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THE THEORIES
OF ANARCHY AND OF LA W.
THE THEORIES
OF ANARCHY AND OF LAW.
A MID NIGHT DE BATE.
|BY
H. B. BREW STE R.
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,
14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON ;
AND 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.
1887.

H X
233
, B 2.5T
!, ON DO N 3
G. NorMAN AND son, PRINTERs, HART STREET,
CUVENT GARDEN.
39 ebater 5,
—-#4—
RALPH.
WILFRID.
LOTHAIRE.
HAROLD.
PART I.
S U M M A R Y.
—4—
P.A. G. E.
The Theory of Progress at fault . - . 9, IO
Different degrees of abstraction . - . I 2, I 3
Language and SPEECH.
Language the interpreter of sensuous ex-
perience, direct or indirect. In such cases
information is given in utterances that taken
separately retain their value. The work is
One of representation.
SPEECH a work of production, the value of
which lies not in any image conveyed, but in
a mode of combination realized. In this case
the utterances lose their value if disconnected.
Synthetic thought conveys no information
concerning outward realities, but is itself one
of the outward realities by the play of which
We ex1St. o o o o 9. g
I4–22
Difficulties raised by this doctrine:
-- can it lay claim to a quality it denies of
philosophical views in general 2
— what becomes of the Law 2
— is not this outward reality, SPEECH, a
fiction ? º º e º e e . 23–27
l,
X Summary.
PAGE
Answer to first difficulty: The objection urged
has its source in a wish to grasp a self-Sup-
porting principle. The doctrine in question
—that of Speech—cannot be taken as a
starting-point or fulcrum for argumentation ;
it must be disconnected from its dialectical
developments, one of which is the argument
just urged against it. At the same time it
must be brought into association or concert
with other thoughts not evolved from it.
We must, in the world of thought, substitute
the principle of a confederacy of equals to
that of an autocracy.
Answer to second difficulty: There is no
general law.
Answer to third difficulty : If SPEECH is a
work of creation and not of representation,
as soon as we name it we are doing as One
who asks a runner to stop that he may
picture the race. Thus in proclaiming the
outward reality of Speech, we are indeed in
some manner creating the very reverse of
what our words declare; we are setting up a
fiction. But there is this to be said for it,
that it claims no supremacy - te . 27–36
A fictitious element in every reality e º 39
The evil of one Law. Necessity of perceiving in
all things a dual value, such as was found in
religious faith by the side of wordly wisdom.
Polytheism a means of recovering this finer
perception . & * - 4- g . 40–44
The evil of doctrinal unity is tempered in most
men by the social instinct . - te . 48–50
Summary. xi
PAGE
Anti-social instincts attendant on a high de-
velopment of thought. The destructive work
of revolutions a right work and as great a
source of sympathy between men as the law-
abiding spirit by which Societies thrive . 50–64
Difficulty of approving two opposed principles 72–74
Answer: The contradiction is a result of verbal
abstraction . e e º e º . 74, 75
Other objection: The attempt to justify the
work of destruction proceeds from a perver-
sion of activity into thought º º . 75–77
Answer: The praise of destruction must be
considered as the extreme expression and last
phase of a system of thought which at less
advanced stages, and to all questions not
ultimate, will give answers that must not be
prejudged . • e º © & . 78–80
The principle of Morality objected to. Moral
ideals opposed to moral Law . & . 8I–95
Moral law defended as vindicating the specific
against the individual or accidental character
of actions . e º º tº e . 95–97
Wisdom opposed to Morality . . tº º 98
Morality distinguished from Wisdom by the
feeling of obligation . º º º . 98—IOI
xii Summary.
PA G E
The feeling of obligation criticized and inter-
preted as a perversion of a feeling of Formal
nature, the only proper expression of which is
Charity e © & * e e Io2—IO4
Criticism of the specific character which has
been adduced in support of Moral law and
Social institutions, and objection to that
criticism . § g © * © IO4—IOg
The philosophy of Anarchism traced to the
instinct of love . & & º º IIo—II9
Religious faith a necessary part of a system
proclaiming separate property and separate
moral individuality. Collective individuality
(i.e., communism in groups) the other alter-
native. e º & g & . II9—I27
Answer: Individualism defended. Legislation
proceeds from Sympathy, and Sympathy from
Activity * • g * * * * , I29–I34
The above-given opinions equally legitimate as
natural products, but their value denied as
expressions of truth; any attempt to decide
between them is a misdirected effort. The
error of criticism. Abstention from
theories the result of particular conditions of
thought, in which our interest is transferred
from the contents to the mode of grouping of
our ideas . g * & g & I32—I52
p=-TTiage
Malheureux ou coupable,
Hâtez-Vous d'accourir
En ce lieu retoutable,
Ouvert au repentir !
Pendant le choeur, plusieurs fugitifs viennent demander asile ;
après le choeur, tous rentrent dans l'église.

of Anarchy and of Law. 3
seen the mine out of which you work them. I
suppose there must be in every man who does not
merely echo back the words of others, some
characteristic vein of thought to which we
Ought to refer all his sayings to get their true
significance; for it determines his attitude
towards life. Indeed, if we knew this clearly—
how a man feels about life, why he cares
or does not care to live, I think his opinions in
general and on all matters would be something
better to us than random sparks. What is the
use of living Speak out one and all of you.
If the subject is old, so is the world. If you
have nothing new to say about it, so much the
worse; but strike me your keynote. We must
have it out between us; we must get out of our
desultory talk; we must tighten the bonds of
our circle, or we shall weary of them.
These are the orders of the chairman with whom
I was conversing when you entered. To-night we
render homage to the Moorish King. You have
my question. What answer can you give
WILFRID.
None, for it is not a sensible question.
RALPH.
I think it a perfectly sensible question, and
I #
4 The Theories
one that a great many people can answer. In-
deed, I fancy that no man who troubles his
brains at all can avoid answering it in some
more or less definite manner.
HAROLD.
I would like an answer that could stand
criticism.
LOTHAIRE.
There are men who contend that reason is an
insufficient instrument for arriving at truth, and
that faith alone can give an ultimate basis to
certitude. They would be of opinion that in
asking for an answer that can stand criticism
you are asking for too little. I am not sure that
after all the best answer is not the old one: The
object and sense of this life is to prepare for a
future one. What weapon have you against
those who set aside rational objections as
worthless 2
HAROLD.
No weapons at all. I have nothing to reply
except that they can no more pretend to defend
their assertion than I can to attack it. It puts
an end to discussion on the subject.
of Anarchy and of Law. 5
LoTHAIRE.
Yet, if all endeavours to account rationally for
the fact of our existence should fail, should they
be unable to give us a sense of security and turn
out to be nothing but an endless vexation of
spirit, we shall be glad to fall back on some
religious faith.
RALPH.
Don't talk like a man of the Middle Ages,
Lothaire. If you have nothing better to say in
favour of faith than that we must turn to it
because reason cannot answer a question that
must be answered, you will convince no one.
You Squeeze your conclusion out of an argument,
and it brings with it none of the collateral
evidence, none of the stray glimpses and side
gleams that distinguish genuine truths from
mere verbal inferences. g
The fact is that even among men of religious
faith very few, only an extreme school, repudiate
the help of reason or consider its data as opposed
to revelation. A surprising amount of time and
ingenuity is spent in reconciling the two. The
spirit of rationalism pervades us. Humanity has
got accustomed to criticise and ask for proof; no
theory of life that assumes the uselessness of a
6 The Theories
way of thinking by which so many excellent
results have been obtained, has any chance
of getting a hearing, nor does it deserve it.
No argument, however stringent it may seem
at first sight, will stand against the mighty
body of evidence that tells in favour of critical
investigation.
LoTHAIRE.
Well, I grant that I spoke hastily. Of course
I ought not to appeal to an argument as to a
voucher for the superiority of faith ; I cannot
ask an inferior power to give credentials to a
superior one. I think, as you do, that our trust
will always go to the broader testimony, not to
the closer-knit argument. And it is, in reality,
simply because the rationalistic view of life seems
to me narrow that I turn to a more complex and
less artificial way of thinking. What I mean by
faith is probably something very different from
what you put under the word. But before I
explain this more fully, I would like to know
what purely rational scheme of life you have to
set forward in answer to Harold's question.
RALPH.
Perhaps you will consider me a very simple,
uncultured mind. Somehow I have learned this
of Anarchy and of Law. 7
from what I have seen of persons and things
here below, that there is a great advantage in
being sensible, that is, in not letting any one
order of thoughts carry us too far, but in keeping
alive to the question as it works in practice, not
as it frames itself to our minds when we have
turned it into an abstract theme and ridden our
thoughts on the subject as far as they will go.
To answer Harold's question I should simply
turn to what experience teaches us. We have
only to look around us to see that what we have
put as a philosophical problem is a practical
question solved every day by thousands. We
ask : What is the use of living : The proper way
of putting it is this : Are there people who at the
close of their life do not regret having lived If
so, they have practically answered our question.
Don’t say that their contentedness proves nothing,
and that the query remains: What is the use of
their having been happy : An abstract inquiry
of that kind can meet with no answer, because in
reality it concerns no one. We can only inquire
of what use it has been to those particular
individuals that they should have been happy. I
suppose they would tell us that it has been of
great use, and that they have ultimately no other
idea of utility than that of the common character
of things conducive to happiness.
8 The Theories
Or, if we choose to take another view, we can
inquire as to what promotes the welfare of the
species. All we have to consider is, firstly,
whether there be certain paths or, if you will,
certain combinations of inward doings and
outward events that cause some men to thrive;
and secondly, whether some lives are profitable
to the community.
I would recommend bringing the discussion
down from the metaphysical key in which
Harold's question seems pitched. If there are
any laws of private or public happiness, as there
are laws of health, there must be great use in
conforming to them, for by so doing we are
carrying out the scheme of nature, fitting into it;
we are going with the stream which opposition
can no more check than the eddies in a river can
force the current up hill.
I believe that such laws exist, however imper-
fect our knowledge of them may still be, and
that by patient investigation we can extend that
knowledge.
HAROLD.
Will there always be eddies, as you call them?
Local movements that go against the general
current Revolts against the law Men and
hours of error Or may we look forward to a
of Anarchy and of Law. Q
state of perfection when all shall understand the
law and find their happiness in obeying it?
RALPH.
I do not anticipate any such paradise on earth.
The social state of things will never be absolutely
good. What matter, provided it always improve 2
Its progress is worth striving for. There will
always be unhappy men. Because some fail are
we to conclude that there is no such thing as
success and that life is not worth living 2 Take
human nature as it is with its imperfections, see
if any good is to be got out of it, and, if so,
look upon that good as the true reason of our
existence.
HAROLD.
One thing is not clear to me. You spoke just
now of questions that can have no answer, because
they concern no real subjects; and, instead of
inquiring into the abstract value of happiness, you
recommended our asking whether those who have
been happy consider it an advantage; or again,
how communities prosper. Surely the same
method should apply to misery. Instead of con-
veniently putting it on the score of human
nature and its imperfections we should inquire
IO The Theories
whether the unhappy deem their unhappiness a
misfortune, and why social edifices fall to ruin.
If the suffering of an individual should have
been of no use to himself or to others—as, for
instance, the torments of a madman—why should
not that individual or his advocate deny the value
of life? You must, according to your own
position, account for his suffering to him or to
others and find some profit in it for some one ;
you have no right to put it on the back of an
abstraction such as human nature. Similarly, so
long as there remains the slightest interval
between absolute perfection and the social state
of things, so long will you have something to
account for that finds no place in your scheme
of ideas. You are in the position of a man
trying to make up a given sum by adding always
something too little to cover the difference. And
this leads me to doubt if there be not some great
mistake at the bottom of the whole doctrine of
progress, of which in its double aspect, moral
and social, your views are an expression. We
are continually hearing the praise of the triumph
of life; what do you do with the other half of
reality ? What place in your scheme has destruc-
tion—not the partial destruction that accompanies
integration, but the uncompensated waste, the
wear and tear of life :
of Anarchy and of Law. II
LOTHAIRE.
Harold's criticism seems to me just. Whose
profit is it that I should grow old and feeble and
end in death Unless you can show that it is a
personal profit to me or a profit to society at
large that I decay, instead of waxing for ever in
strength, you must admit that development,
progress, success, happiness—cannot be the aim
and end of our lot, since there is something in
it which these do not account for.
WILFRID.
I notice that you all seem bent on explaining
life, or at least finding some scheme, either
rational or mystical, according to which it can be
viewed as leading to some definite object; in
default of which you seem to think it would be
a failure.
Now, what do you say to this idea: There are
doubtless individual sufferings and individual
joys, but the attempt to generalize these data, to
reduce the experience of mankind to one straight
line, running towards success or failure, can
convey no valid teaching, no information on
Outward realities : Any such attempt has its
mainspring in the peculiar mechanism of what
we term explaining, and is, like poetry, a deed
of speech—in opposition to knowledge.
I2 The Theories
HAROLD.
Why do you say “a deed of speech " And
is not all scientific knowledge founded on
generalizations and abstractions 2 If I understand
you rightly, you hold that in summing up man's
lot, we are dealing with abstract ideas that have
no exterior prototypes—handling, as it were,
unredeemable paper money. But how do you
propose to distinguish such ideas from those
which are the very material of science 2 And
supposing this distinction clearly established,
where does speech come in 2 If culprit there be,
is not the mind that culprit, and speech simply
the interpreter of its errors 2
WILF RID.
As for your first question, Harold, viz.: How
to distinguish between the data of philosophy
and those of science, observe that there may be
different degrees of abstraction and different ways
of putting them together. Of course chemists,
in talking of the properties of oxygen, or
naturalists in speaking of vertebrate animals, are
to a certain degree treating of fictitious objects,
inasmuch as they leave out of account particular
qualities without which the general ones they
allude to are never met with in reality. But
of Anarchy and of Law. I3
immediately behind these fictions, formed for the
sake of convenience, stand the many perceptions
which, whilst excluding certain others, they sum
up, and each of these perceptions contains the
work of one of the senses that connect us with
the outer world. So that though we have really
no such perception as that of oxygen or verte-
brate animals, pure of all that is not implied in
the terms, yet these symbols are immediately
decomposable into facts of sight, touch, weight,
and so on, all of which are direct responses to
our surroundings and have nothing to do with
introspection.
RALPH.
Are you going to establish that introspection is
a deed of speech 2
WIL FRID.
I should like to, but it would take me too long.
At present I am trying to answer Harold's ques-
tion, and to point out a difference between the
abstractions that constitute the materials of
science and those that philosophers deal with.
Now, it seems to me that the former have a
degree of complexity that is lacking in the second
case, or, if you will, they are nearer to the tissue
wherein numberless threads meet to form what
I4 The Theories
we call external reality. They are in immediate
connection with the hidden dramas of the flesh
that lie out of the pale of consciousness.
Of course science is not solely made up of
such abstractions; the moment it launches into
general theories it becomes analogous to moral
philosophy; it is no longer classing individual
facts under common notions, it is reconciling
different notions by means of some apparently
superior one. But just so soon does its character
of permanence and certainty abandon it; facts
remain and theories pass.
HAROLD.
So you consider the second phase of scientific
thought equivalent to the first phase of philo-
sophical research, and class them both as a kind
of poetry Well, now let us hear why the credit
or the blame, whichever it may be, of these
performances is ascribed to language and not
to thought.
WILFRID.
I prefer to use the term “speech” instead of
“language,” and though the definition may seem
arbitrary, let me for the sake of clearness
distinguish the two in the following manner.
Numbers of things said convey information
of Anarchy and of Law. I5
more or less valuable, but which is intended
for one reason or another to satisfy us in itself.
It relies, to interest us, on previous experiences
and on associations which it will awaken by its
simple enunciation, without the assistance of any
further remark. Take for example a newspaper.
In some of its columns you will find many bits
of information of the kind I am alluding to :
political telegrams, the state of the weather,
crimes and accidents, the rate of exchange,
fashionable movements, and so forth. In all
these cases language serves merely as the inter-
preter of things that have been previously
seen, heard, felt, counted, or measured; of things,
in short, that interest us because they represent
the play of one of our senses, or of several of
them in combined action.
LOTHAIRE.
This is the sensualist theory. You take for
granted that all of our interests can be evolved
out of the action of our senses.
WILFRID.
Not so, though I think they can go a great
way, and I have no doubt Ralph would have a
great deal to say in their favour. But to show
you that you class me amiss, I have only to go
I6 The Theories
on with the same newspaper and ask you to
consider the leading article. You will perhaps
not find in it a single remark that would interest
us were it detached from the surrounding
ones, or that could not be met by some
counter-proposition equally trustworthy. Yet
all the remarks may stand in such a relation
One to the other that the entire article becomes
a powerful performance capable of stirring
public opinion, and possibly of influencing
the destinies of the nation. What kind of a
performance do you call it
RALPH.
A logical one, or else a passionate, an
emotional one, as the case may be. In either
instance I must fall back on some act of the
mind, of which language is merely the inter-
preter, just as with the scrap bits of news you
spoke of before.
WILFRID.
That is where we differ. There is in a
discourse such as the one we are fancying before
us, something that neither logic nor sentiment
can account for. It owes its strength to a
structure independent of the sentiments it
appeals to. It subsists in virtue of an inter-
of Anarchy and of Law. 17
dependence of its parts far more subtle than the
gross and lifeless connections pointed out by logic.
The argumentation might be faultless and the
sentiments appealed to most acceptable, and yet
the whole thing be inefficient, worse than that
—silly. The power there may be in the perform-
ance comes neither from knowledge previously
acquired by the direct or indirect testimony
of our senses as in the case of miscellaneous
information, nor from the passions it may
arouse, nor from dialectical rigour. . .
RALPH.
Nor from any other mental source 2
WIL FRID.
Nor from any other mental source.
RALPH.
Where under the heavens does it come from,
then 2
WILFRID.
From an outward source. Either truth is to
be got at directly without any concatenation of
thoughts, by immediate flashes of intuition, or
else any answer we may give to whatsoever
question, is, besides the answer that it claims to
2.
I8 The Theories
be, part of a situation, it is one of the possible
cases of the concatenation of thoughts. And
not only is it a case of inward adjustments, I
mean not only do the various thoughts it implies
hang together in a particular manner; besides
that, for it to be intelligible, it must fit one way
or another into a previous scheme of thoughts.
RAL PH.
Well, what do you argue from that Surely
the logical connection of our thoughts does not
destroy the value of their import.
WIL FRID.
It just depends on the nature of the subject
discussed. It is of little consequence to me how
you string your ideas together if all I want from
you is some piece of positive information. But
what a philosopher undertakes to give us is the
most comprehensive scheme of thought possible,
in which each thing shall have its allotted place;
he does not seek for information, he takes that
which special inquirers give him, and tries to
make order; the soul of his enterprise is a desire
to connect. Now, whatever a thought may con-
tain or express, something goes with it that
it cannot possibly impart, to wit: the relation in
which it stands to its neighbours. It cannot at
of Anarchy and of Law. I9
the same time express a given sum and the
interval between that sum and others.
But this relation, this connection, is the very
thing philosophers crave for. The very core of
their desire is the instinct of something unat-
tainable directly, a formal element connecting all
things and not to be identified with any one
of them.
This is also the character of a work of art.
Can you reduce a poem and bring it down to a
formula like a law of mechanics I don’t deny
philosophy, or think less of it than any one, but I
say it is all poetry and teaches us nothing.
RALPH.
Have you not wandered a little 2 We wanted
to know what you understand by the outward
force that you discover in certain speeches.
WIL FRID.
It is true I have wandered. I should have
made straight for this; disconnected utterances
conveying information owe their strength to a
previous work of some of our senses, simple or
combined, which they translate into words.
Connected utterances bearing strength with them
owe that strength to the fact that they embody,
instead of translating, a primary reality. They
2 %
20 The Theories
express nothing, they are something. They form
part of the stock and riches of the world, even
as the organic forms. Far from being products
of our mind, that is to say, secondary or manu-
factured wares like our knowledge, they exist
not by us; but we by them. Behold in the
connective power which they display, one of the
threads which man spins not, but of which he is
WOWen.
For this reason I decline to look upon philoso-
phy as a work of the mind in the same sense as
our knowledge may be said to be, and unless
Some better term be suggested—propose to call
it a work of speech, setting speech up as that one
of the primary ingredients of the universe that
creates all synthetic thinking, and therewith a
good part of the world in which we move.
And I go so far as to say that I can only conceive
the opposition between the mind and the world,
the subject and the object, as that of two halves
pertaining to a common unity in which alone
they exist truly. I would neither get the world
out of man's mind nor our mind out of the
progressive integration of matter. I would get
them both out of speech and say to those who -*
discuss their priority : You are expressing no
reality, you are creating one ; you are singing
after a fashion—go on.
of Anarchy and of Law. 2I
LoTHAIRE.
This is the doctrine of the Logos: “In the
beginning was the word and the word was with
God, and the word was God.”
RALPH.
Whatever doctrine it may be, it is a very dis-
couraging one. If your are right, all thinking is
useless as far as the pursuit of truth is concerned,
at least all attempt at a rational and systematic
interpretation of things. Nothing remains but
miscellaneous information of practical value, and
an idle sport that you call poetry. You are even
worse off than Lothaire, who at least admits
that by faith some sort of general knowledge is
accessible.
WIL FRID.
I told you from the beginning that I considered
the question we started from—“What is the use
of living 2 ”—an idle one, neither more so nor
less than any other philosophical question. That
is to say, a misdirected effort if we hope thereby
to get at a faithful representation—which is, I
suppose, what we understand by truth. But I do
not consider myself badly off for all that. . I
22 The Theories
think we overrate the value of representation,
we have too high an idea of truth, or rather we
extend unduly the boundaries of its domain, and
turn something priceless into something worth-
less, by dragging it into the wrong market.
And just as we overrate representation, we
underrate, or entirely overlook, a part more im-
portant still of our life—its poetry.
LoTHAIRE.
The word needs a comment. I suppose we
are to understand by it not an embellishment
wrought for pleasure's sake, but a work of crea-
tion, with this peculiar qualification, that the
creative power resides, as it were, out of us and
that we exist partly thanks to our participation in
it, even as we exist partly thanks to chemical
elements or astronomical bodies without the
assistance of which we could not be fashioned.
By falling into the circle of action of astronomi-
cal forces, chemical forces, and so on, we come
into being as a flame kindled at the focus of
many rays, and among those rays you count the
creative power of speech, of which all. general
views and efforts of connected thoughts are
manifestations. Thus we live partly by poetry,
and without it would die.
of Anarchy and of Law. 23
WILF RID.
Precisely.
RALPH.
Now, I don't want to set a mere word-trap to
you. As you know, I lay small price on those
logical catches by which a thinker's position can
be shown to be contradictory, for I believe that
with a little ingenuity any scheme of thought
can be divested of all that gives it worth, and
reduced apparently to some conflicting statements,
or at least to a statement that cannot be made
without assuming for it the benefit of what it
denies of others. Yet tell me one thing. What
kind of value do you attach to your own doctrine
Is it a work of truth 2 Then is not its very
existence a refutation of the law it propounds 2
Or is it a poetical performance 2 If so, it may
be valuable to you and to those whose minds are
fashioned like yours, but what authority does it
claim over doctrines that have a similar justifica-
tion ? How can it hope to supersede them 2
HAROLD.
Yes, let us have an answer to that.
RALPH.
I repeat it, let it be understood that I do not
24 The Theories
attach much importance to the form my objection
has taken; its dilemma-like appearance rather
weakens it, than otherwise, in my own estimate.
Your ideas will stand or fall according to whether
they bring with them some new gleams of truth
or not; no amount of argumentative proficiency or
deficiency will help or injure them. I have taken
hold of the first objection that presented itself
to my mind, simply because I want to protest, no
matter how. Yes, I want to protest. Just now
you silenced me all three together, and though I
dare say a great deal could be said in behalf of
my cause that would protract the discussion
indefinitely and give me as good a show as
needful, I don't mind confessing that there may
be some shortcoming in the scheme of ideas
that I advocate. But what of that Something
of it remains that cannot be talked away, the soul
of it, as it were, that I feel as a truth and for
which as yet I see no recognition in your system,
—for such it is in germ at least. And I will tell
you at once what I miss in your ideas as far as I
understand them ; the feeling and the recognition
of Law. I listen, and though your thoughts follow
paths I am not accustomed to and of which I
cannot help being somewhat suspicious, not
knowing where they will lead me in the end, I
am inclined to think the perception of some truth
of Anarchy and of Law. 25
animates you, of which perhaps we men of pro-
gress are neglectful. What it exactly is I cannot
say—perhaps a subtle sympathy with some un-
observed power of nature, the instinct of some
overlooked factor in the problem, a more plastic
feeling as compared with our plane geometry.
I was somehow reminded, as you talked, of the
School that looks upon history as an organism of
a less material kind, doubtless, than those physi-
ologists study, but yet an organism, and not as an
addition of facts which it need but summarize.
How far will this hold good How far is your
idea of speech a valid one It is for you to make
out your case, and I will not begin by assuming
that it is worthless, but this point I do urge
against you : What have you done with the Law
HAROLD.
He has done away with it, and that is what
interests me in his scheme.
RALPH.
Oh, you are an incorrigible Nihilist. But to
Wilfrid I would say this : You cannot get rid of
the fact that man has an imperious need of law.
If he does not accept it as revealed from above,
he strives to discover it for himself; if he cannot
believe in a Divine will he believes in a plan of
nature; he wants to know whither the travail and
26 The Theories
toil of the world tend, and when he has found, or
thinks he has found, its grand course, he calls it
law, and that which falls in with it is right, and
that which crosses it is wrong. We started with
this question: Is life worth living 2 I say yes, to
those who believe there is such a law, and that
every increase in our knowledge will help us to
conform to it. But as for those who have no
such faith, nor in its stead the belief in some
revealed law, I don't see what is going to lead
them—toward what light they can turn their steps,
or what they can expect to be in life but shuttle-
cocks thrown to and fro according to the thump
of events or the impulse of the minute.
Now, you come and tell us that there is no
scheme of nature, no general movement any-
where, no law; that in talking of them we are
not talking of things that are, but bringing forth
flowers of speech. We may not even look upon
the human mind as the ultimate reality wherein
our dream unfolds itself—the human mind itself is
a product of speech. Surely this is the final crum-
bling of everything into dust. I have yet to see
how you propose to get along without believing
in right and wrong; for you cannot admit them
without admitting a general scheme which it is
the philosopher's endeavour to understand as
well as he can.
of Anarchy and of Law. 27
I have also to see how you reconcile the fact
that you offer us a system of ideas which I sup-
pose you consider preferable to others with the
very tenure of your doctrine, to wit: that all
such systems are music, not truths; and how,
after upsetting, as so many idols, all our abstract
Saints and patrons, you would have us accept as
a solid, external, and primary reality your new-
born and rather startling god—Speech.
WIL FRID.
Ah I have got into trouble :
Well, I don’t see how it could be otherwise.
If a man's deepest desire is to grasp and to bring
into verbal expression something that no one
formula can express for the simple reason that
you cannot get the entire into one of its parts, it
is only natural that he should be led to a doctrine
which, when compared with those of other men,
seems destructive and contradictory. Such a
man, if true to his instinct, contends that where-
ever you may choose to stop, there is something
missing; he spends his life in arguing that
there is no use resting the world on an elephant,
the elephant on a tortoise, and so on; that there
can be no basis, no fulcrum, no starting-point, and
no terminus; only a vast complex of many points,
none of which can be singled out as the goal
*
Q:
:
28 The Theories
:
.
;
:
toward which the others tend, or the source
whence they proceed. They are all struggling
and turning round and round. Truth itself,
however much you may get of it, is but a factor
in a larger work, and its greatest value is not in
that which it declares, but in that which the
declaration is ignorant of, but tends to fashion
and form. Whatever you may express, you are
at the same time co-operating in the growth of a
reality of a quite different kind, you are making
something different to what you express. Truth
is but a parcel of some becoming reality.
Now, you choose to turn this doctrine against
itself, and say that my position is contradictory.
I am quite willing to accept the reproof if what
it means is that I am not in possession of a
principle that can stand of itself, unassisted, and
serve as a starting-point for further, and con-
catenated, speculations. I recollect having often
spent hours over the precise question you have
raised, with no other result than this : I found
that the apparent contradiction was easy enough
to solve by means of logical niceties and analyses
of propositions; but, unfortunately, these analyses
involved others that stood in the same relation
to them as they did to the primary difficulty,
and as soon as I undertook to grapple with the
newcomers, I mastered them, but with the same
:
:
.
:
;
of Anarchy and of Law. 29
restriction as before; something was left to
explain, an ever-retreating, inaccessible remainder.
I was falling into the very mistake I had begun
by pointing out; I was taking one particular idea
as a prime truth, thus cutting it off from the
company or concert of its fellows, making a king
of it, and at the same time, by working out the
consequences which, logically speaking, it was
natural to draw from that idea, I was accepting
in place of a musical or concerting association,
a purely dialectical one. That is my reply to
what you yourself called a word-trap.
At first sight this may seem strange and con-
fusing, that only disconnected thought should
express truth, and yet that no basis can be
assigned to philosophy because no thought can
be isolated and stand of itself. But the confusion
is only in the vagueness of our usual ideas of
connection and association. I am obliged to give
the words an arbitrary meaning. The connection
I protest against, when I say that only discon-
nected thought can express truth, is that kind of
logical infatuation which leads us to string
consequence to consequence, and which, while
it thus seems to make ingenious weavers of us,
in reality confines us in one mode of thought.
There is no good work to be done that way;
the more ideas we seem to connect, the further
3O The Theories
away we are getting from the only valuable
thing; a complex, many-sided sympathy with the
whole; we are pursuing an endless progression
of analyses more and more technical, minute, and
abstract at each step.
And the kind of association I advocate when I
say that no basis can be assigned to philosophy,
because no thought can be isolated and stand of
itself, is a confederacy, none of the component
parts of which can claim authority over the
others.
Whoever believes in philosophical truth, is
in search, or fancies himself in possession, of some
autocratic principle, some one great law—as, for
instance, evolution; some one great force—such
as Der Wille; some one conception—such as
Substance, some Supreme being in whom all
things are summed up; he believes that all
knowledge and all thought converge toward
one formula, he believes that all that he can lay
hold of with his mind, the physical, the intel-
lectual, the social, the moral world, the universal
growth follows one direction—which he can
name. This is what I protest against; this work
of connection of ideas is valueless, and this
supreme principle, whatever it may be, cannot
stand in its isolated grandeur. I want a con-
federacy of equal states, an Olympus without a
of Anarchy and of Law. 31
ruler. I look upon our abstract opinions and
profound views as personages who step to the
front of the stage, say what they have to say,
and disappear, to return again according to the
working of the plot; the entire drama is in none
of them, they come and go, and struggle, and
rejoice, and behind them all, or between them,
unspoken, unseizable the drama unfolds itself.
I hate the very idea of a truth that would sum
them all up in one lesson, the more of whigh we
had learned the higher we should rank in class.
It is a schoolmaster's idea.
In this sense I am an enemy of the Law you
were speaking of just now. There is no great
stream with which we must swim or bear the
penalty of our folly. There are many streams,
and though sometimes one and sometimes
another may seem to prevail, they are all eternal.
You, Ralph, are greatly enamoured of certain
ideas which obtain among many at this hour;
but what you look upon as the main stream is
to-day's fashion, and what you term vain eddies—
the seemingly impotent struggle of the misled—
will be to-morrow's or some day's master thought.
Nor do I believe there is any real moral want of
the Law you speak of. Men at certain hours
want particular rules, sometimes perhaps, to
guide themselves by, oftener to justify and
32 The Theories
accompany with fine words a line of conduct
they are led to by more hidden and complicated
motives than they suspect, but never do they
stand in need of a vast systematic view which
shall co-ordinate and hedge in all their impulses
towards a common end. Those who profess to
have such a system, hasten to forget it the
moment they are thrown into the practical pro-
blems of life; their deeds are better than their
words. Here again is a question of degrees of
abstraction. There are rules and laws, but there
is no such thing as the Rule or the Law. What
would you say of a man who, observing that
several leaves come from one stem, and several
stems from one branch, should jump to the
conclusion that all the branches in the forest
proceed from one trunk, or that all the trees have
a common root, and therewith set to working
out theoretically the nature and properties of this
sacred parent tree or primordial root * Even so
the thinker who thirsts after unity. There shall
be nothing given him to drink but a mirage of
water. That is my answer to one more of
your queries.
Again, you say—and this, I think, was your
last objection — that in inviting you to look
upon all' such philosophical speculation no
longer as on thought expressing truth, but as
of Anarchy and of Law. 33
speech modelling itself into shapes intellectual,
somewhat as organic. matter may be said to
fashion itself into living forms, I am setting up
one of the idols that I rail against, a stranger
and less acceptable one than your old friends
Mind, or Substance, or Will, or Evolution—
loving Nature.
Perhaps I am setting up an idol, but there is
this to be said in its favour, that it does not
claim any kind of supremacy. I think, as I said
before, that our great work in life is not trans-
lating or expressing truth, but building or
fashioning forms. What is our social and
political activity else? To these I would assimilate
all our speculative efforts. It may be that in the
attempt to sum them up and refer them all to
the working of a reality as external as any of the
physical elements—for such is my view of speech
as opposed to the psychical elements it binds
together—I err even as those whom I criticize,
and am setting up a fiction. You fear that
my god of speech is only a false god Perhaps
he is, as soon as I have named him; he certainly
would be a false god if I assigned to him an
independent position, the self-supporting virtue,
and the regal solitude of a supreme principle.
But, mark you, he is only a little chieftain. I
have no desire to make the world that we look
3
34 The Theories
at evolve out of speech. I am not talking of the
world we see and touch. I am alluding to the
world we think about, and I say that when we
try to get it out of any mystical egg, be it a nebu-
leuse, or a primitive cellule, or a law, or a force,
or a category, or whatever else you please; further,
when in the same spirit we plan out one path
which we present as progress, one aim, one ideal,
one rule—in short, whenever we strive after the
unity of doctrine—at all such times we are mis-
understanding the nature and overstepping the
boundaries of truth, which must ever be frag-
mentary; we are led on too far by a new force
within us. Unfortunately we do not recognize
the newcomer, and do him no honour even when
sacrificing everything to him and letting him have
it all his own way. We are slaving for a master
whom we deny. I believe that at the bottom of
all intellectual and moral craving is the desire of
something whole and entire, a yearning for the
complete and perfect. But, far from reaching it
by any systematic connection of ideas, we are
shutting ourselves up in the interior history of
one of the parties whose exterior relations con-
stitute the real unity; and we only revert to
the real game when we step, as it were, out of the
web of our doctrine-knit thoughts and refer the
whole work to one artful spinner whose name
of Anarchy and of Law. 35
expresses one particular factor in the problem
whilst his handiwork claims most unlawfully to
give us the solution thereof.
Do you see the difference between my idol
and yours? You sum up the world, outer and
inner, and say: Behold this is the essence or the
law thereof, and some of you get mind out of
matter, and some of you get matter out of mind.
I look at your work, follow it through centuries,
See it wax and wane, even as forms of society do,
and it strikes me that something is going on that
has nothing to do with what you are talking
about, something over your heads and greater
than you, that sways you hither and thither with-
out your knowing it; all your systems and their
very data, down to the opposition of matter and
mind, seem to me functions or episodes of the
growth of this reality; and what distinguishes it
from your idols is that they all proceed one out of
another, so that there is one of them which in germ
contains them all, and that in it you grasp
the cosm, whereas what you term my idol enters
into no such system of unification; it remains
disjunct as a separate object of study and laying
no claim to universality, represents merely one of
the many factors of which the great reality is
composed. I simply deny the possibility of an
all-embracing point of view ; I am a polytheist,
3 *
36 The Theories
deeming that no expression can be that of the
total, and that any great doctrinal unity is a
misuse of language.
LOTHAIRE.
Yes, Polytheism is a deep thought; and we
shall have to return to it unless we abide by the
Christian tenet of a future life where the last shall
be first and the first shall be last.
RALPH.
What new voice is this .
LoTHAIRE.
No new voice. Only a sequel to Wilfrid's
reflections. But a necessary one, I think, if they
are to affect us. Of course it is interesting to
discuss whether any systematic view of life can
be an expression of truth or is merely, as
Wilfrid says, a deed of speech. But after all, if
we are to care about it lastingly, the answer to
this question must bear on our daily feelings and
overshadow our moods.
Is speech a god 2 and why, it was asked,
should we believe in him sooner than in evolu-
tion or any unique principle And the answer
was, because he is not unique and claims no
supremacy; does not pretend to be the root
of Anarchy and of Law. 37
whence all proceeds. And furthermore there
came an avowal that I think important. The
words were these, or to this purport: “You
fear that my god of speech is only an idol.
Perhaps he is, as soon as I have named him.”
I wish I could preach as good a sermon on
these words as the text deserves.
WILFRID.
I am very glad they have your approval, but
why do they please you so particularly
LoTHAIRE.
Because I was afraid at one moment that you
were going to treat us to a god of speech after
the likeness of the vital principle, or of the
scholastic universals. I was afraid of some
“connecting principle of thought" that would
have reminded me of the whiteness which the
old realists held to pre-exist in all white things,
or the humanity that fashioned human beings.
WILFRID.
No. My gods are not qualities of classes;
they are modes, or types, of combination.
LoTHAIRE.
Precisely, and, as I understand you, you hold
38 The Theories
that one of them comprises as part of the factors
whose relation constitute him the naming of
himself; an idol in his own image. He himself
is real and cannot be contained in any one state
of consciousness; yet it is part of him that he
should be summed up and destroyed by this
idolatry which is at the same time his glorification.
He reverts on himself by an act which is both a
suicide and an apotheosis.
WILFRID.
Even so. Try to express the whole; your ex-
pression will be but part of an attempt to cope
with the middle in which you are plunged, and
this attempt is but one of many. Yet your
expression stands there as including them all, so
that you can find no other name but it for that
of which it is a part.
LoTHAIRE.
And this is, as we said before, the doctrine of
the Logos.
HAROLD.
Do you think the Fourth Evangelist thought of
this when, sitting down to write the story of the
Son of God, he mused : In the beginning was
the Word 2
of Anarchy and of Law. 39
LoTHAIRE.
I suppose so. But never mind the Fourth
Evangelist. What I wanted made clear is that
you admit in the particular type of combination
that all our philosophical efforts go to form, a
fictitious element which in this case has the self-
reflective character we have mentioned. My
sequel to your thought would be that all our
other efforts—for instance, our moral and our
social efforts—go towards the embodiment of
some reality which likewise contains, as a neces-
sary part, some fictitious element, an element of
the irrational, even as the contradiction of the
preceding case. There is no complete life with-
out some great lie of romance, some dream of
love or grandeur, whose value is in its falseness.
There is no idealless reality. There is no true
world of here below, unless there be, under some
form or other, a kingdom of heaven. If you
object to it under that name I am willing to find
it in the doctrine of modes of grouping or of
architectural types, or whatever you please,
though I doubt if your way of putting it will be
clearer than the old one to the good folk at large.
The all-important thing is that we should not
look upon life as on a journey over tracts of land,
some safe, some dangerous, and some fatal, so
40 The Theories
that a map can be made of the roads that lead to
success, and that they who stray from them are
reputed lost. Assuredly any such success is
vanity, and whatever goal be pointed out the
words of the Ecclesiast will reach it before us :
This also is vexation of spirit. Supposing even
that it were not so, and that what Ralph termed
just now obedience to the Law, gave, as it may
do to some, a security beyond the blight of doubt,
what of the disobedient, what of the outcast,
what of the weaker ones 2 for your one law,
frame it as you will, will always be the gospel of
the survival of the fittest. It will always be in
favour of those who are wise or lucky enough to
observe its ordinances. It will always be the
voice of a party. How in the name of a party
can you speak for the nation ? If you do so, you
are a party no more. If you propound to us the
law of life, it must be a law against which there
can be no transgressors. Now, if everything is
reducible to one scheme, there is also one measure
by which all our thoughts, feelings, and deeds can
be measured, the measure of conformity, and they
can have or lack but one kind of value, that of
faithful representations in the case of ideas, that of
fitness or adaptation to the law in the case of efforts.
As soon as we adopt this view of life, we judge
things by their immediate connections, by the
of Anarchy and of Law. 4I
place which they assume in the great procession
of victory or the repulsed tide of defeat. There
is no appeal from sorrow, such as religion taught
us to seek in another world; there is no appeal
from joy, no way of looking on it as aught but
an ultimate and self-sufficient fact. Can you
stomach such joy I cannot.
I believe that the outward and inner events of
our life would not have in our eyes one simple
exhaustive value if we were not duped by the
belief in one grand scheme according to which
they must be classified.
Of course there are relatively few people who
trouble themselves with any very abstract views,
but the same tendency can be expressed under
many different forms: a limited sphere of
interests is to one man what a system of philoso-
phy is to another—his full range, and whereever
we find this range brought under one law, there
also we find a simple and definite value assigned
to the points it embraces. There are men who
reduce everything to a question of dollars, others
whose ruling passion is vanity and whose standard
is social success, moral bigots who would make
duty odious, and voluptuaries who admit no
other test than pleasure ; all of these have
summed up life and reduced it to one straight
line; whatever happens to them takes its assigned
42 The Theories
place in their scheme and has nothing more to
say for itself than what it bears on its face.
Each one of their actions, feelings, or thoughts,
is a personal performance, subject to no other
possible criterion than the amount of success it
brings to the performer. The whole game is
played on one surface, and there are but two
players in presence : the plan of the universe and
I. What if I lose : Why you have done away
with heaven, but you let an eternal process of
damnation go on.
RALPH.
And what have you to offer us
LOTHAIRE.
Nay, it is not my idea, it is Wilfrid's, that I
have taken up, and that seemed to me susceptible
of a wider bearing than the particular case he
wished to establish. For my part I care more
for feelings than for ideas, and could quickly
accept any old-fashioned notions, provided they
cloak a comely body of live sympathies and
delicate instincts. I will agree with anyone who
will give me, under whatsoever form, the equiva-
lent for a kingdom of heaven, and for the gentle
confidence expressed in the old words: There is
not a sparrow falls from the sky but what your
father knows it. It is all costume and drapery,
of Anarchy and of Law. 43
this grand look of logical necessity that we throw
over the shape of our desires. I was only trying
to fold a new robe round old feelings, since you
and so many to-day are weary of their homely
garb. And Wilfrid having made what seemed
to me a successful charge against the doctrine of
Unity, indeed, having worked us back to Poly-
theism, it occurred to me that one might find
there a new way of expressing the subtle truth
conveyed, crudely if you will, by the promise of
a future life and the faith in providence.
For the precious secret contained therein is
only the perception of a double value in what
before seemed to us simple; with this increased
delicacy of perception comes a serenity that takes
away the sting from sorrow and the coarseness
from joy.
This duplicity or, if you fear the odium gener-
ally attached to the word, this dualism of feeling
is our nearest approach to the great secret, our
only true communion with reality. It is the root
of all power: that of the artist who, where other
men are simply moved, discovers the springs,
and thereby learns how to move us ; that of the
scientist who weighs or dissects what other men
only wonder at; that of the statesman who
makes use of other men's ideas and passions as
of figures on a chess-board ; that of the man of
44 The Theories
will who masters himself; that of the religious
man who forgives life, because whatever it may
bring him—be it joy or sorrow, triumph or shame
—has an entirely other meaning on another
record, which, if he is of an unsophisticated,
gentle mind, he calls his father's will. What
does the name matter
Now, if instead of one universal scheme we
admit a plurality of eternal organisms manifesting
themselves by our agency, our actions of every
kind acquire besides their working or material
value, a formal one. Whatever may be their
merits as far as what they do is concerned,
they are sacred in this : they are. The
unity of scheme reduces all things to one
design, and all men to winners or losers
according as they do or do not fit in, on the
whole, with this design. Given a plurality of
schemes, there is no inward or outward event of
Our lives but what has its value as the realization
of some part of some eternal design.
I don't suppose this change is owing to a
difference in the number of gods we look up to;
it is owing to our enriched feeling of a formal
or syntactic value in all that we do, which feeling
excludes the infatuation, the coarseness of per-
ception, and the consequent individualism that lie
at the root of all our attempts at unification.
of Anarchy and of Law. 45
HAROLD.
One thing I wonder at greatly: our moral
state is in your eyes the greatest consideration,
and you look to our inner life for an answer to
my question—What is the use of living 2
LOTHAIRE.
I do.
HAROLD.
I was called a Nihilist a little while since. If
we are to lable each other with such simple
names, I suppose I shall have to call you a
mystic. Wilfrid I cannot exactly make out;
sometimes his teaching seems to me the pure
doctrine of speech, and I expect him to conclude
that there is no use thinking at all—that it is all
talk; and at other moments it would seem to
me as though he rose above this conclusion,
looked upon it as an episode in his performance
and were at heart an architect of abstractions.
As for Ralph—well, let us say nothing about
him; he is one of those men whose ideas one
meets with in books. Yet I do not know if on
the whole I would not prefer his tendency of
thought to yours. You, both of you, have shut
yourselves up in the intellectual or psychical
46 The Theories
world. Wilfrid, who pleads so strongly the cause
of external realities, and you who are so severe
against egotism, you seem alike to have forgotten
that you are living in a world made up not only
of Sensations and ideas, but also of men and
women whose beliefs—no matter what they
ought to be—form tremendous currents outside
of which all thinking is an ingenious, elegant,
and fruitless pastime. Now, Ralph swims with
one of these currents; indeed, with the strongest
of them, as far as I know, and it is a current that
must lead him to practical results. Any man
with a philosophy such as his, is bound to, and
in fact does, take part in the struggle of moral
and political tendencies that influence our social
state. Compared to you two, he is superficial,
and his thoughts seem of a less delicate grain,
but possibly they have the advantage of express-
ing only part of a nature more complex than
yours because it admits of instincts and prompts
efforts that have nothing to do with intellectual
perfection.
The question I put to you in the beginning,
Wilfrid has quietly put aside as unreasonable,
and you, Lothaire, have in a manner answered it
by interpreting, according to your own heart,
Wilfrid's arguments and conclusions. One of
you has opened to me interesting vistas of
of Anarchy and of Law. 47
thought; the other has reminded me of the
importance of moral purity—I mean the delicacy
of our inward perceptions, and has told me
where I can seek for it. I am grateful to you
both ; you have received me kindly, shown
me fine pictures, and cheered me with sweet
music. But you have forgotten one thing : you
have forgotten to feed me, and I confess I am
hungry. I cannot live on subtile ideas and
exquisites states of mind; I need some coarser
food; I should starve on your abstract specula-
tions and psychological niceties. I want thought
that will rouse my passions and throw me as a
combatant among men. What was that Wilfrid
was saying about the fruitlessness of defending
logically each step of our thought because the
defence involved new positions that would, in
their turn, require justification, and how we must
leave all this hair-splitting, and seek the strength
of our ideas not in the way they derive one out of
another, but in the team they form together—I
don't recollect his words, but they struck me as
very true. Well, I would apply them on a
broader scale. Your team won't pull anything
except, perhaps, the nine muses, or the divine
Logos, or the third person of the Trinity, who is
said to be the comforter. It is altogether too
ethereal. . You have forgotten the shaft-horse ;
48 The Theories
you cannot pull through roads of clay ; you can
only drive, like Aurora, far away at the horizon,
between the fathomless sea and the infinite sky.
What is the use of telling us how it is wise to
think and how it is right to feel? Who ever
listened to such words 2 If your teaching is to
be heard it must have echoes so loud that the
deaf themselves will hark; it must sound as the
falling-off of chains. If it is worth anything it
must have been formed in you from all the
sources of life; it is not enough that it should
light in your eyes the ray of far-searching
thought, or cast on your head a halo of peace
like the haze of fresh morning hours; it must
also have sent your blood coursing through your
veins and knit your muscles for fight. Give me
the thought that makes its way through meta-
physical ether and moral atmosphere down on
to the hard soil where it takes its place among
practical interests and grapples with social facts.
Now, whatever may be the value of Ralph's
ideas, they lead to a sociological doctrine; there
is fight in them, and for this I honour him, though
I cannot side with him ; whereas your ideas stir in
me many approving voices and vague sympathies.
But you do not carry them far enough; you are,
both of you, specialists. There is in his nature an
element, missing in yours, that brings him into
of Anarchy and of Law. 49
a game you know nothing of; he is subjected
to a force which fashions the social structure.
There is impersonalism in that ; it is a way of
submitting one's self to a superior reality. The
man who can enter into the social structure and
work for it is, in spite of himself, free from the
sin of unification; whatever he may feel, he
behaves as an instrument in an orchestra. Our
present social adjustments require men so made
that all that comes into the field of their con-
sciousness should be subject to dogmatic ap-
preciation. Each one of them asserts himself
to be right and would have everyone like him.
But this very error makes him a member of a
higher organism. He is absolute in his views,
and though many moods may pass over him, he
can tell you which is the best, he can point out
truth; thanks to which he can pursue one course,
stick to one calling, belong to one class.
This is an important question : the size and
nature of the group to which a term must be
referred for its justification. Suppose me to be
fully aware of the impossibility of getting a
complete, a fundamental truth into any one state
of consciousness, so that no thought or feeling of
mine can assume command, but they all succeed
each other with equal claim to my respect because
together they form a complete structure—then
4.
5O The Theories
I am doubtless a perfect man inwardly. But I
am a solitary being as far as the social common-
wealth is concerned, for there is no dogmatism
of any kind, intellectual or moral, left in me,
and a good riddance it is with respect to my
communion with Psyche; but, with the error I
have avoided, the conditions of persistent, limited,
and effective work are gone—the blindness, the
unconsciousness that would have assigned me
an allotted place and thanks to which I should
have represented one of the functions of society.
Being a world of myself, I stand alone. And
this solitude is poverty. Something is dead in
me that lives in those who are not only psychical
but also social beings. On the other hand, their
thinking will be as far inferior to mine as an
amateur's performance is to a professional man's.
LOTHAIRE.
I do not recognize your usual voice. If you
had always spoken so among us you would not
have been called a Nihilist.
HAROLD.
Ah ! but wait a minute ; for shall we not
rather say that this solitude of mine exists only
in my feelings and in the visible character of my
relations to society, but that in reality a man can
of Anarchy and of Law. 5I
never step out of humanity; however little in
harmony with his immediate surroundings he
may feel, he cannot do otherwise than take his
part in a higher unity. Do you see what this
leads us to ? That there is an opposition between
the social fabric, which is the work of individuals
in whom thought is but a factor, and who
consequently are dogmatic, and some larger work
at which all must perforce labour, and wherein
those individuals in whom thought is all-ab-
sorbing, tyrannic, have a part to play precisely in
virtue of their antagonism to dogma, that is to
say, to law. Human sympathy awakes in them
as soon as they become destroyers of society.
Thought begins in doubt and ends in revolution.
Its essence is revolt.
RALPH.
Surely this is extravagance.
HAROLD.
To your mind, doubtless. You are saturated
by civilization. You are serenely confident
that if a man has been a good son, a good
husband, a good father, a good worker, and
a good citizen, he may rest in peace; there is
nothing more to be asked ; he has been happy
and done his duty. You seem convinced that a
4 *
52 The Theories
man owes it to society to be happy, or at least
successful.
But there is in us a spirit which you persist-
ently forget; a spirit of rebellion that cries out
against this gregarious ideal; we are not solely
social animals whose efforts are to conspire with
those of our fellow-creatures to the general
good; we sicken on the philosophy of duty and
happiness.
RALPH.
Well, if you wish to be alone, you can with-
draw into the solitude of philosophical thought,
and, if you want misery, take the share of it that
comes to you and retire with it to your chamber
of religious meditation. You have free range
within your own hearts; but as soon as practical
interests and social institutions are at stake, you
must submit to the fact that when men gather
together, it is to pull together, with the hope of
some benefit. There doubtless arises competition,
and there are individual victims, but the progress
we strive to forward tends to improving their lot
and to reconciling the good of all with that of each.
How you can talk of developing sympathy with
humanity by destroying the bonds which unite
men in social aggregates, I am at a loss to under-
of Anarchy and of Law. 53
stand. I can understand how Wilfrid has been
led to take what seems to me a sceptical and
dangerous position; be it what it may, it is
purely theoretical, and possibly there is some-
thing to be got out of it; if he can some other
evening show us that his way of viewing speech
leads to some critical and objective science
of which philosophers and their systems are the
subject-matter, I will listen to him with deference,
esteeming that, whatever his premises may be,
he is working in the direction my instinct tells
me to be true; he will be adding to our stock
of knowledge.
Or if he works in another line, and restores to
philosophy the charm in poetry, I will read him
with pleasure.
Lothaire, also, I can follow to a certain extent.
He spoke to us of a law against which there can
be no transgressors; but, to find it, he takes us
back into a land of mystical feelings which
borders upon the kingdom of heaven — and
possibly we need some such outlook for our
dreams. i
But you, Harold, have brought these dreams
forward into a world where they are out of
place. Keep back the spirit of revolt you speak
of, within the limits of solitary thought and
silence. Something I can feel astir within me
54 The Theories
that responds to your voice; some strange, ever-
repressed feeling of which I know not what
to say except that it was that, I suppose, that in
the minds of the olden poets crowned with
majestic gloom God's fallen enemy; a sudden
stinging misgiving that we are doing injustice to
Evil, and that we remain half-grown, timorous,
reliant on our leading-strings until we rebel against
the law and seek the truth in ourselves. But,
believe me, these are suggestions that we cannot
listen to in practical life. Our first requirements
there are confidence, good faith, principles we can
rely on and know to be of the same value to
others as they are to us, laws which we recognize
in common. Great enough already is the mischief
done by that link-destroying, isolating spirit
you invoke; great enough the work of dissolu-
tion. Behold it in egotism and deceit between
individuals; behold it in war between nations.
The devil needs no lawyer to plead his
interests, he helps himself. What if there is
in our nature a principle of discord that we never
can entirely suppress? Is that a reason to glorify
its work
Whosoever refuses to take a place in organized
society is, and must remain, an outcast. Will
you declare war in the name of the tramps
against the workers ?
of Anarchy and of Law. 55
You say that some men have no true Social
instinct, and that in them thought unadulterated
by other interests attains its perfection; they
form in your eyes an intellectual aristocracy, and
just as we have sometimes seen in history the
alliance of the highest with the very lowest
classes, you seem to think that it is your mission
to take the part of those who stand outside of
society because they are not capable of entering
into it, and who hate it as the savage hates what
he cannot understand. You are one of those
men who reason themselves into crime. Granted
that a great deal of thinking leads us to deny
the value of any dogmatic assertion otherwise
than as an episodic performance, neither better
nor worse than any other, and thus unqualifies us
for social life, with its fixed moral and economi-
cal positions—that would only prove that a great
deal of thinking is too much, and that we had
better content ourselves with less. There is no
better sign of maturity in a man than the dis-
cretion that checks him in every direction before
extreme consequences; teaches him to discrimi-
nate between values of a different order, and saves
him from trying to govern his practical life by
moods that should be pushed no further than
mere verbal expression — if indeed thus far,
and if not best kept silent. But you take a
56 The Theories
particular state of mental anarchy produced by
an excess of solitary thinking, and say to us:
Behold! I cannot join in with other men and
take part in the work they have patiently toiled
at for thousands of years, but I will look upon
this very incapacity as a most valuable contri-
bution to some other work directly opposed to
their social constructiveness, a higher and more
catholic work which their worldliness makes
them forget—so that I shall be right and they
shall be wrong, and that the true bond between
men shall turn out to be the destruction of the
beliefs and institutions that hold them together.
You are dreaming a bad dream. Wake up
and go out amongst men. You will find that
these people you look down upon as superficial
and simple minded have more weight than your-
self; you will find out that your battle-axe is a
child's rattle; you may strike—they will only
smile. But you will not even strike, you will be
borne along with them and fall into pace as a
roadside traveller with the steady tread of an
army in march. You will feel the pressure of
the mighty truth that keeps their ranks compact
and urges them forward in the direction of what
you contemptuously call civilization. And given
that start, all the rest will follow as the parts of
a natural growth; you will see that men can
of Anarchy and of Law. 57
believe in an end worth striving for, can trust in
progress, wish for happiness—aye! and resign
themselves to being, as you term it, good sons,
good husbands, good fathers, good workers,
and good citizens, without deserving the name
of shallow fools which you seem ready to
confer on all those who can content themselves
with such paltry joys.
HAROLD.
By no means. They have one work to do and
I another. Did not Wilfrid tell us there are
many gods
You invite me to awaken from my dreams and
feel the pressure of the force that drives men
together and moulds them into social forms
marked out by laws, beliefs, and customs.
I have felt it. I have heard the tread of your
legions, and have been carried along in step. I
have felt myself weaker before them than a child
with a rattle—a mere straw blown aside by the
rush of air on their path. And the straw sat down
and watched them and saw, to his great surprise,
that the world was not moving with them, but
quietly turning on its axis regardless of their
impetus; whence he concluded that there was
somewhere a greater force than theirs.
It is not true that the highest aim and end of
58 The Theories
the individual is happiness and success, whether
for himself or for others; it is not true that the
aim and end of a social body is its maintenance
and progress, or the furthering of civilization.
There is something higher than that in us;
something that must force its way into our
consciousness, and not only into our thoughts,
but into our will, so that we work with it and .
for it, if we are to respond fully and as brave
instruments none of whose chords are slack, to
the touch of destiny stretching over us its fingers
of life and death.
In your eyes, I am the advocate of certain
tendencies of our nature that should lead—if to
anything—only to religious moods or to specu-
lative investigations; the moment they influence
our dealings with our fellow-creatures you con-
demn them unhesitatingly as forms of evil.
I deny that the realm of practical activity must
by right belong to you and yours exclusively, and
I deny that it does so in fact. There is no such
thing as drawing lines between what is good in
thought and what is good in action—here ends
the psychical and here begins the practical.
States of mind are political parties in germ; it is
idle to make a class of certain of them that you
would check in their growth and condemn to
perpetual embryonic confinement. They leap
of Anarchy and of Law. 59
forth in spite of you, and then you know not what
to say of them; you call them disasters, cataclysms,
trials that must not shake our faith in better
times; you try to forget them, will not look them
in the face. Put a difficult question to a little
boy, he will behave just so, look puzzled and
distressed for a moment, then shake it off and
return to his top, which he understands. I am
not aware that death has any place in your
scheme, or that you have anything more edifying
to say about it than that—“there is no use
complaining, because it is the law of nature; first
up hill, and then down, but if you please we will
not talk about the descent, we will confine our
attention to the ascent; it is all a glorious ascent
if you will only look at it the right way; to be
sure, individually we have an obstinate trick of
slipping backwards through old age into the
tomb, but bother individuals, look at the species,
is not that progressing Have we not just
invented a lot of new toys, and what if wars and
revolutions, and such like, do every now and then
come and upset our work, it is only for awhile,
we begin again, and surely we are far ahead of
the Greeks and Romans, and better off than they,
unless, indeed, they were better off than we are,
which there is no knowing, so it is all right, and
cheer up.” You have got back to your top.
6O The Theories
I say that partially, at least, any man has
made a failure of his life, who cannot look upon
death as a victory, the last achievement of a long
series of efforts no less precious in his eyes than
those by which he has lived. From our earliest
days the work of destruction begins in us,
scattering illusions, shaking beliefs, wearing out
affections, breaking bonds, gaining step by step
in materiality, till it sinks into our tissues to
destroy them. And the brave man is he who
does not shirk the disenchantment, nor the
doubt, nor the sorrow, aye, and perchance the
crime, but accepts all this as part of his task.
He will not cling to happiness, he will not be
dismayed by ruin, he will not fear death—it
plays into his hands, for the soul of tragedy is in
him ; and so true is it that unless this chord
resound within us we are but half-awake, that no
memories are eternally interwoven save of those
whom tragedy has parted, no fates have been
forever commingled, but by the blood of battle-
fields or the sweat of silent agony.
It would seem as though history could only
be woven at the places and hours where some
precious life-tissue is torn in shreds, some web
of dreams, some robe of innocence, some sacred
banner or temple-yeil.
What a poor godhead is that in which no
of Anarchy and of Law. 6I
place is reserved for the holy ghost of destruc-
tion . How incomplete and weak and becoming
only to women of tender, graceful natures, the
soul that peace can satisfy and the ways of
goodness detain. And even so, how miserably
poor the destines of Arcadian commonwealths.
Would you have the world's annals like unto
those of the republic of Andorra 2
You have mentioned egotism as one of the
forms under which the destructive spirit mani-
fests itself, and there is no doubt that a high
intelligence of, or a delicate sympathy for, man's
social skill and its work, supposes generous
feelings; whereas the lack of such intelligence
often accompanies the poverty of a selfish nature.
But give a man a high intelligence of any kind,
and it will lift him above the level of personal
interests as surely as the most genuine public
spiritedness. Nobody would call Archimedes
selfish because he went on working at his
problem whilst the city walls were being stormed.
I know what you are going to say: “We are not
talking of men engrossed by some talent.” Well
then, Francis of Assisi; he was no genius. Would
you call him selfish 2 Yet his teaching was so
destructive of society that it would not be
tolerated to-day. The very ministers of Jesus, or
those who give themselves that name, would
62 The Theories
shout into prison a villain who urged men not
to work but to beg.
RALPH.
Religious fanatics are not to be judged by the
same standard as other men. What is good and
great in them, must be ascribed to the religious
feeling that inspires them, not to the destructive
character their ideas may assume when carried
beyond their due limits into practical life. Chris-
tianity has lasted two thousand years, and yet all
the time we have gone on giving heed to the
morrow, and devoting no little attention to food
and raiment.
HAROLD.
Ah! you picture to yourself philanthropists
whose tender sympathy for suffering blinds them
to economical laws and unfits them for practical
life—men of sentiment. You see the profit of
their work in a revival of delicate feelings which
are so much added to our wealth, if we knew
how to keep them within proper bounds. I see
it in a protest against incomplete reality. It is
not their love of mankind that leads them to
forget part of reality and assume towards social
institutions a hostile attitude; it is the spirit of
destruction that calls on them to represent him
of Anarchy and of Law. 63
against the great social party that has forgotten
him and mutilates reality by thinking that its
supreme law is welfare. They come not to bring
peace, but the sword. Those are admirable
words, and because the instinct that prompts
them is both as deep and universal as that which
makes of each man something of a peace-loving
legislator, deeper, perhaps, and at the same time
of easier access to the simple minded, for that
reason it leads us to the true love of mankind;
not a sentimental pity for those who are un-
fortunate, unreasonable, uninformed; but an
outright revolt with and for the outcasts. I have
in view the moral outcasts as well as the starving.
There are millions of men and women to-day
who are morally starving, because they are not
at their true work, and know not where to find
it. Food in plenty is set before them, but it will
not feed them. The entire system of ideas under
which we live, is a lie to them. Their truest,
happiest, most self-forgetting instincts, they are
taught to be ashamed of. Duties are set before
them, and ideals held up to their admiration,
which they can only conform to at the cost of
sincerity, and if they attempt to lay aside
hypocrisy and step forward free and ingenuous
as God made them, such a storm of opprobrium
greets them that their light-hearted innocence is
64 The Theories
gone, and they recognize themselves no more.
Our social institutions require dogmatic convic-
tions and dogmatic characters; our forms of
property and family can suit but such. And the
care that bears so heavily on many of those to
whom these forms are not suited, is that they
see no way of stepping out of them without
falling into the degraded condition of an
adventurer who understands nothing but his own
personal interests. There is as generous an
impulse and as true a feeling of a high, unselfish
cause to defend among the enemies as among
the friends of the law. Can you marvel that
they should begin to count each other, that from
all ranks, all countries, they should gradually
muster together; men of various aptitudes, of
various grievances, and various hopes, but all of
them one at heart in this: emancipation—which,
I believe, you call Anarchy or Nihilism 2
Do shut that window, Lothaire, if you have
done looking out at the church towers. The
grey of morning is coming on, and it is cold.
LOTHAIRE.
Yes, dawn is coming, as it will do, I suppose,
a thousand years hence, whatever we may decide.
I have just heard a cock crow off yonder ; it is
time for the ghosts to separate.
of Anarchy and of Law. 65
WIL FRID.
What if they cannot :
RALPH.
How 2 Has a witch come and carried us off
while we were engrossed in conversation, and
locked us up in a tower
WIL FRID.
Worse than that; chained us together and
thrown us into one body; there he passes in the
street, muffled up in his cloak. Or—lookſ that is
he, seated at the table in the room opposite,
where you see that lamp growing pale. You
will meet him everywhere. His image it is that
swings on the sign-board we found Harold
gazing at. . . And we, my friends, what are
we ? Big shadows of forms that move in his
and every mind, and that, taken altogether, are
only a very small part of the performers who
throng the stage. We have talked as ingeniously
as one generally does, about how man ought to
view life. Well, suppose we had found an
answer that all could agree to ; where would it be
an hour hence, and of what use to us or to
anyone Should we not forget it all to go to
sleep, or to drink another glass of wine, as I do
5
66 The Theories of Anarchy and of Law.
here, or to think about business, as I trust I
never may, or to call for music, as I suggest we
should
RALPH.
Of course; but, none the less, we should find
Security in knowing that there is a law.
HAROLD.
Or strength in feeling that we have to
destroy it.
LOTHAIRE.
Or peace in looking beyond it.
WIL FRID.
Come, let us have music.
PART II.
PART II.
RALPH.
I HAVE been thinking OVer Our recent conver-
sation. One very clear impression I will speak
of at once. It is a point on which I believe we
shall all agree : abstract philosophy—the dis-
cussion of mere ideas without reference to the
character and passions peculiar to those who
defend a given doctrine—is an ingenious but
more or less frivolous pastime. The real
struggle is not between ideas, but between
temperaments.
Lot HAIRE.
I think so too. If there were assembled in a
room representatives of all the different philoso-
phical schools, the story of their debate would be
nothing but the records of an academy; but an
assembly of men representing all the chief
temperaments would be a miniature humanity.
70 The Theories
RALPH.
Yes. We can leave aside all the school
arguments by which fundamental positions are
defended or attacked, and direct our attention to
the moral and social bearings of our opinions.
Our habitual tone of feeling and the line of action
we strike out; these are the questions at issue.
It is on these grounds that I wish to quarrel
with you, Harold. But just let me see if I
rightly apprehend you.
You contend, if I am not mistaken, that our
philosophy of life is worthless, precisely because
it is a philosophy of life, and not a philosophy of
life and death. We are accused, we modern
men, of overlooking one of the factors of reality,
—something that we occasionally advert to under
such names as dissolution, or destruction, but
that we practically leave out of account in our
reckonings.
HARO LD.
Even so.
RALPH.
Very well. The next thing we hear from you,
however, is that this said principle, unjustly
neglected in our speculations, is the agent of a
of Anarchy and of Law. 7I
work superior to that of the opposed principle for
which we have neglected it. We learn that to
build is well enough in its way, and that
builders are the makers of society, but that to
destroy is far better, and that destroyers are the
makers of history. Their work is, in your eyes,
the manifestation of an instinct so deep that,
when it finds its true expression, it raises men
above their individual interests higher than social
sympathy can. For instance, the genuine spirit
of religious movements, be they of Christ, or of
Buddha, is certainly opposed to the very first, I
mean the economical, interests of society. This
opposition you do not attribute to an excessive
concern for spiritual interests dragging those
over whom it obtains command beyond the
limits of practical utility; on the contrary, you
look upon the opposition in question as the very
source whence flows true sympathy for mankind.
Out of the revolt comes the love. Have I stated
your opinions correctly
HAROLD.
Quite correctly.
RALPH.
Then, hear my perplexities. I will grant that
the theory of progress is at fault on the ground
72 The Theories
that there is, and always will be, in the single or
collective destinies of men, something that it
does not account for.
Now, I can understand the position taken by
a frank dualist who recognizes two opposed
principles, and imputing all error, sin, and
unhappiness to one of them, bids us hate that
one as the Evil One. It may be an unkind
appreciation of the contender, but it is a very
clear one. He is located.
But you first establish that all that we consider
good and desirable is only one of the antagonistic
terms of reality; and then, by a strange twist of
thought, you make out that the forgotten
antagonist for whom you plead has all the
qualities that endeared his rival to us, and has
them in a higher degree. The dualism has gone,
and we revert to a peculiar form of the doctrine
of the one, in which the conclusions of a pessi-
mist are presented to us with a glow of optimistic
enthusiasm.
WILFRID.
Wait a minute. I shall be very glad to see
the discussion brought on to practical grounds.
But you have begun by raising a logical difficulty
which I would like to notice before it slips from
our attention. Will you let me speak first?
of Anarchy and of Law. 73
RALPH.
With pleasure.
WILFRID.
You say that there is something contradictory
in the attempt to legitimate two opposed prin-
ciples. Your text is—Ye cannot serve both God
and Mammon. The difficulty apparently being
this, that if we sum up under the name of the
first all that we approve of, we must either hate
the second, or look upon it merely as a new
manifestation of the former, in which case it is
evident that we had not done what we intended;
we had not summed up, under the name of the
first principle, all that we approve of ; and con-
sequently the opposition disappears. In other
words, you only admit of two tenable theories :
Firstly, an irreductable dualism, that of Good and
Evil, in which case we must abhor the latter;
secondly, monism, whether that of optimists or
that of pessimists. We may worship the Evil
One if we deny the Lord; also if we look upon
them as helping one another; but then they are
not what their names imply. In no case can we
worship them both if they are antagonists.
And as Harold has quarrelled with the
monistic view precisely because it disregards the
74 The Theories
contending principle, he is placed somewhat in
the position of a man who might say: I take
part for the under dog in the fight, because there
must be an under one, and, what is more, I
maintain that he is the upper one.
RALPH.
Exactly.
WIL FRID.
Have you ever seen a conjurer take a ball in
his hands and gently rub it between them : As
he rubs, the ball seems to diminish in size, and
finally it disappears. Now suppose this world
to be treated in the same manner under our feet,
and suppose that you and I were standing at the
antipodes when the performance begins, so that
the soles of our feet would meet when it is over.
All your weight is bearing upon me, and all my
weight is bearing upon you. Who is the under
dog
RALPH.
I really cannot say.
WILFRID.
Nor can I. What we might say is that the
case is not likely to present itself, and that if the
of Anarchy and of Law. 75
substance of the world were to go, ours would
go with it.
Yet, in our own logical performances, we are
continually playing this trick upon each other
and crying hall ha We conjure away the
substance of our thoughts so that nothing
remains of them but two antithetical principles
that look at each other in perplexity, till one of
them says: “I have it; one of us is above and
the other below ; I am above.” “You are mis-
taken,” answers the other, “ and doubly mistaken.
You are not above, nor yet are you below.
Contradiction is the essence of unity, and we
twain are one.”
One or two, what difference does it make
The situation is a fictitious one, a quarrel
between ghosts who strike at each other and hit
nothing. The solid bodies and all the complex
conditions of their reality have long since passed
away, but the shadows linger on the wall and
quarrel for precedence, or wonder which of them
engendered the other.
RALPH.
This is true enough. But if you sweep away
my objection as a merely verbal one, you must
stand by me when I say that Harold's opinions
proceed from a misuse of speech. He goes on
76 The Theories
talking when he ought to do something else.
That which he accuses us of always neglecting
in our philosophies is that which cannot be put
directly into words; it is the antithesis of
thought; it is action. As soon as we try to
convert it into thought its character of contrary
term forces us to present it as the spirit that
always denies. All our previous work of thought
has been in the behalf of order. We have taken
part for that which can be legitimated against that
which cannot, but now the work is inverted;
we are still bound by the nature of the instru-
ment we make use of to legitimate; but what we
legitimate is destruction, and the longer we think,
the further our negations extend.
Is this the proper use to put thought to ? I
say No. It is the revenge of the inactive. The
force that should have lifted their arms has
lingered in their brain and turned to denial.
This is the race of dreamers. And there is
something here far more serious than a denial
of Law considered in its intellectual aspect as
the expression of unity. There is a denial of
its equivalent in our practical life—a blasphemy
against joy. It is the death of all endeavour.
If I point out that a given course leads to
misery, and you quietly answer: “What of
that? misery is of God"—of course I am
of Anarchy and of Law. 77
silenced, but so too are you. You have refused
to accept a postulate which the exchange of ideas
supposes. Where there is nothing to strive for
and nothing to avoid, counsel ceases.
Let us admit that you are vindicating some
superior right. To do it you have to go down
to those depths of analysis at which the value of
reason is in question. It is of course possible
to suspect as fallacious the entire fabric of
consciousness, and you may say: Why not
But if we are agreed that such abstract questions
are sterile, I must judge your opinions by the
effect they would probably have if listened to,
and in that case I shall not let myself be blinded
by any glow of religious grandeur you may
throw over them. We are told that the leader
of the Huns entitled himself the Scourge of
God; and possibly he is your man. But the
Vandals who followed Genseric saw no sacred
mission in destruction, they merely sought for
riot. Beware lest Attila call and Genseric be
answered.
WIL FRID.
I do not think your argument is quite fair.
RALPH.
How So 2
78 The Theories
WIL FRID.
You begin by advising that we should limit
ourselves to practical considerations and avoid
discussing abstract ideas; but you take Harold's
in their extreme phase, at the moment of their
last theoretical import, and ask -how they can
possibly work at the ordinary level. He might
retort in the same manner and show that your
ideas, when pushed far enough, lead to views by
which our daily conduct cannot be governed.
Our ideas have different phases of develop-
ment and pass also through different regions.
They must at all times be judged according to
their behaviour in the region pertinent to the
phase at which we consider them.
RALPH.
I was told the other evening that thoughts
were made to be converted into actions, and
that it was not possible to draw a line between
theory and practice.
WILFRID.
It is not possible to divide our mind into
currents, some of which are only to flow in
dreamland. We cannot say to a tree : You
shall have roots, but that is all; your life must
of Anarchy and of Law. 79
be entirely subterranean. Or : You may have
boughs that wave about high up in the air, but
you are not entitled to a trunk.
HAROLD.
Exactly; and it was in this sense that I
refused to admit that my line of mind-work was
not to cross the boundaries of practical life. It
must, and does, cross them; but that is no
reason to suppose that I shall answer every-day
questions with the trump of the Last Judgment.
If you, Ralph, point out to me that a given
course leads to confusion and distress, I shall
not quietly answer: “Well, my friend, what of
that Suffering is of God.” For I may be
merely trying to put on my waistcoat backwards
forwards, and the powers of above take no
interest in the peformance. I shall try to amend
my course and not blaspheme against joy. I am
as free to love joy as you are; though probably
there will be some unnoticed difference in our
manner of feeling it. I may be as eager for
action as you, though doubtless it will not be
for the same ends. The glaring contrast of our
theoretical conclusions is no proof that all our
lives through I shall shake my head while you
nod assent, and that we have naught in common;
it is simply a sign of some difference in our
8O The Theories
most intimate tissues, that will bring us into
direct opposition only when the depths are
stirred—and at such moments we may indeed
disagree as to where reality lies; the rest of the
time it will reveal itself in the different expres-
sions we give to the same desires.
If I could get nothing out of myself but a
hymn to Sheeva, after which I crossed my arms
and declared that there is nothing to be avoided
and nothing to be striven for, I think you would
be quite justified in calling my philosophy the
revenge of the dreamer. I should be taking
final thoughts for a permanent rule whereby my
conduct is everywhere to be governed, instead of
looking on them as ultimate expressions applic-
able only to ultimate problems. Other problems
I will meet with other answers, and one same
temperament will, of course, underlie them all,
but they will be worked out of it like distinct
and complementary functions of an organism ;
not like propositions out of an axiom, as your
criticism implies.
This is a mistake into which you men of the
Law are always falling. You want a formula
out of which all others can be spun ; a supreme
principle whence authority flows. Wherever,
and under whatever form, I meet this despot, he
is my enemy. If you think that at least on
of Anarchy and of Law. 8I
practical grounds he is invulnerable, and that the
principle of morality must be bowed down to,
you are mistaken. What you look upon as the
necessary safeguard of men, I consider the source
of the greatest harm among them.
RALPH.
Do you assert in good earnest that there is
neither Right nor Wrong
HAROLD.
I do not deny that at every moment there is
something to be striven after and something to be
avoided; some thought, feeling, or deed, failing
which we shall be unequal to the situation. What
I do deny is that the proper course can be pointed
out by assigning fixed qualities to actions or states
of mind. This is precisely what is done under
the name of morality, and it is morality thus
understood that I consider a pernicious fallacy.
RALPH.
In everybody but fanatics, common sense
corrects the exaggeration to which the acceptance
of a permanent Law might lead. I know that
we may become enslaved by forms, and that there
is a danger of moral inertia. But the practice of
life knocks it out of us; and we finish by not
6
82 The Theories
looking too closely at the letter without, for all
that, denying the spirit.
HAROLD.
You are tainted by worldly wisdom. The
genuine moralist will bid us observe unswervingly
the law. That which you cavalierly put aside as
formalism, he will call a delicate conscience of
sin. He makes a virtue of routine. His claim
is that we must act by principle ; to do which
we must attribute an unvarying value to our
actions, and always cling to the same qualities as
though they had at all times the same meaning.
His very first step is the sacrilegious attempt to
prevent us feeling that the parts which make up
the machinery of our life are subject to a delicate
and incessant shifting, so that the performance
allotted at a given moment to a given part will,
at another moment, devolve on a different one
whose function has, perhaps, been hitherto
directly opposite. What does the experience of life
teach us? what do we learn by watching many
men, seeing many countries, tasting of many
events, sweet and bitter Just this : that the
way we thought right was only one of many
ways that lead to the same end ; the ideas we
thought necessary to the working of private or
public economy, can be replaced without dis-
of Anarchy and of Law. 83
advantage by quite different or contrary ideas ;
the customs we deemed sacred are local fashions;
the conditions without which we fancied life
unbearable, can make way to conditions no less
rich in vital stuff. From beginning to end, our
history, if we have any, is one of emancipation
from the tyranny of forms. 4.
RALPH.
Whence you jump to the conclusion that
whatever is, is right 2
HAROL D.
Whatever is, must be considered in relation to
particular facts, and with the precise conditions of
its existence ; not in relation to general ideas
that only represent the rashest conclusions of the
smallest experience. Morality is an assumption
of complete knowledge according to whose
immutable canon we arrogate to ourselves the
right of condemning. There is no such know.
ledge, and the pretence to it is impious. For
this is true piety : that we should forget ourselves,
and our own paltry preferences, in the feeling that
all around us is alive and divine. How much of
it have we learned to revere 2 That is the
measure of our merit. No other question will
be put to us in the great examination. And
6 %
84 The Theories
read carefully, it runs thus: How many moral
teachings and so-called necessary truths have we
learned to disbelieve
RALPH.
You forget that over and above the several
commandments, there is a sentiment of duty
which we get to love for its own sake. What if
Sometimes we carry our legalism too far What
if we look more at the guide-book than at the
country we are travelling through It is a pity;
but, for all that, we carry with us the feeling of
a higher order of things. It is better to err as
we do than to live without an ideal.
HAROL D.
I do not see that morality saves us from an
idealless life. On the contrary, it often leads
there. It so binds up what you term the feeling
of a higher order of things with the observance
of the law that, to keep that feeling, we take to
nursing our conscience, and grow daily more
meticulous, more pharisaical, more scrupulously
careful of our robe of impeccability. And when
experience tears it, we know of nothing better
than to try and hide the rent. There is no joyful
love of the ideal in this fear of sin.
An ideal is a goodly and godly thing when
of Anarchy and of Law. 85
it expresses, in a few essential traits, our main
tendency, the resultant of our instincts. What-
ever they may be, they are always susceptible
of this abstraction or reduction to typical
beauty. Skill in our individual life consists in
discovering these eternal types under every
change of feeling that the growth of new
instincts, or the pressure of circumstances, may
bring about, so that we may always act as the
delegates of a superior cause. This is something
very different from the pride we take in clinging
to a cause because we once felt it as superior to
ourselves. Very different, too, from the idea
that if we have not clung to it we are degraded.
Is this not the history of thousands : They
were taught that such and such feelings and
beliefs are the right ones; and during a while,
they needed none others. That was the good
time. They trod lightly and proudly in those
days. They were surrounded and borne up by
the cause they served. But sooner or later it
seemed to need them no longer; silently they
were dismissed, and they felt it, but dared not
confess it; perhaps not even to themselves.
Then came the empty, joyless days. I look at
the listless countenances that I see around me,
at the youthless eyes, at faces washed into blank
unmeaningness, or settled into a hard mask.
86 The Theories
Are these the faces that, but a few years ago,
seemed the transparent screens of some eternal
truth There is nothing more behind the
screen; the room is empty. The gods of yore
have passed on, and the master of the house has
not dared to let in others—has not known where
to seek them. Our moral principles have kept
out the new ideals that would have corresponded
to our new instincts; but these instincts have
not been repelled; they have forced their way
into flesh and blood, and if they have not come
with their god at the head of them, they have
come without him.
RALPH.
But what if they have been repelled, and
repelled precisely with the help of our moral
principles—the danger of abiding by which you
greatly overrate, I think? You speak of con-
science nursing, and of the puristic rigorism
which aſsolutely unalloyed morality leads to.
But why consider it in that state, since it never is
unalloyed, save in very exceptional cases Do
not look at it in the abstract, consider it such as
we meet it. I do not see that an over-tender
conscience of sin does so much harm in the
world. I would there were none greater. Our
own impulsiveness and friction with our fellow-
of Anarchy and of Law. 87
creatures keep the ermine spirit within bounds.
We start out for fanatism, and do not get
further than just a beginning of pedantry.
Meanwhile we have avoided far greater dangers.
Observe the struggle between our conservative
scruples and our love of adventure, the little
steps we risk, and our emotion over them.
It is the salt of life. I love to watch it all. . .
We may smile sometimes at those whose
greatest pride is that they are respectable citizens;
but they walk straight, and their principles bear
them good company. We can trust our interests
in their hands. Shall we quarrel with them
because they have unorthodox notions on the
nature of ideals 2 They are good people; let
them alone. The belief that certain ways, and
those ways only, are the right ones, helps them
to walk therein. I am sorry for the others you
speak of ; sorry for those who cannot live
according to the duty that has been taught them,
nor yet find in themselves “the type,” or high
design, the consciousness of which would
beautify their lives. Not sorry enough, however,
to condemn on their account the morality which
gives strength to many.
HAROLD.
I cannot assent. It is quite right that I should
88 The Thecries
look upon certain ways as better than others,
for me. That does not imply that my belief in
the excellence of these ways has any influence
over my conduct. My principles and my
conduct may both be products of my organism
without proceeding one from another. But, as
soon as I get to look upon my principles as the
root, and my conduct as the fruit, I am led into
the far graver error of assigning an unvarying,
universal value to those principles. After which,
my next step will be to condemn those who
think not like myself. x
The belief in the superiority of my paths over
all others is by no means a source of strength ;
it is a sign of ignorance and prejudice, and, to go
to the root, it is a sign of foolish egotism. You
say the harm is not great—a little pedantry. It
goes much further. The time has been when a
man, who did not worship as his neighbour, was
burned alive. I almost regret the stake and the
pile, which at least made grand the ceremony,
if the spirit that suggested them is still to
animate us. And how can it be quenched, so
long as we admit that there is a truth exclusive of
other truths; be it a religious, or a philosophical,
or a moral doctrine This is the barrier between
hearts; and those who attack the institutions and
customs on which it is buttressed, those whom you
of Anarchy and of Law. 89
call the destroyers, what is it that they destroy
The work of the spirit of hatred. It is good that
we should take pride in ourselves, but can we
not do so without referring our merit to our
principles, and making these obligatory In all
the attempts of moralists, I see this fatal error:
a belief in the superior worth of some one state
of mind in which we are supposed to have a true
perception of reality. The aspect thus seized
must be abided by, and our thoughts and actions
subordinated accordingly. Whatever tends to
question it must be thrown aside as frivolity, or
stamped down as sin—not in ourselves alone,
but also in others. That which at first was
pure delight in us, a gift of grace—what have we
made of it A yoke for our own necks, and
stocks for other men's feet. This is the misdeed
of morality, that it takes the innocent pleasure we
may have in our own ways, and replaces it by a
duty that must rule when the pleasure which
was the sign of life is gone; must rule at home
and abroad. After which we look round, and
marvel to find the world joyless and egotistical.
And we try to warm up in ourselves and in
others the first day's enthusiasm ; we expatiate
on the sanctity of the law, in hopes that its
defence in common will draw us nearer one to
another. Not so. What we may thus stir up
90 The Theories
is a Superficial emotion that creates in our
imagination a bond of sympathy between us and
our brothers, but leaves us as far apart as ever
in our practical impulses. We fall into each
others' arms while the sound of the church organ
lasts, but as soon as it expires we are ready to
condemn each other on appearances, and strictly
by the letter of the law. The taint of egotism
lies farther back—in our misconception of reality.
The day we invested it with a character of
permanence, and resolved to abide by it such
as it appeared to us then, we were cut off from
experience. It matters little that we should all
agree in extolling the same ideal. There is no
flesh and blood in our agreement.
I will give you an example, one of a thousand,
the first that occurs to my mind. If we were
asked to name some modern writings in which
the teachings of morality are ably set forth, we
could probably do no better than to point to an
author who has blended them with pictures of
life admirable for their vividness and wit. You
will recollect that one of George Eliot's novels
is the story of a pretty village girl who loves
a man above her in rank, forgets her principles,
bears a child, and then, overcome with shame, ter-
rified at her impending disgrace, kills or abandons
the child, is convicted, and condemned to death.
of Anarchy and of Law. 9I
What are the moral reflections it suggests to
the writer That such are the awful conse-
quences of sin; that we should beware of
bringing such misery on a fellow-creature, and
that we must all live as duty bids, for the end of
lust is shame.
Now, I have no doubt that after closing the
book some young girl may shudder, and take
into more serious consideration than before the
fact that life is not solely made up of ribbons and
kisses. She may feel that there is something
terribly serious in it, and attend church the next
Sunday with more gravity; she may feel more in
communion with those who kneel there around
her. Better still, she may form some good
resolution, and set to her household work with
more spirit ; be more cheerful and obliging.
Possibly, too, some young man may resolve, On
closing the volume, never to be the first to tempt
a girl from the right way; and he may like
himself and, indirectly, his neighbours also, all
the better for his good intentions.
I see in both cases that the imagination has
been stirred, the wish aroused to live up to a
decorous standard, and a certain sympathy re-
newed for the commonly accepted ideal of the
community. z
But what working power is there in these
92 The Theories
good resolutions : How long will they last? We
know that hell is paved with them. It is a mere
sentimental play that we believe in till we are
caught in one of the streams that roll men as
drops of water in their statistical tides. There
doubtless may be in the community a certain
number of persons whose instincts and destinies
find in the accepted ideal a proper flower of
expression. And if they looked upon it thus, no
harm would come from it. But they see in it the
root of their virtues; and by education, by predica-
tion, by law, they seek to enfore it upon all. The
factitious ideal thus imposed upon minds that do
not naturally produce it, can no more rule than a
theatre king can put down a revolution in the
country. The passions and moods that govern
us stretch very far back ; to change them we
should have to change half the order of the
universe, beginning by the habits of our ances-
tors for generations past; we should have to
know the secrets of innumerable crucibles at
work for thousands of years on atoms that
have filtered from as far as the world extends.
Are the inexorable facts and the outbursts of force
thus generated, to be conjured away by a gesture
of the paper-crowned majesty who struts before
the footlights of our imagination ? He has no
power for this ; all he can do is to persuade us
of Anarchy and of Law. 93
that if we do not obey him, we ought to do so,
and that if our neighbours do not obey him, we
must chastise them. He blinds us to the recog-
nition of any other ideal but that of which he is
a counterfeit, and induces us to commit real
crimes in order to punish imaginary offences.
It does not occur to our author that the guilty
ones of the story are neither the father of the
child nor the poor mother, driven mad by fright,
but those whose pitiless reproval she feared; and
more properly still, the teachers who instilled
into their minds the notions of morality.
RALPH.
Perhaps the author thinks that if they had no
such notion, their life would be one of those
idealless ones you disapproved of a few minutes
ago.
HAROLD.
And there is precisely the mistake. My ideal,
whatever it may be, has no business to interfere
with my neighbour's. Nor is the spiritual life
of the community to be sought in the conformity
of all to the same type; it must be sought in
mutual intelligence. Goodness in our relations
with others consists in discovering with them,
and, if need be, for them, the purity of the design
94 The Theories
hidden or gradually fashioning itself in them.
True sympathy is not reciprocal congratulation
on a common ideal, together with the goodwill of
like loves like ; true sympathy is fine perception.
Stand up, Hetty : we understand that you find
yourself in circumstances that will demand from
you new qualities of character and efforts of
intelligence to which you have not been trained.
We fear the task may prove a hard one, but as
far as our assistance can help you, you have it.
Pass the baby round ; it shall dance upon our
knees.
This is no fancy picture of an impossible
community. There are many peaceful villages
and alpine hamlets where you will find that
though no one makes the above speech, all
act up to it. The inhabitants have fully as much
sense of the ideal as English villagers, and their
homes and their songs show it. You will see
there unmarried mothers whom no one, friend, re-
lation, or stranger, thinks of despising. They are
judged by their courage and their kindness, by
the sweetness of their temper, their will to work,
and their gift of affection. They are judged by
the rule of Is, and not by the rule of Ought.
“We thought that good girls met with no such
accident, but it appears they do ; therefore, we
were wrong. That is all there is of it. If any
of Anarchy and of Law. 95
one tries to teach us to the contrary, we shall
know that he is more satisfied with his own ideas
than desirous of looking round him to improve
them.”
Now where is the infanticide and the shame
and the sin They were all the work of the
moralist. Let him be responsible for them.
RALPH.
“Pass the baby round" may be all very well
in your mountains, but we are not living in the
Andes or the Caucasus, whichever it was you
alluded to.
If we choose to consider all men and all times,
it is easy enough to make out that almost any
action can be judged in the most contrary
manner. After which we argue that there are
no permanent rules, that all cases are individual,
and that we must judge persons, not actions;
sympathetic offenders shall be acquitted; in
fact, since they are sympathetic, they are not
offenders.
But the fact is that we are none of us living
anywhere in time and space; we are living
somewhere in particular, and though in excep-
tional cases peculiar conditions may be worthy
of consideration, yet the pressure of our sur-
roundings is strong and constant in one direction;
96 The Theories
it represents the resultant of so many forces to
which we have necessarily been subject, that in
a general manner the character of any action may
be said to be determinable a priori; it falls into a
given category and meets with a categorical
judgment by which we can safely abide. Just
as there may be in some legal offences extenu-
ating circumstances, we may sometimes temper
the severity of our judgment on moral misde-
meanours, but any attempt to subordinate the
general character of the action to its accidental
character, only opens the door to endless and
undignified casuistry which the rough, good sense
of the nation at large will not tolerate long.
The Jesuits are clever men, and outside of their
order we have many ingenious and highly cul-
tured thinkers who have examined right and
wrong so minutely that they assure us it is
impossible to distinguish between the two,
except by the most delicate measurings, and that
then it generally turns out the contrary of what
we expected.
But all their ingenious work is sooner or later
swept away at one breath of popular feeling, and
right remains right, and wrong remains wrong ;
very properly too. There is no question here of
metaphysics ; it matters little what the abstract
nature of Right is, or if it has any at all. The
of Anarchy and of Law. 97
plain fact is that the social conditions in which
we live are forces that can be reduced to certain
general lines. These lines represent the accu-
mulated experience of centuries and indicate to
us the directions in which we may profitably
work, and those in which we cannot push
without entangling ourselves and others in diffi-
culties. A man who recognizes these lines is a
man who understands the game ; a man who
does not recognize them is one whose senses are
blunted to certain realities, whether by passion or
by an analytical fastidiousness which is simply a
lack of breath of perception. He must expect to
be turned out of the game; we do not want
bunglers.
And how comes it that you esteem so highly
certain qualities, such as courage and the gift
of affection, while other qualities—chastity, for
instance—weigh so little in your esteem It
always comes back to this: what is right, and
what is wrong You must have some criterion,
since you blame and praise. Whatever that
criterion may be, it is your notion of morality.
What I contend is that the correct criterion
must be sought in the interests of the com-
munity, and that these interests are expressed
in general rules before which the individual
must bow down.
98 The Theories
:
.
©
:
WILFRID.
All this is very true ; and as Soon as you speak
in the name of practical sense, we can but follow
you. But this practical sense is far closer akin
to wisdom than to morality; and although, as
you observed, we are not bound to discuss pure
and unalloyed morality, since it always is alloyed,
yet it is hardly fair to give it credit for the
qualities of the other metal. The man you speak
of as understanding the game, and whom you
oppose to the dull criminal or to the over-subtle
casuist, is one whose conduct is governed by
distinct and ever-fresh perceptions; he follows
the general lines you allude to, because he sees
them, and because, such being the case, it will
no more occur to him to swerve from them than
it occurs to him to walk about blindfolded in the
town. The enjoyment he finds in the exercise
of the senses he is endowed with traces his
course to him. His guide is wisdom, not
morality.
RALPH.
It becomes morality as soon as he is subjected
to temptations that momentarily hide from him
those general lines. He finds no pleasure then
in keeping to them; yet he does so because he
.
º
:
;
of Anarchy and of Law. 99
trusts his previous judgment, and places the
general truths it revealed to him above the
accidental aspect passion gives to things. It is
not true that our good resolutions have never any
working power; they may be powerless against
tendencies accumulated throughout generations,
powerless against those currents of necessity that
seem to originate far away behind the region of
conscience, in the world of Statistics. But we
are not always struggling against tendencies and
necessities of such an order. Our field of action
does not all lie in the cyclone belt. Our con-
science is also a region in which accumulated
feelings and thoughts condense themselves into
streams of action; and there is a world which
has very little to do with Statistics. The respect
of the general laws of that world in preference to
personal interests can very materially influence
our ways ; it liberates us from subjection to
individual impulses; and we say of a man who
feels such obligation that he has the sense of
duty. w -
I believe this is morality. And though I think
highly of wisdom, it seems to me that we must
recognize here something which it cannot give :
the feeling of obligation.
Just as we distinguished the wise man who
sees the general lines from the dull or perplexed
A- #:
M
:
:
.
*
IOO The Theories
one who cannot recognize them, so too must we
distinguish the moral man, who conforms his
conduct to what he holds to be the direction of
these lines, even when he does not see them,
from the wise man who is dependent on his
eyesight. Nor will it be enough to say that the
moral man has merely a better memory than the
wise man, and can with its aid steer more safely;
for a wise man too may rely sometimes on his
memory, knowing that deceitful forms abound
just where he is. A healthy, well-developed being
this, who finds his joy in the full exercise of his
faculties, and will act in view of that joy, even
though it be not immediate. The other one acts
with obligation. He has vested once for all with a
sacred character certain prescriptions, and he has
resolved to observe them because he believes
them to be in themselves of superior right, as
speaking in behalf of interests more general,
more permanent, than others. The superiority
of these interests is quite distinct in his mind
from the profit it may be to him to stake his ven-
ture with them, or from the pleasure there may
be in discerning their permanent character; these
are personal and small aspects of the question to
his mind. Their superiority consists in that
they are general, whether he enjoy perceiving it
or not, whether or not he prosper by serving
of Anarchy and of Law. IOI
them. The power, the virtue, of the case has
gone out of him, and resides in them.
Whereas the man we term wise suggests to
us the idea of a fine development, we here
strike on quite a new theme—that of voluntary
submission; independently of the benefit that
may accrue therefrom to him who submits him-
self.
He does not even need to believe in a future
life, where his sacrifice will be made good to
him; it bears with it its own recompense, for it
delivers from self. You will find many people,
if you look round you, who owe to this feeling a
quietness and a dignity that forces us to respect
them, though their intelligence is far from re-
markable, and they lay no claim to the wisdom
of sages. They have only one support; but it is
the safeguard of the family and the backbone
of the nation : morality. Would you take this
from them for the sake of I know not what
mystical desinvoltura that shall teach them to
walk hand in glove with the angels and call the
devil “mon cher” They would loose in the
barter.
HAROLD.
I think your argument rests on a confusion. I
grant that the interests of the community in which
IO2 The Theories
we live can be represented by certain general
lines, and that our conduct may be influenced
by the perception of these lines. We may also,
as it were, detach them from ourselves, look upon
them as independent of, and superior to, us.
But I deny that this should make their obser-
vance obligatory, and that we pass thus from the
sway of wisdom to that of Duty.
Not only the interests of the community in
which we live, but our own individual tendencies
are susceptible of reduction to their essential
traits. These essential traits, either of the in-
dividual or of the community, can be conceived
by the individual as superior to himself, and as
having a value independent of any advantage that
his perception of them will assure him. He en-
dows them with an external reality.
This is the myth-making work; the gift of
the perception of ideals. It reveals to us beauty
in others, in ourselves, and in the social body.
But nothing, unless it be wisdom as before,
binds us to observe these general lines. The
act by which we have exteriorized their value
lays us under no new bond towards them, brings
no obligation. We are not held to obedience, nor
has any order been given us; we have simply
acquired the right of worship. Worship entails
no obligations. I may worship the moon and
of Anarchy and of Law. IO3
the stars, without contracting duties towards
them.
I account thus for the notion of obligation.
We feel that the act by which we have detached
from ourselves and exteriorized the value of these
general lines or essential traits has added depth
to our horizon; that it comes, as it were, from
afar. This is a feeling of a new order. The
hour which brings it to us resembles neither the
hour in which we perceived the general lines, nor
the hour in which we bowed down to them. It
is a reflex feeling of formal nature, that concerns
the subject and has no material contents; we are
vaguely conscious of a degree of structural com-
plexity in ourselves.
When we mistake the nature of this feeling,
and attribute it to qualities of our ideals, these
ideals appear to us obligatory.
RALPH.
And what happens when we do not mistake it 2
HAROLD.
Our ideals remain ideals, and do not interfere
with other people's ; we consider ourselves the
richer for having them, but are not tempted to
compulsion.
IO4 The Theories
A feeling of formal origin can have no positive
expression; it is by nature an antithesis to our
perceptions, whether of individual facts or of
general lines; an antithesis likewise to the ideals
into which we transform the latter; it is a per-
petual reminder that whatever may form the
object of our attention and the contents of our
consciousness, is only half the game; it is always
on the side of the grasper, and can never be
grasped nor turned into a peculiar quality of that
which is grasped. It is a perpetual denial of the
definitive and absolute.
How can you invoke a feeling of this nature
in favour of the interests of the community ?
You say they are more general than those of the
individual. So they are in some respects and in
some cases. But you forget that men group
themselves in communities not in virtue only of
what they have in common, but also of that in
which they differ from outsiders. These differ-
ences, relatively to the essential characters of the
species, are accidental. They may be deep rooted,
as, for instance, physical differences, differences
of build and colour; even then, men thus dis-
tinguished have to recognize each other as men ;
the distinction is more superficial than the
sameness of those it divides. And our real
communities exist, as distinct one from another,
of Anarchy and of Law. IO5
by characters far less radical than these, differ-
ences due to education and custom, traditions
and fancies that we do not inherit with the
tissues of our structure. These distinctive traits
it is that form in each of our societies the
commonwealth and moral unity; and, in a great
measure, they constitute the interests of society
against more general ones that may be, and often
are, represented by the individual. Between the
individual and society there may be quarrels,
such that on one side there are merely selfish
and simple, on the other, complex interests; but
there may also be quarrels such that society
upholds local traditions against the cause of all
IIlêI].
The quarrel would not be a long or a bitter
one in such cases, were it not that the idea of
duty intervenes to make these local traditions
appear sacred. No distortion more grievous was
ever made of a truth into a falsehood. . . You
and I have not the same standard of right and
wrong. You look at countries and citizens; I
look at the world and at men. I know neither
Jew nor Gentile; that which they have in
common is alone durable. If you want the
feeling of obligation, attach it to the command-
ment that we should love one another as our-
selves, because in that commandment all the
IO6 The Theories
minor prescriptions of our various laws disappear,
together with the limits that divide the commu-
nities for which they were made ; it is no
synthesis of all other laws, it goes directly
against them.
You speak of the safeguard of the family
and backbone of the nation. I see no reason
why we should safeguard the family and prop
up the nation, if the domestic and national ideal
does not meet our wants. I should first have
to be convinced that it represents interests more
general than those to which it may be opposed,
and purer of fanciful conventions.
Probably you think that these are the idle
speculations of volunteer reformers whose opin-
ion nobody cares for. Do not overlook the
fact that our entire education is, directly or in-
directly, the work of bookmen; we have been
subjected to a hieratic training and see with eyes
like those of the Byzantine painters. Sooner or
later the unartificial will prevail. Perhaps the
first thing you will hear from them—you may
hear it already if you listen—will be that they
take no interest in patriotism; they claim to
form an international party and are weary of
frontiers.
You may also hear that their ideas of matri-
mony and family ties are far from Orthodox.
of Anarchy and of Law. Io'7
The refuse, you say, the dregs of society. But
these same ideas, in a more or less simple garb,
are passing round privately and being discussed
by men and women who are thoroughly schooled
in civilization.
This is no question of jauntiness or desinvol-
tura, as you call it; no coquetting with evil. It
is the bitter earnest of grief and work; it is the
travail of a new world. Chief of all the problems
that it forces us to discuss, most radical and
highest reaching is that of morality. We must
look it in the face, and, unless we accept revealed
doctrines, we must, I believe, declare ourselves
against it. I for one am ready to do so. You
have said nothing that can alter my opinion in
the main.
LoTHAIRE.
Of all Ralph's remarks the one I liked best
was that about certain persons who are not
notable for their intelligence, and whom we
would not think of calling sages, but yet who
command our respect by their self possession
and quiet firmness. How comes it that these
same persons happen always to be staunch be-
lievers in the obligatory character of their prin-
ciples You have said nothing of them.
IoS The Theories
HARold.
Frankly, they embarrass me. I do not know
what to say of them. Perhaps they see one
aspect of reality and I another. Theoretically
they are wrong; and practically they are wrong
too sometimes; narrow minded, fanatical,
unjust. At other moments they seem to have
the best of it. I can but cling to what I see
and feel distinctly. I see distinctly what it is
whereby a wise man is governed; I can also
sympathize with the old polytheistic world, and
am ready to sacrifice at many altars, ready to
look on a man who has no gods as a poor man.
But this monistic feeling of duty (we talk of
duties, but the obligation is one) I cannot accept ;
I do not understand it. I have quarrelled with
my consciousness in this sense, that I do not
believe it can contain anything but what is
incomplete. Whatever feelings or ideas it may
furnish me I will accept willingly as fragments,
component parts of an ever-absent total. None
of these can claim that self-sufficient and ultimate
value that we attribute to obligation. Any idea
claiming this dogmatic character and assuming
to be beyond question, be it the idea of an
unique God or that of duty, or whatever else you
please, I will struggle against with the feeling that
of Anarchy and of Law. IOg
I am struggling against idolatry. Why do you
try to get into your conscience more than it can
hold * Why do you try to think the unthinkable
and name the unnameable? The best command-
ment that has ever been given was not understood
by him who conveyed it : Thou shalt not take
the name of the Lord thy God in vain. We do
nothing else when we say—wherever we may
point—“Behold ! here is the supreme.” Idols,
mere idols | And the nearest approach we can
make to that for which they stand, is an incessant
protestation against them. Yes, I know, they
all seem good and fair at other hours; and
perhaps they are good and fair as far as they go.
But they do not go very far. Nothing goes
very far except the eternal flowing of forms that
melt and pass. Down with this one, then, and
next another; we are above all iconoclasts. For
this cause I live, and death can only crown my
life ; my own personality is an idol.
LoTHAIRE.
Please do not strike that chord again. We
are agreed that its peculiar sound is the last and
most abstract answer of a certain race of men
to ultimate questions. What we want to find
out is how these men, your clients, answer every-
day questions. We want to see the politics of
IIO The Theories
those whose philosophical device is: “All things
3 *
flow.
RALPH.
Their politics can be expressed very simply as
the doctrine of revolutions. They are anarchists.
LoTHAIRE.
Yes; but what is Anarchism 2 Of course we
are not speaking of its coarser manifestations, but
of the spirit of protestation that we notice in
some of the least blood-thirsty of men, some of
the most gifted too and the most religious, who
tell us that our life, such as the actual social
adjustments make it, is a lie. This is more
than a question of material reforms. We can-
not help noticing how many human beings
live truly in solitude, even of those who seem
busiest in the busy crowd; how superficial and
unreal our contact is with our fellow-creatures
as social factors. Harold is right in comparing
our sympathy as members of the same common-
wealth to the shallow emotions that die away
with the sound of the church organ.
RALPH.
I don't think we can expect to introduce
sentiment into our economical or practical con-
of Anarchy and of Law. III
nections. Sentiment has its own range in what
we term private life.
LoTHAIRE.
And it behoves us to consider if this re-
striction of the sphere of affection to private
life does not vitiate the problems that we keep
distinct therefrom ; if it does not make our
social connections—I mean those which have an
economical or a political bearing—factitious, and
indeed to many men unbearable.
You may say that anarchy would be a poor
remedy. True enough as long as we see nothing,
or nothing is shown to us, in anarchism save the
wish to destroy. But, once for all, let us set that
form of it aside as not pertaining to the same level
as the interests we are discussing. To use again
Harold's phrase: Let us not answer every-day
questions with the trump of the Last Judgment,
though it may be a satisfaction to know that
we can blow it, or that there are persons who can
blow it for us, when needful. Such, I suppose,
are the great priests of Nihilism. Both our
own thoughts and the course of history throw
us face to face with situations which refuse to
be brought under any plan of expediency, can
receive no rational response. The Christian
bows his head and says: “The will of God.”
II 2 The Theories
If others exclaim : “Let us worship Sheeva,”
I take it that this cry does not exhaust their
religion, and that they will be no more incon-
sequent in speaking otherwise at other hours
than the Christian in worshipping as father of
goodness a God who, as almighty, is also the
creator of Evil.
I say let us set aside the purely destructive
aspect of Anarchism and hold that it attempts to
meet the demand expressed in this phrase of
Emerson : “The philosophy we want is one of
mobility and fluxions.”
HAROLD.
Don't quote.
LOTHAIRE.
Just consider the tendencies, more or less
general, but certainly worth taking into account,
that our last and this evening's conversation
reveal. On the one hand, a revolt against any
philosophical system of unity; which many
would call a revolt against all philosophy, genuine
scepticism. Then the denial that the feeling of
obligation can be brought to bear on any fixed
point.
Intellectually, we remain in presence of separate
of Anarchy and of Law. II3
and irreductable truths; the great synthesis is
denied, and with it monotheism.
Morally we must content ourselves with the
various injunctions of wisdom, and with distinct,
independent ideals. Something beyond them
is indeed recognized, but whereas we were ac-
customed to place it in the obligatory character
of certain prescriptions, we are now told to
understand it as a perpetual warning against all
dogmatism.
Men who can feel thus, will naturally be out
of harmony with the main principle of our
governments, which all of them suppose one
supreme power, be it the will of the sovereign
or that of the majority. And what is more, the
very way in which, so to speak, the bricks are laid
together from one end to the other of the social
fabric, will offend their sense of combination.
They are not exclusive and partial enough in
their ideas, to accept the creed of any political
party. The same immaterialism, the same sense
of the great value of the silent interval, that
prevents them from summing up divers truths
into one supreme one, runs all through their
temperament and debars them from that feeling
of complete reality inseparable from one path,
which is the craftsman's strength. Their nature
is repugnant to classes as it is to dogmas. -
8
II4 The Theories
Now, our whole economical and political edifice
rests on this distribution of men by parties,
classes, and crafts. We muster by species and
we prosper by the acceptance of specific characters
as absolute. Labour being divided, all such as
are concerned with it meet and deal together in
a specific character. The first principle of active
life is not to consider persons, but functions—
not to mix up sentiment and business. In a
like manner, the principle of political association
is a common platform, regardless of those who
gather round it; the principle of religious
association, a common creed. It is only as
we move towards private life and individual
sympathies that the principle of association
becomes less and less material, and gets to
consist more in a proportion or relation between
parts than in any one given trait. Who was it
who interrupted her lover as he was about to
explain his attachment: “If you know why, I
am lost.” She spoke well. We do not and
must not know the wherefore. No reason
can be given, no one quality pointed out
which accounts for the delight we take in our
friends. It is them, the entire and peculiar
confederacy of their parts, not this or that one,
that we love. Love has no basis, no fulcrum,
cannot be bound to things named ; its cause is
Anarchy and of Law. II5
always between them, in the silent framework.
To judge of its true nature we must watch it in
those over whom it obtains an irresistible control.
Consider a mother's affection; whatever her
child may be, comely or plain, gentle or vicious,
bright or dull, she will love it. Her affection
penetrates beneath the surface of qualities; it
seems to reach the skeleton.
So too does passion. There is a sad and
beautiful old story in which a lady destroys her
own beauty to escape from the pursuit of a lover
to whom she may not listen. And as he still
persists, she asks him when his persecution will
cease. “Never,” he replies, “till my bones clasp
yours in the grave.” Nor is this terrible form
of love the only one in which we may see the
contempt of qualities; more spiritual, it will
refuse to be daunted by death or by the change
of years; it essence is eternity.
RALPH.
You are picturing extreme cases.
Lot HAIRE.
Undoubtedly. All this is tempered generally
by the various requirements of life. Indeed,
from the social point of view, the blind
affection of a mother is morbid. So too would
8 *
II6 The Theories
be a passion that refused to be altered by changes.
Affection will fashion itself more or less in
conformity with the general tendencies of the
temperament in which it grows; and in persons
of strong social virtue—I mean in natures well
adapted to the actual social forms—it will in a
certain measure be dependent on positive quali-
ties. Compared, however, with the specific
connections of social life into which these
persons enter, it retains a marked character of
immateriality; sufficiently so for them to answer,
if asked what it is they love in such a one :
neither this nor that, but him or her, a general
impression different from any separate nameable
one and underlying them all. For love carries
us nearer to the substance or formal type of
things than judgment; as far as it extends it
lifts the veil of qualities, and as long as it lasts
the world it opens to our view is one where rust
cannot consume, nor thief break in and steal.
RALPH.
Granting all this, what does your argument
tend to establish
LoTHAIRE.
That the instinct of love plays a great part in
of Anarchy and of Law. II7
the rebellion we see growing around us against
the law in all its forms.
I can understand that natures in which this
instinct is predominant should be incapable of
accepting our system of thought; it is too
analytical and too materialistic for them; our cut-
and-dried social adjustments must seem to them
inexplicable. I do not think they can have the
same feeling of personality as men who have the
virtues and faults of dogmatic characters. If
they are so made that whatever holds in one
field of mental vision, whatever can be grasped in
one thought, appears to them as a fragment of a
reality that cannot be contained in any of its
parts, it is that to them all perceptions wane
into insignificance by the side of the fuller
contact love gives them with reality. They say,
with the Persian poet, “Listen to the flute
lamenting itself in the stillness of the night: it
wails because it is cut off from its bed of reeds.”
RALPH.
I like that.
LoTHAIRE.
Of course. So do I. So do we all. We all
have moods of this depth. But with some
they are passing gusts, as when some popular
II.8 The Theories
enthusiasm or patriotic pride make hearts that
will be estranged to-morrow beat to a common
pulse.
In others they penetrate to the core, and will
fashion the whole temperament. These are the
lovers of eternity, in whose eyes our first and
greatest error is the belief in a distinct personality,
the notion and feeling of a primary self.
RALPH.
What do you mean by a primary self
LoTHAIRE.
The independence of the parties concerned in
a contract, so that each is organized more or less
perfectly but at least sufficiently to exist in
working order, without the other, and before the
partnership. First the several contracting parties;
then the body they form together by agreement,
each party retaining his distinct individuality and
being all the more likely to prove a reliable
contractant in proportion as that individuality is
more firmly marked. “First be master of thy-
self.” This is our great commandment. It is a
translation into practical terms of the general
formula of our entire architecture, mental and
social. And it supposes a dogmatic genius in
those to whom it is addressed. If you can
of Anarchy and of Law. IIQ
accept the contents of any one state of con-
sciousness as a complete, or the most complete
attainable, perception of reality, and say, “here
will I abide,” you have a right to an individuality
of your own ; it is one of the features of a vast
system of organization; you are fitted for asso-
ciation by class characters, for the division of
labour, for rank and caste; for the separate
ownership of property, for the separate ownership
of persons; you have the separate ownership of
yourself. To all of which I have only two
things to say: First, that though this system is
not one of love, but of division, it must meet
SCIIlê very deep want of our nature, or it would
not have prevailed for some thousands of years;
and second, that it seems to me to be thoroughly
understood only by such as accept a revealed
religion and believe in a future life. The
problem as it is placed when we admit separate
human consciences, and all that this admission
entails, cannot be worked out in one world. I
hold that our present modes of thought, feeling,
association, are all of them different features of
one same system of combination; a system of
which religious dogmatism is a necessary part.
I am aware that this opinion does not at first
sight seem corroborated by facts, inasmuch as
we see that many people reject the religious part
I2O The Theories
of the system, and claim to be staunch adherents
of the rest. -
But we also see that slowly but surely the
remaining positions come to be questioned. Few
people are thoroughgoing in their ideas, and the
force of tradition and example is so strong that
they will continue for a long time to feel secure
on grounds that are undermined. It is, however,
but a question of time. Change one factor,
change them all.
RALPH.
Easier to say than to do.
LoTHAIRE.
Of course; and until the new design is
sufficiently clear to be seized as a whole, the
theories and schemes which represent certain
parts of it will not be properly judged. They will
be judged in reference to the previous design
with which they will prove in the long run
incompatible; or they will fare worse, and at
once appear monstrous.
We Inust recollect that the system under
which we are living bears upon all of us, and
from all sides, with a terrible weight, possibly
forcing into moulds that do not suit them men
to whom it does not even occur that there might
of Anarchy and of Law. I2I
be different ones, or who, seeing them, are bound
by their education, twisted into an artificial form
for their lifetime. The consequence is that they
mistrust their own doubts and strive to feel as
others do, wondering sometimes in silence how it
comes that they seem to themselves unreal.
Only at some one point or other are their doubts
strong enough to prevail; they will adopt on
some one subject an opinion which, given the
company of orthodox opinions it is received into,
must bear the character of a heresy. So that we
who look on and judge all these symptoms of
revolt separately as they are presented to us,
watch them with more or less interest, but finish
by turning away with a sense of the vanity of
schisms. To appreciate them correctly we
should have to understand their position and
meaning in a system so different from our
own that many of our virtues, transferred into it,
might be vices, and some of our vices, virtues.
I am trying to speak, mark you, for those who
claim that not in heaven, but on earth, are to be
fulfilled the ineffaceable words: the first shall
be last, and the last shall be first.
HARold.
Speak on. These it is towards whom my
thoughts turned the other evening; the millions
I 22 The Theories
of men and women who are morally dying of
hunger.
RALPH.
But what is the peculiar notion of personality
which you tell us is to be expected from them :
I can see that you have caught up, twisted
together and spun out a good way Wilfrid's
and Harold's thread of ideas; you connect as
parts of the same development a particular
conception of certitude and a particular view of
morality; both seem to you expressions of an
immaterialistic bent of mind, unwilling to accept
as sovereign any thought singled out and arrested
in a fixed shape by the analysis of conscience.
I see also that our principle of association,
wherever affection does not intervene, is the
acceptance of some specific, and therefore domi-
nant, character; so I can follow your argument
when you point to the division of society into
classes, parties, and crafts, as being, for the same
reasons as dogmatic thought, odious to certain
minds. For they seem to crave always for the
entire and to conceive it as a formal framework
which the drapery of qualities will only reveal on
condition that we do not attach our preference to
any one of them. And when you trace all this
tendency to an overpowerful instinct of love, you
of Anarchy and of Law. I23
are possibly right. But what were you saying
about individuality and the ownership of one's
self, and the ownership of persons
LOTHAIRE.
I think that the exclusive form love takes be-
tween lovers, the limitation of it to two partners,
which is supposed to be its very essence, is simply
one of the features of the scheme suited to dog-
matic natures. It is legitimate and beautiful in
those who look forward to a future life, because
the self-assertion that it presupposes is redeemed
in a feeling that makes this entire existence of
ours, with our own separate personality and that
of our fellow-creatures, nothing more than a
provisional and relative reality. The other world
is the outlet of a system which, without it, would
imprison us in the foreground of consciousness.
If that outlet is closed, and we no longer see
through it the reversed image of life on the
second screen, it is right that the half-reality we
still keep in view should not be accepted by us
at its face-value, and that each one of the figures
into which it is divided should impress us with
a sense of illusion and incompleteness. My
opinion is that the consequences of such a change
are only half worked out; they will be found
to reach farther than to our metaphysical and
I24 The Theories
ethical and political views, even to the very
core of our conscience, to the notion of self and
of love. “God made man in his own image,”
says the written book, and it says well, connect-
ing at once as part of a same chain one God
and man one.
But the unwritten book says: The gods made
groups of men and women in the image of
themselves, so that each group was on earth the
shadow of a god. Between all such as formed
part of the same spiritual body, there was neither
malice, nor envy, nor jealousy, nor wilfulness,
nor vanity, nor self-assertion of any kind. The
love that united them was not like that which
we now call love; it was the certitude that one
by another they moved in eternity, and that
without each other they would be as grains of
dust. They thought not as we do of life and of
death, for all the various phases of life and its now
bitter end were to them as the rites of a sacred
service all equally desired. The sorrow of one
was not his sorrow, but a celebration of sorrow
by him for all, in order that the ceremony be
perfect. So too with his joy; only his turn to
lead the choir. There was no shame between
them, and none claimed another as his own and
his alone, save when the two knew by their in-
creased love for others that their separate delight
of Anarchy and of Law. I25
was for a time being a task assigned to them by
their companions. Nor had they any wish to
prolong it; there was no parting between them,
no independent souls to part; they were one in
their god.
WILFRID.
Finish the story, since you have begun it.
LoTHAIRE.
Those were the days of the Elohim, who were
equal gods. But when Jehovah the invader had
conquered heaven and driven the Elohim into
exile, he established the rule of one law, and
promised unto all who would observe it eternal
life with him. Then the bond between men was
broken; each one believed in himself as in a dis-
tinct being. And they were ashamed. “Surely,”
they said, “we have been dreaming.” For all was
changed. Whereas they had previously attached
to all the events of their life a ritual and
impersonal meaning, they now accepted the
promise of another world as a substitute for this
work of spiritual insight. Feelings and thoughts
acquired an intrinsic value; the work of classifi-
cation and the rule of the persistence in one line
began. It is lasting still. But its justification
ceases the moment the faith on which it rests is
I26 The Theories
lost. Whence the weariness and the unrest of
so many. Let them return to God. Or if they
cannot, let them see where they are going. Let
them understand that the doubt which begins on
religion will not rest till it reaches the substance
of ourselves, and that it undertakes to refashion
everything, from our philosophical views to our
sexual relations. For the spirit of doubt, carried
far enough, becomes a great affirmer. I marvel
sometimes at the unconscious faith of those who
deny. What are they, our madcap anarchists 2
Toilers for a cause they wit not of ; a van-guard
to the army of the exiled gods.
HAROLD.
I am of those who cannot join pillaging bands,
but you will find me on the muster-roll of the
regular army.
LoTHAIRE.
My conclusion is: either doubt not at all or do
it thoroughly. We must either admit another
world where the imperfect reality of this one, such
as it appears on the foreground of our conscience,
will be perfected—in which case we can with
impunity accept the law and abide in one path;
or we must learn to be seers—men in whose
eyes no thoughts, feelings, or events, are taken at
of Anarchy and of Law. I27
their face-value, nor esteemed otherwise than as
symptoms of a reality that lies between them ;
so that the individual himself, with his separate
destiny, is to them an illusion, and that the unit,
the one, must be sought in the assembly of those
persons who by love for one another can dispel
that illusion. In such an assembly or group no
one would seek to detain as his own any par-
ticular condition of inward or outward existence;
he would not fear to accept his turn whatever
it might bring; he is as a willing actor in his
company, and he feels the truth of his life not
abiding in one character, but in passing from one
to another. In one thing only he abides, for it
is to him the condition of change—the love of
his companions and the feeling of their and his
joint eternity.
RALPH.
I see the alternative you present, but which
side do you favour
LoTHAIRE.
Why not the better tested of the two Yet
both, provided the partisans are sincere. Let
him who has the gift of belief believe in the
earth and in heaven; let him who has the gift
I28 The Theories
of “through sight” follow doubt till it ends in
love and rids him of himself.
HAROLD.
O Lothaire | don't be so impartial; the moder-
ate achieve nothing. We cannot go back towards
the past; we cannot check the onward course of
doubt, nor bid men believe without enquiry, and
dispense with proof as they used to, for fear of
strange discoveries. We must push on. What
does it matter that we have to mark our road
with ruins and that the end be far ” Our civiliza-
tion must pass as others have passed; our history
will be to-morrow but a speck in the distance,
our culture nothing but a curious form of bar-
barity; children will talk of the 19th Century
as we talk of the Age of Stone, and after that we
shall be forgotten. Why, then, should we cling
to our beliefs and tremble for our homes 2 Sup-
pose they should crumble about our ears—what
of that? We have received the tidings of a new
world, and this is our great joy: to know that
our misgivings, our weariness, our longings that
seem never to be fulfilled, are but the shadow it
casts before it, and that it comes to us borne
upon the yearnings of those who have been
reproved.
of Anarchy and of Law. I29
RALPH.
I am willing to make some profit out of what
has been said, though in neither of the ways
proposed to me. Probably I am not of pure
breed. On the one hand, I cannot profess to
believe when I merely understand the beauty of
faith; on the other hand, I am not inclined to
push my ideas to their extreme consequences, as
you, Harold, are ready to. We sing a good deal
too high in the solitude of logic, and our thoughts
generally need tuning down.
However close a chain of arguments may seem
I should always be afraid of trusting myself very
far to it in such delicate matters. I know what
you want to say: that it is not merely a chain of
reasoning, and that your philosophy is but a
garment thrown over facts such as the wants and
tendencies of given temperaments. So it may
be, but the misfortune is that these garments, as
you yourself have urged against me, swell out
so that they cover more than was intended and
fill the horizon. Our dialectical robes would
need the two Açvins for pages. Why do you
always talk of sorrow It is not fair. Have
you never known what it is to feel happy :
There is good philosophy in a little happiness.
Of course I don't deny that individualism and
9
I30 The Theories
selfishness work much harm in the world.
And yet the world is fair and there is something
bright in Will ! And it is good to love, not in
your impersonal, visionary manner, but as humble
mortals, here on the hard, frosty earth, under the
sparkling sky. Are you sure that to get rid of
selfishness we must get rid of self He is such
an old friend, that I am afraid he comes to us
with our blood and will pass on with it. Look
at our children; as the old ones sang so do the
young ones chirp. They think a great deal of
their little selves, and it is true that they are often
selfish ; but they love one another all the same,
and after they have quarrelled they kiss and make
friends because life is strong in them and each
hour opens new fields to their sight. Their wits
emancipate them. Here you have just what you
desire, what your whole argument makes for :
the gift of affection and of self-forgetfulness due
to something that saves us from tarrying in one
mood. And you seek for that something in the
negation of dogmatism and of individuality. But
I see it in freshness of mind; we shake self off,
not when we deny him, but when we forget
him. He comes back again, and we turn away
from him again. We are neither living by rule
nor by love, neither on the foreground of con-
science nor in the background, we are moving to
of Anarchy and of Law. I3 I
and fro, from the one to the other. There is
mobility and fluxion for you. Do not let us
invent anything; it is all there if we only know
how to look for it. t
You work out systematically a certain number
of ideas and tell me that only two schemes are
good for anything, that of the past, with its half-
forgotten creeds, and that of a future, of which
all we can discern are dim, fantastic forms that
might look very different when we got nearer to
them. Whatever lies between these two lands,
our actual habit of thought and intercourse, you
declare inconsequent and unsatisfactory. So it
may be to those who examine it so closely ; but
the question may be raised if it is not you who
are mistaken in examining opinions on their own
merits, forgetful of the practical value there is
in the simple profession of those opinions. The
same with our institutions, and indeed with the
feelings that are woven into them: you judge
them all by their shadow on the screen, as images,
and not as performances; you forget in all your
calculations the dense atmosphere of action.
What is it you are both fighting against? The
coarse, dull illusion that makes men think:
“Here is the point where we grasp reality;” and
one of you says: Let the illusion persist, and
correct it by the admission that this world is but
9 *
I32 The Theories
an antechamber; whilst the other sees no escape
but in perpetual mobility, and forbids us to stop
anywhere lest we should make unto ourselves
idols. All this may be true of men who attach
an exaggerated importance to their ideas or
feelings—live in them, and feed on them—true
of a race of fanatics or ideologists. But a keen
sense of what is going on around them extenu-
ates in other men's minds the importance of
their own beliefs; they can afford to abide by
them because the complexity of their occupations
and interests stands in lieu of the mobility you
seek for in pure thought. Their hours of dog-
matism do but join in as one of the figures of a
dance. Nor does it so much matter what their
belief is ; let them take the one that is suited to
their times; its merit lies in that they perform
it. Suppose you can show them that their
philosophy, which claims to account for every-
thing, cannot keep its promise, and that it breaks
down before certain problems—what of that 3
Their doctrine lays a false pretence to univer-
sality, but its assertion is a modest factor in
their lives; and by ignoring the active virtue
it has as one among many factors, by shut-
ting yourselves up in it and disproving it from
within, you are guilty of greater intellectual pre-
sumption than theirs, even though the result of
of Anarchy and of Law. I33
your meditations should be the disenthroning
of reason. You are asking of it more than they
do. It is a mock humility. If you were not
over pensive you would not rebel against reason ;
nor would you find it necessary to invent a
kingdom of love, either in heaven or in the
future on earth; the ceaseless longing for the
entire that suggests these expedients to you
would merely urge you forward with something
of the generous confidence of animals, who live
more and question less, something of the human
sympathy that enables men to take pride in each
other's labours, makes them wish to step out of
the solitude of their thoughts and join in the
work of the age wherein they are born. Part
of that work is Legislation, in the higher sense
of the word—the determination of a standard
and the mapping out of ideal landmarks; it is a
creative performance in which all those, and
those alone, who are in sympathy with their
surroundings participate.
What I am willing to thank you for is that you
have reminded me how apt we are to forget that
the maintenance of the law is a process of per-
petual renewal, and that we must always be gently
displacing our landmarks, because the ground
slips. The future may prove that the current of
thought you have traced, and traced back to deep
I34 The Theories
sources, is one that will have to be reckoned with.
That is a question that cannot be decided in this
musty old inn of ours. But, be that as it may,
I refuse to admit that the superiority of ancient
beliefs would be any reason to return to them if
they are no longer the natural outgrowth of our
time; and I refuse to let myself be cheated out
of those I have, on the plea that there are
questions to which they furnish no answer. I
am not sure that those questions are meant to be
answered in thought or feeling, and that we do
not come nearer to the reply in setting them
aside, girdling our loins for the day's battle, and
lying down to die without further ado when our
race is run. What is your opinion, Wilfrid
WILFRID.
If I had to take part I might sit here and listen
to you the whole night through, and agree all the
time with the one who has spoken last. Each
one of you is presenting to me opinions in which
he has entire confidence because behind them he
feels the body of his instincts; whereas I, who
look on from without and feel no such body,
have the impression of dealing with pure surfaces;
and it needs several of them to determine a solid.
I need you all. Your opinions complete in you
a long Series of inward experiences; they are
of Anarchy and of Law. I35
terminal, and their value is in what lies behind
them. To me these same opinions are initial ;
I have not lived into them, I have merely under-
stood them; I begin where you stop.
Suppose the following statement to be made :
“The king is in his chamber, counting out his
money.” It may be to some one—say, to the
lord treasurer—a matter of the utmost importance
whether that statement be true or not ; there are
countless threads of past history that connect
him with the whole scene, and his life may at
that moment be in jeopardy. But cut all these
threads and leave the statement in its abstract
beauty, it becomes a matter of very little impor-
tance whether the king is or not occupied in the
manner, described, or indeed if there be any such
person as the king ; we should be mad if we dis-
cussed it ; we grant it all, and want to hear next
about the queen and the chambermaid, and their
adventures.
You are in the position of the lord treasurer,
and I am in the position of the child who is
waiting for the blackbird—with one thing to be
added lest the comparison mislead. In the lord
treasurer's case, the question reads: Is the state-
ment exact or not ? which is a matter that
depends on evidence given by the senses. In
your case the question reads: Is the opinion
I36 The Theories
professed by you the proper one for you to
profess? is it the right word because it comes at
the right place It is not a question of faithful
representation, but of appropriate complements.
Do you recollect that the other evening, when
we were discussing what value a theory of life can
have, I affirmed that any such theory is a deed
of speech that teaches us nothing, but goes
towards forming something So I say now.
Your words do not grapple with things suscep-
tible of exact measurement or experimental
proof, and consequently they have two very dif-
ferent values. To you they are a matter of belief;
to me they are songs, or verses of a song.
LoTHAIRE.
I should think, then, you must approve Ralph's
protestation against the over-great importance he
says we attribute to our thoughts and feelings.
The theory of law through sympathy, and
sympathy through activity, ought to suit you.
WIL FRID.
Oh yes! doubtless. It partly puts in words
what I would put in deeds. Only it is a theory,
and as such no better than any other. It might
just so happen that the very man who professed
it would fail in the practice. Whereas one who
of Anarchy and of Law. I37
theoretically denies the law, might at the same
time have those very virtues of activity and
sympathy by which we try to explain it. Can
you tell by the adventures of the puppets who
the man is who carries the show on his back 2
We are all showmen; it is part of our business;
and, as far as that part is concerned, we are the
unconscious hirelings of the Word who assigns
to each of us a phrase and an attitude. Toil as
we may for him, our whole task is but begun
when his orders have been obeyed.
I will tell you frankly that to my mind there
are mathematical questions, chemical questions,
physiological questions, and so on; there is no
philosophical question, no metaphysical or
religious problem. What we mistake for it is
a stunted form of the question of life, a merely
psychical aspect of the problem how to live.
But any intellectual treatment of this question
cannot be otherwise than miserably insufficient;
it is a question that must be answered with our
muscles, our passions, with our joys and sorrows,
and our laughter, and with our hands and feet,
as much as with our beliefs. I am unable to
understand how people can go on discussing as
to what we ought to think and feel. There is
no one way better than another. If there were
such a way it would have been discovered ere
I38 The Theories
now, and all men would have entered into it long
since. The wise and the strong recognize this
fact and turn away from general opinions, or at
least look upon those they may profess as a
proper flower of imagination given the surround-
ing soil. -
“I am a Buddhist; and I am a man of pro-
gress; and I am a Christian ; and I am an
Epicurean, or a Stoic, or a Subjective idealist.”
In what am I the wiser for the information?
You may, for all that, be raw, untutored minds,
or far-travelled sages. The same words are the
words of the wise and of the foolish.
Of course men will go on professing what
they hold to be correct philosophical views,
and I am willing to grant they each and all of
them are proper complements to some real
conditions of life. If it were not so they would
not continue to blossom as they do in eternal
contradiction of each other. But to compare
their intrinsic merits is waste of time and
vexation of spirit.
Some events of our inner life—thoughts or
sentiments—are useful even as a concluding
ceremony, a national anthem after a battle; the
work is over, but something yet is called for.
They are the unsubstantial but necessary accom-
paniment of reality, like the shadow which we
of Anarchy and of Law. I39
can ill-afford to lose, as the German story teaches
us. But who needs the shadow of his shadow 2
And what else can we call the second-day
thoughts that fasten on the primary ones when
we seek to justify our opinions by their intrinsic
qualities—when we discuss them, in short 2 This
it is that I term a misuse of language.
I grant the value your opinions may have for
you, because I assume that you have adjusted a
certain number of ideas or feelings with the same
unconscious skill as is shown in the rest of your
organism; your poem is a new proof of the
plastic power of your temperament. But I
refuse to discuss these opinions. Persons who
oppose one doctrine to another and ask them-
Selves which is the better, are going astray.
Observe that though they make a good deal of
noise in the book-world, they form a very small
class. Most men never dream of examining in
the same spirit their own beliefs and those of
other people. They are simply astonished, or
amused, or indignant according to circumstances,
that there should be people who do not think as
they do. It is as though they were told that it
is more comfortable to breathe under the water
than in the air. Doubt is unknown to them.
Now, whatever may be the advantages or
disadvantages of this state of simplicity, it is the
I40 The Theories
only state in which we have the right to profess
beliefs or hold general opinions, because then
they are primary products, and have, like all the
other factors of our organism, an unconscious
substratum ; they are motived outside of thought
and feeling. Believers of this kind do not
compare or weigh; they never argue but their
own side of the case, and, what is more, their
belief is not grounded on the arguments they
adduce ; it springs from their temperament or
grows out of their complex interests; and any
intellectual or moral evidence they may invoke
merely serves as a weapon to fret their opponents
with. What is apt to mislead one here is that
wherever truth—or the representation of reality
—is concerned, reasons are of the utmost
importance, because reasons there stand for
outward perceptions, and the more we have of
them, the broader the testimony. Not so in the
case of doctrines where it is not question of
reflecting mirror-wise, but of a new and comple-
mentary development of our plastic power.
Reasons in this case are harmonies of concepts.
They can serve as musical chords, but not as
roots. Thoughts that do not grow from the
social or animal soil as blindly as plants from the
earth, thoughts which in the realm of conscious-
ness are of the second generation, can neither
of Anarchy and of Law. I4I
reflect any image, as does the statement of an
observed fact, nor take the place of primary
beliefs. They can serve neither for truth nor
for faith, and if we make assertions of them, it
should be with the distinct understanding that we
are claiming the poet's privilege to its very fullest
extent, that the assertions we make are not to be
judged by their import, but to be conceived as
mere devices whereby we seek to model a form
uncontained in any of them.
LoTHAIRE.
But if we are not poets, what are we to do
when we have grown out of the phase of un-
questioning assent, when the times of delibera-
tion and criticism have come 2
WILFRID.
Frankly abjure all opinions that are not for us
beyond the range of conceivable contestation.
We are incurable myth makers, and however
matter of fact we may fancy ourselves, we shall
always walk among illusions. But those alone
among them help us whose title-deeds we do not
think of examining.
No amount of criticism will teach us which
of two doctrines to prefer, for the moment
criticism begins we are out of the stage at which,
I42 The Theories
at least on the subject concerned, any doctrine at
all is allowable. We have entered into a new
field, where our task is no longer to pronounce in
favour of one opinion or another, but to note the
conditions of their production. If we were to
pronounce, our verdict would merely be a cold-
blooded glorification of ourselves very different
from the straight heartedness of those who,
holding the same opinion, are confident that it is
the right one because they have borne it and feel
that it is alive.
You have called my attention to two opposed
systems which, for brevity's sake, I may designate
as the anarchical ideal and the legal ideal. My
interest in the debate lies here. One of you
condemns all dogmatism and the very idea of
the Law, because he says that we cannot isolate
one idea from all others and seek in a part the
authority which belongs to the whole. He has
a keen sense of the interdependency of ideas,
and he refuses to accept any single one as
sovereign. Now, as Lothaire pointed out, men
of this turn of mind are prone to seek on every
field the same rapid and ceaseless circulation,
the same quick achievement of the entire, which
they are accustomed to in the republic of
thought. They are roving and lawless. Love
alone can bind them, because its desire has a
of Anarchy and of Law. I43
taste of totality; it is a return to the pristine
unity; it is the ray of light which has passed
through no prism, and the eyes that colours only
weary turn towards it for rest. These are men
who will always look forward to a reign of love
and fraternity on earth. Carried to the extreme,
their temperament leads them to deny the reality
of separate individuals and to claim that our social
body will be a lie until its unit is no longer the
individual, but groups of persons who renounce
their separate personality in favour of the
community. And so far is this spirit of self-
renouncement carried, that we see them extol
death as the Supreme effort and crowning
moment of their life-long work.
What have we at the beginning A man who
sits down to think alone. And what have we
at the end ? A man who refuses to say I.
You heard the answer. We were told that
this is considering the problem in the individual
alone, assuming that he stands like a solitary
traveller in front of the Sphinx ; we were re-
minded that there is between the members of the
social body such as it actually exists, between the
citizens of a same country, a bond as natural as
that which exists between the various personages
of the intellectual drama, so that if it is vain to
seek for one thought of higher authority than all
I44 The Theories
others, it is vainer still to place the question of
law and duty in that intellectual manner. The
spirit of legality with the self-respect and self-
assertion that it supposes, with its escort of
rights and duties, was shown to us as a gift
refused to the solitary man, but conceded to
him who has a keen sense of the reality of his
neighbours.
What have we this time at the beginning 2 A
man who looks around him, and not within.
And what have we at the end ? A man in whose
eyes the proper form of society is one which
supposes, and tends to promote, the highest
degree of inward organization, the most complex
and centralized type of moral individuality. On
this field he will seek to realize the unity of a
perfect federation, and he rejects, as a dream of
Utopia, the hope of bringing human beings into
any such cohesion. His first interest turns away
from the inward drama, away from the solitary
being, towards the fellowship of men; and his
last word is that this fellowship is both to be
promoted and to be limited by the virtues that
make a distinct, well-entrenched individuality.
Now, the story of the growth of these two
systems seems to me more important than the
systems themselves. I feel that I am in presence
of two plans of architecture, or two contrasting
of Anarchy and of Law. I45
schemes of anatomy, which I hold to be quite
independent of the particular forms in which
they are embodied. All the ways of thinking
and feeling that have been called to contribution
on either side are but the variable matter where-
by the design of the structure happens to be
manifested. And what I long for is not an
appreciation of the different social systems or the
different views of morality that we have been
asked to consider. What I long for is the
diagram we should have before us if the various
ideas the two speakers have built their discourses
with had been presented to us under the form of
signs expressive of nothing save the mode of their
succession or coalescence, their degree of com-
position, and the different planes of abstraction
on which they were taken.
I believe that had we such diagrams before us,
they would prove to be general designs &f which
all cases and forms of combination, whether of
atoms, numbers, thoughts, or men, are but
various expressions. I believe we should hold
the superior logic that Leibnitz did not deem
inaccessible. But I believe also that we shall
never approach it by preferring one thought to
another, nor perhaps till we begin to study
thoughts through phrases, and phrases as we
would exterior phenomena, as masses of sound.
IO
I46 The Theories
By attaching our attention to the thoughts
expressed, we are merely losing sight of that
which made them of value to those who put
them forth—their utility as means of carrying
out a structural design.
HAROLD.
This seems to me a sort of agnosticism carried
beyond its usual limits and applied not only to
religious matters, but to moral and social questions,
as well as to scientific theories as soon as they
assume a general character; in short, to everything
that does not fall under sensuous evidence or
exact measurement. Those who profess it will
find themselves detached from all men, cut off
from all human interests, observant, but solitary.
WIL FRID.
Not so. You may be so organized that you
have a legitimate home-spun faith, and I can only
repeat that you are quite right to profess it. Not
that it will change or maintain anything, but it is
a proper reponse to myriads of facts of a non-
psychical order. You are standing on the brow
of the hill and blowing the horn while the chase
is deep down in the ravine. If I stand a degree
further back and do not directly respond as you
do, but examine your answers, I am bound to
of Anarchy and of Law. I47
consider in them instead of those modes of com-
bination—whether between thoughts or men—
that they severally favour, those modes of com-
bination that they are. My “atheorism "merely
expresses the conditions proper to thought a
degree more abstract than yours; it is a question
of distance and focus. This it is that makes
me look forward to the revival, under some new
form, of the beautiful old pagan world, a world
of many gods, where there will be room for you
as well as for me.
As for the solitude of the observant, I think
our true commerce and our real sympathy with
our fellow-creatures have, after all, very little to
do with our opinions. Most of the business of
the world is done in hours when men are content
to deal with perceptions.
A systematic abstention from systems and
theories may seem to you a lack of fervour, but
to those who have accepted it it is as the con-
tact with bodies after a weary struggle against
shadows. They have travelled from theory to
theory, and belief to belief, ever critical, ever in
search of the new party to which they might
belong. They have spent years seeking light
within their consciousness, and they might vainly
seek for ever, for light always comes from with-
out, as it will come just now to us over yonder
I48 The Theories
hills. Nor can it come to these men in the same
manner as it may to you, for you think some-
what after the fashion in which the birds sing,
whilst they only think upon thoughts; and they
first gain footing on some external reality, such
as temperament and social pressure may be to
you, when all their previous moral or intellectual
activity becomes to them as a portion of the outer
world in which they have no more share than in
the tides or the wind, no share save the observing
of it. They re-enter into communion through
perception.
A further reason for which I am disinclined to
pronounce in favour of either of your schemes is
this. I believe, as I told you, that they, as indeed
any scheme, might be expressed by partly or
wholly different ideas from those selected, so
that—be it said by the way—many men to whom
the particular forms you have chosen may be
meaningless, would under some other form
recognize tendencies of their own. And now I
add that there is not one of us in whom many
such designs do not co-exist, though not all
needed at the same moment. We are all of us,
in some wise, in some spot, here anarchists, and
there partisans of the law, even when the very
words are unfamiliar to us. The systems which
you defend, and other ones too, will all of them
of Anarchy and of Law. I49
be needed and dipped into by us at different
moments. We are not hewn of one piece, as
we should have to be to adopt one and discard
the others. Are you yourselves in reality as
consequent to your doctrines as you fancy while
advocating them : Do you never trespass on
each other's grounds :
You, Ralph however well adapted to the
usual conditions of every-day life your views may
be, however well working and practical they
must seem to you, and doubtless are, in com-
parison with Harold’s venturesome aspirations—
can you deny that there are moments both in the
destiny of the individual and that of nations
when the wisdom of the wise is rebuked 2
Unanswerable as it may be, the question will
ever and anon arise, in presence of a deathbed,
before the unearthed ruins of a forgotten city, or
the silence of a frozen planet: “What is the
end of our labour ” In those moments, the
robust, common sense by which we reproved
schemes incompatible with the maintenance of
our individual dignity and at war with our
civilization, pales in the dawning on us of a
neglected, all-effacing mystery, The light is
changed, a spell is cast over the scene ; the
king's crown seems to be of pasteboard, the
grave statesmen and the lawgivers look like
I5O The Theories
simpering old women, and he who just now
held the fool's wand is leaning on a scythe by
the side of the throne, fleshless and eternal. We
may train ourselves into the most perfect form of
individuality and the most happy adaptation to
our neighbours, yet some day, somewhere, in
the Society we and thcy have so ingeniously
devised together, or in our own mind, or in the
tissues of our body, a forgotten guest will make
his entry—the furious desire of self-annihilation.
One of its names is Communism.
And you, Harold ! who are so willing to abjure
all illusions of personal happiness, do they never
revive within you? do your arguments never
melt under some spark more powerful than
reasoning 2 I cannot help thinking that there
are mighty systems of thought which a flash
of joy would dissolve into simpler and more
available elements, some disinterested fellowship
on the one hand, and on the other—well, on the
other the excellent philosophy of the Scotch
poet who knew so much more than the deep
heads:
“Ye're naught but senseless asses O !
The wisest man the warl' e'er saw,
He dearly loved the lasses O !”
Again : can we any of us get along without
the occasional warning of a voice that repeats,
of Anarchy and of Law. I5I
in different words, perhaps, the burden of
Lothaire's thoughts: “My kingdom is not of
this world’’: We have all of us a spot of sacred
ground, a corner where for the sake of some
dream, some affection, some pride, we would
disregard our most palpable interests. But can
any one listen to this voice alone : The man
has yet to be born whom the endeavour would
not pervert into a hypocrite.
You seem to me to cling to your theories
because each of you, through his own particular
one, has worked his way up to a point where a
force may be found that we cannot discover
within ourselves. And one of you finds it in
the creed of an after-life, and the other in that
reciprocal pressure of one individual on another
whence our social fabric results; and the third
in an uncomprising negation of the boundary
lines of self. If I say that to me there is some-
thing incomplete in these and any teachings, if I
refuse to choose between them because I hold
that their value lies less in their tenure than in
the previous unconscious work that they complete
in you—all you can rightly demand of me is
that my denial should furnish me with the same
Outlet as your assent. Whether it be, as with
you, by means of beliefs and theories, or, as with
me, by ascribing them all to the same plastic
152 The Theories of Anarchy and of Law.
power we see manifested in the visible world, that
we issue forth from ourselves—it matters little.
We have ceased to look inwards, we have caught
sight of an outward fire; and the clamorous
love of our own ways is silenced, hushed in the
solemnity of deep-fathomed space. Yes! the
light has come from without.
, HAROLD.
Enough, friends ! the sun is rising.
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