Friedrich von Schiller: Letters upon the esthetic education of Man (1759-1805)

            Letter III

MAN is not better treated by nature in his first start than her other works are; so long as he is unable to act for himself as an independent intelligence, she acts for him. But the very fact that constitutes him a man is, that he does not remain stationary, where nature has placed him, that he can pass with his reason, retracing the steps nature had made him anticipate, that he can convert the work of necessity into one of free solution, and elevate physical necessity into a moral law.   When man is raised from his slumber in the senses, he feels that he is a man, he surveys his surroundings, and finds that he is in a state. He was introduced into this state, by the power of circumstances, before he could freely select his own position. But as a moral being he cannot possibly rest satisfied with a political condition forced upon him by necessity, and only calculated for that condition; and it would be unfortunate if this did satisfy him. In many cases man shakes off this blind law of necessity, by his free spontaneous action, of which among many others we have an instance, in his ennobling by beauty and suppressing by moral influence the powerful impulse implanted in him by nature in the passion of love. Thus, when arrived at maturity, he recovers his childhood by an artificial process, he founds a state of nature in his ideas, not given him by any experience, but established by the necessary laws and conditions of his reason, and he attributes to this ideal condition an object, an aim, of which he was not cognisant in the actual reality of nature. He gives himself a choice of which he was not capable before, and sets to work just as if he were beginning anew, and were exchanging his original state of bondage for one of complete independence, doing this with complete insight and of his free decision. He is justified in regarding this work of political thraldom as non-existing, though a wild and arbitrary caprice may have founded its work very artfully; though it may strive to maintain it with great arrogance and encompass it with a halo of veneration. For the work of blind powers possesses no authority, before which freedom need bow, and all must be made to adapt itself to the highest end which reason has set up in his personality. It is in this wise that a people in a state of manhood is justified in exchanging a condition of thraldom for one of moral freedom.        

  

Now the term natural condition can be applied to every political body which owes its establishment originally to forces and not to laws, and such a state contradicts the moral nature of man, because lawfulness can alone have authority over this. At the same time this natural condition is quite sufficient for the physical man, who only gives himself laws in order to get rid of brute force. Moreover, the physical man is a reality, and the moral man problematical. Therefore when the reason suppresses the natural condition, as she must if she wishes to substitute her own, she weighs the real physical man against the problematical moral man, she weighs the existence of society against a possible, though morally necessary, ideal of society. She takes from man something which he really possesses, and without which he possesses nothing, and refers him as a substitute to something that he ought to posses and might possess; and if reason had relied too exclusively on him, she might, in order to secure him a state of humanity in which he is wanting and can want without injury to his life, have robbed him even of the means of animal existence which is the first necessary condition of his being a man. Before he had opportunity to hold firm to the law with his will, reason would have withdrawn from his feet the ladder of nature.       

  

The great point is therefore to reconcile these two considerations: to prevent physical society from ceasing for a moment in time, while the moral society is being formed in the idea; in other words, to prevent its existence from being placed in jeopardy, for the sake of the moral dignity of man. When the mechanic has to mend a watch, he lets the wheels run out, but the living watchworks of the state have to be repaired while they act, and a wheel has to be exchanged for another during its revolutions. Accordingly props must be sought for to support society and keep it going while it is made independent of the natural condition from which it is sought to emancipate it.           

  

This prop is not found in the natural character of man, who, being selfish and violent, directs his energies rather to the destruction than to the preservation of society. Nor is it found in his moral character, which has to be formed, which can never be worked upon or calculated on by the lawgiver, because it is free and never appears. It would seem therefore that another measure must be adopted. It would seem that the physical character of the arbitrary must be separated from moral freedom; that it is incumbent to make the former harmonize with the laws and the latter dependent on impressions; it would be expedient to remove the former still farther from matter and to bring the latter somewhat more near to it; in short to produce a third character related to both the others—the physical and the moral—paving the way to a transition from the sway of mere force to that of law, without preventing the proper development of the moral character, but serving rather as a pledge in the sensuous sphere of a morality in the unseen. 

Friedrich Nietzsche: Ecce Homo (1888)

 How One becomes 

            What One Is 

I now wish to relate the history of Zarathustra.  The fundamental idea of the work, the Eternal Recurrence, the highest formula of a life affirmation that can ever be attained was first conceived in the month of August 1881.  I made a note of the idea on a sheet of paper with the postscript: "Six thousand feet beyond man and time”.  That day I happened to be wandering through the woods beside the Lake of Silvaplana and 1 halted not far from Surlei beside a huge pyramidal block of stone.  It was then that the thought struck me.  Looking back now I find that exactly two months before this inspiration I had an omen of its coming in the form of a sudden and decisive change in my tastes—more particularly in music.  The whole of Zarathustra might perhaps be regarded as music.  At all events the essential condition of its production was a second birth within me— of the art of hearing.  In Recoaro a small mountain resort near Vicenza where I spent the spring of 1881, and my friend and maestro Peter Gast—who was also one who had been born again, discovered that the phoenix music hovered over us in lighter and brighter plumage than it had ever worn before.  When I then calculate from that day forward, the sudden production of the book under the most unlikely circumstances in February 1883—the last part out of which I quoted a few lines in my preface was written precisely in the hallowed hour when Richard Wagner died in Venice—I come to the conclusion that the period of gestation covered eighteen months. This period of exactly eighteen months might suggest at least to Buddhists that  I am in reality a female elephant.  The interval was devoted to the Gaya Scienza which contains hundreds of indications of the proximity of something unparalleled; for after all, it shows the beginning of Zarathustra since it presents Zarathustra’s fundamental thought in the last aphorism but one of the fourth book.  To this interval also belongs that Hymn to Life (for a mixed choir and orchestra) the score of which was published in Leipzig two years ago by E.  W.  Fritsch and which gave perhaps no slight indication of my spiritual state during this year in which the essentially affirmative pathos which I call the tragic pathos filled me to the highest degree.  One day people will sing it to my memory.  The text, let it be well understood— as there is some misunderstanding about this point— is not by me; it was the astounding inspiration of a young Russian lady Miss Lou von Salome with whom I was then on friendly terms.  He who is in any way able to make some sense of the last words of the poem will divine why I preferred and admired it: they possess greatness.   Pain is not regarded as an objection to existence: "And if you have no happiness now left to crown me—Lead on!  You have still your pain”.  Perhaps my music is also great in this passage.  (The last note of the clarinet is by the way C sharp not C.  The latter is a misprint.)  


During the following winter I was living on that charmingly peaceful Gulf of Rapallo not far from Genoa which cuts inland between Chiavari and Cape Porto Fino.  My health was not very good; the winter was cold and exceptionally rainy; and the small albergo in which I lived was so close to the sea that at night my sleep was disturbed if the sea was rough.  These circumstances were surely the very opposite of what one would desire; and yet in spite of it all and as if in proof of my belief that everything decisive comes to life in defiance of every obstacle, it was precisely during this winter and in the midst of these unfavourable circumstances that my Zarathustra came into existence.  In the morning I used to start out in a southerly direction up the glorious road to Zoagli which rises up through a forest of pines and gives one a view far out to sea.  In the afternoon or as often as my health allowed I walked round the entire bay from Santa Margherita to beyond Porto Fino.  This spot affected me all the more deeply because it was so dearly loved by the Emperor Frederick III.  In the autumn of 1886  I chanced to be there again when he was revisiting this small forgotten world of happiness for the last time.  It was on these two walks that all Zarathustra came to me, above all Zarathustra himself as a type—I ought rather to say that it was on these walks that he waylaid me. 

2.

To understand this type one must first be quite clear concerning its fundamental physiological condition; this condition is what I call great health.  In regard to this ideal I cannot illustrate the concept more clearly or more personally than I have done already in one of the last aphorisms (No.  382) of the fifth book of the Gaya Scienza: "We new, nameless, ill-understood” so reads the passage, "we premature born, of a future yet unproved—we who have a new goal in view also require new means to that end, namely a new healthiness, a stronger, keener, tougher, bolder and merrier healthiness than any that has existed before.  He who longs to feel in his own soul the whole range of values and aims that have prevailed on earth and to have sailed around every coast of this ‘Mediterranean’ of ideals; who from the adventures of his own inmost experience wants to know how it feels to be a conqueror and discoverer of the ideal;—as also how feels an artist, the saint, legislator, sage, scholar, a man of piety and the divine Hermit of old;—such a man requires one thing above all for his purpose and that is great health—such health as he not only possesses but also must constantly acquire because he is continually sacrificing it again and again!  And now, after having been thus underway for some time, we Argonauts of the ideal, whose bravery is greater than prudence would allow and who are often shipwrecked and bruised but as I have said, healthier than others would like us to be, dangerously healthy, forever recovering our health—it would seem as if we had before us as a reward for all our toils a country still undiscovered the horizon of which no one has yet seen, a land beyond all lands and every refuge of the ideal that man has ever known, a world so overflowing with beauty, strangeness, doubt, the terrible and the divine that both our curiosity and our lust of possession are frantic with eagerness.  How, in the face of such vistas and with such burning desire in our conscience and knowledge could we still be content with the man of the present day?  Indeed, it is difficult to regard his worthiest aims and hopes with anything but ill-concealed amusement or perhaps it is inevitable that we give them no thought at all.  Another ideal now leads us on, a wonderful seductive ideal full of danger, the pursuit of which we would not want to urge upon anyone because we do not readily admit of anyone’s right to it: the ideal of a spirit who plays ingenuously, that is to say, involuntarily and as the outcome of superabundant energy and power, with everything that hitherto has been called holy, good, sacrosanct and divine; to whom even the loftiest thing that the people have with reason made their measure of value would be no better than a danger, a corruption, a degradation or at least a relaxation and temporary forgetfulness of self: the ideal of a humanly superhuman well-being and goodwill which often enough will seem inhuman—for example, when it stands beside all past seriousness on earth and all past solemnities in gesture, word, tone, glance, morality and task as their most lifelike and unconscious parody—but with which, perhaps the great seriousness first arises, the first question mark is placed, the fate of the soul changes course, the hour hand moves on, and tragedy begins”. 

3.

Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration?  If not, I will describe it.  If you had the slightest residue of superstition left in you it would hardly be possible to completely disregard the idea that one is the mere incarnation, a mouthpiece or a medium of an almighty power.  The idea of revelation in the sense of something which profoundly moves and provokes, becoming suddenly visible and audible with indescribable certainty and accuracy—is a simple description.  You hear—you do not seek; you take—and do not ask who gives: a thought suddenly flashes up like lightning, it comes as a necessity, without hesitation—I have never had any choice in the matter.  There is an ecstasy so great that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears during which one does not know whether one is coming or going.  There is the feeling of completely being outside of oneself, with the very distinct consciousness of endless delicate shivers right down to one’s toes;—there is a depth of happiness in which the most painful and gloomy parts do not detract from the whole but are produced and required as necessary shades of colour amidst such an overflow of light.  There is an instinct for rhythmical relationships which embrace a whole world of forms: length, the need of an all-embracing rhythm, is almost the measure of the force of inspiration, a kind of compensation for its pressure and tension.  Everything happens quite involuntarily as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom of absolute power and divinity.  The involuntary nature of the images and similes is the most remarkable thing; one loses all perception of what is imagery and metaphor; everything seems to present itself in the readiest, the truest and simplest means of expression.  It actually seems, to use one of Zarathustra’s own phrases, as if all things came together and offered themselves as images.  ("Here do all things come caressingly to your discourse and flatter you for they would wish to ride upon your back.  On every simile you rid here unto every truth.  Here fly open to you all the speech and word shrines of the world, here would all existence become speech, here would all Becoming learn of you how to speak”.)  This is my experience of inspiration.  I do not doubt but that I should have to go back thousands of years before I could find another who could say to me: "It is mine also”! 

4.

For a few weeks afterwards I lay an invalid in Genoa.  Then followed a melancholy spring in Rome where I only just managed to live—and this was no easy matter.  This city which is absolutely unsuited to the poet-author of Zarathustra and for the choice of which I was not responsible made me absolutely miserable.  I tried to leave it.  I wanted to go to Aquila—the opposite of Rome in every respect and actually founded in a spirit of hostility towards that city just as I also shall found a city some day as a memento of an atheist and genuine enemy of the Church, a person very closely related to me, the great Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II.  But Fate hung heavy over all: I had to return again to Rome.  In the end I was obliged to be satisfied with the Piazza Barberini after I had exerted myself in vain to find an anti-Christian quarter.  I fear that on one occasion to avoid bad smells as much as possible I actually inquired at the Palazzo del Quirinale whether they could not provide a quiet room for a philosopher.  In a chamber high above the Piazza from which one had a good view of Rome and could hear the fountains splashing far below the loneliest of all songs was composed—The Night Song”.  About this time I was obsessed by an unspeakably sad melody the refrain of which I recognized in the words "dead through immortality”.  In the summer, finding myself once more in the sacred place where the first thought of Zarathustra flashed like a light across my mind I conceived the second part.  Ten days were enough.  Neither for the second, the first, nor the third part did I require a day longer.  In the ensuing winter beneath the halcyon sky of Nice which then for the first time poured its light into my life I found the third Zarathustra—and came to the end of my task: the whole task having occupied me scarcely a year.  Many hidden corners and heights in the country round Nice are made sacred for me by moments that I can never forget.  That decisive chapter entitled "Old and New Tables” was composed during the arduous ascent from the station Tol Eza—that wonderful Moorish hill castle in the rocks.  During those moments when my creative energy flowed most plentifully my muscular activity was always greatest.  The body is inspired: let us leave the question of "soul” out of it.  I might often have been seen dancing in those days and I could then walk for seven or eight hours on end over the hills without a suggestion of fatigue.  I slept well and laughed a good deal—I was perfectly robust and patient. 

5.

With the exception of these periods of industry lasting ten days the years I spent during the production of Zarathustra and those after were for me years of unparalleled distress.  One pays dearly for being immortal: one must die many times during his life.  There is such a thing as what I call the rancour of greatness: everything great, whether a work or a deed once it is completed turns immediately against its author.  The very fact that he is its author makes him weak.  He can no longer bear his own deeds.  He can no longer look it full in the face.  To have something at one’s back which one could never have willed, something to which the knot of human destiny is attached—and to be forced afterwards to bear it on one’s shoulders!  It almost crushes you!  The rancour of greatness!  A somewhat different experience is the uncanny silence that falls about one.  Solitude has seven skins— which nothing can penetrate.  One goes among men; one greets friends: but are met with a desert, the looks of those one meets no longer bear a greeting.  At the best one encounters a sort of revolt.  This feeling of revolt I suffered in varying degrees of intensity at the hands of almost everyone who came near me; it would seem that nothing inflicts a deeper wound than suddenly to make one’s distance felt.  Those noble natures are scarce who do not know how to live without reverence.  A third thing is the absurd susceptibility of the skin to small pin-pricks, a kind of helplessness in the presence of all small matters.  This seems to me a necessary outcome of the tremendous expenditure of all defensive energies which is the first condition of every creative act, of every act which comes from the most intimate, most secret and most concealed recesses of one’s being.  One’s lesser defences are thus as it were suspended and no fresh energy reaches them.  I even think it probable that one does not digest so well, that one is less willing to move and that one is much too open to sensations of coldness and suspicion; for in a large number of cases suspicion is merely an error in etiology.  On one occasion when I felt like this I became conscious of the proximity of a herd of cows some time before I could possibly have seen it with my eyes simply owing to a return in me of milder and more humane sentiments: they communicated warmth to me. 

6.

This work stands alone.  Do not let us mention the poets in the same breath: nothing perhaps has ever been produced out of such a superabundance of strength.  My concept "Dionysian” here became the supreme deed; compared with it everything that other men have done seems poor and limited.  The fact that a Goethe or a Shakespeare would not for an instant have known how to take breath in this atmosphere of passion and of the heights; the fact that by the side of Zarathustra Dante is no more than a believer and not one who first creates truth—that is to say not a world-ruling spirit, a Destiny; the fact that the poets of the Veda were priests and not even fit to unfasten Zarathustra’s sandals—all this is the least of the matter and gives no idea of the distance, of the azure solitude in which this work dwells.  Zarathustra has an eternal right to say: "I draw around me circles and holy boundaries.  Ever fewer are they that mount with me to ever loftier heights.  I build a mountain range of holier and holier mountains”.  If all the spirit and goodness of every great soul were collected together the whole could not create a single one of Zarathustra’s discourses.  The ladder upon which he rises and descends is of infinite length; he has seen further, he has willed further and gone further than any other man.  He contradicts with every word that he utters, this most affirmative of all spirits.  Through him all contradictions are bound up into a new unity.  The loftiest and the basest powers of human nature, the sweetest, the lightest and the most terrible rush forth from out one spring with everlasting certainty.  Until his coming no one knew what was height or depth and still less what was truth.  There is not a single passage in this revelation of truth which had already been anticipated and divined by even the greatest among men.  Before Zarathustra there was no wisdom, no psychology, no art of speech: in his book the most familiar and most everyday things speak of things as yet unheard.  The sentence quivers with passion.  Eloquence has become music.  Lightning bolts are hurled towards futures of which no one has ever dreamed before.  The most powerful use of metaphor that has yet existed is poor beside it and mere child’s play compared with this return of language to the nature of imagery.  See how Zarathustra goes down from the mountain and speaks the kindest words to every one!  See with what delicate fingers he touches even his adversaries the priests and how he suffers from themselves with them!  Here at every moment man is overcome and the concept "Superman” becomes the greatest reality—out of sight, almost far away beneath him lies all that which before has been called great in man.  The halcyon brightness, the light feet, the presence of wickedness and exuberance throughout and all that is the essence of the type Zarathustra was never dreamt of before as a prerequisite of greatness.  In precisely this space and in this accessibility to opposites Zarathustra feels himself the highest species of all living things: and when you hear his definition of this highest you will realize that his equal will not be found.  "The soul which has the longest ladder and can descend the deepest, The most spacious soul that can run and stray and rove furthest in its own self, The most necessary soul that out of desire hurls itself into chance, The stable soul that plunges into Becoming, the possessing soul that has to taste of willing and longing— The soul that flies from itself and overtakes itself in the widest sphere, The wisest soul to which foolishness speaks most sweetly, The most self-loving soul in whom all things have their rise and fall, their ebb and flow”— But this is the very idea of Dionysus.  Another consideration leads to this same conclusion.  The psychological problem presented by the type of Zarathustra is how he, who in an unprecedented manner says no and acts no in regard to all that which has been affirmed hitherto, how he can remain nevertheless an affirming spirit?  How can he who bears the heaviest destiny on his shoulders and whose very life task is a destiny yet be the lightest and the most transcending of spirits—for Zarathustra is a dancer?  How can he who has the harshest and most fearful grasp of reality and who has thought the most "abysmal thought” nevertheless avoid taking these things as objections to existence or even as objections to the eternal recurrence of existence?  How is it that on the contrary he finds reasons for being himself the eternal affirmation of all things, "the tremendous and unbounded saying of Yea and Amen”.  "Into every abyss I still bear the blessing of my affirmation to Life”.  But this once more is precisely the idea of Dionysus. 

7.

What language will such a spirit speak when he speaks unto his soul?  The language of the dithyramb.  I am the inventor of the dithyramb.  Listen to the manner in which Zarathustra speaks to his soul Before Sunrise.  Before my time such emerald joys and divine tenderness had found no tongue.  Even the profoundest melancholy of such a Dionysus takes shape as a dithyramb.  As an example of this I take "The Night Song”—the immortal lament of one who, thanks to his superabundance of light and power, thanks to his nature as a sun, is condemned never to love.  It is night: now do all gushing springs raise their voices.  And my soul too is a gushing spring.  It is night: now only do all lovers burst into song.  And my soul too is the song of a lover.  Something unquenched and unquenchable is within me that would raise its voice.  A craving for love is within me which itself speaks the language of love.  Light I am: I would that I were night!  This is my loneliness, that I am girded around with light.  Alas, why am I not dark and hidden like the night!  How joyfully would I then suck at the breasts of light!  And even you would I bless, you twinkling little stars and glow worms on high!  And be blessed in the gifts of your light.  But I live in my own light, I drink my own flames ever back into myself.  I know not the happiness of the hand stretched out to grasp; and often have I dreamt that stealing must be more blessed than taking.  I am forlorn that my hand may never rest from giving: I am destined to be envious of the expectant eyes that I see and nights made bright with longing.  Oh, the wretchedness of all those that give!  Oh, the eclipse of my sun!  The craving for desire!  That burning hunger of satiety!  They take what I give them; but do I touch their soul?  A gulf stands between giving and taking; and even the smallest gulf must be bridged at last.  A hunger is born out of my beauty: I wish that I might rob them of the gifts I have given:—thus do I thirst for wickedness.  To withdraw my hand when their hand is already waiting, hesitating like the waterfall that hesitates even in its fall:—thus do I thirst for wickedness.  My fullness longs for such vengeance: my loneliness gives birth to such spite.  My joy in giving died with the deed.  By its very fulfilment did my virtue grow weary of itself.  He who gives always runs the risk that he will lose all shame; he who is always giving grows callous in hand and heart.  My eyes no longer melt into tears at the shame of suppliants; my hand has become too hard to feel the quivering of heavy laden hands.  To where have you fled the tears of my eyes and the blossom of my heart?  Oh, the solitude of all those who give!  Oh the silence of all that give out light!  There are many suns that circle in the barrenness of space; they have discourse with the darkness—to me alone are they silent.  Alas, this is the hatred of light for that which gives light: pitiless it goes its way.  Unjust in its very heart to all that shines; coldness toward suns—thus does every sun go its way.  Like a storm do the suns fly upon their course: for such is their way.  They follow their own unbending will: that is their coldness.  Alas, it is you alone, you creatures of gloom, you spirits of the night that take your warmth from that which shines.  You alone take your milk and comfort from the breast of light.  Alas, about me there is ice, its coldness burns my hands!  Alas, there is within me a yearning to have your thirst!  It is night: I am sad that I must be light!  And thirst after darkness!  And for solitude!  It is night: now does my longing burst forth like a spring—I long to speak.  It is night: now do all gushing springs try their voices.  And my soul too is a gushing spring.  It is night: now only do all lovers burst into song.  And my soul too is the song of a lover”. 

8.

Such things have never before been written, never before been felt and never suffered: only a God, only Dionysus suffers in this way.  The reply to such a dithyramb on the sun’s solitude in light would be Ariadne.  Who knows except me who Ariadne is!  To all such riddles no one has ever found an answer; I doubt even whether anyone even saw a riddle here.  On one occasion Zarathustra clearly sets out his life-task—and it is also mine.  Let no one misunderstand its meaning.  It is an affirmation to the point of justifying, to the point of redeeming even the entire past.  I walk among men as among fragments of the future: of that future which I foresee.  And all my creativeness and labour is but this, that I may be able to compose all these fragments and riddles and sorry accidents into one piece.  And how could I bear to be a man if man were not also a poet, a riddle reader and a redeemer of chance!  To redeem all the past and to transform every ‘it was” into ‘thus would I have it’—that alone would be my salvation!  In another passage he defines as strictly as possible what to him alone "man” can be—not a subject for love nor yet for pity—Zarathustra became master even of his loathing of man: man is to him a thing unshaped, raw material, unworked stone that needs the sculptor’s chisel.  No longer to will, no longer to evaluate, no longer to create!  Oh, that this great weariness may never be mine!  Even in the lust of knowledge I feel only my will’s delight in begetting and becoming; and if there be innocence in my knowledge it is because my procreative will is in it.  Away from God and gods did this will lure me: what would there be to create if gods existed?  But again to man am I driven by my burning creative will; thus it drives the hammer to the stone.  Ah, you men within the stone, there sleeps an image for me, the image of all my dreams!  That it should have to sleep in the hardest and ugliest stone!  Now rages my hammer fiercely against its prison.  From the stone the fragments fly: and what is that to me?  I will complete it: for a shadow came to me—the most silent and lightest thing on earth came unto me!  The beauty of the Superman came unto me as a shadow.  My brethren!  What are the gods to me now?  Let me call attention to one last point.  The line in italics is my pretext for this remark.  A Dionysian life task needs the hardness of the hammer and one of its first essentials is without doubt the joy to be found even in destruction.  The command ‘become hard! ’, the deep conviction that all creators are hard, is the really distinctive sign of a Dionysian nature.

Nikos Kazantzakis: The Saviors of God (1923)

The Relationship 
           between God 
                      and Man

THE ULTIMATE most holy form of theory is action. Not to look on passively while the spark leaps from generation to generation, but to leap and to burn with it! Action is the widest gate of deliverance. It alone can answer the questionings of the heart. Amid the labyrinthine complexities of the mind it finds the shortest route. No, it does not "find" - it creates its way, hewing to right and left through resistances of logic and matter. Why did you struggle behind phenomena to track down the Invisible? What was the purpose of all your warlike, your erotic march through flesh, race, man, plants, and animals? Why the mystic marriage beyond these labors, the perfect embracement, the bacchic and raging contact in darkness and in light? That you might reach the point from which you began - the ephemeral, palpitating, mysterious point of your existence - with new eyes, with new ears, with a new sense of taste, smell, touch, with new brains. Our profound human duty is not to interpret or to cast light on the rhythm of God's arch, but to adjust, as much as we can, the rhythm of our small and fleeting life to his. Only thus may we mortals succeed in achieving something immortal, because then we collaborate with One who is Deathless. Only thus may we conquer mortal sin, the concentration on details, the narrowness of our brains; only thus may we transubstantiate into freedom the slavery of earthen matter given us to mold.

Amid all these things, beyond all these things every man and nation, every plant and animal, every god and demon, charges upward like an army inflamed by an incomprehensible, unconquerable Spirit. We struggle to make this Spirit visible, to give it a face, to encase it in words, in allegories and thoughts and incantations, that it may not escape us. But it cannot be contained in the twenty six letters of an alphabet which we string out in rows; we know that all these words, these allegories, these thoughts, and these incantations are, once more, but a new mask with which to conceal the Abyss.

Yet only in this manner, by confining immensity, may we labor within the newly incised circle of humanity. What do we mean by "labor"? To fill up this circle with desires, with anxieties, and with deeds; to spread out and reach frontiers until, no longer able to contain us, they crack and collapse. By thus working with appearances, we widen and increase the essence. For this reason our return to appearances, after our contact with essence, possesses an incalculable worth.

We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence.

But we have named it God because only this name, for primordial reasons, can stir our hearts profoundly. And this deeply felt emotion is indispensable if we are to touch, body with body, the dread essence beyond logic. Within this gigantic circle of divinity we are in duty bound to separate and perceive clearly the small, burning arc of our epoch. On this barely perceptible flaming curve, feeling the onrush of the entire circle profoundly and mystically, we travel in harmony with the Universe, we gain impetus and dash into battle. Thus, by consciously following the onrush of the Universe, our ephemeral action does not die with us.

It does not become lost in a mystical and passive contemplation of the entire circle; it does not scorn holy, humble, and daily necessity. Within its narrow and blood-drenched ditch it stoops and labors steadfastly, conquering easily both space and time within a small point of space and time - for this point follows the divine onrush of the entire circle. I do not care what face other ages and other people have given to the enormous, faceless essence. They have crammed it with human virtues, with rewards and punishments, with certain ties. They have given a face to their hopes and fears, they have submitted their anarchy to a rhythm, they have found a higher justification by which to live and labor. They have fulfilled their duty.

But today we have gone beyond these needs; we have shattered this particular mask of the Abyss; our God no longer fits under the old features. Our hearts have overbrimmed with new agonies, with new luster and silence. The mystery has grown savage, and God has grown greater. The dark powers ascend, for they have also grown greater, and the entire human island quakes. Let us stoop down to our hearts and confront the Abyss valiantly. Let us try to mold once more, with our flesh and blood, the new, contemporary face of God. For our God is not an abstract thought, a logical necessity, a high and harmonious structure made of deductions and speculations. He is not an immaculate, neutral, odorless, distilled product of our brains, neither male nor female. He is both man and woman, mortal and immortal, dung and spirit. He gives birth, fecundates, slaughters - death and eros in one - and then he begets and slays once more, dancing spaciously beyond the boundaries of a logic which cannot contain the antinomies.

My God is not Almighty. He struggles, for he is in peril every moment; he trembles and stumbles in every living thing, and he cries out. He is defeated incessantly, but rises again, full of blood and earth, to throw himself into battle once more. He is full of wounds, his eyes are filled with fear and stubbornness, his jawbones and temples are splintered. But he does not surrender, he ascends; he ascends with his feet, with his hands, biting his lips, undaunted. My God is not All-holy. He is full of cruelty and savage justice, and he chooses the best mercilessly. He is without compassion; he does not trouble himself about men or animals; nor does he care for virtues and ideas. He loves all these things for a moment, then smashes them eternally and passes on.

He is a power that contains all things, that begets all things. He begets them, loves them, and destroys them. And if we say, "Our God is an erotic wind and shatters all bodies that he may drive on," and if we remember that eros always works through blood and tears, destroying every individual without mercy - then we shall approach his dread face a little closer.

My God is not All-knowing. His brain is a tangled skein of light and darkness which he strives to unravel in the labyrinth of the flesh. He stumbles and fumbles. He gropes to the right and turns back; swings to the left and sniffs the air. He struggles above chaos in anguish. Crawling, straining, groping for unnumbered centuries, he feels the muddy coils of his brain being slowly suffused with light. On the surface of his heavy, pitch-black head he begins with an indescribable struggle to create eyes by which to see, ears by which to hear.

My God struggles on without certainty. Will he conquer? Will he be conquered? Nothing in the Universe is certain. He flings himself into uncertainty; he gambles all his destiny at every moment. He clings to warm bodies; he has no other bulwark. He shouts for help; he proclaims mobilization throughout the Universe. It is our duty, on hearing his Cry, to run under his flag, to fight by his side, to be lost or to be saved with him. God is imperiled. He is not almighty, that we may cross our hands, waiting for certain victory. He is not all-holy, that we may wait trustingly for him to pity and to save us.

Within the province of our ephemeral flesh all of God is imperiled. He cannot be saved unless we save him with our own struggles; nor can we be saved unless he is saved. We are one. From the blind worm in the depths of the ocean to the endless arena of the Galaxy, only one person struggles and is imperiled: You. And within your small and earthen breast only one thing struggles and is imperiled: the Universe.

WE MUST UNDERSTAND well that we do not proceed from a unity of God to the same unity of God again. We do not proceed from one chaos to another chaos, neither from one light to another light, nor from one darkness to another darkness. What would be the value of our life then? What would be the value of all life?

But we set out from an almighty chaos, from a thick abyss of light and darkness tangled. And we struggle - plants, animals, men, ideas - in this momentary passage of individual life, to put in order the Chaos within us, to cleanse the abyss, to work upon as much darkness as we can within our bodies and to transmute it into light.

We do not struggle for ourselves, nor for our race, not even for humanity. We do not struggle for Earth, nor for ideas. All these are the precious yet provisional stairs of our ascending God, and they crumble away as soon as he steps upon them in his ascent. In the smallest lightning flash of our lives, we feel all of God treading upon us, and suddenly we understand: if we all desire it intensely, if we organize all the visible and invisible powers of earth and fling them upward, if we all battle together like fellow combatants eternally vigilant - then the Universe might possibly be saved. It is not God who will save us - it is we who will save God, by battling, by creating, and by transmuting matter into spirit.

But all our struggle may go lost. If we tire, if we grow faint of spirit, if we fall into panic, then the entire Universe becomes imperiled. Life is a crusade in the service of God. Whether we wished to or not, we set out as crusaders to free - not the Holy Sepulchre - but that God buried in matter and in our souls. Every body, every soul is a Holy Sepulcher. Every seed of grain is a Holy Sepulchre; let us free it! The brain is a Holy Sepulchre, God sprawls within it and battles with death; let us run to his assistance!

God gives the signal for battle, and I, too, rush to the attack, trembling. Whether I straggle behind as a deserter or battle valiantly, I know that I shall always fall in battle. But on the first occasion my death would be sterile, for with the destruction of my body my soul would also be lost and scattered to the winds. On the second occasion, I would descend into earth like a fruit brimming with seed. Though my breath abandon my body to rot, it would organize new bodies and continue the battle. My prayer is not the whimpering of a beggar nor a confession of love. Nor is it the trivial reckoning of a small tradesman: Give me and I shall give you.

My prayer is the report of a soldier to his general: This is what I did today, this is how I fought to save the entire battle in my own sector, these are the obstacles I found, this is how I plan to fight tomorrow.

My God and I are horsemen galloping in the burning sun or under drizzling rain. Pale, starving, but unsubdued, we ride and converse.

"Leader!" I cry. He turns his face toward me, and I shudder to confront his anguish.

Our love for each other is rough and ready, we sit at the same table, we drink the same wine in this low tavern of life.

As we clink our glasses, swords clash and resound, loves and hates spring up. We get drunk, visions of slaughter ascend before our eyes, cities crumble and fall in our brains, and though we are both wounded and screaming with pain, we plunder a huge Palace.

Emma Goldman: Essay II (1910)

Patriotism: 

       A menace 

                  to Liberty

      

WHAT is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naivety, we would watch the fleeting clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not run so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music of the birds, and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distant lands? Or the place where we would sit at mother's knee, enraptured by wonderful tales of great deeds and conquests? In short, is it love for the spot, every inch representing dear and precious recollections of a happy, joyous, and playful childhood? If that were patriotism, few American men of today could be called upon to be patriotic, since the place of play has been turned into factory, mill, and mine, while deafening sounds of machinery have replaced the music of the birds. Nor can we longer hear the tales of great deeds, for the stories our mothers tell today are but those of sorrow, tears, and grief. What, then, is patriotism? "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels," said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the average workingman.

      Gustave Hervé, another great anti-patriot, justly calls patriotism a superstition--one far more injurious, brutal, and inhumane than religion. The superstition of religion originated in man's inability to explain natural phenomena. That is, when primitive man heard thunder or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, and therefore concluded that back of them must be a force greater than himself. Similarly he saw a supernatural force in the rain, and in the various other changes in nature. Patriotism, on the other hand, is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.

      Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.

      The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that, from early infancy, the mind of the child is poisoned with bloodcurdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood, he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition. It is for that purpose that America has within a short time spent four hundred million dollars. Just think of it--four hundred million dollars taken from the produce of the people. For surely it is not the rich who contribute to patriotism. They are cosmopolitans, perfectly at home in every land. We in America know well the truth of this. Are not our rich Americans Frenchmen in France, Germans in Germany, or Englishmen in England? And do they not squandor with cosmopolitan grace fortunes coined by American factory children and cotton slaves? Yes, theirs is the patriotism that will make it possible to send messages of condolence to a despot like the Russian Tsar, when any mishap befalls him, as President Roosevelt did in the name of his people, when Sergius was punished by the Russian revolutionists.

      It is a patriotism that will assist the arch-murderer, Diaz, in destroying thousands of lives in Mexico, or that will even aid in arresting Mexican revolutionists on American soil and keep them incarcerated in American prisons, without the slightest cause or reason.

      But, then, patriotism is not for those who represent wealth and power. It is good enough for the people. It reminds one of the historic wisdom of Frederick the Great, the bosom friend of Voltaire, who said: "Religion is a fraud, but it must be maintained for the masses."

      That patriotism is rather a costly institution, no one will doubt after considering the following statistics. The progressive increase of the expenditures for the leading armies and navies of the world during the last quarter of a century is a fact of such gravity as to startle every thoughtful student of economic problems. It may be briefly indicated by dividing the time from 1881 to 1905 into five-year periods, and noting the disbursements of several great nations for army and navy purposes during the first and last of those periods. From the first to the last of the periods noted the expenditures of Great Britain increased from $2,101,848,936 to $4,143,226,885, those of France from $3,324,500,000 to $3,455,109,900, those of Germany from $725,000,200 to $2,700,375,600, those of the United States from $1,275,500,750 to $2,650,900,450, those of Russia from $1,900,975,500 to $5,250,445,100, those of Italy from $1,600,975,750 to $1,755,500,100, and those of Japan from $182,900,500 to $700,925,475.

      The military expenditures of each of the nations mentioned increased in each of the five-year periods under review. During the entire interval from 1881 to 1905 Great Britain's outlay for her army increased fourfold, that of the United States was tripled, Russia's was doubled, that of Germany increased 35 per cent., that of France about 15 per cent., and that of Japan nearly 500 per cent. If we compare the expenditures of these nations upon their armies with their total expenditures for all the twenty-five years ending with 1905, the proportion rose as follows:

      In Great Britain from 20 per cent. to 37; in the United States from 15 to 23; in France from 16 to 18; in Italy from 12 to 15; in Japan from 12 to 14. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that the proportion in Germany decreased from about 58 per cent. to 25, the decrease being due to the enormous increase in the imperial expenditures for other purposes, the fact being that the army expenditures for the period of 190I-5 were higher than for any five-year period preceding. Statistics show that the countries in which army expenditures are greatest, in proportion to the total national revenues, are Great Britain, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy, in the order named.

      The showing as to the cost of great navies is equally impressive. During the twenty-five years ending with 1905 naval expenditures increased approximately as follows: Great Britain, 300 per cent.; France 60 per cent.; Germany 600 per cent.; the United States 525 per cent.; Russia 300 per cent.; Italy 250 per cent.; and Japan, 700 per cent. With the exception of Great Britain, the United States spends more for naval purposes than any other nation, and this expenditure bears also a larger proportion to the entire national disbursements than that of any other power. In the period 1881-5, the expenditure for the United States navy was $6.20 out of each $100 appropriated for all national purposes; the amount rose to $6.60 for the next five-year period, to $8.10 for the next, to $11.70 for the next, and to $16.40 for 1901-5. It is morally certain that the outlay for the current period of five years will show a still further increase.

      The rising cost of militarism may be still further illustrated by computing it as a per capita tax on population. From the first to the last of the five-year periods taken as the basis for the comparisons here given, it has risen as follows: In Great Britain, from $18.47 to $52.50; in France, from $19.66 to $23.62; in Germany, from $10.17 to $15.51; in the United States, from $5.62 to $13.64; in Russia, from $6.14 to $8.37; in Italy, from $9.59 to $11.24, and in Japan from 86 cents to $3.11.

      It is in connection with this rough estimate of cost per capita that the economic burden of militarism is most appreciable. The irresistible conclusion from available data is that the increase of expenditure for army and navy purposes is rapidly surpassing the growth of population in each of the countries considered in the present calculation. In other words, a continuation of the increased demands of militarism threatens each of those nations with a progressive exhaustion both of men and resources.

      The awful waste that patriotism necessitates ought to be sufficient to cure the man of even average intelligence from this disease. Yet patriotism demands still more. The people are urged to be patriotic and for that luxury they pay, not only by supporting their "defenders," but even by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegiance to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister.

      The usual contention is that we need a standing army to protect the country from foreign invasion. Every intelligent man and woman knows, however, that this is a myth maintained to frighten and coerce the foolish. The governments of the world, knowing each other's interests, do not invade each other. They have learned that they can gain much more by international arbitration of disputes than by war and conquest. Indeed, as Carlyle said, "War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other."

      It does not require much wisdom to trace every war back to a similar cause. Let us take our own Spanish-American war, supposedly a great and patriotic event in the history of the United States. How our hearts burned with indignation against the atrocious Spaniards! True, our indignation did not flare up spontaneously. It was nurtured by months of newspaper agitation, and long after Butcher Weyler had killed off many noble Cubans and outraged many Cuban women. Still, in justice to the American Nation be it said, it did grow indignant and was willing to fight, and that it fought bravely. But when the smoke was over, the dead buried, and the cost of the war came back to the people in an increase in the price of commodities and rent--that is, when we sobered up from our patriotic spree it suddenly dawned on us that the cause of the Spanish-American war was the consideration of the price of sugar; or, to be more explicit, that the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used to protect the interests of American capitalists, which were threatened by the Spanish government. That this is not an exaggeration, but is based on absolute facts and figures, is best proven by the attitude of the American government to Cuban labor. When Cuba was firmly in the clutches of the United States, the very soldiers sent to liberate Cuba were ordered to shoot Cuban workingmen during the great cigarmakers' strike, which took place shortly after the war.

      Nor do we stand alone in waging war for such causes. The curtain is beginning to be lifted on the motives of the terrible Russo-Japanese war, which cost so much blood and tears. And we see again that back of the fierce Moloch of war stands the still fiercer god of Commercialism. Kuropatkin, the Russian Minister of War during the Russo-Japanese struggle, has revealed the true secret behind the latter. The Tsar and his Grand Dukes, having invested money in Corean concessions, the war was forced for the sole purpose of speedily accumulating large fortunes.

      The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, With the result that peace is maintained.

      However, the clamor for an increased army and navy is not due to any foreign danger. It is owing to the dread of the growing discontent of the masses and of the international spirit among the workers. It is to meet the internal enemy that the Powers of various countries are preparing themselves; an enemy, who, once awakened to consciousness, will prove more dangerous than any foreign invader.

      The powers that have for centuries been engaged in enslaving the masses have made a thorough study of their psychology. They know that the people at large are like children whose despair, sorrow, and tears can be turned into joy with a little toy. And the more gorgeously the toy is dressed, the louder the colors, the more it will appeal to the million-headed child.

      An army and navy represents the people's toys. To make them more attractive and acceptable, hundreds and thousands of dollars are being spent for the display of these toys. That was the purpose of the American government in equipping a fleet and sending it along the Pacific coast, that every American citizen should be made to feel the pride and glory of the United States. The city of San Francisco spent one hundred thousand dollars for the entertainment of the fleet; Los Angeles, sixty thousand; Seattle and Tacoma, about one hundred thousand. To entertain the fleet, did I say? To dine and wine a few superior officers, while the "brave boys" had to mutiny to get sufficient food. Yes, two hundred and sixty thousand dollars were spent on fireworks, theatre parties, and revelries, at a time when men, women, and children through the breadth and length of the country were starving in the streets; when thousands of unemployed were ready to sell their labor at any price.

      Two hundred and sixty thousand dollars! What could not have been accomplished with such an enormous sum? But instead of bread and shelter, the children of those cities were taken to see the fleet, that it may remain, as one of the newspapers said, "a lasting memory for the child."

      A wonderful thing to remember, is it not? The implements of civilized slaughter. If the mind of the child is to be poisoned with such memories, what hope is there for a true realization of human brotherhood?

      We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that it will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.

      Such is the logic of patriotism.

      Considering the evil results that patriotism is fraught with for the average man, it is as nothing compared with the insult and injury that patriotism heaps upon the soldier himself,--that poor, deluded victim of superstition and ignorance. He, the savior of his country, the protector of his nation,--what has patriotism in store for him? A life of slavish submission, vice, and perversion, during peace; a life of danger, exposure, and death, during war.

      While on a recent lecture tour in San Francisco, I visited the Presidio, the most beautiful spot overlooking the Bay and Golden Gate Park. Its purpose should have been playgrounds for children, gardens and music for the recreation of the weary. Instead it is made ugly, dull, and gray by barracks,--barracks wherein the rich would not allow their dogs to dwell. In these miserable shanties soldiers are herded like cattle; here they waste their young days, polishing the boots and brass buttons of their superior officers. Here, too, I saw the distinction of classes: sturdy sons of a free Republic, drawn up in line like convicts, saluting every passing shrimp of a lieutenant. American equality, degrading manhood and elevating the uniform!

      Barrack life further tends to develop tendencies of sexual perversion. It is gradually producing along this line results similar to European military conditions. Havelock Ellis, the noted writer on sex psychology, has made a thorough study of the subject. I quote: "Some of the barracks are great centers of male prostitution.... The number of soldiers who prostitute themselves is greater than we are willing to believe. It is no exaggeration to say that in certain regiments the presumption is in favor of the venality of the majority of the men.... On summer evenings Hyde Park and the neighborhood of Albert Gate are full of guardsmen and others plying a lively trade, and with little disguise, in uniform or out.... In most cases the proceeds form a comfortable addition to Tommy Atkins' pocket money."

      To what extent this perversion has eaten its way into the army and navy can best be judged from the fact that special houses exist for this form of prostitution. The practice is not limited to England; it is universal. "Soldiers are no less sought after in France than in England or in Germany, and special houses for military prostitution exist both in Paris and the garrison towns."

      Had Mr. Havelock Ellis included America in his investigation of sex perversion, he would have found that the same conditions prevail in our army and navy as in those of other countries. The growth of the standing army inevitably adds to the spread of sex perversion; the barracks are the incubators.

      Aside from the sexual effects of barrack life, it also tends to unfit the soldier for useful labor after leaving the army. Men, skilled in a trade, seldom enter the army or navy, but even they, after a military experience, find themselves totally unfitted for their former occupations. Having acquired habits of idleness and a taste for excitement and adventure, no peaceful pursuit can content them. Released from the army, they can turn to no useful work. But it is usually the social riff-raff, discharged prisoners and the like, whom either the struggle for life or their own inclination drives into the ranks. These, their military term over, again turn to their former life of crime, more brutalized and degraded than before. It is a well-known fact that in our prisons there is a goodly number of ex-soldiers; while, on the other hand, the army and navy are to a great extent plied with ex-convicts.

      Of all the evil results I have just described none seems to me so detrimental to human integrity as the spirit patriotism has produced in the case of Private William Buwalda. Because he foolishly believed that one can be a soldier and exercise his rights as a man at the same time, the military authorities punished him severely. True, he had served his country fifteen years, during which time his record was unimpeachable. According to Gen. Funston, who reduced Buwalda's sentence to three years, "the first duty of an officer or an enlisted man is unquestioned obedience and loyalty to the government, and it makes no difference whether he approves of that government or not." Thus Funston stamps the true character of allegiance. According to him, entrance into the army abrogates the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

      What a strange development of patriotism that turns a thinking being into a loyal machine!

      In justification of this most outrageous sentence of Buwalda, Gen. Funston tells the American people that the soldier's action was "a serious crime equal to treason." Now, what did this "terrible crime" really consist of? Simply in this: William Buwalda was one of fifteen hundred people who attended a public meeting in San Francisco; and, oh, horrors, he shook hands with the speaker, Emma Goldman. A terrible crime, indeed, which the General calls "a great military offense, infinitely worse than desertion."

      Can there be a greater indictment against patriotism than that it will thus brand a man a criminal, throw him into prison, and rob him of the results of fifteen years of faithful service?

      Buwalda gave to his country the best years of his life and his very manhood. But all that was as nothing. Patriotism is inexorable and, like all insatiable monsters, demands all or nothing. It does not admit that a soldier is also a human being, who has a right to his own feelings and opinions, his own inclinations and ideas. No, patriotism can not admit of that. That is the lesson which Buwalda was made to learn; made to learn at a rather costly, though not at a useless price. When he returned to freedom, he had lost his position in the army, but he regained his self-respect. After all, that is worth three years of imprisonment.

      A writer on the military conditions of America, in a recent article, commented on the power of the military man over the civilian in Germany. He said, among other things, that if our Republic had no other meaning than to guarantee all citizens equal rights, it would have just cause for existence. I am convinced that the writer was not in Colorado during the patriotic régime of General Bell. He probably would have changed his mind had he seen how, in the name of patriotism and the Republic, men were thrown into bull-pens, dragged about, driven across the border, and subjected to all kinds of indignities. Nor is that Colorado incident the only one in the growth of military power in the United States. There is hardly a strike where troops and militia do not come to the rescue of those in power, and where they do not act as arrogantly and brutally as do the men wearing the Kaiser's uniform. Then, too, we have the Dick military law. Had the writer forgotten that?

      A great misfortune with most of our writers is that they are absolutely ignorant on current events, or that, lacking honesty, they will not speak of these matters. And so it has come to pass that the Dick military law was rushed through Congress with little discussion and still less publicity,--a law which gives the President the power to turn a peaceful citizen into a bloodthirsty man-killer, supposedly for the defense of the country, in reality for the protection of the interests of that particular party whose mouthpiece the President happens to be.

      Our writer claims that militarism can never become such a power in America as abroad, since it is voluntary with us, while compulsory in the Old World. Two very important facts, however, the gentleman forgets to consider. First, that conscription has created in Europe a deep-seated hatred of militarism among all classes of society. Thousands of young recruits enlist under protest and, once in the army, they will use every possible means to desert. Second, that it is the compulsory feature of militarism which has created a tremendous anti-militarist movement, feared by European Powers far more than anything else. After all, the greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism. The very moment the latter is undermined, capitalism will totter. True, we have no conscription; that is, men are not usually forced to enlist in the army, but we have developed a far more exacting and rigid force--necessity. Is it not a fact that during industrial depressions there is a tremendous increase in the number of enlistments? The trade of militarism may not be either lucrative or honorable, but it is better than tramping the country in search of work, standing in the bread line, or sleeping in municipal lodging houses. After all, it means thirteen dollars per month, three meals a day, and a place to sleep. Yet even necessity is not sufficiently strong a factor to bring into the army an element of character and manhood. No wonder our military authorities complain of the "poor material" enlisting in the army and navy. This admission is a very encouraging sign. It proves that there is still enough of the spirit of independence and love of liberty left in the average American to risk starvation rather than don the uniform.

      Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time. The centralization of power has brought into being an international feeling of solidarity among the oppressed nations of the world; a solidarity which represents a greater harmony of interests between the workingman of America and his brothers abroad than between the American miner and his exploiting compatriot; a solidarity which fears not foreign invasion, because it is bringing all the workers to the point when they will say to their masters, "Go and do your own killing. We have done it long enough for you."

      This solidarity is awakening the consciousness of even the soldiers, they, too, being flesh of the flesh of the great human family. A solidarity that has proven infallible more than once during past struggles, and which has been the impetus inducing the Parisian soldiers, during the Commune of 1871, to refuse to obey when ordered to shoot their brothers. It has given courage to the men who mutinied on Russian warships during recent years. It will eventually bring about the uprising of all the oppressed and downtrodden against their international exploiters.

      The proletariat of Europe has realized the great force of that solidarity and has, as a result, inaugurated a war against patriotism and its bloody spectre, militarism. Thousands of men fill the prisons of France, Germany, Russia, and the Scandinavian countries, because they dared to defy the ancient superstition. Nor is the movement limited to the working class; it has embraced representatives in all stations of life, its chief exponents being men and women prominent in art, science, and letters.

      America will have to follow suit. The spirit of militarism has already permeated all walks of life. Indeed, I am convinced that militarism is growing a greater danger here than anywhere else, because of the many bribes capitalism holds out to those whom it wishes to destroy.

      The beginning has already been made in the schools. Evidently the government holds to the Jesuitical conception, "Give me the child mind, and I will mould the man." Children are trained in military tactics, the glory of military achievements extolled in the curriculum, and the youthful minds perverted to suit the government. Further, the youth of the country is appealed to in glaring posters to join the army and navy. "A fine chance to see the world!" cries the governmental huckster. Thus innocent boys are morally shanghaied into patriotism, and the military Moloch strides conquering through the Nation.

      The American workingman has suffered so much at the hands of the soldier, State and Federal, that he is quite justified in his disgust with, and his opposition to, the uniformed parasite. However, mere denunciation will not solve this great problem. What we need is a propaganda of education for the soldier: antipatriotic literature that will enlighten him as to the real horrors of his trade, and that will awaken his consciousness to his true relation to the man to whose labor he owes his very existence. It is precisely this that the authorities fear most. It is already high treason for a soldier to attend a radical meeting. No doubt they will also stamp it high treason for a soldier to read a radical pamphlet. But, then, has not authority from time immemorial stamped every step of progress as treasonable? Those, however, who earnestly strive for social reconstruction can well afford to face all that; for it is probably even more important to carry the truth into the barracks than into the factory. When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for that great structure wherein all nationalities shall be united into a universal brotherhood, --a truly FREE SOCIETY.