and what may quiet us in a death so noble.'

Was Kolniyatsch mad? It depends on what we mean by that word. If we
mean, as the bureaucrats of Ellis Island and, to their lasting shame,
his friends and relations presumably meant, that he did not share our
own smug and timid philosophy of life, then indeed was Kolniyatsch not
sane. Granting for sake of argument that he was mad in a wider sense
than that, we do but oppose an insuperable stumbling-block to the
Eugenists . Imagine what Europe would be to-day, had Kolniyatsch not
been! As one of the critics avers, `It is hardly too much to say that
a time may be not far distant, and may indeed be nearer than many of
us suppose, when Luntic Kolniyatsch will, rightly or wrongly, be
reckoned by some of us as not the least of those writers who are
especially symptomatic of the early twentieth century and are possibly
"for all time" or for a more or less certainly not inconsiderable
period of time.' That is finely said. But I myself go somewhat
further. I say that Kolniyatsch's message has drowned all previous
messages and will drown any that may be uttered in the remotest
future. You ask me what, precisely, that message was? Well, it is too
elemental, too near to the very heart of naked Nature, for exact
definition. Can you describe the message of an angry python more
satisfactorily than as S-s-s-s? Or that of an infuriated bull better
than as Moo? That of Kolniyatsch lies somewhere between these two.
Indeed, at whatever point we take him, we find him hard to fit into
any single category. Was he a realist or a romantic? He was neither,
and he was both. By more than one critic he has been called a
pessimist, and it is true that a part of his achievement may be gauged
by the lengths to which he carried pessimism--railing and raging, not,
in the manner of his tame forerunners, merely at things in general, or
at women, or at himself, but lavishing an equally fierce scorn and