Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922Lovecraft, H. P. (Howard Phillips)
History
Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922
Lovecraft, H. P. (Howard Phillips)
Essays; Literature -- History and criticism; Periodicals
=Invictus= for July is the second number of Mr. Paul J. Campbell's
personal organ, and represents the strictly individual magazine in its
most tasteful and elaborate form. Unimpeachably artistic in appearance,
its contents justify the exterior; the whole constituting a publication
of the first rank, wherein are joined the virtues both of the old and of
the new schools of amateur journalism. Since Mr. Campbell is
preeminently an essayist, it is to his dissertations on "The Pursuit of
Happiness" and "The Age of Accuracy" which we turn most eagerly; and
which in no way disappoint our high expectations. The first of these
essays is a dispassionate survey of mankind in its futile but frantic
scramble after that elusive but unreal sunbeam called "happiness". The
author views the grimly amusing procession of human life with the
genuine objective of an impartial spectator, and with commendable
freedom from the hypocritical colouring of those who permit commonplace
emotions and tenuous idealizings to obscure the less roseate but more
substantial vision of their intellects. "The Age of Accuracy" presents
an inspiring panorama of the evolution of Intellect, and of its
increasing domination over the more elemental faculties of instinct and
emotion. At the same time, much material for reflection is furnished,
since it is obvious that the advance is necessarily confined to a
comparatively small and select part of humanity. Instinct and emotion
are still forces of tremendous magnitude, against which Reason wages an
upward struggle of incredible bravery. Only the strong can escape the
clutch of the primitive, wherefore there can be no successful social
order which does not conform in its essentials to the blind impulses of
the natural man or man-ape. We are in danger of overestimating the
ascendancy and stability of Reason, for it is in reality the most
fragile and rudimentary element in our mortal fabric. A heavy blow on
certain parts of the skull, or a bullet in certain parts of the brain,
can destroy in an instant all the accumulated intellect which aeons of
heredity have bestowed, depressing the victim from the zenith of culture
and refinement to a condition separated only by colour and contour from
that of the negro or the gorilla; yet not all the edicts of the
lawgiver, devices of the educator, measures of the reformer, or skill of
the surgeon, can extirpate the ingrained instincts and seated
superstitions of the average human animal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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