IF Job or Hosea were alive to-day and crying out against man's lot and civilization, what would he be like and where and how would he live? As I climbed five steep flights of stairs in a tenement in Rue Henner, on the outskirts of Montmartre, to see Max Nordau, it seemed to me that these questions I was asking myself were about to be answered. For here is one of their race and kind, who, too, has been inveighing mightily against his day and generation. Only, instead of crying out in a market-place in Jerusalem - although, as one of the founders of Zionism, he has done much toward restoring Jerusalem to the Jews-he has written his diatribes with a pen and in German characters so fine that I had to take a magnifying glass to make out the letters; and his books, Conventional Lies of Our Civilization and Degeneration, have spoken in a score and more languages, in Tokio and London, Stockholm and New York. And now that he has rounded his three-score years and ten he is writing the last chapter of his life's message in The Essence of Civilization.

Although the house of Hapsburg has no love for Dr. Max Nordau's writings, the war has exiled him as an Austrian from his beloved Paris to Spain. When he returned to Paris, the housing crisis crowded his eight rooms of household effects into this modest five-room flat on the top floor of a 'walk-up' tene

ment.

Dr. Nordau is a shortish, square man in a well-worn tweed suit, youthful in color like himself. A dazzlingly white beard, vigorously parted, hides his

throat and mounts to an upstanding fringe on his pink bald head. His long, intelligent nose and the bright lips of a crescent-shaped mouth look racial. The pinkness of his skin, the shining hazel eyes, and the vigor of his manner and speech - his English has the trace of accent and foreignism of the man who is at home with half a dozen languages take no notice of seventyodd years. With his capable, squarefingered hands on his thighs, as he swings from argument to argument, he also sways a little unconsciously, as the Talmud student does; and however pessimistic his message, there is a slight smile of enjoyment on his lips that comes from a mind richly working and at a case magnificently marshaled.

'What do you say in your new book?' I asked him.

"That the fruits of our civilization are discontent and pessimism,' he said. 'What Malthus said of the food supply in the future I believe of man's desires. While man's desires increase by multiplication, his means of satisfying them scarcely grow by addition. Take speed of travel, for instance. At first man was content with walking. Then he noticed that animals traveled faster than he did. So, although he would have liked to go as fast as a deer, he had to content himself with a horse. For a time he thrilled at his new speed. But that did not last. He envied the speed of the bird. Steam came, and he harnessed it and thought he achieved wonders at sixty miles an hour. But no sooner was he accustomed to that than he began to strain for a bird's speed.

All right: he flies now, with a bird's wings and speed. Is he content? Not for a moment. He now sees that, compared to the speed at which light travels, he, man, only crawls. Will he attain still greater speed? I don't know. What I do know, however, is that while his speed achievements grow in arithmetical progression, his craze for more will leap by geometrical progression.

'Or consider knowledge. At first his questions were simple, his appetite for knowledge modest; almost any answer was sufficient. Whence came birds? From eggs. Good! Then he had to know who hatched the first bird. For a time he was satisfied with the answer that God created it by a mandate. But little by little knowledge increased and by leaps and bounds his curiosity waxed. How did God come into being? Of course, the first man who asked that question was properly stoned. But his breed did not die. Soon there were too many of them to stone. So answers had to be found. Some answered the question of the origin of the bird by talking about matter and its ways. But of what does matter consist? Of molecules. And molecules? Of atoms. Atoms of electrons. Electrons are centres of power. And what is power? "Ah, one fool can ask more questions in one minute than wise men can answer in a year!" This is the modern stoning by the pious. But now it is not the pious but the questioners who dominate the age.

'And so it will go on. And what is true of the growth of his desires for knowledge and speed holds good of all his other desires. For every achievement man gains his ambition multiplies. The nearer he gets to a goal he once aimed at, the farther away appears a new one.'

'Yes, if you enjoy chasing after a mirage,' he replied.

"That seems to me a figure of speech,' I objected. 'Why not say traveling, exploration? Changing one's destination need not mean failure.'

'Perpetual changing does,' he said. "The principal tendency of life and desire is satisfaction, arrival. The principal process of life is change. Desires so simple that their attainment is simple is the heart of wisdom. Consider from what different sources comes agreement on this: The Bible says blessed are the poor in spirit. Voltaire, arch-atheist, says the ripest wisdom is to cultivate a garden and grow cabbages. Tolstoyan philosophy advises you to renounce, to beware of ambition, to live simply. Folk-lore tells you of the king who looked for the shirt of the happiest man and when he found him he saw that there was no shirt; for the man was poor, hence happy. This concensus of opinion means something.'

'Man in a tired mood,' I suggested. 'Why is that any more valid than the mood of Columbus about to set sail for India?'

'Well, I suppose it is a matter of taste,' he admitted. 'Therefore not to be argued. But

the

And he proceeded to argue joy of it shone in his eyes — all over creation, aggressively defending the unaggressive attitude toward life. If, as pragmatists often hold, a man's philosophy is the product of his temperament, here was an apparent refutation in Dr. Nordau. Life would have a difficult task keeping this man humble and confined to raising cabbages in a little garden. But part of his philosophy does express the man that presents himself to the eye.

"The aim of civilization should be to augment to the fullest the value of the

asked.

and absolute sovereignty over himself and his destiny, to make him independent of anyone else. But modern civilization poses a tremendous dilemma. In order to enjoy its benefits man must combine into organization. He must coördinate his life and efforts with millions of others in a thousand different directions. Without organization he cannot earn his bread, have his milk delivered, or repel criminals and invaders, who are organized. He must belong to an organization called a “village" or a "city"; to another called "country"; to still others that embrace his industrial, religious, social, and family life the family itself is essentially an organization, a natural and effective one. And all these organizations require more or less that he subordinate part of his individuality until he is thoroughly enmeshed in it. How to keep organization acting for him instead of oppressing him? A terrific problem, and civilization to-day makes the answer more and more difficult.

'At present it seems to me that organization is less a release for the individual than a sort of springboard for prepotent and selfish individuals. These strong men lay their hands on organization and reap the benefits of it. Take political democracy, for instance. Formerly the prepotent individual said, "By divine right I am king and order you to give me your obedience, your substance, your lives on the battle field?" And the masses, sheep, obeyed. With sheep the king could be a wolf in his own guise and tear and bite and devour if he pleased. Then this civilization "made progress." Men began to Men began to doubt the "divine right." They began to organize resistance against the tyrant. Political "democracy" became the fashion. The "divine right" king lost his head. Were the people thereupon set free? No, indeed. Along came other prepotent individuals and put on

a little camouflage. "The people must rule!" each of these individuals declare. "Fellow citizens, let us organize the 'People-must-rule Party!' I am a friend of the people. Follow me. Elect me premier or president and you, the people, will rule."

'Again the people follow. On the political field, in the industrial field, on to the battle field they follow like sheep. The political boss, the labor leader, the premier does to-day and has the power that the king-wolf had in former days. If it were n't for that, if it were n't for the machination of a few individuals, we would not have had that great product of our "civilization," the Great War, with its millions of victims, poor people! Sennacherib couldn't have arranged such a holocaust so arbitrarily.

'America and England pride themselves on being democracies. Well, I consider that perhaps America is the freest country in the world. But there, too, we have the political boss in power. Consider the choosing of a candidate for President of the United States at the recent election. How astonished the people of the United States must have been to find one morning that it had been their overwhelming desire that Senator Harding should be their candidate as President on the Republican ticket; that Governor Cox should be the people's Democratic nominee! I don't suppose one American out of a thousand, out of ten thousand, knew who Senator Harding was or what he would do as President. But a few individuals in private session in a hotel room knew that they wanted Senator Harding to be President of the United States. And he is! Nevertheless, there is more democracy in the United States States for the people are beginning to realize a little the workings of the political boss the political boss than in England, where the people are divided between those who obey the labor leader and

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those who obey the older master, the squire, the owning class. Then in the United States this group of individuals get into power, give about two thousand of their lieutenants places of influence, and for four years the people of America have the analogue of the Kaiser or the Czar.'

I asked him if he thought we were entering to-day on some new era of development.

"That is the eternal delusion of man,' he said, 'that his particular day is particularly important. There have been great wars in the past. There will be great wars in the future, unless

He paused. 'Unless the League of Nations should prove to be the germ of something new and great. That is the only significant hope I see to-day, and it is thus far a faint one. America, through President Wilson, was largely responsible for that hope. But America seems to have repudiated that hope. Whether that is fatal He shrugged expressively.

'Do you see in Palestine to-day a new era beginning for the Jewish race?' I asked.

'I see a most critical time at the present moment for the whole Zionist enterprise,' he said. "Three years ago, when England and France promised the Jews a national home in Palestine, a bright prospect opened. If, at that time, the self-appointed guardians of the Jewish people had asked clear and specific questions as to what England and France meant exactly by their promise, that prospect would have flowered. As it is, it threatens to dissipate into nothing. The anti-Semites are making every effort to make the Balfour declaration mean less and less, and the danger is that England may either take Palestine for itself or give it over to the Arabs. The Jews have one or two possible remedies. One is to immigrate to Palestine in vast num

bers. The other is to appeal to the League of Nations. And the outcome of either or both is on the lap of the gods.'

'Do you consider any particular race or nation in the lead of civilization?' I asked.

'No. Spiritual development is to be found in horizontal strata rather than inside national boundary lines. The East often expresses itself as superior to the materialism of the western peoples. But there is sensuality and the luxury of the satraps in the Orient as characteristically as there are Yogis and Brahmin of undoubted piety. And there are Kants, Spinozas, Newtons, and Edisons living as sparely in the Occident and thinking as loftily as the Yogis; and there are profiteers among our neighbors here who live in as swinish materialism as do the satraps of the Orient; perhaps with less art.'

"Then you don't see among the different nations any moral advance?'

"There will not be until morals mean the same things for nations as they do for individuals,' he replied. 'A man steals a gold watch and he is put into prison. A nation steals a gold-field. Who is there to put it into prison unless the League of Nations lives? In the one case the world calls it theft; in the other conquest. In the one case ownership decides the morality of the act; in the other only power. Might makes right. And all the nations are tarred with the same brush. If the smaller nations do not have as great catalogues of imperialistic crime to their records as the big ones, it is only because they are small. That is so not because the people of any nation are any more immoral than as individuals. It is partly because the wolves-in-democratic-garb who rule them are wolves and clever at disguising; and partly because the people themselves have not yet adopted a single standard for nations as well as for individuals.'

'Which way lies salvation?' I asked. "In stimulating the healthy tendencies of the age,' he said. 'One of them is the return to the soil.'

"The United States census for 1920 shows that in the last ten years something like one third of the farm population in America has drifted to the big cities,' I said.

'Make your own comment,' he said grimly. Another healthy current is the increase of popular education tending toward a general leveling upward. Then there is some hope in the growing realization that economic and other freedom lies in the administration of all goods on earth in the interest of all peoples.'

"There are currents, then, making for salvation?' I said, surprising him in the rôle of optimist.

He realized that his enthusiasm had carried him a little beyond his position. He caught himself with a jerk.

"Trickles, I should have said. Trickles through a great swamp!'

'And what can man do about it?' 'Man can only go on with his vaunted civilization,' he concluded ironically. 'Meanwhile I should like to take out citizenship papers in the dog tribe. But if they knew us they would n't admit man in their midst!'

[Isis]

THE FAITH OF A HUMANIST

BY GEORGE SARTON

A FEW weeks ago, I had gone up from Florence to Fiesole. It was not a beautiful day. The weather was cold and dull, and I found myself in a melancholy and hesitating mood. Any man engaged in a long and arduous undertaking, can but ask himself now and then, 'Is it worth while?'

That is what I could not help asking myself on that gray afternoon: Was it

really worth while? Was I on the right way? Why interrogate the past? Why not let bygones be bygones? There was so much to do to go forward or simply to exist, so many practical problems the solution of which called for immediate action. Instead of taking infinite pains to unravel an irrevocable past, was it not wiser to raise crops and live stock, to bake bread, to build roads, to minister to the poor and suffering? Was I not like an idle man in a very busy world? In each of those homes yonder on the hills and in the valley, there lived people who took up one urgent task after the other; they had hardly time to think or to dream; they were swept away by the needs of life.

Then I looked around me and for a while I forgot my own perplexity. I had at last reached the top of the sacred hill. Remains of ancient walls reminded one of the old Etruscan culture. Nearby other ruins spoke of Roman power and refinement. Thus had civilization steadily grown for more than a thousand years before being brutally interrupted by the southward migrations of younger peoples. Soon after, however, fresh endeavors had been made; a new spiritual life had begun and finally the mediaval ideals had been adequately accomplished in this Franciscan monastery, a magnificent assertion of virtue and charity against triumphant barbarity. And lo, yonder in the valley-Florence! Millions of little voices reached my ears. Every stone of Florence told a story. The whole Italian Renaissance was parading before me. Here in Fiesole and there in Florence, twenty-five centuries of almost uninterrupted civilization had accumulated reminiscences and glories. During this long period, men had labored, suffered, tried in many ways to draw a little nearer to the truth, to understand the wonder