Kitabı oku: «The Dawn of Day», sayfa 15

200

Endurance of Poverty. – There is one great advantage in noble extraction: it makes us endure poverty better.

201

The Future of the Nobility. – The bearing of the aristocratic classes shows that, in all the members of their body the consciousness of power is continually playing its fascinating game. Thus people of aristocratic habits, men or women, never sink worn out into a chair; when every one else makes himself comfortable, as in a train, for example, they avoid reclining at their ease; they do not appear to get tired after standing at Court for hours at a stretch; they do not furnish their houses in a comfortable manner, but in such a way as to produce the impression of something grand and imposing, as if they had to serve as a residence for greater and taller beings; they reply to a provoking speech with dignity and clearness of mind, and not as if scandalised, crushed, shamed, or out of breath in the plebeian fashion. As the aristocrat is able to preserve the appearance of being possessed of a superior physical force which never leaves him, he likewise wishes by his aspect of constant serenity and civility of disposition, even in the most trying circumstances, to convey the impression that his mind and soul are equal to all dangers and surprises. A noble culture may resemble, so far as passions are concerned, either a horseman who takes pleasure in making his proud and fiery animal trot in the Spanish fashion, – we have only to recollect the age of Louis xiv., – or like the rider who feels his horse dart away with him like the elemental forces, to such a degree that both horse and rider come near losing their heads, but, owing to the enjoyment of the delight, do keep very clear heads: in both these cases this aristocratic culture breathes power, and if very often in its customs only the appearance of the feeling of power is required, nevertheless the real sense of superiority continues constantly to increase as the result of the impression which this display makes upon those who are not aristocrats.

This indisputable happiness of aristocratic culture, based as it is on the feeling of superiority, is now beginning to rise to ever higher levels; for now, thanks to the free spirits, it is henceforth permissible and not dishonourable for people who have been born and reared in aristocratic circles to enter the domain of knowledge, where they may secure more intellectual consecrations and learn chivalric services even higher than those of former times, and where they may look up to that ideal of victorious wisdom which as yet no age has been able to set before itself with so good a conscience as the period which is about to dawn. Lastly, what is to be the occupation of the nobility in the future if it becomes more evident from day to day that it is less and less indecorus to take any part in politics?

202

The Care of the Health. – We have scarcely begun to devote any attention to the physiology of criminals, and yet we have already reached the inevitable conclusion that between criminals and madmen there is no really essential difference: if we suppose that the current moral fashion of thinking is a healthy way of thinking. No belief, however, is nowadays more firmly believed in than this one, so we should not therefore shrink from drawing the inevitable conclusion and treating the criminal like a lunatic – above all, not with haughty pitifulness, but with medical skill and good will. He may perhaps be in need of a change of air, a change of society, or temporary absence: perhaps of solitude and new occupations – very well! He may perhaps feel that it would be to his advantage to live under surveillance for a short time in order thus to obtain protection from himself and from a troublesome tyrannical impulse – very well! We should make clear to him the possibility and the means of curing him (the extermination, transformation, and sublimation of these impulses), and also, in the worst cases, the improbability of a cure; and we should offer to the incurable criminal, who has become a useless burden to himself, the opportunity of committing suicide. While holding this in reserve as an extreme measure of relief, we should neglect nothing which would tend above all to restore to the criminal his good courage and freedom of spirit; we should free his soul from all remorse, as if it were something unclean, and show him how he may atone for a wrong which he may have done some one by benefiting some one else, perhaps the community at large, in such way that he might even do more than balance his previous offence.

All this must be done with the greatest tact! The criminal must, above all, remain anonymous or adopt an assumed name, changing his place of residence frequently, so that his reputation and future life may suffer as little as possible. At the present time it is true that the man who has been injured, apart altogether from the manner in which this injury might be redressed, wishes for revenge in addition, and applies to the courts that he may obtain it – and this is why our dreadful penal laws are still in force: Justice, as it were, holding up a pair of shopkeeper's scales and endeavouring to balance the guilt by punishment; but can we not take a step beyond this? Would it not be a great relief to the general sentiment of life if, while getting rid of our belief in guilt, we could also get rid of our old craving for vengeance, and gradually come to believe that it is a refined wisdom for happy men to bless their enemies and to do good to those who have offended them, exactly in accordance with the spirit of Christian teaching! Let us free the world from this idea of sin, and take care to cast out with it the idea of punishment. May these monstrous ideas henceforth live banished far from the abodes of men – if, indeed, they must live at all, and do not perish from disgust with themselves.

Let us not forget also, however, that the injury caused to society and to the individual by the criminal is of the same species as that caused by the sick: for the sick spread cares and ill-humour; they are non-productive, consume the earnings of others, and at the same time require attendance, doctors, and support, and they really live on the time and strength of the healthy. In spite of this, however, we should designate as inhuman any one who, for this reason, would wish to wreak vengeance on the sick. In past ages, indeed, this was actually done: in primitive conditions of society, and even now among certain savage peoples, the sick man is treated as a criminal and as a danger to the community, and it is believed that he is the resting-place of certain demoniacal beings who have entered into his body as the result of some offence he has committed – those ages and peoples hold that the sick are the guilty!

And what of ourselves? Are we not yet ripe for the contrary conception? Shall we not be allowed to say, “The guilty are the sick”? No; the hour for that has not yet come. We still lack, above all, those physicians who have learnt something from what we have hitherto called practical morals and have transformed it into the art and science of healing. We still lack that intense interest in those things which some day perhaps may seem not unlike the “storm and stress” of those old religious ecstasies. The Churches have not yet come into the possession of those who look after our health; the study of the body and of dietary are not yet amongst the obligatory subjects taught in our primary and secondary schools; there are as yet no quiet associations of those people who are pledged to one another to do without the help of law courts, and who renounce the punishment and vengeance now meted out to those who have offended against society. No thinker has as yet been daring enough to determine the health of society, and of the individuals who compose it, by the number of parasites which it can support; and no statesman has yet been found to use the ploughshare in the spirit of that generous and tender saying, “If thou wilt till the land, till it with the plough; then the bird and the wolf, walking behind thy plough, will rejoice in thee – all creatures will rejoice in thee.”

203

Against Bad Diet. – Fie upon the meals which people nowadays eat in hotels and everywhere else where the well-off classes of society live! Even when eminent men of science meet together their tables groan under the weight of the dishes, in accordance with the principle of the bankers: the principle of too many dishes and too much to eat. The result of this is that dinners are prepared with a view to their mere appearance rather than the consequences that may follow from eating them, and that stimulating drinks are required to help in driving away the heaviness in the stomach and in the brain. Fie on the dissoluteness and extreme nervousness which must follow upon all this! Fie upon the dreams that such repasts bring! Fie upon the arts and books which must be the desert of such meals! Despite all the efforts of such people their acts will taste of pepper and ill-temper, or general weariness! (The wealthy classes in England stand in great need of their Christianity in order to be able to endure their bad digestions and their headaches.) Finally, to mention not only the disgusting but also the more pleasant side of the matter, these people are by no means mere gluttons: our century and its spirit of activity has more power over the limbs than the belly. What then is the meaning of these banquets? They represent! What in Heaven's name do they represent? Rank? – no, money! There is no rank now! We are all “individuals”! but money now stands for power, glory, pre-eminence, dignity, and influence; money at the present time acts as a greater or lesser moral prejudice for a man in proportion to the amount he may possess. Nobody wishes to hide it under a bushel or display it in heaps on a table: hence money must have some representative which can be put on the table – so behold our banquets!

204

Danæ and the God of Gold. – Whence arises this excessive impatience in our day which turns men into criminals even in circumstances which would be more likely to bring about the contrary tendency? What induces one man to use false weights, another to set his house on fire after having insured it for more than its value, a third to take part in counterfeiting, while three-fourths of our upper classes indulge in legalised fraud, and suffer from the pangs of conscience that follow speculation and dealings on the Stock Exchange: what gives rise to all this? It is not real want, – for their existence is by no means precarious; perhaps they have even enough to eat and drink without worrying, – but they are urged on day and night by a terrible impatience at seeing their wealth pile up so slowly, and by an equally terrible longing and love for these heaps of gold. In this impatience and love, however, we see re-appear once more that fanaticism of the desire for power which was stimulated in former times by the belief that we were in the possession of truth, a fanaticism which bore such beautiful names that we could dare to be inhuman with a good conscience (burning Jews, heretics, and good books, and exterminating entire cultures superior to ours, such as those of Peru and Mexico). The means of this desire for power are changed in our day, but the same volcano is still smouldering, impatience and intemperate love call for their victims, and what was once done “for the love of God” is now done for the love of money, i. e. for the love of that which at present affords us the highest feeling of power and a good conscience.

205

The People of Israel. – One of the spectacles which the next century will invite us to witness is the decision regarding the fate of the European Jews. It is quite obvious now that they have cast their die and crossed their Rubicon: the only thing that remains for them is either to become masters of Europe or to lose Europe, as they once centuries ago lost Egypt, where they were confronted with similar alternatives. In Europe, however, they have gone through a schooling of eighteen centuries such as no other nation has ever undergone, and the experiences of this dreadful time of probation have benefited not only the Jewish community but, even to a greater extent, the individual. As a consequence of this, the resourcefulness of the modern Jews, both in mind and soul, is extraordinary. Amongst all the inhabitants of Europe it is the Jews least of all who try to escape from any deep distress by recourse to drink or to suicide, as other less gifted people are so prone to do. Every Jew can find in the history of his own family and of his ancestors a long record of instances of the greatest coolness and perseverance amid difficulties and dreadful situations, an artful cunning in fighting with misfortune and hazard. And above all it is their bravery under the cloak of wretched submission, their heroic spernere se sperni that surpasses the virtues of all the saints.

People wished to make them contemptible by treating them contemptibly for nearly twenty centuries, and refusing them access to all honourable positions and dignities, and by pushing them further down into the meaner trades – and under this process indeed they have not become any cleaner. But contemptible? They have never ceased for a moment from believing themselves qualified for the very highest functions, nor have the virtues of the suffering ever ceased to adorn them. Their manner of honouring their parents and children, the rationality of their marriages and marriage customs, distinguishes them amongst all Europeans. Besides this, they have been able to create for themselves a sense of power and eternal vengeance from the very trades that were left to them (or to which they were abandoned). Even in palliation of their usury we cannot help saying that, without this occasional pleasant and useful torture inflicted on their scorners, they would have experienced difficulty in preserving their self-respect for so long. For our self-respect depends upon our ability to make reprisals in both good and evil things. Nevertheless, their revenge never urges them on too far, for they all have that liberty of mind, and even of soul, produced in men by frequent changes of place, climate, and customs of neighbours and oppressors, they possess by far the greatest experience in all human intercourse, and even in their passions they exercise the caution which this experience has developed in them. They are so certain of their intellectual versatility and shrewdness that they never, even when reduced to the direst straits, have to earn their bread by manual labour as common workmen, porters, or farm hands. In their manners we can still see that they have never been inspired by chivalric and noble feelings, or that their bodies have ever been girt with fine weapons: a certain obtrusiveness alternates with a submissiveness which is often tender and almost always painful.

Now, however, that they unavoidably inter-marry more and more year after year with the noblest blood of Europe, they will soon have a considerable heritage of good intellectual and physical manners, so that in another hundred years they will have a sufficiently noble aspect not to render themselves, as masters, ridiculous to those whom they will have subdued. And this is important! and therefore a settlement of the question is still premature. They themselves know very well that the conquest of Europe or any act of violence is not to be thought of; but they also know that some day or other Europe may, like a ripe fruit, fall into their hands, if they do not clutch at it too eagerly. In the meantime, it is necessary for them to distinguish themselves in all departments of European distinction and to stand in the front rank: until they shall have advanced so far as to determine themselves what distinction shall mean. Then they will be called the pioneers and guides of the Europeans whose modesty they will no longer offend.

And then where shall an outlet be found for this abundant wealth of great impressions accumulated during such an extended period and representing Jewish history for every Jewish family, this wealth of passions, virtues, resolutions, resignations, struggles, and conquests of all kinds – where can it find an outlet but in great intellectual men and works! On the day when the Jews will be able to exhibit to us as their own work such jewels and golden vessels as no European nation, with its shorter and less profound experience, can or could produce, when Israel shall have changed its eternal vengeance into an eternal benediction for Europe: then that seventh day will once more appear when old Jehovah may rejoice in Himself, in His creation, in His chosen people – and all, all of us, will rejoice with Him!

206

The Impossible Class. – Poverty, cheerfulness, and independence – it is possible to find these three qualities combined in one individual; poverty, cheerfulness, and slavery – this is likewise a possible combination: and I can say nothing better to the workmen who serve as factory slaves; presuming that it does not appear to them altogether to be a shameful thing to be utilised as they are, as the screws of a machine and the stopgaps, as it were, of the human spirit of invention. Fie on the thought that merely by means of higher wages the essential part of their misery, i. e. their impersonal enslavement, might be removed! Fie, that we should allow ourselves to be convinced that, by an increase of this impersonality within the mechanical working of a new society, the disgrace of slavery could be changed into a virtue! Fie, that there should be a regular price at which a man should cease to be a personality and become a screw instead! Are you accomplices in the present madness of nations which desire above all to produce as much as possible, and to be as rich as possible? Would it not be your duty to present a counter-claim to them, and to show them what large sums of internal value are wasted in the pursuit of such an external object?

But where is your internal value when you no longer know what it is to breathe freely; when you have scarcely any command over your own selves, and often feel disgusted with yourselves as with some stale food; when you zealously study the newspapers and look enviously at your wealthy neighbour, made covetous by the rapid rise and fall of power, money, and opinions; when you no longer believe in a philosophy in rags, or in the freedom of spirit of a man who has few needs; when a voluntary and idyllic poverty without profession or marriage, such as should suit the more intellectual ones among you, has become for you an object of derision? On the other hand, the piping of the Socialistic rat-catchers who wish to inspire you with foolish hopes is continually sounding in your ears: they tell you to be ready and nothing further, ready from this day to the next, so that you wait and wait for something to come from outside, though living in all other respects as you lived before – until this waiting is at length changed into hunger and thirst and fever and madness, and the clay of the bestia triumphans at last dawns in all its glory. Every one of you should on the contrary say to himself: “It would be better to emigrate and endeavour to become a master in new and savage countries, and especially to become master over myself, changing my place of abode whenever the least sign of slavery threatens me, endeavouring to avoid neither adventure nor war, and, if things come to the worst, holding myself ready to die: anything rather than continuing in this state of disgraceful thraldom, this bitterness, malice and rebelliousness!” This would be the proper spirit: the workmen in Europe ought to make it clear that their position as a class has become a human impossibility, and not merely, as they at present maintain, the result of some hard and aimless arrangement of society. They should bring about an age of great swarming forth from the European beehive such as has never yet been seen, protesting by this voluntary and huge migration against machines and capital and the alternatives that now threaten them either of becoming slaves of the State or slaves of some revolutionary party.

May Europe be freed from one-fourth of her inhabitants! Both she and they will experience a sensation of relief. It is only far in the distance, in the undertaking of vast colonisations, that we shall be able to observe how much rationality, fairness, and healthy suspicion mother Europe has incorporated in her sons – these sons who could no longer endure life in the home of the dull old woman, always running the danger of becoming as bad-tempered, irritable, and pleasure-seeking as she herself. The European virtues will travel along with these workmen far beyond the boundaries of Europe; and those very qualities which on their native soil had begun to degenerate into a dangerous discontent and criminal inclinations will, when abroad, be transformed into a beautiful, savage naturalness and will be called heroism; so that at last a purer air would again be wafted over this old, over-populated, and brooding Europe of ours. What would it matter if there was a scarcity of “hands”? Perhaps people would then recollect that they had accustomed themselves to many wants merely because it was easy to gratify them – it would be sufficient to unlearn some of these wants! Perhaps also Chinamen would be called in, and these would bring with them their modes of living and thinking, which would be found very suitable for industrious ants. They would also perhaps help to imbue this fretful and restless Europe with some of their Asiatic calmness and contemplation, and – what is perhaps most needful of all – their Asiatic stability.