It is a generally recognized fact
that the onlooker sees most of the game. The rulers of a
country make most of their mistakes because the knowledge of
detail which is constantly thrust upon them is so great that
it binds them to fundamental considerations. The emergencies
of the moment lure them into bypaths in which they become
lost. Those ancient governors who, despairing of their own
judgment, consulted the oracles, were truly wise. England
never made so serious a mistake as when she failed to
utilize the brain of Carlyle. The tendency of all men who
are immersed in affairs, whether public or private, is to
become concentrated upon tactical problems, and in so doing
this they lose sight of the principles of strategy. The real
ruler or adviser of a nation should be a man entirely free
from the expediencies of the passing day. The mischief
wrought by failure to understand these facts is particularly
obvious in finance. Politics, in some countries at least, is
still looked after by men of broad general education; but
finance is entirely in the hands of experts. Its terminology
has been deliberately complicated; partly, no doubt, as in
the case of law, with the idea of making it easier to
hoodwink the layman; but the so-called experts themselves
have become totally oblivious of the fundamental principles
of their own business. Even worse, they have become ensnared
by the greatest of all possible delusions; not only are they
ignorant of the truth, but they believe most firmly its
exact opposite. Money appears to them the only thing of
value, whereas in reality it has no value whatever. It is
merely a convenient medium of exchange of commodities which
have value. If it were not for this, the present system
could never have been created. As things are, a piece of
paper is just as good as a piece of gold; but, as everyone
knows, even the financiers, ninety five per cent of the gold
never existed. The possibility of calling for gold has so
frightened those very people who have been screaming for
years that gold was the only basis, that already there has
been a threat to demonetize gold. This is no vain threat. It
is quite possible and will almost certainly be necessary;
though probably the process will be carried out by some
trick which will conceal the fact from the people. But you
cannot demonetize wheat, or coal, or copper, and any one who
possesses these things can call for anything he likes in
payment for them, and be sure of getting it. But the
financiers of the day avoid all consideration of the
enormous calamity threatened by the present situation. They
are only excited by perfectly trivial and temporary events,
such as small movements in the value of stocks. It never
occurs to them that the most trifling shifts in the real
economic situation may reduce the value of stocks to nothing
a tall. The history of finance has always been the history
of more or less desperate efforts to hide these facts. And
the drastic expedients adopted at the beginning of the war
shew clearly enough in what delicate scales the business of
the world is weighed.
Now, whenever a crisis occurs in
the affairs of the world, it is imperative that they should
be examined de novo by a mind which has never lost sight of
fundamentals. The expert becomes useless at such times for
the very reason that he is an expert. Temporary expedients
will not serve. As a matter of fact, this is always more or
less subconsciously recognized by the good sense of the
people. The hopes which were excited by the election of Mr.
Wilson to the presidency were based entirely on the fact
that he was not a professional politician. In the same way,
in England, to take a recent example, Edward VII was trusted
and respected by the people principally because he had won
the Derby. The instinct of democracy is always sound; its
mistakes are due to that instinct being overlaid by the
partial development of its intellect, which too often leads
it wrong. But in moments of calm it invariably distrusts the
appeals which are made to its cupidity of its cowardice; and
it much prefers its affairs to be in the hands of ordinary,
sensible men of the world. The political tragedy of England
today is largely due to the replacing of the good,
old-fashioned, honest statesmen, like Lord Salisbury (stupid
as he was) by clever and ambitious nobodies like Rufus
Isaacs and Lloyd George. It seems just possible that the
present catastrophe which has overwhelmed Europe and
threatens to engulf civilization entire may arouse the
deepest instincts of the people, and cause them to appeal to
the only types of men who can save them -- the Prophet and
the Poet. America has no Poet, and may be counted
exceedingly fortunate in possessing a Prophet of the first
class:
Mr. Henry Clifford Stuart.
Imagine to yourself a big man, a
really big man, six foot three in height, broad and
well-proportioned. The entire impression is of bigness. And
as should always be the case with homo sapiens, the most
important part if the impression is given by the head. Such
a brow is only seen in the world's greatest thinkers.
Mr. Stuart was born in 1864 in
Brooklyn, N.Y. His father, John Stuart, was a Captain of the
51st and Lieutenant Colonel of the 63rd New York Volunteers.
Mr. Stuart was educated in San Francisco, California; but it
is one of his favorite claims that he is not educated.
Rather, he would say, he is beginning to educate himself.
And this is one of the secrets of his immense power of
brain. By education in the ordinary sense we mean that an
old fool bullies a young fool into agreeing with him. In
order to obtain a university degree it is necessary to
stultify oneself by agreeing with the particular clique of
fifth rate minds who, having been totally unable to carve
out any way in the world, have become sodden in the
backwater of a university; and taken up teaching as a
profession, because they are incapable of learning. One has
only to think of a subject like history to see how lop-sided
conventional education always is. Even in more truly
scientific subjects there is the same parochialism. Consider
Sir William Hamilton and his doctrine of the quantification
of the predicate, which everybody in Edinborough in his time
had to accept, or fail in the examination, but which every
other school in Europe regarded as nonsense. Such training
can only serve to unbalance and destroy the mind. Mr. Stuart
avoided this tragedy. Instead, he read everything, kept his
eyes open, and never allowed the specious arguments of the
logician to lure him into conclusions opposed to common
sense. Almost every writer falls into some trap. Either he
omits a premise, or takes a false one, or commits some
logical error unperceived. But with such skill does he
execute his sophistry, and so deeply does his vanity flatter
him, that even the most careful revision fails to discover
the error. Consequently, humanity is always the prey of
deceptions. Think for example of the arguments in favor of
vegetarianism. It is impossible to refute them. At the same
time they are totally invalid, because they neglect one
single, small, but all-important fact: "Man is a carnivorous
animal."
The calibre of Mr. Stuart's mind
is such that he is incapable of being of hoodwinked by any
mere arguments, however clever, cogent, and convincing. He
invariably applies the standard of truth, intuitive or
instinctive, to the conclusion. And if there be a
contradiction, he perceives it instantly. A brain of this
kind is peculiarly useful in America, where the people are
the slaves of false logic. In transplanting themselves from
their native soil, they have left behind them their greatest
possession: inherited race knowledge. I have never yet met a
stupid American. But Mr. Stuart is almost the only one whom
I have met who was not silly. No people are so quick to
perceive the meaning of what is said, or so eager to listen
to what may be said, but they judge entirely by what is
said: they have no standard of atavistic experience to tell
them whether it is right or wrong. The most ignorant peasant
in Europe, who firmly believes in ghosts and vampires and
werewolves, who cannot read or write, has never traveled
beyond the radius of twenty miles from his hamlet, and knows
nothing of his country's affairs, much less of the world's,
could never be so insensible to the facts of human nature as
Henry Ford. You could argue with him "til all was blue," but
you would never even begin to persuade him. He would know it
was all nonsense, just in the same way as you cannot fool a
dog about a tramp. It is true that this instinct is
sometimes wrong after all in certain minor matters, because
now and then conditions do change. But in all fundamental
points humanity has not altered since the cave man. A friend
of mine was arguing the other day about this very matter.
"Nowadays," said his opponent, "if you want a girl, you
cannot `twist your knuckles in her hair, Club her, and drag
her bleeding to your cave." "No," said my friend, "things
have changed a great deal since the eighth of July!"
It is just this capacity for
seeing everything sub specie aeternatitis which
distinguishes the great artist or the great seer, even to a
certain extent the great statesman, from plausible
imitations. We do not value Shakespeare's histories for
their political views; in fact, the portrait of Joan of Arc
is a stain upon the character of the poet which no ages can
efface. (But the English always blackguard gallant enemies.)
The merit of the histories lies almost entirely in the
character of Falstaff, who has nothing to do with the
period. And the political errors of Shakespeare show how
difficult it is, even for one who has the vision of the
eternal, to keep straight when he comes to deal with the
temporal. But the explanation is that Shakespeare was a
snob, the lackey of debauched noblemen, without virility or
independence of character. Courage is certainly the first of
the virtues, for without it none of the others can be
exercised. In the case of statesmen a little more latitude
must be allowed, because they are compelled to deal with the
conditions of the moment. But, even there, the best epithet
that can be applied in praise of such a man is that he is
far-sighted; and the way to be far-seeing is to refuse to be
obsessed by the expediencies of the hour. And while it is of
course impossible to make every particular conform to the
general, it can at least be arranged that it should not be
in flagrant contradiction to the first principles.
As a concrete example, the
annexation of conquered countries. Economic or military
reasons have often been allowed to over-ride considerations
of the will of the inhabitants. Such acts have almost
invariable cause trouble later on, and such trouble
frequently extends far beyond the territory in dispute. The
injury to the fingertip poisons the whole body. The Germans
in 1870, when asked whom they were fighting, replied: "Louis
XIV." And it was because that monarch tried to extend his
dominions that they, at this present moment of writing, are
invaded. The need of an independent mind in dealing with all
such matters is evident. Not only must the statesman be a
philosopher, but he should also have in his composition not
a little of the mystic. We do not use the word mystic in the
specialized sense, in which it is too often employed today.
The true mystic is one who sees all phenomena without bias,
prejudice, self-interest, or obfuscation. In thinking of
kingdoms, he thinks of spiritual kingdoms; and here again we
must use the word spiritual in its oldest and widest sense.
In such kingdoms faith is more than frontiers, language and
literature more than markets. Ireland has been
systematically depopulated; every engine of oppression has
been set in motion against her; but she has never been
conquered and never can be conquered, because the
Anglo-Saxon can never get her point of view. In the same way
India has overcome every one of her invaders in turn, though
she has never been able to resist even the least of them
successfully by arms. The English in India have become,
within two generations, more Indian than the Indians
themselves, in many important respects, particularly in that
of caste. In the case of South Africa it is once again
evident how far more vital than material considerations are
the spiritual. The Boers, driven from one settlement to
another by the most barefaced treachery and tyranny, and
finally conquered in their last stronghold by invading
armies outnumbering them twenty to one, were yet able to
reconquer their country for themselves, without a drop of
bloodshed, within a decade of the fall of Pretoria.
But in order to perceive the rights and wrongs of all such
matters independence of mind is just as necessary as
clearness of vision. When the man can be influenced by
considerations of his own welfare, when hope and fear find
any place in his mind, he is no longer to be trusted. The
only man who can fulfill this condition is the prophet. (It
must be remembered that the functions of poet and prophet
were originally identical. The distinction between them is
the artificial one of form. The states of mind are
identical.) A true prophet lives only by virtue of his inner
vision. He is responsible to what he calls God, and to
nothing and nobody else. Such men are rare, as are all other
types of genius. And it is the innate perception of this
fact that causes the people to look for prophets always, but
most especially in times of crisis. For this reason also
false prophets abound. It is only natural that the valuable
should be counterfeited. But the test of the true prophet is
a very simple one. It is the independence of his mind. False
prophets are venal, time-servers, flatterers. They make it a
rule to say what other people wish to hear. They have no
grasp of fundamentals, of essentials, of the spiritual
truths that lie beneath the accidental and temporary
phenomena which obsess other minds. They are also
characterized by simplicity. There is no sophistication in
their intellect. When they add up two and two it always
makes four.
Even when you have your true
prophet, however, it is commonly found that there are
difficulties in using him. Firstly, his uncompromising
directness, and the fierce quality in him, need tempering
with tact; or seem to do so. Secondly, his utterances are
often obscure, or seem to be obscure. They are not really
so. But where a thoroughly sophisticated mind, nursed on
false premises and schooled in sophistries, receives the
impact of the prophetic intelligence, it is bewildered by
the simplicity of that intelligence. One is reminded of the
story of charlatans who proposed to weave for the emperor a
robe which should be visible only to the innocent. They made
no robe at all. But the emperor and all his ministers had to
pretend that they saw one; and the fraud passed undetected
until a child in the street cried out: "But the King is
naked!" Nowadays, however, people are not so easily
undeceived. The child would very likely not be understood.
The word "naked" is not in the vocabulary of the fashionable
dressmaker; besides which, the word is improper. We know
that there are no such things! So that even if a dawning
perception of the meaning of the prophet strikes the more
enlightened minds, it is often put aside with a sort of
horror; although that word has been awaited with yearning
and anxiety.
Now it must be confessed that this
objection does to some extent apply to the writings which we
have under consideration. Mr. Stuart's style is as difficult
as Wagner's or Whistler's were to their contemporaries. We
have acquiesced so long in the false meanings which have
been placed upon the simplest words by those whose interest
it is to deceive us, that when those words are used in their
proper, simple sense, we hardly recognize them. For this
reason we have deemed it necessary to comment in various
places upon these letters. It is also to be remarked how
curious a form Mr. Stuart has chosen for the expression of
his thoughts. It is simple, attractive, and convenient, and
possesses the great advantage that his messages are
automatically dated.
