Monthly Bulletin - Clpdigital.org

REVIEWS OF RECENT BOOKS—JULY 1913 317
stands above these impulses, regulates and modifies them, resh
and renewing them.' The line of progress for human society must
therefore be in the direction of this human impetus. It cannot possibly
lead 'back to nature,' but must steadily show a wider divergence from
the path of natural evolution. Society is in great part an organized
opposition to nature, and it justifies itself only when it maintains its
ground. It is irrelevant to approve or condemn this or that possible
line of conduct on the basis that it is or is not in conformity with
nature. It is pertinent only to inquire whether it is in harmony with
the constitution and aim of the human organization. . .
Ibsen does not follow up his arraignment of existing conditions
with a ready and convenient plan for establishing a new commonwealth.
He has drawn from his reading of history a tincture of sobering and
really tonic cynicism. . .
Not the redistribution of brute power, but the gradual abrogation
of it, marks for the philosopher the progress of society; not the extension
of suffrage, the multiplication of hands on the reins, but the ability
'to rise to a position of self-government and to obeying only the inner
voice, that voice that is within us and at the same time above us.'
Meanwhile, that external government is most beneficent which resists
most effectively the stress of natural forces, and which impresses most
deeply upon the consciousness of society the validity and sanctity of
human conventions, and the desirableness of continuing to work out in
the world that ideal pattern which lies in the heart. If this is true,
then the most progressive society will be likewise the most conservative,
the most reverent of traditions, the most critical of hasty innovation,
the most reluctant to entrust its destiny to the gusty and transitory
passions of the hour. Haunted by dim memories of cataclysmic floods
and tragic forebodings of fiery ruin, it will not look for its eternal and
unchanging sanctions in the weltering flux of natural phenomena; not
seek in nature for the order, stability, justice, gentleness, and wisdom
that only man has ever desired or sought to create. It will permit its
scientists to return to nature, for that is their business; but it will urge
its educators, its moralists, its artists, and its lawmakers to return to
man and follow their pattern." Nation, 1913.
Clara Schumann
(Call number 839.84 I12)
By Berthold Litzmann
"Herr Litzmann. . .had at his disposal no fewer than forty-seven
manuscript volumes of Frau Schumann's diaries, besides countless
letters written by her to her husband, as well as to Brahms and other
friends, together with the replies. Out of this superabundant material
Herr Litzmann constructed three volumes. The translator has wisely
condensed these into two. The first includes the most romantic of all
musical love stories—Schumann's long and desperate struggle for the
hand of Clara Wieck, whose father resorted to the most amazing