Will kein Gott auf Erde sein? Sind wir selber G?tter.
W. MüLLER.
THROUGH the years Father Soledano had remained a fairly frequent visitor at the house of the Folyats. His was the only really constant intimacy that Francis enjoyed, and it was based on the kinship of their humour and their common taste for mental caricature. Both strangers to our town and dwelling outside its activity, they loved to foregather and burlesque its politics, its manners, and its worship of money. Father Soledano went further than Francis and poked his fun at English institutions, though then he became malicious and Francis could not see eye to eye with him. Francis had no politics save a dislike for Mr. Gladstone and a distrust of Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Salisbury, and he knew too little of modern English literature to be able to appreciate the priest’s sarcasms at the expense of Carlyle, Ruskin, George Eliot, or Robert Browning. He had never heard of George Meredith, but he became almost angry when Soledano scoffed at Dickens and Thackeray. . . .
Their discussions used to take place on Sunday evenings in the study, and it often happened that Serge was present. One Sunday night when, as often happened, Soledano, harked back to the Manchester murders, he launched out upon a violent assault upon England, and quoted once more words that were often upon his lips, words of the mother of Charles Stewart Parnell:
“‘The English are hated everywhere for their arrogance, greed, cant, and hypocrisy. They want us all to think they are so goody-goody. They are simply thieves.’”
[Pg 289]
“Oh! come, come,” said Francis, “not so bad as that. After all we have given the world a good deal and showed the way to other nations in many things.”
“You have shown the other nations how to steal.”
“I don’t think any nation, or any collective body of men who have pooled their sense of right and wrong need much instruction in that,” said Serge. “It is simply a question of stealing from a body of men weaker than themselves. Men in the mass are abominable. There isn’t anything to choose between England and France, or Italy, or the new German Empire or America. England has been more successful than the rest and has therefore had more opportunity of doing harm. . . .”
“Good as well,” put in Francis. “Good as well.”
“Only incidentally and by accident,” retorted Soledano. “What I contend is that you cannot have collective villainy and individual virtue, collective bad action and individual good action.”
“You can’t indict a nation,” said Serge.
“I can and I do.”
“Then you are not so clever as I thought. There is no such thing as collective action, there is only the action of individuals. You herd men together so that they may carry out the will of individuals, and, as in the present condition of society, the most cunning and cold-blooded and unscrupulous men survive to exercise their wills over the herd. What is produced by the herd is almost always bad, because their efforts are directed only towards base ideals. . . . In the long run it may be a good thing to gather men together into huge masses for the easier and more expeditious creation of wealth and the means of subsistence. I don’t know. I can’t see into the future. But you and my father know—who better?—how the poor are being ground down in this town, and it must be the same in every other. What appals me is that there is no sort of corrective to the base ideal of success and accumulated wealth and what is called power except the blind revolt of nature in man and woman—especially woman. There is absolutely nothing. There are a certain number of artists in this town, men of my own trade, but they [Pg 290]all seem to be doing their work from the dealer’s point of view, to produce a saleable article, and not for the sheer delight of exercising a talent, without which the result cannot give delight. The theatres are even worse: they are fed from London with stupid replicas of pieces designed to give the illusion of pleasure rather than pleasure itself. The newspapers will soon be nothing but advertising sheets. It will soon be impossible for any man to do his work with any joy in it. It is bad enough when a man wastes himself in feeding his own vanity, but when he is used only to feed the vanity of another man then there is absolutely no hope for him. There might be something said for an arrangement by which a man gave a certain number of hours of his day to joyless work, so that during the rest he can take joy in other things. But all these men who are doing work in which there is no reward at all are paid so little that they are shattered by financial anxiety. They marry wives whom they cannot afford to keep and produce children whom it is impossible for them to feed and educate. . . . England is in a bad way, Father. It seems to me rather unfair to attack her when she is down.”
“The greatest Empire the world has ever seen!” said Father Soledano mockingly.
Francis looked thoughtful. He lit his pipe and said:
“I wish I understood what you are talking about, Serge.”
“I want a corrective,” answered Serge. “All this material organisation may be a good thing in the long run, but spiritual health is every bit as important as physical health—more. They’re organising education now, but towards no ideal save the base ideal of cunning unscrupulous men—self-help, and all that. A man’s life consists of only two things, work and love. At present love is wiped out of consideration altogether, and work is regarded as a damned unpleasant thing that has to be stomached. At present a man must be either a slave or an employer of slaves, that is, a slave who is promoted. If you promote a slave to the condition of a free man he goes bad, because he has the soul of a slave and cannot live except under [Pg 291]tyranny. If he escapes from the tyranny of a man he seeks that of his own vices. . . . If you educate men as slaves they will be slaves, just as your Loyola said, Father—every child who passed through the Jesuits’ hands remained theirs for ever. . . . You get revolt every n............