Chapter IX · REFLECTIONS ON THE FOREGOING

If now the reader will reflect calmly and dispassionately upon the arguments and facts that I have advanced in the preceding chapters, while he may find some food for thought and meditation, he cannot possibly be cheered or comforted by the conclusions to which these mental exercises will lead him. For if my facts are beyond question right, and my arguments are valid, then it seems to me that his main conclusion cannot help being very much as follows:—

That man’s zenith on earth, far from having been reached in the Recent Period, either in historic or prehistoric and Neolithic times, was attained during another geological epoch,—i.e., towards the close of the Pleistocene, in Paleolithic times.

Thus, the curve of man’s development, instead of beginning in the Pleistocene, as was for some time supposed, and rising steadily until it reached its zenith in the present age, or in our Age, must be imagined as taking its rise somewhere in Pliocene or Miocene times, a million or so years ago, reaching its maximum height in the late Pleistocene,—having dropped the races which degenerated into the higher apes on its way,—from 30,000 to 60,000 years ago, and then descending again fairly rapidly towards this or the modern Age.

This would mean that at the present moment we are simply an undulation in a rapid avalanche making speedily towards complete and utter degeneration,⁠[279] and that our knowledge of lofty things, great things, precious and valuable things,—nay, our very belief that such things can be,—is but a faint memory. It would mean that our religions are but traditional records of a greatness and a power that was once man’s, and of which, in his decline, he deified the possessors. It would also mean that the persistent idea of a personal god, or of personal gods, which has always been instinctive in men of the latest geological epoch, is the correct, true and original idea of godship or divinity, and that the modern vaporous substitutes known as the “Absolute,” the “All Pervading,” the “First Cause” (whatever this may mean) or the “All,” etc., etc., are simply signs of the enormous distance which, increasing every year, separates us from our former greatness. To attempt to replace the idea of a personal god by these vaporous makeshifts, however, is to cut the last link joining us to what was once our highest achievement.

Now although other men, among them the greatest thinker and poet of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche, have expressed the suspicion that we were in the midst of a decline; except for a highly cultivated aristocrat of French extraction named Joseph de Maistre, of the eighteenth century, no one appears to have been convinced that all savage races of the present day were the degenerate descendants of some higher stock which existed in the past. Joseph de Maistre may be wrong as to this, in a general way, but the fact that he perceived the possibility that man’s greatest Age had passed by, is certainly immensely to his credit, as is also his belief that degeneration from the original higher stock was the outcome of a transgression or perversity. He calls it “Une prévarication quelconque.”⁠[280]⁠

He implies with the subtle insight of a seer, rather than with the laboured demonstration of a scientific investigator, that if man is degraded, ignorant and exposed to evil, it cannot be by accident, but through perversity; hence his incessant scientific activity may be a devious striving to return to his original lofty state, of which he has only a faint glimmering of a recollection.⁠[281] Like Nietzsche, de Maistre was therefore of the opinion that the whole of modern mankind is but a disease.⁠[282]⁠

All our histories, all our works of science, almost all our philosophies, however, have hitherto taken the opposite view,—the view that the history of mankind consists of a series of steps, leaps and bounds, which, with certain intervals of stability or even slight retrogression, have at last brought us to the glory of the present Alexandrian Age of Science, Art, Culture, Beauty, Health and Prosperity.

There is no positive evidence for this,—on the contrary, as I have shown, all the evidence points the other way; but since things change and follow each other with time, and time does not stand still, every one, rejecting the idea of desirable stability, believes that one of two things must be taking place, either progression or retrogression. Now as the latter alternative is flattering neither to mankind in general, nor to the particular class of men—the Prometheans—who are chiefly responsible for the sort of civilisation we now possess, the former alternative has been so repeatedly endorsed by modern spirits, that it has come to be regarded almost as axiomatic.

The mistake arises out of the conception that there is only one kind of civilisation—the Promethean kind—and that all past Ages, since the Promethean crime, have been so many imperfect attempts at realising it in all its fulness, and, therefore, that all past Ages, though they are in the same line of descent with the modern Age, were not so highly civilised as the present Age.

I hope the error put in this way may become clear to the reader, as it is important that this point should be completely grasped. The error is so general, and at the same time receives so much authoritative support, that it becomes every year more difficult to expose.

I will endeavour to make it even more plain. We will imagine humanity through the Ages, simply dressing and undressing, and while so engaged, periodically changing the colour, material, shape and beauty of its garments. This, humanity has actually done, so the simile is perhaps as happy a one as could be chosen.

Now I maintain that the error of the modern scientist, philosopher and historian lies in supposing that the trousers worn by modern man, because they appear later in point of time than the hose of the sixteenth century, or the breeches of the eighteenth century, are necessarily a development of both, and therefore a higher phase of both, in which the virtues of the hose and the breeches happily coalesce, as it were, in one final and glorious manifestation of their combined individualities,—in short, that the hose of the sixteenth and the breeches of the eighteenth centuries were merely blind and clumsy attempts at realising the trousers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Against this I suggest that the hose of the sixteenth and the breeches of the eighteenth centuries have so little in common with the trousers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that any one of the three might easily have preceded the other in order of time, provided that the excessively bad taste of the nineteenth century could be imagined to have existed before it actually did exist. The former are the outcome and creation of a concept of comfort, beauty and utility, so fundamentally opposed to modern ideas that they belong to a totally different culture and civilisation, of which the present civilisation, so far from being a development, seems rather to be a flat contradiction or refutation.

To suppose that everything grows by steady and gradual steps out of everything else, is to assume a continuity which by implication is understood to advance from the imperfect to the more perfect. It does not sufficiently allow for the frequently complete arrest, or even reversal of a movement or tendency, or for the initiation of entirely fresh and unprecedented principles owing to the sudden appearance or predominance of a new type of mind. Thus to the historian there is only one kind of social order and arrangement, and that he calls “Civilisation,” and the latest form of it is always the logical and improved offspring of its preceding forms.

I hope the error is now quite plain.

It is revealed with singular ingenuousness by Tylor in the following passage:—

“It is a mere matter of chronicle that modern civilisation is a development of mediæval civilisation, which again is a development from civilisation of the order presented in Greece, Assyria, Egypt. Thus the higher [note the word ‘higher’] being clearly traced back to what may be called the middle culture, the question which remains is, whether this middle culture may be traced back to lower cultures, that is to say savagery.”⁠[283]⁠

After all I have said the reader will see immediately that to trace the development of modern civilisation, viâ mediæval civilisation, back to the civilisation of Greece, Assyria and Egypt, is about as sensible as to trace the development of the swallow’s nest back through the rabbit-warren to the ant-hill. And yet this gross error is being perpetrated with the utmost gravity and pedantry every day, every hour.⁠[284]⁠

One would not complain if the error ended there; for, after all, it would only constitute one stupidity the more in an age coruscating with stupidities. But the danger lies in the inference drawn from the argument. The average reader, after having taken in the passage by Tylor just quoted is tempted to infer that since A developed out of B, and B developed out of C, D and E; therefore A is an advance on C, D and E.

I suggest that A is not of the same nature as C, D and E, and has nothing whatsoever in common with them. In fact A has only the imperfect historical records of C, D and E, and far from being a development of them, it may even be a contradiction of them, a reversal of them, an unconscious parody of them, or a whole cultural league or two behind them.

It is true that the late Dr. Creighton, Bishop of London, frankly admits that the progressive idea in history is an assumption; but why he believes this assumption to be compulsory, I cannot think.⁠[285]⁠

The fact that in most myths the beginning of a decline is distinctly recorded; the fact, moreover, that this inception of a downward movement is connected in two of the most important myths of European peoples with a type of man which I call “Promethean” owing to the name given to the chief actor in the Greek aspect of the Degeneration Drama, points to this exceedingly interesting speculation: that survival values are possibly of two kinds, and not of one kind, and that civilisations differ from one another and follow one another in motley array, according to the type of man who happens to prevail at their inception, and subject to the kind of survival values observed by the generations of men responsible for them.

This suggestion could long ago have been read from Herbert Spencer, Darwin, or Nietzsche, or from any of the more enlightened philosophers or evolutionists. The fact that it has not been read from the works of these men shows the degree of blindness with which we are heading towards our ignominious fate.

Let me explain what I mean when I say that survival values are of two kinds.

In order to survive, a race must not commit suicide and it must procreate. It must also tend and succour the young, and its male members must not take advantage of their superior strength in order to exterminate the females.

Consequently we arrive at these four fundamental values of survival:—

1. Suicide is bad.

2. Procreation is good.

3. Succour and care of young is good.

4. The extermination of females is bad.

If any one of these survival values be persistently disobeyed by any race, it obviously cannot survive. These are not the only survival values, but they are among the most vital.

Now what is immediately noticeable about these values?

Surely the feature that chiefly characterises them is that survival alone is their object,—not a particular kind of life, but simply life is the goal. That is why they may be accurately described as merely vital survival values.

All values, then, which aim at a survival of life alone, and not of a particular kind of life, we may for convenience’ sake call “vital-survival-values.”

But there is obviously another kind of survival value. In order to survive, alone, it may be necessary to sacrifice something desirable, something noble, something beautiful. A desirable feature, or a noble feature, or even a beautiful feature, may, without making survival impossible, render it at least more difficult of achievement. It may therefore be easier, in the course of ages, for a race to abandon a desirable, a noble, or a beautiful feature, in order to simplify the problem of survival. And if there are no severe values forbidding such abandonment of desirable characteristics, these characteristics, owing to the temptation to follow the line of least resistance, run a considerable risk of being dropped on the way.

Thus as Spencer points out: “Superiority, whether in size, strength, activity, or sagacity, is, other things equal, at the cost of diminished fertility; and where the life led by a species does not demand these higher attributes, the species profits by decrease of them, and accompanying increase of fertility ... very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival.”⁠[286]⁠

This profoundly interesting passage brings out clearly what I am trying to show. Survival may mean abandoning, for convenience’ sake, some form of superiority.⁠[287] That is why, in Chapter VII., I showed, in opposition to the vulgar assumption of modernity, that success was not by any means always a sign of superiority. It is only in an age when ignorance and tastelessness coincide in forming opinion, that success, which may necessitate the abandonment of a desirable quality, is always identified with superiority.

So we come to the conclusion that there is another kind of survival value to be considered. In other words, the question which each race of men, and each man individually, has to answer is not merely: what must I do to survive? but also, what must I do if I wish to survive in a particular—a desirable—fashion?

There are æsthetic-survival-values, then, besides vital-survival-values. If a race wish to survive as an example of quality, it must not abandon certain æsthetic or spiritual attributes it possesses, in order to make survival more easy, otherwise it declines in rank, in preciousness, in worth.

In order to survive as beautiful, intelligent and well-constituted men, a race must not indulge in occupations, practices or pursuits that maim, deform or disfigure the contours of their bodies or of their faces; they must not set themselves, generation after generation, labours and problems which are beneath their standard of intelligence and character; they must not indulge in unhealthy work or pursuits.

Consequently we arrive at these three further fundamental values of survival:—

1. Deforming, maiming or disfiguring work is bad.

2. Mental and other occupations of a standard commensurate with the general level of intelligence and character, and not beneath it, are good.

3. Unhealthy occupations, practices or pursuits, are bad.

These are not the only survival values relating to the preservation of possessions other than life itself, but they are among the more important.

If any one of these survival values be persistently disobeyed, though the race may find survival easier, it will decline either in beauty, intelligence, character, or health. If all these survival values be persistently disobeyed, degeneration will rapidly supervene.

All values, then, which aim, not at a survival of life alone, but at a survival of a certain kind of life, we may for convenience’ sake call “æsthetic-survival-values,” to distinguish them from mere “vital-survival-values.”

When, therefore, life has multiplied on earth to such a great extent, that we may reckon in certain areas, as in England, Germany and Belgium for instance, that there has been an increase of several hundreds per cent. in the population within a century, and that concurrently with this increase there has been a marked decline in beauty, health, character and intelligence, we are justified in suspecting that vital-survival-values have been obeyed and observed to the exclusion of æsthetic-survival-values.

If, now, we enquire what influences have been active in bringing about this exclusive observance of vital-survival-values, and we confine our attention to Western Europe, and all tracts of country like Western Europe, we are forced to the conclusion that the immense increase in population which, beginning 250 years ago, reached its highest point of speed during the last century, has occurred under the influence of a certain very definite attitude towards life.

As I have shown elsewhere,⁠[288] the changes ushered in by the Reformation, and subsequently by the Puritan Rebellion in England, were changes deliberately and consciously pursued by a perfectly definite class of men,—a class of men, chiefly commercial and industrial, who, with the new notion of accumulating profit, as opposed to the former idea of procuring a competence or simple livelihood, exploited every kind of national resource, even their fellow-countrymen, for their own base ends. The object was to heap up ever and ever greater hoards of material gain, either in actual cash, in solid possession, or land; and in the general stampede to achieve this end, a stampede by no means over yet, no one, not even the Established Church,⁠[289] moved a finger to protect the masses who were the victims of it.

I showed also that a curious coincidence of interests occurred between these commercial and industrial innovators and the Puritans, owing to the fact that each in his own way was inclined to ignore the claims of the body. The Puritan and the commercial and industrial innovator were, moreover, frequently one and the same person.

The Puritan with his conviction that the things of body belonged to the Devil, was prone to discount the importance of food, drink, good spirits, beauty and bodily contentment. Frequently he was actively hostile both to beauty and bodily charm because both constituted a lure to life, to the joys of life, and particularly to the joys of sex. The commercial and industrial innovator, on the other hand, with his ruthless determination to exploit for the purposes of gain and “Progress” every means of production available, including his fellow-creatures, could scarcely respect the importance of health, good food, good spirits, beauty and bodily well-being, among the men, women and children he used in his production, without severely complicating and retarding the machinery by which he obtained his yield of profits. High spirits and exuberant health were even directly opposed to his schemes, for how could he expect human beings possessed of high spirits and exuberant health to submit to office or factory life?

In addition, the inventing engineer, whose one thought was to supply the eager manufacturer with ever more efficient and more rapid methods of making a good turnover, never so much as gave a thought to the moral, physical or æsthetic consequences of the innovations he unscrupulously foisted upon the world. And what was worse, there was nobody in a high place to call this smart accessory of Progress to his senses, nobody who thought of doing so, nobody who deemed it was necessary to do so.

Thus was formed that infernal trinity which, with its eyes concentrated greedily upon output and returns, disregarded absolutely the claims of humanity, and did not even know of the existence of æsthetic-survival-values.⁠[290]⁠

What took place in England and later in the whole of Western Europe, after the close of the seventeenth century, however, was only an acute and rapid development of what had been growing and spreading slowly but surely all over the Western World ever since the original Promethean crime. For it is characteristic of Prometheus and all Prometheans, that they pursue their so-called “Progress” without any regard to æsthetic-survival-values. Their only check, their only deterrent,—verily the only brake on their cruel, thoughtless wheel, which always rolls downhill to degeneration and death, is the number of Dionysians there are to oppose them.⁠[291]⁠

All essentially Promethean civilisations, even when their severity is mitigated by the presence of strong Dionysian elements, have this tendency, then, that they ignore æsthetic-survival-values altogether. We have seen what this led to in the Greeks of the prehistoric era, and how faithfully the disasters which supervened are recorded in the myths.

We know what it has led to in England, and all countries like England, and how dearly we are paying now, and shall have to pay in the future, for the deterioration of the bodies, the characters, the health and the brains of the proletariat, as the result of the besotting and devitalising duties to which an ultra-Promethean civilisation has condemned them.

On September 12th, 1918, Mr. Lloyd George spoke as follows at Manchester: “We have a Ministry of National Service and carefully compiled statistics of the health of the people between the ages of eighteen and forty-two. Now that is the age of fitness, the age of strength. You have three grades, I., II., and III., and all I can tell you is that the results of these examinations are startling, and I do not mind using the word appalling. I hardly dare tell you the results. The number of Grade II. and Grade III. men throughout the country is prodigious.”⁠[292]⁠

Since that speech was delivered, the Ministry of National Service have published a report giving details of the physical examination of men of military age by National Service Medical Boards. Of about 2,500,000 men of military age examined between November, 1917, and October, 1918, only 36 per cent. could be regarded as up to the normal standard of health and strength for their age, and more than 10 per cent. were judged as totally and permanently unfit for any form of military service. “This,” as the Daily News expressed it, “means that only one man in three was found to be normally healthy, and that one man in ten was a physical wreck.”⁠[293]⁠

This is bad enough, particularly as everybody has known for at least fifty years that if we continued in early nineteenth-century errors little else could be expected. But what really does take one’s breath away is to find the compilers of this report referring to the conclusions which are to be drawn from their depressing statements as “the nature and extent of the ravages upon the health and physique of our manhood which the progress [!] of civilisation during the nineteenth century has brought in its train.” No better evidence could be found for the misuse of that unfortunate word Progress.

The customary retort to this kind of argument is usually: “Oh, but you want to set the clock back. You cannot set the clock back!”

This remark, usually uttered with the most solemn conviction by the modern man, who regards you, while he pronounces it, with a look of such complete triumph that it is impossible to credit him even with sane doubts as to its wisdom, is, of course, only another sign of the progressive stupidity which is noticeable on all sides.

Let us analyse this remark:—

To begin with, it is based entirely upon an unfounded assumption. To argue that because a man alleges that Prometheanism is wrong, he therefore wishes to “set the clock back,” is to assume that a Promethean civilisation is the only civilisation. This, as we know, however, and as we have seen, is not true. To assume that a Promethean civilisation is the only civilisation, is equivalent to maintaining, as I have shown, that æsthetic-survival-values are not practicable; therefore, that degeneration is a fatality, an ineluctable destiny, something that we cannot avert or arrest. But Dionysians stoutly deny that degeneration is inevitable. They regard the very claim that degeneration is inevitable only as one of the many lame apologies advanced by the Promethean after he has thoroughly degraded the world.

Secondly, the remark is based upon ignorance of what has been achieved in the past. To argue that because a man alleges that Prometheanism is wrong, he therefore wishes to set the clock back, is to assume that Prometheanism has set the clock forward,—that is to say, that there has been something more than mere change, complication and degradation, since Prometheanism became supreme, that there has actually been “Progress” or “advancement.”

Advancement in what? Advancement towards what? Is humanity happier, healthier, more pleasing to look at? Is intelligence greater: has character become more admirable? These are the very directions in which marked degradation is to be observed. I have shown that the wave of man’s “advancement” reached its zenith when the gods walked on earth. How can the Promethean claim to have set the clock forward? The very claim that Prometheanism is wrong,—and that it is wrong is being discovered in the greatest variety of ways by almost everybody to-day,—may indeed amount to setting the clock forward (if the phrase has any meaning at all, which I doubt). Forward to what?—Forward to an era when Prometheanism will be controlled, subordinated, subjugated, managed.

Thirdly, for some reason dishonestly withheld by him who makes it, this remark implies that “back,” “setting the clock back,” is necessarily something prohibited or impracticable. There is a deceitful innuendo in the remark, the result of the false analogy between a set of wheels constituting a piece of clockwork and a civilisation (the two, as a matter of fact, have nothing except their initial letter and the letter L in common)—which leads the unfortunate debater, to whom it is said, to believe, if he be unwary, that seeing that setting the clock back is an absolutely futile thing to do, therefore a civilisation cannot be saved, or changed, by the revival or reimposition of some principle or attitude to life which belongs to the past. The falseness of the analogy is obvious at once when put in this light; but, as I have said, the solemn modern sage who makes the remark, “You cannot set the clock back,” pronounces it with such bland and truculent conviction, that, unless he be on his guard, his opponent is reduced to reluctant and rancorous silence.

Thus, it is plain that this remark does credit neither to him who makes it, nor to him who allows it to confound him. And yet such is the low level of intellectual development of our day, that there is scarcely one man in a thousand in modern Europe who will not make use of this remark in opposing a bitter, pitiless and offensive controversialist like myself; and not one in five thousand who will not expect me to be utterly defeated by it.

It is the suggestion that a backward movement is necessarily a useless movement, however, which is the error involved in this remark. Setting the clock back is known to be useless unless it be done in the case of a clock that is fast. But all “going back” is not useless. For instance, an invalid may get back to the health which he enjoyed in former years. A hypochondriac may go back to the cheerfulness which was his in adolescence. An insolvent firm may go back to the prosperity which was its pride in a previous generation. In short, man can reculer pour mieux sauter.

If a diversity of human types be admitted as a fact,—and it seems difficult to deny that there is such a diversity,—then, according to the conditions favouring either one type or another, a generation may be either prosperous, healthy and wise, or indigent, unhealthy and stupid. Going back, therefore, to the habits, outlook and virtues of a former generation, does not necessarily constitute a retrograde step: it may constitute a distinct advance.

When, therefore, I deny the validity of the objection contained in the popular but foolish phrase, “You cannot set the clock back,” I merely wish to emphasise the importance of enquiring what kind of man, what type of man, is responsible for our present civilisation, and whether there is not a better civilisation to which we might return, if the supremacy of a different type could be encouraged and cultivated. And it must not be supposed that this other type would necessarily be hostile to science or to discovery; it would, however, promote science and discovery in a different way, with at least a careful observance of æsthetic-survival-values, for instance; and would never consent, as the Prometheans have repeatedly done, to the sacrifice of humanity to “Progress.”⁠[294]⁠

The necessity of enquiring earnestly into the type which is predominant to-day, however, has become all the more pressing in view of certain recent developments in Western civilisation, which lead one strongly to suspect that a certain old enemy of man, feeling his power more secure than it has ever been before, has now determined upon an extreme venture.

From the very nature of his latest move, apart from the other signs of his identity, we suspect the Prometheans to be behind this new movement; for it is radically anti-Dionysian both in its intention and its measures.

In plain English, the Prohibition campaign, both in America and this country, is simply an attempt to fling us back into the grey misery of a Promethean civilisation, without either the solace or the therapeutic safeguards of the doctrine of Dionysus.

It is a further proof, if any were needed, of the undeviating consistency with which a type pursues its object, undeterred by considerations or thoughts alien to the class of mind with which it is endowed; and it behoves all those who recognise the danger of the movement, not only to fight it wholeheartedly, but also to set in question the whole nature of the supremacy which has led to its partial success.

If I understand aright what has taken place in America, it is this: an inhuman calculation has been undertaken by the heads of industry and commerce there,—for there are no other “heads” in the United States. Sitting in solemn conclave, with their attention concentrated, as described above, only upon output and turnover, and upon the best means of increasing both, the human factor in their infernal processes of production has been treated only as a cog in a machine, as a necessary evil with which one has to reckon only on the basis of profit and loss. No æsthetic-survival-values ever for one instant troubled the mind of an American. Even after reading this chapter, he would not understand what the term meant.—And then a curious phenomenon was discovered. It amounted to this: that those human machines who were not vitiated by poisonous modern “commercial” beers, or alcoholic beverages, worked best. At least this was alleged; and, in view of the potency of the poisons which profiteers, American and otherwise, do sell as intoxicating liquor, it is not surprising. This momentous discovery would, you might have thought, have led to a rigorous enquiry into the reason why modern “commercial” beers and alcoholic beverages are poisonous, or at best neither invigorating nor inspiriting. At least it might have led to an attempt to defeat the evil at its root, which is the corruption and inhuman profiteering on the part of the producers of the people’s drinks.

Not a bit of it! This is indeed how men would have behaved who had the welfare of humanity at heart, who knew the many benefits, both spiritual and physical, which good ale and good wine could confer; and who were conscientiously endeavouring to observe and apply æsthetic-survival-values in their own country.

But these magnates of industry,—hence the tragic futility of a business government,—are never concerned with humanity. Nothing and no one ever defiled by Prometheanism, ever is concerned with humanity. They were concerned with a very different object, an object very remote indeed from æsthetic-survival-values: it was the result known as business and industrial efficiency. No matter whether character, soul, spirit, beauty or health were ultimately undermined by the besotting labours which this greater efficiency was expected to speed up,—what have character, soul, spirit, beauty or health to do with output and return? The object was not that humanity should be made more dignified, more noble, more beautiful, more worthy of its great past; but that the majority of the workmen should have their last vestige of remaining health and sanity preserved from the poisonous concoctions of these magnates’ unscrupulous counterparts in the liquor trade; because blood-poisoning would constitute an extra obstacle in the road to efficiency.

Hence the Prohibition Laws.

What was the alternative?

Reform the liquor trade, so that the liquor absorbed by the mass of the people might recover those invigorating, health-promoting, health-protecting and inspiriting qualities that it once possessed?

Certainly not! This would be worse than the status quo ante; this, above all things, must be avoided!

Why?

Because people who are spirited, healthy, bright, vigorous, and bold, and confident with that inner contentment and inner warmth, created ever since the Promethean crime only by good, wholesome, fermented liquor,—such people are not abject, they are difficult to dragoon, to enslave, and above all to abuse. Such people do not tolerate for long the jading and besotting high speed of an efficient modern factory; they too strongly resemble the old peasantry of England, the redoubtable bowmen of England, who were the terror of the Continent—the men who stood and conquered when they were but one to fifteen at Poictiers and one to five at Agincourt. Such men must be led, they will not be driven. They must be mastered by an appeal to their imaginations and their understanding; they cannot be mustered by the shriek of a siren.

No, this would be worse than the status quo ante; this above all things must be avoided!

The fact that this heartless and anti-Dionysian conclusion should have been reached in the United States of America can surprise no one. What are the United States of America? Apart from the worthier elements which constitute quite a small minority, I mean the non-Puritanical colonists of Elizabeth’s and the early Stuarts’ reigns,—the backbone of the population consists of the descendants of renegade Puritans of the seventeenth century (who fled their country for their country’s good) reinforced by the slave-drivers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and mixed with the blood of all the people of Europe and Asia. What is their principal achievement? Is it Art?—Letters?—Philosophy?—Learning?

No, it is Machinery! Puritanism, slave-driving and machinery,—the three characteristic features of all late Promethean civilisations.

Verily this can be no morbid hallucination, no empty spook, this alleged hostility of the Promethean type to mortals. I have traced it now from prehistoric times, through the bedimmed and faded records of the Greek myths, down to our own seventeenth, eighteenth and particularly nineteenth centuries. The records of other civilisations, like those of the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Hindus, the Babylonians, the Incas of Peru, are accessible now, and the balance struck in all these cultures, between the Promethean and the Dionysian types, can be seen and learnt by all who wish to do so. It will be observed that others have succeeded where we have most signally failed, in checking, controlling, correcting and averting the worst consequences of the Promethean type’s thoughtless clamour for complexity without discipline, for “Progress” without order or desirability, and for mere change without any genuine and lasting advantage; and while it may be impossible and even inexpedient to imitate these other civilisations in their results and actual fruits, it is always possible at least to emulate them in their spirit and their aims, and to begin at once by suspecting the plausible and still dazzling claims of our triumphant Prometheans.

For Prometheanism is implacable because it is unconscious; it is persistent, because it repeats itself not as a policy but as a type; it is pitiless, because it believes that it is the highest manifestation of the human species on earth in all ages, and that its predominance cannot therefore fail to be the design of the Almighty; finally, it is elusive, because it is too innocent in its devilry, too well-meaning in its dangerous stupidity, and too theatrical in its result, ever to have the whole front of its millions of victims actively opposed to it.

If the situation were hopeless, however, I should have served but a very doubtful purpose in writing this essay. The history that I have related contains at least two instances of the defeat of the Prometheans’ most nefarious schemes by two mighty figures who have come down to us under the names of Zeus and Dionysus. As I have said, from time to time, at certain turning-points in human history, when things have become not only too intolerable to continue, but actually too impossible to last, it is the Dionysians who have hitherto produced men who were called upon to set right the diabolical muddles to which the Prometheans and their vices have always given rise. It may be confidently expected, therefore, that the Dionysians will not fail us when the great turning-point reappears again: but that this turning-point does not seem as if it could be very far off, though signs of a coming Saviour are not immediately discernible, are facts that even the most optimistic Promethean himself could not very well venture to deny.

“It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the germ of his highest hope.

“His soil is still rich enough for that purpose. But that soil will one day be too poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow thereon.”

Thus Spake Zarathustra.

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