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PROPHETS OF DISSENT
BOOKS BY OTTO HELLER
HENRIK IBSEN: PLAYS AND PROBLEMS
STUDIES IN MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE
LESSING'S “MINNA VON BARNHELM”
in English
Prophets of Dissent: Essays
on Maeterlinck, Strindberg,
Nietzsche and Tolstoy
by
Otto Heller
Professor of Modern European Literature
in Washington University (St. Louis)
Is there a thing in this world that can be separated fromthe inconceivable?
Maeterlinck, “Our Eternity”
New York 
Mcmxviii
Alfred A Knopf
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF
PRINTED IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To
HELLEN SEARS
staunchest of friends
Preface
The collocation of authors so widely at variancein their moral and artistic aims as are those assembledin this little book may be defended bythe safe and simple argument that all of theseauthors have exerted, each in his own way, aninfluence of singular range and potency. By fairlygeneral consent they are the foremost literaryexpositors of important modern tendencies. Itis, therefore, of no consequence whether or nottheir ways of thinking fit into our particularframe of mind; what really matters is that in thissmall group of writers more clearly perhaps thanin any other similarly restricted group the basicissues of the modern struggle for social transformationappear to be clearly and sharply joined.That in viewing them as indicators of contrariousideal currents due allowance must be madefor peculiarities of temperament, both individualand racial, and, correspondingly, for the purely“personal equation” in their spiritual attitudes,does not detract to any material degree from theirgeneric significance.
In any case, there are those of us who in thevortical change of the social order through whichwe are whirling, feel a desire to orient ourselvesthrough an objective interest in letters among theembattled purposes and policies which are nowgripped in a final test of strength. In a crisisthat makes the very foundations of civilizationquake, and at a moment when the salvation ofhuman liberty seems to depend upon the successof a united stand of all the modern forces of lifeagainst the destructive impact of the most primitiveand savage of all the instincts, would it notbe absurdly pedantic for a critical student of literatureto resort to any artificial selection and co-ordinationof his material in order to p