Youth and Egolatry Part 4

The former has always been a commonplace among philosophers.

Life is absurd, life is difficult of direction, life is a disease, the better part of the philosophers have told us.

When man turned his animosity against society, it became the fashion to exalt life. Life is good; man, naturally, is magnanimous, it was said.

Society has made him bad.

I am convinced that life is neither good nor bad; it is like Nature, necessary. And society is neither good nor bad. It is bad for the man who is endowed with a sensibility which is excessive for his age; it is good for a man who finds himself in harmony with his surroundings.

A negro will walk naked through a forest in which every drop of water is impregnated with millions of paludal germs, which teems with insects, the bites of which produce malignant abcesses, and where the temperature reaches fifty degrees Centigrade in the shade.

A European, accustomed to the sheltered life of the city, when brought face to face with such a tropical climate, without means of protection, would die.

Man needs to be endowed with a sensibility which is proper to his epoch and his environment; if he has less, his life will be merely that of a child; if he has just the right measure, it will be the life of an adult; if he has more, he will be an invalid.

ON DEVOURING ONE'S OWN G.o.d

It is said that the philosopher Averroes was wont to remark: "What a sect these Christians are, who devour their own G.o.d!"

It would seem that this divine alimentation ought to make men themselves divine. But it does not; our theophagists are human--they are only too human, as Nietzsche would have it.

There can be no doubt but that the Southern European races are the most vivacious, the most energetic, as well as the toughest in the world.

They have produced all the great conquerors. Christianity, when it found it necessary to overcome them, innoculated them with its Semitic virus, but this virus has not only failed to make them weaker, but, on the contrary, it has made them stronger. They appropriated what suited them in the Asiatic mentality, and proceeded to make a weapon of their religion. These cruel Levantine races, thanks only to Teutonic penetration, are at last submitting to a softening process, and they will become completely softened upon the establishment in Europe of the domination of the Slav.

Meanwhile they maintain their sway in their own countries.

"They are quite inoffensive," we are told.

Nonsense! They would burn Giordano Bruno as willingly now as they did in the old days.

There is a great deal of fire remaining in the hearts of our theophagists.

ANARCHISM

In an article appearing in _Hermes_, a magazine published in Bilbao, Salaverria a.s.sumes that I have been cured of my anarchism, and that I persist in a negative and anarchistic att.i.tude in order to retain my literary clientele; which is not the fact. In the first place, I can scarcely be said to have a clientele; in the second place, a small following of conservatives is much more lucrative than a large one of anarchists. It is true that I am withdrawing myself from the festivals of Pan and the cult of Dionysus, but I am not subst.i.tuting for them, either outwardly or inwardly, the worship of Yahveh or of Moloch. I have no liking for Semitic traditions--none and none whatever! I am not able, like Salaverria, to admire the rich simply because they are rich, nor people in high stations because they happen to occupy them.

Salaverria a.s.sumes that I have a secret admiration for grand society, generals, magistrates, wealthy gentlemen from America, and Argentines who shout out: "How perfectly splendid!" I have the same affection for these things that I have for the cows which clutter up the road in front of my house. I would not be Fouquier-Tinville to the former nor butcher to the latter; but my affection then has reached its limit. Even when I find something worthy of admiration, my inclination is toward the small.

I prefer the Boboli Gardens to those of Versailles, and Venetian or Florentine history to that of India.

Great states, great captains, great kings, great G.o.ds, leave me cold.

They are all for peoples who dwell on vast plains which are crossed by mighty rivers, for the Egyptians, for the Chinese, for the Hindus, for the Germans, for the French.

We Europeans who are of the region of the Pyrenees and the Alps, love small states, small rivers, and small G.o.ds, whom we may address familiarly.

Salaverria is also mistaken when he says that I am afraid of change. I am not afraid. My nature is to change. I am predisposed to develop, to move from here to there, to reverse my literary and political views if my feelings or my ideas alter. I avoid no reading except that which is dull; I shall never retreat from any performance except a vapid one, nor am I a partisan either of austerity or of consistency. Moreover, I am not a little dissatisfied with myself, and I would give a great deal to have the pleasure of turning completely about, if only to prove to myself that I am capable of a shift of att.i.tude which is sincere.

NEW PATHS

Some months since three friends met together in an old-fashioned bookshop on the venerable Calle del Olivo--a writer, a printer, and myself.

"Fifteen years ago all three of us were anarchists," remarked the printer.

"What are we today?" I inquired.

"We are conservatives," replied the man who wrote. "What are you?"

"I believe that I have the same ideas I had then."

"You have not developed if that is so," retorted the writer with a show of scorn.

I should like to develop, but into what? How? Where am I to find the way?

When sitting beside the chimney, warming your feet by the fire as you watch the flames, it is easy to imagine that there may be novel walks to explore in the neighbourhood; but when you come to look at the map you find that there is nothing new in the whole countryside.

We are told that ambition means growth. It does not with me. Ortega y Ga.s.set believes that I am a man who is const.i.tutionally unbribable. I should not go so far as to say that, but I do say that I do not believe that I could be bribed in cold blood by the offer of material things. If Mephistopheles wishes to purchase my soul, he cannot do it with a decoration or with a t.i.tle; but if he were to offer me sympathy, and be a little effusive while he is about it, adding then a touch of sentiment, I am convinced that he could get away with it quite easily.

LONGING FOR CHANGE

Just as the aim of politicians is to appear constant and consistent, artists and literary men aspire to change.

Would that the desire of one were as easy of attainment as that of the other!

To change! To develop! To acquire a second personality which shall be different from the first! This is given only to men of genius and to saints. Thus Caesar, Luther, and Saint Ignatius each lived two distinct lives; or, rather, perhaps, it was one life, with sides that were obverse and reverse.

The same thing occurs sometimes also among painters. The evolution of El Greco in painting upsets the whole theory of art.

There is no instance of a like transformation either in ancient or modern literature. Some such change has been imputed to Goethe, but I see nothing more in this author than a short preliminary period of exalted feeling, followed by a lifetime dominated by study and the intellect.

Among other writers there is not even the suggestion of change.

Shakespeare is alike in all his works; Calderon and Cervantes are always the same, and this is equally true of our modern authors. The first pages of d.i.c.kens, of Tolstoi or of Zola could be inserted among the last, and n.o.body would be the wiser.

Even the erudite rhetorical poets, the Victor Hugos, the Gautiers, and our Spanish Zorrillas, never get outside of their own rhetoric.