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EFERRING a while ago to M. Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac," a novelist whose opinions Americans always listen to with great attention denied for himself the possibility of all interest or æsthetic satisfaction in any literary work with a central motif so flagrantly false to human nature. Without going into this par"Natural' ticular instance, one's first thought Situations in is that such a judgment posits an Fiction. invariableness for the ways in which human nature manifests itself, which radically contradicts experience. Criticisms that this story or that incident, in book or play, is contrary to human nature are made very often, by those writers especially who class themselves as realists, with a finality which causes them to be accepted by many as ascertained and demonstrable scientific statements. This would have been comprehensible before the time when studies in the influences of the social environment had gone so far as they have now. To say, at present, with even approximate authoritativeness, what is true or false to human nature, it should be recognized that it is necessary to allow for a very great many secondary conditions indeed; conditions so complicated, for the most part, that the really scientific attitude toward them—the only scientific attitude-is rather one of complete open-mindedness.

When one comes to state these things in theory, they appear to be the barest truisms. In practice they are determinedly ignored, notwithstanding. We speak of a plot, an episode, as " unnatural," because we measure them unconsciously by the norm of human impulse and action as we know it in a rough, a very rough, fashion. This norm of human action can only be regarded as a fixed quantity, however, when the individual is (so far as he ever can be) isolated from his kind, and cut off from social influences. If we should suppose a half-dozen castaways floating about on a wreck, or stranded on a desert island, we might have, safely enough, a standard in our minds of what would be strictly normal behavior for them. The more absolutely they were reduced to the sheer elemental condi

tions of human nature the less likely should we be to go astray in figuring to ourselves, if our imagination had some courage and sincerity, what they would or would not do. But until the worst should have been reached by them, until they should have been brought down to the plainest human terms, the behavior of each would be “natural” in the degree in which it conformed to those largely artificial habits and ideas inbred in him by the particular social environment that he had known. And what would be natural for one would be unnatural for another.

The ruling passion strong in death is, far oftener than we realize, not a primary passion of human nature at all, but a secondary passion superposed upon it by the acquired desires and derived needs that are born of man's estate as a social being. There have been epochs of high moral passion, of religious enthusiasm-epochs, as Professor Dowden would say, of the “lit lamp and the girt loin,” when it was natural for men to do the (humanly speaking) most unnatural things: to despise pain, and gladly suffer death, for an idea, a, belief. But there have also been epochs when the most potent primary impulses, such as the instinct of self-preservation, or of holding on to the object of one's affections for one's self, have been quelled or substantially held in check by sentiments to which one would not a priori be inclined to ascribe any great momentum whatever : sentiments that did not lift people out of themselves like religious faith, but constrained them by the power, merely, of highly composite and exclusively social ideals, of honor, chivalry, becoming æsthetic conduct, and so forth. The early Christian centuries and the Reformation afforded examples enough of the high moral passion that overrides the natural inclination to do thus or so. The period which, in France, preceded the Revolution was one, contrariwise, in which the exclusively social ideals had a force so compelling that they made people pose, as we should now think, even in extremis.

Dickens's Sydney Carton (who belongs to the same family, in fiction, as Cyrano) has

in learning languages is a natural gift, like any other, and it is not one that belongs to all. The late Philip Gilbert Hamerton showed up well, in "The Intellectual Life," a fact that is of common experience the extreme futility and insubstantiality of the average man's knowledge of any tongue but his own. He went so far as to say that it was, in effect, impossible for any man to possess more than one language thoroughly. And anyone who understands what he meant by possessing a language must be in full agreement with him. The man who possesses his own language, in the complete sense, makes it a life-study and is a rarity. He knows it idiomatically and philologically into its small details, but he also knows the essential spirit, so vital yet so intangible, permeating its whole structure. Now it is clear that to do as much for a second language surpasses, except in very unusual circumstances, the powers of application, adaptability, and sympathy of the bestendowed mortal. In ordinary cases certainly nothing even approximating to any such result is attempted. Learning French or German means getting a sort of working acquaintance with just so much French or German grammar, and just so much of the vocabulary that expresses the most obvious thoughts, as will be "of use."

In ordinary cases, naturally not in all, a knowledge of a foreign tongue that goes no farther than this is in reality valueless outside of the most immediate and limited utility such utility as might declare itself in some out-of-the-way corner of Europe when one had missed one's train. It is valueless in the sense that it adds nothing to the general culture. The true reason for learning other languages than one's own is that they shall widen one's outlook, open new vistas to the mind. Conversational fluency in the foreign idiom will not do that. Only an insight into that essential spirit of the language, its elusive inner life, will do it. And this, exactly, is what is forever beyond many persons who have not the gift of sensing the soul of different tongues.

That gift, if it cannot be absolutely created, can be very much strengthened and developed by a taste for poetry, the greatest poetry. If it has once been acquired in the native language, the instinct is very strong to aim at the poetry of the foreign tongue almost from the start, to try to spell out its meaning through the obstructing medium of the strange words;

and it is very curious and stimulating to see how soon a really eager search of this sort is repaid. The noble poetry of all languages moves on the same plane, a plane of its own, and a brotherhood of ideas can there be detected that very quickly makes the mere accident of the alien vesture of speech no impediment. The spirit of the new tongue is caught. And this, if he wished to learn the language for something more than travelling and superficially social purposes, is what the student was looking for. It is what counts. He has reached, by a straight route, what otherwise he might have groped for in vain to the end. He may, after that, or may not have as much conversational fluency as he pleases. Idiomatically, he may never be perfect; but he has gained the best, nevertheless.

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The Old Bohemia.

HE lament that, among other picturesque things, picturesque Bohemia is passing away appears to be wellfounded. Forces have been in operation in the modern social fabric that have affected the solidarity of Bohemians. They constituted a more distinct group apart when the irreconcilableness of the commercial and the artistic standards of excellence was accepted-though perhaps unconsciously—as an axiom. For it is on this irreconcilableness that the most of Bohemianism really rests. It is a state of mind into which many persons come who, having the artistic standard in respect of the thing which they may happen to do, and believing that it conflicts with the standards of work of the practical world, would like to avoid the discomfort growing out of this antagonism by going just in the opposite direction from the practical man. That is the essence; the free-and-easiness of Bohemianism is only incidental, a derivative.

But the newer idea is gaining ground that the practical and the artistic standards of excellence are not necessarily antagonistic. The world increasingly believes that there is no call to separate, either as to demands made or as to rewards given, those whose labors are idealistic from the practical workers. On the one side all idealistic folk are expected more and more to conduct themselves in as orderly and decently conventional a manner as other members of society; on the other side the feeling is growing that there is no good reason why the pursuers of practical affairs should

have money returns proportionate to the energy expended, and idealistic laborers only fluctuating returns in no demonstrable ratio to the work done. The medieval poet's complaint of the Empty Purse may still be sung; but while the old-time writer-or actor, or painter-had perforce to be content (unless he were the chance protégé of princes) with that purse, his successor objects more decidedly to its emptiness, and founds himself on his rights in so doing.

If, however, there is to be a question of "rights" in the matter, it must be proved that the modern idea is the correct one. It must be proved that doing your work in the best way commercially, and doing it in the best way artistically, are one and the same thing. Is this the case?

Doing your work in the best way commercially means expending energy to a given end in such amount that you will legitimately secure that end and yet have a profit left over to pay you for your pains. If it were not for that profit left over, no one would engage in commercial pursuits. It is the condition of their being. The entire practical work of the world, indeed, is done-when properly, soundly done -in conformity to the same rule, of applying efforts to ends in such measure that the outgo of energy will not be in excess of the gain received. That in practical affairs is the higher law. The laborer is worthy of his hire; and if he do five days' work for one day's hire it is no moral act, rather he is disturbing the canons of distributive justice. We do our daily work honestly, but we don't, if we be practical men, labor to total exhaustion over it; both because we have to begin again tomorrow, and because all the fineness that we might have put into it might very often be out of place, or answer to no demand. It is by squaring our conduct with this universal law of balance between demand and supply that we may (so far as it may ever be

done) talk of our rights to material rewards. But if our labors be idealistic how does all this apply to us? The higher law then is not expending energy in such measure that what we give out will not be wholly out of proportion with what we take in. The higher law to the idealist is the pursuit of an impossible perfection. As he can be said, in the absolute sense, never to attain his end, so there can never be any absolute question of his proportioning effort to it. He does not and cannot conform to the law which governs the expenditure of all effort in the world of practical affairs; therefore it is hard to see how there can be any claim made for rights of adequate returns for him such as those who do so conform might put forth. It is quite possible that his material rewards, on given occasions, may be more than adequate. This, however, will be chance. Edgar Allan Poe's failure to make a living was due, as much as to anything else, to his insisting upon doing as if it were to pass down to the ages, work that was only journalistic and could not be paid for on any basis but the journalistic one. This, at least, was the spirit of his toil, and in it he obeyed the compulsion of what was the higher law for him. Measured by the law of practical work, his course was foolishness.

The drift to-day is so much toward a more equal diffusion of well-being everywhere, that the most uncompromising idealist will probably find good things coming his way oftener than poor Poe could have done. But it is inconceivable that anyone should believe that the fundamental difference between the idealistic and the practical standards of work can ever be wiped out. The tendency of things is to tame the rebellious wildness of the “picturesque" Bohemian. Bohemianism pour la pose is a waning fashion. But that perception of unlike conditions of the life-work which really made Bohemianism—as an attitude of separation-one cannot quite see the end of.

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DAUMIER TO FORAIN

HE name of Honoré Daumier - the most distinguished in French caricature, and not without high honor in the annals of pure art-is frequently coupled of late in Parisian criticism with that of J. L. Forain, whose vogue for the past decade has exceeded all others. A comparison of the two maîtres is interesting in itself, and affords light on certain social tendencies of some importance.

To take the latter first, it must frankly be admitted that a comparison of the art of Daumier and the art of Forain is rendered a little difficult by the inevitable distaste persons not of French race and association must feel toward the peculiar character of the VOL. XXX.-13

subjects of the latter. Not that Daumier was incapable of coarseness. He fulfilled the requirement which he himself proclaimed with much emphasis. He was "of his time," and his time-say, the middle third of the century-was that of Balzac and the "Contes Drôlatiques." He was of his race, as well, French and Méridional, and the canons of propriety of the people from whom he sprang and for whom he worked, were not those of England, much less those of our own land and time. The sève of Rabelais was in his brain, and his "Gargantua," for which Louis Philippe's ministers imprisoned him, was as Rabelaisian in flavor as it was in name. It was that flavor, indeed, that made it formidable as well as offensive. The Frenchmen