{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_33979/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_33979","id":"gutenberg_33979","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33979","summary":null,"tags":["Aphorisms and apothegms","Category: British Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Socialism"],"text":"MISCELLANEOUS APHORISMS; THE SOUL OF MAN\n\nSEBASTIAN MELMOTH\n\n[OSCAR WILDE]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLondon\nArthur L. Humphreys\n1911\n\n\n\n(Miscellaneous aphorisms, followed by The Soul of Man.)\n\n\n\nThe mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.\n\nWomen are made to be loved, not to be understood.\n\nIt is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and\nwhat one shouldn't. Moren than half of modern culture depends on what\none shouldn't read.\n\nWomen, as someone says, love with their ears, just as men love with\ntheir eyes, if they ever love at all.\n\nIt is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be\ngood than to be ugly.\n\nNothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.\n\nMisfortunes one can endure, they come from outside, they are accidents.\nBut to suffer for one's faults--ah! there is the sting of life.\n\nBeauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away\nlike sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for\nall seasons, a possession for all eternity.\n\nQuestions are never indiscreet; answers sometimes are.\n\nTwenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years\nof marriage make her something like a public building.\n\nThe only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it\nchanges.\n\nAnyone can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a\nvery fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.\n\nSelfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to\nlive as one wishes to live: and unselfishness is letting other people's\nlives alone, not interfering with them.\n\nA man who does not think for himself does not think at all.\n\nNowadays people seem to look on life as a speculation. It is not a\nspeculation. It is a sacrament. Its ideal is love. Its purification is\nsacrifice.\n\nIn old days nobody pretended to be a bit better than his neighbour. In\nfact, to be a bit better than one's neighbour was considered excessively\nvulgar and middle class. Nowadays, with our modern mania for morality,\neveryone has to pose as a paragon of purity, incorruptibility, and all\nthe other seven deadly virtues. And what is the result? You all go over\nlike ninepins--one after the other.\n\nAll sympathy is fine, but sympathy with suffering is the least fine\nmode.\n\nIf you pretend to be good the world takes you very seriously. If you\npretend to be bad it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of\noptimism.\n\nIt is most dangerous nowadays for a husband to pay any attention to his\nwife in public. It always makes people think that he beats her when\nthey're alone. The world has grown so suspicious of anything that looks\nlike a happy married life.\n\nActors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in\ntragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or\nshed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are\nforced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. The world\nis a stage, but the play is badly cast.\n\nMen know life too early; women know life too late-that is the difference\nbetween men and women.\n\nHe who stands most remote from his age is he who mirrors it best.\n\nThere is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and\nthat is not being talked about.\n\nLife is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves\nand fibres and slowly built-up cells, in which thought hides itself and\npassion has its dreams.\n\nMan is a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex,\nmultiform creature that bears within itself strange legacies of thought\nand passion, and whose very flesh is tainted with the monstrous maladies\nof the dead.\n\nAs long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter she\nis perfectly satisfied.\n\nThere is always something infinitely mean about other people's\ntragedies.\n\nPublic and private life are different things. They have different laws\nand move on different lines.\n\nWhen one is placed in the position of guardian one has to adopt a very\nhigh moral tone on all subjects. It's one's duty to do so.\n\nI have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married\nshould know either everything or nothing.\n\nAn engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or\nunpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be\nallowed to arrange for herself.\n\nIf the lower classes don't set us a good example what on earth is the\nuse of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral\nresponsibility.\n\nIf a woman cannot make her mistakes charming she is only a female.\n\nThe world was made for men and not for women.\n\nIt is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done.\n\nIf you wish to understand others you must intensify your own\nindividualism.\n\nWhy do you talk so trivially about life? Because I think that life is\nfar too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.\n\nWhat a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use\nto us.\n\nIt is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.\n\nRelations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven't got the\nremotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when\nto die.\n\nCharity creates a multitude of sins.\n\nMy experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better\nthey don't know anything at all.\n\nTruth is a very complex thing and politics is a very complex business.\nThere are wheels within wheels. One may be under certain obligations to\npeople that one must pay. Sooner or later in political life one has to\ncompromise. Everyone does.\n\nMen can love what is beneath them--things unworthy, stained,\ndishonoured. We women worship when we love; and when we lose our worship\nwe lose everything.\n\nThe proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.\n\nThe one advantage of playing with fire is that one never gets even\nsinged. It is the people who don't know how to play with it who get\nburned up.\n\nThere are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life\nfully, entirely, completely, or dragging out some false, shallow,\ndegrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.\n\nWhen one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one\namuses other people. It is excessively boring.\n\nRomance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the\nunemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic.\n\nAn acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a\nreal friendship. It starts in the right manner.\n\nThe truths of metaphysics are the truths of masks.\n\nScience can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no\nfuture before it in this world.\n\nThe happy people of the world have their value, but only the negative\nvalue of foils. They throw up and emphasise the beauty and the\nfascination of the unhappy.\n\nIn this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one\nwants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst--the last\nis a real tragedy.\n\nDisobedience in the eyes of anyone who has read history is man's\noriginal virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been\nmade--through disobedience and rebellion.\n\nIt is not wise to find symbols in everything that one sees. It makes\nlife too full of terrors.\n\nComfort is the only thing our civilisation can give us.\n\nPolitics are my only pleasure. You see nowadays it is not fashionable to\nflirt till one is forty or to be romantic till one is forty-five, so we\npoor women who are under thirty, or say we are, have nothing open to us\nbut politics or philanthropy. And philanthropy seems to me to have\nbecome simply the refuge of people who wish to annoy their\nfellow-creatures. I prefer politics. I think they are more ... becoming.\n\nOne's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be\njudged.\n\nIn a very ugly and sensible age the arts borrow, not from life, but from\neach other.\n\nIt is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is\nfatal.\n\nSecrets from other people's wives are a necessary luxury in modern life.\nSo, at least, I am told at the club by people who are bald enough to\nknow better. But no man should have a secret from his own wife. She\ninvariably finds it out. Women have a wonderful instinct about things.\nThey discover everything except the obvious.\n\nLife holds the mirror up to art, and either reproduces some strange type\nimagined by painter or sculptor or realises in fact what has been\ndreamed in fiction.\n\nI feel sure that if I lived in the country for six months I should\nbecome so unsophisticated that no one would take the slightest notice of\nme.\n\nTo recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is\nlike advising a man who is starving to eat less.\n\nA thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.\n\nI am always saying what I shouldn't say; in fact, I usually say what I\nreally think--a great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be\nmisunderstood.\n\nExperience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.\n\nThe true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man\nis.\n\nThe basis of every scandal is an absolute immoral certainty.\n\nPeople talk so much about the beauty of confidence. They seem to\nentirely ignore the much more subtle beauty of doubt. To believe is very\ndull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live,\nto be lulled into security is to die.\n\nEvery effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one\nmust be a mediocrity.\n\nIt is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names\nto things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions, my one\nquarrel is with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in\nliterature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled\nto use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.\n\nA high moral tone can hardly be said to conduce very much to either\none's health or one's happiness.\n\nThere are terrible temptations that it requires strength--strength and\ncourage--to yield to. To stake all one's life on one throw--whether the\nstake be power or pleasure I care not--there is no weakness in that.\nThere is a horrible, a terrible, courage.\n\nNowadays it is only the unreadable that occurs.\n\nAll charming people are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.\n\nThere is more to be said for stupidity than people imagine. Personally,\nI have a great admiration for stupidity. It is a sort of fellow-feeling,\nI suppose.\n\nAll men are monsters. The only thing to do is to feed the wretches well.\nA good cook does wonders.\n\nThere is no such thing as an omen.\n\nDestiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.\n\nCrying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones.\n\nLove art for its own sake and then all things that you need will be\nadded to you. This devotion to beauty and to the creation of beautiful\nthings is the test of all great civilisations; it is what makes the life\nof each citizen a sacrament and not a speculation.\n\nIt is always worth while asking a question, though it is not always\nanswering one.\n\nIt takes a thoroughly good woman to do a thoroughly stupid thing.\n\nWith a proper background women can do anything.\n\nChiromancy is a most dangerous science, and one that ought not to be\nencouraged, except in a 't\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate.'\n\nOne should never take sides in anything. Taking sides is the beginning\nof sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human\nbeing becomes a bore.\n\nThe work of art is beautiful by being what art never has been; and to\nmeasure it by the standard of the past is to measure it by a standard on\nthe reflection of which its real perfection depends.\n\nThere are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannises\nover the body. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul. There\nis the despot who tyrannises over soul and body alike. The first is\ncalled the prince. The second is called the pope. The third is called\nthe people.\n\nCostume is a growth, an evolution, and a most important, perhaps the\nmost important, sign of the manners, customs, and mode of life of each\ncentury.\n\nI really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic\nto be in love, but there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal.\nWhy, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement\nis all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.\n\nWhat consoles one nowadays is not repentance but pleasure. Repentance is\nquite out of date.\n\nIdeals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they\nare better.\n\nUnless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow.\n\nShallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that\nare great are destroyed by their own plenitude.\n\nAn eternal smile is much more wearisome than a perpetual frown. The one\nsweeps away all possibilities, the other suggests a thousand.\n\nTo disagree with three-fourths of England on all points is one of the\nfirst elements of vanity, which is a deep source of consolation in all\nmoments of spiritual doubt.\n\nWomen live by their emotions and for them, they have no philosophy of\nlife.\n\nAs long as war is regarded as wicked it will always have a fascination.\nWhen it is looked upon as vulgar it will cease to be popular.\n\nThere is only one thing worse than injustice, and that is justice\nwithout her sword in her hand. When right is not might it is evil.\n\nWe spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life.\nWell, the secret of life is in art.\n\nThe truth isn't quite the sort of thing that one tells to a nice, sweet,\nrefined girl.\n\nIf one plays good music people don't listen, and if one plays bad music\npeople don't talk.\n\nHow fond women are of doing dangerous things. It is one of the qualities\nin them that I admire most. A woman will flirt with anybody in the world\nas long as other people are looking on.\n\nEnglishwomen conceal their feelings till after they are married. They\nshow them then.\n\nModeration is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.\n\nActions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are\nperhaps the worst. Words are merciless.\n\nLife is terrible. It rules us, we do not rule it.\n\nIn art there is no such thing as a universal truth. A truth in art is\nthat whose contradictory is also true.\n\nOne's days are too brief to take the burden of another's sorrows on\none's shoulders. Each man lives his own life, and pays his own price for\nliving it. The only pity is that one has to pay so often for a single\nfault. One has to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with\nman Destiny never closes her accounts.\n\nPleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When we are happy we\nare always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.\n\nThe people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow\npeople. What they call their loyalty and their fidelity I call either\nthe lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.\n\nBetter to take pleasure in a rose than to put its root under a\nmicroscope.\n\nOf Shakespeare it may be said that he was the first to see the dramatic\nvalue of doublets and that a climax may depend on a crinoline.\n\nPlain women are always jealous of their husbands; beautiful women never\nare! They never have time. They are always so occupied in being jealous\nof other people's husbands.\n\nWhat between the duties expected of one during one's lifetime and the\nduties exacted from one after one's death land has ceased to be either a\nprofit or a pleasure. It gives one position and prevents one from\nkeeping it up.\n\nA man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is\ninvariably plain. There is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a\nwoman as a nonconformist conscience. And most women know it, I am glad\nto say.\n\nIt was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier\nthan the paving-stone and can be made as offensive as a brickbat.\n\nA map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even\nglancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is\nalways landing. And when Humanity lands there it looks out, and, seeing\na better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.\n\nWhat is the difference between scandal and gossip? Oh! gossip is\ncharming! History is merely gossip, but scandal is gossip made tedious\nby morality.\n\nAll beautiful things belong to the same age.\n\nIt is personalities, not principles, that move the age.\n\nModern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of\nthem are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too\nclever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious\nand their method too clearly defined. One exhausts what they have to say\nin a very short time, and then they become as tedious as one's\nrelations.\n\nTo know nothing about our great men is one of the necessary elements of\nEnglish education.\n\nThe truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very\ntedious if it were either and modern literature a complete\nimpossibility.\n\nYou may laugh, but it is a great thing to come across a woman who\nthoroughly understands one.\n\nThe majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated\naltruism.\n\nThe number of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is\nperfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean\nlinen in public.\n\nThe chief thing that makes life a failure from the artistic point of\nview is the thing that lends to life its sordid security--the fact that\none can never repeat exactly the same emotion.\n\nWe teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.\n\nVulgar habit that is people have nowadays of asking one, after one has\ngiven them an idea, whether one is serious or not. Nothing is serious\nexcept passion. The intellect is not a serious thing and never has been.\nIt is an instrument on which one plays, that is all. The only serious\nform of intellect I know is the British intellect, and on the British\nintellect the illiterate always plays the drum.\n\nIt is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either\ncharming or tedious.\n\nIt is only the modern that ever become old-fashioned.\n\nIt is only the Philistine who seeks to estimate a personality by the\nvulgar test of production.\n\nMusical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be\nperfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely\ndeaf.\n\nNothing is so dangerous as being too modern. One is apt to grow\nold-fashioned quite suddenly.\n\nThe fact of a man being a poisoner is nothing against his prose. The\ndomestic virtues are not the true basis of art.\n\nTo the philosopher women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just\nas men represent the triumph of mind over morals.\n\nThe only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so\ncompletely that he loses all possible interest in life.\n\nThe only horrible thing in the world is 'ennui.' That is the one sin for\nwhich there is no forgiveness.\n\nFrench songs I cannot possibly allow. People always seem to think that\nthey are improper, and either look shocked, which is vulgar, or laugh,\nwhich is worse.\n\nIt has often been made a subject of reproach against artists and men of\nletters that they are lacking in wholeness and completeness of nature.\nAs a rule this must necessarily be so. That very concentration of vision\nand inversity of purpose which is the characteristic of the artistic\ntemperament is in itself a mode of limitation. To those who are\npreoccupied with the beauty of form nothing else seems of so much\nimportance.\n\nThe work of art is to dominate the spectator. The spectator is not to\ndominate the work of art.\n\nOne should sympathise with the joy, the beauty, the colour of life. The\nless said about life's sores the better.\n\nYou can't make people good by act of Parliament--that is something.\n\nArt creates an incomparable and unique effect, and having done so passes\non to other things. Nature, on the other hand, forgetting that imitation\ncan be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating the effect\nuntil we all become absolutely wearied of it.\n\nIt is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things\nagainst one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.\n\nA true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to\nhim non-existent.\n\nOne should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who\nwould tell one that would tell one anything.\n\nNothing is so aggravating as calmness. There is something positively\nbrutal about the good temper of most modern men. I wonder we women stand\nit as well as we do.\n\nThe truth is a thing I get rid of as soon as possible. Bad habit, by the\nway, makes one very unpopular at the club ... with the older members.\nThey call it being conceited. Perhaps it is.\n\nMy own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's.\n\nDon't be led astray into the paths of virtue--that is the worst of\nwomen. They always want one to be good. And if we are good, when they\nmeet us they don't love us at all. They like to find us quite\nirretrievably bad and to leave us quite unattractively good.\n\nMen are such cowards. They outrage every law in the world and are afraid\nof the world's tongue.\n\nWicked women bother one. Good women bore one. That is the only\ndifference between them.\n\nTo know the principles of the highest art is to know the principles of\nall the arts.\n\nI don't believe in the existence of Puritan women. I don't think there\nis a woman in the world who would not be a little flattered if one made\nlove to her. It is that which makes women so irresistibly adorable.\n\nWhen I am in trouble eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed,\nwhen I am in really great trouble, as anyone who knows me intimately\nwill tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink.\n\nWhen one is going to lead an entirely new life one requires regular and\nwholesome meals.\n\nThe soul is born old, but grows young. That is the comedy of life. The\nbody is born young, and grows old. That is life's tragedy.\n\nOne can survive everything nowadays except death, and live down anything\nexcept a good reputation.\n\nThe past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is\nwith the future that we have to deal. For the past is what men should\nnot have been. The present is what men ought not to be. The future is\nwhat artists are.\n\nMen become old, but they never become good.\n\nBy persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent\npublic temptation. Men should be more careful; this very celibacy leads\nweaker vessels astray.\n\nI think that in practical life there is something about success, actual\nsuccess, that is a little unscrupulous, something about ambition that is\nscrupulous always.\n\nEvery man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons.\nWhat this century worships is wealth. The god of this century is wealth.\nTo succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth.\n\nI love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don't\ninterest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.\n\nModeration is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than\nenough is as good as a feast.\n\nThe English can't stand a man who is always saying he is in the right,\nbut they are very fond of a man who admits he has been in the wrong. It\nis one of the best things in them.\n\nLife is simply a 'mauvais quart d'heure' made up of exquisite moments.\n\nThere is the same world for all of us, and good and evil, sin and\ninnocence, go through it hand in hand. To shut one's eyes to half of\nlife that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that\none might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice.\n\nMarried men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands and\nabominably conceited when they are not.\n\nBetween men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion,\nenmity, worship, love, but no friendship.\n\nEverybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting\nclever people. This has become an absolute public nuisance.\n\nI don't think man has much capacity for development. He has got as far\nas he can, and that is not far, is it?\n\nI am not quite sure that I quite know what pessimism really means. All I\ndo know is that life cannot be understood without much charity, cannot\nbe lived without much charity. It is love, and not German philosophy,\nthat is the explanation of this world, whatever may be the explanation\nof the next.\n\nI do not approve of anything that that tampers with natural arrogance.\nIgnorance is like a delicate exotic fruit: touch it, and the blossom is\ngone.\n\nThe whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately,\nin England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it\ndid it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably\nlead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.\n\nNo woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so\ncalculating.\n\nEmotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art, and emotion for the\nsake of emotion is the aim of life and of that practical organisation of\nlife that we call society.\n\nMen of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to\nthe influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less than\nancient, history supplies us with many most painful examples of what I\nrefer to. If it were not so, indeed, history would be quite unreadable.\n\nI am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity\nof finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is\nnever advisable.\n\nIt is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life\nhe has been speaking nothing but the truth.\n\nThe two weak points in our age are its want of principle and its want of\nprofile.\n\nThirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women\nwho have of their own free choice remained thirty-five for years.\n\nNever speak disrespectfully of society. Only people who can't get into\nit do that.\n\nIt is always painful to part with people whom one has known for a very\nbrief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with\nequanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has\njust been introduced is almost unbearable.\n\nTo be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.\n\nOne is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his\ntemper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of\nreason.\n\nThe essence of thought, as the essence of life, is growth.\n\nWhat people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply\nour personalities.\n\nIn a temple everyone should be serious except the thing that is\nworshipped.\n\nWe are never more true to ourselves than when we are inconsistent.\n\nThere is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom\none has ceased to love.\n\nIntellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in\nmorals mean absolutely nothing.\n\nTo be in society is merely a bore, but to be out of it simply a tragedy.\n\nWe live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.\n\nOne should never make one's d\u00e9but with a scandal. One should reserve\nthat to give an interest to one's old age.\n\nWhat man has sought for is, indeed, neither pain nor pleasure, but\nsimply life. Man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. When he\ncan do so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it ever,\nand his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner,\nhealthier, more civilised, more himself. Pleasure is nature's test, her\nsign of approval. When man is happy he is in harmony with himself and\nhis environment.\n\nSociety often forgives the criminal, it never forgives the dreamer.\n\nIt is so easy for people to have sympathy with suffering. It is so\ndifficult for them to have sympathy with thought.\n\nConversation should touch on everything, but should concentrate itself\non nothing.\n\nThere is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that\nno one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the\npriest, that gives us absolution.\n\nThere are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating--people\nwho know absolutely everything and people who know absolutely nothing.\n\nThe public is wonderfully tolerant; it forgives everything except\ngenius.\n\nLife makes us pay too high a price for its wares, and we purchase the\nmeanest of its secrets at a cost that is monstrous and infinite.\n\nThis horrid House of Commons quite ruins our husbands for us. I think\nthe Lower House by far the greatest blow to a happy married life that\nthere has been since that terrible thing they called the Higher\nEducation of Women was invented.\n\nOnce a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully\neffeminate, does he not? And I don't like that. It makes men so very\nattractive.\n\nExperience is a question of instinct about life.\n\nWhat is true about art is true about life.\n\nOne can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.\n\nI like men who have a future and women who have a past.\n\nWomen, as some witty Frenchman put it, inspire us with the desire to do\nmasterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.\n\nIn matters of grave importance style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.\n\nThe only way to behave to a woman, is to make love to her if she is\npretty and to someone else if she is plain.\n\nWomen give to men the very gold of their lives. Possibly; but they\ninvariably want it back in such very small change.\n\nDefine women as a sex? Sphinxes without secrets.\n\nWhat do you call a bad man? The sort of man who admires innocence.\n\nWhat do you call a bad woman? Oh! the sort of woman a man never gets\ntired of.\n\nOne can resist everything except temptation.\n\nDon't let us go to life for our fulfilment or our experience. It is a\nthing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and\nwithout that fine correspondence or form and spirit which is the only\nthing that can satisfy the artistic and critical temperament.\n\nIt is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.\n\nOne can always know at once whether a man has home claims upon his life\nor not. I have noticed a very, very sad expression in the eyes of so\nmany married men.\n\nA mother who doesn't part with a daughter every season has no real\naffection.\n\nTo be good is to be in harmony with oneself. Discord is to be forced to\nbe in harmony with others.\n\nA really grand passion is comparatively rare nowadays. It is the\nprivilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the\nidle classes in a country.\n\nThere is no secret of life. Life's aim, if it has one, is simply to be\nalways looking for temptations. There are not nearly enough of them; I\nsometimes pass a whole day without coming across a single one. It is\nquite dreadful. It makes one so nervous about the future.\n\nAll thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of\nanything you kill it; nothing survives being thought of.\n\nWhat is truth? In matters of religion it is simply the opinion that has\nsurvived. In matters of science it is the ultimate sensation. In matters\nof art it is one's last mood.\n\nIt is so easy to convert others. It is so difficult to convert oneself.\n\nA little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is\nabsolutely fatal.\n\nLife cheats us with shadows, like a puppet-master. We ask it for\npleasure. It gives it to us, with bitterness and disappointment in its\ntrain. We come across some noble grief that we think will lend the\npurple dignity of tragedy to our days, but it passes away from us, and\nthings less noble take its place, and on some grey, windy dawn, or\nodorous eve of silence and of silver, we find ourselves looking with\ncallous wonder, or dull heart of stone, at the tress of gold-flecked\nhair that we had once so wildly worshipped and so madly kissed.\n\nThere are two ways of disliking art One is to dislike it and the other\nto like it rationally.\n\nThere is nothing sane about the worship of beauty. It is too splendid to\nbe sane. Those of whose lives it forms the dominant note will always\nseem to the world to be mere visionaries.\n\nI am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world.\nCertainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such\nextraordinary importance.\n\nA sentimentalist is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and\ndoesn't know the marked price of any single thing.\n\nPunctuality is the thief of time.\n\nSelf-culture is the true ideal for man.\n\nThere's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's\na thing no married man knows anything about.\n\nNo woman should have a memory. Memory in a woman is the beginning of\ndowdiness. One can always tell from a woman's bonnet whether she has got\na memory or not.\n\nThere are things that are right to say but that may be said at the wrong\ntime and to the wrong people.\n\nThe meaning of any beautiful created thing is, at least, as much in the\nsoul of him who looks at it as it was in his soul who wrought it. Nay,\nit is rather the beholder who lends to the beautiful thing its myriad\nmeanings, and makes it marvellous for us, and sets it in some new\nrelation to the age, so that it becomes a vital portion of our lives and\na symbol of what we pray for, or perhaps of what, having prayed for, we\nfear that we may receive.\n\nThe Renaissance was great because it sought to solve no social problem,\nand busied itself not about such things, but suffered the individual to\ndevelop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had great and\nindividual artists and great and individual men.\n\nIn England people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is so\ndreadful of them! Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.\n\nWhen one is in love one begins by deceiving oneself, and one ends by\ndeceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.\n\nThe secret of life is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.\n\nNo artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.\n\nThe development of the race depends on the development of the\nindividual, and where self-culture has ceased to be the ideal the\nintellectual standard is instantly lowered and often ultimately lost.\n\nAn idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at\nall.\n\nTo elope is cowardly; it is running away from danger, and danger has\nbecome so rare in modern life.\n\nWhen a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right\nalso.\n\nThe Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. It ends with\nRevelations.\n\nIn married life three is company and two is none.\n\nOut of ourselves we can never pass, nor can there be in creation what in\nthe creator was not.\n\nDon't tell me that you have exhausted life. When a man says that one\nknows that life has exhausted him.\n\nWhen a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband.\nWhen a man marries again it is because he adored his first wife. Women\ntry their luck; men risk theirs.\n\nThe highest criticism really is the record of one's own soul. It is more\nfascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is\nmore delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not\nabstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilised form of\nautobiography, as it deals, not with the events, but with the thoughts\nof one's life, not with life's physical accidents of deed or\ncircumstance, but with the spiritual moods and imaginative passions of\nthe mind.\n\nTo know anything about oneself one must know all about others.\n\nDuty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself.\n\nAfter a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.\n\nTalk to every woman as if you loved her and to every man as if he bored\nyou, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of\npossessing the most perfect social tact.\n\nMan--poor, awkward, reliable, necessary man--belongs to a sex that has\nbeen rational for millions and millions of years. He can't help himself;\nit is in his race. The history of women is very different. They have\nalways been picturesque protests against the mere existence of\ncommon-sense; they saw its dangers from the first.\n\nMore marriages are ruined nowadays by the common-sense of the husband\nthan by anything else. How can a woman be expected to be happy with a\nman who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly rational\nbeing.\n\nIt is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like\nstock-brokers do that, and then merely at dinner-parties.\n\nIt is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work\nwhen there is no definite object of any kind.\n\nTo do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most\ndifficult and the most intellectual. To Plato, with his passion for\nwisdom, this was the noblest form of energy.\n\nTo Aristotle, with his passion for knowledge, this was the noblest form\nof energy also. It was to this that the passion for holiness led the\nsaint and the mystic of medi\u00e6val days.\n\nYouth! There is nothing like it. It is absurd to talk of the ignorance\nof youth. The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any\nrespect are persons much younger than myself. They seem in front of me.\nLife has revealed to them her latest wonder.\n\nRomance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an\nart.\n\nI adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.\n\nThere is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to life. The\nold are in life's lumber-room. But youth is the lord of life. Youth has\na kingdom waiting for it. Everyone is born a king, and most people die\nin exile--like most kings.\n\nAll crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime.\n\nSociety, civilised society at least, is never very ready to believe\nanything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It\ninstinctively feels that manners are of more importance than morals, and\nin its opinion the highest respectability is of much less value than the\npossession of a good chef. And, after all, it is a very poor consolation\nto be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner or poor wine is\nirreproachable in his private life. Even the cardinal virtues cannot\natone for half-cold entrees.\n\nWhile, in the opinion of society, contemplation is the gravest thing of\nwhich any citizen can be guilty, in the opinion of the highest culture\nit is the proper occupation of man.\n\nLife is terribly deficient in form. Its catastrophes happen in the wrong\nway and to the wrong people. There is a grotesque horror about its\ncomedies, and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce. One is always\nwounded when one approaches it. Things last either too long or not long\nenough.\n\nIf a woman wants to hold a man she has merely to appeal to what is worst\nin him.\n\nWe are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.\n\nBeauty has as many meanings as man has moods. It is the symbol of\nsymbols. It reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it\nshows us itself it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world.\n\nMen always want to be a woman's first love. That is their clumsy vanity.\nWomen have a more subtle instinct about things. What they like is to be\na man's last romance.\n\nAnything approaching to the free play of the mind is practically unknown\namongst us. People cry out against the sinner, yet it is not the sinful\nbut the stupid who are our shame. There is no sin except stupidity.\n\nOne regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets\nthem the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.\n\nIt is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our\nperfection; through art and through art only, that we can shield\nourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.\n\nA man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world. The\nfuture belongs to the dandy. It is the exquisites who are going to rule.\n\nIt often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an\ninartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their\nabsolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of\nstyle. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an\nimpression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that. Sometimes,\nhowever, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses\nour lives. If these elements of beauty are real the whole thing simply\nappeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are no\nlonger the actors but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are both.\nWe watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthrals us.\n\nWhen a woman finds out that her husband is absolutely indifferent to\nher, she either becomes dreadfully dowdy or wears very smart bonnets\nthat some other woman's husband has to pay for.\n\nIt is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible\nevils that result from the institution of private property.\n\nIt is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever\nreally shown in the work one creates. Art is always more abstract than\nwe fancy. Form and colour tell us of form and colour-that is all.\n\nIt is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he\ncannot realise his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of\nmost artists is that they realise their ideal too absolutely. For when\nthe ideal is realised it is robbed of its wonder and its mystery, and\nbecomes simply a new starting-point for an ideal that is other than\nitself.\n\nPeople who go in for being consistent have just as many moods as others\nhave. The only difference is that their moods are rather meaningless.\n\nIt is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A\nman who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent\na pleasure.\n\nGood women have such a limited view of life, their horizon is so small,\ntheir interests so petty. The fact is they are not modern, and to be\nmodern is the only thing worth being nowadays.\n\nDiscontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.\n\nMen marry because they are tired, women because they are curious. Both\nare disappointed.\n\nAll men are married women's property. That is the only true definition\nof what married women's property really is.\n\nI am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad people into good\npeople at a moment's notice. As a man sows so let him reap.\n\nNothing refines but the intellect.\n\nIt is very painful for me to be forced to speak the truth. It is the\nfirst time in my life that I have ever been reduced to such a painful\nposition, and I am really quite inexperienced in doing anything of the\nkind.\n\nThe man who regards his past is a man who deserves to have no future to\nlook forward to.\n\nJust as it is only by contact with the art of foreign nations that the\nart of a country gains that individual and separate life that we call\nnationality, so, by curious inversion, it is only by intensifying his\nown personality that the critic can interpret the personality of others;\nand the more strongly this personality enters into the interpretation\nthe more real the interpretation becomes, the more satisfying, the more\nconvincing, and the more true.\n\nMan is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask,\nand he will tell you the truth.\n\nAll women become like their mothers: that is their tragedy. No man does:\nthat is his.\n\nWomen are a fascinatingly wilful sex. Every woman is a rebel, and\nusually in wild revolt against herself.\n\nOne should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.\n\nNo man came across two ideal things. Few come across one.\n\nTo become the spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of\nlife.\n\nThe state is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is\nbeautiful.\n\nA community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of\npunishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.\n\nThe systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human\nnature and not on its growth and development.\n\nJealousy, which is an extraordinary source of crime in modern life, is\nan emotion closely bound up with our conceptions of property, and under\nsocialism and individualism will die out. It is remarkable that in\ncommunistic tribes jealousy is entirely unknown.\n\nAll art is immoral.\n\nHe to whom the present is the only thing that is present knows nothing\nof the age in which he lives. To realise the nineteenth century one must\nrealise every century that has preceded it and that has contributed to\nits making.\n\nFew parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them.\nThe old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.\n\nThe history of woman is the history of the worst form of tyranny the\nworld has ever known; the tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the\nonly tyranny that lasts.\n\nThe happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married.\n\nThere is no one type for man. There are as many perfections as there are\nimperfect men. And while to the claims of charity a man may yield and\nyet be free, to the claims of conformity no man may yield and remain\nfree at all.\n\nA practical scheme is either a scheme that is already in existence or a\nscheme that could be carried out under existing conditions.\n\nAll imitation in morals and in life is wrong.\n\nThe world has been made by fools that wise men may live in it.\n\nWomen love us for our defects. If we have enough of them they will\nforgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.\n\nSociety is a necessary thing. No man has any real success in this world\nunless he has got women to back him--and women rule society. If you have\nnot got women on your side you are quite over. You might just as well be\na barrister or a stockbroker or a journalist at once.\n\nThe worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been\ndecried; men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and\nsensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are\nconscious of sharing with the less highly organised forms of existence.\nBut it is probable the true nature of the senses has never been\nunderstood, and that they have remained savage and animal merely because\nthe world has sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by\npain instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of\nwhich a fine instinct for beauty will be the dominant characteristic.\n\nWomen appreciate cruelty more than anything else. They have wonderfully\nprimitive instincts. We have emancipated them, but they remain slaves,\nlooking for their master all the same. They love being dominated.\n\nThose who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob. It\nis through the voice of one crying in the wilderness that the way of the\ngods must be prepared.\n\nCircumstances are the lashes laid on to us by life. Some of us have to\nreceive them with bared ivory backs, and others are permitted to keep on\na coat--that is the only difference.\n\nCriticism is itself an art.... It is no more to be judged by any low\nstandard of imitation or resemblance than is the work of poet or\nsculptor. The critic occupies the same relation to the work of art that\nhe criticises as the artist does to the visible world of form and colour\nor the unseen world of passion and thought. He does not even require for\nthe perfection of his art the finest materials. Anything will serve his\npurpose.\n\nIt is very much more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it. In\nthe sphere of actual life that is, of course, obvious. Anybody can make\nhistory, only a great man can write it.\n\nIf we lived long enough to see the results of our actions it may be that\nthose who call themselves good would be filled with a wild remorse and\nthose whom the world calls evil stirred with a noble joy. Each little\nthing that we do passes into the great machine of life, which may grind\nour virtues to powder and make them worthless or transform our sins into\nelements of a new civilisation more marvellous and more splendid than\nany that has gone before.\n\nChildren begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge\nthem, sometimes they forgive them.\n\nWe live in an age that reads too much to be wise and that thinks too\nmuch to be beautiful.\n\nOne should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its\ndetails. Details are always vulgar.\n\nIt will be a marvellous thing--the true personality of man--when we see\nit. It will grow naturally and simply flowerlike, or as a tree grows. It\nwill not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not\nprove things. It will know everything, and yet it will not busy itself\nabout knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by\nmaterial things. It will have nothing, and yet it will have everything,\nand whatever one takes from it it will still have, so rich it will be.\nIt will not be always meddling with others or asking them to be like\nitself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet, while\nit will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing\nhelps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be very\nwonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.\n\nCynicism is merely the art of seeing things as they are instead of as\nthey ought to be.\n\nThree addresses always inspire confidence, even in tradesmen.\n\nIf one doesn't talk about a thing it has never happened. It is simply\nexpression that gives reality to things.\n\nNo man is able who is unable to get on, just as no woman is clever who\ncan't succeed in obtaining that worst and most necessary of evils, a\nhusband.\n\nThe one charm of the past is that it is the past. But women never know\nwhen the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon\nas the interest of the play is entirely over they propose to continue\nit. If they were allowed their way every comedy would have a tragic\nending and every tragedy would culminate in a farce. They are charmingly\nartificial, but they have no sense of art.\n\nEach time that one loves is the only time that one has ever loved.\nDifference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely\nintensifies it.\n\nThe real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but\nself-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of\nthe rich.\n\nHuman life is the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there is\nnothing else of any value. It is true that as one watches life in its\ncurious crucible of pain and pleasure one cannot wear over one's face a\nmask of glass nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and\nmaking the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen\ndreams. There are poisons so subtle that to know their properties one\nhas to sicken of them. There are maladies so strange that one has to\npass through them if one seeks to understand their nature. And yet what\na great reward one receives! How wonderful the whole world becomes to\none! To note the curious, hard logic of passion and the emotional,\ncoloured life of the intellect--to observe where they meet, and where\nthey separate, at what point they are in unison and at what point they\nare in discord--there is a delight in that! What matter what the cost\nis? One can never pay too high a price for any sensation.\n\nThere is only one class in the community that thinks more about money\nthan the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.\nThat is the misery of being poor.\n\nTo live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist--that is\nall.\n\nPersonality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated\nby what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break\nthe law, and yet be fine. He may be bad without ever doing anything bad.\nHe may commit a sin against society, and yet realise through that sin\nhis true perfection.\n\nMedi\u00e6val art is charming, but medi\u00e6val emotions are out of date. One can\nuse them in fiction, of course; but then the only things that one can\nuse in fiction are the only things that one has ceased to use in fact.\n\nMan is complete in himself.\n\nWhat is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value\nof nothing.\n\nIt's the old, old story. Love--well, not at first sight--but love at the\nend of the season, which is so much more satisfactory.\n\nNo nice girl should ever waltz with such particularly younger sons! It\nlooks so fast!\n\nGood resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws.\nTheir origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give\nus now and then some of those luxurious, sterile emotions that have a\ncertain charm for the weak. That is all that can be said for them. They\nare simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.\n\nWhat is the difference between literature and journalism? Journalism is\nunreadable and literature is unread.\n\nI hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked\nand being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.\n\nMy husband is a sort of promissory note; I am tired of meeting him.\n\nConscience makes egotists of us all.\n\nNever trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman\nover thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons. It always means that they\nhave a history.\n\nThere is a fatality about good resolutions-they are always made too\nlate.\n\nWe can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of\nlife is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.\n\nAnybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That\nis the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely\nuncivilised. Civilisation is not by any means an easy thing to attain\nto. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being\ncultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity\nof being either, so they stagnate.\n\nWhat nonsense people talk about happy marriages! A man can be happy with\nany woman so long as he does not love her.\n\nThe things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is\nthe fatality of faith and the lesson of romance.\n\nIn the common world of fact the wicked are not punished nor the good\nrewarded. Success is given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak.\n\nNothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing should be\nable to rob a man at all. What a man really has is what is in him. What\nis outside of him should be a matter of no importance.\n\nModern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age. I\nconsider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age\nis a form of the grossest immorality.\n\nPerplexity and mistrust fan affection into passion, and so bring about\nthose beautiful tragedies that alone make life worth living. Women once\nfelt this, while men did not, and so women once ruled the world.\n\nSin is a thing that writes itself across a man's, face. It cannot be\nconcealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices. There are no such\nthings.\n\nIf a wretched man has a vice it shows itself in the lines of his mouth,\nthe drop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even.\n\nThere are sins whose fascination is more in the memory than in the doing\nof them, strange triumphs that gratify the pride more than the passions\nand give to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than they\nbring or can ever bring to the senses.\n\nNo civilised man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilised man ever\nknows what a pleasure is.\n\nAs for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is\narrested. If you want to mar a nature you have merely to reform it.\n\nSocialism itself will be of value simply because it will lead to\nindividualism.\n\nSome years ago people went about the country saying that property has\nduties. It is perfectly true. Property not merely has duties, but has so\nmany duties that its possession to any large extent is a bore. If\nproperty had simply pleasures we could stand it, but its duties make it\nunbearable.\n\nIt is through joy that the individualism of the future will develop\nitself. Christ made no attempt to reconstruct society, and consequently\nthe individualism that He preached to man could be realised only through\npain or in solitude.\n\nMost people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the\nprose of life. To have ruined oneself over poetry is an honour.\n\nThe only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad\nartists. Good artists exist simply on what they make, and consequently\nare perfectly uninteresting in what they are.\n\nWhat are the virtues? Nature, Renan tells us, cares little about\nchastity, and it may be that it is to the shame of the Magdalen, and not\nto their own purity, that the Lucretias of modern life owe their freedom\nfrom stain. Charity, as even those of whose religion it makes a formal\npart have been compelled to acknowledge, creates a multitude of evils.\nThe mere existence of conscience, that faculty of which people prate so\nmuch nowadays, and are so ignorantly proud, is a sign of our imperfect\ndevelopment. It must be merged in instinct before we become fine.\nSelf-denial is simply a method by which man arrests his progress, and\nself-sacrifice a survival of the mutilation of the savage, part of that\nold worship of pain which is so terrible a factor in the history of the\nworld, and which even now makes its victims day by day and has its\naltars in the land. Virtues! Who knows what the virtues are? Not you.\nNot I. Not anyone. It is well for our vanity that we slay the criminal,\nfor if we suffered him to live he might show us what we had gained by\nhis crime. It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his\nmartyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.\n\nNowadays all the married men live like bachelors and all the bachelors\nlike married men.\n\nThe higher education of men is what I should like to see. Men need it so\nsadly.\n\nThe world is perfectly packed with good women. To know them is a\nmiddle-class education.\n\nHesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of\nphysical weakness in the old.\n\nOur husbands never appreciate anything in us. We have to go to others\nfor that.\n\nMost women in London nowadays seem to furnish their rooms with nothing\nbut orchids, foreigners and French novels.\n\nThe canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of\nart. Form is absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a\nceremony as well as its unreality, and should combine the insincere\ncharacter of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such\nplays delightful to us. Is sincerity such a terrible thing? I think not.\nIt is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.\n\nThe tragedy of old age is not that one is old but that one is young.\n\nA great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all\ncreatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse\ntheir rhymes are the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having\npublished a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible.\nHe lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry\nthat they dare not realise.\n\nBeing adored is a nuisance. Women treat us just as humanity treats its\ngods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to do something for\nthem.\n\nIf a man treats life artistically his brain is his heart.\n\nThe 'Peerage' is the one book a young man about town should know\nthoroughly, and it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever\ndone.\n\nThe world has always laughed at its own tragedies, that being the only\nway in which it has been able to bear them. Consequently whatever the\nworld has treated seriously belongs to the comedy side of things.\n\nThe only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint\nhas a past and every sinner has a future.\n\nWhat is termed sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the\nworld would stagnate or grow old or becomes colourless. By its curiosity\nit increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified\nassertion of individualism it saves us from the commonplace. In its\nrejection of the current notions about morality it is one with the\nhigher ethics.\n\nFormerly we used to canonise our heroes. The modern method is to\nvulgarise them. Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but\ncheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.\n\nIndividualism does not come to man with any claims upon him at all. It\ncomes naturally and inevitably out of man. It is the point to which all\ndevelopment tends. It is the differentiation to which all organisms\ngrow. It is the perfection that is inherent in every mode of life and\ntoward which every mode of life quickens. Individualism exercises no\ncompulsion over man. On the contrary, it says to man that he should\nsuffer no compulsion to be exercised over him. It does not try to force\npeople to be good. It knows that people are good when they are let\nalone. Man will develop individualism out of himself. Man is now so\ndeveloping individualism. To ask whether individualism is practical is\nlike asking whether evolution is practical. Evolution is the law of\nlife, and there is no evolution except towards individualism.\n\nThe longer I live the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough\nfor our fathers is not good enough for us. In art, as in politics, 'les\ngrand p\u00e8res ont toujours tort.'\n\nNo woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have\nanything to say but they say it charmingly.\n\nHumanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If\nthe cave men had known how to laugh history would have been different.\n\nI wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most\npremature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not\nrational.\n\nThought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.\n\nTo get into the best society nowadays one has either to feed people,\namuse people, or shock people--that is all.\n\nYou should never try to understand women. Women are pictures, men are\nproblems. If you want to know what a woman really means--which, by the\nway, is always a dangerous thing to do--look at her, don't listen to\nher.\n\nOrdinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to\ntheir century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds\nas easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is\nno mystery in any of them. They ride in the park in the morning and\nchatter at tea parties in the afternoon. They have their stereotyped\nsmile and their fashionable mauve.\n\nDon't run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is an extraordinary\ncharm in them--sometimes.\n\nTo have been well brought up is a great drawback nowadays. It shuts one\nout from so much.\n\nThe people who have adored me--there have not been very many, but there\nhave been some--have always insisted on living on long after I had\nceased to care for them or they to care for me. They have become stout\nand tedious, and when I meet them they go in at once for reminiscences.\nThat awful memory of women! What a fearful thing it is! And what an\nutter intellectual stagnation it reveals!\n\nExaminations are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a\ngentleman he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman whatever\nhe knows is bad for him.\n\nCredit is the capital of a younger son, and he can live charmingly on\nit.\n\nThe object of art is not simply truth but complex beauty. Art itself is\nreally a form of exaggeration, and selection, which is the very spirit\nof art, is nothing more than an intensified mode of over-emphasis.\n\nThe popular cry of our time is: 'Let us return to Life and Nature, they\nwill recreate Art for us and send the red blood coursing through her\nveins; they will shoe her feet with swiftness and make her hand strong.'\nBut, alas! we are mistaken in our amiable and well-meant efforts. Nature\nis always behind the age. And as for life, she is the solvent that\nbreaks up Art, the enemy that lays waste her house.\n\nThere are only two kinds of women--the plain and the coloured. The plain\nwomen are very useful. If you want to gain a reputation for\nrespectability you have merely to take them down to supper. The other\nwomen are very charming. They commit one mistake, however--they paint in\norder to try and look young.\n\nThe way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it\non the tight-rope. When the verities become acrobats we can judge them.\n\nLife imitates art far more than art imitates life.... The Greeks with\ntheir quick, artistic instinct understood this, and set in the bride's\nchamber the statue of Hermes or of Apollo, that she might bear children\nas lovely as the works of art that she looked at in her rapture or her\npain. They knew that life gains from art not merely spirituality, depth\nof thought and feeling, soul-turmoil or soul-peace, but that she can\nform herself on the very lines and colours of art, and can reproduce the\ndignity of Pheidias as well as the grace of Praxiteles. Hence came this\nobjection to realism. They disliked it on purely social grounds. They\nfelt that it inevitably makes people ugly, and they were perfectly\nright.\n\nFaithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of\nthe intellect--simply a confession of failure.\n\nThere are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid\nthat others might pick them up.\n\nWhat a fuss people make about fidelity! Why, even in love it is purely a\nquestion for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young\nmen want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and\ncannot--that is all one can say.\n\nModernity of form and modernity of subject-matter are entirely and\nabsolutely wrong. We have mistaken the common livery of the age for the\nvesture of the muses, and spent our days in the sordid streets and\nhideous suburbs of our vile cities when we should be out on the hillside\nwith Apollo. Certainly we are a degraded race, and have sold our\nbirthright for a mess of facts.\n\nNothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the\nsenses but the soul.\n\nI can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is\nsomething unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.\n\nThose who live in marble or on painted panel know of life but a single\nexquisite instant, eternal, indeed, in its beauty but limited to one\nnote of passion or one mood of calm. Those whom the poet makes live have\ntheir myriad emotions of joy and terror, of courage and despair, of\npleasure and of suffering. The seasons come and go in glad or saddening\npageant, and with winged or leaden feet the years pass by before them.\nThey have their youth and their manhood, they are children, and they\ngrow old. It is always dawn for St Helena as Veronese saw her at the\nwindow. Through the still morning air the angels bring her the symbol of\nGod's pain. The cool breezes of the morning lift the gilt threads from\nher brow. On that little hill by the city of Florence, where the lovers\nof Giorgione are lying, it is always the solstice of noon--of noon made\nso languorous by summer suns that hardly can the slim, naked girl dip\ninto the marble tank the round bubble of clear glass, and the long\nfingers of the lute player rest idly upon the chords. It is twilight\nalways for the dancing nymphs whom Corot set free among the silver\npoplars of France. In eternal twilight they move, those frail,\ndiaphanous figures, whose tremulous, white feet seem not to touch the\ndew-drenched grass they tread on. But those who walk in epos, drama, or\nromance see through the labouring months the young moons wax and wane,\nand watch the night from evening into morning star, and from sunrise\ninto sun-setting can note the shifting day with all its gold and shadow.\nFor them, as for us, the flowers bloom and wither, and the earth, that\ngreen-tressed goddess, as Coleridge calls her, alters her raiment for\ntheir pleasure. The statue is concentrated to one moment of perfection.\nThe image stained upon the canvas possesses no spiritual element of\ngrowth or change. If they know nothing of death it is because they know\nlittle of life, for the secrets of life and death belong to those, and\nto those only, whom the sequence of time affects, and who possess not\nmerely the present but the future, and can rise or fall from a past of\nglory or of shame. Movement, that problem of the visible arts, can be\ntruly realised by literature alone. It is literature that shows us the\nbody in its swiftness and the soul in its unrest.\n\nBehind every exquisite thing that exists there is something tragic.\nWorlds have to be in travail that the merest flower may blow.\n\nBeauty is a form of genius--is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs\nno explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like\nsunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark water of that silver\nshell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned, it has its divine right\nof sovereignty.\n\nThe only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it and\nyour soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to\nitself.\n\nWomen spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever.\n\nHe's sure to be a wonderful success. He thinks like a Tory and talks\nlike a Radical, and that's so important nowadays.\n\nNowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.\n\nWe make gods of men and they leave us. Others make brutes of them and\nthey fawn and are faithful.\n\nThe husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes.\n\nTo me beauty is the Wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do\nnot judge by appearances.\n\nThe true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.\n\nThe thoroughly well-informed man is the modern ideal. And the mind of\nthe thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a\nbric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above\nits proper value.\n\nWomen have no appreciation of good looks in men--at least good women\nhave none.\n\nTo influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think\nhis natural thoughts or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are\nnot real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are\nborrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part\nthat has not been written for him.\n\nThose who are faithful know only the trivial side of love; it is the\nfaithless who know love's tragedies.\n\nAn artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his\nown life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were\nmeant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of\nbeauty.\n\nA man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got\none who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and\nconsequently they all appreciate me.\n\nThe value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of\nthe man who expresses it.\n\nI like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no\nprinciples better than anything else in the world.\n\nHe who would lead a Christ-like life is he who is perfectly and\nabsolutely himself. He may be a great poet, or a great man of science;\nor a young student at the university, or one who watches sheep upon a\nmoor; or a maker of dramas, like Shakespeare, or a thinker about God,\nlike Spinoza; or a child who plays in a garden, or a fisherman who\nthrows his nets into the sea. It does not matter what he is as long as\nhe realises the perfection of the soul that is within him.\n\nThe aim of life is self-development. To realise one's nature\nperfectly--that is what each of us is here for.\n\nThere is no such thing as a good influence. All influence is\nimmoral--immoral from the scientific point of view.\n\nWords have not merely music as sweet as that of viol and lute, colour as\nrich and vivid as any that makes lovely for us the canvas of the\nVenetian or the Spaniard, and plastic form no less sure and certain than\nthat which reveals itself in marble or in bronze, but thought and\npassion and spirituality are theirs also--are theirs, indeed, alone.\n\nThere is nothing so absolutely pathetic as a really fine paradox. The\npun is the clown among jokes, the well-turned paradox is the polished\ncomedian, and the highest comedy verges upon tragedy, just as the\nkeenest edge of tragedy is often tempered by a subtle humour. Our minds\nare shot with moods as a fabric is shot with colours, and our moods\noften seem inappropriate. Everything that is true is inappropriate.\n\nThe longer one studies life and literature the more strongly one feels\nthat behind everything that is wonderful stands the individual, and that\nit is not the moment that makes the man but the man who creates the age.\n\nTo know the vintage and quality of a wine one need not drink the whole\ncask.\n\nIt is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts\nlonger than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such\npains to over-educate ourselves.\n\nThe ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit\nat their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory they\nare at least spared the knowledge of defeat.\n\nTo have a capacity for a passion, and not to realise it is to make\noneself incomplete and limited.\n\nEven in actual life egotism is not without its attractions. When people\ntalk to us about others they are usually dull. When they talk to us\nabout themselves they are nearly always interesting, and if one could\nshut them up when they become wearisome as easily as one can shut up a\nbook of which one has grown wearied they would be perfect absolutely.\n\nEvery great man nowadays has his disciples and it is invariably Judas\nwho writes the biography.\n\nArt finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She is\nnot to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil\nrather than a mirror. She has flowers that no forest knows of, birds\nthat no woodland possesses. She makes and unmakes many worlds, and can\ndraw the moon from heaven with a scarlet thread. Hers are the 'forms\nmore real than living man,' and hers the great archetypes, of which\nthings that have existence are but unfinished copies. Nature has, in her\neyes, no laws, no uniformity. She can work miracles at her will, and\nwhen she calls monsters from the deep they come. She can bid the\nalmond-tree blossom in winter and send the snow upon the ripe cornfield.\nAt her word the frost lays its silver finger on the burning mouth of\nJune, and the winged lions creep out from the hollows of the Lydian\nhills. The dryads peer from the thicket as she passes by, and the brown\nfauns smile strangely at her when she comes near them. She has\nhawk-faced gods that worship her, and the centaurs gallop at her side.\n\nIn literature mere egotism is delightful.\n\nIf we live for aims we blunt our emotions. If we live for aims we live\nfor one minute, for one day, for one year, instead of for every minute,\nevery day, every year. The moods of one's life are life's beauties. To\nyield to all one's moods is to really live.\n\nMany a young man starts in life with a natural gift for exaggeration\nwhich, if nurtured in congenial and sympathetic surroundings, or by the\nimitations of the best models, might grow into something really great\nand wonderful. But, as a rule, he comes to nothing. He either falls into\ncareless habits of accuracy or takes to frequenting the society of the\naged and the well-informed. Both things are equally fatal to his\nimagination.\n\nThe spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts,\nfor the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.\n\nAs for believing things, I can believe anything provided that it is\nquite incredible.\n\n'Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over\nthe portal of the new world 'Be thyself' shall be written. And the\nmessage of Christ to man was simply: 'Be thyself.' That is the secret of\nChrist.\n\nLondon is full of women who trust their husbands. One can always\nrecognise them, they look so thoroughly unhappy.\n\nFor those who are not artists, and to whom there is no mode of life but\nthe actual life of fact, pain is the only door to perfection.\n\nThe English public always feels perfectly at its ease when a mediocrity\nis talking to it.\n\nMen always fall into the absurdity of endeavouring to develop the mind,\nto push it violently forward in this direction or in that. The mind\nshould be receptive, a harp waiting to catch the winds, a pool ready to\nbe ruffled, not a bustling busybody for ever trotting about on the\npavement looking for a new bun shop.\n\nThere is nothing more beautiful than to forget, except, perhaps, to be\nforgotten.\n\nAll bad art comes from returning to life and nature, and elevating them\ninto ideals. Life and nature may sometimes be used as part of art's\nrough material, but before they are of any real service to art they must\nbe translated into artistic conventions. The moment art surrenders its\nimaginative medium it surrenders everything. As a method realism is a\ncomplete failure, and the two things that every artist should avoid are\nmodernity of form and modernity of subject-matter.\n\nMen may have women's minds just as women may have the minds of men.\n\nLondon is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce\nthe serious people or whether the serious people produce the fogs I\ndon't know.\n\nHow marriage ruins a man! It's as demoralising as cigarettes, and far\nmore expensive.\n\nHe must be quite respectable. One has never heard his name before in the\nwhole course of one's life, which speaks volumes for a man nowadays.\n\nLiterature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it\nto its purpose.\n\nAs long as a thing is useful or necessary to us or affects us in any\nway, either for pain or pleasure, or appeals strongly to our sympathies\nor is a vital part of the environment in which we live, it is outside\nthe proper sphere of art.\n\nI couldn't have a scene in this bonnet: it is far too fragile. A harsh\nword would ruin it.\n\nMusic creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant and fills\none with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one's tears.\n\nNothing is so fatal to personality as deliberation.\n\nI adore London dinner parties. The clever people never listen and the\nstupid people never talk.\n\nLearned conversation is either the affection of the ignorant or the\nprofession of the mentally unemployed.\n\nThe Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there,\nthere have been either so many people that I have not been able to see\nthe pictures--which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not\nbeen able to see the people--which was worse.\n\nAll art is quite useless.\n\nBeauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins.\nIntellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration and destroys the harmony\nof any face. The moment one sits down to think one becomes all nose or\nall forehead or something horrid.\n\nThe one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception\nabsolutely necessary for both parties.\n\nSecrecy seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious\nor marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides\nit.\n\nConceit is one of the greatest of the virtues, yet how few people\nrecognise it as a thing to aim at and to strive after. In conceit many a\nman and woman has found salvation, yet the average person goes on\nall-fours grovelling after modesty.\n\nIt is difficult not to be unjust to what one loves.\n\nHumanity will always love Rousseau for having confessed his sins not to\na friend but to the world.\n\nJust as those who do not love Plato more than truth cannot pass beyond\nthe threshold of the Academe, so those who do not love beauty more than\ntruth never know the inmost shrine of art.\n\nThere is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction: the\nsort of fatality that seems to dog, through history, the faltering steps\nof kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows.\n\nTo be born, or at any rate bred, in a handbag, whether it had handles or\nnot, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of\nfamily life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French\nRevolution.\n\nVice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.\n\nThere must be a new Hedonism that shall recreate life and save it from\nthat harsh, uncomely Puritanism that is having, in our own day, its\ncurious revival. It must have its service of the intellect, certainly,\nyet it must never accept any theory or system that will involve the\nsacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, is to\nbe experience itself and not the fruits of experience, bitter or sweet\nas they may be. Of the \u00e6stheticism that deadens the senses, as of the\nvulgar profligacy that dulls them, it is to know nothing. But it is to\nteach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is\nitself but a moment.\n\nArt never expresses anything but itself. It has an independent life,\njust as thought has, and develops purely on its own lines. It is not\nnecessarily realistic in an age of realism nor spiritual in an age of\nfaith. So far from being the creation of its time it is usually in\ndirect opposition to it, and the only history that it preserves for us\nis the history of its own progress.\n\nPeople who mean well always do badly. They are like the ladies who wear\nclothes that don't fit them in order to show their piety. Good\nintentions are invariably ungrammatical.\n\nMan can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the\nimprobable.\n\nWhen art is more varied nature will, no doubt, be more varied also.\n\nIf a man is sufficiently imaginative to produce evidence in support of a\nlie he might just as well speak the truth at once.\n\nThe ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact;\nthe modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of\nfiction.\n\nNature is no great mother who has home us. She is our own creation. It\nis in our brain that she quickens to life. Things are because we see\nthem, and what we see and how we see it depends on the arts that have\ninfluenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing.\nOne does not see anything until one sees its beauty.\n\nThe proper school to learn art in is not life but art.\n\nI won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice,\nor the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too\nmuch.\n\nI wouldn't marry a man with a future before him for anything under the\nsun.\n\nI am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly, but\nI don't see any chance of it just at present.\n\nModern memoirs are generally written by people who have entirely lost\ntheir memories and have never done anything worth recording.\n\nEducation is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to\ntime that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.\n\nWomen are like minors, they live upon their expectations.\n\nTwisted minds are as natural to some people as twisted bodies.\n\nIt is the very passions about whose origin we deceive ourselves that\ntyrannise most strongly over us. Our weakest motives are those of whose\nnature we are conscious. It often happens that when we think we are\nexperimenting on others we are really experimenting on ourselves.\n\nWhenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing it is always from the\nnoblest motives.\n\nI thought I had no heart. I find I have, and a heart doesn't suit me.\nSomehow it doesn't go with modern dress. It makes one look old, and it\nspoils one's career at critical moments.\n\nI don't play accurately--anyone can play accurately--but I play with\nwonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned sentiment is my\nforte. I keep science for life.\n\nI delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a\nlifetime.\n\nEverybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching--that is\nreally what our enthusiasm for education has come to.\n\nNature hates mind.\n\nFrom the point of view of form the type of all the arts is the art of\nthe musician. From the point of view of feeling the actor's craft is the\ntype.\n\nWhere we differ from each other is purely in accidentals--in dress,\nmanner, tone of voice, religious opinions, personal appearance, tricks\nof habit, and the like.\n\nThe more we study art the less we care for Nature. What art really\nreveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her\nextraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.... It is\nfortunate for us, however, that nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we\nshould have had no art at all. Art is our spirited protest, our gallant\nattempt to teach Nature her proper place. As for the infinite variety of\nnature, that is a pure myth. It is not to be found in Nature herself. It\nresides in the imagination or fancy or cultivated blindness of the man\nwho looks at her.\n\nFacts are not merely finding a footing-place in history but they are\nusurping the domain of fancy and have invaded the kingdom of romance.\nTheir chilling touch is over everything. They are vulgarising mankind.\n\nOrdinary people wait till life discloses to them its secrets, but to the\nfew, to the elect, the mysteries of life are revealed before the veil is\ndrawn away. Sometimes this is the effect of art, and chiefly of the art\nof literature which deals immediately with the passions and the\nintellect. But now and then a complex personality takes the place and\nassumes the office of art, is, indeed, in its way a real work of art,\nLife having its elaborate masterpieces just as poetry has, or sculpture,\nor painting.\n\nThinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it\njust as they die of any other disease.\n\nA cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite\nand it leaves one unsatisfied.\n\nThe aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He\nis the very basis of civilised society.\n\nIt is quite a mistake to believe, as many people do, that the mind shows\nitself in the face. Vice may sometimes write itself in lines and changes\nof contour, but that is all. Our faces are really masks given to us to\nconceal our minds with.\n\nWhat on earth should we men do going about with purity and innocence? A\ncarefully thought-out buttonhole is much more effective.\n\nThe only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the\ncaprice lasts a little longer.\n\nPeople say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so,\nbut at least it is not so superficial as thought is.\n\nIt is the spectator and not life that art really mirrors.\n\nNowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.\n\nConscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the\ntrade name of the firm--that is all.\n\nIn every sphere of life form is the beginning of things. The rhythmic,\nharmonious gestures of dancing convey, Plato tells us, both rhythm and\nharmony into the mind. Forms are the food of faith, cried Newman, in one\nof those great moments of sincerity that make us admire and know the\nman. He was right, though he may not have known how terribly right he\nwas. The creeds are believed not because they are rational but because\nthey are repeated. Yes; form is everything. It is the secret of life.\nFind expression for a sorrow and it will become dear to you. Find\nexpression for a joy and you intensify its ecstasy. Do you wish to love?\nUse love's litany and the words will create the yearning from which the\nworld fancies that they spring. Have you a grief that corrodes your\nheart? Learn its utterance from Prince Hamlet and Queen Constance and\nyou will find that mere expression is a mode of consolation and that\nform, which is the birth of passion, is also the death of pain. And so,\nto return to the sphere of art, it is form that creates not merely the\ncritical temperament but also the \u00e6sthetic instinct that reveals to one\nall things under the condition of beauty. Start with the worship of form\nand there is no secret in art that will not be revealed to you.\n\nIt is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.\n\nNowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common-sense, and\ndiscover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are\none's mistakes.\n\nLady Henry Wotton was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if\nthey had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was\nusually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned,\nshe had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque but only\nsucceeded in being untidy.\n\nThose who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.\n\nWith an evening coat and a white tie anybody, even a stockbroker, can\ngain a reputation for being civilised.\n\nThere is nothing so interesting as telling a good man or woman how bad\none has been. It is intellectually fascinating. One of the greatest\npleasures of having been wicked is that one has so much to say to the\ngood.\n\nLaws are made in order that people in authority may not remember them,\njust as marriages are made in order that the divorce court may not play\nabout idly.\n\nTo get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies.\n\nNever marry a woman with straw-coloured hair. They are so sentimental.\n\nThe reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all\nafraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think\nthat we are generous because we credit our neighbours with the\npossession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. We\npraise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good\nqualities in the high-wayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets.\nI have the greatest contempt for optimism.\n\nArt begins with abstract decoration, with purely imaginative and\npleasureable work dealing with what is unreal and non-existent. This is\nthe first stage. Then life becomes fascinated with this new wonder, and\nasks to be admitted into the charmed circle. Art takes life as part of\nher rough material, recreates it and refashions it in fresh form; is\nabsolutely indifferent to facts; invents, imagines, dreams, and keeps\nbetween herself and reality the impenetrable barrier of beautiful style,\nof decorative or ideal treatment. The third stage is when Life gets the\nupper hand and drives Art out into the wilderness. This is the true\ndecadence, and it is from this that we are now suffering.\n\nGood intentions have been the ruin of the world. The only people who\nhave achieved anything have been those who have had no intentions at\nall.\n\nI never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere\nwith what charming people do.\n\nYou know I am not a champion of marriage. The real drawback to\nmarriage is that it makes one unselfish, and unselfish people are\ncolourless--they lack individuality. Still there are certain\ntemperaments that marriage makes more complex. They retain their\negotism, and add to it many other egos. They are forced to have more\nthan one life. They become more highly organised, and to be highly\norganised is, I should fancy, the object of man's existence. Besides,\nevery experience is of value, and whatever one may say against marriage\nit is certainly an experience.\n\nThose who read the symbol do so at their peril.\n\nI never talk during music--at least not during good music. If anyone\nhears bad music it is one's duty to drown it in conversation.\n\nWhen critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.\n\nFaith is the most plural thing I know. We are all supposed to believe in\nthe same thing in different ways. It is like eating out of the same dish\nwith different coloured spoons.\n\nExperience is of no ethical value. It is merely the name men give to\ntheir mistakes. Moralists have, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of\nwarning, have claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation\nof character, have praised it as something that teaches us what to\nfollow and shows us what to avoid. But there is no motive power in\nexperience. It is as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All\nthat it really demonstrates is that our future will be the same as our\npast and that the sin we have done once, and with loathing, we shall do\nmany times, and with joy.\n\nSensations are the details that build up the stories of our lives.\n\nNo artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an\nunpardonable mannerism of style.\n\nShe looks like an 'edition de luxe' of a wicked French novel meant\nspecially for the English market.\n\nI never knew what terror was before; I know it now. It is as if a hand\nof ice were laid upon one's heart. It is as if one's heart were beating\nitself to death in some empty hollow.\n\nWe can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not\nadmire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one\nadmires it intensely.\n\nNo artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be\nproved.\n\nOne knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country\ngentleman galloping along after a fox--the unspeakable in pursuit of the\nuneatable.\n\nPeople seldom tell the truths that are worth telling. We ought to choose\nour truths as carefully as we choose our lies and to select our virtues\nwith as much thought as we bestow upon the selection of our enemies.\n\nSoul and body, body and soul--how mysterious they are! There is\nanimalism in the soul, and the body has its moments of spirituality. The\nsenses can refine and the intellect can degrade. Who can say where the\nfleshly impulse ceases or the psychical impulse begins? How shallow are\nthe arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! And yet how\ndifficult to decide between the claims of the various schools! Is the\nsoul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or is the body really in the\nsoul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit from matter is\na mystery, and the unison of spirit with matter is a mystery also.\n\nThose who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the\ncultivated. For these there is hope.\n\nThere is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well\nwritten or badly written-that is all.\n\nMarriage is a sort of forcing house. It brings strange sins to fruit,\nand sometimes strange renunciations.\n\nThe moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist,\nbut the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect\nmedium.\n\nA sense of duty is like some horrible disease. It destroys the tissues\nof the mind, as certain complaints destroy the tissues of the body. The\ncatechism has a great deal to answer for.\n\nThey are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.\n\nThose who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without\nbeing charming. This is a fault.\n\nFew people have sufficient strength to resist the preposterous claims of\northodoxy.\n\nShe wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes.\nThat is always a sign of despair in a woman.\n\nA virtue is like a city set upon a hill--it cannot be hid. We can\nconceal our vices if we care to--for a time at least--but a virtue will\nout.\n\nCan't make out how you stand London society. The thing has gone to the\ndogs: a lot of damned nobodies talking about nothing.\n\nYou don't know what an existence they lead down there. It is pure,\nunadulterated country life. They get up early because they have so much\nto do, and go to bed early because they have so little to think about.\n\nNothing is so fatal to a personality as the keeping of promises, unless\nit be telling the truth.\n\nWho cares whether Mr Ruskin's views on Turner are sound or not? What\ndoes it matter? That mighty and majestic prose of his, so fervid and so\nfiery coloured in its noble eloquence, so rich in its elaborate\nsymphonic music, so sure and certain, at its best, in subtle choice of\nword and epithet, is, at least, as great a work of art as any of those\nwonderful sunsets that bleach or rot on their corrupted canvases in\nEngland's gallery--greater, indeed, one is apt to think at times, not\nmerely because its equal beauty is more enduring but on account of the\nfuller variety of its appeal--soul speaking to soul in those long,\ncadenced lines, not through form and colour alone, though through these,\nindeed, completely and without loss, but with intellectual and emotional\nutterance, with lofty passion and with loftier thought, with imaginative\ninsight and with poetic aim--greater, I always think, even as literature\nis the greater art.\n\nLaughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far\nthe best ending for one.\n\nMrs Cheveley is one of those very modern women of our time who find a\nnew scandal as becoming as a new bonnet, and air them both in the Park\nevery afternoon at 5.30. I am sure she adores scandals, and that the\nsorrow of her life at present is that she can't manage to have enough of\nthem.\n\nThe world divides actions into three classes: good actions, bad actions\nthat you may do, and bad actions that you may not do. If you stick to\nthe good actions you are respected by the good. If you stick to the bad\nactions that you may do you are respected by the bad. But if you perform\nthe bad actions that no one may do then the good and the bad set upon\nyou and you are lost indeed.\n\nI choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their\ngood characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.\n\nThe artist is the creator of beautiful things.\n\nTo me the word 'natural' means all that is middle class, all that is of\nthe essence of Jingoism, all that is colourless and without form and\nvoid. It might be a beautiful word, but it is the most debased coin in\nthe currency of language.\n\nI pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably\nnever be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment's\nsolitude.\n\nIt is only when we have learned to love forgetfulness that we have\nlearned the art of living.\n\nTo reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.\n\nThe world taken 'en masse' is a monster, crammed with prejudices, packed\nwith prepossessions, cankered with what it calls virtues, a Puritan, a\nprig. And the art of life is the art of defiance. To defy--that is what\nwe ought to live for, instead of living, as we do, to acquiesce.\n\nSome resemblance the creative work of the critic will have to the work\nthat has stirred him to creation, but it will be such resemblance as\nexists, not between nature and the mirror that the painter of landscape\nor figure may be supposed to hold up to her, but between nature and the\nwork of the decorative artist. Just as on the flowerless carpets of\nPersia tulip and rose blossom indeed, and are lovely to look on, though\nthey are not reproduced in visible shape or line; just as the pearl and\npurple of the sea shell is echoed in the church of St Mark at Venice;\njust as the vaulted ceiling of the wondrous chapel at Ravenna is made\ngorgeous by the gold and green and sapphire of the peacock's tail,\nthough the birds of Juno fly not across it; so the critic reproduces the\nwork that he criticises in a mode that is never imitative, and part of\nwhose charm may really consist in the rejection of resemblance, and\nshows us in this way not merely the meaning but also the mystery of\nbeauty, and by transforming each art into literature solves once for all\nthe problem of art's unity.\n\nDiversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new,\ncomplex, and vital.\n\n\nNothing is more painful to me than to come across virtue in a person in\nwhom I have never suspected its existence. It is like finding a needle\nin a bundle of hay. It pricks you. If we have virtue we should warn\npeople of it.\n\nThe critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material\nhis impression of beautiful things.\n\nHopper is one of nature's gentlemen--the worst type of gentleman I\nknow.\n\nIf one intends to be good one must take it up as a profession. It is\nquite the most engrossing one in the world.\n\nI like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can\ntalk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.\n\nAll art is at once surface and symbol.\n\nChildhood is one long career of innocent eavesdropping, of hearing what\none ought not to hear.\n\nThe highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.\n\nThe only things worth saying are those that we forget, just as the only\nthings worth doing are those that the world is surprised at.\n\nMaturity is one long career of saying what one ought not to say. That is\nthe art of conversation.\n\nVirtue is generally merely a form of deficiency, just as vice is an\nassertion of intellect.\n\nPeople teach in order to conceal their ignorance, as people smile in\norder to conceal their tears.\n\nTo be unnatural is often to be great. To be natural is generally to be\nstupid.\n\nTo lie finely is an art, to tell the truth is to act according to\nnature.\n\nPeople who talk sense are like people who break stones in the road: they\ncover one with dust and splinters.\n\nJesus said to man: You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be\nyourself. Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or\npossessing external things. Your perfection is inside of you. If only\nyou could realise that you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches\ncan be stolen from a man, real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of\nyour soul there are infinitely precious things that may not be taken\nfrom you. Try to so shape your life that external things will not harm\nyou, and try also to get rid of personal property. It involves sordid\npreoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong. Personal property\nhinders individualism at every step.\n\nWhen Jesus talks about the poor He simply means personalities, just as\nwhen He talks about the rich He simply means people who have not\ndeveloped their personalities.\n\nAn echo is often more beautiful than the voice it repeats.\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nTHE SOUL OF MAN\n\n\nThe chief advantage that would result from the establishment of\nSocialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from\nthat sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present\ncondition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact,\nscarcely anyone at all escapes.\n\nNow and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like\nDarwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M, Renan;\na supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to\nkeep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand\n'under the shelter of the wall,' as Plato puts it, and so to realise the\nperfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the\nincomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are\nexceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and\nexaggerated altruism--are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find\nthemselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by\nhideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved\nby all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's\nintelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the\nfunction of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with\nsuffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with\nadmirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very\nsentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that\nthey see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely\nprolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.\n\nThey try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the\npoor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the\npoor.\n\nBut this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The\nproper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that\npoverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really\nprevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners\nwere those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of\nthe system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood\nby those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in\nEngland, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most\ngood; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really\nstudied the problem and know the life-educated men who live in the East\nEnd--coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its\naltruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on\nthe ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are\nperfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.\n\nThere is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private property in\norder to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution\nof private property. It is both immoral and unfair.\n\nUnder Socialism all this will, of course, be altered. There will be no\npeople living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up unhealthy,\nhunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely\nrepulsive surroundings. The security of society will not depend, as it\ndoes now, on the state of the weather. If a frost comes we shall not\nhave a hundred thousand men out of work, tramping about the streets in a\nstate of disgusting misery, or whining to their neighbours for alms, or\ncrowding round the doors of loathsome shelters to try and secure a hunch\nof bread and a night's unclean lodging. Each member of the society will\nshare in the general prosperity and happiness of the society, and if a\nfrost comes no one will practically be anything the worse.\n\nUpon the other hand, Socialism itself will be of value simply because it\nwill lead to Individualism.\n\nSocialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by converting\nprivate property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for\ncompetition, will restore society to its proper condition of a\nthoroughly healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each\nmember of the community. It will, in fact, give Life it's proper basis\nand its proper environment. But for the full development of Life to its\nhighest mode of perfection, something more is needed. What is needed is\nIndividualism. If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are\nGovernments armed with economic power as they are now with political\npower; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last\nstate of man will be worse than the first. At present, in consequence of\nthe existence of private property, a great many people are enabled to\ndevelop a certain very limited amount of Individualism. They are either\nunder no necessity to work for their living, or are enabled to choose\nthe sphere of activity that is really congenial to them, and gives them\npleasure. These are the poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the\nmen of culture--in a word, the real men, the men who have realised\nthemselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realisation. Upon\nthe other hand, there are a great many people who, having no private\nproperty of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer\nstarvation, are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work\nthat is quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the\nperemptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want. These are the poor,\nand amongst them there is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or\ncivilisation, or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life.\nFrom their collective force Humanity gains much in material prosperity.\nBut it is only the material result that it gains, and the man who is\npoor is in himself absolutely of no importance. He is merely the\ninfinitesimal atom of a force that, so far from regarding him, crushes\nhim: indeed, prefers him crushed, as in that case he is far more\nobedient.\n\nOf course, it might be said that the Individualism generated under\nconditions of private property is not always, or even as a rule, of a\nfine or wonderful type, and that the poor, if they have not culture and\ncharm, have still many virtues. Both these statements would be quite\ntrue. The possession of private property is very often extremely\ndemoralising, and that is, of course, one of the reasons why Socialism\nwants to get rid of the institution. In fact, property is really a\nnuisance. Some years ago people went about the country saying that\nproperty has duties. They said it so often and so tediously that, at\nlast, the Church has begun to say it. One hears it now from every\npulpit. It is perfectly true. Property not merely has duties, but has so\nmany duties that its possession to any large extent is a bore. It\ninvolves endless claims upon one, endless attention to business, endless\nbother. If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its\nduties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid\nof it. The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much to\nbe regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity.\nSome of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never\ngrateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and\nrebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a\nridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental\ndole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the\nsentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives. Why should they be\ngrateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table? They should\nbe seated at the board, and are beginning to know it. As for being\ndiscontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings\nand such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in\nthe eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is\nthrough disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience\nand through rebellion. Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty.\nBut to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It\nis like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or\ncountry labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man\nshould not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He\nshould decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the\nrates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As for\nbegging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than\nto beg. No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and\nrebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him. He is\nat any rate a healthy protest. As for the virtuous poor, one can pity\nthem, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them; They have made\nprivate terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad\npottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid. I can quite\nunderstand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit\nof its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those\nconditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But\nit is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made\nhideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.\n\nHowever, the explanation is not really difficult to find. It is simply\nthis. Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such\na paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really\nconscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other\npeople, and they often entirely disbelieve them. What is said by great\nemployers of labour against agitators is unquestionably true. Agitators\nare a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some\nperfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of\ndiscontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so\nabsolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would\nbe no advance towards civilisation. Slavery was put down in America, not\nin consequence of any action on the part of the slaves, or even any\nexpress desire on their part that they should be free. It was put down\nentirely through the grossly illegal conduct of certain agitators in\nBoston and elsewhere, who were not slaves themselves, nor owners of\nslaves, nor had anything to do with the question really. It was,\nundoubtedly, the Abolitionists who set the torch alight, who began the\nwhole thing. And it is curious to note that from the slaves themselves\nthey received, not merely very little assistance, but hardly any\nsympathy even; and when at the close of the war the slaves found\nthemselves free, found themselves indeed so absolutely free that they\nwere free to starve, many of them bitterly regretted the new state of\nthings. To the thinker, the most tragic fact in the whole of the French\nRevolution is not that Marie Antoinette was killed for being a queen,\nbut that the starved peasant of the Vend\u00e9e voluntarily went out to die\nfor the hideous cause of feudalism.\n\nIt is clear, then, that no Authoritarian Socialism will do. For while\nunder the present system a very large number of people can lead lives of\na certain amount of freedom and expression and happiness, under an\nindustrial-barrack system, or a system of economic tyranny, nobody would\nbe able to have any such freedom at all. It is to be regretted that a\nportion of our community should be practically in slavery, but to\npropose to solve the problem by enslaving the entire community is\nchildish. Every man must be left quite free to choose his own work. No\nform of compulsion must be exercised over him. If there is, his work\nwill not be good for him, will riot be good in itself, and will not be\ngood for others. And by work I simply mean activity of any kind.\n\nI hardly think that any Socialist, nowadays, would seriously propose\nthat an inspector should call every morning at each house to see that\neach citizen rose up and did manual labour for eight hours. Humanity has\ngot beyond that stage, and reserves such a form of life for the people\nwhom, in a very arbitrary manner, it chooses to call criminals. But I\nconfess that many of the socialistic views that I have come across seem\nto me to be tainted with ideas of authority, if not of actual\ncompulsion. Of course, authority and compulsion are out of the question.\nAll association must be quite voluntary. It is only in voluntary\nassociations that man is fine.\n\nBut it may be asked how Individualism, which is now more or less\ndependent on the existence of private property for its development, will\nbenefit by the abolition of such private property. The answer is very\nsimple. It is true that, under existing conditions, a few men who have\nhad private means of their own, such as Byron, Shelley, Browning, Victor\nHugo, Baudelaire, and others, have been able to realise their\npersonality more or less completely. Not one of these men ever did a\nsingle day's work for hire. They were relieved from poverty. They had an\nimmense advantage. The question is whether it would be for the good of\nIndividualism that such an advantage should be taken away. Let us\nsuppose that it is taken away. What happens then to Individualism? How\nwill it benefit?\n\nIt will benefit in this way, under the new conditions Individualism will\nbe far freer, far finer, and far more intensified than it is now. I am\nnot talking of the great imaginatively-realised Individualism of such\npoets as I have mentioned, but of the great actual Individualism latent\nand potential in mankind generally. For the recognition of private\nproperty has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing\na man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray.\nIt has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the\nimportant thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing\nis to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in\nwhat man is. Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up\nan Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the\ncommunity from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the\nother part of the community from being individual by putting them on the\nwrong road, and encumbering them. Indeed, so completely has man's\npersonality been absorbed by his possessions that the English law has\nalways treated offences against a man's property with far more severity\nthan offences against his person, and property is still the test of\ncomplete citizenship. The industry necessary for the making of money is\nalso very demoralising. In a community like ours, where property confers\nimmense distinction, social position, honour, respect, titles, and other\npleasant things of the kind, man, being naturally ambitious, makes it\nhis aim to accumulate this property, and goes on wearily and tediously\naccumulating it long after he has got far more than he wants, or can\nuse, or enjoy, or perhaps even know of. Man will kill himself by\noverwork in order to secure property, and really, considering the\nenormous advantages that property brings, one is hardly surprised. One's\nregret is that society should be constructed on such a basis that man\nhas been forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop what is\nwonderful, and fascinating, and delightful in him--in which, in fact, he\nmisses the true pleasure and joy of living. He is also, under existing\nconditions, very insecure. An enormously wealthy merchant may be--often\nis--at every moment of his life at the mercy of things that are not\nunder his control. If the wind blows an extra point or so, or the\nweather suddenly changes, or some trivial thing happens, his ship may go\ndown, his speculations may go wrong, and he finds himself a poor man,\nwith his social position quite gone. Now, nothing should be able to harm\na man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a\nman really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a\nmatter of no importance.\n\nWith the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true,\nbeautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in\naccumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live\nis the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.\n\nIt is a question whether we have ever seen the full expression of a\npersonality, except on the imaginative plane of art. In action, we never\nhave. C\u00e6sar, says Mommsen, was the complete and perfect man. But how\ntragically insecure was C\u00e6sar! Wherever there is a man who exercises\nauthority, there is a man who resists authority. C\u00e6sar was very perfect,\nbut his perfection travelled by too dangerous a road. Marcus Aurelius\nwas the perfect man, says Renan. Yes; the great emperor was a perfect\nman. But how intolerable were the endless claims upon him! He staggered\nunder the burden of the empire. He was conscious how inadequate one man\nwas to bear the weight of that Titan and too vast orb. What I mean by a\nperfect man is one who develops under perfect conditions; one who is not\nwounded, or worried or maimed, or in danger. Most personalities have\nbeen obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in\nfriction. Byron's personality, for instance, was terribly wasted in its\nbattle with the stupidity, and hypocrisy, and Philistinism of the\nEnglish. Such battles do not always intensify strength: they often\nexaggerate weakness. Byron was never able to give us what he might have\ngiven us. Shelley escaped better. Like Byron, he got out of England as\nsoon as possible. But he was not so well known. If the English had had\nany idea of what a great poet he really was, they would have fallen on\nhim with tooth and nail, and made his life as unbearable to him as they\npossibly could. But he was not a remarkable figure in society, and\nconsequently he escaped, to a certain degree. Still, even in Shelley the\nnote of rebellion is sometimes too strong. The note of the perfect\npersonality is not rebellion, but peace.\n\nIt will be a marvellous thing--the true personality of man--when we see\nit. It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows.\nIt will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not\nprove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself\nabout knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by\nmaterial things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything,\nand whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it he.\nIt will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like\nitself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet while\nit will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing\nhelps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be very\nwonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.\n\nIn its development it will be assisted by Christianity, if men desire\nthat; but if men do not desire that, it will develop none the less\nsurely. For it will not worry itself about the past, nor care whether\nthings happened or did not happen. Nor will it admit any laws but its\nown laws; nor any authority but its own authority. Yet it will love\nthose who sought to intensity it, and speak often of them. And of these\nChrist was one.\n\n'Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over\nthe portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written. And the\nmessage of Christ to man was simply 'Be thyself.' That is the secret of\nChrist.\n\nWhen Jesus talks about the poor he simply means personalities, just as\nwhen he talks about the rich he simply means people who have not\ndeveloped their personalities. Jesus moved in a community that allowed\nthe accumulation of private property just as ours does, and the gospel\nthat he preached was not that in such a community it is an advantage for\na man to live on scanty, unwholesome food, to wear ragged, unwholesome\nclothes, to sleep in horrid, unwholesome dwellings, and a disadvantage\nfor a man to live under healthy, pleasant, and decent conditions. Such a\nview would have been wrong there and then, and would, of course, be\nstill more wrong now and in England; for as man moves northward the\nmaterial necessities of life become of more vital importance, and our\nsociety is infinitely more complex, and displays far greater extremes of\nluxury and pauperism than any society of the antique world. What Jesus\nmeant, was this. He said to man, 'You have a wonderful personality.\nDevelop it. Be yourself. Don't imagine that your perfection lies in\naccumulating or possessing external things. Your perfection is inside of\nyou. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich.\nOrdinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the\ntreasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that\nmay not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that\nexternal things will not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal\nproperty. It involves sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual\nwrong. Personal property hinders Individualism at every step. It is to\nbe noted that Jesus never says that impoverished people are necessarily\ngood, or wealthy people necessarily bad. That would not have been true.\nWealthy people are, as a class, better than impoverished people, more\nmoral, more intellectual, more well-behaved. There is only one class in\nthe community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is\nthe poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of\nbeing poor. What Jesus does say is that man reaches his perfection, not\nthrough what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through\nwhat he is. And so the wealthy young man who comes to Jesus is\nrepresented as a thoroughly good citizen, who has broken none of the\nlaws of his state, none of the commandments of his religion. He is quite\nrespectable, in the ordinary sense of that extraordinary word. Jesus\nsays to him, 'You should give up private property. It hinders you from\nrealising your perfection. It is a drag upon you. It is a burden. Your\npersonality does not need it. It is within you, and not outside of you,\nthat you will find what you really are, and what you really want.' To\nhis own friends he says the same thing. He tells them to be themselves,\nand not to be always worrying about other things. What do other things\nmatter? Man is complete in himself. When they go into the world, the\nworld will disagree with them. That is inevitable. The world hates\nIndividualism. But that is not to trouble them. They are to be calm and\nself-centred. If a man takes their cloak, they are to give him their\ncoat, just to show that material things are of no importance. If people\nabuse them, they are not to answer back. What does it signify? The\nthings people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public\nopinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual\nviolence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to\nthe same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free.\nHis soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at\npeace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other\npeople or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing.\nA man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law,\nand yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be\nbad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against\nsociety, and yet realise through that sin his true perfection.\n\nThere was a woman who was taken in adultery. We are not told the history\nof her love, but that love must have been very great; for Jesus said\nthat her sins were forgiven her, not because she repented, but because\nher love was so intense and wonderful. Later on, a short time before his\ndeath, as he sat at a feast, the woman came in and poured costly\nperfumes on his hair. His friends tried to interfere with her, and said\nthat it was an extravagance, and that the money that the perfume cost\nshould have been expended on charitable relief of people in want, or\nsomething of that kind. Jesus did not accept that view. He pointed out\nthat the material needs of Man were great and very permanent, but that\nthe spiritual needs of Man were greater still, and that in one divine\nmoment, and by selecting its own mode of expression, a personality might\nmake itself perfect. The world worships the woman, even now, as a saint.\n\nYes; there are suggestive things in Individualism. Socialism annihilates\nfamily life, for instance. With the abolition of private property,\nmarriage in its present form must disappear. This is part of the\nprogramme. Individualism accepts this and makes it fine. It converts the\nabolition of legal restraint into a form of freedom that will help the\nfull development of personality, and make the love of man and woman more\nwonderful, more beautiful, and more ennobling. Jesus knew this. He\nrejected the claims of family life, although they existed in his day and\ncommunity in a very marked form. 'Who is my mother? Who are my\nbrothers?' he said, when he was told that they wished to speak to him.\nWhen one of his followers asked leave to go and bury his father, 'Let\nthe dead bury the dead,' was his terrible answer. He would allow no\nclaim whatsoever to be made on personality.\n\nAnd so he who would lead a Christ-like like life is he who is perfectly\nand absolutely himself. He may be a great poet, or a great man of\nscience; or a young student at a University, or one who watches sheep\nupon a moor; or a maker of dramas, like Shakespeare, or a thinker about\nGod, like Spinoza; or a child who plays in a garden, or a fisherman who\nthrows his net into the sea. It does not matter what he is, as long as\nhe realises the perfection of the soul that is within him. All imitation\nin morals and in life is wrong. Through the streets of Jerusalem at the\npresent day crawls one who is mad and carries a wooden cross on his\nshoulders. He is a symbol of the lives that are marred by imitation.\nFather Damien was Christ-like when he went out to live with the lepers,\nbecause in such service he realised fully what was best in him. But he\nwas not more Christ-like than Wagner when he realised his soul in music;\nor than Shelley, when he realised his soul in song. There is no one type\nfor man. There are as many perfections as there are imperfect men. And\nwhile to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the\nclaims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all.\n\nIndividualism, then, is what through Socialism we are to attain to. As a\nnatural result the State must give up all idea of government. It must\ngive it up because, as a wise man once said many centuries before\nChrist, there is such a thing as leaving mankind alone; there is no such\nthing as governing mankind. All modes of government are failures.\nDespotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably\nmade for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and\nochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of\ndemocracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by\nthe people for the people. It has been found out. I must say that it was\nhigh time, for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who\nexercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is\nviolently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect, by\ncreating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and\nIndividualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount\nof kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully\ndemoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible\npressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a\nsort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that\nthey are probably thinking other people's thoughts, living by other\npeople's standards, wearing practically what one may call other people's\nsecond-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment. 'He\nwho would be free,' says a fine thinker, 'must not conform.' And\nauthority, by bribing people to conform, produces a very gross kind of\nover-fed barbarism amongst us.\n\nWith authority, punishment will pass away. This will be a great gain--a\ngain, in fact, of incalculable value. As one reads history, not in the\nexpurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the\noriginal authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by\nthe crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that\nthe good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised\nby the habitual employment of punishment, than it is by the occurrence\nof crime. It obviously follows that the more punishment is inflicted the\nmore crime is produced, and most modern legislation has clearly\nrecognised this, and has made it its task to diminish punishment as far\nas it thinks it can. Wherever it has really diminished it, the results\nhave always been extremely good. The less punishment, the less crime.\nWhen there is no punishment at all, crime will either cease to exist,\nor, if it occurs, will be treated by physicians as a very distressing\nform of dementia, to be cured by care and kindness. For what are called\ncriminals nowadays are not criminals at all. Starvation, and not sin, is\nthe parent of modern crime. That indeed is the reason why our criminals\nare, as a class, so absolutely uninteresting from any psychological\npoint of view. They are not marvellous Macbeths and terrible Vautrins.\nThey are merely what ordinary, respectable, commonplace people would be\nif they had not got enough to eat. When private property is abolished\nthere will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to\nexist. Of course, all crimes are not crimes against property, though\nsuch are the crimes that the English law, valuing what a man has more\nthan what a man is, punishes with the harshest and most horrible\nseverity, if we except the crime of murder, and regard death as worse\nthan penal servitude, a point on which our criminals, I believe,\ndisagree. But though a crime may not be against property, it may spring\nfrom the misery and rage and depression produced by our wrong system of\nproperty-holding, and so, when that system is abolished, will disappear.\nWhen each member of the community has sufficient for his wants, and is\nnot interfered with by his neighbour, it will not be an object of any\ninterest to him to interfere with anyone else. Jealousy, which is an\nextraordinary source of crime in modern life, is an emotion closely\nbound up with our conceptions of property, and under Socialism and\nIndividualism will die out. It is remarkable that in communistic tribes\njealousy is entirely unknown.\n\nNow as the State is not to govern, it may be asked what the State is to\ndo. The State is to be a voluntary association that will organise\nlabour, and be the manufacturer and distributor of necessary\ncommodities. The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to\nmake what is beautiful. And as I have mentioned the word labour. I\ncannot help saying that a great deal of nonsense is being written and\ntalked nowadays about the dignity of manual labour. There is nothing\nnecessarily dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is\nabsolutely degrading. It is mentally and morally injurious to man to do\nanything in which he does not find pleasure, and many forms of labour\nare quite pleasureless activities, and should be regarded as such. To\nsweep a slushy crossing for eight hours on a day when the east wind is\nblowing is a disgusting occupation. To sweep it with mental, moral, or\nphysical dignity seems to me to be impossible. To sweep it with joy\nwould be appalling. Man is made for something better than disturbing\ndirt. All work of that kind should be done by a machine.\n\nAnd I have no doubt that it will be so. Up to the present, man has been,\nto a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is something\ntragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his\nwork he began to starve. This, however, is, of course, the result of our\nproperty system and our system of competition. One man owns a machine\nwhich does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men are, in\nconsequence, thrown out of employment, and, having no work to do, become\nhungry and take to thieving. The one man secures the produce of the\nmachine and keeps it, and has five hundred times as much as he should\nhave, and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more\nthan he really wants. Were that machine the property of all, everyone\nwould benefit by it. It would be an immense advantage to the community.\nAll unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that\ndeals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be\ndone by machinery. Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all\nsanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets,\nand run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or\ndistressing. At present machinery competes against man. Under proper\nconditions machinery will serve man. There is no doubt at all that this\nis the future of machinery, and just as trees grow while the country\ngentleman is asleep, so while Humanity will be amusing itself, or\nenjoying cultivated leisure--which, and not labour, is the aim of\nman--or making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply\ncontemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will he\ndoing all the necessary and unpleasant work. The fact is, that\ncivilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless\nthere are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture\nand contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong,\ninsecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the\nmachine, the future of the world depends. And when scientific men are no\nlonger called upon to go down to a depressing East End and distribute\nbad cocoa and worse blankets to starving people, they will have\ndelightful leisure in which to devise wonderful and marvellous things\nfor their own joy and the joy of everyone else. There will be great\nstorages of force for every city, and for every house if required, and\nthis force man will convert into heat, light, or motion, according to\nhis needs. Is this Utopian? A map of the world that does not include\nUtopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country\nat which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it\nlooks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the\nrealisation of Utopias.\n\nNow, I have said that the community by means of organisation of\nmachinery will supply the useful things, and that the beautiful things\nwill be made by the individual. This is not merely necessary, but it is\nthe only possible way by which we can get either the one or the other.\nAn individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with\nreference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest,\nand consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him. Upon the\nother hand, whenever a community or a powerful section of a community,\nor a government of any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he\nis to do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or\ndegenerates into a low and ignoble form of craft. A work of art is the\nunique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact\nthat the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that\nother people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist\ntakes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand,\nhe ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman,\nan honest or a dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be\nconsidered as an artist. Art is the most intense mode of Individualism\nthat the world has known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real\nmode of Individualism that the world has known. Crime, which, under\ncertain conditions, may seem to have created Individualism, must take\ncognisance of other people and interfere with them. It belongs to the\nsphere of action. But alone, without any reference to his neighbours,\nwithout any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and\nif he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at\nall.\n\nAnd it is to be noted that it is the fact that Art is this intense form\nof Individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it an\nauthority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous, and as corrupting as\nit is contemptible. It is not quite their fault. The public has always,\nand in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art\nto be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd\nvanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what\nthey ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy\nafter eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are\nwearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular.\nThe public should try to make itself artistic. There is a very wide\ndifference. If a man of science were told that the results of his\nexperiments, and the conclusions that he arrived at, should be of such a\ncharacter that they would not upset the received popular notions on the\nsubject, or disturb popular prejudice, or hurt the sensibilities of\npeople who knew nothing about science; if a philosopher were told that\nhe had a perfect right to speculate in the highest spheres of thought,\nprovided that he arrived at the same conclusions as were held by those\nwho had never thought in any sphere at all--well, nowadays the man of\nscience and the philosopher would be considerably amused. Yet it is\nreally a very few years since both philosophy and science were subjected\nto brutal popular control, to authority in fact--the authority of\neither the general ignorance of the community, or the terror and greed\nfor power of an ecclesiastical or governmental class. Of course, we have\nto a very great extent got rid of any attempt on the part of the\ncommunity, or the Church, or the Government, to interfere with the\nindividualism of speculative thought, but the attempt to interfere with\nthe individualism of imaginative art still lingers. In fact, it does\nmore than linger; it is aggressive, offensive, and brutalising.\n\nIn England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the\npublic take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have\nbeen able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read\nit, and consequently do not influence it. The public like to insult\npoets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them,\nthey leave them alone. In the case of the novel and the drama, arts in\nwhich the public do take an interest, the result of the exercise of\npopular authority has been absolutely ridiculous. No country produces\nsuch badly-written fiction, such tedious, common work in the novel form,\nsuch silly, vulgar plays as England. It must necessarily be so. The\npopular standard is of such a character that no artist can get to it. It\nis at once too easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist. It is\ntoo easy, because the requirements of the public as far as plot, style,\npsychology, treatment of life, and treatment of literature are concerned\nare within the reach of the very meanest capacity and the most\nuncultivated mind. It is too difficult, because to meet such\nrequirements the artist would have to do violence to his temperament,\nwould have to write not for the artistic joy of writing, but for the\namusement of half-educated people, and so would have to suppress his\nindividualism, forget his culture, annihilate his style, and surrender\neverything that is valuable in him. In the case of the drama, things are\na little better: the theatre-going public like the obvious, it is true,\nbut they do not like the tedious; and burlesque and farcical comedy, the\ntwo most popular forms, are distinct forms of art. Delightful work may\nbe produced under burlesque and farcical conditions, and in work of this\nkind the artist in England is allowed very great freedom. It is when one\ncomes to the higher forms of the drama that the result of popular\ncontrol is seen. The one thing that the public dislike is novelty. Any\nattempt to extend the subject-matter of art is extremely distasteful to\nthe public; and yet the vitality and progress of art depend in a large\nmeasure on the continual extension of subject-matter. The public dislike\nnovelty because they are afraid of it. It represents to them a mode of\nIndividualism, an assertion on the part of the artist that he selects\nhis own subject, and treats it as he chooses. The public are quite right\nin their attitude. Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a\ndisturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For\nwhat it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny\nof habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. In Art,\nthe public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not\nbecause they appreciate it. They swallow their classics whole, and never\ntaste them. They endure them as the inevitable, and as they cannot mar\nthem, they mouth about them. Strangely enough, or not strangely,\naccording to one's own views, this acceptance of the classics does a\ngreat deal of harm. The uncritical admiration of the Bible and\nShakespeare in England is an instance of what I mean. With regard to the\nBible, considerations of ecclesiastical authority enter into the matter,\nso that I need not dwell upon the point.\n\nBut in the case of Shakespeare it is quite obvious that the public\nreally see neither the beauties nor the defects of his plays. If they\nsaw the beauties, they would not object to the development of the drama;\nand if they saw the defects, they would not object to the development of\nthe drama either. The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a\ncountry as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the\nclassics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the\nfree expression of Beauty in new forms. They are always asking a writer\nwhy he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not\npaint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of\nthem did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist. A fresh\nmode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it\nappears they get so angry and bewildered, that they always use two\nstupid expressions--one is that the work of art is grossly\nunintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What\nthey mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is\ngrossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a\nbeautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly\nimmoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing\nthat is true. The former expression has reference to style; the latter\nto subject-matter. But they probably use the words very vaguely, as an\nordinary mob will use ready-made paving-stones. There is not a single\nreal poet or prose-writer of this century, for instance, on whom the\nBritish public have not solemnly conferred diplomas of immorality, and\nthese diplomas practically take the place, with us, of what in France,\nis the formal recognition of an Academy of Letters, and fortunately make\nthe establishment of such an institution quite unnecessary in England.\nOf course, the public are very reckless in their use of the word. That\nthey should have called Wordsworth an immoral poet, was only to be\nexpected. Wordsworth was a poet. But that they should have called\nCharles Kingsley an immoral novelist is extraordinary. Kingsley's prose\nwas not of a very fine quality. Still, there is the word, and they use\nit as best they can. An artist is, of course, not disturbed by it. The\ntrue artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is\nabsolutely himself. But I can fancy that if an artist produced a work of\nart in England that immediately on its appearance was recognised by the\npublic, through their medium, which is the public press, as a work that\nwas quite intelligible and highly moral, he would begin to seriously\nquestion whether in its creation he had really been himself at all, and\nconsequently whether the work was not quite unworthy of him, and either\nof a thoroughly second-rate order, or of no artistic value whatsoever.\n\nPerhaps, however, I have wronged the public in limiting them to such\nwords as 'immoral,' 'unintelligible,' 'exotic,' and 'unhealthy.' There\nis one other word that they use. That word is 'morbid.' They do not use\nit often. The meaning of the word is so simple that they are afraid of\nusing it. Still, they use it sometimes, and, now and then, one comes\nacross it in popular newspapers. It is, of course, a ridiculous word to\napply to a work of art. For what is morbidity but a mood of emotion or a\nmode of thought that one cannot express? The public are all morbid,\nbecause the public can never find expression for anything. The artist is\nnever morbid. He expresses everything. He stands outside his subject,\nand through its medium produces incomparable and artistic effects. To\ncall an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his\nsubject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he\nwrote 'King Lear.'\n\nOn the whole, an artist in England gains something by being attacked.\nHis individuality is intensified. He becomes more completely himself. Of\ncourse, the attacks are very gross, very impertinent, and very\ncontemptible. But then no artist expects grace from the vulgar mind, or\nstyle from the suburban intellect. Vulgarity and stupidity are two very\nvivid facts in modern life. One regrets them, naturally. But there they\nare. They are subjects for study, like everything else. And it is only\nfair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always\napologise to one in private for what they have written against one in\npublic.\n\nWithin the last few years two other adjectives, it may be mentioned,\nhave been added to the very limited vocabulary of art-abuse that is at\nthe disposal of the public. One is the word 'unhealthy,' the other is\nthe word 'exotic.' The latter merely expresses the rage of the momentary\nmushroom against the immortal, entrancing, and exquisitely lovely\norchid. It is a tribute, but a tribute of no importance. The word\n'unhealthy,' however, admits of analysis. It is a rather interesting\nword. In fact, it is so interesting that the people who use it do not\nknow what it means.\n\nWhat does it mean? What is a healthy, or an unhealthy work of art? All\nterms that one applies to a work of art, provided that one applies them\nrationally, have reference to either its style or its subject, or to\nboth together. From the point of view of style, a healthy work of art is\none whose style recognises the beauty of the material it employs, be\nthat material one of words or of bronze, of colour or of ivory, and uses\nthat beauty as a factor in producing the \u00e6sthetic effect. From the point\nof view of subject, a healthy work of art is one the choice of whose\nsubject is conditioned by the temperament of the artist, and comes\ndirectly out of it. In fine, a healthy work of art is one that has both\nperfection and personality. Of course, form and substance cannot be\nseparated in a work of art; they are always one. But for purposes of\nanalysis, and setting the wholeness of \u00e6sthetic impression aside for a\nmoment, we can intellectually so separate them. An unhealthy work of\nart, on the other hand, is a work whose style is obvious, old-fashioned,\nand common, and whose subject is deliberately chosen, not because the\nartist has any pleasure in it, but because he thinks that the public\nwill pay him for it. In fact, the popular novel that the public calls\nhealthy is always a thoroughly unhealthy production; and what the public\ncall an unhealthy novel is always a beautiful and healthy work of art.\n\nI need hardly say that I am not, for a single moment, complaining that\nthe public and the public press misuse these words. I do not see how,\nwith their lack of comprehension of what Art is, they could possibly use\nthem in the proper sense. I am merely pointing out the misuse; and as\nfor the origin of the misuse and the meaning that lies behind it all,\nthe explanation is very simple. It comes from the barbarous conception\nof authority. It comes from the natural inability of a community\ncorrupted by authority to understand or appreciate Individualism. In a\nword, it comes from that monstrous and ignorant thing that is called\nPublic Opinion, which, bad and well-meaning as it is when it tries to\ncontrol action, is infamous and of evil meaning when it tries to control\nThought or Art.\n\nIndeed, there is much more to be said in favour of the physical force of\nthe public than there is in favour of the public's opinion. The former\nmay be fine. The latter must be foolish. It is often said that force is\nno argument. That, however, entirely depends on what one wants to prove.\nMany of the most important problems of the last few centuries, such as\nthe continuance of personal government in England, or of feudalism in\nFrance, have been solved entirely by means of physical force. The very\nviolence of a revolution may make the public grand and splendid for a\nmoment. It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is\nmightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the\nbrickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed\nhim, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly\nto be regretted, for both their sakes. Behind the barricade there may be\nmuch that is noble and heroic. But what is there behind the\nleading-article but prejudice, stupidity, cant, and twaddle? And when\nthese four are joined together they make a terrible force, and\nconstitute the new authority.\n\nIn old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an\nimprovement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and\ndemoralising. Somebody--was it Burke?--called journalism the fourth\nestate. That was true at the time, no doubt. But at the present moment\nit really is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords\nTemporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the\nHouse of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by\nJournalism. In America the President reigns for four years, and\nJournalism governs for ever and ever. Fortunately in America Journalism\nhas carried its authority to the grossest and most brutal extreme. As a\nnatural consequence it has begun to create a spirit of revolt. People\nare amused by it, or disgusted by it, according to their temperaments.\nBut it is no longer the real force it was. It is not seriously treated.\nIn England, Journalism, not, except in a few well-known instances,\nhaving been carried to such excesses of brutality, is still a great\nfactor, a really remarkable power. The tyranny that it proposes to\nexercise over people's private lives seems to me to be quite\nextraordinary. The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity\nto know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious\nof this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands. In\ncenturies before ours the public nailed the ears of journalists to the\npump. That was quite hideous. In this century journalists have nailed\ntheir own ears to the keyhole. That is much worse. And what aggravates\nthe mischief is that the journalists who are most to blame are not the\namusing journalists who write for what are called Society papers. The\nharm is done by the serious, thoughtful, earnest journalists, who\nsolemnly, as they are doing at present, will drag before the eyes of the\npublic some incident in the private life of a great statesman, of a man\nwho is a leader of political thought as he is a creator of political\nforce, and invite the public to discuss the incident, to exercise\nauthority in the matter, to give their views, and not merely to give\ntheir views, but to carry them into action, to dictate to the man upon\nall other points, to dictate to his party, to dictate to his country; in\nfact, to make themselves ridiculous, offensive, and harmful. The private\nlives of men and women should not be told to the public. The public have\nnothing to do with them at all. In Prance they manage these things\nbetter. There they do not allow the details of the trials that take\nplace in the divorce courts to be published for the amusement or\ncriticism of the public. All that the public are allowed to know is that\nthe divorce has taken place and was granted on petition of one or other\nor both of the married parties concerned. In France, in fact, they limit\nthe journalist, and allow the artist almost perfect freedom. Here we\nallow absolute freedom to the journalist, and entirely limit the artist.\nEnglish public opinion, that is to say, tries to constrain and impede\nand warp the man who makes things that are beautiful in effect, and\ncompels the journalist to retail things that are ugly, or disgusting, or\nrevolting in fact, so that we have the most serious journalists in the\nworld, and the most indecent newspapers. It is no exaggeration to talk\nof compulsion. There are possibly some journalists who take a real\npleasure in publishing horrible things, or who, being poor, look to\nscandals as forming a sort of permanent basis for an income. But there\nare other journalists, I feel certain, men of education and cultivation,\nwho really dislike publishing these things, who know that it is wrong to\ndo so, and only do it because the unhealthy conditions under which their\noccupation is carried on oblige them to supply the public with what the\npublic wants, and to compete with other journalists in making that\nsupply as full and satisfying to the gross popular appetite as possible.\nIt is a very degrading position for any body of educated men to be\nplaced in, and I have no doubt that most of them feel it acutely.\n\nHowever, let us leave what is really a very sordid side of the subject,\nand return to the question of popular control in the matter of Art, by\nwhich I mean Public Opinion dictating to the artist the form which he is\nto use, the mode in which he is to use it, and the materials with which\nhe is to work. I have pointed out that the arts which have escaped best\nin England are the arts in which the public have not been interested.\nThey are, however, interested in the drama, and as a certain advance has\nbeen made in the drama within the last ten or fifteen years, it is\nimportant to point out that this advance is entirely due to a few\nindividual artists refusing to accept the popular want of taste as their\nstandard, and refusing to regard Art as a mere matter of demand and\nsupply. With his marvellous and vivid personality, with a style that has\nreally a true colour-element in it, with his extraordinary power, not\nover mere mimicry but over imaginative and intellectual creation, Mr\nIrving, had his sole object been to give the public what they wanted,\ncould have produced the commonest plays in the commonest manner, and\nmade as much success and money as a man could possibly desire. But his\nobject was not that. His object was to realise his own perfection as an\nartist, under certain conditions, and in certain forms of Art. At first\nhe appealed to the few; now he has educated the many. He has created in\nthe public both taste and temperament. The public appreciate his\nartistic success immensely. I often wonder, however, whether the public\nunderstand that that success is entirely due to the fact that he did not\naccept their standard, but realised his own. With their standard the\nLyceum would have been a sort of second-rate booth, as some of the\npopular theatres in London are at present. Whether they understand it or\nnot the fact however remains, that taste and temperament have, to a\ncertain extent, been created in the public, and that the public is\ncapable of developing these qualities. The problem then is, why do not\nthe public become more civilised? They have the capacity. What stops\nthem?\n\nThe thing that stops them, it must be said again, is their desire to\nexercise authority over the artist and over works of art. To certain\ntheatres, such as the Lyceum and the Haymarket, the public seem to come\nin a proper mood. In both of these theatres there have been individual\nartists, who have succeeded in creating in their audiences--and every\ntheatre in London has its own audience--the temperament to which Art\nappeals. And what is that temperament? It is the temperament of\nreceptivity. That is all.\n\nIf a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority\nover it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot\nreceive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art is to\ndominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of\nart. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which\nthe master is to play. And the more completely he can suppress his own\nsilly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what\nArt should be, or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and\nappreciate the work of art in question. This is, of course, quite\nobvious in the case of the vulgar theatre-going public of English men\nand women. But it is equally true of what are called educated people.\nFor an educated person's ideas of Art are drawn naturally from what Art\nhas been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has\nnever been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure\nit by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends.\nA temperament capable of receiving, through an imaginative medium, and\nunder imaginative conditions, new and beautiful impressions, is the only\ntemperament that can appreciate a work of art. And true as this is in\nthe case of the appreciation of sculpture and painting, it is still more\ntrue of the appreciation of such arts as the drama. For a picture and a\nstatue are not at war with Time. They take no count of its succession.\nIn one moment their unity may be apprehended. In the case of literature\nit is different. Time must be traversed before the unity of effect is\nrealised. And so, in the drama, there may occur in the first act of the\nplay something whose real artistic value may not be evident to the\nspectator till the third or fourth act is reached. Is the silly fellow\nto get angry and call out, and disturb the play, and annoy the artists?\nNo, the honest man is to sit quietly, and know the delightful emotions\nof wonder, curiosity, and suspense. He is not to go to the play to lose\na vulgar temper. He is to go to the play to realise an artistic\ntemperament. He is to go to the play to gain an artistic temperament. He\nis not the arbiter of the work of art. He is one who is admitted to\ncontemplate the work of art, and, if the work be fine, to forget in its\ncontemplation all, the egotism that mars him--the egotism of his\nignorance, or the egotism of his information. This point about the drama\nis hardly, I think, sufficiently recognised. I can quite understand that\nwere 'Macbeth' produced for the first time before a modern London\naudience, many of the people present would strongly and vigorously\nobject to the introduction of the witches in the first act, with their\ngrotesque phrases and their ridiculous words. But when the play is over\none realises that the laughter of the witches in 'Macbeth' is as\nterrible as the laughter of madness in 'Lear,' more terrible than the\ndaughter of Iago in the tragedy of the Moor. No spectator of art needs a\nmore perfect mood of receptivity than the spectator of a play. The\nmoment he seeks to exercise authority he becomes the avowed enemy of Art\nand of himself. Art does not mind. It is he who suffers.\n\nWith the novel it is the same thing. Popular authority and the\nrecognition of popular authority are fatal. Thackeray's 'Esmond' is a\nbeautiful work of art because he wrote it to please himself. In his\nother novels, in 'Pendennis,' in 'Philip,' in 'Vanity Fair' even, at\ntimes, he is too conscious of the public, and spoils his work by\nappealing directly to the sympathies of the public, or by directly\nmocking at them. A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public.\nThe public are to him non-existent. He has no poppied or honeyed cakes\nthrough which to give the monster sleep or sustenance. He leaves that to\nthe popular novelist. One incomparable novelist we have now in England,\nMr George Meredith. There are better artists in France, but France has\nno one whose view of life is so large, so varied, so imaginatively true.\nThere are tellers of stories in Russia who have a more vivid sense of\nwhat pain in fiction may be. But to him belongs philosophy in fiction.\nHis people not merely live, but they live in thought. One can see them\nfrom myriad points of view. They are suggestive. There is soul in them\nand around them. They are interpretative and symbolic. And he who made\nthem, those wonderful quickly-moving figures, made them for his own\npleasure, and has never asked the public what they wanted, has never\ncared to know what they wanted, has never allowed the public to dictate\nto him or influence him in any way, but has gone on intensifying his own\npersonality, and producing his own individual work. At first none came\nto him. That did not matter. Then the few came to him. That did not\nchange him. The many have come now. He is still the same. He's an\nincomparable novelist.\n\nWith the decorative arts it is not different. The public clung with\nreally pathetic tenacity to what I believe were the direct traditions of\nthe Great Exhibition of international vulgarity, traditions that were so\nappalling that the houses in which people lived were only fit for blind\npeople to live in. Beautiful things began to be made, beautiful colours\ncame from the dyer's hand, beautiful patterns from the artist's brain,\nand the use of beautiful things and their value and importance were set\nforth. The public were really very indignant. They lost their temper.\nThey said silly things. No one minded. No one was a whit the worse. No\none accepted the authority of public opinion. And now it is almost\nimpossible to enter any modern house without seeing some recognition of\ngood taste, some recognition of the value of lovely surroundings, some\nsign of appreciation of beauty. In fact, people's houses are, as a rule,\nquite charming nowadays. People have been to a very great extent\ncivilised. It is only fair to state, however, that the extraordinary\nsuccess of the revolution in house-decoration and furniture and the like\nhas not really been due to the majority of the public developing a very\nfine taste in such matters. It has been chiefly due to the fact that the\ncraftsmen of things so appreciated the pleasure of making what was\nbeautiful, and woke to such a vivid consciousness of the hideousness and\nvulgarity of what the public had previously wanted, that they simply\nstarved the public out. It would be quite impossible at the present\nmoment to furnish a room as rooms were furnished a few years ago,\nwithout going for everything to an auction of second-hand furniture from\nsome third-rate lodging-house. The things are no longer made. However\nthey may object to it, people must nowadays have something charming in\ntheir surroundings. Fortunately for them, their assumption of authority\nin these art-matters came to entire grief.\n\nIt is evident, then, that all authority in such things is bad. People\nsometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist\nto live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of\ngovernment that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.\nAuthority over him and his art is ridiculous. It has been stated that\nunder despotisms artists have produced lovely work. This is not quite\nso. Artists have visited despots, not as subjects to be tyrannised over,\nbut as wandering wonder-makers, as fascinating vagrant personalities, to\nbe entertained and charmed and suffered to be at peace, and allowed to\ncreate. There is this to be said in favour of the despot, that he, being\nan individual, may have culture, while the mob, being a monster, has\nnone. One who is an Emperor and King may stoop down to pick up a brush\nfor a painter, but when the democracy stoops down it is merely to throw\nmud. And yet the democracy have not so far to stoop as the emperor. In\nfact, when they want to throw mud they have not to stoop at all. But\nthere is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all\nauthority is equally bad.\n\nThere are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannises\nover the body. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul. There\nis the despot who tyrannises over the soul and body alike. The first is\ncalled the Prince. The second is called the Pope The third is called the\nPeople. The Prince may be cultivated. Many Princes have been. Yet in the\nPrince there is danger. One thinks of Dante at the bitter feast in\nVerona, of Tasso in Ferrara's madman's cell. It is better for the artist\nnot to live with Princes. The Pope may be cultivated. Many Popes have\nbeen; the bad Popes have been. The bad Popes loved Beauty, almost as\npassionately, nay, with as much passion as the good Popes hated Thought.\nTo the wickedness of the Papacy humanity owes much. The goodness of the\nPapacy owes a terrible debt to humanity. Yet, though the Vatican has\nkept the rhetoric of its thunders, and lost the rod of its lightning, it\nis better for the artist not to live with Popes. It was a Pope who said\nof Cellini to a conclave of Cardinals that common laws and common\nauthority were not made for men such as he; but it was a Pope who thrust\nCellini into prison, and kept him there till he sickened with rage, and\ncreated unreal visions for himself, and saw the gilded sun enter his\nroom, and grew so enamoured of it that he sought to escape, and crept\nout from tower to tower, and falling through dizzy air at dawn, maimed\nhimself, and was by a vine-dresser covered with vine leaves, and carried\nin a cart to one who, loving beautiful things, had care of him. There is\ndanger in Popes. And as for the People, what of them and their\nauthority? Perhaps of them and their authority one has spoken enough.\nTheir authority is a thing blind, deaf, hideous, grotesque, tragic,\namusing, serious, and obscene. It is impossible for the artist to live\nwith the People. All despots bribe. The people bribe and brutalise. Who\ntold them to exercise authority? They were made to live, to listen, and\nto love. Someone has done them a great wrong. They have marred\nthemselves by imitation of their inferiors. They have taken the sceptre\nof the Prince. How should they use it? They have taken the triple tiara\nof the Pope. How should they carry its burden? They are as a clown whose\nheart is broken. They are as a priest whose soul is not yet born. Let\nall who love Beauty pity them. Though they themselves love not Beauty,\nyet let them pity themselves. Who taught them the trick of tyranny?\n\nThere are many other things that one might point out. One might point\nout how the Renaissance was great, because it sought to solve no social\nproblem, and busied itself not about such things, but suffered the\nindividual to develop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had\ngreat and individual artists, and great and individual men. One might\npoint out how Louis XIV., by creating the modern state, destroyed the\nindividualism of the artist, and made things monstrous in their monotony\nof repetition, and contemptible in their conformity to rule, and\ndestroyed throughout all France all those fine freedoms of expression\nthat had made tradition new in beauty, and new modes one with antique\nform. But the past is of no importance. The present is of no importance.\nIt is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man\nshould not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The\nfuture is what artists are.\n\nIt will, of course, be said that such a scheme as is set forth here is\nquite unpractical, and goes against human nature. This is perfectly\ntrue. It is unpractical, and it goes against human nature. This is why\nit is worth carrying out, and that is why one proposes it. For what is a\npractical scheme? A practical scheme is either a scheme that is already\nin existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under existing\nconditions. But it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects\nto; and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and\nfoolish. The conditions will be done away with, and human nature will\nchange. The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that\nit changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The\nsystems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature,\nand not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV. was that\nhe thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his\nerror was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result. All the\nresults of the mistakes of governments are quite admirable.\n\nIt is to be noted also that Individualism does not come to man with any\nsickly cant about duty, which merely means doing what other people want\nbecause they want it; or any hideous cant about self-sacrifice, which is\nmerely a survival of savage mutilation. In fact, it does not come to man\nwith any claims upon him at all. It comes naturally and inevitably out\nof man. It is the point to which all development tends. It is the\ndifferentiation to which all organisms grow. It is the perfection that\nis inherent in every mode of life, and towards which every mode of life\nquickens. And so Individualism exercises no compulsion over man. On the\ncontrary, it says to man that he should suffer no compulsion to be\nexercised over him. It does not try to force people to be good. It knows\nthat people are good when they are let alone. Man will develop\nIndividualism out of himself. Man is now so developing Individualism. To\nask whether Individualism is practical is like asking whether Evolution\nis practical. Evolution is the law of life, and there is no evolution\nexcept towards Individualism. Where this tendency is not expressed, it\nis a case of artificially-arrested growth, or of disease, or of death.\n\nIndividualism will also be unselfish and unaffected. It has been pointed\nout that one of the results of the extraordinary tyranny of authority is\nthat words are absolutely distorted from their proper and simple\nmeaning, and are used to express the obverse of their right\nsignification. What is true about Art is true about Life. A man is\ncalled affected, nowadays, if he dresses as he likes to dress. But in\ndoing that he is acting in a perfectly natural manner. Affectation, in\nsuch matters, consists in dressing according to the views of one's\nneighbour, whose views, as they are the views of the majority, will\nprobably be extremely stupid. Or a man is called selfish if he lives in\nthe manner that seems to him most suitable for the full realisation of\nhis own personality; if, in fact, the primary aim of his life is\nself-development. But this is the way in which everyone should live.\nSelfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to\nlive as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's\nlives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at\ncreating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness\nrecognises infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it,\nacquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for oneself. A\nman who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly\nselfish to require of one's neighbour that he should think in the same\nway, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will\nprobably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to\nrequire thought of any kind from him. A red rose is not selfish because\nit wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all\nthe other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses. Under\nIndividualism people will be quite natural and absolutely unselfish, and\nwill know the meanings of the words, and realise them in their free,\nbeautiful lives. Nor will men be egotistic as they are now. For the\negotist is he who makes claims upon others, and the Individualist will\nnot desire to do that. It will not give him pleasure. When man has\nrealised Individualism, he will also realise sympathy and exercise it\nfreely and spontaneously. Up to the present man has hardly cultivated\nsympathy at all. He has merely sympathy with pain, and sympathy with\npain is not the highest form of sympathy. All sympathy is fine, but\nsympathy with suffering is the least fine mode. It is tainted with\negotism. It is apt to become morbid. There is in it a certain element of\nterror for our own safety. We become afraid that we ourselves might be\nas the leper or as the blind, and that no man would have care of us. It\nis curiously limiting, too. One should sympathise with the entirety of\nlife, not with life's sores and maladies merely, but with life's joy and\nbeauty and energy and health and freedom. The wider sympathy is, of\ncourse, the more difficult. It requires more unselfishness. Anybody can\nsympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine\nnature--it requires, in fact, the nature of a true Individualist--to\nsympathise with a friend's success.\n\nIn the modern stress of competition and struggle for place, such\nsympathy is naturally rare, and is also very much stifled by the immoral\nideal of uniformity of type and conformity to rule which is so prevalent\neverywhere, and is perhaps most obnoxious in England.\n\nSympathy with pain there will, of course, always be. It is one of the\nfirst instincts of man. The animals which are individual, the higher\nanimals, that is to say, share it with us. But it must be remembered\nthat while sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of joy in the world,\nsympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain. It may\nmake man better able to endure evil, but the evil remains. Sympathy with\nconsumption does not cure consumption; that is what Science does. And\nwhen Socialism has solved the problem of poverty, and Science solved the\nproblem of disease, the area of the sentimentalists will be lessened,\nand the sympathy of man will be large, healthy, and spontaneous. Man\nwill have joy in the contemplation of the joyous life of others.\n\nFor it is through joy that the Individualism of the future will develop\nitself. Christ made no attempt to reconstruct society, and consequently\nthe Individualism that he preached to man could be realised only through\npain or in solitude. The ideals that we owe to Christ are the ideals of\nthe man who abandons society entirely, or of the man who resists society\nabsolutely. But man is naturally social. Even the Thebaid became peopled\nat last. And though the cenobite realises his personality, it is often\nan impoverished personality that he so realises. Upon the other hand,\nthe terrible truth that pain is a mode through which man may realise\nhimself exercises a wonderful fascination over the world. Shallow\nspeakers and shallow thinkers in pulpits and on platforms often talk\nabout the world's worship of pleasure, and whine against it. But it is\nrarely in the world's history that its ideal has been one of joy and\nbeauty. The worship of pain has far more often dominated the world.\nMedi\u00e6valism, with its saints and martyrs, its love of self-torture, its\nwild passion for wounding itself, its gashing with knives, and its\nwhipping with rods--Medi\u00e6valism is real Christianity, and the medi\u00e6val\nChrist is the real Christ. When the Renaissance dawned upon the world,\nand brought with it the new ideals of the beauty of life and the joy of\nliving, men could not understand Christ. Even Art shows us that. The\npainters of the Renaissance drew Christ as a little boy playing with\nanother boy in a palace or a garden, or lying back in his mother's arms,\nsmiling at her, or at a flower, or at a bright bird; or as a noble,\nstately figure moving nobly through the world; or as a wonderful figure\nrising in a sort of ecstasy from death to life. Even when they drew him\ncrucified they drew him as a beautiful God on whom evil men had\ninflicted suffering. But he did not preoccupy them much. What delighted\nthem was to paint the men and women whom they admired, and to show the\nloveliness of this lovely earth. They painted many religious\npictures--in fact, they painted far too many, and the monotony of type\nand motive is wearisome, and was bad for art. It was the result of the\nauthority of the public in art-matters, and is to be deplored. But their\nsoul was not in the subject Raphael was a great artist when he painted\nhis portrait of the Pope. When he painted his Madonnas and infant\nChrists, he is not a great artist at all. Christ had no message for the\nRenaissance, which was wonderful because it brought an ideal at variance\nwith his, and to find the presentation of the real Christ we must go to\nmedi\u00e6val art. There he is one maimed and marred; one who is not comely\nto look on, because Beauty is a joy; one who is not in fair raiment,\nbecause that may be a joy also: he is a beggar who has a marvellous\nsoul; he is a leper whose soul is divine; he needs neither property nor\nhealth; he is a God realising his perfection through pain.\n\nThe evolution of man is slow. The injustice of men is great. It was\nnecessary that pain should be put forward as a mode of self-realisation.\nEven now, in some places in the world, the message of Christ is\nnecessary. No one who lived in modern Russia could possibly realise his\nperfection except by pain. A few Russian artists have realised\nthemselves in Art; in a fiction that is medi\u00e6val in character, hecauae\nits dominant note is the realisation of men through suffering. But for\nthose who are not artists, and to whom there is no mode of life but the\nactual life of fact, pain is the only door to perfection. A Russian who\nlives happily under the present system of government in Russia must\neither believe that man has no soul, or that, if he has, it is not worth\ndeveloping. A Nihilist who rejects all authority, because he knows\nauthority to be evil, and welcomes all pain, because through that he\nrealises his personality, is a real Christian. To him the Christian\nideal is a true thing.\n\nAnd yet, Christ did not revolt against authority. He accepted the\nimperial authority of the Roman Empire and paid tribute. He endured the\necclesiastical authority of the Jewish Church, and would not repel its\nviolence by any violence of his own. He had, as I said before, no scheme\nfor the reconstruction of society. But the modern world has schemes. It\nproposes to do away with poverty and the suffering that it entails. It\ndesires to get rid of pain, and the suffering that pain entails. It\ntrusts to Socialism and to Science as its methods. What it aims at is an\nIndividualism expressing itself through joy. This Individualism will be\nlarger, fuller, lovelier than any Individualism has ever been. Pain is\nnot the ultimate mode of perfection. It is merely provisional and a\nprotest. It has reference to wrong, unhealthy, unjust surroundings. When\nthe wrong, and the disease, and the injustice are removed, it will have\nno further place. It will have done its work. It was a great work, but\nit is almost over. Its sphere lessens every day.\n\nNor will man miss it. For what man has sought for is, indeed, neither\npain nor pleasure, but simply Life. Man has sought to live intensely,\nfully, perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on\nothers, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to\nhim, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself. Pleasure\nis Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in\nharmony with himself and his environment. The new Individualism, for\nwhose service Socialism, whether it wills it or not, is working, will be\nperfect harmony. It will be what the Greeks sought for, but could not,\nexcept in Thought, realise completely, because they had slaves, and fed\nthem; it will be what the Renaissance sought for, but could not realise\ncompletely except in Art, because they had slaves, and starved them. It\nwill be complete, and through it each man will attain to his perfection.\nThe new Individualism is the new Hellenism.\n\n\n_Reprinted from the 'Fortnightly Review,' by permission of Messrs\nChapman & Hall._","title":"Miscellaneous Aphorisms; The Soul of Man","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":32826}