In order to purify it
they had withdrawn it from circulation. The result was that it ceased
to be perceived. The common life passed on its way without bothering
its head further, leaving the artist caste to wither in a make-believe
refinement. The violent storms at the time of the excitement about the
Dreyfus Case did rouse some minds from this torpor, but when they came
out of their orchid-house the fresh air turned their heads and they
threw themselves into the great passing movement with the same
exaggeration that their predecessors had shown in withdrawing from
it. They believed that salvation was in the people, that in them was
virtue, even all good, and though they were often thwarted in their
efforts to get closer to them, they set flowing a current in the
thought of Europe. They were proud to call themselves the exponents
of the collective soul, but they were not victors but vanquished;
the collective soul made breaches in their ivory tower, the feeble
personalities of these thinkers yielded, and to hide their abdication
from themselves, they declared it voluntary. In the effort to convince
themselves, philosophers and aesthetics forged theories to prove that
the great directing principle was to abandon oneself to the stream
of a united life instead of directing it, or more modestly following
one's own little path in peace.
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