Creatures That Once Were Men | Page 3

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CREATURES THAT ONCE WERE MEN
By MAXIM GORKY

Translated from the Russian by J. M. SHIRAZI and Others
Introduction by G. K. CHESTERTON
THE MODERN LIBRARY PUBLISHERSNEW YORK Copyright,
1918, by BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC. Manufactured in the United
States of America for The Modern Library, Inc., by H. Wolff
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . V Creatures That Once were
Men . . . . 13 Twenty-Six Men and a Girl . . . . .104
Chelkash . . . . . . . . . . . . . .125 My Fellow-Traveller . . . . . . . .178 On a
Raft . . . . . . . . . . . . .229

INTRODUCTION
By G. K. CHESTERTON
It is certainly a curious fact that so many of the voices of what is called
our modern religion have come from countries which are not only
simple, but may even be called barbaric. A nation like Norway has a
great realistic drama without having ever had either a great classical
drama or a great romantic drama. A nation like Russia makes us feel its
modern fiction when we have never felt its ancient fiction. It has
produced its Gissing without producing its Scott. Everything that is
most sad and scientific, everything that is most grim and analytical,
everything that can truly be called most modern, everything that can
without unreasonableness be called most morbid, comes from these
fresh and untried and unexhausted nationalities. Out of these infant
peoples come the oldest voices of the earth.
This contradiction, like many other contradictions, is one which ought
first of all to be registered as a mere fact; long before we attempt to
explain why things contradict themselves, we ought, if we are honest
men and good critics, to register the preliminary truth that things do
contradict themselves. In this case, as I say, there are many possible
and suggestive explanations. It may be, to take an example, that our
modern Europe is so exhausted that even the vigorous expression of
that exhaustion is difficult for every one except the most robust.
It may be that all the nations are tired; and it may be that only the
boldest and breeziest are not too tired to say that they are tired. It may
be that a man like Ibsen in Norway or a man like Gorky in Russia are
the only people left who have so much faith that they can really believe
in scepticism. It may be that they are the only people left who have so
much animal spirits that they can really feast high and drink deep at the
ancient banquet of pessimism. This is one of the possible hypotheses or
explanations in the matter: that all Europe feels these things and that
only have strength to believe them also. Many other explanations might,
however, also be offered. It might be suggested that half-barbaric
countries, like Russia or Norway, which have always lain, to say the
least of it, on the extreme edge of the circle of our European
civilization, have a certain primal melancholy which belongs to them
through all the ages. It is highly probable that this sadness, which to us

is modern, is to them eternal. It is highly probable that what we have
solemnly and suddenly discovered in scientific text-books and
philosophical magazines they absorbed and experienced thousands of
years ago, when they offered human sacrifice in black and cruel forests
and cried to their gods in the dark. Their agnosticism is perhaps merely
paganism; their paganism, as in old times, is merely devil-worship.
Certainly, Schopenhauer could hardly have written his hideous essay
on