234 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



5. The Fatigue Motif. — But alas! 



The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 

 And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 

 , , Await alike the inevitable hour. 



The paths of glor}- lead but to the grave. 



What are all the reason and learning of the world to the wretch entangled 

 in those tortures from which no science can release him ? 



"Through forthrights and meanders," groans the weak but well- 

 meaning Gonzald, "I needs must rest me." He is weary and heavy- 

 laden. And Newman echoes this sentiment and finds a wide response: 

 " O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till the night be gone." Also 

 other weary and high-aspiring souls, such as Arnold in the beautiful 

 Rugby Chapel: 



With frowning foreheads, with lips 

 Sternly compressed, we strain on. 



This motif leads to the highest flights of altruistic idealism. Take down 

 the hymnbook of any church, and read the lyrics of the weary and 

 heavy-laden; they all end in flights of angels and the joys of Eden. 

 This is one of the most significant truths of psychognosis. Take down 

 Haeckel's Wonders of Life, and certain bills presented to American state 

 legislatures, and they advise us to destroy the weak and incurable. 

 What does all this signify but a general confession of weakness ? If 

 the egotists who claim to be strong and to monopohze reason were really 

 strong and possessed of the law of nature, they would have no excuse. 



It would be useless to argue the value, as a typical situation, of the 

 fatigue motif. All the loftiest and sweetest thoughts of the race have 

 come from, or been inspired by, the misery and degeneracy of those who 

 are crushed in the great transition from animal to spiritual power. All 

 the tragic love-stories of the world — the love of Socrates for truth, of 

 Jesus for democratic equahty, of Dante for Beatrice — are echoes, or 

 brave representations, of the world-weariness of the evolutionary army, 

 forced in loyalty to act upon the orders of the day, yearning inwardly 

 for the order of a perfect time. All ideals are sown in weakness, pain, 

 disease, degeneracy, fanaticism, madness; and without this fertilization 

 is no possible raising in learning, control, reason and power. It is 



