Page:The War and the Future.djvu/5

 of nature, of instinct, of blood, of the unconscious, the primitive spontaneity of life. Now it is by no means natural for the artist, for any human being who stands in any relationship to the creative, to be eternally talking of reason like some learned ass. He very well knows the importance to life of the sub-rational and super-rational powers of instinct and dream; and he is not at all inclined to over-rate the intellect as the guide and moulder of life. He is far from being an enemy of instinct. He recognizes that the recoil from the rationalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was historically and intellectually justified, was inevitable and necessary, but it was crass and immoderate; and if one had the imagination to foresee how the irrational, the dark dynamics, the glorification of instinct, the worship of blood and impulse, the "will to power" and "élan vital" and "myth as cri de bataille," and the justification of violence—how all these ideas would look, when translated from the intellectual sphere, where they were very interesting and fascinating, to the sphere of reality, of politics—if one had imagination enough to foresee this, the desire speedily evaporated to sit upon this side of the boat, where all and sundry, anyway, down to the last petty scribbler and beer-hall demagogue were to be found. It is a terrible spectacle when irrationalism becomes popular. One feels that disaster is imminent, a disaster such as the one-sided over-valuation of reason could never bring about. The over-valuation of reason can be comical in its optimistic pedantry and can be made to look ridiculous by the deeper powers of life. But it does not evoke catastrophe. That is brought about only by the enthronement of anti-reason. At a certain period when fascism took over politically in Germany and Italy, when nationalism became the focus and universal expression of all these tendencies, I was convinced that nothing but war and general destruction could be the final outcome of the irrationalistic orgy, and that in short order. What seemed necessary was the memory of other values, of the idea of democracy, of humanity, of peace, and of human freedom and dignity. It was this side of human nature that needed our help. There is not the slightest danger that reason will ever gain complete 5