INTRODUCTION
cal; Laurent, like Eekhoud himself, is left an orphan at the age of eleven and committed to the care of a wealthy uncle, who, like Eekhoud's uncle, the Mayor of Borgerhout, is a manufacturer of candles. But this identification of Laurent with Eekhoud, beyond offering us an assurance that the novel is written out of an experience which the author has lived, is scarcely of major interest.
The fundamental content of the novel lies in its social feeling. Being a Fleming, Eekhoud reasons about life less than he feels it. He has a profound sympathy with the poor, the weak and the downtrodden. He denounces with bitter contempt the hypocrisy of the capitalistic organization of industrial society and the complacent philosophy of the bourgeoisie. Spiritually, morally and philosophically, Eekhoud is an anarchist. He distrusts all organization as setting an arbitrary limit upon life, as imposing its special utilitarian categories upon the mass of humanity. He challenges the cruelty of our contemporary industrial civilization, and sternly bids us face the facts of reality, however unlovely they may be. His own reaction to life's unloveliness seems, at first sight, supremely discouraging. If there were no organization, he tells us, there would be no evil, since evil is but a term applied to certain actions by an artificial society. Moreover, since atavism is the most potent force in nature, civilization begins and ends in savagery. This, however, is but one half of his doctrine. The other is contained in the following passage:
"And then, too, Antwerp will undergo a moral regeneration also. She will be restored again to her true children. You will see it, Paridael; the oppressed masses are becoming insubordinate. I tell you that a
