CHAPTER XIV

AMONG THE MALCONTENTS

(1872)

When John came to Stockholm, he borrowed money in order to hire a room near the Ladugärdslandet. Always under the sway of sentiment, he chose this quarter of the town because he always used to walk there in his childhood on the 1st of May, and the High Street especially had something of a holiday air about it. Moreover it soon opened into the Zoological Gardens, which became his favourite place for walks. The barracks with their drums and trumpets had something exhilarating about them, and there were fine views over the sea which was close at hand. There was plenty of light and air. When he went for his morning walk he could choose his route according to his mood. If he was sad and depressed, he went along the Sirishofsvägen; if he was cheerful he turned off to the level ground of Manilla, where the paradisial rose-valley exhaled joy and delight; if he was despairing and anxious to avoid people he went out to Ladugärdsgardet, where no one could disturb his self-communings and his prayers to God. Sometimes, when his soul was in a tumult, he remained standing by the cross-ways above the bridge near the Zoological Gardens, irresolute which way to take. On such occasion a thousand forces seemed to pull him in all directions.

His room was very simple and commanded no view. It smelt of poverty, as the whole house did, in which the only person of standing was the deputy-landlord, a policeman. John began his active career by painting, out of a sense of need to give his feelings shape and to express them in a palpable way, for the little letters huddled together on the paper were dead and could not express his mind so plainly and simultaneously. He did not think of being a painter in order to exhibit or sell pictures. To step to the easel was for him just like sitting down and singing. At the same time he renewed his acquaintance with his friend the sculptor, who introduced him to a circle of young painters. These were all discontent with the Academy and the antiquated methods which could not express their vague dreams. They still preserved the Bohemian type, so late did the waves of modern ideas beat on the far coasts of the North. They wore long hair, slouched hats, brilliant cravats, and lived like the birds of heaven. They read and quoted Byron and dreamt of enormous canvases and subjects such as no studio could contain. A sculptor and a Norwegian had conceived the idea of hewing a statue out of the Dovre rock; a painter wished to paint the sea not merely as a level, but with such a wide horizon as to show the convex curve of the globe.

This took John's fancy. One should give expression to one's inner feelings and not depict mere sticks and stones which are meaningless in themselves till they have passed through the alembic of a percipient mind. Therefore the artists did not make studies out of doors, but painted at home from their memory and imagination. John always painted the sea with a coast in the foreground, some gnarled pine-trees, a couple of rocky islets in the distance and a white-painted buoy. The atmosphere was generally gloomy, with a weak or strong light on the horizon; it was always sunset or moonlight, never clear daylight.

But he was soon woken out of this dream-life partly by hunger, partly by recollecting the reality which he had sought in order to save himself from his dreams.

Although John knew little of contemporary politics, he knew that the democracy or peasant-class had arrived at power, that they had declared war on the official and middle classes, and that they were hated in Upsala. And now he himself was to enter the ranks of the combatants and attack the old order of things. The only item of the knowledge which he had brought with him from Upsala which was likely to be useful here, was the small amount of political science which he had studied. Of what use were Astronomy, Philology, Æsthetics, Latin and Chemistry here? He knew something about the land-laws and communal-laws, but had no idea of political economy, finance or jurisprudence. When he now began to look about for a suitable paper to which to attach himself, it did not occur to him to make use of his old connection with the _Aftonbladet_, but he wrote for a small evening paper which had lately appeared, which was regarded as radical and was issued by the New Liberal Union. The editor held receptions in the La Croix Café, and here John was introduced into the society of journalists. He felt ill at ease among them. They did not think as he did, seemed uncultivated, as indeed they were, and rather gossiped than discussed important matters. They certainly busied themselves with facts, but these were rather trifles than great questions. They were full of phrases, but did not seem to have a proper command of their material. John, though against his will, was too much of an academic aristocrat to sympathise with these democrats, who for the most part had not chosen their career, but been forced into it by the pressure of circumstances. He found the atmosphere stifling for his idealism, and came no more to the receptions after he had done his business, and been invited to write for the paper.

He made his début as an art-critic. His first criticism concerned Winge's "Thor with the giants" and Rosen's "Eric XIV and Karin Monsdotter." The young critic naturally wished to display his learning, though all he had was what he had picked up in lectures and books. Therefore his criticism of Winge was a mere eulogy. His remarks chiefly regarded the subject of the picture as a Norse one and treated in the grand style. The painters did not like this sort of criticism, as they considered the only point to be criticised in a work of art was the execution. "Eric the XIV" he judged from his monomaniacal point of view, "aristocrat or democrat," and found fault with the incorrect conception of Göran Persson, whom in his own tragedy _Eric XIV_ (subsequently burnt) he had represented as an enemy of the nobility and friend of the people.

Descended from his own height as a promising student, author and royal protégé to the then less regarded class of journalists, he felt himself again one of the lower orders.

After the editor had struck out his learned flourishes, the articles were printed. The editor told him they were piquant, but advised him to employ a more flowing style. He had not yet caught the journalistic knack.

Then John planned a series of articles in which, under the title "Perspective," he treated of social and economic questions. In these he attacked university life, the divisions of the classes, the injurious over-reading and the unfortunate position of the students. Since the labour-question at that time was not a burning one, he ventured on a comparison between the prospects of a student and that of a workman, declaring the latter to be far better off. The workman was generally in good health, could support himself at eighteen and marry at twenty, while the student could not think of marriage and making a livelihood before thirty. As a remedy he recommended doing away with the final examination as Jaabaek had already done in Norway, and the transference of the university to Stockholm in order that the students might have a chance of earning something during their course. As an example he adduced the case of modern students at Athens who learn a trade while they study. This was all clear to him as early as 1872, yet when he made similar suggestions twelve years later, he was thought to have conceived them on the spur of the moment.

At the same time he took an engagement on a small illustrated ladies' paper and wrote biographical notices and novelettes. The ladies were very kind, but let him work too hard, and gave him all kinds of commissions to execute. After he had spent two or three days in paying visits, dived into a publisher's place of business, read biographical romances in three or four volumes, made researches in the library, run to the printing-office and finally written his columns carefully, setting each person treated of in a proper historical light, and analysing his career, he received, for all that work, fifteen kronas. He calculated that this was less pay per hour than a servant earned. The bread of the literary man was certainty hardly earned, and that this is the common lot of authors does not make matters better. But the profession was also despised, and John felt that in social position he stood below his brothers who were tradesmen, below the actors, yes, even below the elementary school-teachers.

The journalists led a subterranean existence, but they styled themselves "we" and wrote as though they were sovereigns of God's appointment; they had men's weal or woe in their hand, since the chief weapon in the struggle for existence in our civilised days is social reputation. How was it that society had given these free lances such terrible power without taking any guarantees? But when one comes to think, what assurance is there for the capacity and insight of the law-givers in parliament, in the ministry, on the throne? None whatever! It is therefore the same all round. There were, however, two classes of newspapers; the conservative, which wished to preserve the social condition with all its defects, and the liberal, which wished to improve it. The former enjoyed a certain respect, the latter, none at all. John instinctively sided with the last, and at once felt that he was regarded as every one's enemy. A liberal journalist and a chronicler of scandals were synonymous terms. At home he had heard the usual phrase that "no one was honourable whose name had not appeared in the paper _Fatherland_." In the street they had pointed out to him a man who looked like a bandit, with the mark of a dagger-stab between his eyes, and said, "There goes the journalist X." In the Café La Croix he felt depressed among his new colleagues, but none the less chose to associate with this unpopular group. Did he choose really? One does not choose one's impulses, and it is no virtue to be a democrat when one hates the upper classes and has no pleasure in their company.

Meanwhile for social intercourse he went to the artists. It was a strange world in which they lived. There was so much nature among these men who busied themselves with art. They dressed badly, lived like beggars--one of them lived in the same room with the servant--and ate what they could get; they could hardly read, and had no knowledge of orthography. At the same time they talked like cultivated people, they looked at things from an independent point of view, were keenly observant and unfettered by dogmas. One of them four years previously had minded geese, a second had wielded the smith's hammer, a third had been a farmer's servant and walked behind the dung-cart, and a fourth had been a soldier. They ate with knives, used their sleeves as napkins, had no handkerchiefs and only one coat in winter. However, John felt at home with them, though of late years he had been conversant only with cultivated and well-to-do young people. It was not that he was superior to them, for that they did not acknowledge, nor was it any use to quote books to them, for they accepted no authority. His doubts as regards books, especially text-books, began to be aroused, and he began to suspect that old books may injure a modern man's thinking powers. This doubt became a certainty when he met one of the group whom all regarded as a genius.

He was a painter about thirty years old, formerly a farmer's servant who had come to the Academy in order to become an artist. After he had spent some time in the painting school he came to the conclusion that art was insufficient as a medium for expressing his thoughts, and he lived now on nothing, while he busied himself by reflecting on the questions of the time. Badly educated at an elementary school, he had now flung himself on the most up-to-date books and had a start of John, since he had begun where the latter had left off. Between John and him there was the same difference as between a mathematician and a pilot. The former can calculate in logarithms, the latter can turn them to practical use. But Måns also was critically disposed and did not believe in books blindly. He had no ready-made scheme or system into which to fit his thoughts; he always thought freely, investigated, sifted and only retained what he recognised as tenable. More free from passions than John, he could draw more reckless inferences, even when they went against his own wishes and interests, though with certain matter-of-course limitations. He was more-over prudent, as indeed he must have been to have worked himself up from such a low position, and understood how to be silent as to certain conclusions, which, if expressed tactlessly and in the wrong place, might have injured him. As his literary adviser, he had a telegraph-assistant whose knowledge Mans knew better how to use than its owner himself; the latter had not a very lively intellect, although in his knowledge of languages he possessed the key to the three great modern literatures. Passionless and self-conscious, with a strong control over his impulses, he stood outside everything, contemplating and smiling at the free play of thought which he enjoyed as a work of art, with the accompanying certainly that it was after all only an illusion.

With both of these John had many friendly disputes. When he drew up his schemes for the future of men and society he could rouse Måns' enthusiasm and carry him along with him, but when he had taken his hearer a certain way with his emotional and passionate descriptions, the latter took out his microscope, found the weak spot where to insert his knife, and cut. On such occasions John was impatient and motioned his opponent away. "You are a pedant," he said, "and fasten on details." But sometimes it turned out that the "detail" was a premise the excision of which made the whole grand fabric of inference collapse. John was always a poet, and had he continued as such unhindered he might have brought it to something. The poet can speak to the point like the preacher, and that is an advantageous position. He can rattle on without being interrupted, and therefore he can persuade if not convince. It was through these two unlearned men that John learned a philosophy which was not known at Upsala. In the course of conversation, his opponents often referred to an authority whom they called "Buckle." John rejected an authority of whom he had heard nothing in Upsala. But the name continually recurred and worried him to such an extent that he at last asked his friends to lend him the book. The effect of reading it was such that John regarded his acquaintance with the book as the vestibule of his intellectual life. Here there was an atmosphere of pure naked truth. So it should be and so it was. Måns, like all other organised beings, was under the control of natural laws; all so-called spiritual qualities rest on a material basis, and chemical affinities are as spiritual as the sympathies of souls. The whole of speculative philosophy which wished to evolve laws from the inner consciousness was only a better kind of theology, and what was worse, an inquisition, which wished to confine the many-sidedness of the world-process within the limits of an individual system. "No system" is Buckle's motto. Doubt is the beginning of all wisdom, doubt means investigation and stimulates intellectual progress. The truth which one seeks is simply the discovery of natural laws. Knowledge is the highest, morality is only an accidental form of behaviour, which depends upon different social conventions. Only knowledge can make men happy, and the simple-minded or ignorant with their moral strivings, their benevolence and their philanthropy are only injurious or useless.

And now he drew the necessary conclusions. Heavenly love and its result, marriage, is conditioned as to that result by such a prosaic matter as the price of provisions; the rate of suicide varies with wages, and religion is conditioned by natural scenery, climate and soil. His mind was predisposed to receive the new doctrines, and now they made their triumphant entry. John had always planted his feet firmly on the earth, and neither the balloon-voyages of poetry nor the will-o'-the-wisps of German philosophy had found a sincere adherent in him. He had sat in despair over Kant's _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_, and asked himself with curiosity, whether it was he who was so stupid or Kant who was so obscure. The study of the history of philosophy, in which he had seen how each philosopher pointed to his system as the true one, and championed it against others, had left him amazed. Now it was clear to him that the idealists who mingle their obscure perceptions with dear presentations of facts were only savages or children, and that the realists, who were alone capable of clear perceptions, were the most highly developed in the scale of creation. The poets and philosophers are somnambulists, and the religious who always live in fear of the unknown are like animals in a forest who fear every rustic in the bushes, or like primitive men who sacrificed to the thunder instead of erecting lightning rods.

Now he had a weapon in his hand to wield against the old authorities and against the schools and universities which were enslaved by patronage. Buckle himself had run away from school, had never been at a university, and hated them. Apropos of Locke he remarks, "Were this deep thinker now alive, he would inveigh against our great universities and schools, where countless subjects are learnt which no one needs, and which few take the trouble to remember."

Accordingly Upsala had been wrong, and John right. He knew that there were ignorant savants there, and that it was on account of their own want of culture that the professors of philosophy could teach nothing but German philosophy. They neither knew English nor French philosophy for the simple reason that they only understood Latin and German. Buckle's _History of Civilisation in England_ was written in 1857, but did not reach Sweden till 1871-72. Even then the soil was not ready for the seed. The learned critics were unfavourable to Buckle, and the seed took root only in some young minds who had no authoritative voice.

"No literature," says Buckle himself, "can be useful to a people, if they are not prepared to receive it." Thus it was with Buckle and his work, which preceded that of Darwin (1858) and contained all its inferences--a proof that evolution in the world of thought is not so strictly conditioned as has been believed. Buckle did not know Mill or Spencer, whose thoughts now rule the world, but he said most of what they said subsequently.

Now, if John had had a character, _i.e_. if he had been ruled by a single quiet purpose directed towards one object, he would have extracted from Buckle all that answered his purpose and left out all that told against it. But he was a truth-seeker and did not shrink from looking into the abyss of contradictions, especially as Buckle never asserted that he had found the truth, and because truth is relative and it is often found on both sides. Doubt, criticism, inquiry are the chief matter, and the only useful course to pursue, as they guarantee liberty. Sermons, programmes, certainty, system, "truth" are various forms of constraint and stupidity. But it is impossible to be a consistent doubter when one is crammed full with "complete evidence," and when one's judgment is swayed by class-prejudice, anxiety for a living and struggles for a position. John became calm when he learnt that all that was wrong in the world was wrong in accordance with necessary law, but he became furious when he made the further discovery that our social condition, our religion and morality were absurdities. He wished to understand and pardon his opponents, since in their actions they were no more free than he was, but he was in duty bound to strangle them since they hindered the evolution of society towards universal happiness, and that was the only and greatest crime that could be committed. But as there were no criminals, how could one get hold of the crime?

He was rejoiced that the mistakes had now been discovered, but despair oppressed him again when he saw that the discovery was premature. Nothing could be done for many years to come. Social evolution was a very slow process. Consequently he must lie at anchor in the roadstead waiting for the tide. But this waiting was too long for him; he heard an inner voice bidding him speak, for if one does not spread what light one has, how can popular views be changed? Yes, but a premature promulgation of new ideas can do no good. Thus he was tossed to and fro. Everything round him now seemed so old and out of date that he could not read a newspaper without getting an attack of cramp. _They_ only had regard to the present moment; no one thought of the future. His philosophical friend comforted and calmed him, through, among other sayings, a sentence of La Bruyère, "Don't be angry because men are stupid and bad, or you will have to be angry because a stone falls; both are subject to the same laws; one must be stupid and the other fall."

"That is all very well," said John, "but think of having to be a bird and live in a ditch! Air! light! I cannot breathe or see," he exclaimed; "I suffocate!"

"Write!" answered his friend.

"Yes, but what?"

Where should he begin? Buckle had already written everything, and yet it was as though it had not been written. The worst thing was that he felt he lacked the power. Hitherto he had only felt a very moderate degree of ambition. He did not wish to march at the head, to be a conqueror and so on. But to go in front with an axe as a simple pioneer, to fell trees, root up thickets, and let others build bridges and throw up redoubts, was enough for him. It is often observable that great ambition is only the sign of great power. John was moderately ambitious, because he was now only conscious of moderate powers. Formerly when he was young and strong he had great confidence in himself. He was a fanatic, _i.e_. his will was supported by powerful passions, but his awakened insight and healthy doubt had sobered his self-confidence. The work before him took the form of rock-walls which must be pulled down, but he was not so simple as to venture on the task.

Now he began to habituate himself forcibly to doubt in order to be patient and not to explode. He entrenched himself in doubt as in a fortress, and as a means of self-preservation he determined to depict his struggles and doubts in a drama. The subject matter which he had been turning over in his mind for a year he took from the history of the Reformation in Sweden. Thus was composed the drama later on known as _The Apostate_.