the life of Stendhal is of extraordinary interest_.

Stendhal is one of those who, following Goethe and anticipating
Nietzsche, has not hesitated to propound the psychological
justifications for a life based upon pagan rather than Christian
ethics. A shrewd and sly observer, with his own peculiar brand of the
egoistic cult, Stendhal lived a life of desperately absorbing
emotions, most of them intellectual and erotic. He made an æsthetic
use of the Will to Power before even Nietzsche used that singular
expression. In "Le Rouge et le Noir" the eternal sex-struggle with its
fierce accompaniment of "Odi et Amo" is concentrated in the clash of
opposing forms of pride; the pride of intellect against the pride of
sex-vanity.

No writer has ever lived with more contempt for mere sedentary
theories or a fiercer mania for the jagged and multifarious edges of
life's pluralistic eccentricity. For any reader teased and worried by
idealistic perversion this obstinate materialistic sage will have
untold value. And yet he knows, none better, the place of sentiment in
life!



34. ANATOLE FRANCE. L'ORME DE MAIL. L'ABBE JEROME COIGNARD. LE LIVRE
DE MON AMI. _Either in French or the authorized English translation_.

Anatole France, now translated into English, is the most classical,
the most ironical, the most refined, of all modern European writers.
He is also, of all others, the most antipathetic to the Anglo-Saxon
type of mind. In a word he is a humanist of the great tradition--a