that his Utopia is not to be realised, having regard to 
 the frame of human nature, descends, condescends to a 
 possible State, invokes a Carlylese dictator to his aid, 
 dowered with the virtues of lion and wolf at once, even 
 as Frederick. But Guicciardini recognises that Utopias 
 and desires are — desires and Utopias; recognises that 
 conoscere non e mettere in atto, that to know end and 
 means, and to act accordingly, are two things, not one, 
 not necessarily, seldom indeed, connected. Wisdom is not 
 science, but rather, prudence. Like La Rochefoucauld, 
 like Spinoza, he bases on self-interest. The wise man 
 is he who has dismissed once for all the futile investiga- 
 tion of Truth — for men are "in the dark of things" — 
 who, freed from chimaeras, attends solely to his own 
 interest, studying discretion in the book of experience, 
 accepting the world as it is. The enlightened egoist 
 is not to be deterred from his interest by any scruples 
 of conscience, he listens not to the voice of his heart, 
 nor vainly seeks a stay in the supernatural. He who 
 [ i6S ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 fails has only himself to blame. . . . And both Machi- 
 avelli and Guicciardini failed, in spite of science 
 and prudence. Both thought to use "the great" as 
 tools to their own ends, and were discarded when 
 deemed no longer useful. 
 
 . . . And the melancholy which exhales from the 
 pages in the composition of which they sought to 
 beguile their enforced solitude is acrid, asphyxiating, is 
 the melancholy of men of action. More tolerable by 
 far, suave and sweet in comparison, is the melancholy 
 of Petrarca and Tasso, weaklings though they were, 
 dismayed by the disproportion of the ideal and the real, 
 not positive and prudent, led by illusions, subjective 
 only. But perchance Petrarca, pagan ascetic, melan- 
 choly with the superficial melancholy of the imagina- 
 tion, able to be worldly, adroit to win and enjoy the 
 world's "good things"; and Tasso, melancholy with 
 the deepest melancholy of the heart, eternally oscillat- 
 ing between dreams of sanctity and dreams of neo- 
 paganism, unable to attain unity and calm — perchance 
 these were victims of melancholy, as victims of — 
 Mediaevalism and Semitism. They could not break 
 their bonds and freely trust to their fundamental nature, 
 Carducci would doubtless say. They were Italians, he 
 would continue, therefore pagans, but Italians made 
 morbid by superinduced Semitic asceticism and septen- 
 trional subjectivity. ... As though the Hellenes were 
 not melancholy; and as though we moderns could return 
 to such mitigated melancholy ! We can now joy in outer 
 nature without fear or scruple — when such joy is per- 
 mitted us who are prisoners in the nightmare labyrinths 
 of industrialism, — but can we find joy in our hearts, stay 
 our questionings, live aimlessly and in the moment? 
 [ i66 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Is melancholy the ransom of self-consciousness, of 
 subjectivity? But the positive man of the world, the 
 Machiavelli, the Guicciardini, may be as melancholy 
 as the subjective idealist, the Tasso, the Petrarca. And 
 the disillusioned idealist, the Alfred de Vigny, is in the 
 same case as they who deem themselves incapable of 
 being the dupes of illusion. In sooth, each and all 
 are the sport of subjective illusion. Despite Hegel, 
 we cannot transcend subjectivity, egoism; we must 
 needs mould the objective world after the fashion of 
 our personality. Self-interest, self-preservation, as La 
 Rochefoucauld and Spinoza knew, is the basis of our 
 being, of all our thoughts and actions, whether we be 
 idealists or positivists. The hero flings away his life 
 only to assert himself; self-sacrifice is the loftiest 
 expression of pride and selfishness. The lover loves 
 himself in another, loves his own image exalted in his 
 mistress's heart. The saint loves himself in God, loves 
 his own qualities exalted to the highest perfection. 
 
 Yet "love was given that self might be annulled," 
 warns the Protesilaus of Wordsworth. But is self- 
 oblivion desirable, or even possible ? Hegel brands as 
 subjective, that is to say, egoistic, the man who, weary 
 of balancing the antinomies of objective Truth — (if there 
 be objective Truth), — selects theological dogmas after 
 subjective criterions, and adheres to them; or the man 
 who, dismissing the external- internal authority of 
 dogmas, trusts to intuition; or the Berkeley-Fichtean 
 idealist. The ideal is the real; the ideal is, or is to be, 
 realised. What is, is reasonable and right. But how is 
 it possible to dull the sense of the sin — or, if you will, 
 the imperfection — and the suffering of this " reasonable " 
 world which is lost in evil; how transcend personality and 
 
 C 167 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 its arbitrary judgments of good and evil? . . . Unless, 
 indeed, you dissolve personality, with Hume. But 
 even then you must build it up again with some 
 "sceptical solution of sceptical doubts." 
 
 The German Romanticists were idealists, chimserical 
 idealists, deeming themselves humiliated by reality. 
 The present was intolerable, but the past, because it 
 was remote, seemed beautiful. Thither would they 
 fly for refuge. Therefore they preached a return to 
 Mediaevalism; but such returns are impossible; there are 
 no Restorations. Or, artists, they created an imaginary 
 mediaeval world; imaginary, because, as artists, they 
 refused to see the mediaeval world as it really was, even 
 as the neo-pagans refuse to see the horrors of historical 
 paganism. They escaped not melancholy; how could 
 it be otherwise? And they sought oblivion from 
 subjectivity; fled to the fold of the elder Church, fled 
 to Nature. But their Nature was voluptuous subj ectivity, 
 as, for example, the Nature of Novalis was subjective 
 mysticism, which is the border-land of voluptuousness 
 and insanity. Heine, greatest and last, was subjective 
 idealist, neo-pagan, Semite; Protean, but ever tearful, 
 jesting at his tears with jests that were more bitter than 
 tears. Romanticism was Krankheit, Disease, as Goethe 
 said, was Melancholy. But, again, is it possible, or 
 even desirable, to transcend Subjectivity, Selfishness, 
 Melancholy ? 
 
 The Die to thyself that thou mayest live : this, Hegelian 
 
 remedy of formula of Christian humility and self-sacrifice, sings 
 pride. . , . , . ' o 
 
 Itself in my heart as constant refrain. As Plutarch 
 
 says, they alone live as they desire to love who have 
 
 learnt to desire what they should desire. Pride is lofty 
 
 [ i68 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 ennui, no more; pride is decorative, flamboyant 
 wretchedness. Pride, the god of the egoist. . . . 
 Chateaubriand has beheld the nothingness of all things, 
 and is plunged in gloom. He knows in advance that 
 love and ambition are all insufficient to satiate his 
 pride, that it is in vain he seeks to lose himself in 
 action, in the love of the women who, vainly hoping 
 to console the inconsolable, gave him their hearts. 
 Moreover, pride would not suffer him to be the dupe 
 of illusions. Pride sat amid the ruins, scornful, refusing 
 consolation. " Que vous reste-il?" " Moi / Mot .' dis- 
 je, etc'estassez." " Medea superest," he would have loftily 
 rejoined, with Corneille's and Seneca's heroine — with 
 Milton's Satan. But such pride is inevitably accom- 
 panied by irony; he that scorns all men and things, 
 also scorns himself. Nor could he lose himself in God. 
 He is indifferent to all things, save religion, he assures 
 us, confirining his pride; but who can recognise 
 humility and self-surrender in his portrait of the 
 Trappist Ranc6, converted mondain who left the 
 world because it could not offer anything that was 
 worth the desiring, portrait in which he had depicted 
 Renf5 once again, not Ranc6, as subjective painters 
 assimilate their models to the one type they cannot but 
 portray, as Byron's heroes are ever Byron. 
 
 But must pride die? Chateaubriand's pride is at 
 least sincere, he affects no hypocritical humility. Pride 
 often lurks beneath humility; there is nothing more 
 akin to pride than humility, nothing more scandalous 
 than the man who is proud of his humility, as Spinoza 
 and Marcus Aurelius know. Pride is dignity, is 
 strength; Dante, proudest among the proud, will not 
 condemn his Lucifer for the sin of pride, but for his 
 ,[ 169 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 treason against Love. Musset's Franck is eloquent in 
 the cause of his half-truth — and what truth is not a 
 half-truth — that pride is the source of all human virtues, 
 of patience, constancy, probity, excellence. If pride 
 and humility are both excesses, Spinoza will prefer the 
 excess of pride; pride is self-affirmation, therefore 
 necessary, right. Though by that sin fell the angels, 
 by pride, self-respect, stands Rousseau's Monsieur de 
 Volmar. Julie, indeed, who is to reveal to the world, 
 in Rousseau's intention, that reason and self-respect are 
 mightier than passion, is only saved by death from 
 renewed falling, and takes her leave of the sun with 
 the cry that pride is all-insufficient, that she needs 
 some other stay. But, then, Julie is a woman. Yet 
 Shakespeare's Constance, sorrow-stricken, that she 
 may live must needs " instruct her sorrows to be 
 proud." 
 
 How, indeed, distinguish pride from humility? No 
 sentiment reigns absolutely in the heart; each is ever 
 mingled inextricably with its opposite. Luther's ad- 
 versary would find in him ample excuse for charge of 
 pride; Luther, in turn, who had sought peace in vain 
 by the ascetic way, would recognise in him whose life 
 was modelled on the De Imitatione the pride that thinks 
 to earn salvation by merit. Nor are you furthered if 
 you seek to steer a way between the two extremes; for 
 the Greek mean is the modern ideal of perfection, hard, 
 if not impossible to attain permanently. And in what 
 do mystical humility and philosophical pride end, but in 
 absorption, extinction, Nirvana? How should Chateau- 
 briand the artist, and I who, in these fair days of 
 summer, have evoked the shapes of Rend, Chactas, Atala, 
 Eudorus, Velldda, and Cdruta against the living back- 
 [ 170 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 ground of the dreamy woods, desire to tread the 
 Buddhist, Sufist, Christian paths that lead to the wave- 
 less sea of Love and the formless Infinite, to Negation 
 and Indifference, that lead to peace, but the peace of 
 self-oblivion, non-existence only? 
 
 Doubtless I am the mere sport of words, of idolafori, 
 — even as any and every metaphysician, moralist, 
 scientist, positivist. The steeds that bear the chariot 
 of the soul are ever twain, as Plato told. We can but 
 yoke Pride with Humility, Egoism with Altruism, and 
 all the pairs of inimical brethren. Job is proud in the 
 innocency of his suffering, but Job humbles himself in 
 dust and ashes. . . . And yet, " henceforth be warned, 
 and know that pride, howe'er disguised in its own 
 majesty, is littleness!" The lines of Wordsworth and 
 their context come upon me like a recollection of child- 
 hood. Childhood? At least, in boyhood and early 
 youth, my heart was "kept pure" with the "holy 
 forms of young imagination." Pure, simple, because 
 not yet conscious of complexity. And the warning? 
 Wordsworth holds up for warning a proud solitary, a 
 "lost man," whose youthful ardour and hopeful ingenu- 
 ousness were chilled by the world's neglect. The world, 
 as he should have known, owed him no service; but at 
 once with indignation he fled apart, " and with the food 
 of pride sustained his soul in solitude." By Esthwaite's 
 strand he wearied of the desolation that was symbolical 
 of his own unfruitful life, and would turn with tear- 
 filled eyes to the glamorous mirage of unselfish action. 
 . . . What if the solitary could not have fled to the 
 solitude of Esthwaite's strand? What if he must linger 
 on amid the world, his heart never " warm from the 
 labours of benevolence " because he is poor, because as 
 [ 171 1 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Aristodemus and Pindar knew, it is "money, money 
 that makes the man " and permits active kindliness? 
 What if he envies the lot of him that is held up for 
 warning? Envies him, in that he was free to live out 
 his discouraged 'life with Nature for companion and 
 consoler, free to be subdued to her moods, free to be 
 wisely passive. . . . Nay, I should only be free to be 
 melancholy. Nature consoles not. Pedler and Parson 
 inform at full length the Solitary of "The Excursion" 
 that Nature should console him; but Wordsworth 
 knows better than they, he finds he must leave the 
 poem unfinished, and the Solitary unconsoled and in- 
 consolable. 
 
 Pride and But what of the pride of intelligence ? The human 
 !'?'"''' intellect! Truth is absolute, and Truth is one; but 
 
 philosophy. Truth to man is complex, relative. He that is modest 
 looks on Truth as a matter of nuances ; and he that is 
 not modest is not greatly furthered. What can be 
 discovered by reason beyond antitheses ? The attempted 
 syntheses of philosophers are but memorials of vain 
 ingenuity. Take the history of German philosophy 
 for the last hundred years for example. Science must 
 end in mystery, in theology; Eighteenth-Century sci- 
 ence ends in Deism. Deism is duality; the human 
 and the divine, freedom and necessity, nature and 
 spirit, mind and matter, faith and reason are divorced 
 irreconcilably. On the side of reason, Kant is a 
 speculative sceptic, defining the limits and conditions 
 of experience; on the side of faith, an ethical theist, 
 desiring, postulating the substantiality of the nou- 
 mena of God, and freedom, and immortality. Jacobi, 
 wandering disconsolately in the desert of Reason, is 
 [ 172 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 fain to find rest in the oasis of Intuition. Schleier- 
 macher seeks deliverance even from tiie loftiest 
 Spinozistic egoism by absorption in the Spinozistic 
 substance. Fichte vainly shifts from subjective to 
 objective Idealism. But Kant had ruined metaphysical 
 dogmatism, and the Fichtean or general Ego can only 
 dogmatise in the void and object to all previous dog- 
 matism. Man is ever creating the world, — .later, he 
 will say, the moral order — and the world, the moral 
 order, is God, and there is no other God than the 
 world — the moral order — which man is ever creating ! 
 Schelling is the antithesis of Fichte; for Ich ist Alles 
 read Alles ist Ich if you would solve the riddle of the 
 universe. Poet of objective Pantheism, renewing 
 Campanella and Bohme, he has discovered the One in 
 the Many, has discovered God, by dint of Neo-Platonic 
 ecstasis, — ^but, unfortunately, God, he discovers, is only 
 the identification of subject and object, is only the 
 Indifference-point, Unity unrevealed as yet in difference, 
 Spinoza's Substance renamed. And if the less-gifted 
 mortal, incapable of intellectual ecstasy, thinks to find, 
 as Schelling found, the reconciliation of nature and 
 spirit in the sentiment of the beautiful of art, the 
 shade of Kant intervenes to demonstrate that the 
 reconciliation cannot be more than imaginary. More- 
 over, the Schelling or Fichte of one period refutes the 
 Schelling or Fichte of preceding periods; death alone 
 can end the endless variations of themselves, the 
 different revelations of their unity. Hegel, renewing 
 Bruno and Spinoza and Vico, will transcend Dualism, 
 reconcile Fichte and Schelling, bridge over the gulf 
 that Kant left between reason and faith, knowing and 
 being, phenomena and noumena. But this Unity is 
 [ 173 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 only manifested by antagonisms, the Idea is only 
 revealed in its ever-widening circles of differentiations 
 and integrations. Philosophy is method, but Schelling 
 saw that the Hegelian method would prove negative 
 only. Philosophy and Religion are reconciled; they 
 differ only in form. Disciples rejoice, and then • — 
 disperse to Right, and Left, and equivocal Centre. 
 Richter deduces from Hegelian principles that faith in 
 immortality is the cause of all human woes. Strauss 
 equally claims to clarify Hegelianism; the Idea, ever 
 engaged in self-evolution, cannot be incarnated in a 
 transitory individual; Humanity, past, present, and to 
 come, is the only possible Christ, the Gott-Mensch. 
 And Strauss, not satisfied with his clear exposition, 
 sojourns a while with Bauer and his school, and finally 
 decides that religion is nothing more than culture. 
 Rothe, text in hand, demonstrates that by the law of 
 evolution, the Church, after self-assertion, must deny 
 itself, and inevitably pass into the State, the new 
 synthesis. Feuerbach, Hegelian, discovers that religion 
 is merely anthropology. Stirner justifies, on Hegelian 
 grounds, revolutionary, socialistic, anarchical Egoism. 
 The disintegration of the absolute synthesis is complete. 
 But Schopenhauer is at hand to attempt a new synthesis. 
 He links Kant and the Buddha; for what is the 
 noumenon but Nirvana? And Hartmann must find 
 it necessary to explain, rectify, and restate Schopenhauer. 
 And the disciples who have sat at their feet discover 
 that Dualism, that Manichseism is the logical deduction 
 of their principles. . . . And if, remembering Comtist 
 sneers against metaphysics, you turn to English, to 
 a posteriori Evolutionists, you find John Stuart Mill — 
 not blessed, it is true, to bear the full Evolutionary 
 [ 174 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 gospel — posthumously confessing the reasonability of 
 Manichaeism, and Mr. Herbert Spencer stranded in 
 a Cartesian Dualism of mind and matter, discerning 
 dimly a Spinozistic Unity of Substance that is un- 
 knowable. 
 
 But, we are told, humanity will win happiness when 
 it ceases to ask why, and whence, and whither; when 
 we are Neo-Hellenes, unconscious of the division 
 between self and nature. We have but to discard 
 Gnosticism for Agnosticism. ... So, seventeen hun- 
 dred years ago, an Alexandrian school, weary of 
 Transcendentalism, yearned for the dawn of peace, 
 for the advent of "The Great Ignorance." And, 
 somehow. Emperor Hadrian found fervent faith at 
 Alexandria, fervent faith in a deity that Agnostics, 
 Gnostics, Platonists, Jews, Christians, and Gentiles 
 unanimously admitted and worshipped — Gold. 
 
 Pride of intelligence! How is it possible? Nature, 
 as Pascal knew, furnishes nothing but matter of doubt 
 and disquietude; and Intelligence is doubt and dis- 
 quietude itself. 
 
 Simplest and surest of all remedies is Faith. Simple? The 
 That precisely is at issue. One of the Eastern sacred J^.™«'^y °* 
 books affirms that a man's faith is a man's self. But 
 self is dual, if not multiple. The simplest duality is 
 that of the angel and beast in man; but, setting aside 
 the beast, the angel has emotionality and intelligence, 
 and their reconciliation is to be despaired of. 
 
 It is now no longer possible for the theologian to 
 
 simply, crudely proffer salvation by belief only, or to 
 
 accuse inability to believe as though it were wilful 
 
 blindness and wilful viciousness. It would almost 
 
 [ 175 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 seem as if it were the scientist who had inherited the 
 mantle of dogmatism. They are prone to reject from 
 the pale of salvation demurrers to hypotheses and 
 provisional syntheses. What they term the "great 
 act of faith," the saving belief that laws, observed 
 sequences of causes and effects, will reign as they have 
 reigned, that phenomena will repeat themselves, is the 
 barest, most readily to be complied with of their 
 demands. Needs must one apply to their experimental 
 truths the remark which the German transcendentalists 
 applied, to the theologians; — that which is merely 
 historical brings no blessedness, has regard solely to 
 the understanding. Hypothetical evolution of nature, 
 historical observation of nature, historical evolution of 
 creeds, — these can interest the curiosity at most, these 
 can give no blessedness. 
 
 Am I not much in the same case with Madame 
 Roland? Could I not almost repeat after her: "I am 
 pious when my heart is troubled, but when my heart 
 is at peace my mind wings its flight, would fain believe, 
 and yet must doubt." Or again: "religion does not 
 change the mind of any individual, it assimilates itself 
 to his nature, and rises and falls with that nature." 
 Or again : " mobile in opinion, I am fixed and firm in 
 conduct and sentiment." Or still again: "I had no 
 interest in changing belief that I might change my 
 morals, for these are established once for all; I was 
 tempest-tossed in doubt, but untroubled by fear." In 
 a word, I comprehend, I sympathise with Jacobi, 
 Christian at heart, sceptic perforce. It is the merest 
 matter of self-respect, of self-interest, not to condemn 
 oneself to the inevitable consequences, the unspeakable 
 Hell, of passion and injustice. I freely obey the cate- 
 [ 176 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 gorical im'perative of duty, without a struggle, but with- 
 out enthusiasm. But, ' then, the collective human in- 
 tellect can find no complete, stable Truth; and if 
 you resolve that that shall be true which satisfies your 
 individual heart, you limit truth to the requirements of 
 an arbitrary personality. You must needs allow with 
 Semler, the rationalist, that no two men have the same 
 religion; quoi homines, tot religiones. I suppose that 
 Semler also realised that no two rationalists are rational 
 in the same manner. But he must have shirked the 
 thought, for otherwise, he had assuredly not broken 
 silence to vainly attempt proselytism. 
 
 But, for debilitated faith, there is recommended the 
 therapeutic of habit, of Pascal's abitissement. Act as if 
 faith were true, and you shall find in time that faith 
 is truth. Clough formulates the speedy objection: 
 "Action will furnish belief, — but will that belief be 
 the true one?" And did not Leibnitz, the admirable 
 would-te reconciler of faith and reason, say of theo- 
 logians : " their mental dissensions should convince them 
 that their pretended internal evidence is not divine." 
 And faith is fitful even in those who are agreed that it 
 is a sin to reason, to doubt the goodness of the Father. 
 The saintly Eugenie de Gudrin, sorrowing that her 
 brother should trust for guidance to the fallacious 
 marish-lights of reason, is still herself the prey of melan- 
 choly, even as Maurice. She must cry: "be it so. 
 Let this inexorable ennui, veritable basis of human life, 
 hold its ground. To bear with all things, and to bear 
 with oneself, is wisdom." . . . But I will re-read 
 Pascal. At least, I can approach these questions with 
 a calm quite unknown in my early youth. . . . But is 
 this calm a progress or a decadence? . . . 
 
 N [ 177 ] 
 
reason 
 Pascal. 
 
 The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Faith and It is not to be denied that Pascal possessed all the 
 qualities that go to the making of the scientific man, 
 the type that is to displace, we are told, the saint as 
 object of admiration. But Pascal the scientist finds 
 science all-insufficient, the day of " conversion " dawns, 
 and henceforth he is not only dead to the pride of life, 
 the lust of the eye, the desire of the flesh, but also 
 indifferent to science, art, and literature. He is resolute 
 to forget all save God. But to love God is to have 
 pity on them that know him not; he would have them 
 turn from the things that perish, and seek the Eternal. 
 He will reason with them, bearing testimony to the 
 faith that is in him, that haply they may abandon their 
 dance of death. He will apply the Cartesian method, 
 and build up certainty on a basis of universal doubt. 
 He will offer them a saving creed, a sure refuge from 
 doubt. And his life is in complete conformity to his 
 creed; he carries out his principles of asceticism to its 
 logical extent; he makes no compromise with human 
 nature. Sure that " the true state of the Christian is 
 malady," he is happiest when suffering in body. He is 
 inhuman to himself, and cannot tolerate in others the 
 display of innocent affection; rightly, logically so, if 
 "whatever is of man is abominable." And, as men and 
 saints accomplish that which they do not intend, sceptics 
 find in the fragments of his questionings and would-be 
 demonstrations of verity their choicest store-house, and 
 plain men shudder at the narrative of his life, as that of 
 a victim of hallucinations, morbid, distraught, insane. 
 
 Eloquently, lucidly insane, at least, like Rousseau. 
 
 Yet, since men and saints know not what they are and 
 
 what is their faith, though they formulate themselves 
 
 and it again and again, it is an endless matter of ques- 
 
 [ 178 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 tion and dispute whether he was subtlest of doubters or 
 firmest of believers. Did he call Reason to his aid in 
 proving his faith, and falter in dismay at the result? 
 Or, by way of being all things to all men, was he only 
 descending into the arena to conquer his opponents 
 with their own weapons; was he, with a perfect 
 histrionism, more sceptical than the sceptics, that so 
 they might the more readily listen to him? Or again, 
 did he doubt and believe in turn, in endless oscillation, 
 with equal earnestness and sincerity? However it may 
 be, present-day critics mainly find in him a dogmatist, 
 a fanatic of faith, unshaken, untouched by doubt. 
 
 His method, apparently, is something of this kind : — 
 Man is dual, angel and beast, capable of infinite 
 grandeur and immeasurable meanness. Epicurus may 
 rightly exalt, and Montaigne deservedly abase human 
 nature; the dogmatist may confide in the power of 
 the reason, and the pyrrhonist, distrustful, suspend 
 all judgment. Man is a compact of contradictions; 
 dogmatists and pyrrhonists are right, and are wrong. 
 Religion, revelation, the mysteries of sin and the fall, 
 alone reconcile that which, otherwise, is irreconcilable. 
 . . . But if this demonstration be sufficient to confirm 
 those who are already Christians, the sceptic might still 
 declare himself unconvinced. Pascal will meet him on 
 his own ground. All things are subject to doubt, 
 including the supposition of a future life. Man is in- 
 capable of defining, proving, or refuting God and im- 
 mortality; and this being so, such questions are reduced 
 to a calculation of probabilities, for and against. A 
 choice of probabilities must inevitably be made, for to 
 refrain from choosing is still to choose, a choice, that 
 is to say, between the possibility of infinite, endless 
 
 [ 179 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 blessedness or that of infinite, endless misery. The 
 choice cannot be doubtful; and, moreover, submission 
 to the yoke of faith during the brief years of mortal 
 life is easy, is pleasant. . . . But the sceptic may still 
 object that he cannot believe, even if he would fain 
 believe. Then, he must stupefy himseH, s^abetir, 
 reduce himself to an automaton. Habit is second- 
 nature; if he will conduct himself as though he believed, 
 he will ultimately come to believe. 
 
 The majority of men are not rigid logicians, much 
 to their comfort, it may be. Fortunately, or un- 
 fortunately, blind, they fail to see the necessity of 
 making a definite choice once for all, of being im- 
 paled on one or the other horn of a dilemma. They 
 are preserved from introspection, from intense, long 
 questionings, by constant contact with others; daily 
 needs and cares press on them, abstract duty presents 
 itself to them in the tangible form of the duty of 
 "getting on" in the world, of prosecuting their own 
 interest, and thereby that of their nearest. If they are 
 born with the moral instinct, they vaguely resume for 
 themselves Butler's mitigation of Pascal's doctrine; they 
 more or less dimly recognise that if virtue does not 
 always ensure happiness in life, ill-doing at all events 
 never satisfies. As far as circumstances allow, and 
 often in spite of circumstances, they are just. To put 
 it coarsely, they "make the best of both worlds." They 
 fulfil their duties fairly well, without narrowly in- 
 quiring what duty is. Honesty is useful, they find; 
 and the good conduct which is profitable in this life 
 will surely, they suppose, be reckoned to their merit, 
 if there be another. For the excesses of asceticism 
 and fervour they have no inclination, instinctively shun 
 [ i8o J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 them as prejudicial to health and the due transaction 
 of their affairs; they possibly admire examples of such 
 excesses, but do not feel called to imitation. A place 
 in the world is assigned them, and their energies are 
 engrossed in maintaining or improving it. They 
 comfort themselves, if needs be, with the multitude of 
 their like-minded accomplices, and are assured that 
 God is merciful. . . . 
 
 After all, is Pascal, the passionate logician, com- 
 pletely logical? Could he be logical, under the cir- 
 cumstances? He maintains that to disobey reason is 
 to bring unhappiness on oneself : " it is the agreement 
 of self with self, the constant voice of one's reason, and 
 not that of others, which causes belief." Yet he holds 
 that the natural man, unaided by grace, is as incapable 
 of right reason as of right action. Pascal, then, as a 
 subject of grace, will be able to confide in his reason. 
 Not so: "God is known to the heart, and not to the 
 reason." . . . "We are incapable of knowing what 
 God is, whether God exists or not." So sure is he of 
 the utter incapacity of reason, that he will waive aside 
 almost contemptuously not only the traditional proofs 
 derived from miracles and prophecy, but those derived 
 from "natural religion," and finally the " ontological " 
 proofs. A master of negative criticism, he is yet a 
 mystic, a lover. As love and criticism cannot dwell 
 together, he is ecstatic, unquestioning lover and alles- 
 zermalmender critic by turns, hopelessly, dolorously 
 dual. Or if we are to allow that his faith was wholly 
 unshaken, he must be likened to Jacobi. or Schelling, 
 who direct criticism against all save their mystical 
 intuition. To the reason, he will grant, religion is a 
 "folly." But, since reason itself is folly, why should 
 [ i8i ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 he illogically essay to prove that which is incapable of 
 proof by that which is vitiated in its essence? He 
 will clear the path to belief by provisionally doubting 
 all things. But he that has once been visited by the 
 malady of scepticism is incurable, is sure of relapse. 
 So intrepid, so uncompromising is he in doubt, that 
 his Port- Royal Editors had to garble his manuscripts. 
 He is bold, precisely because he is convinced in advance 
 that reason and faith have nothing in common. But, 
 then, why reason at all? Why not impose silence on 
 his own reason by the method he recommends to others? 
 He wishes, indeed, to convert, and the proselytiser 
 must needs speak and reason. Yet he is sure that God 
 has willed to blind the many and enlighten the few. 
 His own conversion he ascribes to inner light; why 
 then essay another doubtful, impossible method, and 
 fondly interfere with God's own method? Dante and 
 Calvin, compelled to meet the same objection, can 
 only bid us not presume to penetrate the secret counsel 
 of the Godhead, for His judgments and justice are 
 inscrutable and incommensurate with ours. "Let us 
 not be ashamed, Calvin must write, to confess our 
 ignorance." But why, confessing ignorance, do Dante 
 and Calvin and Pascal still fondly furnish us with 
 Theodicies? 
 
 Faith and 
 reason, 
 continued ; 
 the men of 
 the Renais- 
 sance and 
 the " Poly- 
 bians." 
 
 The Italians of the early Renaissance could pursue 
 truth with never a fear that philosophy could be the 
 enemy and not the handmaid of theology. Dante could 
 freely innovate and alter accepted beliefs, could be 
 heretical, with the heresies of a soft heart, and yet pass 
 for a good theologian. Gradually, the Renaissance 
 thinkers were led to discern incompatibilities between 
 [ 182 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 autonomous reasoning and reasoning on authoritative 
 premises. Tiiey hold by the authority of reason, with 
 the constant, added clause, salva lafede. They decline, 
 as Albertus Magnus declined, to miscere credita cum 
 physicis. They believe that which reason bids them 
 believe, but they also believe that which the Church 
 bids them believe. If their beliefs come into collision, 
 they profess, more or less ironically, complete submission 
 to the Church. They believe, as Christians, that which 
 they cannot believe as philosophers. Vanini in self- 
 justification quotes St. Augustine's: "I would not 
 believe Ihe gospel were it not for the authority of the 
 Catholic Church." A few from self-respect preferred 
 the glory of martyrdom for philosophic truth to com- 
 promise; they are ready to be courteous — // credere 
 e cortesia, as Galileo said with a smile — but are 
 judged uncourteous, and fit for uncourteous treatment. 
 The vast majority put in practice Cremonino's intus 
 ut libet, foris ut moris. 
 
 Lip-service is now no longer compulsory, but mod- 
 ern scientists, in spite of examples of sincere dualism 
 in faith and science, will not allow this thinking "by 
 double entry," can scarcely credit its honesty. It 
 is true that, while maintaining that reason is assuredly 
 paramount, they permit agnosticism in matters of faith. 
 But men are conscious that agnosticism, which pretends 
 to be neutral, is de facto hostile. Neutrality is not 
 possible; ne pas parier, c^est encore parier, as Pascal 
 says, not to make a choice of probabilities is still to 
 choose. Positivism, for instance, professing neutrality 
 outside the region of verifiable truth, virtually denies 
 metaphysics. Now, the majority of men dislike 
 hostility and denial. Moreover, they fear the moral 
 
 C 183 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 and social consequences of this elimination of the 
 absolute. To resume their fears in formulas of Vico : 
 — the third age is the "human age" that succeeds to 
 the divine and the heroic ages. In this third age 
 philosophy tends to supersede religion, and men practise 
 virtue without religious sanctions. But all men are 
 not philosophers, and philosophy itself has an inevitable 
 tendency to scepticism. Civil equality is accompanied 
 by inequality of wealth; the sceptical, refined, and 
 effeminate find themselves face to face with the posi- 
 tive, envious, and aggressive. On corruption follows 
 anarchy, which is ended only by despotism or subjuga- 
 tion by a stronger, less corrupted race. Or more briefly, 
 with Campanella : — the corruption of religion heralds 
 the dissolution of society. 
 
 Machiavelli and Hobbes reduce religion to an 
 instrumentum regni, a political instrument. But 
 Machiavellism and Hobbism, by right instinct per- 
 chance, however uncritically, have become terms of 
 reproach. Let me then style Polybians those philo- 
 sophers and men of the world who, convinced of the 
 possibility of autonomous morality, would have en- 
 lightenment for themselves, and, out of concern for 
 the commonweal, what they deem superstition for the 
 majority. He that was the friend of Scipio ^Emilianus, 
 he whose effigy was set up by his countrymen side by 
 side with those of Aratus and Philopoemon, opined 
 that the most salutary of the Roman institutions was 
 superstition. In fact, the Roman State was held 
 together by a quality which was considered a reproach 
 by other weaker nations. But the Roman statesmen 
 were wise; they had regard to the multitude, they 
 knew that no nation can possibly consist of wise men 
 [ 184 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 alone. And " since the multitude is fickle and full of 
 lawless desires, of unreasonable anger, and of violent 
 passion, it only remains to curb them with invisible 
 terrors and such-like machinery." In short, Plato's 
 useful State-lie put into practice on the largest scale. 
 The modern Polybian, the obscurantist for the sake 
 of the commonweal, if a laissez-faire constitutionalist, 
 would desire that the State should not discourage the 
 natural fear "which first made the gods." Paternally 
 governed, he will be a Fontenelle, with his hand full 
 of wisdom, but his fingers closed tight over his treasure. 
 Or a Goethe, with his "useful results" which alone 
 are due to the people, for "the faculty of lofty com- 
 prehension is rare, and consequently, in ordinary lif6, it 
 is best to keep one's own counsel, and merely reveal so 
 much as is necessary to give us an advantage over 
 others." In a state menacing dissolution, a Voltaire, 
 confident that reason will triumph — " at least among les 
 honnetes gens, for the mob is not made for it." Or, • 
 under a republic, a Renan, painting the portrait of 
 Spinoza, with many a glance at his own image in the 
 mirror by way of help, paints the ideal sage who knows 
 the solution of the woirld-enigma, but only reveals 
 himself to other men by tolerant kindliness. . . . 
 Indeed, the Polybian, to be perfect, should be wholly 
 silent, abstaining from word of mouth and word of 
 book. And this the Polybian never is. Reason being 
 the bond between man and man, reason being love, he 
 that deems he reasons will be impelled to proselytise. 
 Spinoza is thus only too eager to impart salvation to 
 his correspondents according to the presumed measure 
 of their capacities, and suffers obloquy and misappre- 
 hension, as was to have been expected. The Polybian 
 [ 185 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 tells you all he knows, or thinks to know. Fontenelle 
 will take you aside, and let you peep through his 
 fingers; will hand you his Dialogues des Moris, where- 
 in you may learn the great secret that all is nothing- 
 ness, and nothingness is of no great importance. 
 Goethe will test your sagacity by veiling truth — or 
 rather, truths; for he cares not for co-ordination — in 
 symbols; but his symbols represent nothing not 
 divulged in the exoteric teaching. He can deftly float 
 bubble-microcosms, and is as ready as a Polonius to ratify 
 random interpretations of their significance. For was 
 not the admirer to assimilate from his doctrines, his 
 symbols, just that which he was capable of assimilating? 
 And besides, symbols serve delightfully for mystifica- 
 tion, not of self only, but of others; a symbol means 
 that which the inquirer supposes it to mean; and as 
 no two inquirers can agree, the profundity of the 
 symbol is thereby established. And Renan — a modern 
 Carneades, is he not ? Combining with his own 
 order of eloquence those of his fellow-ambassadors to 
 Rome, Diogenes and Critolaus, capable not only of 
 sublimity, but of simplicity, and of moderation. Nay, 
 ready, the modern Carneades, to add also coquetry. 
 Truths are infinitely interesting, possibly because they 
 are inextricably mingled with error; Truth, indeed, 
 would be colourless, uninteresting, without the ad- 
 mixture. If you would be a cheerful optimist, a 
 Carneades-Renan, you have only to recognise that 
 error is the necessary amalgam of truth, that truth can 
 only be presented in fables, and that all fables, scientific, 
 philosophic, moral, religious, are . . . fables, charming, 
 yet fables. You have only to spend your life in a long 
 and happy "grand tour" through the realm of Ideas. 
 [ i86 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 You may gather pretty pebbles on the roadsides of this 
 reahn, this El Dorado, pebbles which cast a glorious 
 lustre, which are rough diamonds and rubies, and yet 
 are common pebbles until you carve them into match- 
 less form, and so win admiration and a sufficient reward 
 in current coin. . . . Well, at least, Renan is most 
 eloquent when holding a brief for the Good; though, 
 like Carneades, he can fully state the opponent's 
 objections. But Carneades believed this much, that 
 to plead for and against is the readiest method of find- 
 ing truth; Carneades was held by his disciples to have 
 been one that inspired desire to set forth in quest 
 of truth. Doubtless he hoped to be an excubitor 
 dubitantium, as Campanella styled himself, while Renan 
 is a supreme artist, readiest advocate for and against 
 any and every theme, inspiring admiration of his 
 versatility and virtuosity, a Carneades — despairing of 
 truth. Yet he is most eloquent, most artistic, when plead- 
 ing for the Good, though he have a lurking suspicion 
 that to be good is to be dupe of Machiavellian Nature. 
 
 Thinking of Polybians, I am minded of the three The same, 
 grades of perfection in the mediaeval system, personified ™"''""sd. 
 as Umano, Spoglia, and Rinnova, which Dante will 
 translate in time into Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. 
 The human soul, according to this system, can only 
 behold Truth in symbols, till such time as it be 
 cleansed of sin, purified of earthly taint, till it transcend 
 the region of opinion and reach the region of the Idea. 
 The Polybian sage evidently is one who deems that he has 
 attained Paradise after briefest halts in lower regions, and 
 who is inclined to consider that Inferno and Purgatorio 
 are institutions that ought not to be lightly abolished; 
 [ 187 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 a too frequent jail-delivery would endanger, or at least 
 vulgarise society, which should be select and limited. 
 
 But these Polybian sages, when they condescend to 
 speak exoterically, when they return from the realm 
 of the Idea to the Cave, to the realm of opinion, 
 differ as greatly in their accounts of the realm of ideas 
 as though they had never left the realm of opinion. 
 They agree to differ profoundly, agree at most that 
 they might as well have never left the Cave, agree with 
 one another and with Imlac, friend of Rasselas, that 
 "long journeys in search of truth'' are not necessary, 
 that " truth, such as is necessary for the regulation of 
 life," that a sufficient rule-of-thumb is readily to be dis- 
 covered at home. They agree also with Voltaire that 
 all men have the same morality, possibly agree that 
 all men have the same religion, — yet as soon as ever 
 they essay to formulate their common creed, though 
 Faust seems to Gretchen to say much the same things 
 as other people, only in somewhat different language, 
 they seem to each other to differ, they agree to differ, 
 profoundly. The unenlightened dweller in the Cave, 
 indeed, the "good gorilla," Renan would say, by dint 
 of brain-sick chimseras, has behaved itself quite in a 
 wondrous way, has acted on the whole charmingly, 
 and risen to adorable heights of sentiment. The pity 
 only, then, that Renan should feel called upon to strip 
 it of the consolatory fictions it has created for itself, at 
 the risk of reducing it to Caliban once more. The 
 pity also, one might add, that not only Polybian sages 
 confide their secrets to their admirers, but sincere sages 
 freely proclaim the truths they have discovered; for 
 disciples will pry into the Begriff that lurks behind the 
 Vorstdlung of the truth delivered to them, disciples, 
 [ i88 1 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 enfants terribles, will draw logical deductions from the 
 given premises which wholly dismay the sage. Really, 
 the sage should remember that it is dangerous to con- 
 fide a secret, to proclaim a truth, even to reeds. French 
 philosophers, convinced that what was truth for aristo- 
 crats was also truth for plebeians, browbeat Madame 
 d'fipinay when she ventured to object that popular 
 beliefs were useful as a bridle to the uncouth popu- 
 lace. Madame d'fipinay was a wise Polybian, for your 
 wise Polybian would be silent, fearing Revolutions, 
 Democracies, and Socialism. But your wise Polybian, 
 despite of warning example, is never wise. The wise 
 Polybian, could he be wise, would also avoid the error of 
 his brethren of the Italian Renaissance, would not jest, 
 even amid his equals, at ignorance and asinity, mindful 
 that the ironical turn at length their weapons on them- 
 selves, that irony is, in the last resort, subjective and 
 negative. But, remembering this, he would be a disil- 
 lusioned Polybian, would find that the serene happiness of 
 playing with esoteric ideas is the greatest unhappiness. 
 
 How do these self-centred, self-dependent sages The seren- 
 maintain themselves in joyful serenity? If I turn to "y°fa"- 
 
 ■* tonomous 
 
 the Greeks, our masters, the Greeks who are held to sages, 
 have been serene, childishly unconscious of any an- 
 tagonism between self and the world, of any gulf 
 between spirit and nature, I find myself mingled with 
 gloomy self-conscious wanderers in a "meadow of 
 discord " and bewilderment, to use the Empedoclean 
 phrase. I behold arrogant mystagogues and humble 
 neophytes, pedlers of prudential morality, ascetics and 
 voluptuaries, simple folk and sophists, aggressive materi- 
 alists and unbending idealists, despots democratic and 
 
 C 189 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 aristocratic, unscrupulous opportunists and rigid justici- 
 aries, splenetic satirists and languid elegiasts, gossiping 
 loungers in the market-place and timid victims of 
 oppression. . . . Why continue a random list? Em- 
 pedocles shall describe the Hellas to which he was 
 exiled at birth from the court of the gods. " I lifted 
 up my voice and wailed aloud when I beheld the strange 
 region to which I was newly come, region wherein 
 dwell Murder, and Rancour, and the legions of direful 
 Destinies, and manifold Diseases. There Night abides 
 and far-flashing Day, blood-stained Strife and grave- 
 eyed Harmony, Beauty and Shame, Swiftness and Sloth, 
 lovely Truth and darkling Uncertainty, Birth and 
 Decay, Slumber and Wakefulness." ... I have for- 
 gotten the next lines of linked antitheses. In brief, a 
 world of mingled good and evil, then as now; a world 
 of antinomies. . . . But Empedocles is a mystic; let 
 me, then, pass to the practical Romans. As self-con- 
 sciousness deepens, isolation and melancholy extend their 
 reign. The Stoics, even should they refuse to recog- 
 nise the justice of Carneades's refutation of Stoic dogmas, 
 are isolated, melancholy. Driven back upon themselves, 
 they find that self is emptiness, and long for speedy 
 oblivion. . . . Trace the progress of Renaissance 
 Humanism to its dissolution by ironical criticism, and 
 you might scornfully judge the sage to be one who 
 guards himself from all absolute denials and affirmations, 
 who, keenly comprehensive of the real, equipped with 
 prudence, adroitly compasses a moderate, sufficient 
 store of worldly gear, and passes his days in elegant 
 carelessness, serene because superficial, amiably sensual, 
 imaginative, cultured. An Alberti, for example. But 
 this prudential Epicurean compromise was merely an 
 [ 190 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 ephemeral compromise. As to serious mysticism suc- 
 ceeded frivolous indifference, so the latter yielded place 
 in turn to austere negation. Machiavelli proclaimed 
 man to be his own Providence, his own Fortune, re- 
 vealed the survival of the strongest and cleverest, the 
 lion-fox, as the law of life. . . . And Machiavelli is re- 
 newed by the modern prophets of autonomous morality. 
 Might is right; and he is most righteous who is the 
 most energetical in his own interest. As though 
 the Homeric warning were not always in season: 
 "O hapless one, thy strength will prove thy bane." 
 
 But Humanists and Polybians are out of date. Let The 
 me turn to the Neo-Machiavellians, to the scientific ^^^^^J^^. 
 Evolutionists, to the dreamers of the Golden Age that ary Utopia, 
 is to come. What marvellous visions are theirs of the 
 Heaven on earth that is to be ! The men of the future 
 will possess, be possessed by, an " organic morality," will 
 intelligently adapt themselves to their environment, 
 will not be troubled by any conflicts of conscience. 
 We of the present age, indeed, are troubled and 
 blessed, thanks to Evolution, with a conscience, that is 
 to say, we are already enlightened egoists when we 
 obey the dictates of our hereditary conscience which 
 resumes the prudential fears of our forefathers to trans- 
 gress social commands and prohibitions, their experience 
 that self-interest is pursued by avoidance of anti-social 
 actions. But the happy men of the Golden Age to 
 come will not be troubled with a conscience, will be 
 further, unspeakably blessed in not possessing or requir- 
 ing a conscience or the sense of obligation at all, since 
 to' them moral conduct will be natural conduct. And 
 this supreme blessedness — which many of us possess 
 
 C 191 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 already, since to many of us immoral conduct is repug- 
 nant, unnatural, and yet are miserable, doubtless because 
 our lot is cast in an Iron, not in a Golden, Age — this 
 supreme blessedness will necessarily result from the 
 action of natural selection and heredity, and possibly 
 also from the action of Evolutionary legislators. Which 
 legislators should surely select Jacob as their patron- 
 saint — if saints were not despicable to Evolutionists — 
 for Jacob was an Evolutionary legislator, in the matter 
 of four-footed, if not of two-footed, sheep. 
 
 The natural scientists, these Epicurean-Utilitarians, 
 these heirs of Diderot and Lamarck a,nd Malthus, these 
 Hegelians who speak of Evolution in terms of Nature 
 and not of Spirit, are not content to be merely the 
 secretaries of Nature, to register phenomena and 
 gather up the links of causation. They burn with 
 zeal to ameliorate man's lot, and yearn to furnish 
 humanity with a rational morality, a scientific basis of 
 morals. Mankind has long suffered by reason of de- 
 ductions drawn from false principles, self-deluded to its 
 own harm with reasonings about the life according to 
 Nature or the life according to Reason — which latter, 
 again, with a little verbal dexterity, can be held to be 
 the life according to Nature. It is high time to awake 
 from delusion. Ontology is discredited — for a season; 
 types of ethical theories are irreconcilable. Indeed, 
 one might, in utter weariness, desire peace at the hands 
 of the scientists, if there was any hope of their succeed- 
 ing where moral philosophers have failed. Fiat lux, 
 and let us wonder no longer, say, that a Kant can 
 declare morality the essential basis of religion, and a 
 Hegel exactly reverse the order of the terms; that the 
 one can regard religion as "that which is in part " and 
 [ 192 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 which shall be done away, flung aside as a "childish 
 thing," when autonomous morality, "that which is," 
 shall have "come," and the other regard morality as 
 implicit in "the absolute religion." . . . But, after all, 
 Hegel maintained philosophy was the Begriff of that of 
 which Religion was only the Vorstellung, the pictured 
 symbol, and both he and Kant therefore are practically 
 at one. But philosophy is discredited, for a season, 
 and new brooms — I beg pardon, new Herculeses — with 
 Rivers of Biology and Sociology at command, are ready 
 to cleanse the Augean Temple of Morality. 
 
 No. difficult matter, thought Littr6. Nutrition is 
 the biological principle of Egoism, Generation of 
 Altruism; the latter, as more complex, is therefore 
 superior. Yet Littr^ must have reflected that the new 
 gospel was hardly likely to produce many miracles of 
 Altruism, for he speedily delivered still another gospel. 
 A = A, the two terms are equal; therefore one man 
 equals another, and my neighbour is as myself. Un- 
 fortunately, the majority of men have a deplorable, un- 
 scientific tendency, we might object, to overlook such 
 equivalence. . . . However, Evolution, borrowed from 
 the ontologists, and renewed on the side of natural 
 science, will solve the problem. Yet, unfortunately 
 again, as all things are in a state of development, to 
 Evolutionists, as to benighted Intuitionalists, there can 
 be only an ideal standard or criterion of conduct, since 
 it is in the dim and distant future that all men shall be 
 able to order their actions to the well-being, the happi- 
 ness of themselves and others. Moreover, though 
 Evolution implies material necessitarianism, the natural 
 scientist, turned moralist, must avoid announcing, at 
 whatever cost of logic, that man is an automaton, that 
 o [ 193 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 man ist was er isst, that virtue and vice are merely like 
 chemical products. Nor will natural selection, and 
 the survival of the fittest, furnish us with a scientific 
 basis; we must evolve morally, and unscientifically, an 
 altruism "by antithesis," or otherwise we are left to the 
 admiring contemplation of tigers and Borgias, and their 
 grandiose " Sceleratezza, " their adroit "adjustment of 
 means to ends," blameable only if unsuccessful. Yet 
 as this altruistic morality "by antithesis" is nebulous to 
 a degree, ought we not to read, mark, learn, and in- 
 wardly digest Fielding's Jonathan Wild? The pity 
 that Fielding should have wantonly spoiled his code of 
 morals by proclaiming his irony! Pity too that La 
 Rochefoucauld should have deemed it necessary to add 
 by way of preface to his Moral Reflections that he is only 
 considering man in the deplorable state of Nature, even 
 as the Church Fathers had done, thus falling into the 
 error of Pascal, who was anxious at all costs to humiliate 
 human pride. 
 
 But, besides Natural Selection, there is another mode 
 of Evolution, that of adaptation to environment. Surely, 
 the ethical Evolutionist is on firm ground at length! 
 A long farewell to the Heraclitean and Hobbesian state 
 of nature and its war of each against all. We seem 
 already to descry the Golden Age that is to come, — 
 the Golden Age which heralds the catastrophe of equili- 
 bration. From materialism, from necessitarianism, from 
 private Machiavellism, we can turn to Utilitarian- 
 ism, to altruistic Utilitarianism. Poor John Stuart 
 Mill, logician doing strange violence to his principles 
 with his preferences for a "discontented Socrates" 
 to a "contented pig," with his refusal to accept 
 Bentham's mnemonic doggerel as all-sufficient hymnal 
 r 194 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 and declaration of faith ! That it was not given him 
 to listen to the new gospel which reconciles wrangling 
 intuitionalists and empirics, reconciles egoism and 
 altruism. For, thanks to Evolution, we have a con- 
 science, and this conscience is the sum of hereditary 
 ' instincts. . . . But is this conscience the transmitted 
 instinct of self-preservation? For, if so, I am thrown 
 back on "the survival of the fittest," the bellum omnium 
 contra omnes. No, conscience is th'e verdict of past 
 society on actions that promote or retard the well-being 
 of the tribe, the race. Remorse is a revolt of the social 
 instinct when we have violated it by obeying the self- 
 regarding instinct. But what if men remorselessly per- 
 sist in refusing to listen to the altruistic, social instinct? 
 It is answered, personal needs and desires must yield 
 before the interests of the social group. But who is to 
 judge of the interest of the group, the species? The 
 group, Society as a whole ? But Society as a whole used 
 to approve of slavery, and the punishment of heretics; 
 nay. Society still approves of slavery, and punishes by 
 exclusion those who question, or act counter to, con- 
 ventions. Macaulay can but smile at the uniformity 
 of disapprobation which Byron encountered, and yet, 
 according to Mr. Bain, this was a sufficient criterion. 
 George Sand, till she was released by age like Sophocles 
 from the tyranny of the passions, cared not for other 
 approbation than her own, for other duty than that 
 of obeying passion; George Eliot was altruistic in a 
 manner that the tribe did not approve. But still, once 
 more, these and their like lived in transitionary periods, 
 — (what period is not one of transition?) — and they 
 that live in transitionary periods are subject to the con- 
 flicts of social and anti-social tendencies, are prone to 
 [ 195 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 melancholy — melancholy, the consciousness that the 
 universe is out of joint, and the fear that it will ever 
 remain out of joint. In the Evolutionary Millenium, 
 when Evolutionary philosophers shall be kings, and kings 
 Evolutionary philosophers, the crooked shall be made 
 straight and the rough places plain, all men will in- 
 telligently adapt themselves to the social environment, 
 and melancholy be unknown. At least, we are assured so. 
 At present, however, the two modes of Evolution, 
 egoistic and altruistic, are a thesis and an antithesis, 
 once more. Reconcile them in a synthesis; discover, 
 with Aristotle and Littr6, that nutrition and genera- 
 tion are identical; and you must still proceed immedi- 
 ately to divide them as renewing the type, the one in 
 the individual, the other in the species. The Evolu- 
 tionist at present will side with Man against the State, 
 or with the State against the Man, as a mere moralist 
 might, according to the bias of his temperament, and 
 the exigencies of his polemic. He can reconcile the 
 pair of antimonies in Utopia alone, less cautious in this 
 than the unscientific moralist. If the unscientific 
 moralist be a Matthew Arnold, living in an individual- 
 istic country, he is like to judge the contemporary 
 individualism, moral, religious, social, political, as 
 excessive, and exalt "the notion, so familiar on the 
 Continent, and to antiquity," of the State as "the 
 organ of our collective better self," much as Xenophon 
 and Plato exalted Sparta at the expense of Athens. If, 
 on the other hand, he be a Scherer — whose destructive 
 criticism of theological and metaphysical consolations 
 will not allow him other consolation than the sorry one 
 of disinterested detachment, of contemplative accept- 
 ance of whatsoever is — living in a centralised state, he 
 [ 196 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 will admire by contrast the liberty of the Englishman, 
 and deliver himself of the opinion that it is in France, 
 and not in England, that the individual is in a state of 
 "absolute isolation," is an "organic atom," as it were. 
 The most one can say is that there have been and will 
 be epochs of syntheses, to use Saint-Simon's phrase, in 
 which the State absorbs the Man, and epochs of 
 analysis, in which the Man is paramount. And, of 
 course, in any epoch, synthetical or analytical, there is 
 always a minority in opposition. . . . With my innate 
 sympathy for minorities, for remnants and forerunners, 
 it is as well that I live not the age of a crow, a stag, or 
 a wandering Jew, since, in order to be consistent, I 
 should be continually running counter to myself, and 
 opposing my own victory, in the course of the ages ! 
 
 The Evolutionist is specially at a loss to reconcile 
 the two modes of Evolution. On the one hand, 
 evolution is furthered by the free play of the individual, 
 and Mr. Herbert Spencer will side with Man against 
 the State, denounce "The Coming Slavery" of State- 
 Socialism. On the other, a complex, highly organ- 
 ised society implies a hieratic subordination of functions 
 and classes; its principle of growth is an increasing 
 reciprocal interdependence, accompanied by an increas- 
 ing Specialisation; and Mr. Herbert Spencer, de- 
 nouncer of hero and despot worshippers, is led to 
 indulge in Renanian Utopias of patriarchal despotism 
 by mandarins, by king-philosophers and Prosperos 
 holding in subjection democratic, individualistic Cali- 
 bans. But, of course, this is a matter of the Golden 
 Age, and meanwhile, Mr. Spencer must continue to 
 hold a brief for the Individual against the State; 
 though, again, in the interests of future society, he 
 [ 197 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 sides with the State in its endeavours to check the free 
 play of the individual, and countenances the repression, 
 say, of the practical socialist, who will not rest con- 
 tent with dreams of the Utopian future, of the practical 
 Spencerian, who, recognising with his master the lament- 
 able contrast of present society with that of savages, 
 turns savage himself by way of accelerating reform, of 
 the self-deemed fittest who chooses to survive by 
 methods not tolerated by criminal codes. Alas! the 
 ideal Evolutionary moralist is the Arab, who carefully 
 removes the vermin that troubles him, and however 
 often it may return to the charge, refrains from other 
 interference with the free play of the individual flea; 
 but, as things go, in our present provisional state of 
 society, the hapless Evolutionist must at present approve, 
 and in the future command, the interference of society 
 with the individual much in the manner of the irritated, 
 flea-bitten courtiers of whom Mephistopheles sang, and 
 not in the manner of the unconsciously scientific Arab. 
 
 Evolution 
 and the 
 remedy of 
 socialism. 
 
 But the votaries of progress, positivists and evolu- 
 tionists, offer us an all-sufficient comfort; we, heirs of 
 all the hapless ages, may fail and founder in the night, 
 but the dawn will yet bless the sight of happy genera- 
 tions. We are ignoble self-seekers if we care for other 
 reward than the consciousness that we are co-operators 
 with God, that is to say. Humanity and Nature, in 
 this founding of the Kingdom of Earth that is to be, 
 if we need other motive for moral effort than the hope 
 of a future happy social state. Forsooth, it is a mighty 
 step to have abolished Slavery, and we are wholly 
 despicable if we allow ourselves to imagine that progress 
 is only the feverish change, the application of inefficient 
 
 C 198 1 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 palliatives, that the new slavery implied by Industrial- 
 ism is other than a transitional stage. Our remote 
 descendants will dwell in Utopia, and we should be 
 happy in the thought that they will be happy. 
 
 Some form or other of Socialism, indeed, seems in- 
 evitable. Given a general indifference to thoughts of 
 another life, a general disbelief that another life shall 
 amply make good the privations endured in this, and 
 the present form of society is doomed, the fears of the 
 Polybians are like to be justified. If this life be all, 
 and happiness is material enjoyment, or rather the free 
 development ensured by the possession of material goods, 
 the majority cannot and will not tolerate the wonted 
 paucis hufnanum vivit genus ; will not consent any longer 
 that their toil and privations shall serve the leisured 
 few. 
 
 But can I do other than marvel at the confidence 
 of Socialistic theorists. Dreams of fanatics are accom- 
 plished — for it is only the fanatics who accomplish 
 anything, — but the fact is always the mockery of the 
 dream, the accomplishment is the irony of the ideal 
 aim. • Gross and rude are the temples built with hands 
 that loomed so fair in the mind of the architect. And 
 even were Socialism, in the sense of equality of goods, 
 possible and congruous with human nature, all present 
 theorising is surely premature and vain. Here as ever 
 there are antinomies, antinomies irreconcilable. For 
 example, the Man and the State ; — on the one hand, 
 the hideous evolutionary law of competition, the ruth- 
 less strife of Ishmaels; on the other, the tyranny of a 
 Socialistic government. Either alternative of the 
 dilemma is equally detestable. Men are born unequal, 
 and a social state, founded on the principle that each 
 [ 199 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 shall be set in the degree of hierarchy appropriate to 
 his faculties presumes that there shall be slaves and 
 demi-slaves, even as now, toiling to allow the leisure of 
 the few. Moreover, since the law of action and re- 
 action is supreme, if an age of Socialism succeeds 
 to an age of Individualism, Socialism in turn will grow 
 intolerable, and men will seek to fly from the ills they 
 know and embrace intolerable Individualism once again. 
 
 A Socialism that should not be a tyranny is a 
 Utopia; and Utopia is, and ever will be, a land of 
 Nowhere. Athenian sages thought Utopia bore a 
 great resemblance to brutal, military Sparta. Modern 
 dreamers choose to forget that Utopia is a small city, 
 with a small fixed population, stable no less in institu- 
 tions than in population. Multiply Utopias, and farewell 
 to peace; international courtesies are mainly those of 
 war. Moreover, the individualist reasonably forecasts 
 that the Utopians would largely emigrate into the 
 countries of the outlying barbarians to escape ennui 
 and inanition; for equilibrium is stagnation, distress. 
 Were even the disturbing influence of Hunger and Love 
 — those prime motors of human life — banished from 
 a perfected social state by free-trade in passion or by 
 state-organised selection, they would long for a source 
 of bitterness to rise and flow through the palling 
 Arcadian meads. Nay, for very novelty, they would 
 resort to thoughts of immortality, and so disturb the 
 harmonious equilibrium of which they were weary. 
 
 Meanwhile, till mankind shall so have progressed as 
 to have elevated itself to the happy, thoughtless condi- 
 tion of bees and beavers and social-birds, of the brutes 
 that perish, those brutes that are the envy and marvel 
 of the philosopher, lovers of order and harmony, ful- 
 [ 200 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 fillers of the law of Nature, "red in tooth and claw," 
 — what were the best course for those who, in an age 
 of Progress, or rather of Anal3'sis, of Individualism, of 
 Decadence, of Transition (for once again, what age is 
 not an age of transition ?), are excluded by temperament 
 or circumstance, or both combined, from the arena of 
 strife for gold and existence? I know not, unless in- 
 deed I were to side with Clough, as I have wished to 
 be able to side, and essay to trust that he is wise who 
 abandons the culture of the intellect, learns the culture 
 of the soil, emigrates, marries, rears a robust, simple- 
 hearted brood, and struggles healthily with outer Nature. 
 But such a course is only for the strong and stalwart. 
 Moreover, the present-day Educationalist is concerned 
 only to increase the ranks of the declasses, the culti- 
 vated envious superfluous population; the Roman ideal 
 of the agriculturist is far from his dreams. . . . For 
 him that is delicate of body as well as mind, for my 
 brethren, I could but counsel the learning and applica- 
 tion of some light manual toil. More leisure would 
 they have for thought than if they were to join the 
 crowd of combatants who strive to gain and maintain 
 their ground in the "respectable" professions. Of 
 course such sages, such mute inglorious Spinozas, would 
 also have to dedicate themselves to celibacy and poverty. 
 And further, thought is melancholy. ... I can but 
 smile at these counsels I offer. What a meagre gospel 
 to proclaim ! Happily I am a silent preacher. Or 
 rather perchance, a physician trying to heal himself — 
 and aggravating his disease. 
 
 The rain has fallen incessantly throughout the day, slavery. 
 and still falls. The worthy Dr. Johnson scorned the 
 
 [ 20I ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 man who allowed his state of soul to be influenced by 
 the weather. But unless the heart is forcefully pre- 
 occupied, joy comes with sunshine, and sadness with 
 the clouds. Nature, it is true, is a-moral, or immoral 
 if judged by human standards, by human morality, 
 which is a protest against Nature. You carry your joys 
 and sorrows to Nature, and she furnishes you with a 
 background which is mocking or sympathetic, as chance 
 has it. The "pathetic fallacy" is a method of art; 
 and, as such, is employed at times by Nature, the un- 
 conscious artist. On the other hand, as we are a part 
 of Nature, her moods induce corresponding moods in 
 us; the "soul of the world" assimilates us to its moods 
 of the moment. To-day, spleen and ennui reign with- 
 out, spleen and ennui would reign within, did I not 
 rebel as best may be. I "have played joyous allegros on 
 my violin. I have flitted from book to book, seeking 
 distraction, avoiding the while my poets of melancholy, 
 whom I reserve for hours of sunshine. Thus do I 
 mock stepmother Nature in my turn; or rather, by 
 reading indolently my melancholy poets when Nature 
 is holiday-making, I attemper melancholy to a sweet 
 sadness this side of pain. 
 
 Yesterday I wrote of slaves. Long ago, also, I wrote 
 in this book the words "a modern slave," and all this 
 day of sullen rain the phrase has recurred again and 
 again with the nauseous persistence of some common- 
 place musical phrase that forces itself on the unwilling- 
 mertiory. To banish it, I have turned to see exactly 
 what Aristotle has written on the subject. . . . 
 Eadem sunt omnia semper. Eadem omnia restant. 
 There is change only in form and fashion. Now, as 
 then, the majority are slaves; a slave is a living instru- 
 [ 202 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 ment conducive to the life of others. The division is 
 eternal between the majority who serve as means to an 
 end, and the slender minority who are that end. . . . 
 A domestic slave, then, is a living instrument conducive 
 to the life of a single person; the ySarauo-os (artisan, 
 labourer, man of business, professional artist) is a living 
 instrument conducive to the lives of a number. A 
 modern domestic may change his service, may sink by 
 "independence" to the position of a ySavavaos. Sink, 
 for the latter, holds Aristotle the judicious aristocrat, — 
 what thinker is not aristocratic? — is ignoble and in- 
 competent, or almost incompetent of virtue, incompetent 
 in body, soul, and intellect by reason of his occupation. 
 In brief, as Taine would say, le metier ^eforme. 
 Sink, for there is " a natural helpfulness and friendship 
 between the master and the slave," ^- did not Chateau- 
 briand, weary of distressful freedom, yearn, in a moment 
 of ennui, to be the slave of a kindly master? — while 
 the relations of the fSdvava-iys to his employer for the 
 time being are "unnatural, and dependent on law or 
 force." Force? Yes, for he who is in possession 
 of money has a right of force over the work of 
 those who need money. That is to say, of bread- 
 winners, of those who cannot eat bread unless work is 
 given them, the more favoured are those who serve a 
 master with whom they are in daily contact, and the 
 less favoured are those who serve a firm, or the general 
 public. Either class, favoured slaves or hapless 
 Pdvava-oi, must sacrifice their lives for the benefit of the 
 leisured. That a few may live the life worth living, 
 the rest must toil. Faucis humanum vivit genus. 
 
 Logic would lead me to Ruskinism, Tolstoism. 
 But logic has little to do with life. Inequality is the 
 [ 203 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 law of Nature; we all toil for others; life is essentially 
 sacrifice; thoughtless leisure brings ennui, and thought- 
 ful leisure discovers that life is not worth living; the 
 only happiness that is possible is the happiness one 
 strives to give to others, who again are only happy so 
 long as they can delude themselves to believe that they 
 are happy. Yes, but this slavery is a question of degree, 
 and degree passes into kind. There is a woeful 
 difference between my position, in this year of 
 leisure, and that of the poisoned wool-sorter, the con- 
 sumptive mason, the "sweated" tailor, the miner with 
 his life in his hands. And yet the world laughs at 
 those who have lamented the life of industrial towns, 
 as prophets mourned over sinful cities. Or if the 
 world does not laugh, it spurns the thought that civilisa- 
 tion and industrialism are antinomies. Fourier and 
 his like are judged to be fools in their generation; 
 things must be as they may; town-life is civilisation, 
 town-life is progress, and progress is a virtue with 
 "put money in thy purse " for categorical imperative. 
 
 There may be free men with the bodies or the souls 
 of slaves, and slaves with the bodies or the souls of free 
 men. Aristotle is sorry that it should be so, but he and 
 society cannot help it. To call men slaves and ignoble 
 if slaves to vice, noble and free if virtuous, whatever 
 be their condition in life, is an ethical refinement 
 in the application of the word " slave " which Aristotle 
 raises for a moment and then dismisses as not regarding 
 social statics. It is a refinement akin to the " freedom 
 is obedience to moral law," the summa Deo servitus 
 siimtna libertas, or the intellectual, artistic freedom, the 
 "concept of deliverance" of Schopenhauer. The 
 manual of the Stoic slave was a revered revelation to 
 [ 204 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 the Emperor; and Adam Bade is as possible as a 
 Coupeau. And men are slaves of passion, cuique deus 
 fit dira cupido ; slaves of dogmas social, theological, 
 and anti-theological. We are all slaves of circumstance, 
 of heredity, of personality; quisque suos patitur manes. 
 And many seek to escape slavery to their own person- 
 ality by abdication, voluntary submission to a creed, 
 a dogma, a man. What else is hero-worship but this 
 voluntary obedience to a master of intrinsic moral 
 superiority, a "natural master," as Aristotle would say? 
 To Aristotle, Carlyle, Froude, the hero is a king of men 
 by divine right, representative of impersonal law, pre- 
 destined king politically as well as morally. The pity 
 only that potentates, whose right is might, whose might 
 is right, who are born to, or achieve leadership, mainly 
 compose the throng of Plato's "incurable souls," — for 
 such is the baneful influence of power — incurable even 
 by remedies of Tartarus. But hero-worshippers ever 
 judge with Plato's Socrates that one man of sense should 
 rule over ten thousand fools, conveniently holding the 
 while that they themselves are far other than fools, deem- 
 ing that they are a law unto themselves, approving with 
 Socrates's own Socrates that Homer's Ulysses should 
 appeal to the reason of the chiefs, and apply rough words 
 and rougher chastisement to the rank and file. More- 
 over, hero-worshippers conveniently fail to recognise any 
 such divinely appointed leader of men, philosophic king 
 or kingly philosopher, among the men of their own times. 
 They will confess inferiority to the dead alone; at 
 most, when young and generous, to some living sage 
 whose yoke is easy because he cannot compel obedience. 
 Among the dead, indeed, the choice of heroes is great; 
 but the hero when chosen is found to be mortal, and 
 [ 205 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 therefore peccant, imperfect, limited, — exceptional 
 moreover, as placed in circumstances that cannot occur 
 again and do not apply to us. One is reduced to 
 eclecticism . . . and eclecticism furnishes confused 
 light and little warmth. . . . 
 
 Evolution 
 and ethics, 
 continued. 
 
 But to return. At the least, "the altruistic en- 
 thusiast" should remember with Thomas Hill Green 
 that the case is not clear in favour of the assumption 
 that the effect of such character and activity is an addi- 
 tion to the aggregate of human pleasure, and that it 
 is doubtful whether ethical development does not involve 
 a large renunciation of pleasure. But the Socialist will 
 not hear of this, will not remember John Stuart Mill's 
 melancholy when he found, after careful thought, that 
 "great joy and happiness" were not likely to ensue 
 should the changes in institutions and opinions which 
 he looked forward to be even completely effected, that 
 the end had ceased to charm, and therefore, naturally, 
 the means toward that end. "I felt that the question 
 was whether, if the reformers of society and government 
 could succeed in their objects, and every person in the 
 community were free, and in a state of physical comfort, 
 the pleasures of life, being no longer kept up by strug- 
 gle and privation, would cease to be pleasures." . . . 
 Clearly the hope of the Socialist is hopeless, and we are 
 driven back on personal wisdom, on autonomous morality. 
 But the scientists who search in vain for a scientific 
 basis of morals must deprive us, in the interests of 
 Truth, of that conscience which Butler and Kant and 
 Newman recognised as an absolute and infallible guide. 
 Mr. Spencer informs us that "the sense of duty or 
 moral obligation is transitory, and will diminish as fast 
 [ 206 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 as moralisation increases." Conscience is evolved, and 
 has its origin in the struggle to assert self, to live. In 
 its evolved state it is merely the sum of certain social 
 instincts accumulated through the centuries, " the voice 
 of man," in Clifford's words, "ingrained in our hearts, 
 commanding us to work for Man," the voice of our 
 Father, Man, within us. Virtue is a habit, as Clifford, 
 after Aristotle, told us, informing us further that 
 Theism in the past had had no influence, except in 
 pernicious directions, and that Humanitarianism — and 
 Mr. Huxley agrees, plying the Positivists with satire 
 — will have no moral influence in, the future. The 
 spring of virtuous action is the social instinct, which 
 was set to work by the practice of comradeship. But 
 the comrades perceive, as Clifford perceived, that con- 
 science, the social instinct, is at war with nature, that 
 nature suggests obedience to her voice rather than to 
 that of the tribal, the extended self. And many com- 
 rades seem to find that the practice of comradeship is 
 compatible with all manner of practices that are pleasur- 
 able, and therefore " increase vitality," and yet to which, 
 in Spencerian phrase, the application of the word "bad " 
 is "most emphatic." In spite of the prophets of the 
 Tribal Self, men will persist in interpreting the voice 
 of their hereditary conscience to be a command to 
 "work for" themselves. The nation, humanity at 
 large, will be mere abstractions, powerless to influence 
 conduct. Duty will be the duty of "getting on" in 
 the world; rem, quocunque modo, rem will be con- 
 science's most constant behest. 
 
 But once again, all will be well in Evolutionary 
 Utopia. Suppose, then, that egoism and altruism are 
 balanced in a happy compromise, that there are no 
 [ 207 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 conflicts of selfish and social tendencies, that each and 
 all act spontaneously in accord with the conditions im- 
 posed by the social environment, that each and all are 
 blessed with a plenitude of existence. Will Utopian 
 mankind be happy? Unfortunately, as Mr. Spencer 
 khows, the wider and clearer is our knowledge, the 
 deeper is our consciousness of the mystery, the darkness 
 that bounds our knowledge. These Arcadians will 
 have leisure to think; and thought is melancholy. 
 Thought will ever be metaphysical, transcendental, 
 though morality become spontaneous, organic. Though 
 their needs and the means to satisfy these needs be in 
 equilibrium, they will ever be haunted by ideals, un- 
 satisfied desires. Acutely sensitive — for sensitiveness 
 increases with the increase of intelligence — they will 
 pose in anguish the insoluble, inevitable problem of im- 
 mortality. Intellectual, they will wonder why Nature 
 "groaneth and travaileth." Happy, they will wonder 
 why Nature cares so little for the happiness of her 
 other creatures. Moral, they will wonder why Nature 
 is supremely unjust, supremely immoral. 
 
 There can be no authority in any empirical system 
 of morality; and least of all in attempted psychological 
 explanations of the origines of conscience, and hypo- 
 thetical histories of the development of its potentiality. 
 As Scherer knew, that is not truly ethical which is not 
 also metaphysical, which does not transcend pheno- 
 menalism. But Kant, as Schiller wrote, "has made 
 the law of duty repulsive," or rather perhaps, obedience 
 to an abstract categorical imperative is an unemotional 
 obedience. Schiller, wishing to join Love to Law, 
 pointed to Christianity, "the only sesthetic religion," 
 [ 208 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 as the required synthesis. Yet Schiller was a theist at 
 most, gradually recoiling in disgust from the rationalism, 
 "the enlightened reason," which was his own early 
 boast, and which, he found, in keen disappointment, 
 "led to no higher morality, but the rather supported 
 arguments in favour of egoism." He endeavoured 
 to seek refuge in an "aesthetic religion," but an 
 aesthetic religion is only the religion of men who 
 accept as poets what they reject as thinkers. And 
 Schiller's epigram against the ethics of his first master, 
 Kant, was prompted by Goethe, whose "aesthetic re- 
 ligion " was that of self-culture. Now, self-culture is 
 the natural selection of that which is pleasurable, the 
 assimilation of whatsoever, in the realm of thought or 
 the realm of action, is conducive, by being pleasurable, 
 to self-preservation and aggrandisement, to the increased 
 duration and intensity of life. That is to say, the 
 aesthetic religion of self-culture is a chief minister to 
 that Egoism from which Schiller was seeking to escape. 
 Is escape possible? Suppose it should come to be 
 gradually understood, as it was understood by Greek 
 philosophers and sophists, that man is the maker of the 
 gods, that man the anthropomorphic mythopaeist at- 
 tributes, as Goethe would say, to a single God all the 
 perfections of which he perceives the germs within 
 himself. Would not the fears of the Polybians be 
 realised, would not the decadence of morality be at hand, 
 even as decadence followed enlightenment in Greece? 
 Suppose it should come to be generally "considered 
 that "man is the measure of all things." The heroic in 
 poems and dramas, and in poetical, dramatical crises of 
 life, is ever based on the sense of the supreme claims 
 of divine Right; remove this sense, and the possibility 
 V [ 209 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 of heroism is removed. A generation or so may 
 conduct themselves much in the way in which their 
 believing, unenlightened forefathers conducted them- 
 selves, and deem they have attained a higher morality 
 (I have already rehearsed Vico's account of the decad- 
 ence of every " third " philosophic age) ; but will not 
 the men of these generations be like those incense- 
 caskets of which Carneades spoke as retaining for a 
 while their fragrancy though they are empty? For 
 an example on the largest scale of empirical, agnostic 
 morality, we must turn to China; and yet who does 
 not shudder at this example of a civilisation which yet 
 fulfils the dream of positivists and progressists, which 
 is based on reason, on common-sense, on the love 
 of mediocrity, which recognises no other merit and 
 privilege than those which are tested and acquired by 
 competitive examinations. ... Is there a bathos in 
 the last words of this last sentence? Perchance not. 
 ... It matters not. 
 
 The In default of any possible scientific basis of morality, 
 
 ecstasy ° I am driven to personal eclecticism, to private wisdom, 
 to autonomous morality, to airapKua, self-sufficiency, 
 internal adequacy. ... An hour of disinterested in- 
 sight, repeat the sages, is enough. To have lived in 
 the eternal order, to have kept the mind separate and 
 distinguished from objects of appetite and events of 
 time, to have been the contemplator of all time and 
 existence, to have beheld all things under the form of 
 eternity, is enough, is ample, is sufficient immortality. 
 Life can offer no more; added hours and days are 
 supererogatory, idle repetitions. . . . 
 
 Dawn, then, timeless hour of Neo-Platonic ecstasy, 
 [ 2IO J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 o£ mystical absorption in the absolute unity of pure 
 indifference! Or, — since I am humble, and presume 
 not to soar too highly — Come, thou mystic vision of 
 the manifestation of the absolute co-equality of Nature 
 and Spirit, of the train of dialectical deductions of 
 modes and attributes, of the process of the Idea realised 
 in differentiations and integrations of differences. . . . 
 I smile as I lisp the jargon of Spinoza, Schelling, 
 Hegel, in vain effort to utter the ineffable. . . . And 
 does not the /xovo^povos ijSoviJ, the voluptuous moment 
 of the fiercely sensuous Aristippus correspond on the 
 side of sense to Neo-Platonic ecstasy? Both are 
 fleeting moments that will not be stayed. Nay, did 
 not Hegesias, disciple of Aristippus, holding with his 
 master that pleasure is the sole good, conclude with 
 the Neo-Platonists that indifference is the sole attitude 
 of the wise, since pleasure is impossible, incapable of 
 realisation — did not this Cyrenaic logically become 
 "Death's Advocate?" 
 
 Let me be content with an hour of "wise passivity" 
 to Nature. Why have I brought these pages of self- 
 analysis with me to this woodland haunt of peace? 
 Why analyse at all? It is enough to yield to the 
 influence of the hour, to watch the golden orb sink 
 cloudless, to eye its roseate aureole paling, gradating 
 aloft to faintest green and to spectral blue, and the 
 responsive purples of its couch of wood-crowned hills, 
 fold after fold, mist-veiled, wonderful. . . . 
 
 And, on ecstasy will follow melancholy. After the 
 slumber of the Ego comes its dolorous awakening. 
 After intensity comes depression and distressful re- 
 action to the mystic, to the sensualist ... to me. 
 In an hour I must return in the after-glow of the sun 
 
 [ 211 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 that will have died to my narrow room, gradually 
 narrowed also to myself, feeling the reverberations of 
 the ecstasy of an hour grow fainter and fainter. Even 
 so is the mystical intuition of the absolute unity but 
 a lark's flight. Upward, upward ... a momentary 
 pause . . . and then a swift sullen descent from 
 Synthesis to Theses and Antitheses, from Unity to 
 Multiplicity, from Unity to a miserable Unity in Differ- 
 ence, a Unity which embraces vain earnestness, pain, 
 patience, sorrow, toil. . . . 
 
 Wisdom, did I write above? Peace, rather, peace! 
 has been the passionate cry of men baffled in thought 
 and action. Yet peace is held to dwell in the temple 
 of wisdom. Peace, serenity? As well hope for hap- 
 piness, since both presuppose a delicate equilibrium' 
 of faculties and environment hardly to be attained, or 
 if attained, preserved. Peace, harmony, to be won by 
 wisdom? "Oh, wisdom, thou speakest like a dove," 
 retorts Goethe's wounded eagle to the dove that 
 counsels gentleness and moderation. There are those 
 whose due element is the storm; Chateaubriand, wise 
 in the knowledge of the vanity of all things, by age 
 reduced from a Ren6 to a Ranc6, is peaceful much as 
 the dying volcano is peaceful. But for the contem- 
 plative, for them that have renounced even before 
 experience, for such as I, — is not peace to be won by 
 wisdom? Nay, is not knowledge another name for 
 sorrow, and contemplation for melancholy? To know 
 oneself is to be conscious that one is "an outcast on 
 this world, the bondsman of insensate strife," even as 
 Empedocles was conscious. To know, to be wise, is to 
 be disillusioned, is to be submissive to the mediocrity of 
 
 [ 212 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 the actual, is to be the craven sport of fate. Experience, 
 which fires the youthful to indignation, chills the aged 
 to tolerance; he that has lived the lives of others, that 
 has contemplated the world from the narrow cell in 
 which fate has confined him, is aged already in his 
 youth, is tolerant — • scornfully. 
 
 But were not those Renaissance Humanists aright 
 when they judged that wisdom brought peace? At 
 first, indeed, still hampered in their mediaeval swathing- 
 bands, they fondly thought that to be wise was to be 
 an adept in syllogistic Ethics and Rhetoric. But soon 
 came Dante with his Convito, truer "Treasure" than 
 that of his master Brunetto; came Petrarca and his 
 fellows. The wisdom of the ancients was redis- 
 covered; not that mere timid, sordid wisdom of worldly 
 prudence, consisting in saws and proverbs meet for 
 Poloniusj not the pedestrian wisdom that deals with 
 the means of worldly success. Virtue was known to be 
 a habit, virtue was an art; conduct was exposed to no 
 doubt, all the Schools past and present could meet in 
 unison on this one note. Moral philosophy was judged 
 the sole true philosophy. To progress in such wisdom 
 was to progress in virtue. This was supreme wisdom, 
 to set bounds to desire, corporeal and intellectual. 
 Prudence would govern the impulses of the heart, 
 prudence would counsel the neglect of insoluble ques- 
 tions and the candid confession of sane ignorance. A 
 tranquil optimism was the sure result of moderation, 
 of avoidance of all excess; to cultivate virtue, to be of 
 good will towards all men, was enough. . . . But the 
 dream soon died away. Dante turns from the Convito 
 to the Commedia, Petrarca is led to mystic aspiration, 
 to asceticism, to pessimism, by his conviction that on 
 [ 213 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 earth is no fruition of desire, that the things of this 
 world, as Dante sings, nulla promission rendono intera, 
 promise only, never fulfil promise. To calm suc- 
 ceeded the anxious hauntings of the problems that 
 cannot be stifled. There is no possible return to the 
 calm wisdom of the ancients, — which calm is only 
 a coinage of the brain, a beautiful figment of the 
 imagination, a creature of nostalgia, unhistorical, un- 
 critical. 
 
 Well enough says Bacon that philosophy propounds 
 many things beautiful in speech, but remote from use. 
 A scientist has discovered that the flower is a malady 
 of the plant; the fairer, then, the flower, the more 
 corrupt the state of the plant. Let Hesiod speak of 
 primitive Hellas, and Thucydides of its maturity. . . . 
 What an ingrate I am becoming. But it may be that 
 I disparage Grecian wisdom, only because I have made 
 it my own so long, and have grown weary of it. In 
 time past I took Grecian wisdom at its fairest and 
 shaped it to my purposes. I measured the limits of my 
 nature and the limiting, narrow environment in which 
 it must move; it was crtoijjpoa-vvri to discern these limits 
 and to keep resolutely within them. My eclectic 
 wisdom was a negative wisdom, a delicate form of 
 ascetic abstention, a graceful submission, — for so, under 
 my circumstances, was it wise to modify my ideal 
 wisdom. To execute my meed of daily toil, dutifully, 
 irreproachably, to bear myself towards those with whom 
 I must come into contact with a gentle reserve, to retire 
 with all possible speed to my lonely chamber, there to 
 forget my own mean personality in disinterested con- 
 templation, to reduce the cost of food and clothing to 
 its lowest limit that so I might garner modest materials 
 [ 214 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 of contemplation, books, prints, portraits, figured land- 
 scapes of climes I was not to visit, increase my slender 
 store of music from time to time, and amass some tiny 
 sum wherewith to defray a fortnight's freedom on the 
 marge of a summer sea — this was my intent and prac- 
 tice. . . . Egoism, egoism only, though it were con- 
 templative, disinterested, almost impersonal! I had 
 elected myself into the minority, and in this minority 
 I companied only with the dead. I had severed myself 
 from the broad current of humanity. I was a haughty, 
 isolated individualist, even as the Stoics. . . . Such 
 calm, such quietism should be but as the period of rest, 
 the breathing-space between effort and renewed effort. 
 The passions should not be quenched, but directed to 
 noble ends. The true ideal of the Humanists was 
 Fuomo universale, the man who developed to the full, in 
 ideal order, his whole faculties. . . . But was I not 
 forcibly retained in my side-eddy? How, in my 
 poverty, could I consort with others? None cared to 
 abandon the flowing tide even for a moment to seek 
 me out in my solitude and obscurity. I was not bidden 
 to share men's joys, and their sorrows I could not hope 
 to alleviate. It was wisdom to have submitted myself 
 to circumstances; I had shaped mean material to its 
 fairest possible form. I had modified to koKov, cn}<j>po<7m'r], 
 TO iierpov, beautiful goodness, prudent wisdom, due 
 measure, as beseemed my circumstances; I had exer- 
 cised ata-Orjcri's as it was possible for me to exercise it. 
 And must I not resume such way of life after this year 
 of freedom — freedom of which I seem to avail myself 
 only to transgress the first laws of wisdom, to infringe 
 the OvrjTa Xoyi^ov, the /xrjBiv ayav, to overstep the due 
 bounds of moderation, of opportune human thought. 
 
 [ 215 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 But, since humanity is ever in a state of development, 
 to us, the heirs of all the ages, is offered more than the 
 wisdom of the Humanists. To us it is given to iind 
 consolation in a religion free from the taint of the 
 supernatural discredited by Science. Wisdom might 
 leave us cold, even as it leaves me cold, — and such 
 torpor, such "absence of habitual admiration " is irre- 
 ligious. Religion is enthusiasm, and the substance 
 of religion is culture, which is " a threefold devotion to 
 Goodness, Beauty, and Truth," the enthusiasm of 
 morality, art, and physical science. . . . Such is the re- 
 ligion on which Strauss falls back after two attempts to . 
 write a Leben Jesu which he judged inadequate, and the 
 author of Natural Religion after an essayed Ecce Homo. 
 
 But whence is to come the motive power of the 
 newer, more perfect religion? Enthusiasm is the 
 creature of moods. Possessing culture, I am possessed 
 of melancholy. Self-analysis is self-torture, is wilful 
 aggravation of misery; self-knowledge is the discovery 
 of inward emptiness. Nay, to attempt to know self is 
 to attempt the impossible, and to attempt the impossible, 
 to overstep due human bounds, is veriest madness, as 
 the Greeks well knew. "Man is a dark being," judged 
 Goethe, "he knows not whence he comes, nor whither 
 he goes, knows little of the world, and least of all of 
 himself. I know not myself, and God preserve me 
 from such knowledge." But Culture, which elevates 
 us beyond ourselves, which frees us from selfishness, 
 can only make us aware of the thoughts and actions of 
 other selves. Humanity is "a dark being," unknown 
 and unknowable to itself, environed in mystery. To 
 be aware of the myriad guesses of humanity at the 
 enigma of its own being is to be sunk in melancholy. 
 [ 216 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Culture is " a threefold devotion to Goodness, Beauty, 
 and Truth." It is rightly understood that, for the 
 practical life, morality, unconditional, disinterested, is 
 wholly indefeasible and paramount; that virtue is its 
 own reward, and vice entails its own punishment. It 
 is rightly understood that to transgress the moral order 
 is to lose thereby all peace and calm; the brutal, the 
 materialised, the frivolous, as Renan says, these are 
 truly irreligious. But I have never hesitated in proffer- 
 ing complete allegiance to right conduct. The analogy 
 of art and virtue is incomplete; but, to me, the good was 
 the beautiful; gentleness, sympathy, charity, chastity 
 commanded adhesion by right of their beauty. But 
 the performance of duty, the adhesion to right conduct, 
 inspires me with no enthusiasm, frees me not from 
 melancholy, deepens it the rather. The appreciation 
 of, and sensibility to, that which is beautiful in literature, 
 the imitative arts, and music, bring only momentary 
 delight; on enthusiasm follows the reaction of de- 
 spondency, born of the contrast between the actual and 
 the ideal. I am a mere dilettante, it is true, and not a 
 creative artist. Yet the dilettante is freer than the 
 creative artist, he is not so much the slave of his own 
 personality, not narrowed to a single vision of things, 
 to a special "moment." The dilettante can range 
 through the ages, transcend by sympathy his own race, 
 environment, and moment, appreciate many, varied, 
 contradictory ideals. And if the dilettante is the 
 readier prey of melancholy, precisely because of his 
 largeness of vision, the productivity of the creative 
 artist does not necessarily engender serenity; witness 
 Michael Angelo, Delacroix, Rossetti, and countless 
 others. Of the "religion" of science, I cannot speak; 
 [ 217 ] 
 
ne Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 expositions of natural facts and their correlations leave 
 me cold. Text-books treat of that which happens and 
 the manner of its happening, of the laws generalised 
 from the coexistences and successions of phenomena, 
 they affirm a multitude of experimental truths; but for 
 me in these affirmations there is nothing emotional or 
 provocative of enthusiasm. How could I desire the 
 enthusiasm of science, since the predominance of the 
 scientific instinct, analogous though it be to the en- 
 thusiastic productivity of the creative artist, is as it 
 were a hypertrophy implying, balanced by, an atrophy 
 of other faculties. A Goethe, when he adds to his 
 enthusiasm of art that of science, is the victim of two 
 contrary species of enthusiasm; the scientific critic of 
 the mature Goethe apologises for his science, the 
 literary critic blames science for the short-comings of 
 the poet. And the mature Goethe, whose "sublime 
 cheerfulness," according to John Addington Symonds, 
 is a forecast of the results of the scientific spirit, tolerant 
 of literary criticism, intolerant of scientific criticism, 
 falls back on Grecian wisdom, blames as folly the rais- 
 ing of "insoluble problems," narrows himself to the 
 "natural" human understanding, confesses that his life 
 has been but toil and trouble, that the mental comfort- 
 ableness, the Behagen to seek and ensure which was 
 highest wisdom, had been attained not in thirty days out 
 of seventy-five years. Moreover, Goethe, scientist and 
 visionary of the beautiful and eternal, supreme type of 
 the cultured, did not expect, did not wish to be 
 comprehended by the multitude, the majority, the 
 public. The cultured are in a constant minority, half 
 pitiful, half disdainful of the majority, who instinctively 
 mistrust their condescension and virtuosity. 
 [ 218 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Thinking of Culture, I am minded of the Golden The same, 
 Book I made for myself in the first ardour of youth. I <=°"''""ed. 
 sought through the literatures for the one supreme 
 expression of each of the many varied ideas and emo- 
 tions of which I deemed myself capable. What severity 
 I used towards those hapless sages and poets; rejecting 
 that which I had at first accepted with joy and admira- 
 tion; replacing good by newly-found better, the better 
 by the felicitous, rare, delicate best; eliminating in the 
 final draft of my Book of Hours, of Moods, all but these 
 best — even as an examiner who, in miserable calmness, 
 arbitrates a struggle for survival. 
 
 And to that end? of what avail? It is years since 
 I opened the book, abandoned for dust to accumulate 
 upon it. This Arnoldian knowledge of the best said 
 and written on each subject, this knowledge tinged 
 with emotion, this expansion of self, this escape from 
 the everyday self to the universal, eternal self, from 
 particularity to generality, — of what avail? Dead Sea 
 fruit, only. As in my eclectic hero-worship the 
 thought gave me pause that each of my heroes was but 
 a frail mortal whose life furnishes ample material for 
 detraction as well as admiration, whose appreciation 
 varies not only with each appreciator but with his age 
 and mood, so in these supreme expressions of emotions 
 and ideas, or emotional ideas, I could not refrain from 
 perceiving the insufficiency of their verbal manifesta- 
 tions. Words determine thought, and determination, 
 though it be a condition of art, is still negation. 
 Trasutnanar significar per verba non si poria, knows 
 Dante; transcendental thought cannot be expressed in 
 mortal words, though all thought that is worth the 
 thinking is transcendental. Thought expressed is 
 
 [ 219 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 thought belied, sighed Tutchef, mournful Russian 
 lyrist. Alfred de Vigny sorrowed that poetry must 
 lose half its charm in the expression, and preferred the 
 charge of sterility. My Golden Book was to have 
 been a chosen gallery of Fair Ideas, each type in its 
 supreme manifestation; but not long, and I must look 
 on it as a collection of chill petrifactions. Not only 
 was the Idea more than the sum of ideas, but each idea 
 was incapable of perfect revelation. I was the inferior 
 of the poet or sage in that they had reduced ideas to 
 form, had prisoned, limited ideas; but I was their 
 equal in that I knew, like them, that the form, 
 however supreme, is wholly inadequate. All that 
 the form could serve was to inspire dissatisfaction 
 with the form, to suggest a reverie similar to that 
 which had preceded this special crystallisation, this 
 precipitation, this birth into prisoning form. Ex- 
 pression is translation, and traddutore traditore ; the 
 perfume is more than the flower; the spirit more than 
 the word. 
 
 Alas! the breath of the spirit is intermittent; the 
 hours of insight are rare. On enthusiasm follows 
 irony and despondency; sunshine yields to rain, roses 
 fade, and the rapture of the night is spent on the 
 morrow's awakening. Not for long does Mephis- 
 topheles abandon the youthful Faust; and the aged 
 Faust, or the Faust who is old in youth, is a Mephis- 
 topheles unto himself. The hours of reaction readily 
 tend to an almost unbroken continuity. Hours of 
 insight? "No man, in his wits, attains prophetic 
 truth and inspiration; but when he receives the inspired 
 word, either intelligence is enthralled by sleep, or he is 
 demented by some distemper or possession." So Plato, 
 [ 220 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 who, moreover, with his symbolical psychology, holds 
 that enthusiasm is seated, not in the brain, but in the 
 liver, compact of sweet and bitter. Did not our 
 "Augustan age," the age of "common-sense," decor- 
 ously abhor all enthusiasm? And yet it is permanent 
 enthusiasm that I crave. Pleasures of the mind — or 
 liver, — ye are as fleeting as other pleasures. 
 
 The making of the Golden Book chilled all desire 
 for self-expression. I chose to be inarticulate, precisely 
 because I knew " the best said and written on each sub- 
 ject." I was humble, and not to be roused to emulation 
 by others' achievements, as Goethe was roused. During 
 the last months, indeed, that preceded these months 
 of liberty, I sought deliverance, even as Goethe, by 
 voicing my emotions. After prolonged scorn of ex- 
 pression, and deepest scorn of such expression as I 
 could give to emotional thought, I dallied with the 
 antithesis of my thesis, and allowed myself to suppose 
 that thought unexpressed was not ■ worthy of the name 
 of thought. My little poems, my musical thoughts, 
 my melodies in minor keys, my emotions determined 
 in form, were a deliverance, a comfort, in a manner. 
 Absorbed, I could forget the unloveliness of the streets 
 through which I passed to and from my daily toil; 
 I was no longer exposed to my wonted fastidium 
 quotidinarum formarum, my wonted weariness of wonted 
 sights of unloveliness. But now, in these months of 
 my deliverance and consolation- — what a deliverance 
 and consolation! — ^now that I rest at ease on the lap 
 of Alma Parens, I am voluntarily inarticulate once 
 more, save for this confession, this attempted analysis 
 of my melancholy. I cared little for my Golden 
 Book, I care nothing at all for those feeble cries 
 
 [ 221 ] 
 
love, 
 
 The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 of my heart, — cries that none have heard, or shall 
 hear. It is enough to be lulled by the music of 
 the brook, to watch the diapered sunlight on the 
 flowered sward. But night follows day, and with the 
 night I confess, unless I am happily all too wearied for 
 confession. 
 
 Culture and Religion is enthusiasm, and the substance of religion 
 religion jg culture. So I wrote, epitomising others, objecting, 
 Platonic ' a few pages back. Surely, then, the Enthusiasm of 
 Beauty, of Intellectual Beauty, would suffice me. 
 Giordano Bruno, capable of Gli Eroici Furori, revered 
 Sophia, mistress of his soul, in ecstatic fervour. 
 The One, the Infinite, was incomprehensible, unattain- 
 able; yet the quest of Truth, the lover's wooing, was 
 present Heaven. Nay, is not desire sweeter far than 
 fruition? To love Sophia — wisdom — devotedly, un- 
 selfishly, even as a troubadour loved his lofty, unattain- 
 able mistress, to meditate on the beauty of Beauty, 
 were all-sufficient wisdom. Diotima, she who revealed 
 the mysteries of love to Socrates, Plato's Diotima, — 
 though Plato in later life will not hear of reason-dis- 
 turbing emotion — would doubtless warn me that I had 
 not "learned to see the beautiful in right order and 
 succession," that I had not observed the due degrees and 
 stages of initiation. To the love of one fair being 
 should have succeeded that of all fair forms j and 
 the love of general beauty should have led me to 
 the love of fair practices, from practices to fair ideas, 
 from ideas to Absolute Unity, to the knowledge of 
 the essence of Beauty. But I divined from the first 
 that I must omit the first stage of initiation. Doubt- 
 less I should have loved "one fair form only,'' gladly 
 
 [ 222 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 recognising in reverence that the beauty of her mind 
 was fairer, was " more honourable, " than the beauty of 
 her outward form. But a Rossetti finds, or thinks to 
 find, that the first degree of initiation is equivalent 
 to the whole; the mysticism which, to Diotima, the 
 hierophant, and Bruno the dutiful disciple, is the final 
 stage of initiation, is revealed at once and from the 
 first to the lover who can proudly vaunt to his lady that 
 "Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor Thee from 
 myself, neither our love from God." But this per- 
 verted, vain mysticism, this idolatry of the finite, this 
 spiritualisation of the flesh, this building of artificial 
 paradises, — well, all mysticism, dialectic of heart or 
 head. Christian or Sufistic, wavers on a razor's edge, the 
 abyss of melancholy madness on this side, of sensuality 
 on that. It matters not; the "not impossible she " was, 
 in my case, quite impossible. Had I beheld such a 
 one, I should have loved in secret, glorying in silence, 
 in abstinence from word or sign. Why should I not 
 the rather consider it a cause for thankfulness that 
 I have escaped the first initiation? Haply, the desire 
 to love is the fairest love, and I was worthy candidate 
 for initiation into the Greater Mysteries, without 
 previous initiation into the Lesser. Straightway, 
 indeed, from my earliest youth, I loved all forms, prac- 
 tices, ideas, that were fair. But "the last vision," 
 which was to reveal to me "a single science, which is 
 the science of Universal Beauty," is not to be hoped. 
 I have- set fair practices as a thing apart, not to be 
 influenced by theories and their conflict. But Abso- 
 lute Beauty is merely a negative, logical abstraction, 
 like the Neo-Alexandrian, and transcendental German, 
 Divinity — the One, lifeless, indifferent, till limited, 
 [ 223 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 degraded, manifested imperfectly in the material Many. 
 And relative Beauty, as Diotima knew, is "fair from 
 one point of view and foul from another," "fair to some 
 and foul to others," subject to time and circumstance 
 and mood. I behold fair ideas, but not the one fair 
 idea; I cannot but shift my point of view and find 
 inadequacy, if not foulness, in the fairest ideas. 
 
 But the religion of Spinoza, the possession of 
 adequate ideas, the freedom from all passions, does not 
 this suffice? Have not the moods been frequent in 
 which, disinterestedly contemplative, I have looked on 
 my own meanness and misfortune as a passing note in 
 the universal harmony, and on all things and thoughts 
 as the necessary modifications of the two modes of 
 Substance which alone are cognisable to man? Have 
 I not known the momentary calm which ensues on the 
 complete surrender of self, the acquiescence in absolute 
 Necessity? Or, since the artist within me is not to be 
 stifled, — art is sworn enemy of abstractions — why not 
 seek refuge in Schopenhauer's "Concept of Deliver- 
 ance," which embraces at once the religion of art 
 and the Spinozistic religion of the. eternal? Perfect 
 rest and liberty will result on the extinction of personal 
 desire; an escape from the baneful illusions of the 
 senses, from the chains of causality, is open to the dis- 
 interested visionary of the All "under the aspect of 
 Eternity." The sphere of the relative, of appearance 
 and contradiction, is transcended, and the soul finds 
 peace in the Absolute, lives the divine life. The effort 
 to exist in the discordant and partial, the infelicity 
 of impeded energy, pass into the tranquil existence 
 in the whole. The voluntary euthanasia of the will 
 [ 224 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 brings release from bondage; the personal self dies 
 that the true self may live. . . . 
 
 As though Kant had not dealt a death-blow to 
 mystic, transcendent Absolutes and Substances! As 
 though Neo-Platonic, Spinozistic Absolutes were more 
 than mere negations, abstractions, colourless lifeless fig- 
 ments of the void! Absorption is but annihilation. 
 Moreover, the necessary parallelism of spirit and body 
 precludes long communion with the One that is the All, 
 precludes the reconciliation, the identification of nature 
 and spirit, thought and extension. It is well, it is noble 
 to essay with Marcus Aurelius to " preserve the rational 
 faculties free from the allotments of fate, to keep the 
 mind distinct from the objects of appetite and events 
 of time." Goethe's personal adaptation of Spinozism, 
 his unsystematical Pantheism, was little more than 
 this; like the Roman Emperor, he retired within him- 
 self, there to escape as far as might be the fatalities of 
 nature and society. He sought to cherish his genius 
 by regulating its impetuosity; in the doctrine of 
 Spinoza he found the calm, the Stoicism, he desider- 
 ated. But did he not also find that "all which is 
 Spinozism in poetical production becomes in reflection 
 Machiavellism "; that is to say. Nature the unconscious 
 artist, and man the conscious artist, produce their works 
 of art, but men and artists, reflecting on inner and 
 outward nature, discover merely a will-to-live, an en- 
 deavour to persist in being, a selfish dolorous struggle 
 for survival and plenitude of being. The artist and 
 the mystic must descend to the levels of human life, 
 and descending, they are prey of deepest melancholy. 
 The Spinozist, declining, as he must decline, into the 
 sphere of the relative, must ask himself why the 
 Q [ 225 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Absolute lies under the necessity of manifesting itself, 
 limiting itself, of thus producing a world of evil, which 
 evil, though it be a figment of the imagination, of inade- 
 quate knowledge, is still evil. Schopenhauer must con- 
 fess that the moments of deliverance, of mystic, artistic 
 liberty, are brief and infrequent. Even the delicate, 
 contemplative Joubert, that gentle soul who seemed to his 
 friends to tolerate his prisoning body as best might 
 be, was not at peace, was not calm, though he endeav- 
 oured, — pretended, says Chateaubriand, — to be calm. 
 
 But mankind is not to be contented and consoled 
 either by bounded knowledge, or — were it possible — 
 boundless. Goethe's Faust and Vigny's Moses, having 
 attained to wisdom, to the steady vision of the whole, 
 sigh that they are no longer men, mere men, ephemeral, 
 bounded. From Paradise they would fain descend 
 again to Purgatory, and exchange the divine life of 
 adequate wisdom for the human life of imperfect 
 knowledge and, therefore, of imperfect will, of alter- 
 nating joy and sorrow. Gladly would they cease to 
 emulate the stars, "unhasting, unresting," ever orderly, 
 — the stars which Plato and Kant and Goethe despair- 
 ingly envied, the stars which to Machiavelli were but 
 emblems of mutability. . . . And the boon of return 
 to the conditions of human wisdom granted, they 
 would sorrow that their request was heard. Weary 
 of human wisdom, appalled by human misery, they 
 would yearn for deliverance from the human lot. 
 For mankind can know no lasting joy in acquiescence, 
 in acceptance of the conditions and facts of human 
 life. From contented self-contemplation we speedily 
 pass to prison laments; the Athenian cult of beauty 
 and humanity necessarily yields to Alexandrian mysti- 
 [ 226 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 cism. Even the practical, moderate, agnostic Chinese, 
 adherents of rationality and common-sense, furnish 
 devotees of Laotsev and the Buddha. 
 
 Doubtless I am a weakling, an inlirm spirit, a The 
 "problematic nature." And, oh Spinozistic principles, "'^'s'''- 
 it is madness to regret or complain; I am constituted been." 
 thus and thus, and to wish I were other than I am 
 is as though the clay were to be dissatisfied with the 
 shape to which the potter has moulded it, as though a 
 triangle were to sigh that it is not a square. Yet, 
 looking back on my past, disinterested spectator of 
 that which I have done and suffered, I see not a little 
 that is not unworthy of admiration, — will exerted 
 strenuously and continuously, purposeful concentra- 
 tion, brave effort. Early success did not impair mod- 
 esty, later constant failure did not daunt. But when 
 self-sacrifice for my nearest and dearest proved use- 
 less, when all occasion for devotion was removed, when 
 I was free to think in solitude, — well, I was a Stoic- 
 Epicurean. Haply, it was degeneration, to be cultured 
 and contemplative, gentle and disinterested. 
 
 I cannot refrain from indulging in idle reveries of 
 what I might have been, of what I might be still. 
 My self-love, my will-to-live is, I suppose, flattered 
 and encouraged by such fancies ... a little change 
 in my circumstances — " Oh, the little more, and how 
 much it is! And the little less, and what worlds 
 away ! " — a little ease, the confidence, the expansiveness 
 based on security, on the knowledge that one has a 
 firm standing-ground beneath the sun! ... It were 
 as profitable to ponder what they who, beloved of the 
 gods, died young, might have effected, had they lived. 
 [ 227 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 I have been long dead, even as a sage should be dead 
 — dead to the senses and passions. And yet I am a 
 sorry sage, for phantoms haunt me still. I am neither 
 sage, nor man of flesh and blood. 
 
 Of what avail, had I been less the butt of fortune, 
 less a vicarious "whipping-boy," perchance, on some 
 principle of compensation, of equilibrium, for some 
 favourite of fortune whom I know not? Given pros- 
 perity, should I be more than a dilettante, blind and 
 selfish, amiably contented and tolerant, despicably 
 amused and amusable, respectable because instinctively 
 reluctant to cause suffering to others, and thereby to 
 myself? Nay; I was ever serious. No religion of 
 culture could wholly satisfy me; my innocent hobby- 
 driving, my quickly responsive sensibility to the charms 
 of the delicate, the rare, the beautiful, the Italian days 
 that would be mine could not completely stave off the 
 problem. Take what path you will, and you are 
 brought sooner or later to a stand by the blank wall 
 of fearsome mystery. Nursing in delicious solitude 
 my "dainty sympathies," I should find myself repeat- 
 ing Coleridge's question: "Was it right, while my 
 unnumbered brethren toiled and bled, that I should 
 dream away the entrusted hours on rose-leaf beds, 
 pampering the coward heart with feelings all too 
 delicate for use?" Yet why fondly imagine what I 
 might or might not be, were my circumstances altered. 
 I am what I am, and Coleridge was what he was, 
 Coleridge in whom, despite Spinoza, emotion and 
 cognition were not the same things as volition. 
 
 The Had not the doubting votary of Culture, the 
 
 remedy of ^^^fjfjg^ enthusiast of Goodness, Beauty, Truth, best 
 
 music. ' •" ' 
 
 [ =-^8 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 restrict his rites to music? The German religion of 
 Culture, the religion of Goethe, Schiller, Strauss, 
 logically, historically results in the religion of music, 
 the latest art. That which can be formulated is sub- 
 ject to contradiction; and antinomical thought is pro- 
 ductive of pain, of mental anguish. Music is vague; 
 and, save in geometry, as Renan would say, the vague 
 is the true. Music is deliverance; music frees us 
 from ourselves, from the discordant world of things. 
 Music is paradise restored; Casella sings, and Dante, 
 Virgil, and the clustering, hapless listeners forget a 
 while that they dwell in Purgatory. Music is mystic 
 contemplation, contemplative of no arid, ideal geom- 
 etry; music is the true purgation of the passions, 
 purgation that is not annihilation. It awakes our 
 secret joys and sorrows and aspirations; yet trans- 
 mutes them into tearful joy and emotional peace. Its 
 mingled joy and pain is tempered, gentle, ever on this 
 side of acuity and excess. Stimulant and anodyne at 
 once, its excitement is calm. Appalled by the world- 
 silence that is sole response to my anguished question- 
 ings, strong-hearted in Stoic apathy, it is yet mine by 
 music's aid to forget my despair, to be moved to 
 suavest melancholy, to be appeased as by a tender 
 mother's lullabies. 
 
 Salvation by music? The "musical soul" that 
 would be blessed is in much the same case as the 
 theologian or philosopher. There are divers, con- 
 tradictory musical creeds, and sects pullulate. The 
 odium musicale is rife, and self-judged orthodox per- 
 secute the heterodox, each school of which latter judges 
 itself in turn to be solely orthodox. And your musical 
 eclectic, your doubting, rest-seeking musical Erasmus 
 r 229 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 must creep into a corner out of the way of strife, there 
 to discover to his sorrow that in his new religion there 
 is ever but a grain of the charming vague to an ounce 
 of the unlovely mathematical, and that he cannot have 
 the grains apart from the ounces in which they are 
 mingled. The vague! One is tempted to transpose 
 Voltaire's gibe against Metaphysics, and apply it to 
 music: when executants know not the master's mean- 
 ing, and the master knows not his own — then you 
 have Music. And of what crimes the modem 
 "musical soul" is guilty! Does he not fear Plato's 
 wrath when he dares to find the excellency of music 
 in its pleasure, when he foully divorces music from 
 words, when he allows the baneful influence of new- 
 fangled modes and rhythms to steal over him? Did 
 not Pythagoras judge him to be a fool who judged of 
 music by sound and ears; should not he who puts his 
 ears in the place of his mind be banished from the state ? 
 Does not the Indian fable warn us that the rapt 
 chorister is in danger of being consumed by his own 
 ardour; and what are the cicalas but the melomaniacs 
 transformed, who took supreme delight in the songs of 
 the Muses, who sang always, oblivious of all things, 
 delivered from care, till they forgot and died and were 
 changed to strident, monotonous cicalas? 
 
 Why do I thus idly jest in the matter of deliverance 
 by music, parody my painful doubts and obstinate 
 questionings as to other deliverances, other remedies 
 of melancholy? Deliverance by music cannot concern 
 me deeply. Music is a reconciler of antinomies, but 
 precisely because it is almost thoughtless. At best, 
 the return to the actual, the recoil at the contrast after 
 brief deliverance by music is not so dolorous, so de- 
 
 [ 230 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 spairing as in the case of the deliverances by the other 
 arts, by intellectual culture. Rhythms in major keys 
 superinduce dreamy moods of joy; rhythms in minor 
 keys are dreamily pathetic and melancholy; vitality is 
 heightened by allegros, tranquillity reigns the while 
 andantes pursue their even course. There is little 
 more than this to be exactly said of music, apart from 
 questions of acoustics, and of structural form. There 
 are who, by temperament and training, can evoke 
 changing pictures during the progress of a symphony; 
 but those, and they, the greater number, who passively 
 surrender themselves to the various moods inspired by 
 various rhythms, can render no account of their visions 
 or their moods that is not merely fanciful, in pro- 
 portion as the intrinsic vague is formulated. No 
 two listeners to the same music would agree in the 
 interpretation of their moods or visions, if they 
 ventured to tell more than that they, or their visions, 
 had been sad or joyful, and the like. Music at most is 
 an hour's release from thought. 
 
 But I were an ingrate to disparage the anodyne of The same, 
 music, music that better deserves the praises that poets continued : 
 
 -r^ ■, -1 • , T ,, • , The ethics 
 
 have lavished on sleep. Daily toil, and and well-nigh of the 
 useless, succeeded, recompensed by nightly leisure to Greek 
 refresh the soul with melody and harmony, — could not 
 this life-programme content me? I should need to add 
 conduct; but the principles of conduct can readily be 
 compassed in a single page — nay, the golden rule is 
 almost of itself enough, — and their practice is easy, 
 despite the denial of Hesiod and Prodicus. Did 
 I still crave wisdom, the pictured didacticism of the 
 Greek drama would be ample. I could readily accept 
 [ 231 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 the warning veiled in ^schylus's pedigree of crime; 
 doubtless self-conceit begets irreverence, irrever- 
 ence insolence, and insolence infatuation. I could 
 recognise that he who renews the offence awakens the 
 ancestral, human curse; and acknowledge the eternal 
 law of justice, t^ Spda-avn TraOetv. And Sophocles 
 would elucidate for me ^schylus's oracular "suffering 
 is education" by tracing the cause of suffering to tragic 
 error. Ay, and my a/xapTia, the tragic error whereby 
 I made shipwreck of my worldly fortunes, was my 
 youthful inability not to follow the prescribed, beaten 
 paths of thought, accumulating -on the way such wares 
 and suffrages as are marketable, my inability not to 
 postpone thought till such time as thought would be 
 no longer prejudicial to my estate. . . . But do I not 
 scorn success, and pity the successful, with reason ? 
 Success begets self-conceit — and the rest of the 
 .(Eschylean pedigree. 
 
 Once more, music is mere lotus-eating at the most, 
 and the "gentle philosophic soul" who loves it all too 
 exclusively must fear, not so much enervation, as Plato 
 thought, but satiety. Man cannot live by anodynes 
 alone. . . . And hard on thoughts of Sophocles come 
 thoughts of Euripides and Menander. Euripides is 
 melancholy; what thesis can he proclaim without 
 feeling called on to proclaim with equal earnestness 
 and truth its antithesis? And Menander, hailed as 
 true ancestor by Goethe, lauded as "ever pure, noble, 
 great, and cheerful " ! Graceful, yes ; but also true 
 brother of Euripides; contemplating life, he must 
 needs be caustic, tolerantly cynical, an egoistic hedonist, 
 a misanthropist and misogynist, a gloomy fatalist. 
 Darling of fortune, he yet looks on human life as a 
 [ 232 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Vanity Fair, from whence to escape as early as may be 
 is tlie fairest boon that can be given to man. And if, 
 in despair, I return to the sculpturesque tranquillity of 
 Sophocles, it is only to learn that the justice of Heaven 
 is consistent with the suffering of the good; that the 
 good, the just, are brought to sorrow by their very 
 nobleness; that, apart from the physical woes which 
 fall indiscriminately on good and evil, the moral suffer- 
 ing of the noble, the aberration of the good, proceed 
 from imperfect knowledge — which is all the knowledge 
 that mortal men can have. 
 
 Nothing is true but the beautiful. • So speaks my The 
 temperament. Yet, in these algebraical formulas of "^^^f^l °f 
 subjective, relative wisdom, these succinct apothegms, 
 the converse statement, the contradiction, reads equally 
 well. Should I not distrust the voice of my tempera- 
 ment, refuse all incense to an "idol of the den," seek 
 to transcend the illusions of my temperament? Nothing 
 is beautiful but Truth. "Truth is my business, and 
 no one was ever hurt by it." So wrote Marcus 
 Aurelius, and I cannot gainsay. " Wretched is he who 
 hath a false opinion about things divine," vaticinated 
 Empedocles, and my heart responds in unison. But 
 what knowledge is more than opinion, and how dis- 
 engage the element of truth that is contained in all 
 opinions? "God. alone knows the original qualities of 
 things; man can only attain to probability." This 
 Plato knew, and yet drew distinctions between opinion 
 and knowledge. Truth is the object of my yearning, 
 and of my despair. 
 
 Nothing is sacred save truth to the youthful Schiller. 
 To him, as to Pascal, that is truth which the reason 
 [ 233 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 admits as in harmony with itself. But he wonders 
 how he shall avoid unbelief on the one side and super- 
 stition on the other, and fears lest the evil day shall 
 dawn in which he shall discover that his reason is 
 capable of self-contradiction. How he fared I have 
 already examined. Lamennais, at twenty, after two 
 long years of soul-consuming melancholy and anguish, 
 takes minor clerical orders in a moment of enthusiasm 
 and faith, and speedily relapses into his old incertitude, 
 embittered in that he has taken an irrevocable step, which 
 he could wish untaken. At thirty he passes through 
 the same stages once again, with a deeper despair. To 
 put a period to his utter wretchedness, he suddenly 
 allows himself to be persuaded to accept the priestly 
 tonsure, and again bitterly repents. In an interval of 
 ten years, two days are his of happy faith, preceded 
 and followed by countless days of melancholy reason. 
 And, after either crisis, he can find no palliative of 
 despair save feverish, frenzied action and polemical, 
 political strife. As though truth were to be won in 
 polemics; as though polemics were not necessarily 
 one-sided, and therefore untruthful, since truth is a 
 whole. Yet truth has long been known, sings Goethe 
 confidently; it is a bond of union between noble 
 souls. Truth of conduct, perchance, practical wisdom; 
 which wisdom, however, varies with the individual and 
 his circumstances. For truth, truth of the reason, can 
 found no sect, as Lessing knew; and sectarian truth is 
 a source of evil, even as sectarian error. Yet if a sage 
 formulates his code of practical wisdom, he founds or 
 proclaims himself an adherent to a sect. 
 
 Martyrs of reason there have been, even as martyrs 
 of faith, martyrs in either case. In these present days, 
 [ 234 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 however, men have become tolerant, — -because they 
 despair of certainty. From historical experience, 
 historical comparison, they conclude that truth is not 
 self-evident, and therefore they no longer regard 
 opponents as criminals, perversely blind. Each is 
 now free to believe what he can believe, and free to 
 excite what approval or disapproval he can command 
 by public confessions of his faith. He, indeed, is 
 reputed amiable who is silent as to that which most 
 imports; but he is reputed honourable who fearlessly 
 proclaims his view of truth, though such view be 
 regarded as uncomfortable, or even harmful to the well- 
 being of the community. The attitude of him who 
 \oViA\Y cries fiat Veritas, mat calum, commands attention; 
 let such a one take care to hold a safe, conspicuous 
 position, put money in his purse, live long enough, 
 and his tenacity of will and singleness of mad purpose 
 will win esteem. Not to be one of the weaker brethren, 
 clinging to comfortable beliefs, is to assert superiority; 
 and, as the world goes, self-assertion of superiority is 
 wont to meet with acknowledgment. 
 
 What is nobler than Marcus Aurelius's confidence 
 that no one was hurt by truth, or Lessing's expansion 
 of the text into " truth must be taught in its integrity, 
 roundly, fully, without reserves or enigmas, with a 
 perfect faith in its efficacy and usefulness"? . . . But 
 Marcus Aurelius knew that certainty was hard to at- 
 tain, and that "our assent is worth little, for where 
 is infallibility to be found? " Lessing, also, could only 
 proclaim that which seemed true to him at the moment 
 of proclamation, and shrank from systematising his 
 aperfus of truth. The searcher for truth, in proportion 
 to his insight, is modest. If capable of self-detachment 
 [ 235 1 
 
of truth, 
 continued. 
 
 TIk Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 and irony, he realises that all truths contain elements 
 of error, and all errors elements of truth. He may judge 
 that received truths are faulty, erroneous, but he knows, 
 or should know, that the truths he would substitute are 
 also inadequate and erroneous, and that no two critics, or 
 even disciples, will agree in the exposition of his system 
 of truth. For no man wholly understands another. 
 
 The quest But votaries, Hegelian or naturalistic, of " the 
 Becoming," of Development, would teach me to 
 abandon the standpoint of the individual reason for 
 that of the Gemeingeist, the collective consciousness. 
 Truth they tell us, is in the making. Then, collective 
 humanity, seeking after truth, like the individual 
 devotee of hope, "never is, but always to be blest." 
 Truth widens with the process of the suns. But this 
 being so, — and even the intuitionalist acknowledges 
 progressive discernment of moral truth, — truth is no 
 more than a nuance, ever changing with the ages. 
 He that should comprehend the Zeitgeist in its present 
 totality would only comprehend partial, provisional 
 truth. And the men of future ages must find, as we 
 find, that the human mind is bounded, Se'Serai 17 Stavoia, 
 that the flaming walls of the world hem us in, that 
 mortal thought cannot transcend experience, and 
 cannot explain experience. The systematiser of the 
 truth of his age earns at most a niche in the history 
 of philosophic error, of partial truth. Moreover, the 
 systematiser is always a mere eclectic, since he can only 
 assimilate that truth which is congenial to his own 
 temperament. Hegelian evolution is evolution accord- 
 ing to Hegel; Comtist development from theology 
 through metaphysics to positive science suffices Comte 
 [ 236 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 alone, and rouses criticism even among his disciples. 
 They that hail Cousin as teacher are not long in 
 discovering that the consecution of the four types of 
 philosophy, sensualism, idealism, scepticism, mysticism, 
 is no necessary recurring rhythm. For there are 
 families of spirits; and representatives of these families 
 — ^ reduce them, if you will, to these four — appear side 
 by side in all ages. Nay, the individual thinker must 
 often make shift to reconcile or co-ordinate two 
 tendencies, if not more, within him; or he may even 
 pass through all the stages, in such order as he may. 
 Briefly, in those ages more especially given to search, 
 in ages of analysis, there is no side of truth that has 
 not its advocate; and advocates are necessarily partial, 
 prejudiced, incomplete, contradicting all others, and 
 not failing to contradict themselves. Take Nature in 
 its widest sense, including human reason, and the old 
 distich which applied to the written Bible ever applies 
 to the Bible of Nature : Hie liber est in quo qucBrit sua 
 dogmata quisque, Invenit et pariter dogmater quisque sua. 
 And no one understands the dogma of another; each is 
 in terrible isolation. 
 
 We desire truth, truth that would be recognised by The same, 
 all men; but perchance truth would paralyse us, even ^""""^^^{1 ' 
 as the equilibrium of faculties we desire would be 
 inanition, stagnation. As it is, the criterion of such 
 truth as we can attain would seem to be unpleasantness; 
 that which we accept with the greatest repugnance is 
 likest to be truth. It is a grotesque criterion, but one 
 which I have often been inclined to accept. 
 
 Leopardi reluctantly, sorrowfully discovered Truth, 
 even as Alfred de Vigny; he beheld the mystery of 
 [ 237 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 human destiny unveiled, was initiated into the secret 
 of the vanity of all things and the necessary infelicity 
 of man. Nothing remained after such a discovery 
 but to cherish a courageous and magnanimous despair, 
 to front destined misery with scorn, to shirk not the 
 acceptance of truth, which, if mournful, was yet truth, 
 and preferable to illusion. Existence was inevitable 
 misery. It was the part of the courageous not to 
 delude himself with idle hopes that happiness is possible 
 in this life, or that there is another recompensatory life 
 in store ; not to seek to lighten present unhappiness by 
 craven resignation. Disgust and weariness of life 
 was wholly reasonable; the voice of reason counselled 
 lofty despair. Reason was second nature, yet in all 
 men primitive nature subsisted; they were capable of 
 reason only in proportion as they were capable of 
 transcending the illusions of their primitive nature. 
 The logical conclusion of lofty despair was suicide, 
 but Nature, though she cannot but destine man to 
 misery, inspires them with the fear and horror of death, 
 practises imposture on them, prompts them to self- 
 preservation, seeks to mitigate their inevitable woes by 
 concealing, or at least disguising, them. The reason- 
 able and the unreasonable were the sport of "potent 
 and pleasing phantasms"; delusive dreams were given 
 by Zeus, by Nature, for consolation. The unreason- 
 able pursue gross phantasms, the reasonable strive to 
 cherish those "magnanimous errors" of glory and 
 patriotism and virtue "which embellish, or rather 
 constitute, our life." Poets encourage bright hopes 
 and pleasing illusions, and thereby stimulate to action; 
 but the sages, contemplating the inevitable and universal 
 miseries of life, are unable not to despair. It is in 
 [ 238 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 youth, when vitality is intense, when life is full and 
 rich, that men obediently, gladly follow nature and 
 worship illusions; with age, with ever-decreasing 
 vitality, men become capable of melancholy, reason, 
 truth. Similarly, in the youth of the world, men were 
 simple, could believe that happiness was possible, that 
 misery was an accident, not a universal law, could 
 trust fair illusions; but even then a Solomon, a 
 Brutus, a Theophrastus could denounce illusions, could 
 prophetically divine the conclusions of moderns, who 
 in virtue of civilisation have become conscious of 
 complexity, lucidly conscious of misery. While 
 youth lasts, while vitality is at its full, or not yet 
 wholly lost, moderns may resemble ancients in some 
 degree; but they who are old in youth, as Leopardi 
 and his like, sorrowfully abandon poetry for philosophy, 
 illusion for truth. Latest and fairest of all phantasms 
 is Celestial Love, Platonic, Danteian, Petrarchian Love, 
 in whose train attend all other noble phantasms; but 
 Love is a fleeting illusion of the season of youth, and 
 Truth is its implacable enemy, for we are destined not 
 to happiness, but to Death, nay, the deepest thoughts 
 of Love are thoughts of Death. If the ancients could 
 divine that non-existence is better far than existence, 
 the moderns know that wisdom serves but to deepen the 
 consciousness of irremediable infelicity. Socrates might 
 trust that knowledge was preferable to ignorance, but 
 " the ultimate conclusion to be drawn from a true and 
 perfect philosophy is that we should not philosophise." 
 Yet he who has learnt, has been compelled to philo- 
 sophise, who has known Truth, cannot forget his 
 wisdom, cannot forget that illusions are incompatible 
 with truth. He that has discovered truth must scorn 
 [ 239 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 life, must " scorn himself, nature — the churlish, occult 
 power whose law is universal suffering — and the infinite 
 vanity of all things." 
 
 To continue this exposition of Leopardi's view of 
 life — They, then,, who trust to the illusions of happi- 
 ness must find that the possession of happiness is ever 
 to be postponed, that happiness is ever of the future. 
 Happiness is an expectation inevitably foiled, a desire, 
 a sentiment, a conception of the fancy. They that 
 desire happiness are covetous of the infinite, the im- 
 possible. To be happy is at most to be unconscious of 
 unhappiness, even as animals. The art of life is the 
 art of avoiding pain; but the absence of happiness is 
 pain. Pleasure, if other than the freedom from pain, 
 is intolerable; toil is a real evil which serves in a 
 fashion to preclude unhappy brooding on imaginary 
 desires. Variety of occupation and sensation is a 
 palliative, tends to ward off the pain of thought; but 
 variety implies intervals of tedium, and cannot bestow 
 happiness. Happiness is non-existence, for existence 
 is mutability, ceaseless transition. He is least unhappy 
 who is content with fewest delights, and restricts these 
 delights to the delights of memory; but memory, the 
 recollection of past desires of joy, is distress, and con- 
 tentment is impossible, for we could only be content with 
 happiness. To cease to love self is to be happy, is to be 
 dead in life ; but Nature will not allow us to hate our- 
 selves, or to suppress vain hopes of happiness. . . . 
 
 The unsystematic Leopardi is more logical than 
 Schopenhauer, than the builders of pessimistic systems. 
 He offers no consolation other than the scorn of life, 
 the proud, painful satisfaction of knowing that life is 
 inevitable misery. In boyhood he had made himself a 
 [ 240 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 scholar and philologist, had "outraged nature," impaired 
 his health and eyesight, and found that melancholy is 
 aggravated alike by study and abstention from study. 
 Debarred from study, he became poet perforce, followed 
 Petrarch and Alfieri in patriotic laments at the mourn- 
 ful prostration of Italy, joined the Romanticists in 
 egoistic laments at his own unhappiness. To console 
 himself from poetry he turned philosopher; poet- 
 philosopher and philosophic poet. Christian pessimist 
 become philosophical pessimist, he meditated not on his 
 own, but on universal unhappiness, discovered that 
 patriotic and literary glory are baseless illusions, fol- 
 lowed Lucian in mocking the conceit of man, laughed at 
 human misery that he might not weep. 'Born to hope 
 and love, he had loved love and fame, he had hoped; 
 but philosopher, he had learnt that love and hope and 
 fame have no substantial reality. Experience had 
 taught him that hope was always of the future, never 
 of the present; that love of self and love of others was 
 misery; that to be great was to be greatly unhappy. 
 Chafing in enforced solitude, he had imagined the 
 delights of social intercourse, had been beguiled by the 
 illusive mirage of distance; but experience of society 
 taught him that imposture is the animating principle 
 of social life, as it is the animating principle of nature, 
 that social life is a struggle of each against all and of 
 all against each, that social men cannot pardon un- 
 happiness, or lack of wealth and success. Of the two 
 evils, solitude is the least painful; solitude preserves 
 from misanthropy; the solitary is subject to the illusion 
 of distance, he is able to idealise and love men and 
 women when no longer confronted by them. Solitude 
 allows of culture and tranquillity; but yet tranquillity, 
 R [ 241 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Stoic acceptance and submission, is death in life, is 
 monotonous existence devoid of hope and fear and 
 desire; and culture, wisdom, though integrity and 
 mildness be their appanage, is inability to admire. 
 Weary of his inability to admire, weary of indifference, 
 he longs for death. Death the sole remedy; but he is 
 weary of waiting for death. 
 
 Leopardi was well aware that his poems and dialogues 
 and "Thoughts" would prove unpalatable, but he 
 scorned dissimulation; if truth is melancholy, he yet 
 relieves his mind by expressing truth; if facts are 
 painful, he yet consoles himself in a measure, and per- 
 chance his kin, by deriding facts. He seeks no converts 
 to Truth: he is sure that his writings will have little 
 or no effect, for mankind will ever agree to defy truth, 
 will ever trust illusions which are as inveterate as verities, 
 will ever believe that which it is necessary for them to 
 believe if they are to maintain themselves in comfort, 
 or even in existence. He is ready to admit ironically 
 that his philosophy is false, that the devotees of progress 
 and democracy have right on their side, that money 
 makes the man; he is ready to proclaim ironically his 
 belief that happiness is possible, that other men are 
 happy. He does not fear that the race will ever believe 
 itself unhappy, but he must be allowed to believe and 
 know that he himself is most unhappy. He is convinced 
 of the vanity of life and the fatuous stupidity of man; 
 but he pities, rather than scoffs at, their stupidity; he 
 could desire their happiness, if happiness were possible. 
 He only asks to be permitted to rail at destiny, at the 
 necessary infelicity of mankind. 
 
 They who deem that they are happy, or at least 
 contented, naturally seek to dismiss Leopardi and his 
 [ 242 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 importunate truth by assigning his melancholy, his 
 pessimism, to exceptional misfortune. Exceptional 
 misfortune? He is melancholy, and Aristotle discerns 
 in melanchloy a symptom of genius; but genius is 
 consolation, though a sorry consolation, and few are 
 those among the sons of Melancholy who are thus con- 
 soled. Leopardi was a submissive Stoic, not willingly, 
 but because circumstances constrained him, even as 
 others were and are; he suffered pain and poverty, but 
 these are the inheritance of the majority. He loved, 
 and his love was not returned; but celibacy is often 
 enforced, and often chosen, and he knew full well that 
 beauty is fairer than its manifestations, that women can 
 but suggest the ideas of love and beauty. If by poverty 
 he was adscriptus glebcB, bound to his native Recanati, 
 he yet made shift to behold cities and manners. If his 
 parents were uncongenial, his sister was a second self. 
 If they that recognised his erudition were unable to 
 win for him a professorate, he yet had faithful friends 
 who recognised not only his erudition, but his genius 
 — that genius which was universally recognised when 
 once he had taken the due precaution to quit the scene. 
 Temperament, indeed, conforms to circumstance, and 
 circumstance to temperament; a man's judgments are a 
 parcel of his fortunes, and his fortunes a parcel of his 
 judgments; doubtless our ways of life and our ways of 
 regarding life are conditioned by the reciprocal relations 
 of organisation and circumstance, inward and outward 
 destiny. Leopardi 's melancholy was innate, and cir- 
 cumstance aggravated it. He was inclined by tempera- 
 ment, by circumstance, to pessimism, as others are to 
 optimism; his vision of truth was one-sided, incomplete. 
 But what vision of truth is not incomplete? He allows 
 
 [ 243 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 that his melancholy may possibly be due to physical 
 weakness, to morbid conditions of body; he holds that 
 the body is the man, that magnanimity and capability 
 of action and enjoyment are dependent on the vigour 
 of the body; he sighs that he is reduced to Stoic 
 submission, that he is excluded from activity. He is a 
 victim of nervous sensibility, and documents are now to 
 hand which show that his magnanimity often failed 
 him. He is sure that those ancients, whom he idealised 
 as Vauvenargues did, beguiled by the mirage of distance, 
 were led by accidental, personal misery to divine the truth 
 of universal infelicity. But he protests, and rightly pro- 
 tests, that his melancholy is due not to his personal suffer- 
 ing, to his material circumstances, but to thought, to 
 reason, to his contemplation of the universal conditions 
 of human life. He traversed the gamut of melancholy, 
 passed from egoistic to disinterested sorrow. He is at 
 one with Christian and secular pessimists, with Pascal 
 and Johnson and Swift and La Rochefoucauld; and his 
 reason will not permit him other than a Buddhist's 
 consolation, a Buddhist's hope of annihilation, non- 
 existence. 
 
 The same, 
 continued : 
 Truth and 
 Indiffer- 
 ence. 
 
 What if Truth, as the Buddhists suppose, is mere 
 Indifference? Logic is the sanity of the intellect; but 
 logical thought, take what avenue it will, speedily 
 presents to me the relativity of things, their ephemer- 
 ality, their nothingness. All attempts to pass beyond 
 to the sphere of the Substance, the Absolute, is vain; 
 or, if not vain, is premature absorption in Indifference, 
 in "Absolute Negativity," is Nirvana. What is more 
 subtle, more thorough, than Buddhist logic? ... I 
 halt in dismay at the threshold of Truth, stunned by 
 [ 244 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 the strident discord of antinomies. Hegelians sweep 
 proudly past me into the sanctuary, convinced that the 
 principle of development is the principle of contradic- 
 tion; and I hear them in the distance chant hymns to 
 the Absolute in crescendo rhythm of triple beat, — affir- 
 mation, negation, reconciliation, — each reconciliation 
 being a newer affirmation that calls for its accompany- 
 ing negation and reconciliation, an endless musical 
 sorites. And when they cease, the Buddhist ascetics, 
 rapt and motionless, drone slumbrous litanies of Truth, 
 in the inmost shrine. With blank eyes turned navel- 
 wards, the Cantoris semi-chorus affirm each thesis in 
 its turn, and then deny, and thirdly pose it neither 
 affirmatively nor negatively. And ever the Decani 
 semi-chorus respond: truth is not in affirmation, nor 
 negation, nor the union of affirmation and negation; 
 truth is indifference. . . . And I halt in dismay at the 
 threshold of truth, fearing to be logical. . . . 
 
 Maddened by the dread monotony, I dare at length 
 to lift the portal-veil. If, haply, vision may dispel my 
 fear. My brain reels, yet ere I swoon I seem to 
 behold, not solemn priests, but a riotous rout of orgy- 
 celebrating dialecticians, Buddhists, Eleatics, Hera- 
 cliteans, Megarians, Eristics, Neoplatonists, Hegelians, 
 linked hand in hand and reconciled, vertiginously 
 circling round and round a dazed host of saints and 
 seers and scientists and men of action, mocking their 
 affirmations and negations, refusing any predicate 
 to any subject, proclaiming the identity of being and 
 not being and all other opposites, vaunting supreme 
 Indifference. . . . 
 
 Conscious phenomena we mortals are, and life is 
 action, though life and action be illusion? "O King, 
 [ 245 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 wilt thou never be wise. That alone is worthy of the 
 desires which can be enjoyed by the senses." So spoke 
 the "king of the logicians," tempting the ascetic Rama, 
 adding the world-old refrain of gather ye roses while ye 
 may. Ecclesiastes, convinced of the vanity of all 
 things, preached Horatian nonchalance, Horatian pru- 
 dence, Horatian enjoyment in moderation of the good 
 things of the earth. Schopenhauer, occidental Buddhist, 
 propounded an art of delightful living. . . . Illusive 
 pleasure beckons, but still I leave not my post at 
 the threshold of Truth. Pleasure's handmaidens pipe, 
 but I will not dance. 
 
 Yet logic is sanity; logic is method. And method 
 is the mind's knowledge of its own operations. But 
 what if the doctors of logic not only differ among 
 themselves, but also differ each from himself, unable to 
 be consistently logical, unable therefore to conform act 
 to thought, even though will and knowledge should 
 be at one with him. Bacon did not allow his scientific 
 logic to trench on the sphere of ethics and religion; like 
 the Italian Humanists, he refused to miscere credita cum 
 physicis. But that was long ago. Nowadays we are 
 told that to keep thought by double-entry is to be dis- 
 honest. And Bacon's character and conduct were quite 
 other than his intellect; lucidity and integrity were not 
 yoke-fellows. Unhappy Lord of Verulam, if happiness 
 is the accord of thought and act ! But, for the moment, 
 let me attend to consistency of thought alone. 
 Spinoza's theory of immortality was dark even to him- 
 self, else would he not have hastened to assure that his 
 system of ethics was independent of it. Spinoza the 
 determinist defends the right of society to punish the 
 [ 246 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 criminal. But, as a rule, it is to disciples and not to 
 the master that we should apply for the true logic of a 
 system. Thus Toland drew the principles of Locke to 
 a focus; Hume was the necessary successor of Berke- 
 ley, as Lessing of Luther, as the Rationalists of Les- 
 sing; the Deists pushed Cartesianism to its logical con- 
 clusion; the cold, arid Wolf systematised the generous, 
 would-be reconciliatory eclecticism of Leibnitz. Of a 
 truth, the masters would be the first to disown their 
 disciples, and yet the disciple is only elucidating the 
 first principles of his master; and, if the master be still 
 alive, the disciple invokes him in the name of his first 
 principles to abandon the inconclusive conclusions, the 
 inconsistencies into which he was beguiled by his tem- 
 perament. Mr. Herbert Spencer is nothing if not 
 logical, and ' yet the enfants terribles who persist in 
 being more logical than their spiritual father wonder 
 that he should seek subterfuges and hesitate to announce 
 firmly and logically that the will of the strongest is the 
 sole moral law. Bahnsen, in the name of logic, rejects 
 as an aberration, an inconsistency, the immanent finality 
 that Schopenhauer supposed in Nature, and marvels that 
 his master could imagine that aesthetic and contempla- 
 tive delights were possible in a world that is wholly 
 disorderly and irrational. Again, it is of little avail 
 for the logician to be logical; reasoning consistently 
 with his temperament, his innate or acquired prejudices, 
 he does but judge his reasoning to be adequate because 
 it satisfies himself. Newman, by thought, reached 
 certainty and rest, logically reasoned himself into ac- 
 ceptance of Roman Catholicism. But must not critics 
 find that so long as Newman reasons, he doubts, and that 
 haviiJg finally posed as alternatives scepticism and 
 [ 247 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Roman Catholicism — " there is nothing between them " 
 — he elected to abdicate reason once for all; unless, 
 indeed, it be reason to pose, like the Scholastics, such 
 premises as it suits his purpose to pose, and then draw the 
 logical conclusions from these premises. ... In any 
 case, logic is anthropomorphic, subjective, relative. 
 Logic is simplification, simplification is elimination, and 
 elimination is failure to embrace the whole. The con- 
 clusion is implicit in the premises; but the premises, 
 be they what they may, cannot contain the whole of the 
 case. The Scholastics could reason ad infinitum and ad 
 absurdum because they reasoned on accepted premises, 
 but they who smile in scorn at the Scholastics pose 
 premises of their own which are also inadequate. 
 Latet dolus in generalibus. Rousseau's passionate 
 imagination prompts him to startling paradoxes; he 
 vigorously declaims his absolute premises, but, growing 
 ever calmer as he proceeds in their exposition, he more 
 and more restricts their application, till, by the time 
 that his gospel is wholly proclaimed, he has unwit- 
 tingly reduced his absolute truths to helpless common- 
 places, if not repudiated them. Dogmatism, of whatever 
 kind, is false, because it proceeds on inadequate premises. 
 Premises, again, are given by the intellect, and the 
 intellect is mainly at war with the heart. Dante is at 
 wide variance with Machiavelli because the "soul of 
 the world " was Love to the one and Intelligence to 
 the other. Dante is at wide variance with himself, for 
 in the De Monarchia he proclaims the Machiavellian 
 principle that might is right. Tyndall could listen to 
 Carlyle's contention that the heart has claims and yearn- 
 ings which physical science cannot satisfy, and approve 
 more or less Matthew Arnold's insistence on the poetic 
 [ 248 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 basis of religion. The German rationalists mainly 
 evaded the logical conclusions of their premises out of 
 instinctive reverence. Taine essayed a calm, scientific 
 analysis of the French Revolution, and forgot in 
 indignation his mechanical theory of human nature. 
 Surely, materialism is the only doctrine that can be 
 completely logical and consistent because rigidly one- 
 sided; and yet the logical materialist who steadily 
 conforms practice to theory is hardly to be discovered. 
 Besides, the premises of materialism are too simple. 
 And, once again, premises are given by the intellect, 
 which is bounded, and therefore inadequate. 
 
 . . . And how my heart vainly protests against the 
 pages like these which my intellect can, and must 
 dictate ! . . . 
 
 Leibnitz, with eyes fixed on the future, wrote at The same, 
 the most prolegomena of a possible system of Truth, Ec"ecticifm 
 threw out hints towards a solution of the world-problem, and Goethe, 
 suggested present compromises, despaired of present 
 unity. Lessing, as a wise lover might, preferred the 
 wooing of Truth to possession, quest to attainment; 
 he was a critic, and there are men who find in. criticism 
 the reconciliation of dogmatism and scepticism, — a 
 reconciliation which is only an incoherent compromise. 
 Renan, the artist, delighting in multiplicity of ideas, 
 careless of self-contradiction, disdained systematisation 
 as the symptom, or proof, of narrow-mindedness. 
 Goethe, doubtless, was also an arch-priest of Truth, in 
 that he may safely defy any systematisation of his 
 ideas. Airily, persistently, he refused to draw rigid 
 and frigid conclusions from his own premises, to be 
 logical. He would accept no exclusive alternatives, 
 [ 249 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 would fail to see cogent reasons for impaling himself 
 on the horns of any dilemma. He will write a 
 Vermachtniss expressly to contradict his Eins und Alles 
 because admiring scientists had adopted the latter 
 as a creed, and loftily smile at those who should adopt 
 the one paradox to the exclusion of the other. Truth, 
 he constantly repeats, is that which is appropriate to 
 each man's nature, which nature, again, varies with the 
 season of life; truth is whatsoever stimulates activity. 
 He refuses to restrict himself to a single way of think- 
 ing: as artist and poet, he is a polytheist; as naturalist, 
 he is a pantheist; if his moral nature should postulate 
 God, he is ready to satisfy the fresh requirement. A 
 poetical Spinozist, a Stoic pantheist, he preaches ascetic 
 renunciation and sensuous self-development, contem- 
 plation and action, exalts the freedom of man and binds 
 him slave to circumstances, bids us seek to attain self- 
 knowledge, and delights that he knows not himself. 
 Scornful of metaphysicians, that is to say, speculative 
 philosophers and subjective idealists who vainly strive 
 to comprehend the non-ego, he eulogises Kant as 
 having defined the limits within which the human 
 mind can move, recognises certainty in the data of the 
 senses alone, and yet leaves a large room to the Platonic 
 divinations of genius, reads his scientific experiments 
 in the light of the metaphysical iv koI ttSv, of Hera- 
 clitean metamorphosis, of universal dynamism. Style 
 him pantheist, and he will rejoin; I have never found 
 any one who understood the meaning of the term. If 
 he composes ultra-pagan Roman Elegies, he also com- 
 poses religious Confessions of a Fair Soul; autonomous 
 moralist, -he yet admits the reasonability and necessity 
 of scientific and moral faith. Faith? He acknowledges 
 [ 250 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 there is a depth of darkness in his nature which he cannot 
 illumine, and then, comparing this depth of darkness 
 within him to the empty spot in the human brain, and 
 the blind spot in the human eye, finds in this depth the 
 brooding place of chimerical belief in " things of another 
 world," the well-source of mental anguish and disease. 
 In brief, he is for ever escaping from systematisation 
 by scepticism and irony; he is free because he is self- 
 contradictory. 
 
 An incorrigible, incomparable eclectic, consummate 
 critic and supreme creator, Goethe is one who drained 
 the cup of life, and left no source of knowledge untasted. 
 An eclectic, whose eclecticism, so far from stifling 
 originality, favoured its development. Not only had 
 he traversed the gamut of human passions from end to 
 end, and developed all his faculties to the full, but he 
 had taken outer Nature for his province. What wonder 
 that there should be solutions of continuity in his logic 
 and life ? Complexity involves self-contradiction. His 
 very catholicity invests him with a large measure cf the 
 enigmatical, paradoxical, incommensurable qualities of 
 Nature itself. Not only is his long career marked o^t 
 by stages of increasing development (or decline, if you 
 will) — for instance, in the sphere of religion, he 
 relinquishes some sort of a Christian attitude for a 
 non-Christian attitude, relinquishes the latter for that 
 of defiant, self-centred Prometheus, passes thence to a 
 religion of culture and aesthetic morality, and lastly to 
 a mystical reverence, finding in reverence " the dignity, 
 the essential character of true religion " — but his Ego 
 is multiple in each and all of the periods of his develop- 
 ment — -or decline. He is ever monist and dualist at 
 once; Spinozist, he discerns the relativity of evil; 
 [ 251 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Manichaean, he recognises the constant participation of 
 the principle of negation in all things. Sure that the 
 world is the harmonious development, the necessary 
 manifestation of the Absolute Unity, that God is the 
 world as Idea, and the world God as the realisation of 
 the Idea, he is also sure that even colour, the problem 
 of which was his favourite problem, is due to the 
 changeful mutual aggressions of darkness and light — 
 much as the world resulted to Empedocles from the 
 alternate victories and defeats of love and discord, — is 
 uneasily conscious that matter and spirit are not in 
 harmony, that man must combat nature and usurp 
 an imperium in imperio ; he vainly strives to escape 
 the fatalities of nature and society, to ignore painful 
 problems and regulate disturbing emotions that he may 
 attain the calm of orderly, circumscribed activity; he 
 yields though he refuses submission to occult, fatalistic 
 influences which he could not define. Narrowing, 
 concentrating his energy that he may realise in himself 
 the Greek ideal of self-sufficiency, declaring classicism 
 to be sanity and Romanticism to be malady, his 
 Iphigeneia is marred by involuntary romanticism, his 
 Wilhelm Meister is vague and diffusive, unharmoniously 
 realistic, his romantic Faust and classic Helen are 
 parents of a reconciliatory Euphorion who, if not still- 
 born, ere long "falls dead at the feet of his parents," as 
 he allows in his stage-direction. 
 
 He is an eclectic, therefore illogical, self-contradic- 
 tory, incoherent. He is an objective realist, ever main- 
 taining that the sole method, his constant method, is 
 objective, denying the name of poet or scientist to him 
 who expresses personal sentiments, subjective ideas; 
 and yet he is the most objective of poets, the most 
 [ 252 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 personal and intolerant of scientists : as poet he proudly 
 acknowledges that his whole poetical work is one long 
 confession; as scientist, he readily forgets his own 
 warnings against subjective dogmatism. Half Stoic, 
 half Epicurean, so he says, he effects at most a personal 
 one-sided compromise between his two tendencies; he 
 cannot tolerate asceticism, and if he accepts the Stoic 
 sustine, he rejects the abstine with which it is linked. 
 He claims to have found peace in Spinozistic renun- 
 ciation and disinterestedness, and yet the Chancellor 
 Miiller must deplore the love passion of an octogenarian 
 who could only regain his lost equilibrium by poetical 
 deliverance, by composing a Marienbad Elegy. Moder- 
 ation in enjoyment he failed not to preach through- 
 out, even in his early vicious Anacreontica; but he 
 haughtily rejected the counsels of moderation proffered 
 by the temperate friends whom he dismayed by the 
 madness, the folly, the excesses of his first months at 
 Weimar. Spinozistic joy and calm, moreover, are 
 incompatible with regret and repentance; and yet he 
 who sought self-deliverance in the artistic objectifica- 
 tion of his emotions and ideas, careless of the con- 
 sequences to his readers, vainly strove not to regret the 
 consequences of his Werther and his Prometheus. 
 He that is wise on Goethian principles attends solely 
 to the present, and Goethe duly sought to avoid 
 recollecting the painful consequences of his Sesenheim 
 idyll-in-action; but the Goethe who had attained calm 
 and was living his new Olympian life, revisiting 
 Ilmenau, cannot refrain from resuscitating the dead 
 Goethe who, eight years before, had brooded there over 
 the dying embers of the hunting bivouac, regretful of 
 the evil his poetical works had wrought, regretful that 
 [ ^53 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 he had not known how to guide his life by art. And 
 yet the Olympian, revisiting the scene of his remorse, 
 should surely rather have abandoned himself in wise 
 passivity to Nature, the oblivion-bringing, the con- 
 solatory. Forsooth, Faust wins oblivion and peace by 
 such abandonment. 
 
 Doubtless, I am captious and sophistical; "Goethe's 
 course few sons of men may dare to emulate," and least 
 of all may I. Yet had I the power, should I care to 
 emulate Goethe's calm, his eclecticism, his free develop- 
 ment by restless, dangerous experimentation on him- 
 self and others? As in my youthful days, I should 
 ever gainsay his admirer, and equally gainsay his 
 depredator. At times, I scorn with Wordsworth, De 
 Quincey, and Novalis his " economic worldliness and 
 artistic atheism"; at others, I scorn them that scorn 
 him. I marvel, yet cannot sympathise with him as 
 with those victims of Melancholy who are my ken. 
 He was not melancholy, indeed, and yet well might 
 he have been, for he attained no real unity. Nay, let 
 me smile, and write grotesquely that if he was not 
 melancholy, he should have been. Did he ever succeed 
 in holding the balance between law and impulse, 
 between knowledge and will, between frank realism 
 and symbolical idealism; or ever succeed in harmoni- 
 ously fusing the diverse natures inherited from his 
 parents, the vivacious, self-indulgent spontaneity of his 
 mother, prevalent in his youth, and the orderly, self- 
 confident pedantry of his father, prevalent in his 
 age? To the end he was incomplete. He recognised 
 duty only as towards himself. ^sthetically wise, 
 he did not condescend to share the noble errors of 
 common humanity; Schiller, drawn within the circle 
 I 254 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 of his domination, knew this and continued his 
 own course, and the Romanticists resented the 
 artistic sympathy which allowed him only to assimi- 
 late all of Romanticism that was non-Christian, non- 
 Romantic. He felt interest in men and ideas only 
 so far as he discovered in them materials for his own 
 self-development and poetic creation; he was in- 
 different, with the indifference of pantheism, to all that 
 entered not into "the circle of his activity." Self- 
 analysis he branded as morbid, delighting the while in 
 artistic representation of his own moral maladies; he 
 was never weary of proclaiming the supreme felicity of 
 action, determined after complete self-examination, and 
 yet declared that self-knowledge was impossible, and 
 action dubious, since the morrow alone can reveal if 
 action has proved beneficial or baneful. Can I expect 
 to discover in him an example of unity, harmony, 
 peace, since he confessed that in virtue of his character 
 and habit of mind, the one present idea, the one present 
 enthusiasm, absorbed him, rendered him oblivious of 
 all others? Can I hope for a reconciliation of his 
 Spinozistic doctrine of absolute unity, legitimating 
 fatalistic apathy, with his doctrine of free activity? 
 His own reconciliation is a mere verbal coupling of 
 antithetical words, of pairs of opposites, true appear- 
 ance, determined autonomy, present eternity, and the 
 like. He divides the world of men into isolated, aris- 
 tocratic sages, and the dim common herd; into those 
 who possess knowledge and art, and therefore need not 
 religion, and those who, lacking art and knowledge, 
 must possess religion. Sages differ from sages, he al- 
 lows, in their definition of wisdom and their art of life; 
 but all sages, he is sure, rightly judge it the first law 
 [ 255 1 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 of wisdom to waive aside unanswered the foolish, 
 insoluble questions which the populace pose to 
 them! 
 
 Yet Logic and Life, theory and practice, thought 
 and action, should be in accord. But such is the 
 fashion of the world that the ideal is a paradox, and 
 its lovers must endeavour to echo with what con- 
 fidence they can muster Plato's brave assertion that 
 the ideal is none the worse for being incapable of 
 realisation, must comfort themselves so far as they may 
 with George Herbert's "who aimeth at the sky shoots 
 higher much than he that means a tree." Conformity 
 of creed and life? A Socrates believed knowledge 
 and conduct were one, and his life was the verification 
 of his doctrine. But what do we know accurately of 
 his life and doctrine? No two commentators agree 
 in summarising his creed; no two biographers in the 
 manner of his defence or depreciation. One will dis- 
 cover that, rightly speaking, he had no philosophy at all; 
 another that he was a monger of comfortable, prosaic 
 platitudes, a Greek Paley, a typical Athenian bourgeois 
 rendered eccentric by added genius; and so on from the 
 lowest to the highest representation. A Saint Francis 
 was a "prince of youth" among his gay comrades of 
 Assisi, and must separate his days into those before 
 and after his conversion. And what do we accurately 
 know of St. Francis? For, in his legend, he is 
 evidently made to conform as far as may be to the 
 type of his Master. Doctrine and action seem fairly 
 one in Spinoza's case, but whom can I add as fourth 
 to Socrates, St. Francis, and Spinoza? — unless, indeed, 
 it be Thomas Creech, commentator of Lucretius, who 
 [ ^56 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 logically committed suicide on the completion of his 
 labours. Pope Celestine the Fifth, Henry the Sixth 
 of England, are admirable in their would-be integrity 
 and consistency of creed and conduct, — but they were 
 set to rule a mad world, and earn the lofty scorn of 
 Dante, the pitying contempt of Shakespeare. Realisa- 
 tion implies deformation, since the material to hand 
 is recalcitrant; history is the record of the sorry 
 accommodations of ideals to earthly conditions. The 
 right is not the possible or the expedient; private and 
 public, private and political morality are not the samet 
 Men of business, men of action, men of the world, 
 find themselves compelled to compromise; idealogues 
 and doctrinaires are reduced to become opportunists; 
 philosophers must draw distinctions between specula- 
 tive and practical doctrines. Unity of character is of 
 difficult, if not of impossible attainment in periods 
 of transition (and what period is not a period of transi- 
 tion?); the past is reluctantly, never wholly abandoned, 
 the future is vaguely, falsely divined. There are in- 
 dividuals whose actions are better than their creeds, 
 and individuals who fall far short of their own elected 
 standard: Catullus and his like assure us that their 
 lives are purer than their writings; men of genius, 
 and men without genius, arrogate to themselves the 
 right of licence. Temperament, moreover, is com- 
 plex; and complexity precludes unity. Petrarch is 
 Christian and pagan, mediaevalist and humanist; Pet- 
 rarch the complex and versatile, friend of all his foes, 
 and thereby foe of all his friends, the solitary and the 
 acute man of the world, is wholly incoherent; the 
 least of his inconsistencies is his ideal love of Laura 
 and his contemporaneous lawless love of the mother of 
 s [ 257 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 his children. Diderot had a creed, logically deduced 
 from evolutionary, "natural" principles, but he begs 
 his friends not to communicate his exposition, and 
 declares that he would refuse to salute any one sus- 
 pected of putting his creed into practice. Schopen- 
 hauer must carefully warn his disciples not to seek 
 resemblance between his doctrine and his practice; 
 forsooth, his doctrine was one, but he himself was 
 many-sided. 
 
 Such is the force of circumstance and the feebleness 
 of human nature that imperative commands from within 
 or from without are regarded as "counsels of perfec- 
 tion." The more ideal the aim, the more excessive 
 the act if act, if action duly conform to aim; but to 
 be excessive is to expose oneself to the well-founded 
 objections of common-sense. The sages, the teachers, 
 must needs offer concessions and facilitate compromises. 
 The Buddha divided the path of salvation into stages; 
 let the disciple pursue it who can, and as far as he can. 
 The Stoics endeavoured to rigidly maintain that virtue, 
 if not perfect, is not virtue at> all, that wisdom admits 
 of no degrees; but they had to reckon with human 
 nature, and suitably discovered that there is degree in 
 virtue and wisdom; they could point to no concrete 
 example of the perfect sage; they must confess that all 
 men were secundcB vota. In similar fashion, the 
 Italian Catharists, would-be renewers of the commun- 
 ism and simplicity of the primitive Church, yielded 
 concessions to the weaker brethren. The successors 
 of St. Francis denied themselves of the privilege and 
 duty of obedience to their vows of poverty and 
 Epicurean-like ignorance, that so, by running counter 
 to their master's principles, they might glorify him the 
 [ 258 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 more and establish the better his institution. The 
 Jesuits compromised with human nature so thoroughly 
 that they hastened the reaction signalled by Pascal. 
 Yet, as nature and spirit are antinomies, common-sense 
 compromises must proceed on Jesuitical principles. 
 The school-boy essayist readily justifies inconsistency 
 of opinion; Rousseau dwells on the utility of incon- 
 sistency between thought and act. Men are so often 
 better than their opinions; such inconsistency, to 
 Rousseau, is plain testimony of the innate goodness of 
 human nature. The Inquisitioners were logical and 
 inhuman; La Mettrie was logical and ludicrous with 
 his "O Pleasure, sovereign of gods and men, before 
 whom yield all things, even reason, thou knowest how 
 my heart adores thee, and all the sacrifices it has made 
 thee." To be inconsistent is to be worthy object of 
 satire; to be consistent is to be wholly angel or beast. 
 Consistency of thought is inconsistent with the neces- 
 sary development of wisdom in the individual, the race. 
 Knowledge and conduct might possibly coincide, if 
 knowledge were perfect; perfect wisdom being in- 
 compatible with development, conformity of act to 
 thought is precluded. The individual is taught by 
 experience, that is to say, he is only wise when it is 
 too late; he is ever a tragi-comic hero. The race, we 
 are told, progresses towards wisdom. So far, indeed, 
 nations, like individuals, have progressed towards dotage 
 and decay. But the Hegelian looks on the spectacle 
 undisturbed; nations and ideas must decline and an- 
 nihilate themselves that broader syntheses may ensue. 
 But progress, to individuals, nations, the race, ever 
 implies loss side by side with gain. . . . Alas! I do 
 but "darken counsel." Complexity may be "charm- 
 [ 259 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 ing," to use Kenan's favourite epithet, but tlie charms 
 of complexity are other than and incompatible with 
 simplicity. 
 
 I am weary of this storm and stress of thought; 
 weary of analysis and synthesis, weary of criticism of 
 analysis and synthesis; weary of contraries, weary of 
 my despair of reconciling contraries. Nature, indeed, 
 offers nothing but matter for doubt and disquietude; 
 Thought is doubt and disquietude itself. I am weary 
 of wandering hopelessly in the desert of doubt and 
 drought; my strength is almost at an end. 
 
 I despairingly desire a synthesis of thought and life. 
 It were reasonable, perchance, to be well content with 
 a personal, subjective synthesis, a synthesis of error 
 which should be truth to me, as being appropriate to 
 my nature, a morality which should promote ray 
 vitality. But this also is beyond reach. Is it possible 
 for me to resolve to be blind to opposites, to antinomies? 
 If I listen to my heart, can I refrain from criticising 
 the postulates of my heart, from remembering that 
 sentiment must be checked by intelligence? Truly 
 he who trusts solely to reason must needs doubt, must 
 needs be a sceptic. The doubter, the sceptic, forced 
 on action, must indeed pass over to the Neo-Acade- 
 micians, and balance probabilities. But to balance 
 probabilities is to doubt once again, is at most to 
 suggest " sceptical solutions as sceptical doubts." He, 
 again, who, distrusting reason, seeks refuge in faith, is 
 in no better case. For faith, to be worthy of the 
 name, must be reasonable, faith must be corrected by 
 reason; and reason, once more, is scepticism. 
 
 Spinoza promises unity, an adequate synthesis. He 
 [ 260 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 bases metaphysics on ethics, and ethics on meta- 
 physics; the two are one. Epicureanism and Stoicism 
 are the two eternally opposite poles of morality in 
 common conceit; Spinoza offers a synthesis. The 
 Epicurean-Utilitarian principle of self-interest and self- 
 preservation is the principle of Stoic cultivation of the 
 reason and indifference to all that depends not on will. 
 To love self rationally is to love one's true self, to 
 love that which is rational in self. Now, to love the 
 rational is to love God, and God is all that is rational. 
 Therefore to love self is to love others in that they are 
 rational; and to love the rational in others is to love 
 God. Thus, from a basis of self-love, of self-interest, 
 he reaches altruism, the love of one's neighbours, of the 
 race; and from altruism he passes to the religious, 
 the philosophical love of God, — that is to say, the 
 eternal moral order in praise of which Cleanthes sang. 
 And, if you are oppressed by the shadow of Necessity, 
 troubled by the painful consciousness of the eternal 
 injustice and immorality of the natural order, he 
 will reveal to you that Stoic freedom, contemplative 
 submission to the natural order, is self-determination, 
 though such self-determination is necessitated. . . . 
 But Kant demolishes once for all Spinozistic and 
 all other dogmatic syntheses. . . . But then, Hegel 
 criticises Kant's criticism, and attains a synthesis. 
 If your faith emboldens you to pursue the quest of unity 
 in diversity, if you care to read Berni after Boiardo, 
 to listen to Handel with or without Mozart's added 
 orchestration, you may let Hegel, the other great 
 modern master of synthesis, remodel and amplify 
 Spinoza's Ode to Divine Harmony. You shall hear the 
 glad tidings that the Good, the True, and the Beauti- 
 [ 261 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 ful are one; that happiness is virtue, and virtue happi- 
 ness; that happiness is rational asceticism, and rational 
 asceticism is joy and free expansion; that knowledge and 
 conduct, spirit and nature, philosophy and religion coin- 
 cide. The way of salvation lies open before you; Hegel 
 repeats, after Spinoza, that the sole rule of morality is 
 to have a clear idea of God; Hegel and Spinoza repeat, 
 after Aristotle, that to live the rational life is to live the 
 divine life. Nay, more than this, he that is in posses- 
 sion of adequate ideas, he that has attained to a perfectly 
 clear idea of God, — and of course the masters and their 
 true disciples have reached this height of beatitude,— is 
 immortal, is a Gott-Mensch. . . . 
 
 Heine — have I not already written it? — Heine, 
 disciple of Hegel, was delighted to find himself a GoU- 
 Mensch. He also found, not to hisdelight, that he lacked 
 certain very necessary attributes of divinity, that his 
 human element was all too preponderant, — and abdi- 
 cated. But then Heine was somewhat the slave of "pas- 
 sive affections," of inadequate ideas. He "maintained 
 himself in joy," but his joy was dashed with tears; 
 he "lacked love," as Goethe said, and therefore reason. 
 But Spinoza incarnated Reason; his conduct was 
 wholly rational. Yet was his conduct wholly at one 
 with his creed, his life with his logic, as I allowed 
 myself to allow the other day? The Spinoza of time 
 and space necessarily varied, in that he progressed 
 towards perfection. There is the Spinoza before his 
 moral crisis, his conversion; there is the Spinoza who 
 drew up and practised, like Descartes, provisional rules 
 of morality ; there is the Spinoza who is in the posses- 
 sion of perfect knowledge and calm, who, because he 
 adequately comprehends human actions, is not to be 
 [ 262 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 moved to laughter or tears or indignation, and who yet 
 sheds tears at the massacre of Jan de Witt, and has to 
 be restrained by force from sallying forth into the 
 streets to proclaim his scorn. But his doctrine, at least, 
 is one ? How can that be, since it is so comprehensive, 
 so admirably eclectic. Moreover, comprehensive as 
 was his synthesis, it was still, of necessity, a personal 
 synthesis; there can be no Spinozist except Spinoza. 
 Follow the devious history of the influences of 
 Spinozism on European thought, witness the conflict 
 of interpretations, the divergences from Spinoza and 
 from one another of those who were under the illusion 
 that they were Spinozists. . . . And have I not already 
 traced the divergences of Hegel's disciples in the 
 interpretation of his synthesis? Hegel sighed, "there 
 is only one disciple who understands me, and he does 
 not understand me. Se non e vero — ... To Spinoza 
 was not given even the sorry comfort of such a sigh. 
 . . . And did he or Hegel understand themselves? 
 
 The "patrons of the One" must needs be Gott- The same, 
 betrunken. How should they behold "the One in the Mysticism 
 Many," Unity in Difference, dream that the world is a 
 dream of divinity, unite themselves to the "Absolute 
 Self-Consciousness," except by mysticism, — which 
 mysticism is ever a confusion of the subjective and 
 objective, a presumption that the seer's dreams are 
 divine realities. Mystically afifirm that the Whole is 
 One, and, condescending to reason out your affirmation, 
 you must choose whether you side with the Indian 
 Pantheists and the Eleatics, to whom the One is All 
 because the • Many are nothing, or with Heraclitus, 
 Spinoza, Hegel, to whom the Many is the manifestation 
 [ 263 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 of the One. Or you must choose whether you under- 
 stand All is God in a distributive or collective sense. 
 Understanding it in the collective sense, you yet make 
 God "star and pumpkin, thought and mire, slaying 
 and slain." Mystically affirm, with Aristotle, that the 
 Idea is immanent, with Plato, that it is transcendent, 
 or even that it is transcendent and immanent, and the 
 relations of the One to the Many are equally inexplicable. 
 
 Pursue the path of dialectic that leads to Unity, and 
 you shall reach, by successive abstractions, Indifference, 
 Nothingness. Traverse in succession, with the Sufis, 
 the valleys of the Quest, of Love, of Knowledge, of 
 Independence, of Unity, of Amazement, of Self-Anni- 
 hilation, and you shall but lose yourself in the Divine 
 Essence, gain the peace of Nirvana, of Extinction. 
 
 Return in dismay upon your steps, baffled and 
 forlorn, and you do but body forth Indifference under 
 forms of the Good, or Beauty, or Nature, or Thought, 
 or Love, — so many aspects that are irreconcilable, as 
 Plato found to his cost. Spinoza must regard Substance 
 under its two aspects, and thereby sinks incontinently 
 to Dualism, wavers between Idealism and Materialism. 
 Unity is incomprehensible, Difference is fraught with 
 pain. Be reluctant to admit dualism and contrast, 
 desire to believe harmony and unity, and you shall 
 surely fail in your desire. Allow that the human mind 
 is a microcosm mirroring the macrocosm, and the 
 universe shades off into darkness and evil ; the objective 
 world is the manifestation of the spirit, but it is also 
 Nature, which is " the extreme self- alienation of the 
 spirit." Draw an impassable gulf between the subject 
 and the object, suppose that we know that we know 
 nothing of "things in themselves,'' and the subject, the 
 [ 264 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 conscious phenomenon, must still regard the universe 
 under the laws of subjective thought. Deride, with 
 the scientist or positivist, the attempts of metaphysicians 
 to regard the order of thought as one with the order of 
 external co-existence and succession, to unify Thought 
 and Being, and you are reduced to a dualism of nature 
 and spirit, matter and mind, parallel symbols of an 
 unknown unity. Start with unity, as a metaphysician, 
 trust to the infallibility of reason, and the difference in 
 unity is inexplicable; start with multiplicity, as a 
 scientist, trust to the infallibility of the senses, and 
 the unity in difference is inexplicable. Even suppose 
 it is within our power to apprehend unity by mystical 
 intuition, and to attain peace, we must speedily de- 
 scend to the world of pain and evil, — ^not the less pain- 
 ful and evil, if pain and evil are but negative aspects, 
 — in which being is manifested in difference; must 
 descend and be baffled by the antagonism of opposites. 
 
 Lucretius and Schelling told us that to know Nature The same, 
 was to know Self, Socrates and Fichte that to know ""I'lnued: 
 
 Knowledge 
 
 Self was to know Nature. If we know ourselves, we of Self and 
 know that we are the sons and yet the enemies of Nature. 
 Nature, we know that we desire justice while Nature 
 is supremely indifferent to justice, we are like to protest 
 against the actual, to side with faith against science. 
 If we know Nature, we know that man in his war 
 against Nature is ever baffled, that the law of irony is 
 supreme over the individual and the race, that each 
 and all have contrary tendencies and make illogical, in- 
 effectual compromises between the ideal and the real, 
 between the moral and the natural. We may hold that 
 the moral is also the natural, that the ideal, if rational, 
 [ 26s ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 is also the real; but this is only to say that man is a 
 microcosm, that Nature writ small or large is the 
 dolorous battle-ground of antinomies. Saints and sages 
 have their dreams of felicity; they aspire to live in the 
 eternal, to know truth adequately. But what is truth? 
 what is the eternal? To know the whole truth about 
 "a flower in the crannied wall " is to know "all in all," 
 is to know not only the because but also the why, is to 
 have transcended self, to have identified self with the 
 eternal order of Nature, is to be subject-object, is to 
 be God. We creatures of a day with bounded minds 
 surrender ourselves to contemplation, seek like Buddhist 
 seers to lose ourselves in the eternal; we dream that, 
 clear-eyed, we pierce the mists of illusions and behold 
 the truth of things, we dream that we behold — 
 Indifference, Non-Being. To live in the eternal order 
 is to be dead in life, is to behold Indifference and 
 become indifferent. He that lives in the eternal order 
 dreams that he and all things are a dream. He is 
 supremely cultured; and to be cultured is to be tolerant, 
 indifferent. He is a lonely, mournful Stoic who retires 
 within himself that he may live in the eternal and 
 wearily discovers that his soul is empty. He loves truth; 
 but truth is antinomical, truth is error, and error is 
 truth. He would fain act rationally; but action is 
 irrational, action is based on desire, and desires are 
 illusions. He has contemplated the universal, tran- 
 scended illusion, and is therefore dead in life, immobile, 
 incapable of action, since to act is to be a dupe of 
 Nature. 
 
 The same, If I tum to Amiel, I am but confirmed in the truth 
 AmieT'^'^ °^ ^'^^'^ ^ wrote yesterday, in the truth of these last de- 
 
 [ 266 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 spairing pages. . . . And yet it would be no difficult 
 task to maintain that Amiel, latest of the articulate 
 sons of Melancholy, was the happiest of them. At 
 the least, it is sure that he was well equipped with the 
 conditions, with the means of happiness. Unlike Leo- 
 pardi and Maurice de Gu^rin, he is blessed with an in- 
 herited competency, sufficient to allow of independence, 
 to preserve him from the humiliation and slavery of 
 poverty, sufficient to serve as a platform from whence 
 to reach firm ground, to win a tolerable station beneath 
 the sun; and this competency, moreover, he increases 
 threefold before his death, and yet is generous and help- 
 ful. It is given him in boyhood to pass his days near the 
 lake and mountains which inspired Rousseau to become 
 the first of modern landscapists; in youth to fulfil his 
 Wanderjahre, to wander forth seven years, behold cities 
 and men and scenery, traverse Switzerland and Italy 
 and Sicily, visit Paris, "city of light," live an ardent 
 student life at Heidelberg and Berlin, vibrate respon- 
 sively to whatsoever is fair and noble, know the height 
 and depth and breadth of all the joys of sages and saints, 
 artists and scientists. On his return he is welcomed, 
 acclaimed, chosen to be the guide of those that are but 
 little younger than himself along the paths of loveliness 
 and wisdom. Versatile, he loves society and yet soli- 
 tude, solitude and yet society, is enabled to alternate 
 delight at will, is in the way of being preserved by his 
 mobility and personal charm from the hapless, hopeless 
 seclusion of Leopardi and Obermann and their despair- 
 ing, incomplete, one-sided vision of truth. If he wearies 
 of exercising fascination over men and women, if he 
 wearies of social pleasures, he can retire within himself, 
 can look in his heart and write, can analyse the folly of 
 [ 267 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 social men, can find relief, consolation, in introspection, 
 in contemplative mysticism. Haunted by the ideal of 
 perfection, of completeness, he betrays not the ideal of 
 love by possession, like Shelley; dutiful, he is not like to 
 be horror-stricken, paralysed by the vision of the " Spectre 
 of Debauch," like Alfred de Musset; and though he fails 
 to win fame in life, to satisfy the high expectations of 
 his friends, he escapes thereby the demoralisation of 
 success, and moreover is pursuing the while his appro- 
 priate business, since he is inditing the all-sufficient 
 "testament of his thought and heart," is confessing 
 the multitudinous diversity of his temperament, is 
 noting exactly his ideas, sentiments, sensations. And 
 if his genius is malady, if his "testament" is one of 
 deepest melancholy, this testament is but a thirtieth 
 part of the private diary of one whose nature was 
 mobile, inclined, so say his friends, to joy rather than 
 to sadness, a series of extracts admirably selected by his 
 editors in the interests of his fame, extracts serving to 
 prove his genius for the expression of melancholy. 
 
 And yet Amiel is among the chiefest of the sons of 
 Melancholy; he is no more to be consoled than they. 
 He knows with Leopardi that hope lasts only while 
 youth lasts, with Alfred de Vigny that the hopes of 
 manhood are cowardice. Like Lenau, he has feared 
 to betray ideal love, to compromise present and future 
 liberty, to give hostages to fortune and responsibility; 
 and, like Lenau, he is for ever regretting his allegiance 
 to the ideal, for ever dreaming that love of an actual 
 woman, relatively perfect, would prove his salvation, 
 would be supremest consolation. He is able to duly 
 accomplish toil, and after toil accomplished to sojourn 
 at leisure amid fairest nature; but if he admires, he 
 [ 268 J 
 
ne Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 also distrusts and fears this living nature, distrusts even 
 more than Lenau, — for is not Nature an eternal illusion, 
 and they who love her the dupes of their love? He 
 can look upon her with an artist's eye, but he cannot 
 refrain from looking on her coldly, intellectually, 
 sceptically. The enthusiasm of nature is like the 
 enthusiasm of hope, is at most a passing mood when 
 youth is gone. Moreover, not only is Amiel the thrall 
 of nature's influence, subdued to the hour and the season, 
 like Maine de Biran and Maurice de Gu^rin, but still 
 more haplessly he is at times most tranquil when nature is 
 mourning, his joy in the spring-tide passes into pain; like 
 Leopardi, he is young with the youth of the year, but 
 vain, youthful desires awaken, old wounds reopen, love 
 is longed for, love and therefore death. Sociable, judg- 
 ing that he is best fitted for social life, he cannot but 
 scorn the parrot-gossip which alone is possible in soci- 
 ety, cannot but find that to converse or to be silent is in- 
 evitably in either case to incur adverse criticism; driven 
 back on solitude, like Leopardi and Maurice de Gu^rin, 
 he fails not to admire in absence that social intercourse 
 of which present experience breeds weariness, dislike, 
 disgust, fails not also to discover that solitude is 
 wretchedness, is dolorous, empty selfishness. To be in 
 solitude is to have at command his perennial consola- 
 tion of diary-confession and ingenious versification; 
 but though, to a Goethe, poetry is deliverance, and the 
 analytical confession of melancholy is dispersion of 
 brooding mists, is purgation of poison, to a Maurice 
 de Gu^rin, to an Amiel such therapeutic remedies 
 serve but to waken, to vivify, to aggravate distress, 
 to deepen the painful sense of powerlessness. 
 
 It was easier for Amiel to traverse the gamut of 
 [ 369 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 existence, to be all things and all men in turn — though 
 he rather tells us of his power of universal metamor- 
 phosis than gives us proofs, such as a Michelet can in 
 a measure give, of this power, — to wing his mystic 
 way to that central calm of Indifference which is 
 potentially the universe, than to be himself, easier in 
 a word to contemplate than to act. But contemplation 
 is self-consciousness; subjectivity is the condition of 
 objectivity; it is only by the commission of what 
 Indian sages term "the heresy of individuality," by 
 existing as a person, that contemplation is possible. 
 Amiel is a contemplatist, but he and all other con- 
 templatists can but contemplate a world of their own 
 creation, can only render an account of their vision of 
 things, can only contemplate themselves. Individuality, 
 Being, is limitation, imperfection; whatsoever opposites 
 are implicit in Being, are implicit in Individuality; 
 self-consciousness is consciousness of imperfection and 
 opposition; consciousness is pain, is melancholy. In 
 proportion as the individual is capable of general com- 
 prehension, comprehension by intellectual sympathy of 
 the manifold forms of existence, he is but analysing 
 himself; the more versatile and multiple is this self, 
 the more irreconcilable pairs of opposites does the 
 self-analyst discover within himself, and the more 
 poignant and irremediable will be his melancholy. 
 Moreover, the melancholy self-analyst will discover 
 that even consciousness of equilibrium can be no, 
 more than the fitful illusion of a passing mood, that 
 his nature is inevitably biassed, that he regrets, resents 
 this bias, be its direction whatever it may, that he 
 painfully desires to be the opposite of that which he 
 tends to be. The practical man, the man of action, 
 [ 270 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 as Horace knew and told us once for all, is never 
 content with his actual lot; the contemplatist, like 
 Amiel, come to scorn contemplation. Amiel comes 
 to yearn for action, to yearn for that brutal self- 
 confidence and gross self-satisfaction -^yhich action 
 presupposes, though he cannot but scorn such qualities, 
 cannot but shrink from compromising his liberty, from 
 incurring responsibility,, cannot but fear the irreparable 
 consequences of any and every action. Moreover, the 
 idealist, the contemplatist, scornful of the real, must 
 of necessity scorn himself, since he scorns the finite: 
 Amiel cannot surrender himself to love, because he 
 cannot fail to perceive defect in any and every object 
 of love, be this object a particular person or a particular 
 idea, since the particular is necessarily the imperfect; 
 'and yet he would fain devote himself to some fair 
 hope, or idea, or woman, or action in deeds or words, 
 would fain be ambitious, though he is weaned from 
 ambition because his ambition is ideal, infinite. And 
 the idealist, the contemplatist, must make sorry com- 
 promises, and sorrow at his compromises : Amiel, 
 though he fears and scorns practical action, yet acts 
 and must act as a friend, a professor, a citizen, con- 
 scious the while that his action is a mean translation 
 of the ideal; diffidently, painfully composes, must 
 compose, works of literary virtuosity, elaborates verse- 
 translations of foreign poems, of his own private journal, 
 conscious the while that his literary activity is a mean 
 translation of the ideal. 
 
 Any and every attitude of thought or action is 
 
 exposed to criticism, to blame, because it is particular, 
 
 and therefore incomplete; no man may so think or 
 
 act as not to incur criticism, blame. The lucid self- 
 
 [ 271 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 examiner, though his instinct of self-preservation will 
 lead him at times to deceive himself in his own interest, 
 to regard his malady as a privilege, a superiority, to 
 pride himself on his weakness, — as Amiel occasionally 
 does, — will discover and apply to himself all the charges 
 that other men, they also imperfect and blameable, 
 since they are individuals, are like to bring against 
 him. The self-satisfied man of action who should 
 scorn or pity Amiel and his kindred should remember 
 that these have amply scorned themselves, should also 
 remember that he and his like would have been objects 
 of pity to the melancholy men of contemplation. Con- 
 templation and action are opposed; he may act whose 
 emotions and thoughts run ceaselessly in a single, 
 narrow, bounded channel; and he who is not simple, 
 whose range of emotions and thoughts is wide, is 
 paralysed. But the one fares little or no better than 
 the other; the man of action and the man of contem- 
 plation are alike biassed by a fatality of temperament; 
 each is what he becomes, and becomes what he is. 
 And consciousness of being, becoming, mutability, is 
 conscious misery. 
 
 Weariness I am weary, weary of thought; weary of ' Difference, 
 ofThought. weary of Unity. The Architectonic science is ever an 
 ideal, a science without a content. We think and are, 
 but know not what are Thought and Being, or how 
 related. We are dimly conscious there is unity, 
 though "sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears, 
 divides one thing entire to many objects." We 
 seem to know all things in a dream, as Plato says, but 
 find we know nothing when we awake. Awaking, 
 the mind converses with itself, but such conversation 
 [ 272 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen /4llard<x; 
 
 involves the use of words, and words are distinctions, 
 and to distinguish is to abandon unity. Language is 
 the brother-enemy of Thought. For perfect know- 
 ledge, a Metaphysic of Metaphysics, and a Criticism, 
 destructive and constructive, of such a Metaphysic of 
 Metaphysics, were needed; in default of this, the 
 historical criticism of any and every term of meta- 
 physics, theology, science, ethics, politics, suffices to 
 inspire distrust of any and every system-builder. The 
 thirst for knowledge is a tragic passion; Marlowe's 
 hapless Dr. Faustus is a victim of a vain, soul-consum- 
 ing lust even as Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Barabas, and 
 Queen Dido. 
 
 Did I not write long ago in these pages that there 
 was nothing worth the knowing but that which is un- 
 known, unknowable. When I return to my prison 
 life, when my days of "golden uncontrolled enfranch- 
 isement " are at an end, there is nothing left me, it 
 would seem, but as heretofore to pitifully amuse the 
 leisure of my lonely nights by intellectual curiosity, 
 and to "drudge for my outer covering," daily acting 
 over again the sorry acts for which society rewards me 
 scantily, worthily. For a year I have abandoned 
 action, such action as was permitted me, and Epicurean 
 contemplation, that I might earnestly, truly con- 
 template, and therefore earnestly, truly act — if con- 
 tempation be the rightful source of practical action, 
 be highest action. And contemplation would seem to 
 convince me of the vanity of all action, and all con- 
 templation. . . . Let me enjoy my present liberty, if 
 I have the heart to enjoy it; let me cease to think, 
 if indeed I can cease; let me surrender myself to 
 the influence of these days of sunshine that remain 
 T [ 273 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 to me. Soon, all too soon, a few short months that 
 yet remain of my year of liberty, and I must return 
 to my old poverty and isolation; return to my prison, 
 more chill, more gloomy than in the past, since now 
 all hope is fled. Unable to comfort myself, I may not 
 seek to comfort others. Such consolation as gold and 
 interest afford I may not offer, for I am not of the 
 world, and cannot, even if I would, win the world's 
 approbations and rewards. Action, on any but the 
 meanest scale, is not permitted me. Moreover, thought 
 reveals the vanity of all action, be it mean or grandiose. 
 Still more, and worse, thought reveals the vanity of 
 thought, since thought cannot reconcile opposing 
 thoughts. "For no thought is contented," agree 
 Shakespeare and Richard the Second, " the better sort, 
 as thoughts of things divine, are intermix' d with 
 scruples, and do set the word itself against the word: 
 as thus, 'Come little ones'; and then again, 'It is as 
 hard to come as for a camel to thread the postern of a 
 needle's eye.' " 
 
 The But before I cast this book aside, as long ago I 
 
 sTdfilsa- ^^'^^ ™y "Golden Book," should I not finally, by way 
 tion. of balancing opposites, ask myself whether it is not 
 
 wisdom to abandon all hope of equilibrium, to cultivate 
 one special faculty rather than to pursue a vain quest 
 after harmony, after equilibrium. Harmony is chimeri- 
 cal; equilibrium is apathy, stagnation. He is wise 
 who is successful, judges the son of Sirach; and success 
 presupposes specialisation. To be narrow, one-sided, 
 is to be in the way of action; the versatile should 
 cultivate preponderantly the one faculty which best 
 repays cultivation. To be simple and single of eye, 
 [ 274 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 to be one definitely, to be the slave of one idea, to 
 possess an exclusive talent — this, possibly, should be the 
 object of my desire. ... But I am haplessly complex, 
 cursed with a multiplicity of "half-talents," or rather 
 potential half -talents, or — impotent potentialities. 
 Voluntary elimination, choice, habitual exercise of the 
 chosen talent, would hardly avail me. From youth 
 there has reigned within me a dolorous struggle for 
 survival; no fittest tendency has survived at the cost 
 of the rest; the strife continues without hope of issue. 
 Kindly is the fatality of temperament when the 
 temperament is simple; but what of the temperament 
 that is complex? Each tendency is counteracted by 
 the other co-existing tendencies, and strife is fatally 
 endless. Nor, indeed, have I any reason to suppose 
 that a single tendency, surviving, or exclusively 
 cultivated, would be strengthened by the atrophy of 
 the rest; the "noble," "natural" savage fondly deems 
 that the strength of his slain foes passes into himself. 
 Blessed, or cursed, with a sufficiency of worldly goods, 
 I should be at most a trifling dilettante. Could I even 
 from dilettante turn creator, and thus beguile my 
 melancholy, it were vain to suppose that the voice of 
 my heart would be wholly stifled, that voice which 
 now I hear incessantly, and which I should still hear 
 in hours of lassitude, more imperious perchance for 
 momentary suppression. . . . "But whate'er I be, nor 
 I nor any man that but man is with nothing shall be 
 pleased, till he be eased with being nothing." Long 
 ago I cited this of Shakespeare's King Richard the 
 Second. Richard's Bushey and Richard himself were 
 my spokesmen yesterday; and now Richard's Queen 
 shall summarise my sorrow, shall justify my despairing 
 [ 275 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 silence. Of a truth, "what I have " — so little, and so 
 mean — "I need not to repeat, and what I want it 
 boots not to complain." I must make shift to love 
 again, as I was wont to love, as Maurice de Gu^rin 
 loved, that god of silence, Harpocrates, with finger 
 laid on lip. This much, however, I have gained in 
 my quest: I can no longer desire opportunity for action, 
 which is ever fraught with mingled consequences, — 
 successful action, which is ever at the cost of others; 
 I can no longer desire opportunity for contemplation, 
 which tends to doubt and despair. ... Be it mine to 
 cultivate uncomplaining patience, brave endurance, 
 humble dignity. . . . But have I not linked two 
 opposites in these my latest words? 
 
 it 7 
 
 Once more, and I have done. And, assuredly, 
 twere well it were done quickly," for when I turn 
 over these pages, when I look upon my self-portraiture, 
 I could fain disown acquaintance with myself. Let 
 me suppose them indited by another, imprinted, exposed 
 to my curiosity and judgment. Should I not be 
 prompted to bid their author cease descanting on 
 his own deformity? Should I not instinctively abhor 
 his diseased self-questionings, his impotent despair, his 
 coward selfishness? Should I not doubt the legitimacy 
 of his doubts, and protest against his protests? And 
 yet, would this instinctive reaction be a permanent 
 one? The confessors of Melancholy have awakened 
 reaction and protest again and again in me; but none 
 the less, I know them for my brethren, my articulate 
 brethren, and sympathise unspeakably with their 
 sorrows, since they are akin to mine. . . . The plaints 
 of those who are stricken at heart are lost in the tumult; 
 [ 276 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 the multitude, rightly it may be, stay not to listen, 
 anxious, it would seem, not to be reminded of misery. 
 Yet from time to time I have chanced to see the im- 
 printed confessions of my articulate brethren lying on 
 those open-air stalls which assemble books that have been 
 owned and read; on turning their leaves to learn what 
 passages have elicited sympathy and earned a pencil's 
 underscore, I have almost ever found these passages 
 express some fleeting mood of timid joy or tearful hope. 
 Was it that the readers, stirred even as I to reaction 
 and protest by the very completeness of the despondency 
 presented in spectacle to them, eagerly seized upon the 
 slightest pretext for optimism offered by the author's 
 inconsistency, — necessary inconsistency, for opposite 
 calls for opposite, sorrow and despair presuppose at 
 least desires of joy and hope, — endeavouring to maintain 
 themselves in error, striving to cling to the illusive 
 belief in the possibility of happiness? ... Be this as 
 it may, the spectacle of a too complete despondency 
 surely awakens opposition within me, even as the 
 spectacle of a confidence too complete. Opposite calls 
 for opposite; pessimism and optimism have no meaning 
 apart from each other. Yet how are these, or any 
 other pair of opposites, to be reconciled? How may 
 extremes be avoided? By the discovery and constant, 
 consistent practice of the mean between them? But, 
 once again, the mean is ever an ideal, ever just beyond 
 the grasp, ever passing out of sight. Were the mean 
 not an ideal, the attempts to discover it, to reconcile 
 opposites, to reveal the harmony of opposites, would not 
 have to be perpetually, vainly renewed. ... I could 
 conceive a certain satisfaction of pride in thinking and 
 acting counter to my nature. Inclined, it would seem, 
 [ 277 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 by temperament, impelled by circumstance, to the side 
 of pessimism, I might possibly approximate to the 
 desired mean by a wilful, blind, persistent partisanship 
 of optimism. But how would such an escape from 
 the fatality of temperament, original and accentuated 
 by my outward fortunes, be possible ? In like manner, 
 to avoid the excess of self-consciousness, to approximate 
 to the mean between egoism and altruism, I should 
 violently espouse altruism, self-sacrifice. But given 
 my frame of mind, my circumstances, to what idea, to 
 whom could I satisfactorily devote myself, and die that 
 I might live? . . . Nay, I am but reopening the old 
 unsolved, insoluble problems. . . ^ 
 
 ^ [ Here follow several blank pages in the manuscript. I have again 
 taken on myself to mark this blank, and the interval of time which 
 elapsed between this entry and the next, by another division of the 
 diary. — Editor.] 
 
 [ 278 ] 
 
PART III 
 
 Ach, ich war des Treibens milde. Not a word have a visitation 
 I written during these days of perfect summer; and ofp^ace. 
 barely a thought has troubled my calm. I have been 
 making true holiday. I have lived in the present, as it 
 has rarely been given me to do, — given at most in 
 those short breathing-spaces I could yearly snatch 
 from toil, those halcyon days I could spend by the sea. 
 But, even then, the shadows were wont to deepen in 
 upon me; forsooth, I must needs squander my slender 
 store of sunny hours in fondly essaying to express my 
 subjective melancholy, — gentle, subdued though it 
 was. But now, but in these latest days, I have wholly 
 surrendered myself, wisely passive, to the influence of 
 Nature, have gazed on her beauty, void of will, void 
 of passion, void of mad desire to express her charm, to 
 interpret her. I have waived aside all doubts and 
 questionings, have ceased, as Jami, the Persian mystic, 
 ceased, to be the slave of every " how " and "wherefore." 
 Void of will ? Nay, rather I have willed to be happy 
 in my holiday, like Pippa. But Pippa gazed on the 
 puppet-show of human passions, losing herself for the 
 moment in the contemplation of the lives of others, 
 and then passing, gaily phrasing her content to be 
 herself and not another. Pippa might do this, but 
 [ 279 ^ 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 not I. And yet at least I have raised my voice in the 
 solitude, carolling brave songs to exorcise the spirit of 
 distrust. But I have been Faust, not Pippa, Faust 
 who has turned aside from the village festival to climb 
 the hill-brow, there to rest in the joyous sunlight. 
 " Happy is he who still dares to hope that he will rise 
 above the sea of error. That which we know not is 
 that which we need to know, and that we know is all 
 unprofitable. " So he speaks, remembering past vanities, 
 and turns for relief to the contemplation of the loveli- 
 ness around, fearing to mar with melancholy the sweet- 
 ness of the hour, hoping to forget that which he knows. 
 ... Is it that my calm is merely due to bodily 
 sanity? I have willed not to think in these perfect 
 days, I have wandered afield, and returned at night- 
 fall only to sink into deepest slumber. Is health, is 
 happiness conditional on vagueness of thought, on 
 vacancy of mind? . . . But the sun soon sank on 
 Faust's festal day; he must brood again on mystery, 
 and listen to the spirit of denial within him. Winter 
 treads hard on the heels of summer, as pain follows joy. 
 "The summer of life so easy to spend. . . . But 
 winter hastens at summer's end," sings Pippa. Soon 
 I must return to my life of perennial winter. Has the 
 sunshine of these happy days brought me a gospel? 
 Have the halcyon hours been harbingers of a "new 
 life"? 
 
 Ach, ich bin des Treibens miide, 
 Was soil all der Schmerz und Lust? 
 
 Susser Friede, 
 Komm, ach komm in meine Brust ! 
 
 Peace has come and sojourns with me, weary as I was 
 
 [ 280 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 and am of endless fluctuation and ever-varied distress. 
 Will she wed me, and be my helpmeet to the end? 
 Would that it might be so ! 
 
 So much I wrote a while ago, to furnish myself The "new 
 with an excuse for not thinking, for not writing. It '*•' 
 was, and is, peace with me, a peace of that order which 
 Maurice de Gue^rin knew in those days of his at the Val 
 d'Arguenon which intervened between his baffled quest 
 for philosophic truth and his dolorous endeavour to 
 accommodate himself to a practical life. Alas ! his days 
 of peaceful, passionless contemplation of outer Nature 
 were too fair to last; and I, even as he, must take up 
 the burden of active life, and drudge for food and 
 shelter, — drudge without Ferdinand's hope of winning, 
 by drudgery, an ideal Miranda. Summer is dying, and 
 winter is at hand. In the sullen or stormy days of the 
 period of liberty that yet remains to me before I quit 
 my -solitude I must lay the foundations of the lowly 
 shrine of my "new life," in which Peace is to 
 dwell. I must mark off its boundaries, trace the lines 
 of the edifice, draw out my code of service and book 
 of hours. ... A personal synthesis only? ... Be 
 it so. 
 
 This happiness, then, which is the aim of human His 
 
 action and contemplation, what form shall it take for 
 me? . . . Am I not convinced, and have I not a 
 cloud of witnesses equally convinced, that the only 
 possible happiness is that which one thinks to give to 
 others, that self-sacrifice is sole happiness. Positive 
 moralists, considering that a happiness within the 
 bounds of experience can alone be considered, and 
 [ 281 ] 
 
 method of 
 happiness. 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 finding, on consideration, that personal happiness is 
 chimerical, think to console themselves by holding 
 that it is a sufficient, ample happiness to contribute, 
 as Bacon puts it, to "the relief of man's estate." 
 But this is only to adjourn the question, which again 
 recurs in its old form after adjournment. As questions 
 of social morality are merely questions of personal 
 morality, so questions of social happiness are merely 
 questions of personal happiness. If my self-sacrifice 
 goes to the making of the general happiness, the 
 general self-sacrifice of humanity, past and present, 
 must likewise go to the making of my own happiness. 
 But how can I be happy so long as I am conscious of 
 the misery of others. Self-sacrifice is progress towards 
 perfection, — but progress along the path of perfection 
 is progress along the path of selfishness. . , , What 
 then must be my selfish happiness ? 
 
 From the circumstances of my case, my penury and 
 consequent solitude, I cannot hope to give happiness 
 to others, — that happiness which is only theirs so long 
 as they can believe it theirs. From the circumstances 
 of my case, again, my self-sacrifice can only take the 
 form of refraining from ill-doing. But such self- 
 sacrifice comes so easy to me that it deserves not 
 so noble a name. Self-indulgence at the cost of 
 others, vice in its most elegant shapes, have no 
 charm for me. Ill conduct is ugly, and therefore 
 repugnant, hateful. But such as it is, this self- 
 sacrifice is the only, all too modest, merely negative 
 contribution I can make to "the relief of man's 
 estate." Yet be it so. If "they also serve who only 
 stand and wait," they also serve who hinder not the 
 service. 
 
 [ 282 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 A Maudsley, versed, like Ribot, in the maladies of Power of 
 the will, discerns in the well-fashioned will the last and ^'"' 
 highest phase of mental development. A Pascal judges 
 that the design of God is rather to perfect the will 
 than the reason: "Now, perfect clearness would only 
 serve the intellect, and would prove detrimental to the 
 will." I know only too well the constant ebb and 
 flow, like to that of the Euripus, of contrary impulses, 
 the discord that results from openness of mind. The 
 desire to transcend the prejudices of temperament, the 
 desire to comprehend all that is human, the desire to 
 place self, perfected, developed, to the full extent of its 
 capacities, in accord with nature, or, if nature be im- 
 moral or a-moral, at least with the moral order, with 
 God — these are noble desires, but shipwreck lies this 
 way. I must hold that liberty is voluntary limitation, 
 obedience, and cavil no longer at antinomies. I must 
 hold with Goethe that self-development is the assimila- 
 tion of such extraneous elements, and those alone, 
 which are congruous, therefore not prejudicial, to 
 native aptitudes — be they mean as mine are, or be they 
 excellent. Concentration, stability, prejudice — for 
 prejudices make for sanity, — these must I desire. But 
 Goethe counselled that we should "live resolutely in 
 the True, the Beautiful, the Whole." The True? — 
 Pilate might well have asked what is Truth, sorrow- 
 fully, despairingly, without a jest. And the Whole? 
 — Precisely because it is the Whole, it embraces all 
 the realm of Typhon, of Ahriman, of Evil. ... I 
 must abandon the True and the Whole, and adhere 
 solely to the Beautiful. 
 
 But Will? But Liberty? Are not will and lib- 
 erty mere psychological illusions? As religion is 
 [ 283 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 reduced to morality, and morality, conscience, dis- 
 appears before analysis, as personality is dissolved into 
 a mere echo, a reflection, of the variations of the 
 body, so will is lost in determinism, automatonism. 
 Velle non discitur. The sources of the illusion are set 
 forth by the physiologist; and the moralist, basing on 
 the conclusions of the physiologist, bids us forsooth 
 modify our character, forgetting to add — if we have 
 the power, which power is precisely denied. Yet, let 
 Will be an illusion. If Will be but the victory of one 
 passion over another, as Spinoza says, yet this illusion 
 of choice is none the less a necessary illusion. On the 
 lowest ground will has helped humanity to bear its 
 burdens. It is a fair illusion, this belief in man's power 
 to strain towards perfection. 
 
 Yet, have I power of will? E.en6 had strength of 
 will, and disdained to use it; Obermann and Amiel, 
 each in his own way, were painfully conscious of their 
 incapacity of will. Maine de Biran, would-be Stoic, 
 defining Stoicism as the afiSrmation of the supremacy 
 of will, must confess, like Obermann, after sincerest 
 self-examination, that he is wholly unable to command 
 his actions, and still less his sentiments; must lament 
 that he is wholly at the mercy of his organisation. 
 The Russian novelists allow, at most, power of will to 
 their heroines; their feeble; unstable heroes drift to 
 and fro pn every wave of doctrine; abstain from action, 
 because they can no other; act, when it is given them 
 to act, all too logically, all too simply, madly — even 
 as the iron-willed heroines act — under the magnetic 
 influence of fanatics, or under the insane impulse of 
 Otchaianie, "possession," as Dostoievsky appropriately 
 terms it. Fever succeeds to apathy; they are strong 
 [ 284 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 to will only when reason, lucidity, no longer gives 
 pause to the will. They fling themselves on action, 
 on crime, if but to end irresolution, if but to court 
 death and peace. But, though I accept solitude and 
 obscurity, and will strive even to cherish them; though 
 I definitely abandon action for contemplation, since 
 action is not allowed me, since I should fear the 
 consequences of action, the inevitable concomitancy 
 of evil in the results of good action, were action 
 allowed me; I am not conscious of a lack of will- 
 power. In time past I willed strenuously to acquire 
 knowledge, I willed faithful performance of daily 
 duty. And I must henceforth will concentration of 
 my faculties, such — always understood — -as they are; 
 must concentrate them on duty, the duty of joy. 
 
 Dante punishes, — yes, I will add — rightly punishes 
 those who bore themselves sadly in the sweet air made 
 joyous by the sunshine, who veiled all things with the 
 acrid vapour of their hearts. The sun does not always 
 smile, but my heart shall. I will rank with those 
 wisest of sectaries, oi iXwia-TiKoi, The Hopeful, to 
 whom Plutarch alludes in passing. I will be hilaris 
 et convenienter gratiosus, as the rule of St. Francis 
 enjoined. Joy is the symptom of strength, Spinoza 
 allows that the knowledge of the good is a synonym of 
 reason, and I will understand reason only as the con- 
 scious "passion of joy,'' will "possess my heart in joy." 
 L'Allegra and La Pensierosa are twin sisters, indeed; 
 but,, then, a lover must choose between them, he cannot 
 wed both. Come, then, AUegra, whose other name is 
 Duty. I will forget thy sister, loving only thee. . . . 
 
 It is a metaphor only, this making of life a poem, — 
 " a true poem, a composition, a pattern of the best and 
 [ 285 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 honourablest things, " as was written of Sir Philip Sidney. 
 But, since my temperament is that of the artist, I will 
 make my life a poem, a picture, — that none will hear, or 
 see. But what of that? . . . The artist is only artist if 
 he chooses, eliminates. Melancholy shall be eliminated, 
 that my poem-picture, my life, may be fair. The true 
 artist ignores all that is ugliness; he cannot, will not 
 see it. He ignores. Dutiful, I will ignore pain and 
 sorrow, will recognise alone the obligation to be happy. 
 Hitherto, I have followed Marcus Aurelius's rule: "let 
 thy mien be cheerful." Henceforth, not mien alone, 
 but heart shall be cheerful. Life is duty, and the 
 accomplishment of daily duty is not intolerable. To 
 be happy is the fairest duty, and the fairest courage. 
 Courage is grave, indeed; but he that is courageously 
 happy is joyfully grave. 
 
 Optimism Was I not all too enthusiastic yesterday? Will 
 and pes- ^^^ ■ yigj^j ^q melancholy, enthusiasm to criticism? 
 But I am resolved to be optimistic, to be joyful. Why 
 not find material for grave, temperate joy even in 
 antinomies? To presume that I have accomplished a 
 synthesis would be the best of proofs that I have 
 attained stability of contemplation, and calm. Syn- 
 theses are arbitrary, personal, subjective, but thereby 
 precisely significant of character; and character is 
 significant of the strong will which I have willed to 
 form, and possess. If I can find joy in the antinomies 
 of optimism and pessimism, I furnish myself with an 
 excellent test that I am recognising the duty of joy. 
 
 Well, then. Optimism and Pessimism are a pair of 
 the countless opposites which are the extreme poles 
 between which human thought moves, and must move. 
 [ 286 ] 
 
 simism. 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Both views result from a balancing of pains and pleasures; 
 and since contentment and melancholy are matters of 
 individual organisation, men incline to the one or 
 the other according to their prevailing temperament. 
 Shaftesbury is naturally an optimist, Butler is naturally 
 a pessimist. The rational optimist, that is to say, he 
 who has theorised his temperament, may find a balance 
 of pleasure in this life, or may be a pessimist as regards 
 the life of experience, postulating the redress of the 
 balance by another existence, striving meanwhile to 
 find pleasure in duty. The pessimist, on the other 
 hand, may also be an optimist in a degree; holding 
 that pleasure is brief, he may still hold that brevity is 
 of the essence of pleasure; convinced that all is vanity, 
 he may yet be convinced that many vanities are de- 
 lightful. . . . But I am still balancing opposites. 
 Mankind is apt both to joy and sorrow, is optimistic 
 and pessimistic by turns. The sane, optimistic poet 
 wins popular suffrage; but, also, sunt lacrimce rerum, 
 and Plato must complain that poets are crowned whose 
 "words and melodies are most sorrowful to hear." But 
 I must essay my synthesis. I will be bold, then, and 
 afifirm that both pessimists and optimists are idealists. 
 I will be yet bolder, and afifirm that of these idealists, 
 if the optimist generously extends his satisfaction with 
 his best, ideal self to a satisfaction with the actual frame 
 of things, the pessimist is more optimistic than the 
 optimist. For while the one is content with things as 
 they are, the other would only be contented if things 
 were far otherwise, or even wholly otherwise. While 
 the optimist sees in this world the best of all possible 
 worlds, the pessimist demands, in the name of the ideal, 
 a much better than this best. . . . There! Have I 
 [ 287 J 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 not succeeded in smiling? But, unfortunately for my 
 synthesis, pessimists persist in remaining incredulous 
 that the ideal is capable of realisation. 
 
 But my own, personal synthesis? I will look on 
 Pessimism and Optimism as extremes, as one-sided 
 exaggerations. I will assimilate so much of Spinoza 
 as will serve to augment my joy, to further me in the 
 way of my "greater perfection"; I will hold that, a 
 priori, life is neither good nor evil, is precisely that 
 which we make it. As an artist, an artisan of my own 
 happiness, I will ignore all save the beautiful, — which 
 beautiful includes pity, sympathjr, noble discontent. 
 
 The But this voluntary limitation, this exclusion of 
 
 voluntary melancholy, is much as if a Jacobi, weary of the 
 limitation, eternal duel between his heart and head, his sensibility 
 and his intelligence, were to impose silence on the 
 doubts and questionings of his intellect, that his heart 
 may be at rest. Is it a mere abdication of a weak and 
 mediocre mind, a cowardly acceptance of defeat ? 
 "The effect of a great multiplicity of ideas," says 
 Vauvenargues, " is to involve weak minds in contradic- 
 tions." But the ideal of "the greatest weaklings," says 
 Novalis, is precisely "the ideal of highest strength, of 
 most powerful life," which was the exclusive ideal of 
 Vauvenargues. And I have already stated a few out 
 of the countless contradictions in which Goethe involved 
 himself. . . . Well, Goethe, he who is not content 
 with any single point of view, who endeavours to 
 regard nature objectively, impersonally, confesses that 
 his calm is attained by strenuous elimination of doubts, 
 by constant refusals to admit or consider contradictions. 
 Moreover, I have no pride to wound by any admission 
 [ 288 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 that I am of the order of "weak minds." And Vau- 
 venargues himself is only able to arrange tentative 
 prolegomena to a system by the most arbitrary ex- 
 clusions. 
 
 The temple once erected, I must grave brief legends His ideal 
 around the portal. What shall they be ? The men ■"°°'^- 
 of letters must have been embarrassed when it was 
 asked of them the other year to signify their dearest 
 texts and tirades. For what rhythmical period does 
 not weary by often remembrance ? The fairest colloca- 
 tions of words are prisons to thought; the expression 
 is nothing to that which it fain would express; Isis 
 is never wholly unveiled. My task is easier. What, 
 then, can I remember at the moment? ... 
 
 Cato's " I regret not having lived, since I have so 
 lived that I deem I was not born in vain." 
 
 Pascal's "Thou wouldst not seek me, hadst thou not 
 already found me; therefore, trouble not thyself." 
 
 Sophocles's choral strophe — and let it be in Matthew 
 Arnold's English: "Oh! that my lot may lead me in 
 the path of holy innocence of word and deed, that path 
 which august laws ordain, laws that in the highest 
 empyrean had their birth, of which heaven is the father 
 alone, neither did the race of mortal men beget them, 
 nor shall oblivion ever put them to sleep. The power 
 of God is mighty in them, and groweth not old." 
 
 Plato's "The true philosopher ... is content, if 
 only he may live his earthly life pure of injustice and 
 unrighteousness, and quit the present scene in peace and 
 kindliness with bright hopes." 
 
 Pindar's "It is our duty to harbour goodly hope." 
 
 And again Pindar's "Brief is the flowering time of 
 u [ 289 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 the joy of mortals. And quickly the blossom falls, 
 smitten by adverse change. We are 'the creatures of 
 a day, anything and nothing, the shadow of a dream. 
 But when the splendour comes that Heaven bestows, 
 our meed is radiant light and sweetest life." 
 
 And let me end with St. Paul's eulogy of charity. 
 
 Pindar-fashion, I was to begin my palace-building 
 by making the portal radiant. I have given brief rein 
 to memory, and now must notice that I have remem- 
 bered sentences of moral beauty alone. . . . And yet 
 I trusted instinct rightly, for, if I am to make fair my 
 life, moral beauty must be paramount. Sensitiveness 
 to colour and form in music, art, and literature will not 
 greatly further me. It is not mine to dwell in the 
 Fortunate Isles; and lotus-eating, even for the leisured, 
 cannot be more than an occasional diet. 
 
 I have been accustomed to regard the surprises of 
 happiness as part of the stock-in-trade of poets and 
 novelists. And yet that has happened this autumn 
 day which was unforeseen, which lent lustre even to 
 the sunshine. Mindful of the first pages of this diary, 
 I had dared to be absurd. I had risen so gladsome, 
 that the romantic seemed as natural as — the singing of 
 the birds amid the orchard-trees on which I looked from 
 my window. This day would I be Orpheus, would 
 prelude in the woods as though the golden-siiooded 
 Muses were to take up the strain when I had ended, 
 singing as once they sang at the wedding-feast of 
 Cadmus and Harmonia. But how convey my lyre,^ — ■ 
 such lyre as Raphael's Apollo loves, — to the secret 
 glades? I thought how I had olten borne a hidden 
 nosegay through the stony homeward streets — so timid 
 [ 290 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 are we children of industrialism, fearing to encounter 
 ridicule by open love of beauty. Veiling then my four- 
 stringed lyre in cloak of darkness — let this serve as 
 laughing paraphrase for waterproof and violin, — I stole 
 away with guilty trepidation. Unmarked I reached my 
 woodland brook and knoll of moss, choosing for audience 
 and rivals winged choristers, not sheep. As my fingers 
 wandered over the strings, I smiled in thought of the 
 phantom maiden, Nephele, whom I was wont in time 
 past childishly to invoke by mournful rhythms. And, 
 to mock melancholy, I modulated swiftly into a joyous 
 allegro. Leaning against a white-rinded birch, I 
 glanced from rippling brook to leafy, sun-spangled 
 covert, and the sombre shade that was scored by mount- 
 ing, columnar stems. . . . Was that a Dryad peeping 
 with curious eyes through a leafy screen, parting the 
 twigs with gentle hand? Was it Nephele? ... I 
 played on, fearing to dispel the vision, feigning to fix 
 my eyes upon the strings. . . . Would she linger, and 
 thus approve my minstrelsy; or swiftly disappear in 
 scorn from mortal eyes? I echoed Faust's "Oh stay, 
 thou fleeting moment." . . . How many moments of 
 prosaic time the Dryad lingered I know not; but I 
 had ample lesiure to mark well her beauty. And alas ! 
 it passed not undiscovered that I was conscious of her 
 presence. A meeting of the eyes, — and needs must I 
 pause in my playing. . . . The leaves rustled to their 
 wonted place, and I must hear hurried parting steps. 
 . . . No Dryad surely, prisoned to her natal tree. 
 Some daughter of Eve, not all without a taint of trans- 
 mitted curiosity. Rather, some guest of a neighbouring 
 country house, not lightly fatigued by lengthy walks, 
 and not afraid of sylvan solitude. . . . Well, surprised 
 [ 291 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 by happiness, filled with joy and music, I could sing on 
 my homeward way, my lyre well veiled, my newest, 
 dearest picture treasured sacredly in memory. 
 
 The If it was dangerous to speak disdainfully of Helen, 
 
 remedy of ^g Stesichorus must find, far graver was the offence 
 and all condign the punishment of austere Hippolytus, 
 self-dedicated victim of the wrath of Aphrodite. Love, 
 thou art mediator between Truth and the human 
 understanding, though I have ever mistrusted thee ! 
 Vouchsafe thy pardon, and I will stoutly hold the lists 
 in thy behalf against all comers, with a " Perfect lovers 
 are onely wise " for challenge. 
 
 "Fair lady is never false," "Perfect lovers are onely 
 wise " ! John Forde was youthful, verily, when he 
 made bold to defend his defiant, chivalrous "posi- 
 tions." Yet Beauty is Truth's splendour and lovely 
 incarnation. I will not herd with heretics who fondly 
 babble of beauty unadorned. Beauty unadorned is 
 formless Good; and formless good is arid dialectic. 
 The Banquet, not the Philebus, shall charm me. 
 "Love is the onely line which leadeth men to the 
 font of wisdome," as this Elizabethan maintained; love 
 is the new intelligence that raises men aloft, as Dante 
 knew. 
 
 Since I have willed to stoutly ignore all that is not 
 Beauty, I must create my Beatrice. Will not the 
 vision serve of yesterday? To see is to love, and to 
 love is to be wise, was Dante's creed. For name, the 
 vision shall be known to me as Nephele, phantom- 
 muse of my whilom verses. And as the lover must 
 ever strain to raise himself to the imagined altitude of 
 bis Beatrice, so will I hold myself as if I were ever in 
 [ 292 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 her presence, guarding my thoughts that they be 
 "high-erected, and seated in a heart of courtesie," in 
 Sir Philip's words. What if she be but a cloud-love? 
 She is none the less Beatrice, none the less Laura. 
 Nor shall she have cause to frown at any infidelity. 
 No domestic Gemma, no Avignon light-of-love can be 
 her rival. Such are the sweet uses and safeguards of 
 adverse poverty. . . . "The lownesse and meannesse 
 of my fortune and person forbids me to hope," sighed 
 Algernon Sidney, grand-nephew of Sir Philip. But // 
 miser suole dar facile credenza a quel che vuole, jests 
 Ariosto. What if I take seriously his laughing 
 irony ! In virtue, then, of my meanness, I can the 
 readier feign, and give credence to my feigning. 
 L'invisibil fa vedere Amove, he laughs again. Yes, I 
 gravely agree that it is the lover's privilege to behold a 
 goddess confessed in a — very woman. I have trans- 
 figured a mere "young lady" into a Nephele whose 
 presence in my heart shall be constant incentive to 
 erect myself above myself. 
 
 The "new life" cannot wholly draw its source from The 
 the sense of beauty. Yet let me neither overvalue '^^™6dy of 
 
 ^ art. 
 
 nor undervalue the deliverance vouchsafed by art. 
 There is a time for all things; and I may well seek 
 occasional refuge from this unintelligible world in the 
 fair harmonious worlds that are realised by artists, on 
 condition that I chafe not at the contrast on my 
 return. More is life than art; more than the love of 
 art and beauty is the love of man. The artist, the 
 creator of harmony, is based on the man, as Novalis 
 says, even as the statue is based on its pedestal. The 
 artist, who is enabled to reveal to other men his visions 
 [ 293 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 of Paradise, must yet bear himself as a man among 
 men; and therefore all the more should the artist who 
 divines a Paradise in moments of exalted joy, but lacks 
 the power of revelation, who forgets his misery a while 
 in the contemplation of revealed paradises, proceed on 
 his way rejoicing, not bewildered at his ' banishment, 
 not gazing helplessly with lack-lustre eye on the sphere 
 of his exile as a disorderly Inferno, but encouraged to 
 behold in it a Purgatory, wherein adherence to all that 
 is noble is an approximation to Paradise. For to side 
 with the good is to know Beauty. . . . Long have I 
 held, indeed, and I still can hold, that art is independent 
 of ethics. Is it not the duty of the creative artist to 
 fulfil his vocation; may not the musician's cult of 
 Beauty be wholly exclusive, and the painter's cult be 
 almost wholly exclusive; cannot the dramatist in prose 
 or verse rightly leave his representations of human 
 life, if they be true representations, to serve as object- 
 lessons? But other artists, in proportion as their 
 art can influence human thought and action, are 
 responsible. Moreover, the artist of whatever art is 
 primarily a man, and the deficiencies of his work, 
 setting workmanship aside, result from the deficiencies 
 of his character. If rich in imagination, and poor 
 in conscience, his imagination will be superficial. . . . 
 I mean no more than this; for me, since I am not 
 blessed to be a creative artist, lotus-eating can be no 
 permanent, satisfactory occupation, I must not prolong 
 my sojourn in imaginary paradises, oblivious of time 
 and honour. The world will not let me go free, or 
 allow me to withdraw for long into the sanctuary of 
 art, refusing all responsibility. The law of irony 
 besets alike the artist and the lover of art. This 
 [ 294 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 Ariosto is a supreme artist, but he is ever conscious of 
 the contrast between the actual and his ideal world of 
 art and harmony, must needs jest at the momentary 
 forgetfulness of life and discord he has inspired in 
 himself and his audience. The German Romanticists, 
 eager to escape from oppressive actuality by picturing 
 an ideal world, welcomed Schelling's theory that the 
 reconciliation of nature and spirit, necessity and free- 
 dom, could only be effected in works of art (Beauty is 
 imaginary unity, said Kant before them), but Solger, 
 completing the theory, showed that irony was the funda- 
 mental principle — and solvent — of artistic idealism. 
 The world is what it is; the finite is necessarily im- 
 perfect; nature denies permanency to beauty of thought 
 and art. Heine, revolting from the actual, denies it, 
 and creates a world of beauty; but, conscious that his 
 imaginary world is merely imaginary, he jests at his 
 own creation, even as he jests at Nature's creation. 
 In a word, art is not life; and to love art too well is 
 to hate life unduly. 
 
 Art, ideal art, is not the whole of art, still less of The 
 life. He who embraces life under all its aspects ''<=™^dy oi 
 
 . humour. 
 
 beholds in man the artist, the home-sick feigner of 
 imaginary paradises, but also the sorrowful, courageous 
 struggler. Like irony, humour is a solvent of that 
 ideal art, that ideal life, expressed with more or less 
 completeness by others, vaguely divined in my own 
 reveries, for which I have hitherto solely cared. The 
 humourist is one who looks on life as a tragi-comedy. 
 He knows that, under the conditions of human exist- 
 ence, the highest thought and the highest endeavour, 
 the most ardent desire for truth, and the most strenuous 
 [ 295 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 energy, are tragic, since they must fail of completeness; 
 are comic, in their contrast with ideal completeness. 
 He knows that even those who cherish mediocrity, 
 who endeavour to make life an art of calculation, offer 
 a tragi-comic spectacle to the humorous, objective artist, 
 to the disinterested observer. Let me cultivate the 
 faculty of humour, if indeed I possess it in poten- 
 tiality, not only that I may find consolation for my 
 own sorrows, that my "misery" may "make sport to 
 mock itself," but that my sympathy and tolerance may 
 be strengthened. He that is humorous has "right 
 opinion," and avoids instinctively excess of earnestness, 
 which is fanaticism, and excess of sensibility, which is 
 sentimentality. But let me remember that humour 
 should not be merely playful acceptance of that which 
 IS. Right humour is based on the serious conviction 
 of the beauty and truth of goodness, — though the finite 
 be not the infinite. 
 
 But shall I readily reconcile, in myself, the humourist 
 with the artist, and the artist with the man of action — 
 the drudge? I must not rigidly divide, as heretofore, 
 my life into hours of arid toil, stoically endured, 
 and hours of leisure, lapsing in music and dis- 
 interested. Epicurean contemplation. I must not be 
 hopeless of unity. The complete artist should be 
 poetical, and he who endeavours to make of his life a 
 poem should not so much strive to ignore that portion 
 of his life which allows no ready perception of the 
 beautiful which perchance may lurk in it, as strive to 
 regard it under its poetical aspect. Since the universal 
 is implicit in the particular, I must make shift to dis- 
 cover the All in the One, to regard my drudgery as 
 [ 296 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 representative, symbolical. It is the performance of 
 duty, and the manner of performance, not the rank of 
 the performance, that imports; the dignity of toil is 
 not lessened by the specific meanness of the toil. . . . 
 But I fear that I am not to be wholly satisfied with 
 bravery of words, with seeming nobility of sentiment; 
 I fear that such transcendentalism rings hollow. 
 Must I not call the humourist to the aid of the poet- 
 artist? Thus, I should remember that, in the hours 
 of contemplation, I can be other than I am, I can be 
 all men in turn, only on condition of being, in the 
 hours of action, what I must be, on condition of being 
 persistently one. The humourist, again, cognisant of 
 the laws of contrast and alternation, will preserve the 
 artist from idle regret that his life cannot be wholly 
 Epicurean, by his ever-renewed warning that intel- 
 lectual pleasure cannot be truly enjoyed except as 
 the reward of task-work duly accomplished. And the 
 humourist will slay with Apolline "kindly darts" the 
 sentimentalist within me. For is not the sentimentalist 
 one who, revolting from the actual, seeks to live in a 
 chimerical world, thereby exposing himself to endless 
 suffering and countless disillusion, since the actual world 
 will not fail to give the constant lie to his cherished 
 dreams? And might not such a sentimentalist de- 
 generate, and ultimately side with those who, elevating 
 impressibility into a virtue, trusting solely to their 
 instincts and emotions for guidance, abhorring, if not 
 shirking, duty, unless it presents itself in a flattering, 
 emotional form, find ready excuse for their deficiencies 
 of practice and their omissions of plain duties in the con- 
 viction of the excellence of their hearts and intentions? 
 But the meanness, the meanness of my toil and 
 [ 297 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 station! Not that men's disregard need surprise or 
 afflict; but that the resulting, inevitable poverty will 
 deprive the contemplative artist of desired materials. 
 Yet let the artist see that he use to the full such 
 material as he already possesses; and let the man of 
 action, the drudge, with the aid of the humourist, 
 remember that though his own task-work, nay, "all 
 human affairs," to use Plato's words, "are hardly worth 
 considering in earnest, yet must we be in earnest 
 about them, for a sad necessity constrains us." Sad? 
 Though the humourist be a laughing and a weeping 
 philosopher in one, laughing that he may not weep, 
 and weeping lest laughter turn to bitterness, I will hide 
 my tears even from myself, and mitigate my laughter 
 to a secret smile. 
 
 Should the old despondency revisit me, should 
 humour fail to ward off its visitation, I must doubtless 
 fall back on pride in the last resort. The unfortunate, 
 believing that he merits a fairer lot, finds consolation 
 in such belief. La Rochefoucauld would find his 
 account in such a sentiment, and declare that "we 
 often console our unhappiness by a certain pleasure we 
 find in appearing unhappy." But my pride was, and 
 shall be, wholly hidden; nay, I will be too proud to 
 confess my unhappiness to myself. The Due de La 
 Rochefoucauld must yield precedence to Sir Thomas 
 Browne : " if our merits be above our stations, if our 
 intrinsical value be greater than we go for, or our 
 value than our valuation, and if we stand higher in 
 God's than in the censor's book, it may make some 
 equitable balance in the inequalities of the world." 
 . . . Should I dally with my old fancy that I am a 
 
 r 298 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 "whipping boy "for some favourite of fortune, that, 
 in the compensatory economy of things,- 1 fall short 
 that another may excel? If only he who is a gainer 
 by my loss were — my friend! But I am used to 
 loneliness, and can only smile at this mystic solution of 
 the problem of inequality. . . . Yet why am I proud, 
 and why do I find consolation in pride ? Since I freely 
 confess to myself that I cannot, could not even with 
 changed circumstances, be that which I fain would be, 
 how can I deem that I merit a fairer lot? I can only 
 deserve by being patient, gentle, silent — save when 
 I can aid by kindly words. If I persist in such well- 
 being I shall deserve, and be justified in my humble 
 pride, able perchance to find satisfaction in deserving 
 without enjoying. Indeed, were I to be circumstanced 
 as my wandering, idle desires would have me circum- 
 stanced, should I not be exposed to the poignant sense 
 that I was beneath, unworthy of my fortune ? 
 
 Do what I will, strive as I may to constantly Despond- 
 discover the ideal in the real, to be that always which ^'^J'' ^""^ 
 
 •^ renewed 
 
 I am sometimes, my life will yet be no orderly, courage, 
 harmonious whole. The task of the creative artist 
 is simpler far; in representing life, he eliminates 
 all hampering, discordant elements; he orders and 
 harmonises at will. But life is complex, and its com- 
 plexity is not to be simplified. The beautiful is 
 symbolical of the good; akin to, and yet other than 
 the good. Grace, it may be, is the link between 
 them. Grace is beauty in action; there are "fair 
 souls," doubtless, who are constantly inspired, con- 
 stantly under the influence of "the daemonic," who 
 move and speak and act as though to the sound of 
 [ 299 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 music, who radiate sunshine, however they be circum- 
 stanced. Imagination and understanding with them 
 are ever in proportion; not, as with others, occasion- 
 ally, seldom; true artists, they constantly behold 
 harmony in all things because they are harmonious 
 themselves. Can such lovely simplicity be gained by 
 desire and resolution and effort? Is it not even as the 
 poet's imagination, given from the first; not to be 
 merited, not to be acquired by resolution? Yet to 
 love beauty is to love love, for beauty is love visible. 
 And to love love is to be kind and pitiful. '"Fair, 
 kind, and true ' is all my argument." If kind and true 
 of heart, then shall I be also fair. 
 
 The fear of That I may continue in calm this reconstruction of 
 selfishness, jjjy jjfg^ j must exorcise once and for all the lurking, 
 troublous doubt that not only the basis but the whole 
 superstructure is — selfishness. Must we not " per- 
 severe in our essence"; and is not the essence of lofty 
 character self-respect? The "happy warrior" obeys 
 the call of duty, but it is he himself who issues the 
 order he obeys. If he recognises duties to others, it 
 is because he recognises that such duties are duties 
 he owes to himself; if he embraces self-sacrifice, it is 
 because self-sacrifice is supreme self-satisfaction. I 
 will not be dismayed by La Rochefoucauld, for he 
 effects his generalisation of selfishness by sophistries of 
 omission, omission of the lofty intellectual egoism of 
 self-sacrifice, and the spontaneous impulses of the heart 
 towards self-sacrifice — which latter form, precisely 
 because instinctive, is less meritorious than the self- 
 sacrifice that proceeds from calculated self-interest. . . . 
 Nay, am I not also sophistical in turn, discounting 
 C 300. ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 self-sacrifice that I may plausibly console myself for 
 my inability, born of circumstance and temperament, 
 to forget myself ? But at least I will desire and strive 
 to be a rational citizen of the ideal Commonwealth. . . . 
 With the very gaoler of Imogen's Posthumus "I would 
 that we were all of one mind, and that mind good." 
 The diversity of hearts is manifest; yet resignation, 
 self-love, active benevolence, obedience to law imposed 
 from within or without, mystic love, faith, are but so 
 many aspects of goodness appropriate to different 
 visions. Resignation, cheerful if it may be; the self- 
 love that is the timid yet ardent desire of perfection, — 
 I cannot be altogether base if I cherish these. 
 
 In the coming days and years I could not, and The posing 
 should not, wholly disregard in the interests of my 
 serenity those problems which are insoluble, and yet 
 inevitable. The posing of them is self-dedication to 
 pain, but yet to honour; not to be haunted by divine 
 questionings is to fail in human dignity. Let me 
 recognise once and for all with Kant that the sphere of 
 knowledge is bounded by experience, that the verifica- 
 tion of faith in ideals is impossible, and yet that trans- 
 cendent faith is necessary and legitimate. So shall I 
 not unduly despond because proffered solutions are ever 
 inadequate; so shall doubt fail to wound me, armed 
 with the certainty that my trust — how shall I express 
 it in words? — my trust that Love is lord of all, if it is 
 not capable of proof, is yet also incapable of disproof. 
 Such trust is teleological, and the opposite of teleology 
 is mechanism, and opposites are irreconcilable. Be it 
 so. I cannot reconcile a single pair of opposites, of 
 antinomies, ethical, political, metaphysical; I cannot 
 [ 301 ] 
 
 of insoluble 
 problems. 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 side exclusively with love or justice, civilisation or in- 
 dustry, spirit or nature, freedom or law, immanency or 
 transcendency, nor yet synthesise them. I have vainly 
 pursued unity, individual, universal. The supreme, 
 ineffable Unity? I know full well the countless diffi- 
 culties that immediately ensue from the thesis that God 
 is, or the thesis that God -is not; I know full well that 
 the various aspects of the One involve contradictions. 
 I recognise that the conception of an Ideal of beauty, 
 love, reason, as efficient and final cause of the real is a 
 possible conception, but that the conception of an ideal 
 does not necessarily imply the reality of this ideal, or 
 that this ideal is the cause and end of reality. I admit 
 that an abstraction is a mere abstraction, that the 
 Absolute, if it is pure indifference, is pure emptiness; 
 that if it is determined by attributes, it is no longer 
 absolute, that if it is other than nature and humanity it 
 is a mere algebraical x, that if it includes or is the 
 cause of nature and humanity, it includes or is the cause 
 of evil. Jehovah, or the Moral Order, or Nature {Deus 
 sive Naturd), or Necessity, or the Unknowable, or the 
 Unconscious Absolute — .... Nay, reason is bounded 
 by experience, and faith becomes necessary when reason 
 fails. We cannot think otherwise than we do think; 
 we cannot believe otherwise than we do believe. And 
 there are infinite degrees of belief; the belief of each 
 believer is, as his personality, unique. Moreover, non- 
 belief is impossible; suspension of judgment is incom- 
 patible with action, and moral action is truest thought. 
 We cannot comprehend rational unity, we cannot 
 know the unknowable; but we can, and must, be men 
 of good will. Positivists, Agnostics, Gnostics, each 
 duly insists on elements of truth neglected by his 
 [ 302 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 brethren, each arid all are Knights of the Spirit; they 
 reason, and therefore differ one from another, but each 
 and all acknowledge and reverence the supreme beauty 
 of moral goodness. ... So, with Menander, let me 
 "revere, and be not curious about God "; so with Phile- 
 mon, let me "have faith in God." Let me, with 
 Spinoza, recognise in Reason the mediator between 
 selfishness and altruism, but let me regard reason under 
 its aspect of love; let me hold, with Dante, that Love 
 is wisdom, that Love the Mediator can effect the re- 
 conciliation between thought and act. 
 
 I have let a long week of days and nights speed by Renewed 
 with never an added word to these last. I bore my '^"P™'*' 
 
 ency. 
 
 new-found joy through the sunlit meadows and woods, 
 and boldly matched it with the gladsome brooks and 
 golden autumn flowers, exulting to find them not more 
 vocal, not more radiant. Unfaltering and undismayed, 
 I marked the falling leaves and myriad signs of coming 
 winter, and visited my wonted stations in gloomy hours 
 of cold rain and pitiless wind. Nay, I wandered out 
 into the twilight and darkness, challenging myself to 
 remember that with Nature's year my year of liberty 
 would die, summoning the most unlovely images of 
 future penury and privation, of arid toil and necessary 
 loneliness; and yet serenity did not fail, nor joy with- 
 draw in troubled fear. 
 
 . . . But is not my new-found joy almost wholly 
 unreasonable? Reverting to these latest pages, how 
 can I discover in them adequate cause for this present 
 — or, must I write, recent? — joy, and not rather and 
 only cause for wonder, cause for doubt that it can result 
 from such trivial eclecticism, such fallacious juggling 
 [ 303 1 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 with words? Should I not attribute my present, or 
 recent, joy to mere bodily well-being? The Epicurean, 
 obeying his master, would "dwell in the country"; 
 and the "happy, garden state" has been mine despite 
 my agony of thought. ... Is not this temple of the 
 "new life "based on shifting sands? Will it endure 
 the hurtling shock of ever-renewed storms? In what 
 is the plan of it worthy of selection, and of execution? 
 How could this plan bear criticism ? Criticism ! 
 What reconciliation of opposites have I effected? 
 Can I cease to affirm and deny my affirmation? Can 
 I cease to distrust affirmation and distrust denial? Will 
 not the war between my heart and head continue to the 
 end? . . . But whence, again, this new despondency? 
 Should I not attribute it with better reason to bodily 
 causes than this my recent joy? A cold contracted, a 
 passing chill, perchance ? May I not, must I not hold 
 that joy is but eclipsed for the moment? Let me 
 await in silence its new coming. In the days of liberty 
 that yet remain to me shall I not press on, with the 
 greater ardour that I have paused awhile, towards the 
 completion of my Temple of Life? Boethius, noble 
 man of action and contemplation, writing in his latest 
 prison-days a De Consolatione Philosophice, set forth 
 prolegomena of Theistic Stoicism, and promised to 
 himself a Christian continuation and conclusion of the 
 whole matter. But death stayed his hand. ... Or 
 were it not better to rest content with my clear-obscure 
 of faith? Faith is tongue-tied, and doubt is eloquent. 
 I am more than my doubts; and haply the silence of 
 faith is more than eloquence. They that are happy 
 have no expression for their happiness, shrink from its 
 expression; "their own hearts know it best." I have 
 [ 304 ] 
 
The Melancholy of Stephen Allard 
 
 loved wisdom, but wisdom has failed and would fail me; 
 let my sole wisdom be the wisdom of love, let me trust 
 that there is unity behind and in difference, that there 
 is some reconciliation of virtue and happiness, that 
 Love is Lord of All. . . . Nay, I cannot write to-night, 
 I will write no more to-night.' 
 
 1 [The "passing chill" proved fatal, and no more was written. — 
 Editor.] 
 
 THE END. 
 
 [ 30s ] 
 
THE WINGS OF ICARUS. 
 
 Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher, as revealed by 
 
 HERSELF in 
 
 I. Thirty-five Letters written to Constance Norris between July 
 
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