The Man behind the Legend: Memoirs, Autobiographical Novels & Essays of Jack London. Jack London

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      “I’ll tell you where you are wrong, or, rather, what weakens your judgments,” he said. “You lack biology. It has no place in your scheme of things.—Oh, I mean the real interpretative biology, from the ground up, from the laboratory and the test-tube and the vitalized inorganic right on up to the widest aesthetic and sociological generalizations.”

      Ruth was appalled. She had sat two lecture courses under Professor Caldwell and looked up to him as the living repository of all knowledge.

      “I scarcely follow you,” he said dubiously.

      Martin was not so sure but what he had followed him.

      “Then I’ll try to explain,” he said. “I remember reading in Egyptian history something to the effect that understanding could not be had of Egyptian art without first studying the land question.”

      “Quite right,” the professor nodded.

      “And it seems to me,” Martin continued, “that knowledge of the land question, in turn, of all questions, for that matter, cannot be had without previous knowledge of the stuff and the constitution of life. How can we understand laws and institutions, religions and customs, without understanding, not merely the nature of the creatures that made them, but the nature of the stuff out of which the creatures are made? Is literature less human than the architecture and sculpture of Egypt? Is there one thing in the known universe that is not subject to the law of evolution?—Oh, I know there is an elaborate evolution of the various arts laid down, but it seems to me to be too mechanical. The human himself is left out. The evolution of the tool, of the harp, of music and song and dance, are all beautifully elaborated; but how about the evolution of the human himself, the development of the basic and intrinsic parts that were in him before he made his first tool or gibbered his first chant? It is that which you do not consider, and which I call biology. It is biology in its largest aspects.

      “I know I express myself incoherently, but I’ve tried to hammer out the idea. It came to me as you were talking, so I was not primed and ready to deliver it. You spoke yourself of the human frailty that prevented one from taking all the factors into consideration. And you, in turn,—or so it seems to me,—leave out the biological factor, the very stuff out of which has been spun the fabric of all the arts, the warp and the woof of all human actions and achievements.”

      To Ruth’s amazement, Martin was not immediately crushed, and that the professor replied in the way he did struck her as forbearance for Martin’s youth. Professor Caldwell sat for a full minute, silent and fingering his watch chain.

      “Do you know,” he said at last, “I’ve had that same criticism passed on me once before—by a very great man, a scientist and evolutionist, Joseph Le Conte. But he is dead, and I thought to remain undetected; and now you come along and expose me. Seriously, though—and this is confession—I think there is something in your contention—a great deal, in fact. I am too classical, not enough up-to-date in the interpretative branches of science, and I can only plead the disadvantages of my education and a temperamental slothfulness that prevents me from doing the work. I wonder if you’ll believe that I’ve never been inside a physics or chemistry laboratory? It is true, nevertheless. Le Conte was right, and so are you, Mr. Eden, at least to an extent—how much I do not know.”

      Ruth drew Martin away with her on a pretext; when she had got him aside, whispering:-

      “You shouldn’t have monopolized Professor Caldwell that way. There may be others who want to talk with him.”

      “My mistake,” Martin admitted contritely. “But I’d got him stirred up, and he was so interesting that I did not think. Do you know, he is the brightest, the most intellectual, man I have ever talked with. And I’ll tell you something else. I once thought that everybody who went to universities, or who sat in the high places in society, was just as brilliant and intelligent as he.”

      “He’s an exception,” she answered.

      “I should say so. Whom do you want me to talk to now?—Oh, say, bring me up against that cashier-fellow.”

      Martin talked for fifteen minutes with him, nor could Ruth have wished better behavior on her lover’s part. Not once did his eyes flash nor his cheeks flush, while the calmness and poise with which he talked surprised her. But in Martin’s estimation the whole tribe of bank cashiers fell a few hundred per cent, and for the rest of the evening he labored under the impression that bank cashiers and talkers of platitudes were synonymous phrases. The army officer he found good-natured and simple, a healthy, wholesome young fellow, content to occupy the place in life into which birth and luck had flung him. On learning that he had completed two years in the university, Martin was puzzled to know where he had stored it away. Nevertheless Martin liked him better than the platitudinous bank cashier.

      “I really don’t object to platitudes,” he told Ruth later; “but what worries me into nervousness is the pompous, smugly complacent, superior certitude with which they are uttered and the time taken to do it. Why, I could give that man the whole history of the Reformation in the time he took to tell me that the Union-Labor Party had fused with the Democrats. Do you know, he skins his words as a professional poker-player skins the cards that are dealt out to him. Some day I’ll show you what I mean.”

      “I’m sorry you don’t like him,” was her reply. “He’s a favorite of Mr. Butler’s. Mr. Butler says he is safe and honest—calls him the Rock, Peter, and says that upon him any banking institution can well be built.”

      “I don’t doubt it—from the little I saw of him and the less I heard from him; but I don’t think so much of banks as I did. You don’t mind my speaking my mind this way, dear?”

      “No, no; it is most interesting.”

      “Yes,” Martin went on heartily, “I’m no more than a barbarian getting my first impressions of civilization. Such impressions must be entertainingly novel to the civilized person.”

      “What did you think of my cousins?” Ruth queried.

      “I liked them better than the other women. There’s plenty of fun in them along with paucity of pretence.”

      “Then you did like the other women?”

      He shook his head.

      “That social-settlement woman is no more than a sociological poll-parrot. I swear, if you winnowed her out between the stars, like Tomlinson, there would be found in her not one original thought. As for the portrait-painter, she was a positive bore. She’d make a good wife for the cashier. And the musician woman! I don’t care how nimble her fingers are, how perfect her technique, how wonderful her expression—the fact is, she knows nothing about music.”

      “She plays beautifully,” Ruth protested.

      “Yes, she’s undoubtedly gymnastic in the externals of music, but the intrinsic spirit of music is unguessed by her. I asked her what music meant to her—you know I’m always curious to know that particular thing; and she did not know what it meant to her, except that she adored it, that it was the greatest of the arts, and that it meant more than life to her.”

      “You were making them talk shop,” Ruth charged him.

      “I confess it. And if they were failures on shop, imagine my sufferings if they had discoursed on other subjects. Why, I used to think that up here, where all the advantages of culture were enjoyed—” He paused for a moment, and watched the youthful shade of himself, in stiff-rim and square-cut, enter СКАЧАТЬ