Emil Reich

“ Although most Polish noblemen of the wealthier classes had received a careful education at the universities of Italy, and many of them were imbued with the spirit of the classics, and fired by the ideals of true patriotism, yet all these and many other fine qualities of this most distinguished of Slavonic nations, were rendered useless and barren by the apathy and indolence of the great body of the nobles. Surely in a nation which could produce a Copernicus and so many great poets, there must have been much natural endowment even for the highest spheres of thought. ”

“ And now, O Zeus, can you really brook Aristotle's attempt to demolish and to remove men who furnish pleasure and intense amusement to so many animals holy to men and even to the gods? I cannot believe it. You know how necessary it is to provide carefully for the amusement of people. To neglect Dionysus is to court hideous punishment. If the specialists in Nature should disappear, you will, O Zeus, have endless anarchy on all sides. ”

“ What people want, in Religion or Science, is effectological truth, and not truth proper. My book, as the rest of my work, has procured me a place in Olympus, but has not enabled me to conquer a single town of the nether-world.
"I too have learnt to resign myself.
"Truth, like Beauty, and Goodness, is not meant for the little ones. And yet they will in all times go on their pilgrimage to our shrines; through all ages they will worship Athens and mighty Rome as the true home of humanity; as the age and the men who had the divine courage of truthfulness, and the saving grace of Beauty." ”

“ The Holy Roman Empire was a fiction, or at best an ideal, lacking all the realities of power. In the face of that vague "Empire," the less ambitious but more practical smaller sovereigns and lords in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, and likewise those of Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland, endeavoured during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, to build up well-knit and well-organised smaller realms. ”

“ Thereupon Zeus, by a wave of his hand, placed the whole Assembly in the shadow as if encircled by a vast mantle of darkness, and shed a strange and supramundane light on the town of Pompeii, which grew up at sight from the ground, putting on life and movement and beauty on all its houses, narrow streets, gardens, and squares. The ancient population filled, in ceaseless movement, every part of the charming city. ”

“ Give us Free Love, and you shall have heard the last word of old maids. Refuse Free Love, and we shall have to form our old maids into regiments and send them against the Germans. Plato said that the unsatisfied womb of a woman wanders about in all her body like a ravenous animal and devours everything on his path. Our present marriage system makes more victims than victors.' ”

“ The immortals, in their light dresses and lighter movements, formed a gorgeous contrast to the sombre stones of the vast edifice. When all had taken their seats, Zeus rose in all his majesty and spake:
"Gods and heroes! We have derived much exquisite distraction from the stories of Alcibiades, Diogenes, Plato, Aristotle, Columbus and Cæsar about the various features of lay-life in England. If now I call upon you, Socrates, to tell us something about the religious life of the English, it is, I need hardly assure you, not in a spirit of mockery that I do so. ”

“ Is not your language the only idiom in Europe that has completely dropped that fine shade of sweet intimacy which the use of thou and thy is giving to the other languages? Is not a new world of tenderest internal joy permeating the French, German or Italian woman who for the first time dares to tutoyer her lover? ”

“ Why, then, do they not learn to respect Dionysus, who was the chief help to the powerful consolidation of the German Empire? German music kept North and South Germans intimately together; it saved them from wasting untold sums of money, of time, of force, on arid fads; it paved the way to political intimacy.
"Had the English not neglected Dionysus, had they sung in his honour those soul-attaching songs which once learned in youth can never be forgotten, they might have retained the millions of Irishmen, who have left their shores, by the heart-melting charm of a common music. ”

“ The Cynical critics of men want to bring about the Age of Reason, or as these presumptuous half-knowers call it, the Age of Science. This, I have long since laid down, shall never be.
"At the gate of the Future, at Delphi, Apollo is associated with Dionysus, and so it has been ever since I came to rule this Universe. Just as good music consists of tones and rhythms, and again of the cessation of all sound, or of measured pauses; even so my Realm consists of Reason, and of the cessation of all Reason, or of Unreason. The Cynics who ignore the latter, misjudge the former. ”

“ Not having made a single effort in any way comparable to the sustained armed resistance of the Scotch, the Dutch, the Hungarians, or the Boers, in the course of over three hundred years, they have fallen under the yoke of a nation whom they detest. This naturally demoralised them, as it demoralises a mere husband when he is yoked to a hated wife. Being demoralised, they have never, oh never, reached that balance of internal powers without which nothing great can be achieved. ”

“ All our lives we have been taught to suppress our emotions, and to consider it ungenteel to express them in any way whatever. We were told that we must hide and suppress them—which we have done so successfully that after some time we resemble to a nicety the famous safe of Madame Humbert. And then, in flagrant contradiction to all this genteel education, we are supposed to accept with joy the moanings, cries, sobs, sighs, and other unsuppressed emotions of some middle-class Dutchman or Teuton dished up to us in the form of a sonata. It is too absurd for words. ”

“ Or, do you call a person a man who is none? The first and chief characteristic of a true man is his love of justice. It is so completely and exclusively his, that we women do not in the least pretend to share in this his principal privilege.
"'But can the present so-called men be called just? Is it justice to deny justice to more than one half of the nation, to the women? Let us women have the suffrage, so that men, by thus doing justice, shall become true men worthy of their suffrage. ”

“ The combination of political power, boundless erudition, and charming male beauty could not but be pleasing to a knowing woman of the world. His eyes, big and lustrous, yet veil more than they reveal. ”

“ They reminded me violently of the Spartan women. They are handsome, if more striking than beautiful. I noticed that in contrast to European women, American females gain in years what they lose in dress at night. They look older when undressed. They have excellent teeth, and execrable hands; they jump well, but walk badly. Their great speciality is their voice, which is strident, top-nasal, falsetto, disheartening. The most beautiful amongst them is murdered by her voice. It is as if out of the most perfect mouth, set in the most charming face, an ugly rat would jump at one. ”

“ The gods laughed aloud and Apollo, taking up his lyre, intoned a grand old Doric song in praise of the heroes of war who, by their valour, had prepared the palæstra for the heroes of thought and beauty. He was soon joined by a thousand harmonious voices from the temple of Isis, and from his own majestic sanctuary at Pompeii. Vesuvius counterpointed the lithe song with his deep bass; and, with Dionysus at the head of them, Pan and the nymphs came wafting through the air, strewing buds of melodies on to the Olympian wreaths of tones sung by Phœbus Apollo in praise of War. ”

“ Religion is not a theorem but an action, an active sentiment. Our religion was like our language: all active verbs, all movement and energy, all expression and sentiment, but no theorems.'
"'But just look at the superstition and downright fiction in all your mythology! Who has ever seen Apollo, Dionysus, the Graces, Aphrodite, or any other of your numberless gods? They are all mere phantasies, meant to amuse, but not to elevate. ”

“ They will worry all the gods incessantly. They will make the most annoying conspiracies and plots and intrigues against all of us. Let us not take Aristotle seriously. He means well, and is no doubt quite right, as far as reason goes. But does reason go very far? Can he now deny the eternal rights of unreason? To remove the specialists in biology and natural history is to remove the comedy from Athens. The Athenians, in order to be ruled, must be entertained. But for me and the like of me, the Athenians could never have held out as long as they did hold out. It is even so with animals. ”

“ You women of England, the natural priestesses of all warmth and intimacy, you have suffered all that to decay.
"'To your men we Hellenes say: "Imitate us!" To you women, we do not say so. We ask you to exceed us, to go beyond us, and then alone when women will be what we Hellenic men were, that is, specimens of all-round humanity, then indeed you too will rise to the higher status, and the golden age will again fill the world with light and happiness!'
"After that speech of mine," continued Alcibiades, "there was much applause. ”

“ I have received too many a whipping while I was at Athens and Corinth—pray let me in peace here in our temporary Olympus.
"At present, as you well know, I have quite changed my ideas about war, and much as I may have disliked you before, at present I know that Apollo, Venus, you Ares, and Dionysus keep all mortal things agoing. But let us amuse ourselves with the contemplation of an oration of Antisthenes in modern Britannic.
"Antisthenes hated war so much that he attacked the greatest and least doubted military glory of the Athenians, their victories over the Persians. ”

“ Why should dentistry be one speciality? Why should there not be thirty-two different specialist dentists for our thirty-two teeth? All specialisation in the realm of knowledge is rank arbitrariness. Without exception, the great leading ideas in all organised thought have invariably been made by wholesale thinkers like Pythagoras, Plato, I venture to add: myself, Lionardo da Vinci, Kepler, Newton, Pascal, Leibniz, Darwin. That is precisely where humans differ from animals. All animals are the most conceited specialists."
Here Diogenes interrupted: "Does the converse hold good, O Aristotle?" ”

“ In music there is infinitely more than a mere tinkling of rhythm; there is Dionysus in it. Their teachers of politics sneer at Aristotle because he treats solemnly of music in his 'Politics.' But Aristotle told me himself that he sneers at them, seeing what absurd socialistic schemes they discuss because they do not want to steady the souls of their people by a proper cult of Dionysus. ”

“ In my day I had given away millions to the populace, and my imperial successors had gone even very much further. The common people was thereby demoralised as is everybody, even parents, who accepts, year in year out, free gifts from a third person or his children. Being demoralised, such a recipient of donations becomes inevitably the most cruel enemy of his donor. Nothing contributed more to the downfall of Rome. A nation must consist of free and financially independent citizens, or it loses its most precious asset. ”

“ When he is unsuccessful, he takes it for granted that nobody desires to speak to him. He builds his house after his own character: rooms do not communicate. He chooses his friends among people that talk as little as possible and call on him once a year. Any remark about his person he resents most bitterly. Tell him, ever so mildly, that the colour of his necktie is cryingly out of harmony with the colour of his waistcoat, and he will hate you for three years.
"'And you mean to tell me, gentlemen, that such a creature is fit for marriage? ”

“ And what greater potentialities of charm could one wish for than those that your women possess? If those magnificently cut and superbly coloured eyes learned to be expressive; if the muscles of those fine cheeks knew how to move with speedier grace; if that purely outlined mouth were more animated—what possibilities of fascination, like so many fairies, might rise over the dispassionate surface of those silent lakes! As they are, their several organs are positively hostile, or coldly indifferent to one another. ”

“ I watched the Athenians in their homes, in the market-place, in the law courts, in peace and war, in the theatre and in the temple, at the holy places of Eleusis and Delphi, their men as well as their women.
"Personally I long inclined towards a view of the world almost exclusively influenced by Apollo. I thought that as the sun is evidently the great life-giver of all existence, so light, reason, system, liberty, and consummately devised measures constitute the highest wisdom of the community. ”