Let a new messiah leap up with a new message in any part
of the world, and at once there is a response from the two great free
nations. Once it was Tolstoi with a mouldy asceticism made of catacomb
Christianity and senile soul-sickness; again it was Bergson, with a
perfumed quasi-philosophy for the boudoirs of the faubourgs; yet again
came Rudolf Eucken and Pastor Wagner, with their middle-class beeriness
and banality. The list need go no further. It begins with preposterous
Indian swamis and yoghis (most of them, to do them justice, diligent
Jews from Grand street or the bagnios of Constantinople), and it ends
with the fabulous Ibsen of the symbols (no more the real Ibsen than
Christ was a prohibitionist), the Ellen Key of the new gyneolatry and
the Signorina Montessori of the magical Method. It was a sure instinct
that brought Eusapia Palladino to New York. It was the same sure
instinct that brought Hall Caine.
I have mentioned Ibsen. A glance at the literature he has spawned in the
vulgate is enough to show how much his falser aspects have intrigued the
American mind and how little it has reacted to his shining skill as a
dramatic craftsman--his one authentic claim upon fame.
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