A Modern Symposium

"For Democracy – note it well – destroys greatness in every kind, of intellect, of perception, as well as of character. And especially it destroys art, that reflection of life without which we cannot be said to live. For the artist is the rarest, the most choice of men. His senses, his perception, his intelligence have a natural and inborn fineness and distinction. He belongs to a class, a very small, a very exclusive one. And he needs a class to appreciate and support him. No democracy has ever produced or understood art. The case of Athens is wrongly adduced; for Athens was an aristocracy under the influence of an aristocrat at the time the Parthenon was built. At all times Art has been fostered by patrons, never by the people. How should they foster it? Instinctively they hate it, as they hate all superiorities. It was not Florence but the Medici and the Pope that employed Michelangelo; not Milan but Ludovic the Moor that valued Leonardo. It was the English nobles that patronized Reynolds and Gainsborough; the darlings of our middle class are Herkomer and Collier. There have been poets, it is true, who have been born of the people and loved of them; and I do not despise poetry of that kind. But it is not the great thing. The great thing is Sophocles and Virgil, a fine culture wedded to a rich nature. And such a marriage is not accomplished in the fields or the market-place. The literature loved by democracy is a literature like themselves; not literature at all, but journalism, gross, shrieking, sensational, base. So with the drama, so with architecture, so with every art. Substitute the mass for the patron, and you eliminate taste. The artist perishes; the charlatan survives and flourishes. Only in science have you still an aristocracy. For the crowd sees that there is profit in science, and lets it go its way. Because of the accident that it can be applied, it may be disinterestedly pursued. And democracy hitherto, though impatiently, endures an ideal aim in the hope of degrading its achievement to its own uses.

"Such being my view of democratic society I look naturally for elements that promise not to foster, but to counteract it. I look for the germs of a new aristocracy. They are hard to discover, and perhaps my desires override my judgment. But I fancy that it will be the very land that has suffered most acutely from the disease that will be the first to discover the remedy. I endorse Ellis's view of American civilization; but I allow myself to hope that the reaction is already beginning. I have met in Italy young Americans with a finer sense of beauty, distinction, and form, than I have been able to find among Englishmen, still less among Italians. And once there is cast into that fresh and unencumbered soil the seed of the ideal that made Greece great, who can prophecy into what forms of beauty and thought it may not flower? The Plutocracy of the West may yet be transformed into an Aristocracy; and Europe re-discover from America the secret of its past greatness. Such, at least, appears to me to be the best hope of the world; and to the realization of that hope I would have all men of culture all the world over unite their efforts. For the kingdom of this earth, like that of heaven, is taken by violence. We must work not with, but against tendencies, if we would realize anything great; and the men who are fit to rule must have the courage to assume power, if ever there is to be once more a civilization. Therefore it is that I, the last of an old aristocracy, look across the Atlantic for the first of the new. And beyond socialism, beyond anarchy, across that weltering sea, I strain my eyes to see, pearl-grey against the dawn, the new and stately citadel of Power. For Power is the centre of crystallization for all good; given that, you have morals, art, religion; without it, you have nothing but appetites and passions. Power then is the condition of life, even of the life of the mass, in any sense in which it is worth having. And in the interest of Democracy itself every good Democrat ought to pray for the advent of Aristocracy."

ALL of our company had now spoken except two. One was the author, Vivian, and him I had decided to leave till the last. The other was John Woodman, a member of the Society of Friends, and one who was commonly regarded as a crank, because he lived on a farm in the country, worked with his hands, and refused to pay taxes on the ground that they went to maintain the army and navy. If Harington was handsome, Woodman was beautiful, but with beauty of expression rather than of features, I had always thought of him as a perfect example of that rare type, the genuine Christian. And since Harington had just revealed himself as a typical Pagan, I felt glad of the chance which brought the two men into such close juxtaposition. My only doubt was, whether Woodman would consent to speak. For on previous occasions I had known him to refuse; and he was the only one of us who had always been able to sustain his refusal, without unpleasantness, but without yielding. To-night, however, he rose in response to my appeal, and spoke as follows:

"All the evening I have been wondering when the lot would fall on me, and whether, when it did, I should feel, as we Friends say, 'free' to answer the call. Now that it has come, I am, I think, free; but not, if you will pardon me, for a long or eloquent speech. What I have to say I shall say as simply and as briefly as I can; and you, I know, will listen with your accustomed tolerance, though I shall differ even more, if possible, from all the other speakers, than they have differed from one another. For you have all spoken from the point of view of the world. You have put forward proposals for changing society and making it better. But you have relied, for the most part, on external means to accomplish such changes. You have spoken of extending or limiting the powers of government, of socialism, of anarchy, of education, of selective breeding. But you have not spoken of the Spirit and the Life, or not in the sense in which I would wish to speak of them. MacCarthy, indeed, I remember, used the words 'the life of the spirit.' But I could not well understand what he meant, except that he hoped to attain it by violence; and in that way what I would seek and value cannot be furthered. Coryat, again, and Harington spoke of the good life. But Coryat seemed to think that any and all life is good. The line of division which I see everywhere he did not see at all, the line between the children of God and the children of this world. I could not say with him that there is a natural goodness in life as such; only that any honest occupation will be good if it be practised by a good man. It is not wealth that is needed, nor talents, nor intellect. These things are gifts that may be given or withheld. But the one thing needful is the spirit of God, which is given freely to the poor and the ignorant who seek it. Believing this, I cannot but disagree, also, with Harington. For the life of which he spoke is the life of this world. He praises power, and wisdom, and beauty, and the excellence of the body and the mind. In these things, he says, the good life consists. And since they are so rare and difficult to attain, and need for their fostering, natural aptitudes, and leisure and wealth and great position, he concludes that the good life is possible only for the few; and that to them the many should be ministers. And if the goods he speaks of be really such, he is right; for in the things of the world, what one takes, another must resign. If there are rulers there must be subjects; if there are rich, there must be poor; if there are idle men there must be drudges. But the real Good is not thus exclusive. It is open to all; and the more a man has of it the more he gives to others. That Good is the love of God, and through the love of God the love of man. These are old phrases, but their sense is not old; rather it is always new, for it is eternal. Now, as of old, in the midst of science, of business, of invention, of the multifarious confusion and din and hurry of the world, God may be directly perceived and known. But to know Him is to love Him, and to love Him is to love His creatures, and most all of our fellow-men, to whom we are nearest and most akin, and with and by whom we needs must live. And if that love were really spread abroad among us, the questions that have been discussed to-night would resolve themselves. For there would be a rule of life generally observed and followed; and under it the conditions that make the problems would disappear. Of such a rule, all men, dimly and at moments, are aware. By it they were warned that slavery was wrong. And had they but read it more truly, and followed it more faithfully, they would never have made war to abolish what they would never have wished to maintain. And the same rule it is that is warning us now that it is wrong to fight, wrong to heap up riches, wrong to live by the labour of others. As we come to heed the warning we shall cease to do these things. But to change institutions without changing hearts is idle. For it is but to change the subjects into the rulers, the poor into the rich, the drudges into the idle men. And, as a result, we should only have idle men more frivolous, rich men more hard, rulers more incompetent. It is not by violence or compulsion, open or disguised, that the kingdom of heaven comes. It is by simple service on the part of those that know the law, by their following the right in their own lives, and preaching rather by their conduct than by their words.

"This would be a hard saying if we had to rely on ourselves. But we have God to rely on, who gives His help not according to the measure of our powers. A man cannot by taking thought add a cubit to his stature; he cannot increase the scope of his mind or the range of his senses; he cannot, by willing, make himself a philosopher, or a leader of men. But drawing on the source that is open to the poorest and the weakest he can become a good man; and then, whatever his powers, he will be using them for God and man. If men do that, each man for himself, by the help of God, all else will follow. So true is it that if ye seek first the kingdom of heaven all these things shall be added unto you. Yes, that is true. It is eternal truth. It does not change with the doctrines of Churches nor depend upon them. I would say even it does not depend on Christianity. For the words would be true, though there had never been a Christ to speak them. And the proof that they are true is simply the direct witness of consciousness. We perceive such truths as we perceive the sun. They carry with them their own certainty; and on that rests the certainty of God. Therein is the essence of all religion. I say it because I know. And the rest of you, so it seems to me, are guessing. Nor is it, as it might seem at first, a truth irrelevant to your discussion. For it teaches that all change must proceed from within outward. There is not, there never has been, a just polity, for there has never been one based on the love of God and man. All that you condemn – poverty, and wealth, idleness and excessive labour, squalor, disease, barren marriages, aggression and war, will continue in spite of all changes in form, until men will to get rid of them. And that they will not do till they have learnt to love God and man. Revolution will be vain, evolution will be vain, all uneasy turnings from side to side will be vain, until that change of heart be accomplished. And accomplished it will be in its own time. Everywhere I see it at work, in many ways, in the guise of many different opinions. I see it at work here to-night among those with whom I most disagree. I see it in the hope of Allison and Wilson, in the defiance of MacCarthy, in the doubt of Martin, and most of all in the despair of Audubon. For he is right to despair of the only life he knows, the life of the world whose fruits are dust and ashes. He drifts on a midnight ocean, unlighted by stars, and tossed by the winds of disappointment, sorrow, sickness, irreparable loss. Ah, but above him, if he but knew, as now in our eyes and ears, rises into a crystal sky the first lark of dawn. And the cuckoo sings, and the blackbird, do you not hear them? And the fountain rises ever in showers of silver sparks, up to the heaven it will not reach till fire has made it vapour. And so the whole creation aspires, out of the night of despair, into the cool freshness of dawn and on to the sun of noon. Let us be patient and follow each his path, waiting on the word of God till He be pleased to reveal it. For His way is not hard, it is joy and peace unutterable. And those who wait in faith He will bless with the knowledge of Himself."

As he finished it was light, though the sun had not yet risen. The first birds were singing in the wood, and the fountain glistened and sang, and the plain lay before us like a bride waiting for the bridegroom. We were silent under the spell; and I scarcely know how long had passed before I had heart to call upon Vivian to conclude.

I have heard Vivian called a philosopher, but the term is misleading. Those who know his writings – and they are too few – know that he concerned himself, directly or indirectly, with philosophic problems. But he never wrote philosophy; his methods were not those of logic; and his sympathies were with science and the arts. In the early age of Greece he might have been Empedocles or Heraclitus; he could never have been Spinoza or Kant. He sought to interpret life, but not merely in terms of the intellect. He needed to see and feel in order to think. And he expressed himself in a style too intellectual for lovers of poetry, too metaphorical for lovers of philosophy. His Public, therefore, though devoted, was limited; but we, in our society, always listened to him with an interest that was rather enhanced than diminished by an element of perplexity. I have found it hard to reproduce his manner, in which it was clear that he took a conscious and artistic pleasure. Still less can I give the impression of his lean and fine-cut face, and the distinction of his whole personality. He stood up straight and tall against the whitening sky, and delivered himself as follows:

"Man is in the making; but henceforth he must make himself. To that point Nature has led him, out of the primeval slime. She has given him limbs, she has given him brain, she has given him the rudiment of a soul. Now it is for him to make or mar that splendid torso. Let him look no more to her for aid; for it is her will to create one who has the power to create himself. If he fail, she fails; back goes the metal to the pot; and the great process begins anew. If he succeeds, he succeeds alone. His fate is in his own hands.

"Of that fate, did he but know it, brain is the lord, to fashion a palace fit for the soul to inhabit. Yet still, after centuries of stumbling, reason is no more than the furtive accomplice of habit and force. Force creates, habit perpetuates, reason the sycophant sanctions. And so he drifts, not up but down, and Nature watches in anguish, self-forbidden to intervene, unless it be to annihilate. If he is to drive, and drive straight, reason must seize the reins; and the art of her driving is the art of Politics. Of that art, the aim is perfection, the method selection. Science is its minister, ethics its lord. It spares no prejudice, respects no habit, honours no tradition. Institutions are stubble in the fire it kindles. The present and the past it throws without remorse into the jaws of the future. It is the angel with the flaming sword swift to dispossess the crone that sits on her money-bags at Westminster.

"Or, shall I say, it is Hercules with the Augean stable to cleanse, of which every city is a stall, heaped with the dung of a century; with the Hydra to slay, whose hundred writhing heads of false belief, from old truth rotted into lies, spring inexhaustibly fecund in creeds, interests, institutions. Of which the chief is Property, most cruel and blind of all, who devours us, ere we know it, in the guise of Security and Peace, killing the bodies of some, the souls of most, and growing ever fresh from the root, in forms that but seem to be new, until the root itself be cut away by the sword of the spirit. What that sword shall be called, socialism, anarchy, what you will, is small matter, so but the hand that wields it be strong, the brain clear, the soul illumined, passionate and profound. But where shall the champion be found fit to wield that weapon?

"He will not be found; he must be made. By Man Man must be sown. Once he might trust to Nature, while he was laid at her breast. But she has weaned him; and the promptings she no longer guides, he may not blindly trust for their issue. While she weeded, it was hers to plant; but she weeds no more. He of his own will uproots or spares; and of his own will he must sow, if he would not have his garden a wilderness. Even now precious plants perish before his eyes, even now weeds grow rank, while he watches in idle awe, and prates of his own impotence. He has given the reins to Desire, and she drives him back to the abyss. But harness her to the car, with reason for charioteer, and she will grow wings to waft him to his goal. That in him that he calls Love is but the dragon of the slime. Let him bury it in the grave of Self, and it will rise a Psyche, with wings too wide to shelter only the home. The Man that is to be comes at the call of the Man that is. Let him call then, soberly, not from the fumes of lust. For as is the call, so will be the answer.

"But for what should he call? For Pagan? For Christian? For neither, and for both. Paganism speaks for the men in Man, Christianity for the Man in men. The fruit that was eaten in Paradise, sown in the soul of man, bore in Hellas its first and fairest harvest. There rose upon the world of mind the triple sun of the Ideal. Aphrodite, born of the foam, flowered on the azure main, Tritons in her train and Nereids, under the flush of dawn. Apollo, radiant in hoary dew, leapt from the eastern wave, flamed through the heaven, and cooled his hissing wheels in the vaporous west. Athene, sprung from the brain of God, armed with the spear of truth, moved grey-eyed over the earth probing the minds of men. Love, Beauty, Wisdom, behold the Pagan Trinity! Through whose grace only men are men, and fit to become Man. Therefore, the gods are eternal; not they die, but we, when we think them dead. And no man who does not know them, and knowing, worship and love, is able to be a member of the body of Man. Thus it is that the sign of a step forward is a look backward; and Greece stands eternally at the threshold of the new life. Forget her, and you sink back, if not to the brute, to the insect. Consider the ant, and beware of her! She is there for a warning. In universal Anthood there are no ants. From that fate may men save Man!

"But the Pagan gods were pitiless; they preyed upon the weak. Their wisdom was rooted in folly, their beauty in squalor, their love in oppression. So fostered, those flowers decayed. And out of the rotting soil rose the strange new blossoms we call Faith, and Hope, and Charity. For Folly cried, 'I know not, but I believe'; Squalor, 'I am vile, but I hope'; and the oppressed, 'I am despised, but I love.' That was the Christian Trinity, the echo of man's frustration, as the other was the echo of his accomplishment. Yet both he needs. For because he grows, he is dogged by imperfection. His weakness is mocked by those shining forms on the mountain-top. But Faith, and Hope, and Charity walk beside him in the mire, to kindle, to comfort and to help. And of them justice is born, the plea of the Many against the Few, of the nation against the class, of mankind against the nation, of the future against the present. In Christianity men were born into Man. Yet in Him let not men die! For what profits justice unless it be the step to the throne of Olympus? What profit Faith and Hope without a goal? Charity without an object? Vain is the love of emmets, or of bees and coral-insects. For the worth of love is as the worth of the lover. It is only in the soil of Paganism that Christianity can come to maturity. And Faith, Hope, Charity, are but seeds of themselves till they fall into the womb of Wisdom, Beauty, and Love. Olympus lies before us, the snow-capped mountain. Let us climb it, together, if you will, not some on the corpses of the rest; but climb at least, not fester and swarm on rich meadows of equality. We are not for the valley, nor for the forests or the pastures. If we be brothers, yet we are brothers in a quest, needing our foremost to lead. Aphrodite, Apollo, Athene, are before us, not behind. Majestic forms, they gleam among the snows. March, then, men in Man!

"But is it men who attain? Or Man? Or not even he, but God? We do not know. We know only the impulse and the call. The gleam on the snow, the upward path, the urgent stress within, that is our certainty, the rest is doubt. But doubt is a horizon, and on it hangs the star of hope. By that we live; and the science blinds, the renunciation maims, that would shut us off from those silver rays. Our eyes must open, as we march, to every signal from the height. And since the soul has indeed 'immortal longings in her' we may believe them prophetic of their fruition. For her claims are august as those of man, and appeal to the same witness. The witness of either is a dream; but such dreams come from the gate of horn. They are principles of life, and about them crystallizes the universe. For will is more than knowledge, since will creates what knowledge records. Science hangs in a void of nescience, a planet turning in the dark. But across that void Faith builds the road that leads to Olympus and the eternal gods."

By the time he had finished speaking the sun had risen, and the glamour of dawn was passing into the light of common day. The birds sang loud, the fountain sparkled, and the trees rustled softly in the early breeze. Our party broke up quietly. Some went away to bed; others strolled down the gardens; and Audubon went off by appointment to bathe with my young nephew, as gay and happy, it would seem, as man could be. I was left to pace the terrace alone, watching the day grow brighter, and wondering at the divers fates of men. An early bell rang in the little church at the park-gate; a motor-car hooted along the highway. And I thought of Cantilupe and Harington, of Allison and Wilson, and beyond them of the vision of the dawn and the daybreak, of Woodman, the soul, and Vivian, the spirit. I paused for a last look down the line of bright statues that bordered the long walk below me. I fancied them stretching away to the foot of Olympus; and without elation or excitement, but with the calm of an assured hope, I prepared to begin the new day.