文档介绍：CREATURES THAT ONCE WERE MEN
CREATURES THAT
ONCE WERE MEN
By MAXIM GORKY
1
CREATURES THAT ONCE WERE MEN
INTRODUCTORY.
By G. K. CHESTERTON.
It is certainly a curious fact that so many of the voices of what is called
our modern religion e from countries which are not only simple,
but may even be called barbaric. A nation like Norway has a great
realistic drama without having ever had either a great classical drama or a
great romantic drama. A nation like Russia makes us feel its modern
fiction when we have never felt its ancient fiction. It has produced its
Gissing without producing its Scott. Everything that is most sad and
scientific, everything that is most grim and analytical, everything that can
truly be called most modern, everything that can without unreasonableness
be called most morbid, comes from these fresh and untried and
unexhausted nationalities. Out of these infant e the oldest
voices of the earth. This contradiction, like many other contradictions, is
one which ought first of all to be registered as a mere fact; long before we
attempt to explain why things contradict themselves, we ought, if we are
honest men and good critics, to register the preliminary truth that things do
contradict themselves. In this case, as I say, there are many possible and
suggestive explanations. It may be, to take an example, that our modern
Europe is so exhausted that even the vigorous expression of that
exhaustion is difficult for every one except the most robust. It may be
that all the nations are tired; and it may be that only the boldest and
breeziest are not too tired to say that they are tired. It may be that a man
like Ibsen in Norway or a man like Gorky in Russia are the only people
left 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 animal spirits
that they can really feast high and drink deep at the ancient banquet of
pessimism. This is one of t