{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_53261/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_53261","id":"gutenberg_53261","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53261","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Ethics","Human beings","Life"],"text":"WE MODERNS:\n\nENIGMAS AND GUESSES\n\nBy EDWIN MUIR\n\nEdited with Introduction by H. L. Mencken\n\nNEW YORK ALFRED. A. KNOPF\n\nMCMXX\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n    I. THE OLD AGE,\n   II. ORIGINAL SIN,\n  III. WHAT IS MODERN?\n   IV. ART AND LITERATURE,\n    V. CREATIVE LOVE,\n   VI. THE TRAGIC VIEW.\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nThat a young Scotsman, reacting from the vast emotional assault of\nthe late ferocious war, should have withdrawn himself into an ivory\ntower in Glasgow town, and there sat himself down in heroic calm\nto wrestle with the vexatious and no doubt intrinsically insoluble\nproblems of being and becoming--this was surely nothing to cause,\nwhispers among connoisseurs of philosophical passion, for that grim,\npersistent, cold-blooded concern with the fundamental mysteries of the\nworld has been the habit of the Scots ever since they emerged from\nmassacre and blue paint. From blue paint, indeed, the transition was\nalmost instantaneous to blue souls, and the conscience of Britain,\nsuch as it is, has dwelt north of the Cheviot Hills ever since.\nFind a Scot, and you are at once beset by a metaphysician, or, at\nall events, by a theologian. But for a young man of those damp,\ndesolate parts, throwing himself into the racial trance, to emerge\nwith a set of ideas reaching back, through Nietzsche and even worse\nheretics, to the spacious, innocent, somewhat gaudy days of the Greek\nillumination--for such a fellow, so bred and circumscribed, to come\nout of his tower with a concept of life as a grand and glittering\nadventure, a tremendous spectacle, an overpowering ecstasy, almost\nan orgy--such a phenomenon was, and is, quite sufficient to lift the\njudicious eyebrow. Yet here is this Mr. Edwin Muir of Caledonia bearing\njust that outlandish contraband, offering just that strange flouting\nof all things traditionally Scotch. What he preaches in the ensuing\naphorisms is the emancipation of the modern spirit from its rotting\nheritage of ingenuous fears and exploded certainties. What he denounces\nmost bitterly is the abandonment of a world that is beautifully\nsurprising and charming to the rule of sordid, timid and unimaginative\nmen--the regimentation of ideas in a system that is half a denial of\nthe obvious and half a conglomeration of outworn metaphors, all taken\ntoo literally. And what he pleads for most eloquently, with his cold,\nreserved northern eloquence, is the whole-hearted acceptance of \"life\nas a sacrament,... life as joy triumphing over fate,... life made\ninnocent,... life washed free from how much filth of remorse, guilt,\ncontempt, 'sin'.\"...\n\nIt goes without saying that the red hand of Nietzsche is in all\nthis. The Naumburg Antichrist, damned for five years running by\nthe indignation of all right-thinking men, has made steady and\nenormous progress under cover. There has never been a time, indeed,\nwhen his notions enjoyed a wider dispersion or were poll-parrotted\nunwittingly by greater numbers of the righteous. Excessive draughts\nof the democratic cure-all, swallowed label, cork, testimonials and\nall, have brought Christendom to bed with _Katzenjammer--_and there\nstands the seductive antidote in its leering blue bottles. Where would\nphilosophical opponents of Bolshevism be without Nietzsche? Who would\ndevise arguments for them, eloquence for them, phrases for them? On all\nsides one hears echoes of him--often transformed from his harsh bass\nto a piping falsetto, but nevertheless recognizable enough. Any port\nin a storm! If God is asleep, then turn to the Devil! The show offers\nthe best laughing that heathen have enjoyed, perhaps, since the Hundred\nYears' War. And there is an extra snicker in the fact that Scotland,\nonce again, seems to resume the old trade of intellectual smuggling.\nIf one Scot is to the front with so forthright a piece as \"We Moderns,\"\nthen surely there must be a thousand other Scots hard at it in a\n_pianissimo_ manner. Thus, I suppose, the crime of Carlyle is repeated\non a wholesale scale, and once again the poor Sassenach is inoculated\nwith pathogenic Prussian organisms. On this side of the ocean the\nbusiness is less efficiently organized; we have no race of illicit\nmetaphysicians on our border. But the goods come in all the same. I\nhave heard more prattling of stale Nietzscheism of late, from men\nbearing the flag in one hand and the cross in the other, than I ever\nheard in the old days from parlour anarchists and unfrocked priests.\nNietzsche, belatedly discovered by a world beset by terrors too great\nfor it and mysteries too profound, becomes almost respectable, nay,\nalmost Episcopalian!\n\nWhat ails it, at bottom, is the delusion that all the mysteries, given\ndoctors enough, theories enough, pills enough, may be solved--that it\nis all a matter of finding a panacea, unearthing a prophet, passing\na bill. If it turns to Nietzsche, however gingerly and suspiciously,\nit will turn only to fresh disappointment and dismay, for Nietzsche\nis no quack with another sure cure, but simply an iconoclast who shows\nthat all the sure cures of the past and present have failed, and\n_must_ fail--and particularly the sure cure of the mob, the scheme\nof determining the diagnosis by taking a vote, the notion that the\nmedicine which most pleases the grossest palates is the medicine to get\nthe patient upon his legs. Nietzsche is no reformer; he is an assassin\nof reformers; if he preaches anything at all, it is that reform is\nuseless, illusory--above all, unnecessary. The patient is really not\ndying at all. Let him get up and dance! Let him pick up his bed and\nemploy it upon the skulls of his physicians! Life is not a disease to\nbe treated with boluses and philtres, not an affliction to be shirked\nand sentimentalized, but an adventure to be savoured and enjoyed--life,\nhere and now, is the highest imaginable experience. What the world\nneeds is not a cure for it, but room for it, freedom for it, innocent\nzest for it. So accepted and regarded, half of its terrors vanish at\nonce, and even its unescapable catastrophes take on a certain high\nstateliness, a fine \u00e6sthetic dignity. This is the tragic view that Mr.\nMuir cries up--life as joy triumphing over fate. \"For the character of\ntragedy is not negative and condemnatory, but deeply affirmative and\njoyous.\" The ideal man is not the time-serving slave of Christendom,\nin endless terror of God, forever flattering and bribing God, but the\nNietzschean _Ja-sager,_ the yes-sayer, facing destiny courageously and\na bit proudly, living to the full the life that lies within his grasp\nin the present, accepting its terms as he finds them, undaunted by the\nimpenetrable shadows that loom ahead.\n\nWhat Mr. Muir, following Nietzsche, is most dissatisfied with in the\nmodern spirt is its intolerable legalism--its fatuous frenzy to work\neverything out to nine places of constabulary decimals, to establish\nwindy theories and principles, to break the soul of man to a rule.\nIn part, of course, that effort is of respectable enough origin. It\nsprings from intelligent self-assertion, healthy curiosity, the sense\nof competence; it is a by-product of the unexampled conquests of nature\nthat have gone on in the modern age. But in other parts it is no more\nthan a by-product of the democratic spirit, the rise of the inferior,\nthe emancipation of the essentially in competent. Science is no\nlonger self-sufficient, isolated from moral ideas, an end in itself;\nit tends to become a mere agent of mob tyranny; it takes on gratuitous\nand incomprehensible duties and responsibilities; like the theology\nthat it has supplanted, it has friendlier and friendlier dealings with\nthe secular arm. And art, too, begins to be poisoned by this moral\nobsession of the awakened proletariat. It ceases to be an expression\nof well-being, of healthy functioning, of unpolluted joy in life, and\nbecomes a thing of obscure and snuffling purposes, a servant of some\nlow enterprise of the cocksure. The mob is surely no scientist and no\nartist; it is, in fact, eternally the anti-scientist, the anti-artist;\nscience and art offer it unscalable heights and are hence its enemies.\nBut in a world dominated by mob yearnings and mob passions, even\nscience and art must take on some colour from below. The enemies, if\nthey cannot be met and overthrown on a fair field, can at least be\ndegraded. And when the mob degrades, it always degrades to moral tunes.\nMorality is its one avenue to superiority--false but none the less\nsoothing. It can always be good. It can always dignify its stupidity,\nits sordidness and its cowardice with terms borrowed from ethical\nrevelation. The good man is a numskull, but nevertheless he is good.\n\nMr. Muir has at the modern spirit on many other counts, but nearly\nall of them may be converted with more or less plausibility into an\nobjection to its ethical obsession, its idiotic craze to legislate\nand admonish. When he says, for example, that realism in the novel\nand the drama is hollow, he leaves his case but half stated; there\nis undoubtedly a void where imagination, feeling and a true sense\nof the tragic ought to be, but it is filled with the common garbage\nof mob thinking, to wit, with the common garbage of moral purpose.\nAll of the chief realists, from Zola to Barbusse, are pre-eminently\nmoralists disguised as scientists; what one derives from them, reading\nthem sympathetically, is not illumination but merely indignation. They\nare always violently against something--and that something is usually\nthe fact that the world is not as secure and placid a place as a\nMethodist Sunday-school. Their affectation of moral agnosticism need\ndeceive no one. They are secretly appalled (and delighted) by their\nown \"scientific\" pornographies, just as their brethren of the vice\ncrusades are appalled and delighted. Realism, of course, can never be\nabsolute. It must always stress something and leave out something. What\nit commonly stresses is the colossal failure of society to fit into\nan orderly scheme of causes and effects, virtues and rewards, crimes\nand punishments. What it leaves out is the glow of romance that hangs\nabout that failure--the poignant drama of blind chance, the fascination\nof the unknowable. The realists are bad artists because they are\nan\u00e6sthetic to beauty. And a good many scientists are bad scientists\nfor precisely the same reason. In their hands the gorgeous struggle of\nman against the mysteries and foul ambuscades of nature is converted\ninto a banal cause before a police court, with the complainant put\non the stand to prove that his own hands are clean. One cannot read\nsome of the modern medical literature, particularly on the side of\npublic hygiene, without giving one's sympathy to the tubercle bacilli\nand the spiroch\u00e6t\u00e6. Science of that sort ceases to be a fit concern\nfor men of dignity, superior men, gentlemen; it becomes a concern for\nevangelists, uplifters, bounders. Its aim is no longer to penetrate\nthe impenetrable, to push forward the bounds of human knowledge, to\noverreach the sinister trickeries of God; its aim is simply to lengthen\nthe lives of human ciphers and to reinforce their delusion that they\nconfer a favour upon the universe by living at all. Worse, it converts\nthe salvation of such vacuums into a moral obligation, and sets up\nthe absurd doctrine that human progress is furthered by diminishing\nthe death-rate in the Balkans, by rescuing Georgia crackers from the\nhookworm and by reducing the whole American people, the civilized\nminority with the barbarian mass, to a race of teetotalling ascetics,\nfull of pious indignations and Freudian suppressions.\n\nThe western world reeks with this new sentimentality. It came on in\nEurope with the fall of feudalism and the rise of the lower orders.\nEven war, the last surviving enterprise of natural man, has been\ntransformed from a healthy play of innocent instincts into a combat\nof moral ideas, nine-tenths of them obviously unsound. It no longer\noffers a career to a Gustavus Adolphus, a Prince Eugene or a Napoleon\nI. It loses even the spirit of gallant adventure that dignified the\ntheological balderdash of the Crusades--in which, as every one knows,\nthe balderdash was quickly absorbed altogether by the adventure. It\nbecomes the business of specialists in moral indignation. The modern\ngeneral must not only know the elements of military science; he\nmust also show some of the gifts of a chautauqua orator, including\nparticularly the gift of right-thinking; it would do him more harm\nto speak of his opponent with professional politeness, as one lawyer\nmight speak of another, than it would do him to lose an important\nbattle. Worse, war gets out of the hands of soldiers altogether. It\nbecomes an undertaking of boob-bumpers, spy-hunters, emotion-pumpers,\npropaganda-mongers--all sorts of disgusting cads. Its great prizes\ntend to go, not to the men fighting in the field, but to the man\nmanufacturing shells, alarms, and moral indignation. At the time of\nthe last great series of wars it was said that every musketeer of\nFrance carried a marshal's baton in his haversack. The haversack of the\nmusketeer now contains only official literature, informing him of the\ncauses of the war as most lately determined, the names of its appointed\nmoral heroes, and the penalties for discussing its aims, for swapping\ntobacco with the boys on the other side, and for inviting a pretty\npeasant-girl into his shell-hole. The baton is being fought for by a\npress-agent, a labour leader and a Y.M.C.A. secretary.\n\nIt is against such degradations that Mr. Muir raises his voice, and\nin particular against such degradations in the field of the fine\narts. The superficial, I daresay, will mistake him (once they get\nover the sheer immorality of his relation to Nietzsche) as simply one\nmore pleader for _l'art pour l'art--_one more prophet of a superior\nand disembodied \u00e6stheticism. Well, turn to his singularly acute and\naccurate estimate of Walter Pater: there is the answer to that error.\nHe has, in fact, no leanings whatsoever in any such direction. The\nthing he argues for, despite all his fury against the debasement of\nart to mob uses, is not an art that shall be transcendental, but an\nart that shall relate itself to life primarily and unashamedly, an art\nthat shall accept and celebrate life. He preaches, of course, out of\nseason. There has never been a time in the history of the world when\nthe natural delight of man in himself was held in greater suspicion.\nChristianity, after two thousand years, seems triumphant at last.\nFrom the ashes of its barbaric theology there arises the phoenix of\nits maudlin sentimentality; the worship of inferiority becomes its\ndominating cult. In all directions that worship goes on. It gives a new\ncolour to politics, and not only to politics, but also to the sciences\nand the arts. Perhaps we are at the mere beginning of the process. The\ndoctrine that all men are equal in the sight of God is now defended\nand propagated by machine guns; it becomes a felony to deny it; one is\nalready taxed in America to make good the lofty aspirations of Poles,\nJugo-Slavs and Armenians. In England there are signs of a further step.\nAn Ehrlich or a Koch, miraculously at work there, might be jailed for\nslitting the throat of a white rat: all the lower animals, too, it\nappears, are God's creatures. So viewed, a guinea-pig becomes the peer\nof a Beethoven, as a farm-hand is already the peer of a Bach. It is too\nlate to turn back; let us hope that the logic of it is quickly worked\nout to its unescapable conclusion. Once the _pediculus vestimenti_ and\nthe streptococcus are protected, there will be a chance again, it may\nbe, for the law of natural selection to achieve its benign purgation.\n\nMeanwhile, Mr. Muir cannot expect his ideas to get much attention.\nA gaudy parade is passing and the populace is busy cheering.\nNevertheless, they were ideas worth playing with, and they are now\nworth printing and pondering. It seems to me that, in more than one\nway, they help to illuminate the central \u00e6sthetic question--the problem\nas to the nature and function of artistic representation. They start\nfrom Nietzschean beginnings, but they get further than Nietzsche ever\ngot. His whole \u00e6sthetic was hampered by the backwardness of psychology\nin his time. He made many a brilliant guess, but more than once he was\nhauled up rather sharply by his ignorance of the machinery of thought.\nMr. Muir not only has Nietzsche behind him; he also has Freud, as he\nshows, for example, in \u00a7145. Beyond him there is still a lot of room.\nHe will not stop the parade--but he will help the next man.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nEdwin Muir was born in the Orkney Islands in 1887. His father was a\nsmall crofter there. When he was fourteen years old the family moved\nto Glasgow. Within four years his father, his mother and two older\nbrothers died, and he was forced to fend for himself. He became a\nclerk in a Glasgow office and remained there until very recently, when\nhe moved to London. Like all other young men with the itch to write, he\ntried poetry before prose, and his first verses were printed in _The\nNew Age._ But his discovery of Nietzsche, at the age of twenty-two,\nexerted such a powerful influence upon him that he soon turned to\nprose, and five or six years later his first philosophical speculations\nwere printed, again in _The New Age._ They attracted attention and were\nrepublished in book-form, in 1918, as \"We Moderns.\" At the last minute\nthe author succumbed to modesty and put the _nom de plume_ of Edward\nMoore upon his book. But now, in this American edition (for which he\nhas made certain revisions), he returns to his own name.\n\nH. L. MENCKEN.\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nTHE OLD AGE\n\n\n1\n\n_The Advanced_\n\nAmong the advanced one observes a strange contradiction: the existence\nin one and the same person of confidence and enthusiasm about certain\naspects of life along with diffidence and pessimism about life\nitself. The advanced have made up their minds about all the problems\nof existence but not about the problem of existence. In dealing with\nthese problems they find their greatest happiness; they are there\nsure-footed, convinced and convincing. But brought face to face with\nthat other problem, how helpless, vacillating and spiritless are they!\nWhat! are propaganda, reform, and even revolution, perchance, with many\nof them simply their escape from their problem?\n\n\n2\n\n_The Intellectual Coquettes_\n\nAn intellectual coquetry is one of the worst vices of this age. From\nwhat does it arise? From fear of a decision? Or from love of freedom?\nIt cannot be from the latter, for to abstain from a choice is not\nfreedom but irresponsibility. To be free, is, on the contrary, itself\na choice, a decision involving, in its acceptance, responsibility. And\nit is responsibility that the intellectual coquettes fear: rather than\nadmit that one burden they will bear all the others of scepticism,\npessimism and impotence. To accept a new gospel, to live it out in all\nits ramifications, is too troublesome, too dangerous. The average man\nin them pleads, \"Be prudent! Where may not this resolution lead you?\nThrough what perils? Into what hells?\" And so they remain in their\nprison house of doubt, neither Pagans nor Christians, neither Theists\nnor Atheists, ignorant of the fact that they are slaves and that a\ndecision would set them free.\n\nBut in the end the soul has its revenge, for their coquetry destroys\nnot only the power but the will to choose. To flirt with dangerous\nideas in a graceful manner: that becomes their destiny. For the\nintellectual coquette, like other coquettes, dislikes above everything\npassion--passion with its seriousness, sincerity and--demand for a\ndecision.\n\n\n3\n\n_Modern Realism_\n\nHow crude and shallow is the whole theory of modern realism: a\ntheory of art by the average man for the average man! It makes art\nintelligible by simplifying or popularizing it; in short, as Nietzsche\nwould say, by vulgarizing it. The average man perceives, for instance,\nthat there is in great drama an element of representation. Come, he\nsays, let us make the representation as \"thorough\" as possible! Let\nevery detail of the original be reproduced! Let us have life as it\nis lived! And when he has accomplished this, when representation has\nbecome reproduction, he is very well pleased and thinks how far he has\nadvanced beyond the poor Greeks. But it is hardly so! For the Greeks\ndid not aim at the reproduction but at the interpretation of life,\nfor which they would accept no symbol less noble than those _ideal_\nfigures which move in the world of classical tragedy. To the Greeks,\nindeed, the world of art was precisely this world: not a paltry,\nsober and conscientious dexterity in the \"catching\" of the aspects\nof existence (nothing so easy!), but a symbolizing of the deepest\nquestions and enigmas of life--a thing infinitely more noble, profound\nand subtle than realistic art. The Greeks would have demanded of\nrealism, Why do you exist? What noble end is served by the reproduction\nof ordinary existence? Are you not simply superfluous--and vilely\nsmelling at that? And realism could have given no reply, for the truth\nis that realism _is_ superfluous. It is without a _raison d'\u00eatre._\n\nThe average man, however, takes a second glance at classical tragedy\nand reaches a second discovery. There is something enigmatical,\nhe finds, behind the Greek clearness of representation, something\nunexplained; in short, a problem. This problem, however, is not\nsufficiently clear. Let us state our problems clearly, he cries! Let\nus have problems which can be recognized at a glance by every one! Let\nus write a play about \"the marriage question,\" or bad-housing, or the\nLabour Party! But, again, the theory of the Greeks, at least before\nEuripides, was altogether different. The \"problem\" in their tragedies\nwas precisely not a problem which could be stated in a syllogism or\nsolved in a treatise: it was the eternal problem, and it was not stated\nto be \"solved.\"\n\nThus the Moderns, in their attempt to simplify art, to understand it\nor misunderstand it--what does it matter which word is used?--have\nsucceeded in destroying it. The realistic and the \"problem\" drama alike\nare for the inartistic. The first is drama without a _raison d'\u00eatre,_\nthe second is a _raison d'\u00eatre_ without drama.\n\n\n4\n\n_The Modern Tragic_\n\nIn realistic novels and dramas a new type of the tragic has been\nevolved. It may be called tragedy without a meaning. In classical\nand Shakespearean tragedy, the inevitable calamities incident to\nhuman existence were given significance and nobility by the poets.\nThat interpretive power of drama was, indeed, the essential thing to\nthe great artists, to whom representation was only a means. But the\nrealists with their shallow rationalizing of art have changed all\nthat. They have cut out the essential part of drama so as to make the\nother part more \"complete\": in short, their tragedy is now simply\n\"tragedy\" in the newspaper sense. And it is obvious that this kind\nof \"art\" is much easier to produce than tragedy in the grand style:\none has not even to read a meaning into it. This absence of meaning,\nhowever, is itself, in the long run, made to appear the last word of an\nunfathomably ironical wisdom. And in this light, how much modern wisdom\nis understood! The superficiality which can see only the surface here\nparades as the profundity which has dived into every abyss and found it\nempty. No! it is not tragedy but the modern tragedian who is without a\n_raison d'\u00eatre!_\n\n\n5\n\n_Realism as a Symptom of Poverty_\n\nIn an age in which the power of creation is weak, men will choose the\neasiest forms: those in which sustained elevation is not demanded and\ncreation itself is eked out in various ways. The world of our day has\ntherefore as its characteristic production the realistic novel, which\nin form is more loose, in content and execution more unequal, and\nin imaginative power less rich and inventive than poetic drama, or\n_any_ of the higher forms of literature. If we deduct from the modern\n\"literary artist,\" the diarist, the sociologist, the reporter, and the\ncollector of documents, there is not much left. For creation there is\nvery little room in his works; perhaps it is as well!\n\n\n6\n\n_Compliments and Art_\n\nThe convention of gallantry observed by the sexes is the foundation\nof all refined understanding between them. For in the mutual game of\ncompliment it is the spiritual attitude and not the spoken word that\nmatters. There is truth in this attitude, however unreal the words\nmay seem: a thousand times more truth than in the modern egalitarian,\ngo-as-you-please camaraderie of the sexes. Here there is truth\nneither in the spirit nor in the letter. To be candid, about this new\nconvention there is something faintly fatuous: the people who act thus\nare not subtle! Yet they are hardly to be blamed; it is the age that is\nat fault. There is no time for reflection upon men, women and manners,\nand consequently no refinement of understanding, no form in the true\nsense. We work so hard and have so little leisure that when we meet\nwe are tired and wish to \"stretch our legs,\" as Nietzsche said. It is\nfar from our thoughts that a convention between men and women might be\n_necessary_; we are not disposed to inquire why this convention arose;\nit presents itself to us as something naively false; and we have time\nonly to be unconventional.\n\nThe ceremonious in manners arose from the recognition that\nbetween the sexes there must be distance--respect as well as\nintimacy--understanding. The old gallantry enabled men and women to\nbe intimate and distant at the same time: it was the perfection of\nthe art of manners. Indeed, we can hardly have sufficient respect for\nthis triumphant circumvention of a natural difficulty, whereby it was\nmade a source of actual pleasure. But now distance and understanding\nhave alike disappeared. The moderns, so obtuse have they become,\nsee here no difficulty at all, consequently no need for manners:\nbrotherhood--comradeship--laziness has superseded that. Nothing is any\nlonger _understood;_ but a convention means essentially that something\nis understood. Indeed, it is already a gaucherie to explain the\nmeaning of a good convention. But what can one do? Against obtuseness\nthe only weapon is obtuseness.\n\nIn literature this decline into bad taste and denseness is most\nclearly to be seen. So incapable have readers become, so resourceless\nwriters, that whatever is said now must be said right out; sex must\nbe called sex; and no one has sufficient subtlety to suggest or to\nfollow a suggestion. Hence, Realism. An artist has to write exactly\nwhat he means: the word must be word and nothing more. But this\nis to misunderstand art. For the words of the true artist undergo\na transubstantiation and become flesh and blood, even spirit. His\nwords are deeds--to say nothing of what he writes _between_ his\nlines! Realism in art and \"comradeship\" between the sexes are two\nmisunderstandings, or, rather, two aspects of a misunderstanding. And\nthat misunderstanding is perhaps attributable to a lack of leisure? And\nthat to modern hurry? And that to the industrial system?\n\n\n7\n\n_A Modern Problem_\n\nIt has been observed again and again that as societies--forms of\nproduction, of government, and so on--become more complex, the mastery\nof the individual over his destiny grows weaker. In other words, the\nmore man subjugates \"nature,\" the more of a slave he becomes. The\nindustrial system, for instance, which is the greatest modern example\nof man's subjugation of nature, is at the same time the greatest\nmodern example of man's enslavement. What are we to think, then? Is\nthe problem a moral one, and shall we say that a conquest of nature\nwhich is not preceded by a conquest of human nature is bound to be\nbad? In a society which has not surpassed the phase of slavery does\nevery addition to man's power over nature simply intensify the slavery?\nOr is the problem intellectual? And when the intellect concentrates\nupon one branch of knowledge to the neglect of the other, is the\noutcome bound to be the enslavement of the others? For instance the\nnineteenth century devoted far more of its brains to industry than\nto politics--its politics, indeed, was merely the reflection of its\nindustry--with the result that industry has now enslaved us all. Yes,\nit has enslaved us all--not merely the wage-earners, not merely the\nsalariat! In the old days the workman, indeed, was a slave, but now the\nemployer is a slave as well.\n\nIn this age, therefore, in which man appears as the helpless appendage\nof a machine too mighty for him, it is natural that theories of\nDeterminism should flourish. It is natural, also, that the will should\nbecome weak and discouraged, and, consequently, that the power of\ncreation should languish. And so the world of art has withered and\nturned barren. The artist needs above all things a sense of power; it\nis out of the abundance of this sense that he creates. But confronted\nwith modern society, that vast machine, and surrounded by its hopeless\nmechanics and slaves, he feels the sense dying within him; nor does the\nevil cease there, for along with the sense of power, power itself dies.\n\nWell, does not the moral become clearer and clearer? If art and\nliterature are to flourish again, artists, writers, nay, the whole\ncommunity must regain the sense of power. Therefore, economic\nemancipation first!\n\n\n8\n\n_Leisure and Good Things_\n\nThe very greatest danger confronts a people who renounce leisure: that\npeople will become shallow--just consider England! For of all things\nnoble it is hard to see the immediate utility: patience and reverence\nare needed before one can see in them a meaning at all. Art, literature\nand philosophy are not obvious goods: at the first glance they appear\neven repellent: alas, then, for them in an age of first glances! In\nsuch an age, it is true, they will not altogether disappear. Something\nworse will happen. They will be degraded, made obvious, misunderstood;\nin one word, popularized--the fate of our time. Society should be\norganized so as to give to its members the maximum of leisure; thus\nwould the dissemination of art and philosophy be made at least\npossible. But society should at the same time provide for a privileged\nclass of artists and philosophers, with _absolute_ leisure, who would\nwork only when the inner compulsion made them. The second condition is\nat least as important as the first.\n\n\n9\n\n_Wanted: A History of Hurry_\n\nIs there a critic who wishes to be at once edifying and entertaining?\nLet him write a history of hurry in its relation to literature and\nart. Has literature decayed as hurry has intensified? Have standards\nof balance, repose and leisured grace gradually shrunk since, say, the\nIndustrial Revolution? Has the curtailment of the realm of literature,\nits reduction from the Romantic school to the Victorian circle and\nfrom that to the Decadent clique, been due to the everstrengthening\nencroachment of hurry? And has hurry now become finally triumphant so\nthat our critics and even our artists and savants are nothing more than\njournalists? For certainly they seem to be so.\n\nThese are questions to be investigated by our historian.\n\n\n10\n\n_The Sex Novel_\n\nHow did the vogue of the sex novel arise? Perhaps from the great\nattention which was in the last century given to the sciences of\nbiology and physiology; and perhaps, more especially from the\npopularization of these sciences. Love was, under the spell of science,\ntranslated by the novelists into sex. Not the psychology, but the\nphysiology of love was found interesting: with the result that for the\nproduction of a modern novel one qualification alone is now necessary:\na \"knowledge of the simple facts of physiology,\" as the primer-writers\nsay. Well, what is the remedy for this? Not a denial of physiology:\nthose who have learned it cannot now erase it from their memory and\nbecome voluntarily ignorant. No; let, rather, the opposite course be\ntaken! Let us popularize psychology as well!\n\n\n11\n\n_These Advanced People_\n\nA. Free Love is all right in theory, but all wrong in practice. B. On\nthe contrary! I think it is all right in practice, but all wrong in\ntheory.\n\n\n12\n\n_Sex in Literature_\n\nIn English literature, until very modern times, sex was treated only\nwithin the limits of a very well-understood convention. From this\nconvention the physiological was strictly excluded. Yet, of our\nclassical writers, even in the most artificial periods, it cannot\nbe said that they did not understand sex. No matter how \"unreal\"\nthey might be in writing about Love, the physiological contingencies\nof Love were unmistakably implied in their works, but only, it is\ntrue, implied. The moderns, however, saw in this treatment of Love\nnothing but a convention, a \"lie\"; and they became impatient of the\nartificiality, as if art could be anything but artificial! To what\nwas the change of attitude due? Not to a failure in the artistic\nconvention: that was perfectly sound. No, it was the reader who had\nfailed: a generation of readers had arisen who had not learnt the art\nof reading, who did not understand reading as a cultured amateur of\nthe eighteenth century, for instance, understood it. Literature was to\nthis reader a document, not an art. He had no eye for what is written\nbetween the lines--for symbolism, idealization, \"literature.\" And it\nwas to satisfy him that the realistic school arose: it arose, indeed,\nout of himself. In the realist the modern reader has become writer: the\nman who could not learn the art of reading has here essayed the more\ndifficult art of writing--documentary art!\n\n\n13\n\n_History of a Realist_\n\nWho will write a series of biographies of modern writers, illustrating\nthis thesis: that they are nothing more than modern readers wielding a\nhasty pen? Such a set of memoirs would almost compensate us for having\nread the works of these writers. How interesting, for instance, it\nwould be to know how many years--surely it would be years?--they spent\nin trying to understand literature before they dedicated themselves to\nits service. How interesting, again, to discover how many hours each\nday X, the celebrated novelist, devotes to contemplation, how many to\nwriting for the newspapers, and how many to his present masterpiece.\nWhat! one hour's thought has actually preceded five hours' dictation!\nThis revelation is, after all, not so startling. On second thought,\nthese memoirs seem superfluous; we can read everything we wish to know\nof the moderns in their works.\n\nYet, for our better amusement, will not some one write his one and\nonly novel, giving the true history of the novelist? A novel against\nnovels! But for that we need a second Cervantes, yet how unlike\nthe first! For on this occasion it is not Don Quixote that must be\nsatirized, but Sancho Panza.\n\n\n14\n\n_Novelists by Habit_\n\nAll of us who read are novelists more or less nowadays: that is to say,\nwe collect \"impressions,\" \"analyse\" ourselves, make a pother about\nsex, and think that people, once they are divorced, live happily ever\nafter. The habit of reading novels has turned us into this! When one of\nus becomes articulate, however--in the form of a novel--he only makes\nexplicit his kinship with the rest; he proclaims to all the world that\nhe is a mediocrity.\n\n\n15\n\n_The Only Course_\n\nAll the figures in this novel are paltry; we despise them, and, if we\nwere in danger of meeting them in real life, would take steps to avoid\nthem; yet such is the author's adroitness that we are led on helplessly\nthrough the narrative, through unspeakable sordidness of circumstance\nand soul, hating ourselves and him, and feeling nothing better than\nslaves. To rouse our anxiety lest Herbert lose five pounds, or Mabel\nfind it impossible to get a new dress, this is art, this is modern art!\nBut to feel _anxiety_ about such things is ignoble; and to live in a\nsordid atmosphere, even if it be of a book, is the part of a slave.\nAnd yet we cannot but admire. For in this novel what subtlety in the\ntreatment there must be overlying the fundamental vulgarity of the\ntheme! How is Art, which should make Man free, here transformed into a\npotent means for enslaving him! It is impossible to yield oneself to\nthe sway of a modern realist without a loss in one's self-respect. To\nwhat is due this conspicuous absence of nobility in modern writers? But\nis the question, indeed, worth the asking? For to the artist and to him\nwho would retain freedom of soul, there is only one course with the\npaltry in literature--to avoid it.\n\n\n16\n\n_The Average Man_\n\nIt is surely one of G. K. Chesterton's paradoxes that he praises the\naverage man. For he is not himself an average man, but a man of\ngenius; he does not write of the average man, but of grotesques; he is\nnot read by the average man, but by intellectuals and the nonconformist\nmiddle-class. The true prophets of the average man are the popular\nrealistic novelists. For they write of him and for him--yes, even when\nthey write \"for themselves,\" when they are \"serious artists.\" Who,\nthen, but them should extol him? It is their _m\u00e9tier_.\n\n\n17\n\n_The \"New\" Writers_\n\nThe fault of the most modern writers--and especially of the\nnovelists--is not that they are too modern, but that they are too\ntraditional. It is true, they are not traditional in the historical\nmanner of G. K. Chesterton, who wishes to destroy one tradition--the\nmodern tradition--in order to get back to another--the medi\u00e6val. To\nMr. Chesterton tradition is a matter of selection; the dead tradition\nseems to him nobler than the living; and, deliberately, therefore, he\nwould return to it. The new writers, however, follow a tradition also,\nthough a much narrower one; they, too, believe in the past, but only,\nalas, in the immediate past; they are slaves to the generation which\npreceded theirs. In short, that which is disgusting in them is their\ninability to rise high enough to _see_ their little decade or two, and\nto challenge it, if they cannot from the standpoint of a nobler future,\nthen, at least, from that of the noblest past. But how weak must a\ngeneration be which is not strong enough to challenge and supersede\nArnold Bennett, for instance.\n\n\n18\n\n_The Modern Reader_\n\n\nWhat is it that the modern reader demands from those who write for\nhim? To be challenged, and again to be challenged, and evermore to be\nchallenged--but on no account to be asked to accept a challenge, on no\naccount to be expected to take sides! A seat at the tournament is all\nthat he asks, where he may watch the most sincere and intrepid spirits\nof his time waging their desperate battle and spilling their life blood\nupon the sand. How he loves them when, with high gesture, they fling\ndown their gauntlets and utter their blasphemies! His heart then exults\nwithin him; but, why? Simply because he is a connoisseur; simply\nbecause he _collects_ gauntlets!\n\n\n19\n\n_The Public_\n\nOf the modern writers who are in earnest, Mr. Chesterton has had the\nmost ironical fate: he has been read by the people who will never agree\nwith him. To the average man for whom he writes he is an intellectual\nmade doubly inaccessible by his orthodoxy and his paradoxy. It is the\nadvanced, his _b\u00eate noire,_ who read him, admire him, and--disagree\nwith him.\n\n\n20\n\n_Reader and Writer_\n\nThe modern reader loves to be challenged. The modern writer, if he is\nin earnest, however, is bound to challenge him. This is his greatest\nburden; that he _must_ fall a victim of the advanced idlers. But one\nday he thinks he see a way of escape. He has noticed that the reader\ndesires not only to be challenged, but to be able to understand the\nchallenge at a glance. And here he sees his advantage. I shall write,\nhe says, to himself, in a manner beautiful, exact, and yet not easily\nunderstood; so I shall throw off the intellectual coquettes and secure\nmy audience of artists, for my style is beautiful; an audience of\ncritics, for my style is exact; an audience of patient, resolute,\nconscientious intellects, for my style is difficult. This, perhaps, was\nthe conscious practice of Nietzsche. But he did not foresee that, for\nthe benefit of the intellectual coquettes, who must have hold of new\nthoughts by one end or another, a host of popularizers would be born;\nhe did not reckon with the Nietzscheans!\n\n\n21\n\n_Popularity_\n\nHow amazingly popular he is. Even the man in the street reads him. Yes;\nbut it is because he has first read the man in the street.\n\n\n22\n\n_Middle Age's Betrayals_\n\nIt is not easy to tell by a glance what is the character of a young\nman; his soul has not yet etched itself clearly enough upon his\nbody. But one may read a middle-aged man's soul with perfect ease;\nand not only his soul but his history. For when a man has passed\nfive-and-forty, he looks--not what he is, perhaps--but certainly what\nhe has been. If he has been invariably respectable, he is now the very\npicture of respectability. If he has been a man about town or a secret\ntoper, the fact is blazoned so clearly on his face that even a child\ncan read it. If he has studied, his very walk, to use a phrase of\nNietzsche's, is learned. As for the poet, we know how terribly poetical\nhe looks in middle age--poor devil! Well, to every one of you, I say,\nBeware!\n\n\n23\n\n_The Novelists and the Artist_\n\nIs it the modern novelists who are to be blamed for the degraded\nimage of the artist which lives in the minds of the cultured\npopulace? Turgenieff in \"On the Eve,\" and Henry James in \"Roderick\nHudson\" display the artist simply as a picturesque waster, an oh so\ncharming, impulsive, childlike, na\u00efve waster. But, in doing so, they\nsurely confused the artist with the man of artistic temperament.\nOf the artistic temperament, however, the great artists had very\noften little or nothing--far less, certainly, than either Shubin or\nRoderick. The great examples of last century, the Goethes, Ibsens,\nand Nietzsches, knew that there were qualities more essential to them\nthan temperament; discipline, for instance, perseverance, truth to\nthemselves, self-control. How is it possible, indeed, without these\nvirtues--virtues of the most difficult and heroic kind--for the\nartist to bring his gifts to maturity, to become great? His discipline\nto beauty must be as severe as the discipline of the saint to holiness.\nAnd, then, how has his sensuousness been misconstrued and vulgarized;\nand treated precisely, indeed, as if it were the licentiousness of a\npresent-day Tom Jones! That artists can be thought about in such a way\nproves only one thing, namely, in what poor esteem they are now held.\nWe need a new ideal of the artist; or, failing that, an old one, that\nof Plato, perhaps, or of Leonardo, or of Nietzsche.\n\n\n24\n\n_Decadence and Health_\n\nIt is in the decadent periods that the most triumphantly healthy\nmen--one or two--appear. The corrupt Italy of the Renaissance gave\nbirth to Leonardo; the Europe of Gautier, Baudelaire and Wilde\nproduced Nietzsche. In decadent eras both disease and health become\nmore self-conscious; they are cultivated, enhanced and refined. It\nhas been said that the best way to remain healthy is not to think\nof health. But lack of self-consciousness speaks here. Perhaps the\nMiddle Ages were as diseased as our own--only they did not know it! Is\ndecadence nothing more than the symptom of a self-conscious age? And\nis \"objectivity\" the antidote? Well, we might believe this if we could\nrenounce our faith that mankind will yet become healthy--if we could\nbecome optimists in the present-day sense!\n\n\n25\n\n_Art in Modern Society_\n\nAn object of beauty has in modern surroundings a dangerous seduction\nwhich it did not possess in less hideous eras. In this is there to be\nfound a contributory explanation of Decadence--the decadent being one\nwho feels the power of beauty intensely, and the repulsion from his\nenvironment as intensely, and who plunges into the enjoyment of beauty\nmadly, with abandonment? In a society, however, which was not hideous\nas ours is, and in which beauty was distributed widely over all the\naspects and forms of existence, the intoxication of beauty would not\nbe felt with the same terrible intensity; a beautiful object would be\nenjoyed simply as one among many lovely things. In short, it would be\nenjoyed in the manner of health, not in that of sickness. It is the\n_contrast_ that is dangerous; the aridity of modern life arouses a\nterrible thirst, which is suddenly presented with the spectacle of a\nbeauty unaccountable and awful; and this produces a dislocation and\nconvulsion of the very soul. So that the present-day artist, if he\nwould retain his health--if he would remain an artist--must curb his\nvery love of the beautiful, and treat beauty, when he meets it, as he\nalways does, in the gutter, a little cynically. Otherwise he will lose\nhis wits, and Art will become his Circe. Therefore, mockery and hard\nlaughter--alas, that it _must_ be so!\n\n\n26\n\n_Art in Industry_\n\nIn those wildernesses of dirt, ugliness and obscenity, our industrial\ntowns, there are usually art galleries, where the daintiest and most\nbeautiful things, the flowers of Greek statuary, for instance, bloom\namong the grime like a band of gods imprisoned in a slum. The spectacle\nof art in such surroundings sometimes strikes us as being at once\nludicrous and pathetic, like something delicate and lovely sprawling in\nthe gutter, or an angel with a dirty face.\n\n\n27\n\n_Conventions_\n\nThe revolt against conventions in art, thought, life and manners may\nbe due to at least more than one cause. It is usually ascribed to\n\"vitality\" which \"breaks through\" forms, because it desires to be\n\"free.\" But common sense tells us that more than two or three of our\nfriends abjure convention for an altogether different reason--to be\ncandid, on account of a _lack_ of vitality resulting in laziness and\nthe inability to endure restraint of any kind. And, for the others,\nwe shall judge their \"vitality\" to be justified when they build new\nconventions worthy of observance, instead of running their heads\nfinally into illimitable space. Or does their strength not go just so\nfar? There is something suspicious about this vitality which cannot\ncreate: it resembles impotence so much! Heaven preserve the moderns\nfrom their \"vitality\"!\n\n\n28\n\n_\"Vitality\"_\n\nWhen moderns talk of the \"vitality\" of their most lauded writer,\nwhat they mean is finally the size of his muscles, physical energy,\nor, at the most, strong emotions; not vigour of mind. Well, let us\non no account make the opposite mistake and revile the large muscle\nand energetic feelings: they are admirable things. Let us point out,\nhowever, that vitality of emotion undisciplined by vitality of thought\nleads nowhere, is often disruptive and cannot build. But to build is\nour highest duty and our peculiar form of freedom--we who have realized\nthat there is no freedom without power. As for the old freedom--it is\nonly the slaves who are not already tired of it.\n\n\n29\n\n_Decadence_\n\nThe decisive thing, determining whether an artist shall be major or\nminor, is very often not artistic at all, but moral. Yes, though it\nshock our modern ears, let this be proclaimed! The more \"temperament\"\nan artist has, the more character he requires to govern it, to make\nit fruitful for him, if he would not have it get beyond control,\nand wreck both him and itself. And, consequently, the great artists\nshow, as a rule, less \"temperament\" than the minor; they appear more\nself-contained and less \"artistic.\" Indeed, they smile with the hint of\nirony at the merely \"artistic.\"\n\nIt is, perhaps, when the traditions of artistic morality and discipline\nhave broken down, when the \"temperament\" has, therefore, become\nunfettered and lawless, that decadence in art is born. The sincerity of\nthe artist, his chief virtue, is gone--the sincerity which commands him\nto create only under the pressure of an artistic necessity, which tells\nhim, in other words, to produce nothing which is not genuine. Without\nsincerity, severity and patience, nothing great in art can be created.\nAnd it is precisely in these virtues that the decadent is lacking. A\nlove of beauty is his only credential as an artist, but, undisciplined,\nit degenerates very soon into a love of mere effect. An effect of\nbeauty at all costs, whether it be the true beauty or not! That becomes\nhis object. Without a root in any soil, he aspires to the condition of\nthe water lily, and, in due time, becomes a full-blown \u00e6sthete. Is it\nbecause he is incapable of becoming anything else? Has he in despair\ngrown \"artistic\" simply because he is not an artist? Is Decadence the\nmost subtle disguise of impotence? And are decadents those who, if they\nhad submitted to an artistic discipline of sincerity, would never have\nwritten at all? Of some of them this is true, but of others it is not;\nand in that lies the tragedy of Decadence. Wilde himself was, perhaps,\na decadent by misadventure; for on occasion he could rise above\ndecadence into sincerity. \"The Ballad of Reading Gaol\" proves that. He\nwas the victim of a bad \u00e6sthetic morality, to which, it is true, he\nhad a predisposition. And if this is true of him, it is true, also,\nof his followers. A baleful artistic ethic still rules, demoralizing\nthe young artist at the moment when he should be disciplining himself;\nand turning, perhaps, some one with the potentiality of greatness into\na minor artist. By neglecting the harder virtues, the decadents have\nmade minor art inevitable and great art almost impossible.\n\nThe old tradition of artistic discipline must be regained, then, or a\nnew and even more severe tradition inaugurated. A text-book of morality\nfor artists is now overdue. When it has been written, and the new\ndiscipline has been hailed and submitted to by the artists, who can say\nif greatness may not again be possible?\n\n\n30\n\n_Decadence Again_\n\nHow is the dissolution of the tradition of artistic discipline to\nbe explained? To what cause is it to be traced? Perhaps to the more\ngeneral dissolution of tradition which has taken place in modern\ntimes. When theological dogmas and moral values are thrown into the\nmelting-pot, and the discipline of centuries is dissolved into anarchy,\nit is natural that artistic traditions should perish along with them.\nDecadence follows free-thought: it appears at the time when the old\nvalues lie deliquescent and the new values have not yet risen, the\ndry land has not yet appeared. But this does not happen always: the\nold traditions of morality, theology, politics and industry are\noverthrown, the beginnings of a new tradition appear tentatively,\neverything fixed has vanished, the wildest hopes and the most chilling\ndespair are the common possession of one and the same generation--but,\nthroughout, the artistic tradition is held securely and confidently,\nit remains the one thing fixed in a world of dissolution. Then an art\narises greater even than that of the eras of tradition. The pathos of\nthe dying and the inexpressible hope of the newly born find expression\nside by side; all chains are broken, and the world appears suddenly to\nbe immeasurable. Is this what happened at the Renaissance?\n\n\n31\n\n_Wilde_\n\nThe refined degeneracy of Oscar Wilde might be explained on the\nassumption that he was at once over--and under--civilized: he had\nacquired all the exquisite and superfluous without the necessary\nvirtues. These \"exquisite\" virtues are unfortunately dangerous to all\nbut those who have become masters of the essential ones; they are\nqualities of the body more than of the mind; they are developments\nand embellishments of the shell of man. In acquiring them, Wilde\nministered to his body merely, and, as a consequence, it became more\nand more powerful and subtle--far more powerful and subtle than his\nmind. Eventually this body--senses, passions and appetite--actually\nbecame the intellectual principle in him, of which his mind was merely\na drugged and stupefied slave!\n\n\n32\n\n_Wilde and the Sensualists_\n\nThe so-called Paganism of our time, the movement towards sensualism\nof the followers of Wilde, is not an attempt, however absurd, to\nsupersede Christianity; nor is it even in essence anti-Christian. At\nthe most it is a reaction--not a step beyond current religion into a\nnew world of the spirit, but a changing from one foot to the other, a\nreliance on the senses for a little, so that the over-laboured soul\nmay rest. And there is still much of Christianity in this modern\nPaganism. Its devotees are too deeply corrupted to be capable either of\npure sensuousness or of pure spirituality. They speak of Christ like\nvoluptuaries, and of Eros like penitents. But it is impossible now to\nbecome a Pagan: one must remember Ibsen's Julian and take warning. Two\nthousand years of \"bad conscience,\" of Christian self-probing, with its\ndeepening of the soul, cannot be disavowed, forgotten, unlived. For\nPaganism a simpler spirit, mind and sensuousness are required than we\ncan reproduce. We cannot feel, we cannot think, above all, we cannot\nfeel without thinking of our feelings, as the Pagans did. Our modern\ndesire to take out our soul and look at it separates us from the na\u00efve\nclassic sensuousness.\n\nWhat, then, does modern sensualism mean? What satisfaction does it\nbring to those, by no means few in number, its \"followers\"? A respite,\nan escapade, a holiday from Christianity, from the inevitable. For\nChristianity is assumed by them to be the inevitable, and it fills\nthem with the loathing which is evoked by the enforced contemplation\nof things tyrannical and permanent. To escape from it they plunge\nmadly into sensuality as into a sea of redemption. But the disgust\nwhich drives them there will eventually drive them forth again--into\nasceticism and the denial of the senses. Christianity will then\nappear stronger than ever, having been purged of its \"uncleanness.\"\nYes, the sensualists of our time are the best unconscious friends\nof Christianity, its \"saviours,\" who have taken its sins upon their\nshoulders.\n\nThere still remain the few who do not assume Christianity to be\ninevitable, who desire, no matter how hopeless the fight may seem, to\nsurmount it, and who see that men have played too long the game of\nreaction. \"To cure the senses by the soul and the soul by the senses\"\nseems to them a creed for invalids. And, therefore, that against\nwhich, above all, they guard, is a mere relapse into sensualism. Not\nby fleeing from Christianity do they hope to reach their goal; but\nby understanding it, perhaps by \"seeing through\" it, certainly by\nbenefiting in so far as they can by it, and, finally, emancipating\nthemselves from it. They know that the soil no longer exists out\nof which grew the flower of Paganism, and that they must pass\nthrough Christianity if they would reach a new sensuality and a new\nspirituality. But their motto is, Spirituality first, and, after that,\nonly as much sensuality as our spirituality can govern! They hold that\nas men become more spiritual they may safely become more sensual; but\nthat, to the man without spirit, sensuality and asceticism are alike\nan indulgence and a curse. That the spirit should rule--such is their\ndesire; but it must rule as a constitutional governor, not as an\narbitrary tyrant. For the senses, too, as Heine said, have their rights.\n\n\n33\n\n_Arnold Going Down the Hill_\n\nOne section of the realist school--that represented by Bennett and\nJohn Galsworthy--may be described as a reaction from asceticism.\nMen had become tired of experiencing Life only in its selected and\ncostly \"sensations,\" and sought an escape from \"sensations,\" sought\nthe ordinary. But another section of the school--George Moore, for\nexample--was merely a bad translation of \u00e6stheticism. Equally tired of\nthe exquisite, already having sampled all that luxury in \"sensation\"\ncould provide, the artists now sought _new \"sensations\"_--and nothing\nelse--in the squalid. It was the _r\u00f4le_ of the \u00e6sthetes to go downhill\ngracefully, but when they turned realists they ceased even to do that.\nThey went downhill _sans_ art. Yet, in doing so, did they not rob\n\u00e6stheticism of its seductiveness? And should we not, therefore, feel\ngrateful to them? Alas, no; for to the taste of this age, grace and\nart have little fascination: it is the heavy, unlovely and sordid that\nseduces. To disfigure \u00e6stheticism was to popularize it. And now the\nvery man in the street is--artistically speaking--corrupted: a calamity\nsecond in importance only to the corruption of the artists and thinkers.\n\n\n34\n\n_Pater and the \u00c6sthetes_\n\nHow much of Walter Pater's exclusiveness and reclusiveness was a\nrevulsion from the ugliness of his time--an ugliness which he was\nnot strong enough to contemplate, far less to fight--it is hard to\nsay. Perhaps his phase of the Decadence may be defined as largely a\nreaction against industrialism, just as that of Wilde may be defined\nas largely a reaction against Christianity: but, in the former case as\nin the latter, that against which the reaction was made was assumed\nto be permanent. Indeed, by escaping from industrialism instead of\nfighting it, Pater and his followers made its persistence only a\nlittle more secure. It is true, there are excuses enough to palliate\ntheir weakness: the delicateness of their own nerves and senses,\nmaking them peculiarly liable to suffering, the ugliness and apparent\ninvulnerability of industrialism, the beauty and repose of the world of\nart wherein they might take refuge and be happy. Art as forgetfulness,\nart as Lethe, the seduction of that cry was strong! But to yield to it\nwas none the less unforgivable: it was an act traitorous not only to\nsociety but to art itself. For what was the confession underlying it?\nThat the society of today and of tomorrow is, and _must be,_ barren;\nthat no great art can hereafter be produced; that there is nothing left\nbut to enjoy what has been accomplished! Against that presumption, not\nthe Philistines but the great artists will cry as the last word of\nNihilism.\n\nPater's creed marks, therefore, a degradation of the conception of art.\nArt as something exclusive, fragile and a little odd, the occupation\nof a few \u00e6sthetic eccentrics--this is the most pitiable caricature! To\nmake themselves understood by one another, this little clique invented\na jargon of their own; in this jargon Pater's books are written, and\nnot only his, but those of his followers to this day. It is a style\nlacking, above all, in good taste; it very easily drops into absurdity;\nindeed, it is always on the verge of absurdity. It has no masculinity,\nno hardness; and it is meant to be read by people a little insincerely\n\"\u00e6sthetic,\" who are conscious that they are open to ridicule, and who\nare accordingly indulgent to the ridiculous; the Fabians of art. To\nadmire Pater's style, it is necessary first to put oneself into the\nproper attitude.\n\n\n35\n\n_Creator and \u00c6sthete_\n\nThe true creators and the mere \u00e6sthetes agree in this, that they are\nnot realists. Neither of them copies existence in its external details:\nwherein do they differ? In that the creators write of certain realities\nbehind life, and the \u00e6sthetes--of the words standing for these\nrealities.\n\n\n36\n\n_Hypocrisy of Words_\n\nThe \u00e6sthetes, and Pater and Wilde in particular, made a cult of the\nuse of decorative words. They demanded, not that a word should be\n_true,_ nor even that it should be true and pretty at the same time,\nbut simply that it should be pretty. It cannot be denied that writers\nhere and there before them had been guilty of using a fine word where\na common one was most honest; but this had been generally regarded as\na forgiveable, \"artistic\" weakness. Wilde and his followers, however,\nchose \"exquisite\" words systematically, in conformity to an artistic\ndogma, and held that literature consisted in doing nothing else. And\nthat was dangerous; for truth was thereby banished from the realm of\ndiction and a hypocrisy of words arose. In short, language no longer\ngrasped at realities, and literature ceased to express any thing at\nall, except a writer's taste in words.\n\n\n37\n\n_The Average Man_\n\nIn this welter of dissolving values, the intellectuals of our time find\nthemselves struggling, and liable at any moment to be engulfed. A few\nof them, however, have snatched at something which, in the prevailing\ndeliquescence, appears to be solid--the average man. Encamped upon him,\nthey have won back sanity and happiness. But their act is nevertheless\nsimply a reaction; here the real problem has not yet been faced! What\nis it that makes the average man more sane and happy than the modern\nman? The possession of dogmas, says G. K. Chesterton; let us therefore\nhave dogmas! But, alas, for them he goes back and not forward. And not\nonly back, but back to the very dogmas against which modern thought,\nand Decadence with it, are a reaction, nay, the _inevitable_ reaction.\nWhat! has Mr. Chesterton, then, postponed the solution of the problem?\nAnd on the heels of his remedy does there tread the old disease over\nagain? Perhaps it is so. The acceptance of the old dogmas will be\nfollowed by a new reaction from them, a new disintegration of values\ntherefore, and a new Decadence. The hands of the clock can be put back,\nit is true; but they will eventually reach the time when the hour shall\nstrike _again_ for the solution of the modern problem.\n\nAnd that is the criticism which modern men must pass upon Mr.\nChesterton; that he interposed in the course of their malady to bring\nrelief with a remedy which was not a remedy. The modern problem should\nhave been worked out to a new solution, to its own solution. Instead\nof going back to the old dogmas, we should have strained on towards the\nnew. And if, in this generation, the new dogmas are still out of sight,\nif we have meantime to live our lives without peace or stability, does\nit matter so very much? To do so is, perhaps, our allotted task. And as\nsacrifices to the future we justify our very fruitlessness, our very\nmodernity!\n\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nORIGINAL SIN\n\n\n38\n\n_Original Sin_\n\nOriginal Sin and the Future are essentially irreconcilable conceptions.\nThe believer in the future looks upon humanity as plastic: the good\nand the bad in man are not fixed quantities, always, in every age,\npast and future, to be found in the same proportions: an \"elevation of\nthe type man\" is, therefore, possible. But the believer in Original\nSin regards mankind as that in which--the less said about the good,\nthe better--there is, at any rate, a fixed substratum of the bad.\nAnd _that_ can never be lessened, never weakened, never conquered.\nTherefore, man has to fight constantly to escape the menace of an\never-present defeat. A battle in which victory is impossible; a contest\nin which man has to climb continually in order not to fall lower;\nexistence as the tread mill: that is what is meant by Original Sin.\n\nAnd as such it is the great enemy of the Future, the believers in which\nhold that there is not this metaphysical drag. But it is more. At\nall things aspiring it sets the tongue in the cheek, gladly provides\na caricature for them, and becomes their Sancho Panza. To the great\nman it says, through the mouths of its chosen apostles, the average\nmen, \"What matter how high you climb! This load which you carry even\nas we will bring you back to us at last. And the higher you climb the\ngreater will be your fall. Humanity cannot rise above its own level.\"\nAnd therefore, humility, equality, radicalism, comradeship in sin--the\nideas of Christianity!\n\n\n39\n\n_Again_\n\nDistrust of the future springs from the same root as distrust of great\nmen. It derives from the belief in the average man, which derives from\nthe belief in Original Sin. The egalitarian sentiment strives always\nto become unconditional. It claims not only that all men are equal,\nbut that the men who live now are no more than the equals of those who\nlived one, or five, thousand years ago, and no less than the equals\nof those who will live in another one, or five, thousand years. And\nit desires that this should be so: its jealousy embraces not only the\nliving, but the dead and the unborn.\n\n\n40\n\n_Again_\n\nSociety is a conspiracy, said Emerson, against the great man. And to\nblast him utterly in the centre of his being, it invented Original Sin.\nIs Original Sin, then, a theological dogma or a political device?\n\n\n41\n\n_Equality_\n\nIs equality, in truth, a generous dogma? Does it express, as every one\nassumes, the solidarity of men in their higher attributes? It is time\nto question this, and to ask if inequality be not the more noble and\ngenerous belief. For, surely, it is in their nobler qualities that men\nare most unequal. It was not in his genius that Shakespeare was only\nthe equal, for instance, of his commentators; it was in the groundwork\nof his nature, in those feelings and desires without which he would not\nhave been a man at all, in the things which made him human, but which\ndid not make him Shakespeare: in a word, in that which is for us of no\nsignificance. Equality in the common part of man's nature, equality\nin sin, equality before God--it is the same thing--that is the only\nequality which can be admitted. And if its admission is insisted upon\nby apologists for Christianity, that is because to the common part of\nman's nature they give so much importance, because they are believers\nin Original Sin. In their equality there is accordingly more malice\nthan generosity. The belief that no one is other than themselves, the\nwill that no one shall be other than themselves--there is nothing\ngenerous in that belief and that will. For man, according to them, is\nguilty from the womb. And what, then, is equality but the infinitely\nconsoling consciousness of tainted creatures that every one on this\nearth is tainted?\n\nThe believer in Original Sin will, of course, deny this, and say that\nin his philosophy men are equals also in their higher _r\u00f4le_ as \"sons\nof God.\" But is this so? Is salvation, like sin, common to all men?\nIs it not, on the contrary, something _conferred_ as the reward of\na belief and a choice--a belief and a choice which an Atheist, for\ninstance, simply cannot embrace? So that here, touching the highest\npart of men, their soul, there is introduced, by Christianity itself, a\ndistinction, an inequality--the distinction, the inequality between the\n\"saved\" and the \"lost.\" Men are equal inasmuch as they are all damned,\nbut they are not equal inasmuch as they are not all redeemed.\n\nGazing at man, however, no longer through the eyes of the serpent,\nshall we not be bound to find, if we look _high_ enough, distinction,\nsuperiority, inferiority, valuation? The dogma of equality is itself\na device to evade valuation. For valuation is difficult, and demands\ngenerosity for its exercise. To recognize that one is greater than\nyou, and cheerfully to acknowledge it; to see that another is less\nthan you, and to treat the inferiority as a trifling thing, that is\ndifficult, that requires generosity. But one who believes in inequality\nwill always be looking for greatness in others; his eye, habituated\nto the contemplation of lofty things, will become subtle in the\ndetection of concealed nobility; while to the ignoble he will give only\na glance--and is it not good, where one may not help, to pass on the\nother side? The egalitarians will cry that it is ungenerous to believe\nthat some men are vile; but it is a strange generosity which would\npersuade us with them that all men are vile. Let us be frank. To those\nwho believe in the future, inequality is a holy thing; their pledge\nthat greatness shall not disappear from the earth; the rainbow assuring\nthem that Man shall not go down beneath the vast tide of mankind. All\ngreat men are to them at once forerunners and sacrifices; the imperfect\nforms which the Future has shattered in trying to incarnate itself; the\nsublime ruins of _future_ greatness.\n\n\n42\n\n_If Men Were Equal_\n\nIf men had been equal at the beginning, they would never have risen\nabove the savage. For in absolute equality even the concept of\ngreatness could not have come into being. Inequality is the source of\nall advancement.\n\n\n43\n\n_The Fall of Man_\n\nIn very early times men must have had a deep sense of the tragicality\nof existence: life was then so full of pain; death, as a rule, so\nsudden and unforeseen, and the world generally so beset with terrors.\nThe few who were fortunate enough to escape violent death had yet to\ntoil incessantly to retain a footing on this unkind star. Life would,\naccordingly, appear to them in the most sombre tones and colours. And\nit was to explain this human misfortune, and not sin at all, that the\nwhole fable of Adam and Eve and the Fall was invented. The doctrine\nof Original Sin was simply an interpretation which was afterwards\nread into the story, an interpretation, perhaps, as arbitrary as the\northodox interpretation of the Song of Songs.\n\nHow would the fable arise? Well, a primitive poet one day in a fit\nof melancholy made the whole thing up. Out of his misery his desires\ncreated for him an imaginary state, its opposite, the Garden of Eden.\nBut this state being created, the problem arose, How did Man fall from\nit? And the Tree was brought in. But to the na\u00efve, untheological poet,\nthis tree had nothing to do with metaphysics or with sin, the child of\nmetaphysics. It was simply a magical tree, and if Man ate of the fruit\nof it, something terrible would happen to him. The Fall of Man was a\n_mystery_ to the poet, which he did not rationalize or theologize.\nWell, Man succumbed to curiosity, and pain and misfortune befell the\nhuman race. But we must not assume in the modern manner that with the\neating of the fruit early man associated any idea of guilt. Rather the\ncontrary; he regarded the act simply as unfortunate, just as at the\npresent day we regard as unfortunate the foolish princess in some fairy\ntale. So the Fall was not to him a crime, branding all mankind with a\nmetaphysical stigma.\n\nThat conception came much later, when the conscience had become deeper,\nmore subtle and more neurotic; when individualism had been introduced\ninto morality. And at that time, too, the ideal of the Redeemer became\nvitiated. Early man, if he did envisage a Redeemer, envisaged him as\none who would set him back in the Garden of Eden again, in the literal,\nterrestrial Garden of Eden, be it understood: theology had not yet\nbeen etherealized. And this Redeemer would redeem _all_ men: the\ndistinction of the individual came afterwards. It was not until later,\ntoo, that this ideal was \"interpreted,\" and, as a concession to the\nconscience, salvation was made a conditional thing: the reward of those\nwho were successful in a competition in credulity, in which the first\nprize went to the most simple, most stupid. The \"guilt\" now implicated\nin the Fall was not purged away from all men by the Redeemer, but\nonly from such as would \"accept\" it. And, lastly, with the passing of\nJesus, the redemption was still further de-actualized. It was found\nthat acceptance of the Redeemer did _not_ reinstate Man in an earthly\nGarden: paradise was, therefore, drawn on the invisible wires of\ntheology into the inaccessible heavens. Salvation lay at the other side\nof the grave, and there it was safe from assault.\n\nNevertheless, what our primitive poet meant by the Fall and the\nRedemption was probably something entirely different. The Fall to him\nwas the fall into misfortune, not into sin: the Redemption to him was\nthe redemption from misfortune, not from sin. And his Redeemer would\nbe, therefore--whom? Perhaps it is impossible for us to imagine the\nnature of such a being.\n\nThis is not an interpretation, but an attempted explanation of the\nstory of the Fall.\n\n\n44\n\n_Interpretations_\n\nHow inexhaustible is myth! In the story of the Fall is a meaning for\nevery age and every creed. The interpretation called Original Sin is\nonly one of a thousand, and not the greatest of them. Let us dip our\nbucket into the well.\n\nThe tree of the knowledge of good and evil--that was the tree of\nmorality! And morality was then the original sin? And through _it_ Man\nlost his innocence? The antithesis of morality and innocence is as old\nas the world. And if we are to capture innocence again, if the world is\nto become \u00e6sthetically acceptable to us, we must dispense more and more\nwith morality and limit its domain. This, one desperate glance into the\ndepths of the myth tells us. Instinct is upheld in it against isolated\nreason and exterior law. Detached, \"abstract\" Reason brought sin into\nthe world, but Instinct, which is fundamentally Love, Creation, Will to\nPower, is forever innocent, beyond good and evil. It was when Reason,\nno longer the sagacity of Instinct, no longer the eyes of Love, became\nits opponent and oppressor, that morality arose and Man fell.\n\nOr to take another guess, granted we read Original Sin in the Fall,\nmust we not read there, also, the way to get rid of it? If by Original\nSin Man fell, then by renouncing it let him arise again. But how\nrenounce it? What! Cannot Man renounce a metaphor?\n\nYet how powerful is metaphor! Man is ruled by metaphor. The gods\nwere nothing but that, some sublime, some terrible, some lovely, all\nmetaphors, Jehovah, Moloch, Apollo, Eros. Life is now stained through\nand through with metaphor. And there are further transfigurations still\npossible! Yet we would not destroy the beauty already starring Life's\nskies, the lovely hues lent by Aphrodite, and Artemis, and Dionysos, or\nthe sublime colours of Jehovah and Thor. But the heavy disfiguring blot\ntarnishing all, Love, Innocence, Ecstasy, Wrath, that we would rather\naltogether extirpate and annul. Original Sin we would cut off as a\ndisfigurement and disease of Life.\n\nOr, again, may not the myth be an attempt to glorify Man and to clothe\nhim with a sad splendour. And not Original Sin, but Original Innocence\nis the true reading of the fable? Its _raison d'\u00eatre_ is the Garden of\nEden, not the Fall? To glorify Humanity at its source it set there a\nSuperman. The fall from innocence--that was the fall from the Superman\ninto Man. And how, then, is Man to be redeemed? By the return of the\nSuperman! Let that be our reading of the myth!\n\n\n45\n\n_The Use of Myth_\n\nIn the early world myth was used to dignify Man by idealizing his\norigin. Henceforward it must be used to dignify him by idealizing his\ngoal. _That_ is the task of the poets and artists.\n\n\n46\n\n_Before the Fall_\n\nInnocence is the morality of the instincts. Original Sin--that was war\nupon the instincts, morality become abstract, separate, self-centred,\naccusing and tyrannical. This self-consciousness of morality, this\ndisruption in the nature of Man, was the Fall.\n\n\n47\n\n_Beyond Original Sin_\n\nHow far is Man still from his goal? How sexual, foul in word and\nthought, naively hedonistic! How little of spirit is in him! How\nclumsily his mind struggles in the darkness! How far he is still from\nhis goal!--This is a cry which the believer in Original Sin cannot\nunderstand, because he accepts all this imperfection as inevitable, as\nthe baleful heritage of Man, from which he cannot escape.\n\nThe feeling of pure joy in life, the feeling that Life is a\nsacrament--that also is forever denied to the believer in Original Sin.\nFor Life is not a sacrament to him, but a sin of which joy itself is\nonly an aggravation.\n\n\n48\n\n_The Eternal Bluestocking_\n\nThe bluestocking is as old as mankind. Her original was Eve, the first\ndabbler in moral philosophy.\n\n\n49\n\n_The Sin of Intellectualism_\n\nThe first sin, the original sin was that of the intellectuals. The\nknowledge of Good and Evil was not an instantaneous \"illumination\"; it\nwas the result of long experiment and analysis: the apple took perhaps\nhundreds of years to eat! Before that, in the happy day of innocence,\nGood and Evil were not, for instinct and morality were one and not\ntwain. As time passed, however, the physically lazy, who had been\nfrom the beginning, became weaker and wiser. Enforced contemplation,\nthe contemplation of those who were not strong enough to hunt or to\nlabour, made them more subtle than their simple brethren; they formed\nthemselves into a priesthood, and created a theology. In these priests\ninstinct was not strong: they were invalids with powerful reason.\nBut they had the lust for power; they wished to conquer by means of\ntheir reason; therefore, they said to themselves, belittle instinct,\ntyrannize over instinct, discover an absolute \"good\" and an absolute\n\"evil,\" become moral. Morality, which had in the days of innocence been\nunconscious, the harmony of the instincts, was now given a separate\nexistence. The cry was morality against the instincts. Thus triumphed\nthe priests, the intellectuals, by means of their reason. Original Sin\nwas their sin--the result of the analysis by which they had separated\nmorality and the instincts. If we are to speak of Original Sin at all,\nlet it be in this manner.\n\n\n50\n\n_Once More_\n\nThe belief in Original Sin--that was itself Man's original sin.\n\n\n51\n\n_Apropos Gautier_\n\nHe had just read \"Mlle. de Maupin,\" \"What seduction there is still for\nMan in the senses!\" he exclaimed. \"How much more of an animal than a\nspirit he must be to be charmed and enslaved by this book!\" Yet, what\nground had he to conclude that because the sensual intoxicates Man,\ntherefore Man is more sensual than spiritual? For we are most fatally\nattracted by what is most alien to us.\n\n\n52\n\n_Psychology of the Humble_\n\nThere is something very na\u00efve in those who speak of humility as a\ncertain good and of pride as a proven evil. In the first place these\nare not opposites at all; there are a hundred kinds of both, and\nhumility is sometimes simply a refined form of pride. Humility may be\nprudence, or good taste, or timidity, or a concealment, or a sermon, or\na snub. How much of it, for instance, is simple prudence? Is not this,\nindeed, its chief _utility,_ that it saves men from the dangers which\naccompany pride? On the day on which some one discovered that \"Pride\ngoeth before a fall,\" humility became no mean virtue. For if one become\nthe servant and proclaim himself the least of all, how can he still\nfall? Yet if he does it is a fall into greater humility, and his virtue\nonly shows the brighter. This is the sagacity of the humble, that they\nturn even ignominy to their glorification.\n\nHumility is most commonly used with a different meaning, however. There\nare people who wish to be anonymous and uniform, and people who desire\nto be personal and distinct. Or, more exactly, it is their instincts\nthat seek these ends. The first are humble in the fundamental sense\nthat they are instinctively so; the latter are proud in the same sense.\nHumility, then, is the desire to be as others are and to escape notice;\nand this desire can only be realized in conformity. It is true, people\nbecome conceited after a while about their very conformity, and would\nbe wounded in their vanity if they failed to comply with fashion; but\nvanity and humility are not incompatible.\n\nPride, however, is something much more subtle. The na\u00efve, unconditional\ncontemners of pride, who plead with men to cast it out, have certainly\nno idea what would happen if they were obeyed. For pride is the\ncondition of all fruitful action. This thought must be consciously or\nsubconsciously present in the doer, What I do is of value! I am capable\nof doing a thing which is worth doing! The Christian, it is true, still\nacts, though he is convinced that all action is sinful and of little\nworth. But it is only his mind that is convinced: his instincts are by\nno means persuaded of the truth of this! For though in the conscious\nthere may be self-doubt, in the unconscious there _must_ be pride,\nor actions would not be performed at all. Moreover, in all those\nqualities which are personal and not common--in personality--pride is\nan essential ingredient. The pronoun \"I\" is itself an affirmation of\npride. The feeling, This is myself, this quality is _my_ quality, by\npossessing it I am different from you, these things constitute _my_\npersonality and _are_ me: what a na\u00efve assumption of the valuableness\nof these qualities do we have there, how much pride is there in that\nunconscious confession! And without this instinctive pride, these\nqualities, personality could never have been possible. In the heart of\nall distinct, valuable and heroic things, pride lies coiled. Yes, even\nin the heart of humility, of the most refined, spiritual humility. For\nsuch humility is _not_ a conformity; it separates and individualizes\nits possessor as effectually as pride could; it takes its own path and\nnot that of the crowd; and so its source must be in an inward sense of\nworth, of independence: it is a form of pride. But pride is so closely\nwoven into life that to wound it is to wound life; to abolish it, if\nthat were possible, would be to abolish life. Well do its subtler\ndefamers know that! And when they shoot their arrows at pride, it is\nLife they hope to hit.\n\n\n53\n\n_Les Humbles_\n\nHumility is the chief virtue, said a humble man. Then are you the\nvainest man, said his friend, for you are renowned for your humility.\nGood taste demands from writers who praise humility a little\naggressiveness and dogmatism, lest they be taken for humble, and,\ntherefore, proud. On the other hand, if humility is the chief virtue,\nit is immoral not to practise it. And, therefore, one should praise\nhumility, and practise it? Or praise it and not practise it? Or not\npraise it and practise it? There is contradiction in every course. That\nis the worst of believing in paradoxical virtues!\n\n\n54\n\n_Against the Ostentatiously Humble_\n\nHe who is truly humble conceals even his humility.\n\n\n55\n\n_The Pessimists_\n\nIn pessimistic valuations of Life, the alternative contemplated is\ngenerally not between Life and Death, but between different types of\nLife. The real goal of Schopenhauerism is not the extinction of life,\nfor death is a perfectly normal aspect of existence, and Life would\nnot be denied even if death became universal. In order to deny Life\nand to triumph over it, the pessimist must continue at least to exist,\nin a sort of death in life: he must be dead, but he must also know it.\nThat is the goal of Schopenhauerism; perhaps not so difficult, perhaps\nfrequently attained! \"They have not enough life even to die,\" said\nNietzsche.\n\n\n56\n\n_Sickness and Health_\n\nSome men have such unconquerable faith in Life that they defy their\nvery maladies, creating out of them forms of ecstasy: that is their way\nof triumphing over them. Perhaps some poetry, certainly not a little\nreligion has sprung from this. In religions defaming the senses and\nenjoining asceticism, or, in other words, a lowering of vitality, the\nchronic sufferers _affirm_ Life in their own way; for sickness _is_\ntheir life: their praise of sickness is their praise of Life. And if\nthey sometimes morbidly invite death, that is because death is nothing\nbut another form of experience, of Life. To the sick, if they are to\nretain self-respect and pride, these doctrines are perhaps the best\npossible; it is only to the healthy that they are noxious. For the\nhealthy who are converted by them, become sick through them, yet not\nso sick as to find comfort in them. The aspiration after an ascetic\nlife contends in these men with their old health, their desire to live\nfully, and causes untold perplexities and conflicts; leaving them at\nlast with nothing but a despairing desire for release. Thus, a religion\nof consolation becomes for the strong a Will to Death--the very\nopposite of that which it was to those who created it.\n\n\n57\n\n_The Pride of the Sterile_\n\nEcclesiastical, ceremonious humility is the pride of those who cannot\ncreate or initiate, either because they are sterile, or because the\nobstacles in their way are too great. Their pride is centred, not on\nwhat they can do, but on what they can endure. The anchorite goes\ninto the wilderness, perhaps rather to get his background than to\nescape attention, and there imposes upon himself the most difficult\nand loathsome tasks, enduring not only outward penances, fasting\nand goading of the flesh, but such inward convulsions, portents and\nhorrors, as the soul of man has by no other means experienced. Here, in\nendurance, is his power, and here, therefore, is his pride: the poor\nAtlas, who does not remove, but supports mountains, and these of his\nown making!\n\nMen who have the power to create but are at the same time extremely\ntimid belong to this class. Rather than venture outside themselves\nthey will do violence to their own nature. The forces which in\ncreation would have been liberated are pent within them and cause\nuntold restlessness, uneasiness and pain. Religions which stigmatize\n\"self-expression,\" separating the individual into an \"outward\" and an\n\"inward\" and raising a barrier between the two, encourage the growth\nof this type of man. These religions themselves have their roots in a\ntimidity, a fear of pain. For self-expression is by no means painless;\nit is, on the contrary, a great cause of suffering. Essentially its\noutcome is strife, the clash of egos: Tragedy is the great recognition\nin Art of this truth. Christianity saw the suffering which conflict\nbrought with it, said it was altogether evil, and sought to abolish\nit. But a law of Life cannot be abolished: strife, driven from the\nworld of outward event, retreated into the very core of man, and\nthere became baleful, indeed, disintegrating, and subversive. The\nearly Christians did not see that men would suffer more from that\ninward psychic conflict than from the other. It was the Greeks who\nelevated conflict to an honourable position in their outward actions;\nwith them, as Nietzsche said, there was no distinction between the\n\"outward\" and \"inward\"; they lived completely and died once. But the\nChristians, to use the words of St. Paul, \"died daily.\" How true was\nthat of those proudly humble anchorites! What a light it throws upon\ntheir sternly endured convulsions of the soul! In the end, Death\nitself came no doubt to many of them as a relief from this terribly\nprotracted \"dying.\" Perhaps one thing, however, made their lives\nbearable and even enjoyable--the power of the soul to plumb its own\nsufferings and capacity for endurance. Psychology arose first among the\necclesiastically humble men.\n\nWell, let us count up our gains and losses. Spiritual humility,\nwherever it has spread, has certainly weakened the expression of\nLife: for it has weakened man by introducing within him a disrupting\nconflict. But it has also made Life subtler and deeper; it has enlarged\nthe inward world of man, even if it has straitened the world outside.\nSo that when we return--as we must--to the Pagan ideal of \"expression,\"\nour works shall be richer than those of the Pagans, for man has now\n_more_ to express.\n\n\n58\n\n_When Pride is Necessary_\n\nPerhaps in all great undertakings into which uncertainty enters\npride is necessary. In the Elizabethan age, our most productive and\nadventurous age, pride was at its zenith. Was that pride the necessary\ncondition of that productiveness? Would the poets, the thinkers and the\ndiscoverers have attempted what they did attempt, had they been humble\nmen? What is needed is more enquiry: a new psychology, and, above all,\na new history of pride.\n\n\n59\n\n_Humility and the Artists_\n\nThere is one man, at any rate, who has always owed more to pride than\nto humility--the artist. Whether it be in himself, where it is almost\nthe condition of productiveness, or in others, where it is the cause\nof all actions and movements \u00e6sthetically agreeable, Pride is his\ngreat benefactor. All artists are proud, but not all have the good\nconscience of their pride. In their thoughts they permit themselves to\nbe persuaded too much by the theologians; they have not enough \"free\nspirit\" to say, \"Pride is my atmosphere, in which I create. I do not\nchoose to refuse my atmosphere.\"\n\nBut if pride were banished even from the remainder of Life, how poor\nwould the artists be left! For every gesture that is beautiful, all\nfree, spirited, swift movement and all noble repose have in them pride.\nHumility uglifies, except, indeed, the humility which is a form of\npride; that has a sublimity of its own. Even the Christian Church--the\nChurch of the humble--had to make its ceremonies magnificent to make\nitself \u00e6sthetically presentable; without its magnificence it would\nhave been an impossible institution. Humility, to be supportable, must\nhave in it an admixture of pride. That gives it _standing._ It was His\nsubtle pride that communicated to the humility of Jesus its gracious\n\"charm.\"\n\nPoetic tragedy and pride are profoundly associated. No event is tragic\nwhich has not arisen out of pride, and has not been borne proudly:\nthe Greeks knew that. But, as well, is not pride at times laughable\nand absurd? Well, what does that prove, except that comedy as well as\ntragedy has been occasioned by it? Humility is not even laughable!\n\n\n60\n\n_Love and Pride_\n\nPride is so indissolubly bound up with everything great--Joy, Beauty,\nCourage, Creation--that surely it must have had some celestial origin.\nWho created it? Was it Love, who wished to shape a weapon for itself,\nthe better to fashion things? Pride has so much to do with creation\nthat sometimes it imagines it is a creator. But that it is not. Only\nLove can create. Pride was fashioned out of a rib taken from the side\nof Love.\n\n\n61\n\n_Pride and the Fall_\n\nIt was not humility that was the parent of the fable of the Fall. Or is\nit humility to boast of one's high ancestry, and if the ancestry does\nnot exist, to invent it? The na\u00efve poet who created that old allegory\ndid not foresee the number of interpretations which would be read into\nit. He did not foresee that it would be used to humiliate Man instead\nof to exalt him; he did not at all foresee Original Sin. As less than\njustice, then, has been meted to him, let us now accord him more than\njustice. Let us say that he was a divine philosopher who perceived that\nin unconditional morality lay the grand misfortune of mankind. Man is\ninnocent; thus, he said, it is an absolute ethic that defiles him--the\nknowledge of Good and Evil. Sweep that away, and he is innocent and\nback in the Garden of Eden again. Let us say this of the first poet,\nfor certainly he did not mean it! Perhaps he knew nothing at all about\nmorality! All that he wished for was to provide a dignified family tree\nfor his generation.\n\n\n62\n\n_The Good Conscience_\n\nWhat a revolution for mankind it would be to get back \"the good\nconscience\"? Life made innocent, washed free from how much filth of\nremorse, guilt, contempt, \"sin\"--that vision arouses a longing more\nintense than that of the religious for any heaven. And it seems at\nleast equally possible of realization! Bad conscience arises when\nreligion and the instincts are in opposition; the more comprehensive\nand deep this conflict, the more guilty the conscience. But there\nhave been religions not antagonistic to the instincts, which, instead\nof condemning them, have thought so well of them as to become their\nrule, their discipline. The religion of the Greeks was an example of\nthis; and in Greece, accordingly, there was no \"bad conscience\" in our\nsense. Well, how is it possible, if it _is_ possible, to regain \"the\ngood conscience\"? Not by any miracle! Not by an instantaneous \"change\nof heart,\" for even the heart changes slowly. But suppose that a new\ninstinctive religion and morality were to be set up, and painfully\ncomplied with, until they became a second nature as ours have become,\nshould we not then gradually lose our bad conscience, born as it is out\nof the antagonism between instinct and morality? Nay, if we were to\npersevere still further until instinct and religion and morality became\nintermingled and indistinguishable, might we not enter the Garden of\nEden again, might not innocence itself become ours? But to attain that\nend, an unremitting discipline, extending over hundreds of years,\nmight be necessary; and who, in the absence of gods, is to impose that\ndiscipline?\n\n\n63\n\n_The Other Side_\n\nThe life-defaming creeds are not to be condemned unconditionally: even\nthey are not evil. \"Guilt,\" asceticism, contempt for the world--these\nare the physiologically bad things which have sharpened, deepened and\nmade subtle the soul of man. The Greeks were simple compared with\nmodern man; a thousand times more healthy, it is true--perhaps because\nthey were incapable of contracting our maladies. Well, let us judge\nChristianity, which in Europe was mainly responsible for this deepening\nof Man, by an artistic criterion: let us judge it by the effects it\nachieved, not by what it said.\n\n\n64\n\n_Effects of Christianity_\n\n\nIf there are gods who take an interest in Man, and experiment upon\nhim, what better means could they have devised for getting out of\nhim certain \"effects,\" not Christian at all, than Christianity? Far\nmore significant for mankind than the virtues of Christianity, are\nits contradictions, excesses and \"states of mind.\" The \"way of life,\"\nChristian morality, is of little account compared with the permanent\nphysiological and psychological transformations effected upon Man by\nthe discipline of centuries of religion. Not that Man has been forced\ninto the mould of Christian morality, but that in the process he has\nundergone the most unique convulsions, adaptations and permutations,\nthat an entire new world of conflict, pain, fear, horror, exaltation,\nfaith and scepticism has been born within him, that Life, driven\nwithin itself, has deepened, enriched and invested him--_that_ is\nfrom the standpoint of human culture the most important thing, beside\nwhich what is usually understood by the Christianizing of Europe is\nrelatively insignificant. Not Christian morality, but the effects of\nChristian morality it is that now concern us. And these effects are\nnot themselves Christian; rather the contrary. Christianity has made\nMan more complex, contradictory, sceptical, tragic and sublime; it has\ngiven him more capacity for good and for evil, and has added to these\ntwo qualities subtlety and spirituality.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nWHAT IS MODERN?\n\n\n65\n\n_Whither?_\n\nThe fever of modern thought which burns in our veins, and from which\nwe refuse to escape by reactionary backdoors--Christianity and the\nlike--is not without its distinction: it is an \"honourable sickness,\"\nto use the phrase of Nietzsche. I speak of those who sincerely strive\nto seek an issue from this fever; to pass through it into a new health.\nOf the others to whom fever is the condition of existence, who make a\nprofession of their maladies, the valetudinarians of the spirit, the\ndabblers in quack soul-remedies for their own sake, it is impossible\nto speak without disdain. Our duty is to exterminate them, by ridicule\nor any other means found effectual. But we are ourselves already too\ngrievously harassed; we are caught in the whirlwind of modern thought,\nwhich contains as much dust as wind. We see outside our field of\nconflict a region of Christian calm, but never, never, never can we\nreturn there, for our instincts as well as our intellect are averse\nto it. The problem must have a different solution. And what, indeed,\nis the problem? To some of us it is still that of emancipation--that\nwhich confronted Goethe, Ibsen, Nietzsche, and the other great spirits\nof last century. It is an error to think that these men have yet been\nrefuted or even understood; they have simply been buried beneath the\ncorpses of later writers. And it is the worst intellectual weakness,\nand, therefore, crime, of our age that ideas are no longer disproved,\nbut simply superseded by newer ideas. The latest is the true, and Time\nrefutes everything! That is our modern superstition. We have still,\nthen, to go back--or, rather, forward--to Goethe, Ibsen and Nietzsche.\nOur problem is still that of clearing a domain of freedom around us,\nof enlarging our field of choice, and so making destiny itself more\nspacious; and, then, having delivered ourselves from prejudice and\nsuperstition--and how many other things!--of setting an aim before us\nfor the unflinching pursuit of which we make ourselves responsible.\n\nGreater freedom, and therefore greater responsibility, above all\ngreater aims, an enlargement of life, not a whittling of it down to\nChristian standards--that is our problem still!\n\n\n66\n\n_The \"Restoration\" of Christianity_\n\nWill Christianity ever be established again? It is doubtful. At the\nmost, it may be \"restored\"--in the manner of the architectural\n\"restorations,\" against which Ruskin declaimed. The difficulty of\nre-establishing it must needs be greater than that of establishing\nit. For it has now been battered by science (people no longer believe\nin miracles) and by history (people have read what the Church has\ndone--or has not done). Christianity has become a Church, and the\nChurch, an object of criticism. As the body which housed the spirit\nof Christianity, men have studied it with secular eyes, and have\nfound little to reverence, much to censure; and in the disrepute into\nwhich the body has fallen, the spirit, also, has shared. And now the\natmosphere cannot be created in which Christianity may grow young again\nand recapture its faith. The necessary credulity, or, at any rate,\nthe proper kind of credulity, is no longer ours. For Christianity\ngrew, like the mushrooms, _in the night._ Had there been newspapers in\nJudea, there had been no Christianity. And this age of ours, in which\nthe clank of the printing press drowns all other sounds, is fatal to\nany noble mystery, to any noble birth or rebirth. _That_ night, at all\nevents, we can never pass through again, and, therefore, Christianity\nwill probably never renew itself.\n\n\n67\n\n_A Drug for Diseased Souls_\n\nThe utmost that can be expected is a \"restoration,\" and in that\ndirection we have gone already a long way. For Christianity is not now,\nas it was at the beginning, a spring of inspiration, a thing spiritual,\nspontaneous, Dionysian. It is mainly a remedy, or, more often, a\ndrug for diseased souls; and, therefore, to be husbanded strictly by\nthe modern medicine men, to be dispensed carefully, and, yes, to be\nadvertised as well! Its birth was out of an exuberance of spiritual\nlife; its \"restoration\" will be out of a hopeless debility and fatigue.\nAnd, therefore----\n\n\n68\n\n_The Dogmatists_\n\nAll religions may be regarded from two sides; from that of their\ncreators, and from that of their followers. Among the creators are to\nbe numbered not only the founders of religion, but the saints, the\ninspired prophets and every one who has in some degree the genius for\nreligion. They are not distinguished by much reverence for dogma, but\nby the \"religious feeling\"; and when this emotion carries them away in\nits flood they often treat dogma in a way to make the orthodox gape\nwith horror. But, in truth, they do not themselves take much account of\ndogma; every dogma is a crutch, and they do not feel the need of one.\nBut the people who are not sustained by this inward spring of emotion,\nwho can never know what religion really is, these need a crutch; it is\nfor them that dogma was designed. And, of course, the real religious\nmen see their advantage also in the adherence of the dogmatists, the\nmany; for the more widely a religion is spread, the more secure it\nbecomes, and the greater chance it has of enduring. Dogma, then, is\nreligion for the irreligious. To the saint religion is a thing inward\nand creative; to the dogmatist it is a thing outward, accomplished\nand fixed, to which he may cling. The former is the missionary of\nreligion, the latter, its conserver. The one is religious because he\nhas religion, the other, because he needs it.\n\n\n69\n\n_The Religious Impulse_\n\nThe time comes in the history of a faith when the \"religious feeling\"\ndies, and nothing is left but dogma. The dogmatists then become the\nmissionaries of religion. The fount is dried up; there is no longer\nan inward force seeking for expression; there is only the fear of the\ndogmatist lest his staff, his guide, his horizon should be taken from\nhim. Religion is then supported most frenziedly by the irreligious;\nweakness then speaks with a more poignant eloquence than strength\nitself. And that is what is happening with Christianity. Its \"religious\nfeeling\" is dead: there has been no great religious figure in Europe\nin our time. And the Church is now being defended on grounds neither\nreligious nor theological, but secular and even utilitarian. The real\nreligious impulse is now to be found in the movement outside, and,\n_therefore,_ against Christianity. But, alas, as Nietzsche feared,\nthere may not after all be \"sufficient religion in the world to destroy\nreligion.\"\n\n\n70\n\n_The Decay of Prophecy_\n\nThe past should be studied only in order to divine the future. The new\nsoothsayers should seek for omens, not, as their ancient brethren did,\nin the stars and the entrails of animals, but in the book of history,\npast and becoming. \"The new soothsayers,\" for soothsaying has not died;\nit has become popular--and degenerate. Every one may now foretell the\nfuture, but no one may believe what is foretold. And that is because\nthe soothsayers do not themselves believe their auguries; when they\nhappen to speak the truth, no one is more surprised than they. But\nin the antique world the augurs had, at any rate, responsibility; to\nforetell the future was not to them an amusement but a vocation.\n\nTo what is due the decay of the art of soothsaying? Partly, no doubt,\nto the dissemination of popular knowledge, by which people have become\nless credulous; partly to the \"scientific temper\" of those who, had\nthey lived in the old world, would have been the soothsayers; partly to\nother causes known to every one. But, allowing for these, may there not\nbe _something_ due to the fact that people are no longer interested,\nas they used to be, in the future? They know the past, ah, perhaps too\nwell: they have looked into it so long that at length they feel that\nthe future holds nothing which it has not held, that Fate has now no\nfresh metamorphosis or apotheosis, and that Time must henceforth be\ncontent to plagiarize itself. And so the future has lost the seduction\nwhich it once held for the noblest spirits. It is true, men still amuse\nthemselves by guessing which of Time's well-thumbed and greasy cards\nwill turn up at the next deal, or by playing at patience with the\nimmemorial possibilities. But that is not soothsaying, nor is it even\nplaying with the future: it is playing with the past. And the great\nmodern discovery is not the discovery of the future, but the discovery\nof the past.\n\nAnd as with soothsaying, so with prophecy. If we could but look for a\nmoment into the soul of an old prophet and see his deepest thoughts and\nvisions, what a conception of the future would be ours! But that is\nimpossible. We cannot now understand the faith of the men who, unmoved,\nprophesied the advent of supernatural beings, the Christ or another;\nto whom the future was a new world more strange than America was to\nColumbus. That attitude of mind has been killed; and now comes one who\nsays the belief in the future is a weakness. Would he, perchance, have\nsaid that to John the Baptist, the great modern of his time? Had he\nlived in that pre-Christian world, would he have believed in the God\nin whom he now believes? The orthodox Christian here finds himself in\na laughable dilemma. Admitting nothing wonderful in the future, he is\nyet constrained to believe in a past wonderful beyond the dreams of\npoets or of madmen--a past in which supernatural beings, miracles and\nportents were almost the rule. And so the future is to him not even\nso wonderful as the past. It is an expurgated edition of the past--an\nedition with the incidents and marvels left out, a novel without a hero\nor a plot.\n\nSo, for good or for evil, we no longer believe in the future as we did:\nit is steadily becoming less marvellous, and, therefore, less seductive\nfor us. But, without the bait of the strange and the new to lure it\non, must not humanity halt on its way? _Can_ man act at all without\nbelieving in the future in some fashion? Must not things be _foreseen_\nbefore they can be accomplished? Is not soothsaying implicit in every\ndeliberate act? Are not all sincere ideals involuntary auguries? Is it\nnot the future rather than the prophecy which \"comes true\"? Did not\nthe old prophecies \"come true\" _because_ they were prophesied? Did not\nChrist arise _because_ He was foretold? And are not the believers in\nthe future, then, the creators of the future, and the true priests of\nprogress? When we can envisage a future noble enough, it will not then\nbe weakness to believe in it.\n\n\n71\n\n_The Great Immoralists_\n\nThe morality of Nietzsche is more strict and exacting than that of\nChristianity. When the Christians argue against it, therefore, they\nare arguing in favour of a morality more comfortable, pleasing and\nindulgent to the natural man; consequently, even on religious grounds,\nof a morality more immoral. What! is Nietzsche, then, the great\nmoralist, and are the Christians the great immoralists?\n\nThis notion may appear to us absurd, or merely ingenious, but will it\nappear so to future generations? Will timidity, conformity, mediocrity,\njudicious blindness, unwillingness to offend, be synonymous, to them\nalso, with morality? Or will they look back upon Christianity as a\ncreed too indulgent and not noble enough? As a sort of Epicureanism,\nfor instance?\n\n\n72\n\n_The First and the Last_\n\nWe all know what the weak have suffered from the strong; but who shall\ncompute what the strong have suffered from the weak? \"The last shall\nbe first\"; but when they become first they become also the worst\ntyrants--impalpable, anonymous and petty.\n\n\n73\n\n_Humility in Pride_\n\nThe pride of some gifted men is not pride in their person, but in\nsomething within them, of which they regard themselves the guardians\nand servants. If there is dignity in their demeanour it is a\nreflected, impersonal dignity. Just so a peasant might feel ennobled\nwho guarded a king in danger and exile.\n\n\n74\n\n_The Modern Devil_\n\nThe devil is not wicked but corrupt, in modern phraseology, decadent.\nThe qualities of the medi\u00e6val devil, rage, cruelty, hatred, pride,\navarice, are in their measure necessary to Life, necessary to virtue\nitself. But corruption is wholly bad; it contaminates even those who\nfight it. Hell relaxes: Mr. Shaw's conception is profoundly true.\n\nBut if the devil is corruption, cannot the devil be abolished? It is\ntrue, Man cannot extirpate cruelty, hatred and pride without destroying\nLife; but Life is made more powerful by the destruction of the corrupt.\nGod created Man; but it was Man that created the devil.\n\n\n75\n\n_Master and Servant_\n\nTo summon out of the void a task, and then incontinently to make of\nhimself its slave: that is the happiness of many a man. A great means\nof happiness!\n\n\n76\n\n_Criterions_\n\nIt is not expedient to choose on _every_ occasion the higher rather\nthan the lower, for one may not be able to endure too much living on\nthe heights. If will and capacity were always equal! Then, it is true,\nthere would not be any difficulty; but Life is Life, after all--that\nis, our will _is_ greater than our capacity. On the other hand, it is\nnot well to develop equally all our faculties--the formula of the\nHumanist--for among them there is a hierarchy, and some are more worthy\nof development than others. What course is left? To act always in the\ninterest of what is highest in us, and when we partake of a lower\npleasure to regard it as a form of sleep, of necessary forgetting? For\neven the mind must slumber occasionally if it is to remain healthy.\n\n\n77\n\n_Intellectual Prudence_\n\nAmong athletes there is a thing known as over-training: if it is\npersisted in it wrecks the body. A similar phenomenon is to be found\namong thinkers: thought too severe and protracted may ruin the mind.\nWas this the explanation of Nietzsche's downfall? Certainly, his\nintellectual health was that of the athlete who remains vigorous by\nvirtue of a never-sleeping discipline, who maintains his balance by\na continuous effort. This is perhaps the highest, the most exquisite\nform of health, but it is at the same time the most dangerous--a\nlittle more, a little less, and the engine of thought is destroyed. It\nis important that the thinker should discover exactly how far he may\ndiscipline himself, and how far permit indulgence. What in the ordinary\nman--conscious of no _secondary raison d'\u00eatre_--is performed without\nfuss by the instincts, must by him be _thought out_--a task of great\nperil.\n\n\n78\n\n_A Dilemma_\n\nTo be a man is easy: to be a purpose is more difficult; but, on the\nwhole--easy. In the first instance, one has but to exist; in the\nsecond, to act. But to unite man and purpose in the same person--to\nbe a type--is both difficult and precarious. For that a balance is\nimperative: \"being\" and \"doing\" must be prevented from injuring each\nother: action must become rhythm, and rest, a form of energy. To be in\ndoing, to do in being--that is the task of the future man. The danger\nof our being mere man is that mankind may remain forever stationary,\nwithout a goal. The danger of our being mere purpose is that our\nhumanity may altogether drop out and nothing but the purpose be left.\nAnd would not that defeat the purpose?\n\n\n79\n\n_Dangers of Genius_\n\nWhy is it that so many men of genius have been destroyed by falling\ninto chasms of desire which are safely trodden by common men? Is it\nbecause there is within the exceptional man greater compass, and,\ntherefore, greater danger? The genius has left the animal further\nbehind than the ordinary man; indeed, in the genius of the nobler sort\nthere is an almost passionate avoidance and disavowal of the animal. In\nthis disavowal lie at once his safety and his danger: by means of it\nhe climbs to perilous heights, and is also secure upon them. But let\nhim abrogate even once this denial of kinship, and he is in the utmost\ndanger. He now finds himself stationed on the edge of a precipice up to\nwhich he seems to have climbed in a dream, a dreadful dizziness assails\nhim, along with a mad desire to fling himself into the depths. It was\nperhaps a leap of this kind that Marlowe made, and Shelley. Meantime,\nthe ordinary man lives in safety at the foot of the precipice: he\nis never so far above the animal as to be injured by a fall into\nanimalism. Only to the noble does spiritual _danger_ come.\n\n\n80\n\n_A Strange Failure_\n\nHe failed; for the task was too _small_ for him--a common tale among\nmen of genius. You have been unsuccessful in trivial things? There is\nalways a remedy left: to essay the great. How often has Man become\nimpotent simply because there was no task heroic enough to demand\ngreatness of him!\n\n\n81\n\n_Dangers of the Spiritual_\n\nIf you are _swept off your feet_ by a strongly sensuous book, it is\nprobably a sign that you have become too highly spiritualized. For\na sensualist would simply have enjoyed it, while feeling, perhaps, a\nlittle bored and dissatisfied. It was only a religious anchorite who\ncould have lost his _soul_ to Anatole France's Tha\u00efs. For the salvation\nof Man it is more than ever imperative that a reconciliation should be\neffected between the spirit and the senses. Until it is, the highest\nmen--the most spiritual--will be in the very greatest peril, and will\nalmost inevitably be wrecked or frustrated. It is for the good of the\n_soul_ that this reconciliation must now be sought.\n\n\n82\n\n_Again_\n\nFrom the diabolization of the senses innumerable evils have flowed;\nphysical and mental disease, disgust with the world, cruelty towards\neverything natural. But, worst of all, it has made sensuality a greater\n_danger_ than it was ever before. In the anchorite, seeking to live\nentirely in the spirit, and ignoring or chastising the body, sensuality\nwas driven into the very soul, and there was magnified a hundredfold.\nTo the thinker avoiding the senses as much as possible--for he had\nbeen taught to distrust them--sensuality, in the moments when he was\nbrought face to face with it, had acquired a unique seductiveness, and\nhad become a problem and a danger. If he yielded, it was perilous in a\ndegree unknown to the average sensual man; if he resisted, a good half\nof his spiritual energy was wasted in keeping the senses at bay. In\neither case, the thinker suffered. So that now it is the spirit that\nhas become the champion of the senses, but for the good of the spirit.\n\n\n83\n\n_God and Animal_\n\nUntil the marriage of the soul and the senses has been accomplished,\nMan cannot manifest himself in any _new_ type. What has been the\nhistory of humanity during the last two thousand years? The history\nof humanity, that is, as distinct from the history of communities? A\nrecord of antithetic tyrannies, the spiritual alternating with the\nsensual; an uncertain tussle between God and animal, now one uppermost,\nnow the other; not a tragedy--for in Tragedy there is significance--but\na gloomy farce. And this farce must continue so long as the spirit\ncontems sense as evil in itself--for neither of them can be abolished!\nWhether we like it or not, the senses, so long as they are oppressed\nand defamed, will continue to break out in terrible insurrections of\nsensuality and excess, until, tired and satiated, they return again\nunder the tyranny of the spirit--at the appointed time, however, to\nrevolt once more. From this double _cul de sac_ Man can be freed only\nby a reconciliation between the two. When this happens, however, it\nwill be the beginning of a higher era in the history of humanity; Man\nwill then become spiritual in a new sense. Spirit will then affirm\nLife, instead of, as now, slandering it; existence will become joyful\nand tragic; for to live in accordance with Life itself--voluntarily\nto approve struggle, suffering and change--is the most difficult\nand heroic of lives. The softening of the rigour of existence, its\nreduction and weakening by asceticism, humility, \"sin,\" is the _easier_\npath; _narrow_ is the way that leads to Nihilism! The error of Heine\nwas that he prophesied a _happier_ future from the reconciliation of\nthe body and the soul: his belief in the efficacy of happiness was\nexcessive. But this reconciliation is, nevertheless, of importance for\n_nothing else_ than its _spiritual_ significance: by means of it Man\nis freed from his labyrinth, and can at last _move forward_--he becomes\nmore tragic.\n\n\n84\n\n_Ultimate Pessimism_\n\nTo the most modern man must have come at some time the thought, What if\nthis thing spirit be _essentially_ the enemy of the senses? What if,\nlike the vampire, it _can_ live only by drinking blood? What if the\nconflict between spirit and \"life\" is and must forever be an implacable\nand destructive one? He is then for a moment a Christian, but with an\nadded bitterness which few Christians have known. For if his thought be\ntrue, then the weakening and final nullification of Life must be our\nobject.\n\nTo prove that the spirit and the senses are not eternally\nirreconcilable enemies is still a task. Those who believe they are, do\nso as an act of faith: their opponents are in the same case. We should\nnever cease to read spirit into Life-affirming things, such as pride,\nheroism and love, and to magnify and exalt these aspects of the spirit.\n\n\n85\n\n_Leisure and Productiveness_\n\nGranted that the society which produces the highest goods in the\ngreatest profusion is the best--let us not argue from this that\nsociety should be organized with the direct aim of producing goods. For\nwhat if goods be to society what happiness is said to be to men--things\nto be attained only by striving for something else? In all good\nthings--whether it be in art, literature or philosophy--there is much\nof the free, the perverse, the unique, the incalculable. In short, good\nthings can only be produced by great men--and these are exceptions. The\nbest we can do, then, is to inaugurate a society in which great men\nwill find it possible to live, will be even encouraged to live. Can\na society in which rights are affixed to functions serve for that? A\nfunction, in practice, in a democratic state--that will mean something\nwhich can be seen to be useful for today, but not for tomorrow, far\nless for any distant future. The more subtle, spiritual, posthumous the\nactivity of a man the less it will be seen to be a function. Art and\nphilosophy arise when leisure and not work is the ruling convention.\nIt is true that artists and philosophers work, and at a higher tension\nthan other men; but it is in leisure that they must _conceive_ their\nworks: what obvious function do they then fulfil? Even the most\nharassed of geniuses, even Burns would never have become immortal\nhad he not had the leisure to ponder, dream and love. Idleness is as\nnecessary for the production of a work of art as labour. And with some\nmen perhaps whole years of idleness are needed. Artists must always be\nprivileged creatures. It is privileges, and not rights, that they want.\n\n\n86\n\n_What is Freedom?_\n\nThe athlete, by the disciplining of his body, creates for himself a new\nworld of actions; he can now do things which before were prohibited to\nhim; in consequence, he has enlarged the sphere of his freedom. The\nthinker and the artist by discipline of a different kind are rewarded\nin the same way. They are now more free, because they have now more\ncapacity.\n\nThere are people, however, who think one can be free whether one\nhas the capacity for freedom or not--a characteristically modern\nfallacy. But a man the muscles of whose body and mind are weak cannot\ndo _anything;_ how can he be free? The concept of Freedom cannot be\nseparated from that of Power.\n\n\n87\n\n_Freedom, in the Dance_\n\nEven the most unbridled dance is a form of constraint. The completest\nfreedom of movement is the reward of the severest discipline.\n\n\n88\n\n_A Moral for Moderns_\n\nA spring gushed forth here on the airy height; but the soil was not\nhard enough to retain it; and the water sapped away among the soft\nmoss. One day a man came and laid down a hard channel for the spring.\nImprisoned on both sides, it now imperiously sought an outlet and--a\nmiracle!--leapt glittering into the sunshine. The history of Freedom.\n\n\n89\n\n_The Renaissance: A Thesis_\n\nHow unsatisfactory are those explanations of the Renaissance which\ngive as its cause the breaking up of the restrictive intellectual\ncanons of the Middle Ages--as if a mere negation could explain such a\nunique creative era! What has here to be discovered is how freedom and\nthe _capacity_ for freedom should have appeared at the same moment.\nPerhaps the Middle Ages have now been sufficiently reviled by the\nadmirers of the Renaissance; perhaps that event owed more than we are\nwilling to acknowledge to the centuries of medi\u00e6val repression and\ndiscipline. During these centuries the human spirit had been confined\nin the granite channel cut for it by medi\u00e6val Christianity, a channel\nof which even the mouth was stopped. In the fifteenth century the\nstream swept away every obstacle and leapt forth, a brilliant cascade,\nscattering almost pagan warmth and light. The fall of Constantinople\nand the other circumstances usually given as the explanation of this\noutburst were only its occasion; the cause lay much deeper, in the\nlong storing up, conserving and strengthening of human powers. The\nfreedom of which the Renaissance was an expression was more, then,\nthan the simple removal of restriction. It was a freedom not political\nor moral, but vital; a positive enhancement if the natural power of\nman, who could now do things which hitherto he could not do--an event\nin the history, not merely of society, but of Man. Accordingly, the\n\"freedom of the individual,\" so dear to some moderns, does not teach us\nmuch here. It was not because freedom was given to them that men now\ncreated: the freedom was claimed because they now possessed more power,\ncould do more, and had, therefore, the _right_ to a larger sphere of\nfreedom. The more naturally free--that is, individually powerful--a\npeople become, the more they will demand and obtain of \"individual\nfreedom\"; but it is perhaps inexpedient to offer to a people\nindividually weak any more freedom than they can use. They are still\nat the disciplinary stage; they are preparing for their renaissance;\nand to the student of human culture the periods of preparation, of\nunproductiveness, are more worthy of consideration than the productive\nperiods. For in the future we must prepare for our eras of fruition,\nand not leave them, as in the past, to pure chance.\n\nAt the Renaissance, however, it was not even individual freedom in\nthe modern democratic sense that was claimed and allowed; it was at\nthe most the freedom of certain individuals, the naturally free, the\npowerful. Not until a later time was this claim to be universalized by\nthe unconditional theorists, the generalizers _sans_ distinction, the\negalitarians. The French Revolution was the Renaissance rationalized\nand popularized.\n\n\n90\n\n_The Unproductive Periods_\n\nWithout the Middle Ages the Renaissance would have been impossible;\nthe one, therefore, was as necessary as the other; and our reprobation\nof the former for its comparative sterility is entirely without\njustification. If we happen to be living in an unproductive age, it\nis our misfortune, then; but we are not entitled, in contemplating\nthis age, to the luxury of condemnation, reproof or scorn. What we\n_may_ demand of any period now is that it should be a period either\nof preparation or of fruition. So the present era _is,_ after all,\ndeserving of condemnation, but only because it is not an era of\npreparation--not for any other reason.\n\n\n91\n\n_Duties of the Unproductive_\n\nThe history of culture is the history of long ages of unproductiveness\nbroken by short eras of production; but unproductiveness is the\nrule. The men born in barren periods have not, then, the right to\nbewail their lot: _we_ have not that right. But what is of the first\nimportance, for the sake of culture, is to find out what are the duties\nproper to men in a sterile age. Certainly their duty it is not to\nproduce whether they are productive or not; that can only result in\nabortions and painful caricatures: does not contemporary literature\ndemonstrate it? The work that is born out of the poverty of the artist\nis, as Nietzsche pointed out, decadent work, and debases the spectator,\nlowers his vitality.\n\nWhat, then, are the tasks of a writer in an unproductive age? To\nlive sparely and conserve strength? To make discipline more rigid?\nTo preserve and fortify the tradition of culture? To render more\naccessible the sources from which creative literature draws its\nlife, so that the _next_ generation may be better placed? To observe\nvigilantly the signs of today--and not only of today? It may be so;\nbut, also, when necessary, to throw these prudent and preservative\ntasks to the winds and spend his last ounce of strength in battling\nwith the demons who make a productive era forever impossible. Yes, this\nlast duty is for us today--the most important. And, we may depend, it\nis the creators--those who produce what they should not--who will fight\nmost bitterly on the opposite side.\n\n\n92\n\n_\"Emancipation\"_\n\nThe rallying cry of the great writers of the last century was\n\"emancipation.\" Goethe, Heine and Ibsen alike professed as their\ntask the emancipation of man; Nietzsche, their successor, elevated\nthe freed man, the Superman, into an ideal, in the pursuit of which\nit was necessary meantime that men should discipline themselves. The\nlater moderns, our own contemporaries, have belittled this freedom,\nseeing in it nothing but a negation, the freedom _from_ some one\nthing or another. But Ibsen and Heine, these men of true genius, who\nbelieved most sincerely that they were \"brave soldiers in the war of\nthe liberation of humanity\" did not perhaps waste their powers in\nbattling for a thing so trivial! It is barely possible that they meant\nby emancipation something much more profound; something spiritual\nand positive; indeed, nothing less than an enhancement of the powers\nof man! Certainly both poets looked forward to new \"developments\" of\nman: Heine with his \"happier and more perfect generations, begot in\nfree and voluntary embraces, blossoming forth in a religion of joy\";\nIbsen with his perplexed figures painfully \"working their way out to\nFreedom.\" It was the task of us in this generation, who should have\nbeen the heirs of this tradition, but are not, to supply the commentary\nto this noble vision, to carry forward this religion of hope further\nand further. But the _cult_ of modernity has itself prevented this;\nthe latest theory has always seized us and exacted our belief for its\nhour; the present has invariably triumphed; and we have discarded the\ngreat work of last century before we have understood it. Heine has been\nseized mainly by the decadents; his healthy and noble sensuousness,\nhis desire to restore the harmony between the senses and the soul,\n_as a means_ towards the emancipation of man, and as nothing else,\nhas been perverted by them into worship of the senses for their own\nsake--a thing which to Heine would have seemed despicable. Ibsen has\nfallen among the realists and propagandists; all the spiritual value\nof his work has for this age been lost--and what a loss!--his battle\nto deliver man from his weakness and inward slavery has been reduced\n--it is no exaggeration--to a battle to deliver the women of the middle\nclasses from their husbands. The old story of emanation has been again\nrepeated, with the distinction that here there is no trace left of\nthe original source except negative ones! Well, we have to turn back\nagain, our task, second to none in grandeur, before which we may well\nfeel abashed, is still the same as that of Goethe, Ibsen and Nietzsche,\nthe task of emancipation. To restore dignity to literature, indeed, it\nwould be necessary to create such a task if it did not already exist.\n\n\n93\n\n_Genealogy of the Moderns_\n\nThis is what has happened. The conventional moderns of our time are\nthe descendants _not_ of Heine and Ibsen, but of the race against\nwhich the poets fought. They live unthinkingly in the present, just\nas their spiritual ancestors lived unthinkingly in the past. But\nslavery to the past has long ago fallen into the second place among\ndangers to humanity: it is slavery to the present that is now by far\nthe greatest peril. Not because they broke the tyranny of the past, but\nbecause they had an ideal in the future are the great fighters of last\ncentury significant. To think of them as iconoclasts is to mistake for\ntheir aim the form of their activity: the past lay between them and\ntheir object: on that account alone did they destroy it. But the great\nobstacle now is the domination of the present; and were the demi-gods\nof last century alive today, they would be fighting precisely against\n_you,_ my dear moderns, who live so complacently in your provincial\npresent, making of it almost a cult. To be a modern in the true sense,\nhowever, is to be a fore-runner; there is in this age, an age of\npreparation, no other test of the modern. To believe that there are\nstill potentialities in man; to have faith that the \"elevation of the\ntype Man\" is possible, yes, that the time is ripe to prepare for it;\nand to write and live in and by that thought: this is to be modern.\n\n\n94\n\n_Domination of the Present_\n\nTo be modern in the accepted, intellectually fashionable sense: what is\nthat? To propagate always the newest theory, whatever it be; to be the\nleast possible distance behind the times, behind the latest second of\nthe times, whether they be good or bad; and, of course, to assume one\nis \"in the circle\" and to adopt the tone of the circle: in short, to\nmake ideas a matter of fashion, to choose views as a well-to-do woman\nchooses dresses--to be intellectually without foundation, principles or\ntaste. How did this convention arise? Perhaps out of lack of leisure:\nsuperficiality is bound to engulf a generation who abandon leisure.\nBut to be enslaved to the present in this way is the most _dangerous_\nform of superficiality: it is to be ignorant of the very thing that\nmakes Man significant, and with idiotic cheerfulness and unconcern to\nrender his existence meaningless and trivial. In two ways' can Man\nbecome sublime; by regarding himself as the heir of a great tradition:\nby making of himself a fore-runner. Both ways are open to the true\nmodern, and both must be followed by him. For the past and the future\nare greater than the present: the sense of continuity is necessary for\nhuman dignity.\n\nThe men of this age, however, are isolated--to use an electrical\nmetaphor--from the current of Humanity: they have become almost\nentirely individuals, temporal units, \"men\"; what has been the outcome?\nInevitably the loss of the concept Man, for Man is a concept which can\nbe understood only through the contemplation on a grand scale of the\nhistory of mankind. Man ceases to be dramatic when there are no longer\nspectators for the drama of Humanity. The present generation have,\ntherefore, no sentiment of the human sublime; they see that part of the\ngrand tragedy which happens to pass before them, but without caring\nabout what went before or what will come after, without a clue, however\npoor, to the mystery of existence. They know men only, the men of their\ntime. They are provincial--that is, lacking the sentiment of Man.\n\nHow much decadence may not be traced to this! In Art, the conventions\nof Realism and of \u00c6stheticism have arisen. The first is just the\nportrayal of present-day men _as_ present-day men; nothing more,\ntherefore, than \"contemporary art\"; an appendage of the present, a\ntriviality. The second has as its creed enjoyment of the moment; and if\nit contemplates the past at all, it is with the eyes of the voluptuous\nantiquary--but a collector is not an heir. Art has in our time, both\nin theory and in practice, become deliberately more fleeting. In\nmorality, there is Humanitarianism, or, in other words, the conviction\nthat the suffering of today is the most important thing, coupled with\nthe belief that there is nothing at present existing which can justify\nand redeem this suffering: therefore, unconditional pity, alleviation,\n\"the greatest happiness of the greatest number.\" Modern pessimism,\nwhich springs from the same source, is the obverse of this belief.\nIt, also, regards only the present, and says, perhaps with truth,\nthat _it,_ at any rate, is not noble enough to deserve and demand the\nsuffering necessary for its existence--consequently, _all life_ is\nan error! All these theories, however, are breaks with the spiritual\ntradition of emancipation; they are founded on the magnification of\nthe temporary--of that which only in a present continually carried\nforward seems to be important. This judgment of Life with the eyes\nof the present, this narrowest and most false of interpretations:\nhow has it confused and finally stultified the finest talents of our\ntime! The modern man is joyless; his joylessness has arisen out of his\nmodernity; and now to find forgetfulness of it he plunges more madly\nthan before--into modernity! For his own sake, as much as for that of\nHumanity, it is our duty to free him from his wheel. One can live with\ndignity only if one have a sense of the tragedy of Man. It is the first\ntask of the true modern to destroy the domination of the present.\n\n\n95\n\n_Encyclop\u00e6dists_\n\nStrange that the great dramatic poets of modern times have had a\nweakness for turning their tragedies into encyclop\u00e6dias! Consider\n\"Faust\" and \"Brand,\" for instance. Is it that the sentiment of the\neternal was already beginning to weaken in Goethe and Ibsen? Were they\noverburdened by their own age? Their world was too much with them;\nand so they did not reach the highest peaks of tragedy: they were not\nuniversal.\n\n\n96\n\n_What is Modern_\n\nIt is time we erected a standard whereby to test what is modern. To\nbe an adherent of all the latest movements--that is at most to be\nanarchistic, eclectic, inconsistent--call it what you will. Futurism,\nRealism, Feminism, Traditionalism may be all of them opposed or\nirrelevant to modernity. It is not sufficient that movements should be\nnew--if they are ever new; the question is, To what end are they? If\nthey are movements in the direction of emancipation, \"the elevation\nof the type Man,\" then they are modern; if they are not, then they\nare movements to be opposed or ignored by moderns. If modernism be a\nvital thing it must needs have roots in the past and be an essential\nexpression of humanity, to be traced, therefore, in the history of\nhumanity: in short, it can only be a tradition. The true modern is a\ncontinuator of tradition as much as the Christian or the conservative:\nthe tine fight between progress and stagnation is always a fight\nbetween antagonistic _traditions._ To battle against tradition _as\nsuch_ is, therefore, not the task of the modern; but rather to enter\nthe conflict--an eternal one--for his tradition against its opposite:\nNietzsche found for this antithesis the symbolism of Dionysus and\nApollo. Does such a tradition of modernity exist? Is there a \"modern\nspirit\" not dependent upon time and place, and in all ages modern?\nIf there is--and there is--the possession of it in some measure will\nalone entitle us to the name of moderns, give us dignity and make the\nhistory of Man once more dramatic and tragical. It is a pity that some\nhistorian has not yet traced, in its expression in events, the history\nof this conflict--a task requiring the deepest subtlety and insight.\nMeantime, for this tradition may be claimed with confidence such events\nas Greek Tragedy, most of the Renaissance, and the emancipators of\nlast century. These are triumphant expressions of \"the modern spirit,\"\nbut that spirit is chiefly to be recognized as a principle not always\ntriumphant or easy of perception, constantly struggling, assuming many\ndisguises and tirelessly creative. It is not, indeed, only a tradition\nof persons, of dogmas, or of sentiments: it is a principle of Life\nitself. This conception, it is true, is grand, and even terrifying--a\ndisadvantage in this age. But is there any other which grants\nmodernity more than the status of an accident of time and fashion?\n\n\n97\n\n_How We Shall Be Known_\n\nIn an age it is not always what is most characteristic that survives:\nposterity will probably know us not by our true qualities, but by the\nexceptions to them. The present-day writers in English who will endure\nafter their age has passed are probably Joseph Conrad, W. H. Hudson,\nand Hillaire Belloc for a few of his essays and lyrics--none of them\nrepresentative, none of them modern. They might have been born in any\nera: they are in the oldest tradition. The most striking characteristic\nof our time, however, is its lack of a tradition. The sentiment of\ntransiency is our most deeply rooted sentiment: it is the very spirit\nof the age. But by its essential nature it cannot hope to endure, to be\nknown by future generations; for we shall not produce immortal works\nuntil we become interested in some idea long enough to be inspired by\nit, and to write monumentally and surely of it. We hold our ideas by\nthe day; but for a masterpiece to be born, an idea must have taken\nroot and defied time. Permanence of form, moreover, would seriously\nembarrass a modern writer, who wishes to change with the hour, and does\nnot want his crotchets of yesterday to live to be refutations of his\nfads of today. Thus we are too fleeting to make even our transitoriness\neternal. The very sentiment of immortality has perished amongst us, and\nwe actually prefer that our work should die--witness the Futurists! The\nmost self-conscious heirs of modernity, these propounded the theory\nthat _it is better_ that works of art should not endure: well, in that\ncase, their own creations have been true works of art! Nevertheless,\nall they did in this theory was to erect into a system the shallowness,\nprovinciality and frivolousness of the present--and thereby to proclaim\nthemselves the enemies of the future.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nART AND LITERATURE\n\n\n\n98\n\n_Psychology of Style_\n\nThere are writers with a style--it may be either good or bad--and\nwriters with no style at all, who just write badly. What quality or\ncombination of qualities is it which makes a writer a stylist?\n\nStyle probably arises out of a duality; the association in a writer\nof the scribe and the spectator. The first having set down his\nthought, the second goes aside, contemplates it, as things should be\ncontemplated, _from a distance,_ and and asks, \"How does this strike\nme? How does it look, sound, move?\" And he suggests here a toning\ndown of colour, there an acceleration of speed, somewhere else, it\nmay be, an added lucidity, for clearness is an \u00e6sthetic as well as an\nintellectual virtue.\n\nThe writer without style, however, just writes on without second\nthought; the spectator is altogether lacking in him; he cannot\ncontemplate his work from a distance, nor, indeed, at all. This\nexplains the unconsciousness and innocence in bad writing--not in\nbad style, which is neither unconscious nor innocent! The stylist,\non the other hand, is always the actor to his own spectator; he must\nget his effect; even Truth he uses as a means to his effect. If a\ntruth is too repulsive, he throws this or that cloak over it; if it\nis uninteresting, he envelops it in mysticism (mysticism is simply\nan artist's trick); in a word, he \u00e6stheticizes, that is, falsifies\neverything, to please the second person in his duality, the spectator.\nEven if he gets his effects by moderation of statements, he is to\nbe distrusted, for it is the moderation and not Truth that is aimed\nat. And, then, his temptation to employ metaphors, to work up an\ninteresting madness, to rhapsodize--these most potent means to great\neffects, these falsifications! Well, are we to assent, then, to the\nold philosophic prejudice against style and refuse to believe any\nphilosopher who does not write badly?\n\n\n99\n\n_Modern Writing_\n\nThe greatest fault of modern style is that it is a smirking style. It\nfawns upon the reader, it insinuates, it has the manner of an amiable\ndog. If it does something smart, it stops immediately, wags its tail,\nand waits confidently for your approval. You will guess now why those\nlittle regiments of dots are scattered so liberally over the pages of\nthe best-known English novelist. It is H.G. Wells's style wagging its\ntail.\n\n\n100\n\n_The Precise_\n\nThere have been writers--there _are_ writers--whose only title to fame\nis an interesting defect. They are unable to write soundly, and this\ninability, being abnormal, is more interesting than sound writing,\nwhich is only normal. For to limp or to hop on one leg is never\npedestrian--what do I say?--is _not even_ pedestrian.\n\n\n101\n\n_Paradox_\n\nWhat is paradox? The \"bull\" raised to a form of literary art?\n\n\n102\n\n_The Platitude_\n\nThere should be no platitudes in the works of a sincere author. A\nplatitude is an idea not understood by its writer--in one word, a\nshibboleth.\n\n\n103\n\n_Praise?_\n\nIt is usual to extol the industry of those realists who put\n_everything_ into their books, but they should rather be censured\nfor their want of taste. The truth is that they lack the selective\nfaculty--lack, that is, art. Afraid to omit anything from\ntheir reproductions of existence--lest they omit what is most\nsignificant--they include _all_: the easiest course. The easiest\ncourse, that is--for the writers.\n\n\n104\n\n_Hostility of Thinkers_\n\nWhen a thinker has a world of thought of his own, he generally becomes\ncold towards other thinkers, and to none more than to him whose star is\nnearest his own. It is necessary, therefore, that he should read, above\nall, the philosopher whose thought most closely resembles his, for to\nhim he is most likely to be unjust. We are the most hostile to those\nwho say what we say, but say it in a way we do not like.\n\n\n105\n\n_The Twice Subtle_\n\nThe thinker who has been twice subtle arrives at simplicity. And in\ndoing so he has, at the same time, discovered a new truth. But this\nother thinker has possessed simplicity from the beginning. Has he also\npossessed this truth? At any rate, he does not know it.\n\n\n106\n\n_Mastery of One's Thoughts_\n\nOne should know how to keep one's thoughts at a distance. The French\ncan do this, and, therefore, write at once wittily and profoundly of\nserious things. But the Germans live, perhaps, too near their thoughts,\nand are possessed by them: hence, their obscurity and heaviness.\nWit--lightness of hand--shows that one is master of one's thought, and\nis not mastered by it. Nevertheless, the thoughts of the Germans may\nbe the mightier. In this matter the complete thinker should be able to\nbecome French or German as occasion demands.\n\n\n107\n\n_Psychologists_\n\nThe keenest psychologists are those who are burdened with no social\nmission and get along with a minimum of theory. Joseph Conrad, for\ninstance, is infinitely more subtle in his analysis of the human mind\nand heart than is H. G. Wells or John Galsworthy. He has the happy\nunconcern and detachment of a connoisseur in humanity, of one who\nexperiences the same fine interest in an unusual human situation as the\ndilettante finds in some recondite trifle. Henry James carried this\nattitude to a high degree of refinement. He walked among men and women\nas a botanist might walk among a collection of \"specimens,\" dismissing\nthe ordinary with the assured glance of an expert, and lingering\nonly before the distinctive and the significant. Should we who nurse\na mission deplore the spirit in which these disinterested observers\nenter into their task? By no means. But for them, certain domains of\nhuman nature would never have been discovered, and we should have been\ncorrespondingly the losers. For we revolutionists must know the human\nkind before we can alter them. The non-missionary is as necessary as\nthe missionary, and to none more than to the missionary.\n\n\n108\n\n_Realism_\n\nNovels which take for their subject-matter mere ordinary, pedestrian\nexistence--and of this kind are three-fourths of present-day novels\n-are invariably dull in one of two ways. In the first instance, they\nare written by pettifogging talents to whom only the ordinary is of\ninterest, by people, that is to say, who are incapable of writing a\nbook that is not dull. In the other, they are written by men generally\nof considerable, sometimes of brilliant, ability, who, misled by a\ntheory, concern themselves laboriously with a domain of life which\nthey dislike and which even bores them. But if the writer is bored, how\nmuch more so must be the reader! In short, the realist theory produces\nbad books because it forces the writer to select subjects the only\nemotion towards which it is possible to feel is boredom. And great art\nmay arise out of hate, grief, even despair, but never out of boredom.\n\n\n109\n\n_Fate and Mr. Wells_\n\nFate has dealt ironically with H. G. Wells. It has turned his volumes\nof fiction into prophecies, and his volumes of prophecies into fiction.\n\n\n110\n\nMr. G. K. Chesterton\n\nA man's philosophy may be uninteresting, although he writes about it in\nan interesting manner. Just as the many write dully about interesting\nthings, so a few write interestingly about dull things. And Mr.\nChesterton is one of these. Equality is a dull creed, Christianity\nis a dry bone, tradition is wisdom for ants and the Chinese. But Mr.\nChesterton is a very interesting man. How is it possible for an\ninteresting man to have an uninteresting philosophy? Is this simply the\nlast paradox of a master of paradox?\n\nMr. Chesterton's most charming quality is a capacity for being\nsurprised. He writes paradoxically, because to him everything is a\nparadox--the most simple thing, the most uninteresting thing. And\nthat is his weakness, as well as his strength. He has found the common\nthings so wonderful that he has not searched for the uncommon things.\nThe average man is to him such a miracle, that he will not admit the\ngenius is a far greater miracle. The theories he finds established,\nChristianity, equality, democracy, traditionalism, interest him so much\nthat he has not gone beyond them to inquire into other theories perhaps\nmore interesting. And this, because he lacks intellectual curiosity,\nalong with that which frequently accompanies it, subtlety of mind.\nFor the intellectually curious man is precisely the man who is _not_\ninterested in things, or, at any rate, is interested in them only for a\nlittle, and then passes on or burrows deeper to find something further.\nOne dogma after another he studies and deserts, this faith--- less\nsearcher, this philanderer, this philosopher; and that which leads him\non is the hope that at last he will find something to interest him\nfor an eternity. Perhaps it is this dissatisfaction of the mind which\nhas always driven men to seek knowledge; perhaps, if all mankind had\nbeen like Mr. Chesterton, we should not have had even Christianity,\nequality, democracy and the other theories which he holds and adorns.\n\nFor Mr. Chesterton's impressions are all first impressions. Like\nhis own deity, he sees everything for the first time always. And he\nlacks, therefore, the power, called vision, of seeing _into_ things:\nthe outside of things is already sufficiently interesting to him. He\npossesses imagination, however, and kindly and grotesque fancies which\nhe hangs on the ear of the most common clodhopper of a reality. In\nfantasy he reaches greatness. But his philosophy is not interesting. It\nis himself that is interesting.\n\n\n111\n\n_Nietzsche_\n\nNietzsche loved Man, but not men: in that love were comprehended his\nnobility and his cruelty. He demanded that men should become Man\nbefore they asked to be loved.\n\n\n112\n\n_Strindberg_\n\nThis writer, despite his genius, earnestness and courage, arouses\nin us a feeling of profound disappointment. Nor is the cause very\nfar to seek. For along with earnestness and courage in a writer we\ninstinctively look for nobility and joy: if the latter qualities are\nabsent we feel that the _raison d'\u00eatre_ of the former is gone, and that\nearnestness and courage divorced from nobility and joy are aimless,\nwasted, almost inconceivable. And in Strindberg they are so divorced. A\ndisappointed courage; an ignoble earnestness! These are his pre-eminent\nqualities. And with them he essayed tragedy--the form of art in which\nnobility and joy are most required! As a consequence, the problems\nwhich he treats are not only treated inadequately; the inadequacy, when\nwe stop to reflect upon it, absolutely amazes us. His crises are simply\nrows. His women, when they are angry, are intellectual fishwives;\nand--more disgusting still--so are his men. All his characters,\nindeed, intellectual and talented as they are, move on an amazingly low\nspiritual plane. The worst in their nature comes to light at the touch\nof tragedy, and an air of sordidness surrounds all. Posterity will not\ntolerate this \"low\" tragedy, this tragedy without a _raison d'\u00eatre,_\nthis drama of the dregs.\n\n\n113\n\n_Dostoieffsky_\n\nDostoieffsky depicted the subconscious as conscious; that was how he\nachieved his complex and great effects. For the subconscious is the\nsphere of all that is most primeval, mysterious and sublime in man;\nthe very bed out of which springs the flower of tragedy. But did\nDostoieffsky do well to lay bare that world previously so reverently\nhidden, and to bring the reader behind the scenes of tragedy? The\nartist will deny it--the artist who always demands as an ingredient\nin his highest effects mystery. For how can mystery be retained when\nthe very realm of mystery, the subconscious, is surveyed and mapped?\nIn Dostoieffsky's imperishable works the spirit of full tragedy is\nperhaps never evoked. What he provides in them, however, is such a\ncriticism of tragedy as is nowhere else to be found. His genius was for\ncriticism; the artist in him created these great figures in order that\nafterwards the psychologist might dissect them. And so well are they\ndissected, even down to the subconsciousness, that, to use a phrase of\nthe critics, we know them better than the people we meet. Well, that is\nprecisely what we object to--as lovers of art!\n\n\n114\n\n_Again_\n\nNot only is Dostoieffsky himself a great psychologist; all his chief\ncharacters are great psychologists as well. Raskolnikoff, for instance,\nPorphyrius Petrovitch, Svidraga\u00efloff, Prince Muishkin, walk through\nhis pages as highly self-conscious figures, and as people who have one\nand all looked deeply into the shadowy world of human motives, and\nhave generalized. The crises in Dostoieffsky's books are, therefore,\nof a peculiarly complex kind. It is not only the human passions and\ndesires that meet one another in a conflict more or less spontaneous;\nthe whole wealth of psychological observation and generalization of\nthe conflicting character is thrown into their armoury, and with that,\ntoo, they do battle. The resulting effect is more large, rich and\nsubtle than anything else in modern fiction, but also, if the truth\nmust be told, more impure, in the artistic sense, more sophisticated.\nSometimes, so inextricably are passion and \"psychology\" mingled, that\nthe crises are more like the duels of psychologists than the conflicts\nof human souls. In the end, one turns with relief to the pure tragedy\nof the classical writers, the tragedy which is not brought about by\npeople who act like amateur psychologists.\n\n\n115\n\n_Tolerance of Artists_\n\nNo matter what their conscious theories may be, all artists are\nunconsciously aristocratic, and even intolerant in their attitude\nto other men. They are more blind than most people to the _raison\nd'\u00eatre_ of the politician, the business man and the philosopher--these\nunaccountable beings who will not acknowledge the primacy of Creation\nand Beauty. But at last they magnanimously conclude that these exist to\nform their audience, _not_ the subject-matter of their art--that is\nthe modern fallacy!\n\n\n116\n\n_Climate_\n\nThere are natures exquisitely sensitive to their human environment.\nThis man depresses them, they feel the vitality ebbing out of them\nin his presence; that other brings exhilaration, at the touch of his\nmind their powers increase and become creative. It is a question of\natmosphere. The first has a wintry, grey soul; the latter carries a\nsun--_their_ sun--in his bosom. And these artists require sunlight and\nsoft air, before the flowers and fruit can hang from their boughs.\nEvery artist of this type should go to Italy or France and live there;\nor, failing that, create for himself an Italy or France of friends.\nOthers require the tempest with its lowering skies. But that is easier\nto seek; they can generally find it within themselves.\n\n\n117\n\n_Sensibility_\n\nIt may be wisdom for the man of action to smother his griefs, and\nfollow resolutely his course. But with the artist it is different. He\nshould not close his heart against sorrow, for sorrow is of use to him;\nhis task is to transfigure it; thus he makes himself richer. Every\nconquest of suffering which is attained by isolating the pang makes the\nartist poorer; the part of him so isolated dies: he loses bit by bit\nhis sensitiveness, and how much does his sensitiveness mean to him! The\nartist is more defenceless than other men, and he must be so. For his\nsensitiveness should be such that the faintest rose-leaf of emotion\nor thought cannot touch his heart without evoking in him infinite\ndelight or pain; and, at the same time, he should be able to respond to\nthe great tempests and terrible moods of life. Great strength, great\nlove, great productiveness, these are required if he is to endure\nhis sensitiveness; alas, for him, if he have them not! Then he must\nsuffer and suffer, until he has cut off one by one the sources of his\nsuffering, until he has mutilated and lamed what is most godlike in\nhim, and has made himself ordinary at last--or a Schopenhauerian.\n\n\n118\n\n_The Artist's Enemy_\n\nI waited once beside a lake, created surely to mirror Innocence, so\npure it was. The passage of a butterfly over it or the breath of a\nrose-leaf's fall was enough to stir its surface, infinitely delicate\nand sensitive. Yet tempests did not affright it, for it laughed and\ndanced beneath the whip of the fiercest storm. And it could bury, as\nin a bottomless tomb, the stones thrown at it by the most spiteful\nhands; to these, indeed, it responded with a Puck-like radiating\nsmile that spread until it broke in soft laughter upon its marge. So\nstrong and delicate it lay, and yet, it seemed, so defenceless. Yet\nwhat could harm it? Storm, shower, sunshine, and darkness alike but\nministered to it, and even the missiles of its enemies were lost in its\nboundless security. It seemed invulnerable. I returned years later,\nand looked once, looked and fled. For the lake had grown old, blind\nand torpid, so that even the light lay dead in it. Then I noticed that\non every side, almost invisible, there were innumerable black streams\noozing--infection! The tragedy of the artist.\n\n\n119\n\n_Uniformity_\n\nIn the mien of children there is sometimes to be noted a natural\nnobility and pride; they walk with the unconscious grace of\nconquerors. But this grace and freedom soon disappear, and when the\nchild has become man there is nothing left of them: his bearing is\nas undistinguished as his neighbour's. Nowhere, now, is nobility\nof presence and movement to be found, except among children, the\nchieftains of half-barbarous peoples, and some animals. The farther\nman departs from the animal the less dignified he becomes, and the\nmore his appearance conforms to a common level: indeed, civilization\nseems, on one side, to be a labourious attempt to arrive at the\nundistinguished and indistinguishable. Is Man, then, the mediocre\nanimal par excellence? Only, perhaps, under an egalitarian r\u00e9gime.\nWherever a hierarchy exists in Europe there is more of nobility of\ndemeanour than elsewhere. Equality and humility are the great fosterers\nof the mediocre: and not only, alas! of the mediocre in demeanour. Who\ncan tell how many proud, graceful and gallant thoughts and emotions\nhave been killed by shame--the shame which the egalitarians and the\nhumble have heaped upon them? And how much Art, therefore, has lost?\nCertainly, in the minds of children there are many brave, generous and\nnoble thoughts which are never permitted to come to maturity. Ye must\nbecome as little children----.\n\n\n120\n\n_Immortality of the Artist_\n\nAn artist one day forgot Death, so entirely had he become Life's, rapt\nin a world of living contemplation; and, established there, he created\na form. That hour was immortal, and, therefore, the form was immortal.\nThis is the \"timelessness\" of true art-work; they are fashioned \"in\neternity,\" as Blake said, and so speak to the eternal in Man.\n\n\n121\n\n_The Descent of the Artist_\n\nAt the beginning of his journey he climbed daringly, leaping from rock\nto rock, exuberant, tireless, until he reached what he thought was\nhis highest peak. Then began his descent, and, lo, immediately great\nweariness fell upon him. A friend of his wondered, Is he going downhill\nbecause he is tired? Or is he tired because he is going downhill?\n\n\n122\n\n_Apropos the Cynic_\n\nHe wrote with an assumption of extreme heartlessness, and the public\nsaid, \"How tender his heart must be when he hides it under _such_ a\ndisguise!\" But what he was hiding all the time was his lack of heart.\n\n\n123\n\n_Artist and Philosopher_\n\nIn all ages the philosophers have _pardoned_ the artists their lack of\ndepth, on account of their divine love of the beautiful. In our time,\nhowever, this only reason for pardoning them has disappeared, and they\nare now entirely deserving of condemnation. For the realists abjure\nequally thought--interpretation, and beauty--selection. To be an eye,\nwith a fountain pen attached to it; that is their aim, successfully\nattained, alas! A single eye and not a single thought: the definition\nof the realist.\n\n\n124\n\n_An Evil_\n\nArt is at the present day far too easy for comprehension, far too\nobvious. Our immediate task should be to make it _difficult,_ and the\nconcern of a dedicated few. Thus only shall we win back reverence for\nit. When it is reverenced, however, it will then be time to extend its\nsway; but not until then. Art must be approached with reverence, or\nnot at all. A democratic familiarity with it--such as exists among the\nmiddle classes, _not_ among the working classes, in whom reverence is\nnot yet dead--is an abomination.\n\n\n125\n\n_Modern Art Themes_\n\nHow sordid are the themes which modern art has chosen for itself!\nThe loss of money or of position, poverty, social entanglements--the\nlittle accidents which a thinker laughs at! Are modern artists as\nbourgeois as this? A coterie of shop-keepers? Tragic art has no\nconcern with the accidental: that is the sphere of comedy. Tragedy\nshould move inevitably once it has begun to revolve; it is beyond\nfashion, universal, essential; Fate, not Circumstance, is its theme.\nThe presence of the accidental in a tragedy is sufficient to condemn\nit. For it is the inevitable, the \"Fate\" in Tragedy, that makes of it\na heroic and _joyful_ thing. It cannot be improvised like Comedy. It\ndemands in its creator a sense of the eternal, just as Comedy, on the\nother hand, demands an exquisite appreciation of temporal fashion.\nTragedy is the greater art; Comedy, perhaps, the more difficult.\nOur modern tragedies, however, are mainly about accidents, and very\nmean accidents; they are improvised misfortunes and their effect is\ndepressing.\n\n\n126\n\n_The Illusionists_\n\nHow shallow are most artists! How childish! How subject to illusion!\nThis novelist at the end of his novels leaves his characters in a\nUtopia, from which all sorrow and trial have been banished, a condition\nabsolutely unreal, contemptible and absurd. And all his readers admire\nwithout thinking, and call the author profound! He is not profound,\nbut shallow and commonplace. Except for his gift of mimicry, which he\ncalls Art, he is just an average man. And, moreover, he is tired: the\n\"happy ending\" is his exhaustion speaking through his art, his will\nto stagnation and surrender. Works of art should only end tragically,\nor enigmatically, as in \"A Doll's House,\" or at the gateway of a new\nideal, as in \"An Enemy of the People.\"\n\n\n127\n\n_Majorities and Art_\n\nWhen it is said that in modern society poetic tragedy is out of season\nand cannot _succeed,_ an assumption is made which on literary grounds\ncan never be admitted. It is that majorities count in literature as in\npolitics; that \"Brand\" was a failure and \"A Doll's House\" a success.\nBut from another point of view, \"Brand\" was the success, \"A Doll's\nHouse\" the failure. And the whole \"problem\" drama a failure with it,\nand all the realistic schools, as well--a failure! This is _certainly_\nhow the future historian of literature will regard it. Our era with its\ndepressing \"masterpieces\" will be called the barren era, because the\ngrand _exception,_ great art, has not bloomed in it, because even our\ncritics have judged contemporary art by a criterion of success instead\nof the eternal spiritual criterion: their championship of \"problem\" art\nproves it! In the meantime, then, realism is considered \"the thing,\"\nand people speak pityingly of poetic tragedy. Only those forms of art\nwhich can \"survive\" in the struggle for existence are counted good--so\ndeeply, so unwisely have we drunk at the Darwinian spring!\n\n\n128\n\n_The Decay of Man_\n\nThe aim of Art was once to enrich existence by the creation of gods\nand demi-gods; it is now to duplicate existence by the portrayal of\nmen. Art has become imitation, Realism has triumphed. And how much has\nmaterialism had to do with this! In an age lacking a vivid ideal of\nMan, men become interesting. The eyes of the artist, no longer having\nan ideal to feed upon, are turned towards the actual, and imitation\nsucceeds creation. Every one busies himself in the study of men, and\nArt becomes half a science, the artists actually collecting their data,\nas if they were professors of psychology! Theories glorifying men are\nborn, and the cult of the average man arises, which is nothing but\nthe exaltation of men at the expense of Man. In due time all ideals\nperish, only an inspiration towards averageness remains, and equality\nis everywhere enthroned. Art has no longer a heaven to fly to, there\nto create loftier heavens. In despair, she descends to earth and the\nordinary, and for her salvation _must_ find the ordinary interesting,\nmust _make_ the ordinary interesting. Realism arises when ideals of Man\ndecay: it is the egalitarianism of Art.\n\n\n129\n\n_A New Valuation_\n\nBut why do ideals of Man decay--why _did_ the ideal of Man decay?\nBecause there were no longer examples to inspire the artists in\nthe creation of their grand, superhuman figures. Suspicion, envy,\nequality--call it what you will--had become strong: the great man could\nno longer fight it and remain great. By the radicals the genius was\nregarded as an insult to the remainder of mankind. And how ordinary\nhe was, this genius, compared with the grand figures of the time of\nthe Renaissance; that time when men were weighed and valued, when\nelevation and inequality were acknowledged and acted upon, and Man\nbecame greater in stature, with Art his Will to Greatness! Well,\nwe must weigh men again; we must deny equality; we must affirm\naristocracy--in everything but commerce and production, where democracy\nis really a return to the aristocratic tradition. And, you artists, you\nmust turn from men to Man, from Realism to Myth. And if you can find\nin your age no example to inspire you to the creation of a great ideal\nof Man, then become your own examples! Man must be born again, if you\nwould enter into your heaven.\n\n\n130\n\n_The Man and the Hour_\n\nA. Let people say about aristocracy what they will, it remains\ntrue that Man generally is equal to the event. Events are the true\nstepping-stones on which Man rises to higher things. B. Ah! you are\nnot speaking of Man, but of men, of the many. The great man, however,\ndoes not require an event to call his greatness forth. He is his own\nevent--and also that of others!\n\n\n131\n\n_The Lover to the Artists_\n\nLove idealizes the object. If you would create an ideal Art, must you\nnot, then, learn to love? And that you are Realists--does it not prove\nthat you have not Love?\n\n\n132\n\n_Origin of the Tragic_\n\nHere is yet another guess at the origin of the tragic:\n\nA man is told of some calamity, altogether unexpected, the engulfing\nof a vessel by the sea, an avalanche which wipes out a town, or a fire\nin which a family of little ones perish, leaving the father and mother\nunharmed and disconsolate; and at once the very grandest feelings\nawaken within him, he finds himself enlarged spiritually, and life\nitself is enriched for him--the people in the vessel and in the town,\nthe children and the parents of the children, are raised to a little\nmore than human elevation by the favouritism of calamity. Next day he\nhears that the news was false, and immediately, along with the feeling\nof relief, he experiences an unmistakable disappointment and loss;\nfor all those grand emotions and the contemplation of life in that\ngreater aspect are snatched from him! Perhaps in primitive times, when\nthe means of disseminating news were more untrustworthy than they are\ntoday, disappointments of this kind would occur very often; and one day\nsome rude poet, having noted the elevation which calamity brings, would\nin luxurious imagination _invent_ a calamity, in order to experience\n_at will_ this enlargement of the soul. But a tale of calamity, being\ninvented, would inevitably please the poet's hearers, both for the\nfeelings it aroused and the grand image of Man it represented. So much\nfor the origin and persistence--not the meaning--of the tragic.\n\n\n133\n\n_Tragedy and Comedy_\n\nTragedy is the aristocratic form of art. In it the stature of Man is\nmade larger. The great tragic figures are superhuman, unapproachable:\nwe do not sorrow with them, but for them, with an impersonal pity and\nadmiration. And that is because Man, and not men, is represented by\nthem: idealization and myth are, therefore, proper to their delineation.\n\nBut Comedy is democratic. Its subject is men, the human-all-too-human,\nthe unrepresentative: it belittles men in a jolly egalitarianism. This\nstatic fraternity, this acceptance of men as they are, is resented by\nthe aristocratic natures, who would make Man nobler; but to the average\nmen it is flattering, for it proclaims that the great are absurd even\nas they, it unites men in a brotherhood of absurdity. Thus, all comedy\nis an involuntary satire, all tragedy an involuntary idealization of\nmen.\n\nTragedy is the supreme affirmation of Life, for it affirms Life even\nin its most painful aspects, struggle, suffering, death; so that we\nsay, \"Yes, this, too, is beautiful!\" _That_ was the _raison d'\u00eatre_ of\nclassical tragedy--and not Nihilism!\n\nWell, in which of these forms, Tragedy or Comedy, may our hopes and\nvisions of the Future best be expressed? Surely in that which idealizes\nMan and says Yea to suffering, Tragedy, the dynamic form of Art.\n\n\n134\n\n_Super-Art_\n\nIn the works of some artists everything is on a slightly superhuman\nscale. The figures they create fill us with astonishment; we cannot\nunderstand how such unparalleled creatures came into being. When we\ncontemplate them, in the works of Michelangelo or of Nietzsche, there\narise unvoluntarily in our souls sublime dreams of what Man may yet\nattain. Our thoughts travel into the immeasurable, the undiscovered,\nand the future becomes almost an intoxication to us.\n\nIn Nietzsche, especially, this attempt to make Art perform the\nimpossible--this _successful_ attempt to make Art perform the\nimpossible--is to be noted in every book, almost in every word. For\nhe strains language to the utmost it can endure; his words seem to be\nstriving to escape from the bonds of language, seeking to transcend\nlanguage. \"It is my ambition,\" he says in \"The Twilight of the\nIdols,\" \"to say in ten sentences what every one else says in a whole\nbook--what every one else does _not_ say in a whole book.\" In the same\nway, when in his first book he wrote about Tragedy, he raised it to\nan elevation greater than it had ever known before, except, perhaps,\nin the works of \u00c6schylus; when, in his essay upon \"Schopenhauer as\nEducator,\" he adumbrated his conception of the philosopher, philosophy\nseemed to become a task for the understandings of gods; and when,\nhaving criticized the prevailing morality, he set up another, it\nseemed to his generation an impossible code for human beings, a code\ncruel, over-noble. Finally, when he wrote of Man, it was to create\nthe Superman. He touched nothing which he did not ennoble. And,\nconsequently, in Art his chosen form was Myth; he held it beneath the\nnobility of great art to create anything less than demi-gods; religion\nand art were in him a unity.\n\nIn super-art, in these works of Leonardo and Michelangelo, of \u00c6schylus\nand Nietzsche, Man is incited again and again to surpass himself, to\nbecome more than \"human.\"\n\n\n135\n\n_Love Poetry_\n\nLove poetry, so long as it glorifies Love, is supremely worthy of\nour reverence. Everything that idealizes and transfigures Love,\nmaking it more desirable and full even of transcendental meaning, is\nof unquestionable advantage to mankind; on the other hand, a crudely\nphysiological statement, even though this may be _formally_ true,\nserves neither Love nor Life. It is assuredly not the function of art\nto treat Love in this way. On the contrary, amatory poetry by its\nidealization allures to Love; this is true even of such of it as is\ntragic: we are prepared by it to experience gladly even the suffering\nof Love. The only poetry that is noxious is that which bewails\nthe \"vanity\" of Love, and that in which a deliberate sterility is\nadumbrated. These are decadent.\n\n\n136\n\n_Literature and Literature_\n\nLiterature that is judged by literary standards merely is not of the\nhighest rank. For the greatest works are themselves the standards by\nwhich literature is judged. How, then, are they to be valued? By a\nstandard outside of literature, by their consonance with that which is\nthe _raison d'\u00eatre_ of literature? In them a far greater problem than\nany literary problem faces us, the problem, Why does literature exist?\nWhat is the meaning of literature?\n\nThrough whole generations men forget this problem, and literature\nbecomes to them a specialized form of activity to be pursued for its\nown sake, a part of Man's soul, thrown off and become static and\nseparate, with a sterile life of its own. The more shallow theory and\npractice of literature then come into being; Realism and Art for Art's\nsake flourish. But the eternal question always returns again, Why does\nliterature exist? What is its meaning? And, then, the possibility of\nanother blossoming of literature is not far away.\n\n\n137\n\n_The Old Poet_\n\nAn old poet who had lived in the good days when poets were _makers_--of\nmoralities and gods, among other things--lately re-visited the earth,\nand after a study of the very excellent exercises in literature to be\nfound in our libraries, delivered himself thus:--\n\n\"How has our power decayed! Into litterateurs have we declined who were\ncreators. Perish all literature that is only literature! Poets live\nto create gods; to glorify gods should all their arts of adornment\nand idealization be used. But I see here adornment without the object\nworthy of adornment; beautification for the sake of beautification; Art\nfor Art's sake. These artists are only half artists. They have surely\nmade Art into a game.\"\n\nThe critics did not understand him, and, _therefore,_ disagreed. The\nartists thought he was mad, besides knowing nothing of \u00e6sthetics. The\nmoral fanatics acclaimed him vociferously, mistaking him for a popular\npreacher. Only a philosophico-artistic dilettante listened attentively,\nand said, a little patronizingly, \"He is wrong, but he is more right\nthan wrong.\"\n\n\n138\n\n_The Old Gods_\n\nPerhaps there is too much made of anthropomorphism. Man's first gods\nwere not \"human\" gods; they were stars, animals, plants and the like.\nIt was not until he became an artist that he made gods after his own\nform: anthropomorphism is just an artistic convention! For gods are in\ntheir _content_ superhuman. There has never been a man like Jehovah\nor Zeus or Odin. The essential thing in them is that they embody an\nideal, a fiction, adumbrating something _more_ than Man. Religion is\npoetry in the grand style, and, as poetry, must have its conventions.\n\n\n139\n\n_The Old Poets_\n\nIn primitive times the poet was far more both of an inventor and a liar\nthan he is at present. For many centuries the lies of the poets have\nbeen innocent lies, a convention merely, and to be recognized as such\nbefore \"\u00e6sthetic\" enjoyment can begin. But the lies the old poets told\nwere believed literally--as they were meant to be! Yes, the poet at\nthe beginning was just a liar, a great liar. How else, if he had not\ndeceived Man, could he have peopled the heavens with Man's deities? And\nas the father of whole families of gods, he has done more to decide the\nfate of Humanity than all the philosophers, heroes and martyrs. These\nare only his servants, who explain war or die for his fictions. And not\nmerely error, as Nietzsche held, but lying has from the earliest times\nbeen the most potent factor of progress. But not all lying; only the\nlies told out of great love have been creative and life-giving. Art,\nimagination, prophecy, hallucination, ecstasy, vision--all these were\nunited in the first poets, the true creators.\n\n\n140\n\n_The Creator Redivivus_\n\nThe only modern who has dared to be a poet through and through,\nthat is, a liar in the noble and tragic sense, is the author of the\nSuperman. In Nietzsche, again, after centuries of divine toying, the\npoet has appeared in his great _r\u00f4le_ of a creator of gods, a figure\nbeside whom the \"poet\" seems like nothing more than the page boy of the\nMuse.\n\n\n141\n\n_Literature as Praise_\n\nA. Would you erase from the book of literature all that is not\nidealization and myth, you neo-moderns? Would you deprive us of all the\ncharming, serious, whimsical, and divinely frivolous works which are\nhuman-all-too-human? B. If we could--a thousand times no! We would only\ndestroy what defames Life. All that praises Life, all that enchants to\nLife, we would cherish as things holy. Idealization, it is true, is\nthe highest form of praise, because it arises out of Love; but there\nare other forms. Modern Realism, however, is a calumny against Life.\n_\u00c9crasez l'inf\u00e2me!_\n\n\n\n142\n\n_The Poet Speaks_\n\nHow unhappy must all those poor mortals be who are not poets! They\nfeel and cannot express. They are dumb when their soul would utter its\ndivinest thoughts. Cloddish and fragmentary, they are scarcely human,\nthese poor mortals! For one must be a poet to be altogether human. Yes!\nin the ideal society of the future every one will be a poet, even the\naverage man!\n\n\n\n143\n\n_Myth_\n\nThe worst evil of our time is this, that there is nothing greater than\nthe current average existence to which man can look; Religion has dried\nup, Art has decayed from an idealization of life into a reflection of\nit. In short, Art has become a passive thing, where once it was the\n\"great stimulus to Life.\" The idealization and enchantment which the\nmoderns have so carefully eliminated from it was precisely its _raison\nd'\u00eatre._ And modern Art, which sets out to copy life, has forgotten Art\naltogether, its origin, its meaning and its end.\n\nAgainst this aimless Realism, we must oppose idealization, and\nespecially that which is its highest expression, Myth. And let no one\nsay that it is impossible at this stage in Man's history to resuscitate\nMyth. The past has certainly lost its mystery for us, and it was in\nthe past, at the source of Humanity, that the old poets set their\nsublime fictions. But the future is still ours, and there, at Man's\ngoal, our myths must be planted. And thither, indeed, has set the\ngreat literature of the last hundred years. Faust, Mephistopheles,\nBrand, Peer Gynt, Zarathustra--there were no greater figures in the\nliterature of the last century--were all myths, and all forecasts of\nthe future. The soil out of which literature grows, then, has not yet\nbeen exhausted! If we but break away from Realism, if we make Art\nsymbolic, if we bring about a marriage between Art and Religion, Art\nwill rise again. That this is possible, we who have faith in the Future\n_must_ believe.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nCREATIVE LOVE\n\n\n144\n\n_Creative Love_\n\nTo us who nourish hopes for the future of Man, the important\ndistinction to be drawn in Love is not that between the sacred and the\nprofane. We ask, rather, Is our Love creative or barren? That Love\nshould bring happiness, or union, or fulfilment, seems to us not such\na very great matter! The will to create something, out of oneself, not\noneself, whether it be in bodies, or in Art or Philosophy--that is the\nthing for ever worthy of our reverence.\n\nThere is another Love; that whose end is enjoyment. It is the enemy\nof creative Love. It is the Love which, in various forms, is known\nas Liberalism, or Humanitarianism, or the greatest happiness of the\ngreatest number. Sympathy is its central dogma; and it is never tired\nof exalting itself at the expense of the other Love, which it calls\ncruel, senseless and unholy. But the same blasphemy is here repeated\nthat Socrates once was guilty of and afterwards so divinely atoned.\nFor it is not creative Love, but sympathetic Love, that is unholy.\nThis would spare the beloved the pangs of love, even if, in doing so,\nit had to sacrifice the fruits of love. It springs from disbelief in\nexistence. Life is suffering, it cries, suffering must be alleviated,\nand, therefore, Life must be abated, weakened and lamed! And this love\nis barren. But creative Love does not bring enjoyment, but rapture\nand pain. It is the will to suffer gladly; it finds relief from the\npains of existence, not in alleviation, but in creation. This Love\nis, indeed, a Siren--we would not mitigate the awfulness of that\nsymbol--luring Man to peril, perhaps to shipwreck. Yet, by the holiest\nlaw of his being, he listens, he follows. And, if his ears have been\nsealed by reason he _unseals_ them again, he listens with his very\nsoul, yielding to that which is for him certainly danger, perhaps\nDeath, knowing that, even in Death, he will be affirming Life in the\nhighest. This Love, the earnest of future greatness, this terrible,\nunconditional and innocent thing, we _cannot but_ reverence.\n\n\n145\n\n_Where Man is Innocent_\n\nThere is one region in Man where innocence and a good conscience\nstill reign--in the unconscious. Love and the joy in Love are of the\nunconscious. The rapture which Love brings is neither, as Schopenhauer\nsaid, merely a device to ensure the propagation of mankind, nor the\nrace rejoicing in and through the individual to its own perpetuation;\nbut the joy of unconscious Man, still innocent as before the Fall, with\na good conscience enjoying the anticipatory rapture of new life. The\ninstincts believe in Life entirely without questioning; doubt and guilt\nare simply not present in their world: it is reflection that makes\nsinners of us all.\n\nThe thoughts that come to us in the season of Love--we do not need to\nsearch in metaphysical heavens for their source. They arise from the\nvery well spring, the very central ego of Man, out of the unconscious,\nthe innocent, the real. Poetry, in that which is incomprehensible and\nmystical in it, arises from this also. So there is hope still for Man,\nall ye who believe not in primal depravity! The real man is _even\nnow_ innocent: Original Sin is only mind deep, conscience deep. The\ninstincts still behave as if Life-defaming doctrines _were not_: they\nhave not yet begun to mourn at the Spring and exult at the Autumn.\nAnd in the ecstasies of creative Love, whether it be of persons or of\nthings, they continue to celebrate, without misgiving, their jubilee.\n\n\n146\n\n_A Criterion_\n\nTo find out whether a thing is decadent or no, let us henceforth\nput this question, Does it spring from creative Love? Is the Will\nto suffering incarnate in it, or the will to alleviate suffering?\nHow much must by this standard be condemned! Humanitarianism and its\nchild, Reform, or the desire to alleviate others' pain; \u00c6stheticism\nand its step-brother, Realism, or the wish to alleviate one's own:\nthese spring from the same source--a dearth of Love. For creative Love\nwould enjoin, not sympathy with suffering, but the will to transcend\nsuffering; not reform, whose aim is happiness, but revolution, whose\naim is growth; not Art for Art's sake, an escape from Life into a\nstationary \u00e6sthetic world, but the creation, out of Life, of ever new\nArt; not Realism or the need to find men interesting; but idealization,\nor the desire to _make_ men interesting. John Galsworthy and Oscar\nWilde alike are decadent for this reason, that they lack Love. The\nreal difference between them is that the one is a Collectivist, and\nsympathizes with the people, and the other is an Individualist, and\nsympathizes with himself. But both degrade Love to the level of\nHedonism; both rebel against the cruelty of Love, desiring a Love which\nwill not hurt, and, therefore, _must_ be barren.\n\nBut wherever peoples, faiths or arts decay, the decay of Love--this\nstrong, energetic Love--has come first. The current frivolousness about\nintellectual matters, the philandering of the literary coquettes,\nsprings simply from a lack of Love. For the great problems demand\npassion for their comprehension, and our intellectuals dislike\npassion. In politics and in religion it is the same: creative Love has\neverywhere disappeared to be replaced by barren Sympathy. But is it\npossible by preaching to increase Love? Can it be willed into power?\nWell, praise may call it forth.\n\n\n147\n\n_Love at the Renaissance_\n\nHow may a great creative age like the Renaissance be interpreted on the\nhypothesis of Love? Shall it yet be found that the mainspring of the\nRenaissance was a newly discovered love of Life and, therefore, of Man?\n\nIn the Middle Ages that part of Life, then called God, had become\nisolated and abstract, and was worshipped to the detriment of all other\nLife; while Man was neglected where he was not belittled. Thus, a\nstrong current of Man's love was diverted away from Man altogether, and\nthe earth became dark and sterile. How was the earth to recapture its\nlove again, and drink back into itself its rapture and creativeness? By\na marriage in which God and the Universe were made one flesh; by the\nincorporation of God into Life, and, therefore, into Man. Hence arose\nthe Pantheism of the Renaissance. To love Life with a good conscience,\nto love Life unconditionally, it was necessary to call Life God. Out of\nthis Love sprang not only the art but the science of the Renaissance.\nFor Man once more became interested in himself, and, from himself, in\nLife; ultimately discoveries were made and more than one New World was\nbrought to light.\n\nPerhaps it is the defect of all theistic, objective theologies that\nthey become, sooner or later, barren. Only by being translated into the\nsubjective do they regain their creative power: Pantheism is the remedy\nfor Theism. Yet to Theism we owe this, that it lent intensity and\nelevation to Love. The Love of the Pantheists of the Renaissance was\nnot ordinary human Love; it united in a unique emotion the love that\nhad formerly been given to Man along with that which had formerly been\ngiven to God. It loved Man as God should be loved--a dangerous thing.\nBut out of this love of God in Man it created, nevertheless, something\ngreat, somewhat less than the one, somewhat more than the other--the\ndemi-god. The Renaissance was the age of the demi-gods.\n\n\n148\n\n_Sympathy_\n\nSympathy is Love bereft of his bow and arrows--but still blind.\n\n\n149\n\nA Self-Evident Proposition\n\nThis is certain, that God is Love. How, else, could He have created the\nUniverse?\n\n\n150\n\n_\"God is Love\"_\n\nWhen Jesus said, \"God is Love,\" He denned a religion of Becoming. Was\nit not necessarily so? For Love is not something which may _choose_ to\ncreate; it _must_ create, it is fundamentally the will and the power\nto create. And Eternal Love, or God, is, therefore, eternal creation,\neternal change, eternal Becoming. Consequently, there is no ultimate\ngoal, no Perfection, except that which is realized at every moment in\nthe self-expression of Love. A vision? A nightmare? Well, it depends\nwhether one is in favour of Life, or of Death; whether one lives, or is\nlived. And, therefore, whether religion is subjective, or objective?\nWhether God is within us, or outside us? For so long as God is within\nus, we must create. That should be our Becoming!\n\n\n151\n\n_Love and Mr. Galsworthy_\n\nThe art of Mr. Galsworthy is such an ambiguous thing--half impersonal\nportrayal, half personal plea, the _Art pour l'Art_ of a social\nreformer--and the subjects he chooses are so controversial--the\nabuses of society--that it is hard to place him as an artist. When\n\"The Dark Flower\" appeared, however, we thought we had him. Here was\na great subject to his hand, an artist's question at last, Love.\nAlas! even in writing about it, he could not altogether exclude the\nreformer. Well, that itself, perhaps, told us something! However\nthat may be, we do get here Mr. Galsworthy's conception of Love. It\nis an inadequate conception, a realist's conception: Love, with the\nmeaning left out. The ardours, the longing, the disappointment and\nanguish--all the _symptoms_--of Love are given; but not a hint that\nLove has any significance beyond the emotions it brings: that which\nredeems Love, creation, is ignored altogether! Mr. Galsworthy has\nseen that Love is cruel, but he has not seen beyond the cruelty: it\nis the ultimate thing to him. Well, that is perhaps the most that\ncould be expected of a humanitarian trying to comprehend Love! In this\nbook are all the symptoms of Humanitarianism--pity for every one,\nreform of institutions, suffering always considered the sufficient\nreason for abolishing or palliating things: a creed thrice inadequate,\nthrice shallow, thrice blind. Love would find relief from suffering in\ncreation. But one feels that Mr. Galsworthy would abolish Life if he\ncould. Humanitarianism unconsciously seeks the annihilation of Life,\nfor in Life suffering is integral.\n\n\n152\n\n_Mr. Thomas Hardy_\n\nIn Mr. Hardy's conception of Love, unlike Mr. Galsworthy's, the\ncontingency of creation is never absent; but to him creation is not\na justification of the pangs of Love. It is an intensification of\nthem; it is Love's last and worst indignity. But even when Love does\nnot bestow this ultimate insult of creation, it cannot resist the\nsatisfaction of torturing its victims; it is wanton and irrelevant\nin its distribution of pain. Mr. Hardy's books are filled with the\ntorments of Love. Was it not fitting that he should aim his main\nindictment of Life against it, seeing that it is the trick whereby\nthe blunder of Life is perpetuated? And so Mr. Hardy is certainly a\ndecadent; but he is a great decadent--one of those who by the power of\ntheir denial of Life seem to make Life more profound and tragic, and\ninspire the healthy artists to an even greater love and reverence for\nit.\n\nHe is great, however, not by his theories, but by his art. The contrast\nbetween the sordidness of his thought and the splendidness of his art\nfills us sometimes with amazement. He sets out in his books to prove\nthat Life is a mean blunder; and, in spite of himself, the tragedy of\nthis blunder becomes in his hands splendid and impressive, so that\nLife is enriched even while it is defamed. Art, which is _necessarily_\nidealization and glorification, triumphs in him over even his most\ndeeply founded conscious ideas. In all his greater books, it refutes\nhis pessimism and turns his curses into involuntary blessings. So\ndivine is Art!\n\n\n153\n\n_Mr. George Moore_\n\nIn writing about Love, Mr. Moore falls into the same realistic error\nas Mr. Galsworthy: he writes about its manifestations without knowledge\nof that which gives them meaning and connection. Love to him is just\ncertain sensations--and not only Love, but everything else. Art is\na sensation; religion, a sensation; the soul, a sensation. Take out\nof his books sensation, and there will be little of account left. He\nknows the religious feeling, but not religion: he always confounds\nspirituality with refined sensualism. So he knows the sensation of\nLove, but not Love.\n\nBut Mr. Moore is learned in the senses: he knows them in everything\nbut their purity. Yes, even sensuality is in his books corrupted. How\ntrue this is we realize when in \"Evelyn Innes\" he compares one of his\ncharacters to a faun. We are almost distressed at this, for we feel\nthat the word is not only coarsened, but used with a wrong meaning\naltogether: we feel that Mr. Moore is incapable of understanding what a\nfaun is! These sophisticated, scented and somewhat damaged voluptuaries\nof his, in whose conversation there is always an atmosphere of\nexpensive feminine lingerie, and who \"know\" women so intimately; how\nperverted must be the taste which can compare them with the hardy,\nnimble, unconscious creatures of ancient Greece! But Mr. Moore is much\nnearer in temper to Oscar Wilde than to the realists. He is an \u00e6sthete\nessentially, and a realist only in the second place, and only because\nhe is an \u00e6sthete. The province of selected exquisite beauty had been\nexhausted by Wilde and his school; so Mr. Moore turned to the squalid,\nthe commonplace and the diseased in Life, there to find his \"\u00e6sthetic\nemotion.\" This explains the curious effect at once of colour and of\ndrabness in his books. He is a perverted Wilde; doubly a decadent.\n\n\n154\n\n_Mr. Bernard Shaw_\n\nBoth the strength and the weakness of Mr. Shaw spring from a\ndefect--his lack of Love. Freedom from illusion is his strength. He\npossesses common sense minus common sentiment; that, and probably\nnothing more; and that gives to his thought an appearance of subtlety,\nthough it is not really subtle. Thus, his common sense tells him that\nLove is essentially creation. He sees through the illusions which Love\nspins round its purpose, because he does not see these illusions at\nall. Love, indeed, is known to him in all but its illusions; but who\nknows Love that knows not Love's illusions? Still, it is to his honour\nthat he has conceived Love as creation. His weakness consists in that\nhis attitude to Love is purely intellectual. He lacks Love more than\nany other man of his time. In grappling with the great problems of\nexistence, it is not Love but the very absence of Love that has been\nhis most useful weapon; and so he has seen much, but grasped nothing,\ncreated nothing. And because he has never loved, he can never be called\nan artist. For how can one who has not loved idealize? And how can one\nwho has not idealized be an artist? In Mr. Shaw, Nature has gone out of\nher way to create the very antithesis of the artist.\n\nWhat Nietzsche said about Socrates is true of Mr. Shaw even in a\nhigher degree; that his reason is stronger than his instincts, and\nhas usurped the place of his instincts. Without Love, he yet affirms\ncreation. What can be his reason for doing so? Why should he wish\nLife to persist if he does not love Life? Is it in order that people\nmight still converse wittily, and the epigram might not die? Or so\nthat exceptional men might experience forever the joy of intellectual\nconflict, the satisfaction found in the ruthless exposure of fallacy\nand weakness, and the proud feeling of mental power? We know that Mr.\nShaw regards the brain as an end--the purpose of Life being to perfect\na finer and finer brain--and we know, too, that to Mr. Shaw the highest\njoy the brain can experience is not that of knowing, but of fighting.\nKnowledge to him is a weapon with which to wage war. Does he desire\nLife to continue so that controversy might continue? Well, let us look,\nthen, for some other reason for his praise of Love. He himself lacks\nLove:--Can it be that he praises it for the same reason for which\nthe Christian praises what he is not but would fain be? And his love\nof Love is then something pathetic, founded on \"unselfishness\"? And\nhimself, a Romantic?\n\n\n155\n\n_Mr. H. G. Wells_\n\nHow much has Mr. Wells's scientific training had to do with his\nconception of Love? As a student of biology, it was natural he should\nsee Love as sex. In all his theories, indeed, there is more of the\nscientist than of the artist. Scientific certainly, is his simple\nacceptance of sex as a fact, and his unhesitating association of it\nwith generation, and of both with Love. The innocence of the scientist\nand not of the artist is his, an innocence Darwinian, not Goethean. And\nso, although his purpose is fine--to restore in his books an innocent\nconception of sexual Love--in doing so, his biology always runs away\nwith his art. For he would render sex significant by reading it into\nall creation, as the meaning of creation; thus making the instrument\nmore than the agent, the very meaning of the agent! But this robs both\ncreation and sex of their significance. The way to restore an innocent\nconception of sexual Love is by reading creation into it, by seeing it\nas part of the universal Becoming, by carrying it away on the great\npurifying stream of Becoming. In spite of his genius, and still more\nof his cleverness, Mr. Wells here began at the wrong end. But it is\ndoubtful whether any one in this generation has sufficient artistic\npower and elevation to express in art this conception of Love. Within\nthe limits of Realism, especially of \"physiological Realism,\" it\ncertainly cannot be expressed. Nothing less than the symbolic may serve\nfor it.\n\n\n156\n\n_The Idealism of Love_\n\nThe writer who discovered that love idealizes the object might have\npushed his discovery a little further; for it is no less true that love\nidealizes the subject. None knows better than the poets how to take\nadvantage of this self-idealization: one has only to read their love\npoems to find out how much more is said about the poet's beautiful\nfeelings than about the object which presumably evoked them. Heine,\nparticularly, was a shameless offender in this way. A woman was to\nhim simply an excuse for seeing himself in imagination in a romantic\nattitude. But even with the others who appear less obtrusive and more\ndisinterested the implication is the same. How elevated and even divine\nwe must be, they seem to say, when we can feel in this manner; and how\nhappy, when we are privileged to love an object of such loveliness!\nYes! love has such power that it idealizes everything--even the\nsubject!\n\n\n157\n\n_Love and Becoming_\n\nThe great Heraclitus propounded the doctrine of Becoming. Everything\nchanges, is built up and dissolved; \"stability\" is only a little\nsluggishness in the flux of things. Zeus, the great child, the divine\nartist, constructs and destroys at his pleasure and for his amusement:\nall the worlds are his playthings. This conception of the Universe is\ninnocent and beautiful, an artist's conception; but it is at the same\ntime terrifying. And that because all meaning is left out of it; for\nall things without meaning, no matter how beautiful they may be, are in\nthe end terrifying.\n\nNietzsche, the modern counterpart of Heraclitus, re-affirmed this\ndoctrine; but he coupled with it the idea of creative Love: that is his\nchief distinction. Certainly, those who do not comprehend Nietzsche's\nLove do not comprehend Nietzsche. It is the key to his religion of\nBecoming. Becoming without Love is meaningless; Love without Becoming\nis meaningless. But, united, each gives its meaning to the other, each\nredeems the other. But have things a meaning in themselves? Is it not\nMan that forever interprets and interprets? Very well. But is not a\nthing incomplete without its interpretation? Is not its interpretation\na part of it?\n\n\n158\n\n_Static Values_\n\nStagnant waters become noisome after a while. And stagnant values?\nCertainly within these eternal pools not a few repulsive things have\nbeen born: in Perfection, Sin; in Justice, Guilt. It was when human\njudgments were apotheosized and became Eternal Justice that guilt was\ninsinuated into the core of Life. A falsehood, a presumption! What man\nfound necessary at one moment in his history for his preservation,\nthat, forsooth, was a law governing the spheres, the everlasting edict\nof God Himself. And when Life did not operate in conformity with this\nlaw, it was Life that must needs be guilty--a very ingenious method\nof world-vilification! It was human vanity that created the eternal\nverities. And how much have we suffered from them! For the deification\nof Things meant the diabolization of Man, nay, of Life itself. The\nmetaphysician who created Heaven created Hell at the self-same\nmoment; but, ever since, it has been Hell that has given birth to the\nmetaphysicians. Being _condemns_ Becoming, and pollutes all Life with\nsin. So in the pools of Being we can no longer cleanse ourselves, and\nour preference for a doctrine of Becoming may be at bottom a hygienic\npreference.\n\n\n159\n\n_The God of Becoming_\n\nLove is the God of Becoming. All the other gods are static gods,\nchangeless for yesterday, today and tomorrow. But Love belongs\naltogether to the future. It is the deity of those who would create a\nfuture.\n\n\n160\n\n_Utopias_\n\nIt is sympathy that has built the Utopias. On every one of them is\nwritten, \"Conflict and suffering are bad.\" Utopia is nothing but\na place where men are happy, like how many heavens, an ideal of\nexhaustion. The thing that is omitted from it is always Love, for\nLove would shatter all Utopias and leave them behind. In Nowhere Man\nno longer creates, but enjoys. But creation and pain go hand in hand;\nfor what is creation? The dissolution of the outworn, the birth of the\nnew; a continuous fury in which the throes of death and of life are\nmingled. And Love calls Man to that fate.\n\nWhat we need is an ideal of energy. But that must needs be an ideal\nof Man, not of Society; for Man is the dynamic, Society the static.\nUtopia is a goal, but the Superman is a goal beyond a goal; for, once\nattained, he is naught but the arrow to shoot into _his_ future. To\nattain the Superman is to surpass the Superman. Only ideals of this\nkind are unassailable by Love.\n\n\n161\n\n_\"Primacy of Things\"_\n\nIf we aim at a state of society in which static values, as far as we\ncan know them, are conformed with, we aim at a state in which the\ncreative impulse will not only be needless, but harmful. For does not\nbelief in absolute values necessarily imply belief in a Utopia? And\ntherefore in something antagonistic to Love? The metaphor of static\nPerfection, lovely as it is, has perhaps ruled us too long, and it is\ntime we superseded it by another. Or is it still, as it has always\nbeen, a crime to substitute one metaphor for another? Even if it is\nLove that drives us on?\n\nProgress conceived as a discovery of the unknown instead of as\na pursuit of Perfection--might not that take us a long way? Did\nNietzsche, perhaps, create his Superman, and give him his hardness and\nlightness for no other purpose than to carry out that task? Perfection\nis something that we have yet to discover! In this conception of\nprogress all Utopias are transcended, all goals renounced, yet a set\nof values, a morality, is retained. The morality might be judged by\nthe criterion, Does it aid us in our quest? A future of discovery, of\ncreation and change, not of enjoyment: what a task for energetic Love\ndoes that open out! The Superman is a goal, but what is the Superman's\ngoal? The Superman is something that must be surpassed!\n\n\n162\n\n_Perfection_\n\nWhen men write largely of Perfection, as if it were a concept every\none could understand, we are entitled to ask what exactly they mean.\nDo they mean a sort of synthesis or hotchpotch of the virtues in which\nthey believe? Does X believe in a Christian and Y in a Nietzschean\nperfection? As a rule, conceptions of Perfection are offshoots of\nthe morality prevalent at any given time. And, for action, people's\nconception of Perfection is much more important than Perfection itself.\nTherefore, let us ceaselessly repeat, Perfection is something still to\nbe discovered! As for the current conception, is conflict an ingredient\nin it, or rest? Is it an ideal of Life, or a thing impossible,\nself-contradictory, static, an eternal stick with which to chastise\nexistence? The first question to be asked.\n\n\n163\n\n_Goals_\n\nWhen people speak of the unthinkableness of eternal Becoming which has\nno goal in Being, what they express is their longing for rest. It is\nunendurable, they feel, that Life, creation, change, should travel on\ntheir way forever: at the very thought their minds become tired, and\nBeing is conjured up. Hitherto, our goals have not been resting stages,\nbut eternal termini. But a true goal should not be a cul-de-sac, but\nthe peak from which to descry our next goal. And so on eternally? Well,\nwhy not? Finality was born when the mind became weary at the thought\nof eternal ascent and found refuge in that of eternal rest. We have not\nfully learned yet how to live: struggle is still with us an argument\nagainst Life. What we need is perhaps a few re-incarnations! When we\nhave learned to live, however, we shall welcome struggle as a necessary\npart of Life, and Becoming will be as desirable to us as Being now. And\nnot till then shall we be _fit_ for immortality.\n\n\n164\n\n_Love and Sympathy_\n\nLove and Hatred are not the true opposites, but Love and Sympathy. Love\nis creation, that is to say, strife: a battle between the inanimate\nnot yet dead, and the living still unborn. And it is also, therefore,\nthe hatred of the one for the other. True, this hatred may not be of\nindividuals but of things; but does that make it any more harmless? It\nis na\u00efve democratic prejudice to think that hatred of things is less\n_wicked_ than hatred of individuals; the very opposite is the case!\nThe former is a thousand times more dangerous and destructive than the\nlatter, which, indeed, is little more than an idiosyncrasy. Hatred is\ncontained in and is an aspect of Love; it is Love seen as destruction.\nWell, only Love has a right to Hatred, for only Love can create.\n\nSympathy, however, would maintain in existence what should be dead, and\nwould bid what should be living remain forever unborn. For in death and\nin birth alike there is pain. Sympathy--that is, Sympathy with the\n_necessary_ suffering of existence--is a far greater danger than Hatred.\n\n\n165\n\n_The Humanitarians_\n\nHatred only to things, not to men; Love only to men, not to things: the\nformula of the half-and-half.\n\n\n166\n\nLove and the Virtues\n\nLove is the mother of all the harder virtues, and that because she\nrequires them. For how without them could she suffer to create, and\nendure the pain of Becoming? Everything dynamic must become virtuous.\nThe soft, hedonistic, and degenerate in morality, however, arise from\nSympathy. Sympathy needs the comfortable virtues; it seeks the static,\nfor movement is pain, and pain, of the devil--if Sympathy will admit a\ndevil! Its virtues are all in bad training.\n\n\n167\n\n_The Other Side_\n\nHe ceaselessly groaned that he was weary of life and wished to be rid\nof it; but all the time it was life that wished to be rid of him.\n\n\n168\n\n_Love and Danger_\n\nThe fear that danger might perish--the immortal fear of Nietzsche--need\ncause us no anxiety, could we but believe that creative Love will\ncontinue to exist. For Love is the great source of danger, and of the\nheroic in action and thought. If military wars were to disappear from\nthe earth, danger need not be diminished; it might become emancipated\nand voluntary: it might be raised from a common necessity to an\nindividual task. Perhaps in the distant future nations will become more\npacific, men more war-like; peace will be maintained among nations\n_in order_ that individuals may have a free arena in which to carry\non their great contests--\"without powder,\" as Nietzsche said. The\nbattles, born of Love, of the Brands and Zarathustras, not those of\nthe Napoleons: that is what creative Love would envisage! But this\nprophecy has not sufficient foundation as yet, alas, to be called even\na conjecture!\n\n\n169\n\n_Fellowship and Love_\n\nFellowship is of two kinds: that which is inspired by Sympathy,\nand that which is an expression of Love. Men unite for the mere\nsatisfaction which union brings, or for that which is found in the\nstruggle for more remote things--an aspiration or a vision. This latter\nthing, impractical and paradoxical, which lends Man what nobility\nhe has--it was Love that gave it to him. Fellowship is the sublime\nattempt to complete the figure of Man. My friend is he who possesses\nthe qualities which I lack and most need: in that sense, he creates me.\nFellowship should enrich _all_ who partake of it, make their highest\nqualities productive, and throw bridges over the chasms of their\ndefects. But the association of men for mere enjoyment is not worthy\nthe name of Friendship. Sympathy is its parent.\n\n\n170\n\n_The Paradox_\n\nIt is possible to live nobly without Happiness, but not without Love.\nLove, however, confers the highest happiness. Is it because Love\nis indifferent to Happiness that Happiness flutters around it, and\ncaresses it with its wings?\n\n\n171\n\n_Moral Indignation_\n\nWe should altogether eschew moral censoriousness in our contemplation\nof Life, for it is merely destructive. To destroy that which we cannot\nre-create in a better form is a crime. Only Love should condemn, for\nonly Love can create. To bring the good into existence, or prepare the\nway of those who can create the good--that should be our only form\nof condemnation. In what consists the passion of the moral fanatic?\nIn respect for the law, that it should not be violated. So he would\nextirpate whatever does not conform, even though thus he should destroy\nall life, and have no power to create it anew. No wonder he is gloomy:\nthe vulture is not a bird of cheerful mien.\n\n\n172\n\n_Morality and Love_\n\nInto what a dilemma falls the poor lover of life who goes to make\nthe choice of morality! He sees that both great types of morality,\nthe humanitarian and the military, the Hedonistic and the Spartan,\nlead in the end to Nihilism, the one by liquefying, the other by\nhardening. The former becomes too sensitive to endure Life; the\nlatter, too insensible to feel it. Yet they were to serve Life; but\nthey soon forgot the purpose for which they were formed; they exalted\nthemselves as something higher than Life; they become \"absolute,\" and\na stumbling-block to existence. And this was because they were not\nfounded in the beginning upon the very principle of Life, which is\nLove, but upon accidentals. The conflict between Morality and Love\nhas accordingly been a conflict between the forces of Death and of\nLife: for \"works\" without Love are dead. Morality should be but the\ndiscipline which Love imposes upon itself in order to create. It\nshould crown all the virtues which oppose a gallant and affirmative\ncountenance to suffering and change, such as heroism, fortitude,\njoy, temperance. This morality is the antithesis of the humanitarian\nmorality sprung from Sympathy.\n\n\n173\n\n_Paradise Regained_\n\nIf Life is but an expression of creative Love, then a morality founded\nupon Love must be the only true morality. And, moreover, in it ethics\nand the instincts are reconciled; innocence is grasped.\n\n\n174\n\n_Love and Knowledge_\n\nIf in all Life there is change, creation, Becoming, and if in our\nlives we know these things only in the interpretation of them which we\ncall Love, must not Love be a necessary part of our knowledge of Life?\nObservation, investigation and the weighing of results may tell us much\n_about_ Life, and show it to us in many aspects, but it does not give\nus immediate knowledge. Is it possible to know Life? If Life be the\nexpression of Love----! Upon that \"if\" depends everything. For if it is\njustified, then we have within us the clue to the riddle of existence.\nPerhaps here we discern the faint struggling for birth of that\nundiscovered faculty of the mind of which men speak. The comprehension\nof Life through Love! The profoundest of intuitions? The maddest of\ndreams?\n\n\n175\n\n_Proverb and Commentary_\n\nLove is blind, but it is with excess of light.\n\n\n176\n\n_Bad Thoughts_\n\nShe was as perfect as a drop of dew or a beam of light; a pure thought\nof God, delicate, spontaneous and finished. There was nothing misshapen\nin body or soul; Love did well to create such a being. But the others,\nthe crooked, blind and defiled! Are these the bad thoughts of God? From\nwhence do they come? Whither do they go? Conceived in darkness, born\nfor destruction?\n\n\n177\n\n_Love and Sympathy_\n\nWe must not think of Love as a mere concept. For it is something\nmore real than Life itself: the very Life of Life, the very soul of\nBecoming. It is a force both spiritual and physical, but transcending\nthe distinction of spiritual and physical. We must not conceive Love\nas a thing akin to Sympathy. It is not humanitarian or even human; it\nis a force as unsullied by humanity as the mountain winds or the tides\nof the ocean. Nevertheless, it is within Man, just as it is within\nthe stars and seas; a great creative, destructive, transforming and\npurifying force; beyond Good and Evil as the dew and the lightning are.\nThis is the power that is known by Man in his moments of love. He is\nthen free to create and enjoy, as if he were re-born, with a will new,\njoyful and innocent. But seldom does he attain this knowledge: his\nmoments of exultation are brief. Yet Love has not on that account lost\nany of its potence. Man may decay and become corrupt; but Love remains\nunalterable, forever pure, incapable of corruption.\n\n\n178\n\n_Multum in Parvo_\n\nYou are but a drop in the ocean of Life. True: but it is in the ocean\n_of Life!_\n\n\n179\n\n_Love and the Senses_\n\nWhen one loves, the distinction between soul and body is passed. In\nLove alone is the dream of Goethe, Heine, and the moderns realized:\nhere the reconciliation of the spirit and the senses is celebrated in\nperfect innocence. For Love irradiates and makes fragrant the body in\nwhich it dwells, and raises it aloft to sit by its brother the soul.\n\n\n180\n\n_Love and Innocence_\n\nLife takes us back to its bosom when we love. The heavens, the\nearth and the race of men no longer appear things external and\nhostile, against which we must arm ourselves. We return from exile\nin personality; our thought sweeps to the farthest horizons, and\nplunges into the deepest gulfs of existence, at home in all places.\nThe \"external\" is no longer external: we contemplate it from the\ninside, we gaze through its eyes. For the very principle of Life, of\nwhich all living things are the expression, has been apprehended by\nus. Our personality has been emancipated. This feeling of universal\ncomprehension is called Innocence.\n\n\n181\n\n_Love and the Fall_\n\nHas the fable of the Fall still another interpretation for us? Was\nthe Fall of Man the fall from Love? When the feeling of universal\ncomprehension was lost, personality in the individualistic sense\narose. And Sin was the child of this Individualism. To the first man\nbereft of Love, the earth assumed a terrible mien; nature glared at\nhim with a million baleful eyes: he became an outcast in his home.\nNo longer knowing the earth or other men, he experienced terror,\nhatred and despair. To protect himself against existence, he created\nLove's substitute, morality. And with morality arose sin, and perished\ninnocence.\n\n\n182\n\n_Love and its Object_\n\nNietzsche's psychology was wrong when he spoke of Love as a narrowly\negoistic thing isolating two people and making them indifferent to\nevery one else. There is too much of the philosopher and too little of\nthe psychologist in this observation. For mankind cannot be loved, Life\ncannot be loved, until One has been loved. Only lovers can generate\nsuch wealth of life that it overflows, enriching their friends, their\nenemies, all the world. To love one is to love all.\n\n\n183\n\n_Freedom in Love_\n\nIn true love there is a feeling of entire freedom. Is it because the\nlovers have by a divine chance found their true path, have become a\npulse in the very heart of Life? If Love is the principle of Life, then\nin Love alone is perfect freedom. Ethics and instinct become one. This\nis the road that leads beyond good and evil: Man must learn to love.\n\n\n184\n\n_Love and the Sensualists_\n\nOn those who affirm Life as innocent and holy, there is an obligation\nlaid. Their lives must be innocent: Life must be to them a sustained\nact of worship. How many of them have been lacking just here! Heine\nfailed, in spite of his real nobility. Goethe, however, attained unity\nand sincerity; and Nietzsche was a figure of beautiful integrity and\ninnocence. They were neither of them mere \"writers.\" Nor must we be:\nthere is upon us the compulsion to prove that a life of innocence is\npossible. And as a first step, we must separate ourselves from those\nwho, before they have sought innocence, praise the senses. For they\nconfuse and defile everything.\n\n\n185\n\n_Free Will_\n\nOnly those who have knowledge of Becoming can know what the freedom of\nthe will is. Freedom--that is to will Becoming with all its suffering,\nvoluntarily to go on the way which Fate and the highest Life direct\nus. Slavery--that is to deny Becoming, to cling to the static, and to\nbe dragged along the stream of change. To be dragged, not to remain\nstationary; for men by taking thought cannot gain immunity from change.\nTheir will and their desires avail them nothing. For the stream of\nBecoming is unchangeable in its power. It is Man that changes. When he\naffirms Becoming, he is enlarged; when he denies it, he is straitened.\n\n\n186\n\n_Tragedy, Life and Love_\n\nIn the highest Life two qualities are always to be found together,\nexuberance and suffering. Life is founded on this paradox, which is\nfundamental; for in the emotion of Love we are most conscious of\nit. Love is the most joyful and most suffering thing: its plenitude\nof joy is so great that it can endure gladly the worst griefs. And\ntragedy is the truest expression in art of Life and of Love; for its\ncharacteristic, too, is a Joy triumphing over Fate.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\nTHE TRAGIC VIEW\n\n\n\n187\n\n_Life as Expression_\n\nSchopenhauer interpreted life as the expression of a Will to Live.\nNietzsche showed with profound truth that beneath this will there was\nsomething more fundamental, the Will to Power. Have we here got to the\nfoundation, or shall we find that underlying the Will to Power there is\nsomething more fundamental still? _Why_ do all living things strive for\npower? Is it, indeed, power that they desire in their striving, power\nfor the sake of power? That which everything by a law of its being\nsearches for is _expression:_ the Will to Power is merely an outcome of\nthat search. For seeing that the sun of created Life is split up into\nindividuals, related and yet diverse, the expression of one unit is\nbound to collide with that of another, and the outcome is a conflict.\nLife, therefore, is essentially something that injures itself, and\ninjures itself the more the more powerful it is; in a word, Life is\nessentially tragic. Most people, however, live in illusion, knowing\nnothing of this. The philosophers, and, before them, the priests, were\nthose who perceived that Life was of this nature; but, alas, from the\ntruth they drew the immediate and not the more profound conclusion.\nThey sought, unconscious Hedonists, a palliative for Life, and\ncontemned expression, which they saw was the cause of suffering. These\nwere the creators of that morality which has prevailed to our own day;\na morality antagonistic to Life, anti-tragic, negative. All the systems\nwhich have been created in this way are colossal panaceas and remedies:\nthey are not fundamental.\n\nThere were others, however, who saw as the priests did that Life was\ntragic, but who at the same time affirmed it. These were the tragic\npoets. They were more deeply versed in Life than the priests: tragic\nart is more profound than morality. For morality is based on the belief\nthat man desires above everything else Happiness. But Tragedy has\nperceived that this is not so. Man will express himself, it proclaims,\nwhatever the outcome, whether it be joy or suffering.\n\nSince then morality has sunk deep into Life, and there is now almost a\nsecond instinct in man striving against expression. Consequently there\nare many existences passed without expression; sometimes even in a\nresolute struggle against it, as in the case of innumerable religious\nmen and ascetics. To some men it seems that their spirit has been lying\nfrozen and dead within them, until one day an influence touches them,\nand they feel an imperious desire to express themselves, to create.\nThis influence is nothing else than Love, which is the desire for\nexpression itself. When its rule is recognized and obeyed Life reaches\nits highest degree of joy and of pain, and becomes creative. This is\nthe state which is glorified by the tragic poets. To those who affirm,\nit is the highest condition of Life.\n\n\n188\n\n_\"Self-Expression\"_\n\nSelf-expression is something infinitely more subtle than the moderns\nconceive. This man studied to express himself: he investigated his\nego, and thereby cut himself off from Life more completely than\nany anchorite, for the anchorite had at least heaven in addition to\nhimself. This neo-anchorite, however, turned his eyes deliberately\ninward and strove to find expression for what he discovered there, but\nfor nothing more. Thus he became his own prison. Eventually he turned\nout an \u00e6sthete.\n\nThis other man found that his thoughts and desires flew away from him\nas irrevocably as a flock of wild birds and became lost or strangers.\nHe seemed constrained to express everything _not_ himself, everything\nforeign, remote and as exalted; but in the end he discovered that it\nwas himself he had expressed. \"Thy true being,\" said Nietzsche, \"lies\nnot deeply hidden in thee, but an infinite height above thee, or at\nleast above that which thou dost commonly take to be thyself.\"\n\n\n189\n\n_Life as a Value_\n\nThose who say that the belief in Life as a value is not a belief which\nwill arouse the heroic passions and make men die for it, use a form\nof reasoning, at any rate, which is erroneous. They first confuse the\nideal of more complete existence with the more complete existence\nof an individual, and then demonstrate that this individual will not\nlay down his life for the sake of _his_ more complete existence! But\nLife as an ideal is just as impersonal as any other ideal, whether it\nbe Justice or Perfection or Renunciation. True, it has not yet become\nstatic, but on that account its attraction is only the stronger; it\narouses our very love. And men will die for what they love: they will\ndie for Life.\n\n\n190\n\n_Hebbel's Theory of Tragedy_\n\nHebbel's theory of Tragedy is noble and profound. Not in the\nmisdirection of wills does he find the source of the tragic, but in the\ncore of the will itself, in the inexorable expression and collision\nof wills. This conception raises Tragedy from a mere consequence and\npunishment of sin to an expression of Life itself, to the most profound\nand essential expression of Life. And this is just and worthy of\nTragedy. For the character of Tragedy is not negative and condemnatory,\nbut deeply affirmative and joyous. How shallow then must be the\ntheories which would deny Tragedy to the good, to those whose wills\nare highly directed! Tragedy is not a punishment. The more noble man\nbecomes the more tragic he will also become.\n\n\n191\n\n_Tragic Philosophy_\n\nThe belief, against which Nietzsche declaimed, that Reason brings\nHappiness has become to the modern man second nature, so that now the\nnotions of Reason and Happiness are indissolubly connected in his mind.\nAny argument for a tragic view of Life must therefore appear, first of\nall, unreasonable; for Happiness as an end is the only reason that will\nbe acknowledged. It remains for us to show that Happiness is itself\nunreasonable, an impossibility, a chimera. There is no Happiness as\nan end. Reason does not bring Happiness, nor does virtue, nor does\nasceticism, nor does comfort. Happiness is an accident. And not even a\nmodern can make accidents happen!\n\nTo this modern world, with its belief in Happiness, Nietzsche was bound\nto appear unreasonable, for he brought with him not only a tragic\nconception of Life, but a tragic philosophy. A tragic philosophy--the\nmarriage of Knowledge and Tragedy: nothing could have seemed more\nirrational to modern Europe than that!\n\n\n192\n\n_Tragedy and Arguments_\n\nThose who desire to restore a tragic conception of Life should not\nuse these arguments: that Happiness is a condition which, if it were\npossible of realization, would become intolerable, producing its\nopposite, unhappiness; or that only when the individual renounces\nHappiness does Happiness become his. These are the statements of a\nHedonism once removed. The argument for the tragic view should be\nfounded on considerations altogether irrelevant to Happiness. It should\nnot care enough about Happiness even to disdain it.\n\n\n193\n\n_Morality and Happiness_\n\nPhilosophers have from the beginning acknowledged that Happiness is\nnot won by seeking for it, but by striving for other things. This,\nhowever, has not prevented them from proclaiming Happiness as the goal\nof Man and as the deliberate object of ethics. Contradiction upon\ncontradiction! If the individual cannot by taking thought capture\nHappiness, is it conceivable that a community can, or the human race,\nin toto? To throw a net round this mirage compounded of desire and\nfancy--surely Reason was itself the most unreasonable thing to attempt\nthat. And, after all, does Man desire Happiness? Tragedy denies it.\n\n\n194\n\n_End or Effect_\n\nOne may possess all the virtues save Love, and remain unhappy.\nLove, however, brings Happiness with it as the sun brings light. Is\nHappiness, then, the end of morality? Or an effect of Love?\n\n195\n\n_Superiority_\n\nIn order to despise enjoyment, one need only be supremely happy or\nsupremely wretched.\n\n\n196\n\n_Beauty and Tragedy_\n\nIn every beautiful face there is nobility, strength and a touch of\nsadness--the seal of tragedy is upon it. To make Life beautiful, then,\nwould be to make it tragic? Nay, rather let us say that to make Life\ntragic is to make it beautiful. Supreme beauty is but the expression\nin which are comprised in a miracle of unity the sorrow and the joy of\nTragedy. For in the most radiant manifestation of Beauty there is a\nbrooding solemnity; in the most sorrowful there is triumph.\n\n\n197\n\n_Experimenting in Life_\n\nThe aim of the \u00e6sthetes was without enduring Tragedy to enjoy Beauty.\nTo that end they devised their creed of experimentation in Life: they\nwished to know all the joys of the soul and of the senses without\ninconvenience to themselves. Perceiving that Love and Beauty bring\nsuffering in their train, they decided to _take the initiative_ against\nthem, in other words, to \"experience\" them. All they experienced,\nhowever, was--their experiences. That, indeed, was all they desired:\ntheir \"experimenting in Life\" was escaping from Life. Without the\ncourage to accept Life with the Dionysians or to renounce it with the\nascetics, they hit upon the plan of stealing a march upon it. Well, it\nwas certainly not upon Life that they stole a march!\n\n\n198\n\n_Christian and Dionysian_\n\nThe Christian and the Dionysian are both of them step-children and\nsolutions of Pessimism. A gloomy and realistic view of the world\nwas necessary before either of them could be born. In Christianity\nPessimism was translated into symbols. \"Original Sin\" and\n\"transgression against God\"--these were the theological counterparts\nof the pessimist's \"suffering,\" \"the tyranny of the Will.\" How did\nChristianity find relief from this fundamental pessimism? By a pathetic\nillusion in which mankind were transformed into erring children, who,\nhowever, were forgiven by an indulgent Father. Here suffering was\nstill an argument against Life, and a palliative was sought and found.\nThe Dionysian, however, affirmed Life in the very tragicality of its\naspect, and, by so doing, achieved a victory over it. In short, to the\nDionysian Life is a tragedy; to the Christian it is a pathetic tale\nwith a happy ending.\n\n\n199\n\n_History of the Dionysian_\n\nIn the beginning he possessed innocence: the world appeared to him\nas beautiful, Man as good, and the future as immeasurable. The great\nillusion of Rousseau was his--a \"natural man\" himself, believing in the\n\"natural man,\" a romanticist, a credulous, not too sincere, \"beautiful\"\nsoul--a youth with the qualities of youth. But a day came when\nunwillingly and painfully his soul forced his eyes open and compelled\nthem to look, and he saw without illusion; the cruelty beneath smiling\nAppearance, the red claw, and conscienceless, inappeasable appetite.\nLooking at Man he found him a powerless little creature, condemned\nto a few years in this world, cut off by Death, and even during his\nlife circumscribed by invincible limitation. Nevertheless, this man\ndisdained to hide his head in the sands of illusion; and immediately he\nbecame altogether more worthy of respect, more real, almost sublime. A\nnoble resignation to Life now characterized him; the classical writers,\nespecially the Greeks with their naturalistic pessimism, seemed to him\nthe highest thing; and he accepted the theory of Original Sin. All\nhonour to him when he reached, after a painful journey, this spare but\nreal conclusion! All honour to this pessimist who would not deceive\nhimself!\n\nOne day, however, the thought came to him, \"Even if pain and necessity\nbe the truths of Life! There is something within me which can turn\nthese, also, to account! I can transfigure them. Pain, Struggle,\nChange--these will no longer enslave me; for these shall be my slaves!\"\nAt that moment he became a Dionysian: he had turned the corner of\npessimism, and had gained freedom. Original Sin was no longer true for\nhim; for a new truth had dawned in whose light the old was quenched.\n\nFrom an illusive freedom in the beginning, through bondage to\nnecessity, to a new freedom--the history of the Dionysian. The\npessimist is more profound than the \"natural man,\" but the Dionysian is\nthe most profound of all. He burrows deeper than pessimism itself; he\ngrows, the most happy of men, out of the very soil of pessimism.\n\n\n200\n\n_Tragic Affirmation_\n\nTo feel happy at this moment--is not that to approve of your whole\nlife, of its suffering, conflict, ennui and scepticism no less than\nits victories and festivals? This moment is what it is by virtue of\nthese experiences; justify it and you justify them. The physical\nagony which left its mark upon you; the anguish of bereavement and of\ndisillusionment; the cynicism with which you consoled yourself; the\nyears when you lived altogether bereft of hope; your most profound\nand most petty thoughts and actions; your meanest, bitterest and\nnoblest experiences: all these are unconsciously affirmed in your\naffirmation of this moment. Let them be affirmed consciously! Or is\nyour soul afraid to go as far as your will? Looking back now with new\neyes over your life, you find that precisely what you cannot do is to\nrepent--least of all of your sins and griefs! For to repent is to will\nLife to be other than Life, and essentially not to affirm.\n\nHe who contemplates his life thus, perhaps understands for the first\ntime what is the meaning of Tragedy.\n\n\n201\n\n_Mastery and Tragedy_\n\nThe desire of Man to subjugate Nature and Fate and obtain mastery\nover his resources--perhaps it is as well that this is meantime\nunattainable! For Man's spirit is not yet noble enough for him to use\nhis power aright: he would use it, if he could grasp it now, as a means\nto Happiness! Our first duty is to fight the idea of Happiness, to\nmake Man tragic. Once Man wills Tragedy, however, the more mastery he\nacquires the better.\n\n\n202\n\n_The Hidden Faculty_\n\nWhen we speak hopefully of the discovery of still undiscovered\nfaculties in Man, to what do we look forward? In plain terms, how do we\nexpect this faculty to be of use to us? In bringing about Happiness?\nIt is almost a tragedy--it is a tragedy without the nobility--that\nin our time the most beautiful, heroic and powerful things have to\nbow their heads and become slaves to this weak and pathetic tyrant,\nHappiness. Should we then oppose the addition of one more divine power\nto the imprisoned? Well, a hope consoles us. For the discovery of a new\nfaculty in Man will not make him more happy, but simply more powerful;\nhis self-expression in action will be the more complete; the essential\nconflict of Life will be magnified; Life will become more tragic. So\nthink well, you votaries of Happiness, before you bring to life another\npower of the tragic creature, Man. Far better for your ends if you\ncould but succeed in killing some of those he already possesses. But\nhave you not sometimes tried to do that?\n\n\n203\n\n_The Other Side_\n\nAnd yet Man cannot create without Happiness. The soul that lives\nin shadow becomes unhealthy and sterile: sunshine is after all the\ngreat health-bringing and fructifying thing. Happiness does make a\nman nobler; more ready to generosity and heroism; more careless of\nenjoyment. Happiness! But what is Happiness? The Happiness that is\nessential to the best life is a state of the soul: this is doubtless\nthat which Goethe and Heine praised. But the other, the Happiness\nof the utilitarian, is an effect of calculated action, the reward\nof a sort of ethical thrift. The first, however, is independent of\ncalculation, and even a little scornful of it; for in its confidence\nand plenitude it dares to put out on the gloomiest seas. It is not\nunrelated to Love, this effect of an affirmative attitude to Life. When\npeople praise Happiness, how one desires to believe it is this that\nthey praise.\n\n\n204\n\n_The Two Species_\n\nThe few have a conception of Life different from that of the many. To\nthe latter still pertain such notions as \"do as you would be done by,\"\nand so forth. They understand a morality but not the end of morality.\nThe few, however, who understand both the morality and the reason for\nit, who have a conception of Life more difficult and unyielding, seem\nto the many cold and a little inhuman. The lives of the latter, on the\nother hand, appear to the few as a naively happy, narrow and absurd\nform of existence.\n\n\n205\n\n_Nietzsche_\n\nWhat was Nietzsche, that subtlest of modern riddles? First, a great\ntragic poet: it was by a divine accident that he was at the same\ntime a profound thinker and the deepest psychologist. But his tragic\naffirmative was the core of his work, of which thought and analysis\nwere but outgrowths. Without it, his subtlety might have made him\nanother Pascal. The Will to Power, which makes suffering integral in\nLife; the Order of Rank whereby the bulk of mankind are doomed to\nslavery; the Superman himself, that most sublime child of Tragedy; and\nthe last affirmation, the Eternal Recurrence: these are the conceptions\nof a tragic poet. It is, indeed, by virtue of his tragic view of Life\nthat Nietzsche is for us a force of such value. For only by means of it\ncould modern existence, sunk in scepticism, pessimism and the greatest\nhappiness of the greatest number, be re-created.\n\nFor the last two centuries Europe has been under the domination of\nthe concept of Happiness as progress. Altruism, the ideology of the\ngreatest happiness of the greatest number, altruism as a means of\nuniversalizing Happiness, was preached in the eighteenth century; until\nafter a while it was seen by such clear-sighted observers as Voltaire\nthat men did not obey this imperative of altruism; therefore they were\ncondemned: the moral indignation of the eighteenth century, the century\nof censoriousness par excellence, was the result. First, an impossible\nmorality was demanded, and for the attainment of an unattainable ideal;\nthen Man was condemned because he failed to comply with it, because he\nwas Man. Thus in the end the ideal of the greatest happiness worked\nout in pessimism: Life became hideous and, worst of all, immoral, to\nthe utilitarian, when it was seen that altruism and happiness are\nalike impossible. Schopenhauer is here the heir of Voltaire: the moral\ncondemnation of the one has become in the other a condemnation of Life\nitself, more profound, more poetical, more logical. Altruism has in\nSchopenhauer deepened into Pity; for Pity is altruism bereft of the\nillusion of Happiness.\n\nHow was Man to avoid now the almost inevitable bourne of Nihilism? By\nrenouncing altogether Happiness as a value; by restoring a conception\nof Life in which Happiness was neither a positive nor a negative\nstandard, but something irrelevant, an accident: in short, by setting\nup a tragic conception of Life. This was the task of Nietzsche: in how\nfar he succeeded how can we yet say?\n\n\n206\n\n_Again_\n\nNietzsche loved not goodness but greatness: the True, the _Great_ and\nthe Beautiful. Was not this the necessary corollary of his \u00e6sthetic\nevaluation of Life?\n\n\n207\n\n_Sacrifices_\n\n\"The first of the first fruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the\nhouse of the Lord thy God.\"\n\nThus spoke the oldest reverence. We should not scoff at this feeling\nbut rather try to understand it; for it is only too rare in our time.\nWhat was its meaning to the rulers of Israel? Gratitude, a beautiful,\naffirmative thing. To enrich Life with our highest gifts, which we\nfreely offer in thanksgiving for what Life has given us,--that should\nbe our form of sacrifice. And we should perform it gladly, with\nfestive, overflowing heart, not with sullen and conscientious face, as\nif Life were a usurer.\n\n\n208\n\n_Our Poverty_\n\nThe spiritual poverty of modern life is appalling; and all the more\nbecause men are unconscious of it. Prayer was in former times the\nchannel whereby a profound current of spiritual life flowed into the\nlives of men and enriched them. This source of wealth has now almost\nceased, and Man has become less spiritual, more impoverished. We must\nseek a new form of prayer. Better not live at all than live without\nreverence and gratitude! Let our sacramental attitude to Life be our\nform of prayer. Let us no longer desire to live when that has perished.\n\n\n209\n\n_Finis_\n\n\"To abjure half measures and to live resolutely in the Whole, the Full,\nthe Beautiful.\"--GOETHE.\n\n\"To try to see in all things necessity as beauty.\"--NIETZSCHE.\n\nTHE END","title":"We Moderns: Enigmas and Guesses","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":39749}