It still remains to elucidate the Steppenwolf as an isolated phenomenon, in his relation, for example, to the beois world, so that his symptoms may be traced to their source. Let us take as a starting point, si offers itself, his relation to the beoisie.
To take his own view of the matter, the Steppenwolf stood entirely outside the world of vention, since he had her family life nor social ambitions. He felt himself to be single and alone, whether as a queer fellow and a hermit in poor health, or as a person removed from the on run of men by the prerogative of talents that had something of genius in them. Deliberately, he looked down upon the ordinary man and roud that he was not one. heless his life in many aspects was thhly ordinary. He had money in the bank and supported poor relations. He was dressed respectably and inspicuously, even though without particular care. He was glad to live on good terms with the polid the tax collectors and other such powers. Besides this, he was secretly and persistently attracted to the little beois world, to those quiet and respectable homes with tidy gardens, irreproachable stair-cases and their whole modest air of order and fort. It pleased him to set himself outside it, with his little vices aravagances, as a queer fellenius, but he never had his domicile in those provinces of life where the beoisie had ceased to exist. He was not at ease with violent and exceptional persons or with criminals and outlaws, aook up his abode always among the middle classes, with whose habits and standards and atmosphere he stood in a staion, even though it might be one of trast a. Moreover, he had been brought up in a provincial and ventional home and many of the notions and much of the examples of those days had never left him. In theory he had nothing whatever against the servant class, yet in practice it would have been beyond him to take a servant quite seriously as his equal. He was capable of loving the political criminal, the revolutionary or intellectual seducer, the outlaw of state and society, as his brother, but as for theft and robbery, murder and rape, be would not have known how to deplore them otherwise than in a thhly beois manner.
In this way he was always reising and affirming with one half of himself, in thought and act, what with the other half he fought against and denied. Brought up, as he was, in a cultivated home in the approved manner, he ore part of his soul loose from its ventionalities even after he had long sindividualised himself to a degree beyond its scope and freed himself from the substance of its ideals and beliefs.
Now what we call "beois," when regarded as a always to be found in human life, is nothing else than the search for a bala is the striving after a meaween the tless extremes and opposites that arise in human duct. If we take any one of these coupled opposites, such as piety and profligacy, the analogy is immediately prehensible. It is open to a man to give himself up wholly to spiritual views, to seeking after God, to the ideal of saintliness. Oher hand, he equally give himself up eo the life of instinct, to the lusts of the flesh, and so direct all his efforts to the attai of momentary pleasures. The oh leads to the saint, to the martyrdom of the spirit and surreo God. The other path leads to the profligate, to the martyrdom of the flesh, the surreo corruption. Now it is betweewo, in the middle of the road, that the beois seeks to walk. He will nev