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of life, which one vents in pathetic moans, another in bitter scorn of self, and a third in enraptured yearnings for different and more perfect conditions of life.

      And does not the literature of our own generation, the literary productions of the two last decades, betray an attempt at escape from our age and its disappointments? The public demands novels and poems that treat of the most distant countries and epochs. It devours Freytag's and Dahn's sketches of life among the ancient Germanic races, the mediæval poems of Scheffel and his imitators, and the novels of Egyptian, Corinthian and Roman times by Ebers and Eckstein, or if it bestows its favor upon a book that announces its subject as modern, it must recommend itself by a certain false, sickly, sentimental ​idealism; it must be an attempt to clothe human beings like ourselves, with certain attributes that make them as our imagination delights to picture them, but as no one ever saw them in reality. The light literature of England has long since ceased to be a faithful mirror of real life. When it is not describing with gusto, crimes and scandals of all kinds, murders, burglaries, seductions or testamentary frauds, it portrays a model society, in which the members of the nobility are all handsome, dignified, cultivated and wealthy; while the lower classes are honest God-fearing people, devoted to their superiors, the virtuous among them being graciously praised and rewarded by Sir This or Sir That, while the wicked are locked up by the police—in short, a society which is in all respects an absurd idealization of the dilapidated, tottering structure of society as it exists in England at the present day.

      The literature of France does not seem to fit into this frame at the first glance; but a second convinces us of our error. It is true, it limits its field of observation to the present and real in life. It denies itself any suggestions or longings for the past or the future, for any better or any different ideal. It is founded upon a principle of Art, that is called Realism or Naturalism. But let us examine closer: is Naturalism a proof of satisfaction with the present, and in this sense, in opposition to the pseudo historical and fanciful idealization which I have just described to be a powerful manifestation of disgust with the actualities of life, and of longing for their improvement? What are the themes which Naturalism portrays with a partiality for which it has been reproached so often? Does it ever depict any lovely or pleasing phases of this mortal life? No. It describes exclusively the most loathsome and hideous traits of civilization, such as are found ​mainly in the large cities. It takes especial pains to portray corruption, suffering and moral weakness, human beings sick unto death and a society at its last gasp, and as we finish a work belonging to this school, a plaintive voice seems to murmur with monotonous repetition. "You see, tormented reader, that this life which is here described with an inexorable fidelity to nature, is really not worth living." This is the fundamental conviction which every production of the Realistic school in literature silently proclaims; it is the starting point, it underlies the whole and forms the closing moral of each work, and is identical with the convictions upon which the false Idealism of England and Germany is based. The two paths, far from leading in opposite directions, conduct the wayfarers to the same goal. Naturalism lays down the premises, Idealism draws the conclusion from them. The former says: "The present conditions of life are intolerable," the latter adds: "Therefore away with them; let us forget them for one brief moment, and fancy ourselves in that ideal, perfect world which I can call up before my readers by my magic." The poet who sings in inspired verse of Arcadian simplicity, whose maidens are all beautiful and gay, with love in their hearts and lilies in their hands, living in romantic castles perched upon picturesque mountain peaks tipped with gold by the rising sun, who is called "a noble poet," by the admiring public, is only the brilliant co-worker of that other author who dips his pen like a shovel, into the mire, and for whom the public can not find language strong enough to express its disgust.

      I have lingered upon this subject because the literature of a country is the most complete and many-sided form in which the intellectual activity of any age reveals itself. But all the other manifestations of human thought of the present time allow us also to discern the same traits ​as those in the physiognomy of modern literature. All around us we notice a general sense of uneasiness and a mental irritation, which assumes in one mind the form of grief or anger at the unbearable state of affairs in this world, and in another, produces a decided longing for a change in all the conditions of modern life.

      The aim of the creative arts in former ages was the reproduction of the beautiful. The painter and the sculptor seized and perpetuated only the pleasing scenes that life and the world offered them. When Phidias was at work upon his Zeus, and Raphael was painting his Madonna, their hands were guided by a naive admiration of the human form per se. They experienced a delight and satisfaction in reproducing nature and when their delicate artistic taste recognized some slight imperfection in her, they hastily and discreetly toned it down, with an apologetic and idealizing touch. The art of to-day knows neither their satisfaction nor their naive admiration. It examines nature with a frowning brow and a keen, malicious eye, skilled in discovering faults and blemishes; it portrays under the pretext of fidelity to truth, all the imperfections in the visible form, involuntarily exaggerating them and giving them undue prominence. I repeat, under the pretext of truth, for truth itself does not lie within such means. The artist naturally reproduces his model as he sees and feels it himself; Courbet's ugly Stonebreaker is as far removed from absolute truth, as Lionardi's lovely Mona Lisa, from which Vasari drew his inspiration on account of its supposed fidelity to nature. And even when modern art is compelled to recognize the beautiful and pay unwilling tribute to it by perpetuating it, the artist contrives to suggest a flaw in it, by smuggling in a hint that the noble and glorious form is used for base purposes and is consequently contaminated. The ​of the nude female figure is destroyed by a vague insinuation of sensuality and wantonness, which mars every modern painting of this class. It is sure to exert upon the susceptible observer the same kind of influence as the "If you only knew what I know!" whispered by some malicious, old scandal-monger into the ear of her neighbor, when the virtues of some acquaintance are being praised. Ancient art is characterized by a pleased enjoyment of nature; modern art by a self-tormenting dissatisfaction with her. One glorifies her, the other complains of her. One is a constant ode in her honor, the other an incessant, harsh and unfounded criticism. The point of view of the former was that we are living in the most beautiful of all possible worlds, and of the latter, that our world could hardly be more hideous than it is.

      Pessimism is also the fashionable coloring of thought now in philosophy, not only in the established philosophies taught in the universities, but also in the private systems of philosophical thought and enquiry, which every person of culture has built up for himself around the important problems of the day. In Germany, Schopenhauer is God and Hartmann is his prophet. The Positivism of Auguste Comte is making no progress either as doctrine or sect, for even its followers have acknowledged that its methods were too circumscribed and its aims not sufficiently high. The philosophers of France are confining their investigations to psychology, or, to be more exact, to psycho-physiology. English philosophy has lost its right to the title of metaphysics, as it has abandoned its higher task, that of seeking a satisfactory view of the world, and is only occupied by questions of secondary importance, John Stuart Mill is studying logic alone, that is to say, the doctrine of forms for human thought; Herbert Spencer is busy with social ​science—that is, the mental and moral problems which arise in social life; Bain is devoting his time to theories of education, which include the study of psychology and moral philosophy. Germany alone has a living school of metaphysics, but it is dismal and hopeless. Good Dr. Pangloss is dead and he has left no heirs behind him. Hegelism, which provided a sufficient cause for every thing and allowed its followers to convince themselves that whatever is, is logical and necessary, has followed its predecessors to the store-room for old and worn-out systems of philosophy, and the world is now attracted by that philosophy which proclaims that this intolerable universe will finally sink again into nothing, owing to the wish of all created beings and things for complete annihilation.

      This same disease of the age shows itself in the realms of political economy in a different but no less significant form. We seek in vain among the rich a feeling of security in regard to their wealth and of simple enjoyment of it; neither do we find among the poor that patient acquiescence in the poverty which appears so inevitable and unchangeable to human eyes. An undefined fear of approaching danger haunts the man of wealth; he sees a menace in the present condition of men and affairs, indistinct but none the less real, so

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