value" in terms of utility. Professor Schinz contends very forcibly and conclusively that such a theory is not a philosophy; that it is at best a modern. form of "opportunism," a recrudescence of certain scholastic systems which regarded philosophy merely in the light of an ally for the support of dogma. In much the same way in our day, the convenient doctrines of pragmatism are made to serve a like purpose, of giving a scholarly sanction to an easy-going code of morality and a comfortable philosophy of life. Pragmatism, however, fails to prove itself. It is absurd to invoke reason in order to demonstrate the untrustworthiness of the very foundations of reason itself. The Italian Pragmatist, Papini, virtually concedes this point in a statement of his which appeared in a recent number of the Popular Science Monthly: "Pragmatism is really less a philosophy than a method of doing without a philosophy." However, the followers of Pragmatism generally would not allow this concession, but would insist upon its claims to be a philosophy, and that of a new and higher order.

Not only has Professor Schinz most admirably exposed the unphilosophical character of Pragmatism, but he has also attempted to show that this present-day movement of thought is a natural response to certain needs of the age in which we live, and particularly that it has been greatly accelerated by the conditions which exist in America. These needs may be indicated briefly in the popular demand for a theory of life that is grounded upon ideas of utility. There is a tendency, perhaps unconscious, not only to regard practical success as a supreme test in all fields of activity, but to regard it also with a certain religious fervour, and to seek to surround it with the sentiments and sanctions of a philosophical aura. There is a demand for an apotheosis of the practical. These ideas are in the air; they are the expression of the spirit of the times, and the attempt to constitute a pragmatic philosophy is both a proof of their presence and a formulation of their demands. To these tendencies Professor Schinz has drawn attention in a comprehensive and striking manner. The alarm which he

sounds is timely and we refuse to heed it at our peril.

He himself indulges in rather a pessimistic prophecy concerning the future of Pragmatism, especially in this country. He regards the demand for an expression of such a view of life as irresistible. For in a democratic land, where the character of the population is ever changing, there can be no body of philosophical traditions sufficiently strong and sufficiently permanent to contend against it. Consequently, Professor Schinz predicts the success of Pragmatism, not because it is true, but because it is false. This is based upon the ground that the masses generally, and the unreflecting portion in particular, do not care to behold the truth face to face. The truth is not always convenient, and, therefore, a gospel of convenience such as Pragmatism heralds will always be welcomed with acclaim. The God of things as they are or the God of things as they ought to be is not a popular deity rather the God of things as we would like to think them to be.

Professor Schinz, in the expression of this opinion, however, is not to be interpreted too literally. There is a satirical vein which one may detect throughout his pessimistic description of the future of philosophy in America. His essay is in itself a protest against the set of the tide. Pragmatism may appeal to certain needs of human nature; they are the needs, however, of the frailty of human nature and not of its strength of its lower levels and not of the higher. It is a prostitution of the offices of philosophy to attempt merely to render people happy and comfortable in mind. Philosophy is not an anææsthetic. There are certain needs which it should combat and to which it should not stoop to minister. It should quicken apprehension and not dull it. It should discern the springs of knowledge and not obscure them. And in the long run the demand for the truth will assert itself. Even from the standpoint of Pragmatism itself the lead of expediency and of the convenient is a blind lead unless it follows the light of knowledge and obeys the necessities of law both physical and moral. An individual or a people may forge ahead to

ward certain desired ends and attain them, but there is sure to come a great awakening to a sense of disaster and humiliation when it is discovered that in the keen zest of pursuit the fundamental principles of honesty and the laws both of God and man have been ignored.

Moreover, in the spheres of mere utility, where all moral questions can be eliminated, the worshippers of success. may be slow to learn the lesson, but nevertheless will come to learn it in time, that the man who bases his reckonings upon the stable foundations of necessary and universal truth is the one man of all others who is best qualified to adapt means to ends, and SO command efficiently and resourcefully the various practical situations of life. In this age of large enterprises there are certain undertakings where it is impossible to make the successful outcome a matter of experiment. A certain end is desired. and it is out of the question to hazard the certainty of its accomplishment. There must be an initial assurance that the plans and calculations will work and work in a rigorously exact manner.

In a great engineering problem, for instance, such as the construction of a tunnel under a river, where the work is to begin at either shore, meeting at the centre and with a margin of error of a fraction of an inch, what question can arise of the convenient, or the expedient, or the agreeable leading? It is solely a question of fundamental and necessary principles of mechanics which must be known, and consistently followed, and upon which alone the success of the undertaking depends. This is not a question of interesting speculation, but the most practical of problems. A very large area of the practical affairs of life rests upon a basis of knowledge which is not derived from results of successful experiments, but, on the contrary, arises. from the mastery of certain fundamental principles of necessity and universality. Permanent success and permanent satisfactions in life come from a deep knowledge of the rules of the game, and a disposition to play fair. There is another kind of success and another kind of satisfaction where the end desired is attained by short cuts and the turning of sharp

corners, but the end fails to glorify the means when the truth has been ignored in the process. If there is to be a "philosophy for the masses," let it be the knowledge of the true, and not the art of the expedient. The weakness of Pragmatism may be its strength, as Professor Schinz evidently fears; but is it a strength which can withstand the reaction of a sober common sense, and sane judgment which in the long run. are bound to assert themselves?

John Grier Hibben.

VI

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD'S "MARRIAGE À LA MODE"*

I chanced to overhear a bookseller the other day expressing plaintive wonder at the slowness with which his customers were relieving his counter of the fifty copies of Mrs. Ward's latest book which he had confidently ordered. Usually, he said, Mrs. Ward went off like hot cakes; he couldn't make out what was the matter with this marriage book. The fact is, it is an irritating book for the American reader. We love Mrs. Ward very much as long as she stays on her own side of the fence. We like to have her lean upon it in her serious, stately way, and tell us all about what is happening on her side, behind the shrubberies, among the Georgian pillars-what political history is making, what human hearts are breaking, among those aristocratic groups which for ourselves we can discern but dimly. short, we like to have her expound the noble Briton to us-all the more because she takes him quite seriously. But it is a different matter when she suddenly mounts the fence and begins to lecture us on our faults. Everybody knows that the American divorce laws are not all that they should be; but I doubt whether it is worth the while of Mrs. Ward or any other literary artist (that is, interpreter) to harangue about them. The author of Marriage à la Mode (published in England under the far more self-respecting title of Daphne) is so intent

In

*Marriage à la Mode. By Mrs. Humphry Ward. Doubleday, Page and Company.

upon teaching her lesson, scoring her point, that she fails of her usual success in creating the illusion of character and life. Daphne is a disagreeable puppet, an awful example, an effigy of the American woman at, as it were, her damndest. She is unspeakably selfish, wilful, illbred, charming, jealous, rich. There is no detail in which she is not framed for the undoing of any young British "Apollo" (yes, Mrs. Ward actually so names him) who may be under family orders to pick up an American heiress. Roger Barnes is such an Apollo; he has been so enjoined; and he is in due season undone, according to our dearest expectations.

His father has reared him in luxury, but died insolvent. The young man, to relieve his mind, makes off to America, and presently finds himself joined by an uncle, General Hobson, who is afraid his nephew may be looking to him for aid, or at least for a legacy. The general, a crusted old Britisher who hates America because it remembers Bunker Hill with a certain satisfaction, insults him generously, but "contemplating his nephew, and mollified . . . by his splendid appearance, kept saying to himself: 'He hasn't a farthing but what poor Laura allows him; he has the tastes of forty thousand a year; a very indifferent education; and what the deuce is he going to do?''

Poor Laura is the British matron of mature years, the dowager without fear and without self-reproach. She writes the absent Apollo that it is his business. to marry money in America; the uncle cordially seconds the motion; and the son and nephew makes a go of it. Daphne, the prize, or victim, is a young American girl (with the somewhat unusual asset of a Spanish-American mother) who possesses much ante-marital charm, not a few accomplishments according to the local standard, and no end of the root of all evil. Roger has no difficulty in marrying her; she, too, is pleased with "his splendid appearance." In fact, she loves him in a quite innocent and disinterested way. Up to the end of Part I she presents a rather engaging figure-distinctly the more engaging figure of the two, though Roger is a decent enough young chap.

But there have been mutterings of thunder in the distance, and we cannot plausibly feign surprise when at the beginning of Part II (three years later) we find ourselves in the midst of matrimonial excursions and alarums. After the lapse of so much time, passed, if not in the inexpirable honeymoon of romance, at least in a relative condition of peace and mutual understanding, Apollo and Daphne, with the little Beatrice whom they both adore, return to the ancestral home of the Trescoes, and to that consummate Tresco, poor Laura, who, thanks to her son's successful venture in matrimonial stocks and bonds, is now freer than ever to lady it over the countryside. She has indeed, by virtue of her Trescosity, a Lady to her name. But Daphne here develops an unpardonable trait of barbarism. The House at "Heston Park" seems to her a sad middleVictorian monster. "The outside, the shell of the house-delightful. But inside-heavens! what taste, what decorations-what ruin of a beautiful thing! Half the old mantelpieces gone, the ceilings spoiled, the decorations 'busy.' pretentious, overdone, and nothing left to console her but an ugly row of bad Lelys and worse Highmores-the most despicable collection of family portraits she had ever set eyes upon!" dowager and her consort had been responsible for most of these enormities, but Daphne, being an ill-bred American, had not sense enough to feel that the dictates of kindliness are at times of more importance than those of taste. She set herself forthwith to restore what poor Laura had improved. Hence anger and an added series of chins on the part of the dowager, and much simple-minded perturbation for Apollo. Enter a Mrs. Fairmile, who can discount and outdo the "expertise" (as Mrs. Ward calls it) of Daphne's art-chatter. Unfortunately Mrs. Fairmile is a former flame of the Apollo's whom he has neglected to name in the course of those marital confidences during which Daphne has religiously discharged her conscience of any possible cause of offence to the man whose name she bears. Apollo Roger is, in fact, a good-natured invertebrate, whose chief virtue, apart from his "splendid appear

The

ance" and his ráce, lies in his devotion to his child (I am tempted to spell "cheeyild"). Of that object of affection Daphne (with the aid of a British spinster whom she has easily subsidised and after an absurdly melodramatic scene in a garret) presently deprives him. "Mrs. Barnes bought the show"-in America, of course, where, if people do not so often marry for a consideration as in most other parts of the globe, they can at least unmarry for that same. Mrs. Ward has no trouble in making a monster of Daphne. She obtains her freedom in some accursed United States court, but the Apollo is still bound by British law. No chance of an heir for Heston Court: how else can he vindicate his manhood than by taking to drink, going into consumption?

There is only one thing that can happen in Part III. Daphne must be made to repent, to eat dirt. The cheeyild has died in America, after the divorce, away from its father-has called his name in its last hours. The fact is brought home to Daphne that the father is on the road to the dogs. She posts off to England, under a blind impulse to help him, to bring him back to life in some way. But he will have none of her: Apollo is avenged.

The situation is not absurd, but pathetic, tragic even, if you like. It is the shrill note in Mrs. Ward's treatment of it -a note unworthy of her and not to have been predicted of her-which admirers on either side of the Atlantic must, one may think, deplore.

VII

H. W. Boynton.

JAMES LANE ALLEN'S "BRIDE OF THE MISTLETOE"*

There are books which should be read, as it were, on one long breath. They exist as the sweep of a bird through the clear ether exists-by one beautiful motion, one fine gesture. It is impossible. to take such a book apart, to point to

*Bride of the Mistletoe. By James Lane Allen. New York: The Macmillan Company.

such or such portions as being better or not so good, as meaning less or more. Whole, complete, nothing except in its completeness, such a book affects you as the sudden opening of a flower mightthere is mystery behind the bloom, slow days of growing toward the moment; but of these you are for the time being unconscious. Effortless and inevitable, the petals stir, unfold, reveal the accomplished wonder-form, perfume, colour, a whole which you cannot convey to another save by plucking the flower and presenting it in its entirety.

To many people James Lane Allen has given a particular and exquisite pleasure yielded by no other writer. A certain indefinable spiritual quality lives in his books, an abiding quality that subsists long after the incidents of the story have grown dim in the memory. Deeply refreshing, it comes to the mind like a wind from wide fields and mighty forests, with a sense of space in it, yet remaining strongly individual-so individual that it does not appeal to every one. Some it passes by, some it antagonises. those who love it love it strongly, for it is a quality virile as manhood itself.

But

Mr. Allen looks out upon the world with an eye at once sensitive and courageous. What he sees he does not hesitate to tell, but in the telling he transmutes the rough fragments, the mud and dust of life into a new thing, a beautiful thing complete in itself, as the plant transforms the soil and water in which it is set to the blossom that is its crown. Always one returns to nature, to the growth of trees, the quiet spaces of the fields, in speaking or thinking of Mr. Allen's work. This is from something inherent in itself, and not only because he has given Kentucky to the world in many a matchless description of its hempfields and farmsteads, its roads winding through forests, its undulating bluegrass meadows and fruit and flower gardens. A young strong land and in his books a passion strong and young, men and women who feel, whose actions are the spontaneous outcome of their personality.

There are pictures and moods induced by them which remain always with you. Who forgets the tender playfulness of

Georgiana in the Kentucky Cardinal, bending from her window and asking the young Adam, crouched over his strawberry plants, "Old man, are you the gardener?" Who forgets, in Aftermath, that moment when the eyes of husband and wife meet, dark with the sudden realisation of inexorable parting? Or, in the Choir Invisible, John Gray's ride through the forest, or his last interview with the woman he loved. They are like happenings in one's own life which remain fixed in the heart.

Behind the scenes and the characters he portrays lies Mr. Allen's philosophy of life. It is the philosophy of a scholar, of a man who has pondered upon the race, upon its strange birth, its stranger growth. It is the philosophy of one who recognises both the animal and the spirit that make us human, the gross elements that have come up through the ages from brute ancestors, the divinity which, through ages, has flowed down from God and Heaven. We, who are created from the union of these two elements, were not born for happiness, this somewhat stern philosophy says. But we have power to be noble; a sweet and piercing light shines through the tears of life and illumines them with a rainbow radiance. The hardly built castle of happiness in which Mr. Allen's characters abide for awhile crumbles away under the assaults of life; but in the open, under the stars and close to the forces of nature, something else comes to them, something it may be even finer than happiness.

In his latest book, Bride of the Mistletoe, Mr. Allen has achieved a work of art more complete in expression, more cohesive, than anything that has yet come from him. It is like a cry of the soul, so intense one scarcely realises whether it is put into words or not. The high note which is to dominate is struck in the first page, where the contour of the land and the ancient brotherhood of man is set before you. This stage of green and gold and white, this past that presses upon us, this future upon which we press, and which make for tragedy as surely and inexorably as the relentless Fate of the Greeks.

The story occupies some twenty-four hours on the edge of Christmas in the

life of a man and a woman. It takes. perhaps, a couple of hours to read. Nothing happens to change the outer life of these two. To those nearest them, to their children, their friends, no perception of any change has come. Nevertheless, within them summer has turned to winter, the flowers of their life are killed, a deadly wind has frozen the springs of their laughter and their joy. Not willingly, not consciously, did they bring this blight upon their Garden of Eden. Their inheritance-his inheritance-the facts of life, the passing of the seasons, brought it. How to meet it, what to be, beast or angel, that is what matters to them, to us, to all. The story is a story of one of the great experiences of the human soul.

A beautiful love has bound these two for years. A love which, in the wife, is deep as the sea and unchangeable as the hills. The man's love is still there, is a part of him, too. He breathes and lives in love's atmosphere and one feels that, should it fail him, he would stifle, would disintegrate, for all his strength of limb and mind. But a fiercer youth burns in him than in her, and an instinct, a desire as surely handed down to him from remote forbears as are his golden Saxon head and mighty thews and sinews, is passionately alive in him.

After the truth is spoken between them, told in a way of which only a great artist could have conceived, the wife, during the night that follows, climbs her Calvary. She searches, too, the depths of her own being and finds hell there; but like the white soaring of a dove she rises again and on the height where she at last alights the glory of the dawn will always be about her. She has attained to a new region in her own soul. Henceforth, perhaps, her husband will be closer to her than ever before; a sublimer element will live in her love. she will also be forever solitary, having within her a height no earthly shadow can darken nor whose flashing snows any earthly heat can melt.

But

In the great bedroom on a spot of the carpet under the chandelier-which had no decoration whatsoever-stood an exquisite picture of youth, more insubstantial than