lluring world-dream. By showing the
vanity of endeavor he is to still the fatal lust for life and bring
all men to despair and longing for Nirvana. Thus does he become the
true savior of mankind; for at this point the world, obeying the
desperate resolve of the human race, will vanish utterly,

"And like the baseless fabric of a dream
Leave not a rack behind."

The pessimistic temper of the age reveals itself in every field where
mood finds utterance. Every book that makes a sensation does it by
virtue of the phase of despair it presents. Every drama that creates a
furore does it by uncovering some new tragic element in life. Anything
optimistic falls flat. The literary men of Europe are recklessly
underbidding each other in the attempt to show that life is sadder,
or meaner, or baser, or emptier than had been supposed. The cynic and
the pessimist share public attention. Not that European writers are
insincere. The authors and thinkers themselves have been the first to
feel the Zeitgeist. They have written as they have because they have
found the melancholy view of life the most fruitful thing in recent
culture. They have found it the richest in novelty, surprises, images,
scenes, reflections, effects, and sensations. The worthlessness of
life is an idea that agrees with science, meets the mood of the age,
and fires the imagination of the artist.

The French, Norwegian, and Russian realism of the last decade is the
utterance of later pessimism. For the term "realism" describes
something more than an art. It describes an ethical view. It means the
conviction of Flaubert: "You may fatten the human beast, give him
straw up to his belly, and gild his manger; but he remains a brute,
say what you will." The realists are filled with the scientific
notions of human nature. They base romances on psychology, physiology,
or pathology. They study Darwin, and Spencer, and Ribot. They look
constantly for the traces of the savage cave-dweller. The great
masters,--Tolstoi, Zola, Ibsen, Maupassant, Flaubert, Gautier, Loti,
Bourget,--as well as their swarms of disciples, are ever on the watch
for marks of decadence, or for vestiges of the brute in man's
instincts and passions. To the old romanticism of Victor Hugo they
oppose blunt truth-telling and remorseless analysis. They spare no
illusions. "Love, marriage, family," cries Tolstoi's hero, "are lies,
lies, lies!"

This same ethical spirit is shared by realism in art. A pa