Wallace E. Baker

“ Deep down in my heart, however, I have had and still do have in my most despairing moment the conviction that I have in me the ability to do great things, my love of the finer things, keen appreciation of character so that I see right through many people I meet, wherefore much of my continued unpopularity, great care in small details, love of neatness, order, strong passions, enthusiasm, many other things in my good moods which I cannot quite grasp, but my physical weakness annuls everything and leaves me a hopeless weakling, vacillating and desperately unhappy. ”

“ A tendency I have noted to theatricalism I will sternly suppress. I sometimes act cruelly after a mental struggle and I just hold myself by calling on Neitzsche and the philosophy of the superman, and then woe betide the one who crosses me.
While I will not force it, and avoid self-pity, I cannot help feeling at bottom the tragedy of life to me. It is such an effort to live, there is so little to look back on, no youth, no sweetheart, no love except that of the children, and the mistaken love of a weak mother. ”

“ Beginning a new month, although full of hope as usual at the beginning of anything, I also feel rather humble after my previous egoism. Thus I go from mood to mood, but the turning point is at hand. I cannot be tossed around like a bark without rudder or sail much longer and with my tendency to extremes, feeling that I have much power for good or evil in this world, one course I must enter on with the greatest determination.
Having willed to live at the moment of despair, I must needs live with sincerity and without conforming ”

“ With such an impractical, childish mother and failure of a father, uncongenial brothers and sisters, almost hating each other, with bad heredity on both sides and a hellish environment, a shy nervous, suspicious disposition, extremes of ecstasy and despair, ungratified passions, alone and friendless, how could I end otherwise than a suicide?
I claim that any man who commits suicide of necessity suffers more than any who continues to live. I don’t want to die. ”

“ Sometimes I have thought absolutely sincerely that if I had had enough money to be able to dispense with the daily grind, which, with its necessity of strong excitement as a reaction, has so impaired my will-power as to bring me from supreme egoism of imagining and believing myself to be a genius to a miserable death alone and away from home by my own hand. ”

“ Much of this is due to my wretched physical health, wrecked nervous force and absolute lack of any kind of love for so long that I am too selfish and self-centred ever to amount to anything. Who is to blame? My father dead, how can I blame him for his share? My mother is the only hope left in the world. Without her, suicide would seem to be the only alternative, and I have . . . what is this after all but the imagined courage of a weakling, my egoism the conceit of a degenerate? ”

“ Is there some insidious form of insanity slowly creeping over me? Gautier has said that nothing is beyond words. I deny this—I could be as eloquent as ever man was, have as fine a command of language, be as fluent, brilliant as the best of the masters; but I could not describe the agony of the past few weeks.
It is not alone the nervousness, loneliness, and the old tired feeling; the sudden bursts of enthusiasm, followed by strange periods of peculiar calmness, now peaceful, now raging, now with an unholy joy in I know not what; then black despair seemingly without cause, it is more than this. ”

“ To-day may or may not be the beginning of a more sensible outlook as far as my erratic, artistic temperament will permit. In any case this strain, self-imposed for the most part, must stop even if I have to throw over a few pet theories. I must be human even at the expense of virtue. I almost congratulate myself that I can at least laugh at my own foibles and enjoy the joke, just as I cannot help, cynically to a certain extent, pointing out others’ foolish earnestness over nothing. ”

“ I would go far to state that it is different now, but so repeatedly and in such a series of shocks has the lesson been driven home, that I have simply in desperation put suicide on one side and restraint on the other, and, realizing that it is impossible to go on as I have been doing, I have, with all the remaining strength, passion, love, honor, or whatever is left in me, ambition and enthusiasm, and the like, determined once and for all and for one year at least to be absolutely ascetic as the first step. To restrain myself all around is, of course, the next, and I will succeed fairly well. ”

“ Of course, I do not compare myself to the average man. If I had no sense of humor I would have persisted and made myself a genius in spite of the hell life has been. Nietzsche could never have been if he was born in England or the States.
But I only feel at home when I read men of genius. Always without a friend, the average man is a stranger to me. Women have killed me, because with all my temperament and passion I have- 80 - been too shy to ever have any love or outlet to my passion. ”

“ Life, of course, comes first. Unless a man is going to deliberately plan suicide he must live. All account of death from outside sources must be left out of account because they are outside of his sphere to influence. By living I mean to touch the depths and the heights, each one according to the strength of his passions, his temperament. He should not be an ascetic except under certain conditions, and asceticism as a deliberate plan of life is absolutely wrong for a young man—whether for one who is older time will tell. ”

“ Death seemed preferable to working, and, dreading to go back to what it had represented in Havana and New York previous to that, I made the suicide decision. The reasons enumerated all came to me night after night as I lay awake, and I called for death . . . . it was this dread of work that finally took the ground away from under my feet. I felt in my heart that, with a weekly income of $20 to $25 I would persist and fight my mental disabilities, finding consolation in reading, studying, especially philosophy and writing. ”

“ Without this, life will indeed be not worth living, because the very things my heart and mind are set on accomplishing will be impossible, and a conventional, plodding life devoted to the accumulation of money is impossible for me. Death is much preferable. Art, philosophy, love of life in its nakedness, without false convention, must be my keyword, not for happiness, for that were impossible, but for sufficient interest to carry me through. ”

“ I have found myself enough to see the necessity of one course at least, that is, to preserve a dignified silence. The coarse, vulgar familiarity of the fellows I have met has jarred on me more and more, and I see that my only escape in the future is to maintain a reserve and a dignity beyond which no man may penetrate. Anything I reveal will be by writing, not by speech. I have made considerable progress, but still have to fight a foolish talkativeness on occasions. ”

“ At twenty-three I have to go back to the self-consciousness of youth before I can cast it all off and face life as it is. I often realize the apparent priggishness and silliness of this diary, but I at least try to be sincere sometimes, and after the shocks of the realization of life I may write as a man. Things cannot go on as they have been doing. Circumstances will force me to sink or swim, either to rise from this slough and weakness or collapse utterly, and this knowledge will help me. ”

“ Nearly two months passed since June 1st, and I have failed to keep my good resolutions and also to commit suicide after several failures. It seems a silly business all around, these writings included, but I must keep on for awhile in this strain.
The only thing is to try again. I only realize the more keenly the utter hopelessness of the easiest way. Self-control, and the thought as I look ahead of giving up things is harder, but the other is impossible. I hesitate to express myself so confidently as to my ability to be a superman and a genius, but I can still fight on for a time at least. ”

“ To-night I feel that beneath all my degeneracy and weakness, I am a genius and I feel that I cannot die without leaving something behind. No, I will fight. It is harder for my yielding, but I cannot give up without a struggle. Somewhere- 69 - and at some time I must prove that I am something besides a weakling. Good and evil predominate by turns, love and hate, weakness and strength. ”

“ The realization of this in regard to biology, coming suddenly and sharply, caused a sort of awakening. I began to search my other tendencies and realized that I did not like the dry, obstruse details of philosophy either, nor economics, but that by way of working out a philosophy of life or conduct and hope for future, I was very greatly, more, vitally, interested in the subject. I like to read and study philosophy as giving a basis for a plan of life, but when you get to the brain wearying works of Kant and the like it is different. ”

“ Last night was the culmination of all this—for the first time I actually threw over all my plans and ambition and contemplated suicide. Many times the thought had crossed my mind before, but it was always as a possibility in the dim future, but yesterday the thought materialized.
I carried on a terrific mental struggle in bed and the will to live triumphed. I will fight on, but I will be more and more egotistical. I realize the vast gulf between me and the rest of my family. It is insurmountable, and my last hope now centers on my return to . ”

“ To-night everything seems hopeless—whether insanity is creeping on me I do not know. I simply must have sexual intercourse to relieve the strain, and it is the lack of it which brings on these moods. If for nothing else woman is a necessity for me to relieve the great strain when routine becomes so deadly as to tempt me to throw everything to the winds. ”

“ I have never for more than the briefest space of time contemplated self-destruction as I have hinted at several times. The thought has crossed my mind in my darkest moods, but I am not a- 38 - coward and to-day must go a step further and say that I’ll fight to the finish against all outside difficulties, as well as ill health and natural defects of temperament and heredity. From now on any departures from a certain standard until I have changed that standard by thought and experience, I will consider in their proper light of weaknesses to be overcome. ”

“ In other words, as long as gratification of the senses does not weaken one appreciably that gratification is good and moral and conduces to life, but when it becomes a weakness and threatens the physical and mental strength of a man he must restrain himself. Life comes first, but by life I mean life with Power. Thus anything that makes for power and for a full life and healthy gratification of the senses is good.
This is my first definite outlining of the philosophy I have been endeavoring to attain. ”

“ I dread this about as much as going back to work, because the sanctity, jealous regard and fear about my personality, my individuality is such that if I thought that the result of an appeal would be confinement, I would welcome death as a gift from heaven.
I am an agnostic, and, philosophically at least, an anarchist. I want to be free, to glory in liberty; to have no boss, to be able to develop my intellect. ”

“ As these conditions are unlikely to occur, as I am not going looking for them, namely, that a woman yield from pure love or passion, and the only other alternative is marriage, I have a big fight on, but as the issue is life with honor, or death, with or without honor, I feel that I shall make this stand at last, after which the fight will be easier, if without the prospect of happiness, for, after all, I must not expect happiness; I must learn to live without it,- 71 - to make my life represented by my work, and finally I may attain a degree of peace and rest, if not of happiness. ”

“ I have come thus far without reading any philosophy except bare outlines and reviews. Now I shall read and study life and build from these grounds. My philosophy is rather more individualistic than socialistic, but, of course, it is open to a reconciliation between Socialism and Anarchism. Conventional views are left entirely out of consideration. It rests with the individual how far he will be guided by precedent and prevailing opinion in a given situation. ”

“ It is no use—I have to acknowledge defeat. Born with such a Jekyll-and-Hyde disposition that I am never normal, either so filled with ideals that everything good and noble seems possible, or so black that I shrink from myself in horror—even though it has been in thought rather than deed that I have transgressed or been an idealist. It is not that I have contemplated deeds of violence, but- 34 - one thing, sex, is the cause of the perfect hell my life has been. ”

“ With the desire to express myself, to be an artist, to live the fullest life possible, or whatever my precise object may be, it is absolutely necessary to be damn independent.
I have found the family very impatient, and out of accord with my views and rejecting their ideals of a man—very conventional—I must of necessity make a break, because the petty bickering engendered is bound to dissipate my energy without anything being accomplished. ”

“ THE only editorial policy of THE GLEBE is that embodied in its declaration of absolute freedom of expression, which makes for a range broad enough to include every temperament from the most radical to the most conservative, the only requisite being that the work should have unmistakable merit. Each issue will be devoted exclusively to one individual, thereby giving him an opportunity to present his work in sufficient bulk to make it possible for the reader to obtain a much more comprehensive grasp of his personality than is afforded him in the restricted space allotted by the other magazines. ”

“ I often feel that if I had been told by my parents, I might not have taken the first downward step and waited until I could give my emotion a healthy outlet on honorable terms.
As it is, I have lost something which is the cause of my condition of despair, and it will take a long, slow process of upbuilding to give me back my enthusiasm and grip on life, but events of to-day and yesterday give me hope and encouragement. ”