Counter-Currents. Agnes Repplier

WE are rising dizzily and fearlessly on the crest of a great wave of sentiment. When the wave breaks, we may find ourselves submerged, and in danger of drowning; but for the present we are full of hope and high resolve. Forty years ago we stood in shallow water, and mocked at the mid-Victorian sentiment, then ebbing slowly with the tide. We have nothing now in common with that fine, thin, tenacious conception of life and its responsibilities. We do not prate about valour for men, and domesticity for women. A vague humanity is our theme. We do not feel the fastidious distaste for repulsive details which made our grandparents culpably negligent. All knowledge, apart from its quality, and apart from our requirements, now seems to us desirable. Taste is no longer a controlling force. We do not, if we can help it, look "that jade, Duty,"—I use Sir Walter Scott's phrase, and he knew the lady in question better than do most men,—squarely in the face; but we speak well of her behind her back, which is more than Sir Walter did. To hear us talk, one would imagine that she never cost a pang.

The sentiment of to-day is social and philanthropic. It has no affiliations with art, which stands aloof from it,—a new experience for the world. It dominates periodical literature, minor fiction, and serious verse; but it has so far given nothing of permanent value to letters. It is in high favour with politicians, and is echoed loudly from all party platforms. It has unduly influenced our attitude toward the war in Europe, and toward our defences at home. It is a force to be reckoned with, and to be controlled. It is capable of raising us to a better and clearer vision, or of weakening our judgment and shattering our common sense. If we value our safety, we must forever bear in mind that sentiment is subjective, and a personal thing. However exalted and however ardent, it cannot be accepted as a scale for justice, or as a test for truth.

The issues with which our modern sentiment chiefly concerns itself are the conditions of labour, the progress of women, the social evil, and—for the past two years—the overwhelming question of peace and war. Sometimes these issues are commingled. Always they have a bearing upon one another. There is also a distinct and perilous tendency toward sentiment in matters political and judicial; while an excess of emotionalism is the stumbling-block of those noble associations which work for the protection of animals. It is profoundly discouraging to read in the accredited organ of an American humane society an angry protest against Vilhjalmur Stefansson's being permitted the use of Eskimo dogs on his Arctic explorations, because, forsooth, when he went hungry, the dogs went hungry too, and because their feet were hurt by the ice. The writer (a woman) reminds us that these dogs (like all other animals) are not "free agents"; and she calls upon public opinion and law to rescue them. We hear about the "long arm of the law," but it would be a giant stretch that could reach Stefansson in his ice fields. "Men who do such things," she affirms, "are not heroes of the highest type; and, anyway, when you have found or explored the North Pole or the South Pole, what can you do with it?"

This query is hard to answer. Perhaps no explorer wants to do anything with the Poles; but just leave them as they are, uncolonized for the present. They are not the only things in the world which have no commercial value. But if Stefansson is not a hero, of what stuff are heroes made, and where shall we look to find one? And with all Europe crying out in its agony of pain, is it worth our while to worry over a few dogs, who are doing, under hard conditions, the work they are fitted to do?

The same journal insults the intelligence of its readers by printing a wild rhapsody of Mrs. Annie Besant's, apparently under the illusion that it can be accepted as an argument for vegetarianism. I venture to quote one particularly mad paragraph as an illustration of the unplumbed depths to which emotional humanitarianism can descend:—

"The killing of animals in order to devour their flesh is so obviously an outrage on all humane feelings, that one is almost ashamed to mention it in a paper that is regarding man as a director of evolution. If any one who eats flesh could be taken to the shambles, to watch the agonized struggles of the terrified victims as they are dragged to the spot where knife or mallet slays them; if he could be made to stand with the odours of the blood reeking in his nostrils; if there his astral vision could be opened so that he might see the filthy creatures that flock round to feast on the loathsome exhalations, and see also the fear and horror of the slaughtered beasts as they arrive in the astral world, and send back thence currents of dread and hatred that flow between men and animals in constantly refed streams; if a man could pass through these experiences, he would be cured of meat-eating forever."

Now, when one has belonged for many years to the society which printed this precious paragraph, when one has believed all one's life that to be sentient is to possess rights, and that, not kindness only, but justice to the brute creation is an essential element of decent living, it is hard to be confronted with unutterable nonsense about astral currents and astral visions. It is harder still to be held indirectly responsible for the publication of such nonsense, and to entertain for the thousandth time the weary conviction that common sense is not a determining factor in humanity.

Mr. Chesterton, upon whom the delight of startling his readers never seems to pall, has declared that men are more sentimental than women, "whose only fault is their excessive sense." Also that the apparent absorption of the modern world in social service is not the comprehensive thing it seems. The general public still remains indifferent. This may or may not be true. It is as hard for Mr. Chesterton as for the rest of us to know much about that remnant of the public which is not writing, or lecturing, or collecting data, or collecting funds, or working for clubs and societies. But no one can say that the social reformer is the slighted creature that he was a half-century ago. He meets with the most distinguished consideration, and he is always accorded the first hearing in print and on the platform. He commands our respect when he deals soberly with sober facts in sober language, when his conclusions are just, his statements irrefutable. He is less praiseworthy when he flies to fiction, an agreeable but unconvincing medium; or to verse, which, as the theologian said of "Paradise Lost," "proves nothing." It is very good verse sometimes, and its grace of sentiment, its note of appeal, find an easy echo in the reader's heart.

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