It is certainly a curious fact that so many of the voices of what iscalled our modern religion have come from countries which are not onlysimple, but may even be called barbaric. A nation like Norway has agreat realistic drama without having ever had either a great classicaldrama or a great romantic drama. A nation like Russia makes us feelits modern fiction when we have never felt its ancient fiction. It hasproduced its Gissing without producing its Scott. Everything that ismost sad and scientific, everything that is most grim and analytical,everything that can truly be called most modern, everything that canwithout unreasonableness be called most morbid, comes from these freshand untried and unexhausted nationalities. Out of these infant peoplescome the oldest voices of the earth. This contradiction, like manyother contradictions, is one which ought first of all to be registeredas a mere fact; long before we attempt to explain why things contradictthemselves, we ought, if we are honest men and good critics, toregister the preliminary truth that things do contradict themselves.In this case, as I say, there are many possible and suggestiveexplanations. It may be, to take an example, that our modern Europe isso exhausted that even the vigorous expression of that exhaustion isdifficult for every one except the most robust. It may be that all thenations are tired; and it may be that only the boldest and breeziestare not too tired to say that they are tired. It may be that a manlike Ibsen in Norway or a man like Gorky in Russia are the only peopleleft who have so much faith that they can really believe in scepticism.It may be that they are the only people left who have so much animalspirits that they can really feast high and drink deep at the ancientbanquet of pessimism. This is one of the possible hypotheses orexplanations in the matter: that all Europe feels these things and thatthey only have strength to believe them also. Many other explanationsmight, however, also be offered. It might be suggested thathalf-barbaric countries like Russia or Norway, which have always lain,to say the least of it, on the extreme edge of the circle of ourEuropean civilisation, have a certain primal melancholy which belongsto them through all the ages. It is highly probable that this sadness,which to us is modern, is to them eternal. It is highly probable thatwhat we have solemnly and suddenly discovered in scientific text-booksand philosophical magazines they absorbed and experienced thousands ofyears ago, when they offered human sacrifice in black and cruel forestsand cried to their gods in the dark. Their agnosticism is perhapsmerely paganism; their paganism, as in old times, is merelydevilworship. Certainly, Schopenhauer could hardly have written hishideous essay on women except in a country which had once been full ofslavery and the service of fiends. It may be that these moderns aretricking us altogether, and are hiding in their current scientificjargon things that they knew before science or civilisation were. Theysay that they are determinists; but the truth is, probably, that theyare still worshipping the Norns. They say that they describe sceneswhich are sickening and dehumanising in the name of art or in the nameof truth; but it may be that they do it in the name of some deityindescribable, whom they propitiated with bl