Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham only noticed that his father was a drunkard, and completely lost sight of the fact that he was a genius, that he had built an ark and saved the world. Writers must not imitate Ham.

On the other hand, Tchehov was always alert to defend the practice of honest realism in literature. He refused to admit that it is the object of literature to "unearth the pearl from the refuse-heap":

A writer is not a confectioner, not a provider of cosmetics, not an entertainer; he is a man bound, under contract, by his sense of duty and his conscience; having put his hand to the plough, he mustn't turn back, and however distasteful, he must conquer his squeamishness and soil his imagination with the dirt of life. He is just like any ordinary reporter. What would you say if a newspaper correspondent, out of a feeling of fastidiousness or from a wish to please his readers, would describe only honest mayors, highminded ladies, and virtuous railway contractors?

In Tchehov's view, it is the duty of the artist to tell the truth about his characters, not to draw morals from them. "The artist," he declares, "must not be the judge of his characters and of their conversations, but merely an impartial witness." The artist must, no doubt, strive after some such impartiality as this. But the great

artist will never quite attain to it. Shakespeare, Dickens, and Tchehov himself, all lavished affection on some of their characters and withheld it from others.

On the other hand, the artist must be tolerant to a degree that frequently shocks the orthodox moralist. He approaches individual men, not as a censor, but as a recorder. Tchehov, writing to a friend from his country estate, relates, for instance: "The village priest often comes and pays me long visits; he is a very good fellow, a widower, and has some illegitimate children." To the stern moralist, a priest who is a very good fellow with some illegitimate children is an unthinkable paradox. To the artist it is a paradox that exists in nature: he accepts it with a smile. It is not that Tchehov was indifferent to the vices of the flesh. We find him writing on one occasion to a great journalist: "Why do they write nothing about prostitution in your paper? It is the most fearful evil, you know. Our Sobelev street is a regular slave-market."

Tchehov, indeed, like every great artist, was a man divided. He had the artist's passion for describing his fellow-men: he had also the doctor's passion for helping them. He was in a sense pulled in opposite directions by these rival passions. Luckily, the tug-of-war, instead of

weakening, positively strengthened his genius. The great artist is a reformer transformed. Shakespeare is sometimes held to have lived aloof from the reformer's temporary passions. But that repeated summons to reconciliation in his plays is the credo of a man who has plumbed the great secret of the liberalism of his time and, equally, of ours. Pity, tenderness, love, or whatever you choose to call it, is an essential ingredient of the greatest genius, whether in reform or in art. It is the absence of pity that is the final condemnation of most of the literature, painting, and sculpture of our time. When pity is exhausted, the best part of genius is exhausted, and there is little but cleverness left. In Tchehov, more than in almost any other author of recent years, truth and tenderness are united. He tells us the truth even when it is most cruel, but he himself is kind. He often writes like a doctor going his rounds in a sick world. But he cares for the sick world. That is why his stories delight us as the synthetic golden syrup of more optimistic authors never does.

XII

NIETZSCHE: A NOTE

"And thus I wander alone like a rhinoceros." Nietzsche writes in one of his letters that he had discovered this "strong closing sentence" in an English translation of the sacred books of the Buddhists and had made it a "household word." It is at once a grotesque and an apt image of his isolation in a world of men and women. His solitude made him perilous: it ultimately exalted his egoism into madness. There are few more amazing passages in the annals of literature than those containing the last letters between the mad Nietzsche and the mad Strindberg. Nietzsche, signing himself "Nietzsche Cæsar," wrote on New Year's Eve, 1888:

I have appointed a meeting day of monarchs in Europe. I shall order .. to be shot.

Au revoir! For we shall surely see each other again.
On one condition only. Let us divorce.

Strindberg, writing on the same date and signing himself "The best, the highest God," began his letter to Nietzsche: "I will, I will be raving mad," and concluded it:

Meanwhile, let us rejoice in our madness. Fare you well and be true to your

Dr. Oscar Levy, in his introduction to an English selection from Nietzsche's letters, vigorously objects to the emphasis that has been laid by some critics on Nietzsche's madness. It is a reasonable protest, if the accusation is put forward in order to damage Nietzsche's fame as an artist among philosophers. Dr. Levy, however, goes so far on the other side that he almost leaves us with a picture of Nietzsche as a perfectly normal man with all the normal "slave virtues." "A good friend, a devoted son, an affectionate brother, and a generous enemy""not the slightest trace of any lack of judgment"—"perfectly healthy and lucid”—such are