There are some forty thousand professional musicians in Germany. The town council of Berlin is now discussing gravely the sum to be allotted to the support of the Symphony Orchestra, and Charlottenburg is building an opera house of its own, and Spandau a theatre; and there has just been formed in Berlin a "Society of the German Artistes' Theatre," with a capital of $200,000, which is a project along the general lines of the Comédie Française. The discussions and arguments relating to these municipal expenditures, as I read them in the newspapers, are all based upon the assumption that the people have a right to good and cheap music, just as they have a right to good and cheap beer and bread.
At Düsseldorf one of the theatres, managed by a woman, and supported by the best people in the town, is not only a playhouse, but a school for actors, and a proving-ground for the drama. It is a treat indeed to attend the performances there. We have tried similar things in America, but with sad results. Fifty millionaires, no one of whom had ever read the text of a serious play in his life, build a temple for the drama, but there are no plays, no actors, no audience, nothing is accomplished. There is no critical body of real lovers of the drama, and there are no cheap seats, and there is still that fatuous notion that exclusiveness, except in the trifling matter of physical propinquity, can be bought with dollars.
The only impenetrably exclusive thing in the world is intellect, he is the only aristocrat left in these democratic days, and we are not devoting much attention as yet to his breeding. We do not realize that the only valuable democrat must be an aristocrat. "Culture seeks to do away with classes and sects; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely; nourished and not bound by them. This is the social idea; and the men of culture are the true apostles of equality."
In Germany there are more men of culture per thousand of the population than in any other land, but they rule the country not by "sweetness and light," but by force. This seems at first a contradiction. It is not. Religion, life, and love are all savage things. Because we have known men who preach but do not believe; men who breathe and walk who have not lived; men who protest but who have not loved, we are prone to think of religion, life, and love as soft. We have conquered and chastened so much of nature: the air, the water, the bowels of the earth that we fool ourselves with thinking that culture also is tame, that religion, life, and love are tame too. Savage things they are! You may know them by that! If you find them nice, vivacious, amusing, amenable, be sure that they are forgeries.