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A Semi-Monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Information.

THE DIAL (founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 16th of each month. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION, $2.00 a year in advance, postage prepaid in the United States, Canada, and Mexico; in other countries comprised in the Postal Union, 50 cents a year for extra postage must be added. Unless otherwise ordered, subscriptions will begin with the current number. REMITTANCES should be by check, or by express or postal order, payable to THE DIAL. SPECIAL RATES TO CLUBS and for subscriptions with other publications will be sent on application; and SAMPLE COPY on receipt of 10 cents. ADVERTISING RATES furnished on application. All communications should be addressed to

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out attempting to discuss the political questions concerned, we emphasized the need of deliberation in all such matters, and stated as our position that in a dispute involving, as the Venezuelan controversy does, delicate questions of international usage and historical investigations such as only the well-equipped scholar can undertake, it was the part of sobriety and self-respect to maintain a decent reserve, awaiting the final verdict of the trained specialist, and provisionally deferring to the judgment of those alone whose authority can have any real weight. Our modest "plea for sanity" has called forth a number of communications, most of them in sympathy with the attitude of THE DIAL, but a few breathing the "amazement and indignation" aroused in patriotic breasts by our tame and spiritless views.

We are not concerned to reply to these angry outpourings, for they are all beside the mark. Those that make elaborate arguments about the boundary line of Venezuela discuss a subject upon which we have expressed no opinion, and in which we take but a feeble interest. Those that denounce our utterances as "treasonable" and "unpatriotic" have yet to learn the meaning of the words "fidelity" and "patriotism." "Our true country," as Lowell once wrote, "is that ideal realm which we represent to ourselves under the names of religion, duty, and the like. Our terrestrial organizations are but far-off approaches to so fair a model, and all they are verily traitors who resist not any attempt to divert them from this their original intendment." We are happy to note that the opening weeks of the new year have brought much testimony to the existence among our fellow-countrymen of a nobler patriotic passion than is known to the philosophy of the jingo, and that hundreds of weighty utterances have voiced the sentiments of justice and humanity and civilization, justifying our appeal almost before it was made.

There is, however, one aspect of the recent discussion, as of most public discussions in which fundamental principles are concerned, that seems to call for thoughtful consideration. The greatest fault of democracy is that it so often presumes to decide upon questions which in their very nature are to be decided upon intelligently only by experts. Every philosoph

ical writer upon democratic institutions, whether sympathizing with them or not, has put his finger upon this weak spot, and found in it the greatest menace to the permanence of popular government. A sound decision upon almost any problem of political science, of economics or finance, is within the reach of specially disciplined minds alone, and the opinion of the unthinking masses upon such matters has just as much or as little real weight as an opinion upon the special problems of engineering, or chemistry, or physiology. This doctrine, of course, will never receive the assent of the demagogue, whether he be a political schemer, or a legislator chosen by popular vote, or the editor of a newspaper conducted upon modern commercial principles. It is the business of all these people to pretend that their opinions upon the delicate problems presented by the art of government are as good as anybody's, and probably a little better; their stock in trade is an infinite self-assurance, and their method the method of flattery, either rank or insidious, according to the particular vanities or susceptibilities of their hearers.

For many years these artful manipulators of public opinion, in pursuit of their ad captandum policy, have sedulously labored to develop the antagonism always latent between the masses and the men of scholarship. The process is by no means peculiar to this country, but has probably been more successfully carried out with us than elsewhere, in consequence of the innate irreverence of the American national character, its unpleasant self-assertiveness, and the superficiality of the educational influences under which it has in large part been shaped. A curiously mythical notion of the scholar and his function in society, as unlike the reality as anything that could well be imagined, has come currently to be held, and in perfect good faith, by a large proportion of our population. One can hardly take up an American newspaper without coming upon many a covert sneer at the scholar and his modes of thinking, upon many an expression of ill concealed contempt for his impracticability and his idealism. He is spoken of as if he were some curious sort of stuffed animal, exhibited in the glass case of some university or other institution of learning. That he has opinions upon the subject to which he has devoted a lifetime of thought is, of course, a familiar fact, for he sometimes has the temerity to state them in public; but that they should be taken seriously by the plain sensible man of

affairs, who lives in the world and rubs against it every day, is too extraordinary a proposition to be considered.

This singular distortion of view has received so frequent illustration of late years that examples seem hardly necessary. The history of our national economic and financial policy since the Civil War is an almost unbroken record of fatuous ignorance, and empirical experimentation, and insolent disregard of the best established inductions of science. The only adequate analogy is that offered by a man who barely escapes with his life from a succession of diseases, each the result of some act of recklessness, and each dealt with in accordance with the rules of some new quackery or some timehonored superstition. That there is such a thing as the scientific treatment of disease, and that imminent disease may be averted by the precautions suggested by scientific knowledge, are the last propositions that such a man will admit. And the body politic seems to fare in much the same way, for your Demos is firm in his prejudices, and distrusts above all things else the pedantry of the university professor or other variety of trained practitioner. "What can he know about politics?" some one said of Lowell, a few years before the death of our great American scholar; "he never made a stump speech in his life." "What can he know about the tariff?" says the self-confident woolgrower of the authoritative writer upon economic science; "he never raised a flock of sheep in his life."

The application of these illustrations to the Venezuelan controversy is obvious enough. That controversy presents - leaving its ethics out of the question-two special problems, one of international law and one of statesmanship. The first problem is concerned with the relation of the Monroe Doctrine to the body of international law and usage, together with the question of the legitimacy of an application of that Doctrine to this particular case. The second problem is concerned with the possible menace to our national safety resulting from a slight enlargement of a small English colony in a corner of South America. Both of these problems belong preeminently to the domain of the scholar, and upon neither of them is the opinion of the "man in the street" likely to have any value. Now the judgment of competent authorities upon both of these problems, in this country as well as in Europe, is substantially unanimous as far as the essential elements are concerned. That judgment runs

counter to an opinion, or rather a sentiment, that seems to have a somewhat widespread currency among our population, a sentiment based mainly upon prejudices of the baser sort, and inflamed by the pernicious zeal of timeserving politicians and journalists. What should be the attitude of the sober-minded toward this division of opinion? It seems to us that but one rational answer to such a question is possible. The voice of a man who has made the subjects concerned the study of his lifetime, who can bring to bear upon the problems the full weight of historical scholarship and scientific method, must surely outweigh the voices of many thousands of butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers, however successfully they may ply their respective crafts. It is only where really competent opinion is divided, as in the case of the fierce discussion about acquired characteristics and heredity which just now divides the biologists into two opposed camps, that the layman is at all justified in taking sides, and even in such a case a modest suspension of judgment is for him the more fitting part. "The majority is always wrong" is the vehement utterance of one of Dr. Ibsen's characters, reflecting, doubtless, the view of the dramatist himself in one of his moods of angry individualism. Without accepting this as a complete induction, we may say that history shows the majority to have been often wrong, at least, and honors the minority that has stood for justice and right. And we may add that the minority, when it really is right, and stands patiently steadfast, nearly always in the end brings around to its own way of thinking the wrong-headed majority.

THE STAGNATION IN RUSSIAN

LITERATURE.

The close connection between politics and letters, which has been a distinctive characteristic of the intellectual life of Russia, was never more strikingly illustrated than at the present time. The confusion, uncertainty, and haziness of the political situation are fully reflected in the literature of the country. The land which has produced Tourguénieff, Gogol, Dostoievsky, Saltikoff, and Tolstoi, is now without a single definite literary school or movement. Tolstoi, to be sure, lives and writes. His latest novel, "Master and Man," whose success outside of Russia has not been very decided, has proved disappointing to the progressive youth of Russia. While everything Tolstoi publishes is eagerly read and widely discussed, the ideas which he represents are no longer dominant. There is little sympathy with the cult of

He

individual self-improvement and altruism; progress is generally expected to take the form of a change in the economic, political, and educational conditions of Russia. Tolstoi is indifferent to external reforms, and insists that character alone is essential. exhorts individual men and women to be unselfish, brave, and truthful, and has no hope of improvement through any other agency. Nearly all his recent works, including "Master and Man," enforce this moral; and hence most of his readers, while admitting the literary power and charm of his latter-day fiction, declare that Russia no longer finds in it that inspiration and that aid which Tolstoi afforded it in the days when his doctrines enjoyed considerable popularity. There is considerable interest in the

new novel which Tolstoi is understood to have nearly ready for publication. It deals with the life of Siberian convicts, and shows that moral regeneration is not imposssible even under the worst conditions, provided love in its most unselfish form is present to guide and comfort the victims. According to reports in the Russian press, the heroine of the new novel is a young woman unjustly accused of having poisoned a rich merchant with whom she lived in illicit relations, while the hero is the foreman of the jury which convicts the woman. This foreman falls in love with the supposed murderer, and follows her to Siberia. Whatever the artistic merits of this new story may prove to be, its "moral" will be essentially the same as that of "Master and Man," and it cannot be taken as expressing the present sentiments and aspirations of Russia. Tolstoi is powerful, but he stands virtually alone. The progressive elements of Russia recognize his sincerity and moral greatness, but decline to follow him. He is not a leader of men, and his writings do not impel his readers to action along the lines indicated by him.

The younger writers of fiction, having no special doctrine to preach, turn to actual life for their material, and find it colorless, vague, poor, unstable. Being, most of them, extremely realistic, their novels. naturally reflect the emptiness and confusion of the life they depict. The most successful of them Mamin, Chekhoff, Korolenko, and others — still continue to describe peasant life; but a number have abandoned that field and turned their attention to the aristocratic classes and the high life of the capital. This departure is deemed very significant by the best Russian critics, for ever since the emancipation of the serfs the "Populist" movement in Russia has attracted the finest writers, and the life and labor of the people—the peasantry and the city proletariat have furnished the themes for their productions. This literary movement has coincided and corresponded with the revolutionary Populist movement, which sent thousands of the most cultured and refined youths into the villages and factories, to live and work with the common people for the sake of disseminating liberal political ideas among them and scattering the seeds of revolution. Now, however, the revolutionary movement is prac

tically dead in Russia. The young men and women no longer go among the people as propagandists and conspirators against the powers that be, while terrorism has been abandoned as wasteful and futile. The desire of the progressive minority to be useful to the masses is as intense as it has ever been, but the methods have radically changed. Literature has not as yet adapted itself to these new conditions, and it is at present colorless, barren, and vapid.

The high hopes of the reformers having been dashed by the reactionary attitude of the Czar, constitutional and political changes, while still secretly yearned for, have ceased to form the staple of discussion. But it would be an error to suppose that no improvements at all are expected in Russia. The present government is apparently determined to demonstrate that absolutism is not incompatible with true progress, and a number of important reforms seem to have been decided upon. Perhaps the most important task undertaken by it is universal popular education. There is a veritable educational crusade in Russia at present. The Provincial Assemblies, the press, official and voluntary societies, all talk about the means of raising the popular intelligence. Thousands of new schools are proposed for villages, night schools, libraries, lectures, and reading rooms are being organized in the cities, popular editions of national and foreign authors are being undertaken, and the young men and women of the country are turning their attention to this sphere of activity. Higher education is not neglected. A medical college for women has been authorized by the government, and several new commercial colleges have been opened for graduates of female gymnasia. A warm controversy has arisen in regard to the character of the proposed common schools. The Conservatives insist on religious training and on the control of the schools by the clergy. They want none but priests as teachers, and plainly intimate that secular education would prove a source of the greatest danger to absolutism. teachers, they say, would disseminate revolutionary heresies and undermine the foundations of Church and State. Moreover, mere intellectual training, instruction in the "three R's," they argue, will be of little utility either to the masses or to the government. Honesty, loyalty, sobriety, and strong practical sense, are virtues entirely unrelated to the ability to read and write, and the government ought not to encourage education that is not spiritual, moral, Christian. On the other hand, the Liberals naturally insist on complete separation between the schools and the Church, and they point to the tendencies in the civilized world at large as sustaining their view. The government has not interfered with this discussion, but it is feared that it will finally take the side of the Conservatives.

Secular

Economic and judicial reforms are also among the probabilities of the near future. New landbanks for the pesantry are planned, and in certain Provincial Assemblies it is proposed to organize legal bureaus to which the peasants could apply for

free advice. The monopoly of the sale of liquor, which the government has experimentally introduced in a few provinces, appears to have worked well, and the disappearance of all private saloons is regarded as a great reform by all Russian writers except the few who claim that the nobility, rather than the government, ought to enjoy this monopoly. In short, reform, though not of a political or constitutional nature, is in the air. People are in a state of expectancy. They are hopeful, and yet skeptical. They believe that something will be done by the present government, and they are eager to lend a hand and coöperate in anything really conducive to national welfare; at the same time, they fear that the reactionary spirit presiding over these reformatory movements may emasculate and deflower the most promising of the reforms.

Under these circumstances the literary life can hardly be very vigorous. Publicists and economists manage to extract some comfort from the dim prospects and possibilities of progress, but the lot of the novelists and story-tellers is hard indeed. The present is dismal and chaotic, and they are not even sure that they are on the eve of a new era. Realism has always been supreme in Russian fiction, but even realism needs definite human documents and an active life full of movement, interest, and struggle. Stagnation, indefiniteness, confusion, are fatal to it. All is talk at present in Russia; there are no types or things worthy of study and portrayal. The Tourguénieff atmosphere has vanished; the terrorist and revolutionary days are over; the enthusiasm of the Populist propogandists has spent itself. No one knows what the future will bring. Tolstoi alone, as said above, unconcerned and indifferent, with a firm faith in the saving quality of his philosophy of life, is able to write and preach in the form of semi-realistic fiction. He has his ideal, source of inspiration, and message, and he finds sermons in stones and lessons in everything.

VICTOR YARROS.

COMMUNICATION.

UNAUTHORIZED EDITION OF MURRAY'S MYTHOLOGY.

(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)

The literary notices of THE DIAL are so uniformly · accurate and just that I read with some surprise, in the issue of December 16, your mention of the new edition of A. S. Murray's "Manual of Mythology "; one might readily infer from it that the book had been carefully revised by the author. In a recent letter Mr. Murray says: "Since the preparation of the second edition of the Manual, so long ago that I was but a young man then, I have had nothing whatever to do with the book in any shape or form." Moreover, the authorized publishers of the American edition are Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons; on the conduct of the Philadelphia publisher who has taken Mr. Murray's book without authorization, and has had it revised without consulting him, each reader will pass judgment for himself. F. W. K.

University of Michigan, Jan. 3, 1896.

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