{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_78380/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_78380","id":"gutenberg_78380","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78380","summary":null,"tags":["Jackson, Laura (Riding), 1901-1991 -- Philosophy","Literature -- History and criticism","Literature -- Philosophy","Meaning (Philosophy)","Modernism (Literature)"],"text":"_ANARCHISM_\n                              is not enough\n\n\n                              Laura Riding\n\n\n                              JONATHAN CAPE\n                                 London\n\n\n                        FIRST PUBLISHED MCMXXVIII\n\n\n                       PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY\n                           BUTLER & TANNER LTD\n                                  FROME\n\n\n\n\n                                CONTENTS\n\n\n  THE MYTH                                              Page   9\n\n  LANGUAGE AND LAZINESS                                       13\n\n  THIS PHILOSOPHY                                             15\n\n  WHAT IS A POEM?                                             16\n\n  A COMPLICATED PROBLEM                                       19\n\n  ALL LITERATURE                                              20\n\n  MR. DOODLE-DOODLE-DOO                                       22\n\n  AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION                                    25\n\n  THE CORPUS                                                  27\n\n  POETRY AND MUSIC                                            32\n\n  POETRY AND PAINTING                                         37\n\n  POETRY AND DREAMS                                           39\n\n  JOCASTA                                                     41\n\n  HOW CAME IT ABOUT?                                         133\n\n  HUNGRY TO HEAR                                             136\n\n  IN A CAF\u00c9                                                  138\n\n  FRAGMENT OF AN UNFINISHED NOVEL                            142\n\n  WILLIAM AND DAISY: FRAGMENT OF A FINISHED NOVEL            150\n\n  AN ANONYMOUS BOOK                                          152\n\n  THE DAMNED THING                                           187\n\n  LETTER OF ABDICATION                                       209\n\n\n\n\n                        ANARCHISM IS NOT ENOUGH\n\n\n\n\nTHE MYTH\n\n\nWhen the baby is born there is no place to put it: it is born, it will\nin time die, therefore there is no sense in enlarging the world by so\nmany miles and minutes for its accommodation. A temporary scaffolding\nis set up for it, an altar to ephemerality--a permanent altar to\nephemerality. This altar is the Myth. The object of the Myth is to\ngive happiness: to help the baby pretend that what is ephemeral is\npermanent. It does not matter if in the course of time he discovers\nthat all is ephemeral: so long as he can go on pretending that it is\npermanent he is happy.\n\nAs it is not one baby but all babies which are laid upon this altar, it\nbecomes the religious duty of each to keep on pretending for the sake\nof all the others, not for himself. Gradually, when the baby grows and\nlearns why he has been placed on the altar, he finds that he is not\nparticularly interested in carrying on the pretence, that happiness and\nunhappiness are merely an irregular succession and grouping of moments\nin him between his birth and his death. Yet he continues to support\nthe Myth for others\u2019 sake, and others continue to support it for his.\nThe stronger grows the inward conviction of the futility of the Myth,\nthe stronger grows the outward unity and form of the Myth. It becomes\nthe universal sense of duty, the ethics of abstract neighbourliness.\nIt is the repository for whatever one does without knowing why; it\nmakes itself the why. Once given this function through universal\nmisunderstanding, it persists in its reality with the perseverance of a\nghost and continues to demand sacrifices. It is indifferent what form\nor system is given to it from this period to that, so long as it be\ngiven _a_ form and _a_ system by which it may absorb and digest every\npossible activity; and the grown-up babies satisfy it by presenting\ntheir offerings as systematized parts of a systematized whole.\n\nThe Myth may collapse as a social whole; yet it continues by its own\nmemory of itself to impose itself as an \u00e6sthetic whole. Even in this\nday, when the social and historical collapse of the Myth is commonly\nrecognised, we find poets and critics with an acute sense of time\ndevoting pious ceremonies to the \u00e6sthetic vitality of the Myth, from a\nhaunting sense of duty which they call classicism. So this antiquated\nbelief in truth goes on, and we continue to live. The Myth is the art\nof living. Plato\u2019s censorship of poets in the interests of the young\nsprang from a realization of the fact that poetry is in opposition to\nthe truth of the Myth: I do not think he objected to poetry for the\nold, since they were nearly through with living.\n\nPainting, sculpture, music, architecture, religion, philosophy, history\nand science--these are essentially of the Myth. They have technique,\ngrowth, tradition, universal significance (truth); and there is also\na poetry of the Myth, made by analogy into a mythological activity.\nMythological activities glorify the sense of duty, force on the\nindividual a mathematical exaggeration of his responsibilities.\n\nPoetry (praise be to babyhood) is essentially not of the Myth. It is\nall the truth it knows, that is, it knows nothing. It is the art of not\nliving. It has no system, harmony, form, public significance or sense\nof duty. It is what happens when the baby crawls off the altar and\nis \u2018Resolv\u2019d to be a very contrary fellow\u2019--resolved not to pretend,\nlearn to talk or versify. Whatever language it uses it makes up as it\ngoes and immediately forgets. Every time it opens its mouth it has to\nstart all over again. This is why it remains a baby and dies (praise be\nto babyhood) a baby. In the art of not living one is not ephemerally\npermanent but permanently ephemeral.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBecause most people are not sufficiently employed in themselves, they\nrun about loose, hungering for employment, and satisfy themselves in\nvarious supererogatory occupations. The easiest of these occupations,\nwhich have all to do with making things already made, is the\nmaking of people: it is called the art of friendship. So one finds\noneself surrounded with numbers of artificial selves contesting\nthe authenticity of the original self; which, forced to become a\ncompetitive self, ceases to be the original self, is, like all the\nothers, a creation. The person, too, becomes a friend of himself. _He_\nno longer exists.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWords have three historical levels. They may be true words, that is, of\nan intrinsic sense; they may be logical words, that is, of an applied\nsense; or they may be poetical words, of a misapplied sense, untrue and\nillogical in themselves, but of supposed suggestive power. The most the\npoet can now do is to take every word he uses through each of these\nlevels, giving it the combined depth of all three, forcing it beyond\nitself to a death of sense where it is at least safe from the perjuries\neither of society or poetry.\n\n\n\n\nLANGUAGE AND LAZINESS\n\n\nLanguage is a form of laziness; the word is a compromise between what\nit is possible to express and what it is not possible to express.\nThat is, expression itself is a form of laziness. The cause of\nexpression is incomplete powers of understanding and communication:\nunevenly distributed intelligence. Language does not attempt to affect\nthis distribution; it accepts the inequality and makes possible a\nmathematical intercourse between the degrees of intelligence occurring\nin an average range. The degrees of intelligence at each extreme are\nthus naturally neglected: and yet they are obviously the most important.\n\nProse is the mathematics of expression. The word is a numerical\nconvenience in which the known and the unknown are brought together to\nact as the meeting-place of the one who knows and the one who does not\nknow. The prose word accomplishes no redistribution of intelligence;\nit merely declares the inequality, and so even as expression it has no\nreality, it is an empty cipher.\n\nPoetry is an attempt to make language do more than express; to make it\nwork; to redistribute intelligence by means of the word. If it succeeds\nin this the problem of communication disappears. It does not treat\nthis problem as a matter of mathematical distribution of intelligence\nbetween an abstract known and unknown represented in a concrete knower\nand not-knower. The distribution must take place, if at all, within\nthe intelligence itself. Prose evades this problem by making slovenly\nequations which always seem successful because, being inexact, they\nconceal inexactness. Poetry always faces, and generally meets with,\nfailure. But even if it fails, it is at least at the heart of the\ndifficulty, which it treats not as a difficulty of minds but of mind.\n\n\n\n\nTHIS PHILOSOPHY\n\n\nThis philosophy, this merchant-mindedness: how much have we here?\nwhat sum? And of what profit? Somewhere, in the factories of reality,\nall this has been produced which now floods the market of wisdom,\nawaiting its price-ticket. What is science? yard-measure and scale to\nphilosophy, expert-accountant, bank clerk. What is poetry? miserable,\nill-fed, underpaid, ununionized labourer, pleased to oblige, grateful\nfor work, flattering himself that poverty makes him an aristocrat.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOnly what is comic is perfect: it is outside of reality, which is\na self-defeating, serious striving to be outside of reality, to be\nperfect. Reality cannot escape from reality because it is made of\nbelief, and capable only of belief. Perfection is what is unbelievable,\nthe joke.\n\n\n\n\nWHAT IS A POEM?\n\n\nIn the old romanticism the poem was an uncommon effect of common\nexperience on the poet. All interest in the poem centred in\nthis mysterious capacity of the poet for overfeeling, for being\noveraffected. In Poe the old romanticism ended and the new romanticism\nbegan. That is, the interest was broadened to include the reader: the\nend of the poem was pushed ahead a stage, from the poet to the reader.\nThe uncommon effect of experience on the poet became merely incidental\nto the uncommon effect which he might have on the reader. Mystery was\nreplaced by science; inspiration by psychology. In the first the poet\nflattered himself and was flattered by others because he had singular\nreactions to experience; in the second the object of flattery makes\nhimself expert in the art of flattery.\n\nWhat is a poem? A poem is nothing. By persistence the poem can be made\nsomething; but then it is something, not a poem. Why is it nothing?\nBecause it cannot be looked at, heard, touched or read (what can be\nread is prose). It is not an effect (common or uncommon) of experience;\nit is the result of an ability to create a vacuum in experience--it is\na vacuum and therefore nothing. It cannot be looked at, heard, touched\nor read because it is a vacuum. Since it is a vacuum it is nothing for\nwhich the poet can flatter himself or receive flattery. Since it is a\nvacuum it cannot be reproduced in an audience. A vacuum is unalterably\nand untransferably a vacuum--the only thing that can happen to it is\ndestruction. If it were possible to reproduce it in an audience the\nresult would be the destruction of the audience.\n\nThe confusion between the poem as effect and the poem as vacuum is\neasily explained. It is obvious that all is either effect or it is\nnothing. What the old romanticism meant by an uncommon effect was a\nsomething that was not an effect, an over-and-above of experience.\nAlthough it was really not an effect, it was classified as an effect\nbecause it was impossible to imagine something that was not an effect.\nIt did not occur to anyone to imagine nothing, the vacuum; or, if it\ndid, only with abhorrence. The new romanticism remedied this inaccuracy\nby classifying the poem as the cause of an effect--as both cause and\neffect. But as both cause and effect the poem counts itself out of\nexperience: proves itself to be nothing masquerading as something. As\nsomething it is all that the detractors of poetry say it is; it is\nfalse experience. As nothing--well, as nothing it is everything in an\nexistence where everything, being effect of effect and without cause,\nis nothing.\n\nWhenever this vacuum, the poem, occurs, there is agitation on all sides\nto destroy it, to convert it into something. The conversion of nothing\ninto something is the task of criticism. Literature is the storehouse\nof these rescued somethings. In discussing literature one has to\nuse, unfortunately, the same language that one uses in discussing\nexperience. But even so, literature is preferable to experience, since\nit is for the most part the closest one can get to nothing.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe only productive design is designed waste. Designed creation results\nin nothing but the destruction of the designer: it is impossible to\nadd to what is; all is and is made. Energy that attempts to make in\nthe sense of making a numerical increase in the sum of made things\nis spitefully returned to itself unused. It is a would-be-happy-ness\nending in unanticipated and disordered unhappiness. Energy that is\naware of the impossibility of positive construction devotes itself to\nan ordered using-up and waste of itself: to an anticipated unhappiness\nwhich, because it has design, foreknowledge, is the nearest approach\nto happiness. Undesigned unhappiness and designed happiness both mean\nanarchism. _Anarchism is not enough._\n\n\n\n\nA COMPLICATED PROBLEM\n\n\nA complicated problem is only further complicated by being simplified.\nA state of confusion is never made comprehensible by being given a\nplot. Appearances do not deceive if there are enough of them. The truth\nis always laid out in an infinite number of circles tending to become,\nbut never becoming, concentric--except occasionally in poetry.\n\n\n\n\nALL LITERATURE\n\n\nAll literature is written by the old to teach the young how to express\nthemselves so that they in turn may write literature to teach the\nold how to express themselves. All literature is written by mentally\nprecocious adolescents and by mentally precocious senescents. How not\nto write literature, how not to be precocious: cultivate inattention,\ndo not learn how to express yourself, make no distinction between\nthoughts and emotions, since precocity comes of making one vie with\nthe other, mistrust whatever seems superior and be partial to whatever\nseems inferior--whatever is not literature. And then, if you must\nwrite yourself, write _writing-matter_, not _reading-matter_. People\nwill think you brilliant only if you tell them what they know. To\navoid being thought brilliant, avoid knowing what they know. Write to\ndiscover to yourself what you know. People will think you brilliant\nif you seem to be enjoying yourself, since they are not enjoying\nthemselves. To avoid being thought brilliant, avoid pretending to be\nenjoying yourself. Make it clear that you know that they know that\nnothing is really enjoyable except pretending to be enjoying yourself.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nPeople may treat themselves as extraneous phenomena or as fundamental\nphenomena--it does not matter which. It does not matter, so long as\nthey behave consistently as one or the other. What discredits character\nis not self-importance or self-unimportance, but the adjustment of\npersonal importance according to expediency.\n\n\n\n\nMR. DOODLE-DOODLE-DOO\n\n\nMr. Doodle-Doodle-Doo, the great mathematician and lexicographer, then\nput aside his work and said: \u2018_adultery_ and _adulteration_ can wait\nuntil I return.\u2019\n\nFor Mr. Doodle-Doodle-Do was at one thing or the other by turns, and\nthis particular morning he felt his mathematical genius complaining: it\nwas undoubtedly true that it was a long time since he had been out to\nget Numbers. So, leaving _adultery_ and _adulteration_ to take care of\nthemselves, he walked out into the Square, and from the Square into the\nGardens; and in the Gardens he sat down on a bench near the rockery and\nbegan to think with the mathematical half of his brain.\n\n\u2018Let me see. I left off with _honey_ last time. Now the problem will\nbe to show that honey as a purely mathematical symbol is equivalent\nto honey as a philological integer. If I can do this I have once more\nproved that 2 \u00d7 2 = 4 is the equivalent of \u201ctwo times two is four.\u201d For\nit\u2019s not enough to show a thing is true: you must also show that true\nis true. By being a mathematical lexicographer and a lexicographical\nmathematician, I am therefore able to check the truth with the truth.\nMy last words are never \u201cthat\u2019s true\u201d but \u201cthat\u2019s correct,\u201d which\nexplains how I can be a philosopher and a gentleman at the same time.\u2019\n\nWith this Mr. Doodle-Doodle-Doo crowed three times: once for\nlexicography (Doodle), once for mathematics (Doodle), and once for\nhimself (Doo), wherein the truth was checked by itself and found\ncorrect. The immediate matter in hand, however, was honey. So he left\noff crowing and proceeded with his calculations, which went so quickly\nthat it is very difficult to record them. But they were something like\nthis:--\n\n  H O N E Y       = HONE + Y\n  G O N E + Y     = GONEY (sailors\u2019 term for albatross)\n  L O N E + Y     = LONE(L)Y\n  B O N E + Y     = BONEY\n  O N E + Y + M   = MONEY\n\n  BONEY GONEY HONEY LONE(L)Y MONEY\n    1     2     3      4       5\n    H     O     N      E       Y\n    1     2     3      4       5\n\nAt this point he stopped following him. But that his researches must\nhave reached some happy conclusion was obvious from the enthusiasm with\nwhich he later returned to his lexicography. His calculations then ran\nsomething like this:--\n\n  1 2 3 4 5\n  H O N E Y\n  1 2 3 4 5\n  A D U L T [ E R Y\n\n  1 2 3 4 5\n  H O N E Y\n  1 2 3 4 5\n  A D U L T [ E R A T I O N\n\n  \u2234 H O N E Y E R Y \u2235 H O N E Y E R A T I O N\n\n      1 2 3 4 5   1 2 3 4 5\n  But H O N E Y = S W E E T\n      5 4 3 2 1   5 4 3 2 1\n\n  \u2234 S W E E T E R Y \u2235 S W E E T E R A T I O N\n\nWhich went far enough to persuade him that in lexicography he was, if\nanything, even more skilled than in mathematics.\n\n\n\n\nAN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION\n\n\nThe important (but infrequently drawn) distinction between what is\ngentlemanly and what is dull in poetry. Most people read poetry\nbecause it makes them feel upper-class, and most poetry is written\nby people who feel upper-class; at least by people who take pleasure\nin describing themselves as upper-class; for instance, by men who\nmake themselves feel upper-class by holding gentlemanly feelings\ntoward woman, and by women who make themselves feel upper-class by\nacknowledging these feelings. This poetry is idealistic poetry: it\ndramatizes a non-existent emotional life and seems real because it is\nnot real. It also seems \u2018interesting\u2019 because it is not real.\n\nPractical poetry is written by people who do not feel upper-class:\nwho do not feel anything. It describes themselves, but not as\nupper-class, not, in fact, as anything. It is real and therefore not\ndramatic and therefore seems unreal. It therefore seems (and is) dull.\nThe only reason that people ever read dull poetry (such as some of\nShakespeare\u2019s) is that they mistake it for gentlemanly poetry (such\nas all of Browning\u2019s). For few people are really interested in anyone\nelse\u2019s description of himself except as it makes them feel upper-class.\nThey mistake it for gentlemanly poetry because of their inability to\ndistinguish between the interestingness of dull poetry and the dullness\nof \u2018interesting\u2019 poetry.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CORPUS\n\n\nThe first condition was chaos. The logical consequence of chaos was\norder. In so far as it derived from chaos it was non-conscious, but\nin so far as it was order, it had an increasing tendency to become\nconscious. It therefore may be said to have had a mind of which it\nwas unconscious and of which it remained unconscious in its various\nevolutionary forms until the mind developed to a point where it in turn\nseparated from order and invented the self. The occasion of the self\nwas a stage in the most anarchic evolutionary form, man, coeval with\nthe general transformation of chaos into a universe. A consciousness\nof consciousness arose and at the same time divided between order, in\nwhich mind was the spirit of cohesion, and the individual, in whom\nmind was the spirit of separation. In the ensuing opposition between\nthese two, order yielded to the individual by allowing him to call it\na universe, but triumphed over him since, by naming it, the individual\nmade the universe his society and therefore his religion. Order was the\nnatural enemy of the individual mind. To conciliate it order appealed\nto the individual mind for sanction. This sanction, the original\nsocial contract, was not between man and man, but between man and the\nuniverse as men, or society. Although the sanction was given on the\nbasis of natural instinct, or the non-conscious identity of man and the\nuniverse, society has always claimed authority over conscious thought\nand purpose. In incorporating the man it attempts to incorporate the\nmind and in turn to give the mind its sanction through the sanction\nwhich it first had from the man: it constitutes itself the parent past\nand the mind present memory of it.\n\nThe social corpus is tyrannically founded on the principle of origin.\nIt admits nothing new: all is revision, memory, confirmation. The\nindividual cosmos must submit itself to the generalized cosmos\nof history, it must become part of its growing encyclop\u00e6dia of\nauthorities. Such a generalized cosmos, however, must have been\nformulated more by the desire of people to define themselves as a\ngroup than to account for the origin of their personal existence.\nOrigin, indeed, is properly the preoccupation of the individual and\nnot a communal interest. The group is only interested in the formal\npublishing of individuals for the purpose of establishing their social\nsolidarity. Art, for example, is record not creation. The question\nof origin is only emphasized in so far as it proves the individual a\nmember of the group, as having a common pedigree with the other members\nof the group. Thus God, the branding-iron of the group idea, does not\nappear in societies where as yet there is imperfect differentiation\nbetween the individual and the type; where as yet there is no need\nfor branding. Once the distinction between the group mind and the\nindividual mind could be made the group mind really ceased to exist.\nThe distinction, however, could only be made by minds complete in\nthemselves, and as such minds have always been extremely rare, the\nfiction of a group mind has been maintained to impose the will of the\nweak-minded upon the strong-minded, the myth of common origin being\nused as the charter of the majority. The tyranny by which this majority\ncan enforce its will may be either democratic or oligarchic. The only\ndifference is that in the first case, provided that the democracy\nis a true democracy (which it very rarely is), the group mind is so\nefficient that it acts despotically as one man; in the second case the\ngroup mind is less efficient and, by a process of blind selection, the\nmost characteristic of the weak-minded become the perverse instruments\nof unity.\n\nBoth the individual mind and the group mind are engaged in a pursuit\nwhich may be described as mind-making or, simply, truth. The object of\ngroup truth is group-confirmation and perpetuation; while individual\ntruth has no object other than discovering itself and involves neither\nproofs nor priests. In order, however, to win any acceptance it must\ntranslate itself into group truth, it must accommodate itself to\nthe fact-curriculum of the group. But not only is such truth forced\nto submit to group terminology and order, but the group conscience\ndemands that the individual mind serve it by working with the purposes\nof the group. The group, indeed, tries to preclude all idiosyncratic\nthought-activity and to use what intelligence it can control against\nit. This civic intelligence is found simplified in the catechism\ninstructing children \u2018to order themselves lowly and reverently before\ntheir betters and to do their duty in that state of life unto which it\nhas pleased God to call them.\u2019\n\nThe confirmation of the candidate as a member of the group establishes\nthe superiority of group opinion over individual opinion and the\nauthority of the group to define this relationship as one governed by\ncivic duties. It is the nature of these duties which determines the\ncategories into which civic intelligence falls. The group can never\nbe anything more than a superstition, but the categories assemble\nall available material into a textual Corpus. There being no real\nfunctional group surviving, this Corpus of group texts is used as the\nrallying point of the group, the counterpart of the primitive clan\ntotem, the outward and visible sign of a long-extinct grace.\n\nThe Corpus, in making categorical demands upon the individual, thus\nlimits the ways in which works may be conceived and presented. These\ndemands become the only \u2018inspiration\u2019 countenanced, and theoretically\nall creative supply has its source in them. This seems a fairly\nplausible view of the status of the arts and sciences in human\nsociety. The occurrence of a supply independent of Corpus demands, its\npossibility or presence, is a question that the social limitations of\nour critical language prevent us from raising with any degree of humane\nintelligibility.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe live on the circumference of a hollow circle. We draw the\ncircumference, like spiders, out of ourselves: it is all criticism of\ncriticism.\n\n\n\n\nPOETRY AND MUSIC\n\n\nThere is a weakling music and a weakling poetry which flatter each\nother by making critical comparisons with each other: there is a\nliterary criticism of music in which words like \u2018wit\u2019 and \u2018rhetoric\u2019\nexcuse musical flabbiness, and a musical criticism of poetry in which\nwords like \u2018symphonic\u2019 and \u2018overtone\u2019 excuse poetic flabbiness. This\nmutual tenderness leads to false creative as well as false critical\nanalogies between poetry and music; to the deliberate effort to use the\ncreative method of one art in the other.\n\nI am not distressed by the poeticization of music because I do not\nmuch care what happens to music; it is a nervous and ostentatious\nperformance, and little damage remains to be done to it. I am, on the\nother hand, distressed by the musicification of poetry because poetry\nis perhaps the only human pursuit left still capable of developing\nantisocially. Musicified or pictorialized it is the propagandist tribal\nexpression of a society without any real tribal sense. We get a \u2018pure\u2019\npoetry, metaphysically musical, that reveals a desire in the poet\nfor a civilized tribal sense and for poetry as an art intellectually\nco\u00f6rdinating group sympathies: and we get a sort of jazz poetry,\npolitically musical, that reveals a desire in the poet for a primitive\ntribal sense and for poetry as an art emotionally co\u00f6rdinating group\nsympathies.\n\nArt indeed is a term referring to the social source and to the social\nutility of creative acts. Poetry I consider to be an art only when the\npoet consciously attempts to capture social prestige: when it is an art\nof public flattery. In this sense Beaumont and Fletcher were greater\nartists than Shakespeare--better musicians. Shakespeare alternated\nbetween musical surrenders to social prestige and magnificent fits of\npoetic remorse.\n\nTo explain more precisely what I mean by this distinction between what\nI believe to be poetry and what I believe to be art I shall set down a\nnumber of contrasts between poetry and music.\n\n1. All real musicians are physically misshapen as a result of platform\ncozening of their audience. They need never have stood upon a platform:\nthere is a kind of ingratiating \u2018come, come, dear puss\u2019 in the musical\nbrain that distorts the face and puckers up the limbs. All real\npoets are physically upright and even beautiful from indifference to\ncommunity hearings.\n\n2. The end of a poem is the poem. The poem is the only admissible test\nof the poem; the reader gets poetry, not flattery. The end of a musical\nwork is an ear, criticism, that is, flattery.\n\n3. A musical work has a composer; it is an invention with\nprofessionally available material and properties. A poem is made out\nof nothing by a nobody--made out of a socially non-existent element in\nlanguage. If this element were socially existent in language it would\nbe isolated, professionalized, handed over to a trained craft. Rhyme\nand rhythm are not professional properties; they are fundamentally\nidiosyncratic, unavailable, unsystematizable; any formalization of\nthem is an attempted imitation of music by poets jealous of the public\nsuccess of music.\n\n4. Music is an instrument for arousing emotions; it varies only\naccording to the emotions it is intended to arouse and according to the\nprecision with which these emotions are anticipated in the invention\nof the music. Emotions represent persons; not persons in particular\nbut persons in general. Music is directed toward the greatest number\nof persons musically conceivable. It is a mass-marshalling of the\nsenses by means of sound. Poetry is not an instrument and is not\nwritten with the intention of arousing emotions--unless it is of a\nhybrid musico-poetical breed. The end of poetry is not to create a\nphysical condition which shall give pleasure to the mind. It appeals\nto an energy in which no distinction exists between physical and\nmental conditions. It does not massage, soothe, excite or entertain\nthis energy in any way. It _is_ this energy in a form of extraordinary\nstrength and intactness. Poetry is therefore not concentrated on an\naudience but on itself and only produces satisfaction in the sense that\nwherever this energy exists in a sufficient degree of strength and\nintactness it will be encouraged by poetry in further concentration on\nitself. Poetry appeals only to poetry and begets nothing but poetry.\nMusic appeals to the intellectual disorganization and weakness of\npeople in numbers and begets, by flattering this weakness (which is\nsentimentality), gratifying after-effects of destructive sociality.\nThe end of poetry is not an after-effect, not a pleasurable memory\nof itself, but an immediate, constant and even unpleasant insistence\non itself; indeed, it has no end. It isolates energies in themselves\nrather than socially dissolving one in another.\n\n5. Music provides the hearer with an ideal experience, a prepared\nepisode. Poetry is not idealistic; it is not experience in this episode\nor programme sense. There is an entertaining short-story variety in\nmusic; a repellent, austere monotony in poetry. Poetry brings all\npossible experience to the same degree: a degree in the consciousness\nbeyond which the consciousness itself cannot go. Poetry is defeat, the\nend which is not an end but a stopping-short because it is impossible\nto go further; it makes mad; it is the absolutism of dissatisfaction.\nMusic brings not the consciousness but the _material_ of experience\nto a certain degree, always to different degrees. It makes pleasantly\nhappy or unhappy. It is the vulgarity of satisfaction.\n\n6. Music disintegrates and therefore seems active, fruitful, extensive,\nenlarging. Poetry isolates all loose independencies and then integrates\nthem into one close independency which, when complete, has nothing to\ndo but confront itself. Poetry therefore seems idle, sterile, narrow,\ndestroying. And it is. This is what recommends it.\n\n\n\n\nPOETRY AND PAINTING\n\n\nPainters no longer paint with paint except in the sense that\npoets write with ink. Paint is now only a more expensive, elegant\nink. What do painters paint with, then? They paint with poetry. A\npicture is a poem in which the sense has been absorbed by the medium\nof communication of sense. It is not an intelligible series of\nhieroglyphics, but the poem itself forced into a kind of outrageous,\nunnatural visibility: as if suddenly the thing mind were caught in\nthe hand and made to appear painfully and horribly as a creature. The\ndevelopment of painting is toward this poetic quality; the better (the\nmore literal, the less realistic) it gets, the more horrible. So much\nfor the so-called abstractness of painting: the sense is made identical\nwith the medium by forcibly marrying it to the medium. Medium and sense\nare a legally fictitious One in which the medium, the masculine factor,\nforces the sense, the feminine factor, to bear his name and do honour\nto his bed and table. _She_ is all meek, hopeless amicability, _he_ is\nall blustering, good-humoured cynicism.\n\nThis poetic progress of painting influences the pictorial progress of\npoetry. There is a great response in modern poetry to the demand by\npainters that it should be more poetic. See for yourself how many of\nthe newest poems have not their names lettered in aluminium on their\ndoors, with a knocker designed by the latest French abstract sculptor\n(master also of golf), humanly visible furniture within (all primary\ncolours), and nobody home.\n\n\n\n\nPOETRY AND DREAMS\n\n\nI do not believe there is any more relation between poem-making and\ndream-making than between poem-making and child-making. The making\nof poems, dreams and children is difficult to explain because they\nall somehow happen and go on until the poem comes to an end and the\nsleeper wakes up and the child comes out into the air. As for children,\nthere are so many other ways of looking at the matter that poetry is\ngenerally not asked to provide a creative parallel. As for dreams,\nthey are the dregs of the mind, anxious to elevate themselves by\nflattering comparisons. As for poems, they are frequently (more often\nthan not) concocted in the dregs of the mind and therefore happy in an\nunderstanding of mutual support between themselves and dreams.\n\nThe only real resemblance between poetry and dreams is that they are\nboth on the other side of waking--on opposite sides. Waking is the\nmind in its mediocrity. Mediocrity is of such large extent that it\npushes off into obscurity the mental degree _beyond_ mediocrity, in\na direction _away from_ sleep. The mental degree _before_ mediocrity,\n_toward_ sleep, is the dream. So the stage before the lowest degree\nof mediocrity and the stage beyond the highest degree of mediocrity\nare bracketed together by mediocrity because they are both outside of\nmediocrity--the mind at its canniest intelligence and the mind at its\ncanniest imbecility.\n\n\n\n\nJOCASTA\n\n\n\u00a71\n\nThe pathetic differences between wrong and right are well illustrated\nin the persons of Otto Spengler and Wyndham Lewis. Herr Spengler is a\npessimist who has succeeded in cheering himself up with a romantic view\nof Decline. Mr. Lewis is an optimist because he is right, forced into\npessimism by the general prevalence of wrong. He sees wrong (rightly)\nas Time, Romance, Advertisement (forced optimism), Righteousness,\nAction, Popular Art (Time, Romance, Advertisement, Righteousness,\nAction, united in an inferiority complex). Since he is right his\nright quarrels with the various manifestations of wrong he is able to\ndistinguish: the more he is able to distinguish the more corroborations\nhe has of his rightness. Herr Spengler, being wrong, has this advantage\ntherefore over Mr. Lewis: whereas Mr. Lewis\u2019s success must be confined\nto seeing wrong in the most unorganized (that is, various) manner\npossible, _his_ success depends on his being wrong in the most\norganized manner possible--the more organized he seems, the more right\nhe seems. Unfortunately this situation brings about a competition\nbetween Herr Spengler and Mr. Lewis: Mr. Lewis feels obliged to\norganize his unorganized view of wrong, which cancels the potency of\nhis rightness, which is only valid so long as it is unorganized (that\nis, commentarial instead of systematic). So he becomes a colleague of\nHerr Spengler in righteousness, the advocate of a vocabulary. We find\nhim, as he himself admits, trying to give \u2018compendious\u2019 names to what\nis wrong: which places him immediately in Herr Spengler\u2019s class.[1]\n\nTo be right is to be incorruptibly individual. To be wrong is to be\nrighteously collective. Herr Spengler is a collectivist: he believes in\nthe absorption of the unreal (right) individual in a collective reality\n(History or Romance)--by which the individual becomes functionally (as\nopposed to morphologically) really-real. Mr. Lewis is an individualist\nin so far as he is opposed to organized functional reality. But\nhe is unable to face the final conclusion of individualism: that\nthe individual is morphologically as well as functionally unreal,\nand that herein alone (in this double withdrawal from both nature\nand human society, or history) can he be right. How does Mr. Lewis\ncome to believe in the morphological reality of the individual? By\ndevoting himself so violently to revealing the sham of historical\naction in art--the unreality of functional reality--that he creates by\nimplication a real which, since it cannot exist in historical romance\n(society), which is all sham, must exist in non-historical romance\n(nature). Further, both Herr Spengler and Mr. Lewis think through the\nsame machinery--the machinery of knowledge. Indeed it appears as if\nthey thought because they possessed this machinery and had to use it:\nthis is the constant impression made by Herr Spengler, the frequent\nimpression made by Mr. Lewis. I do not think that Mr. Lewis really\nthinks because of and by means of knowledge. I am convinced that he\nthinks. But I see also that he is unable to face uncompromisingly the\nproblem of individualism. He is not content with being right; he is\nstung by his irritation with what is wrong into the desire to be real\nas well as right. He therefore organizes the same material that Herr\nSpengler organizes--to prove that it is sham, as Herr Spengler to\nprove that it is real. He even uses the same false organizing system\nas Herr Spengler--analogy. Herr Spengler, by proving the analogical\nconsistency of his views, merely proves that wrong is wrong. Mr. Lewis,\nby overstudying the analogical consistency of wrong, establishes his\nright by the same system that Herr Spengler uses in establishing his\nwrong. He is making of his right a competitive Romance to argue with\nHerr Spengler\u2019s Romance. With both Herr Spengler and Mr. Lewis I feel\nin the presence of realists. Herr Spengler, I feel, is happy in being a\nrealist, Mr. Lewis, I feel, is not. He is not, I think, because he is\nfundamentally right, but afraid of facing the unreality of rightness.\nIt is difficult to explain this because it is a difficult situation;\nand I wish if possible to avoid compendious names. It would perhaps be\nsimplest to say that Mr. Lewis is timid (as he has himself privately\nadmitted).\n\nMr. Lewis attacks the principle which is to Herr Spengler the right of\nhis wrong. He attacks the reality of the collective-real. But in doing\nso he opposes to it an individual-real. The collective-real is man in\ntouch with man. The individual-real is man in touch with the natural in\nhim, in touch with nature. Neither Herr Spengler nor Mr. Lewis dares\nface the individual-unreal: both believe in unity and integration, Herr\nSpengler in the unity and integration of history, Mr. Lewis in the\nunity and integration of natural as opposed to historical existence. \u2018I\nam for the physical world,\u2019 Mr. Lewis says. One of the reasons he is\nfor the physical world is, apparently, that the historical world, in\nkeeping up with itself, not only worships the fetich of Romance, but\nthe fetich of childishness as well. In pointing this out Mr. Lewis is\nboth wise and courageous; but he reveals at the same time an important\nfetich of the individual-real, adultishness. Nor, maddened by the\nvulgar success of the historical world with itself, can he see that the\nfetich of childishness in only a half-clue to the story of Gertrude\nStein, that Miss Stein has one foot in the collective real and one foot\nin the individual-unreal--which is more than can be said of Mr. Lewis,\nwho has both feet planted in the individual-real.[2]\n\nI must next give an illustration of the individual-real in contemporary\nliterature. This will perhaps not please Wyndham Lewis and will\ncertainly not please its author, Virginia Woolf. I can only say\nthat I do not mean to attack either of them but merely to explain\nthe individual-real. And Mrs. Woolf\u2019s most recent book, _To the\nLighthouse_, seems to me a perfect example of the individual-real.\nIn the first place, it is individual: not in the sense that it\nis personal, warm, alive to itself, indifferent to effect or\nappreciation, vividly unreal, but in the sense that it individualizes\nthe simple reality of nature, gives it distinction--shade, tone,\npersonal subtlety. In the second place it is real--meticulously,\nmathematically like life: not historical time-life, which is an easy\napproximation, but natural flesh-life, which must be laboriously,\nexquisitely, irritatingly, painfully rendered. To do this language\nmust be strained, supersensitized, loaded with comparisons, suggestive\nimages, emotional analogies: used, that is, in a poetic way to write\nsomething that is not poetry--used to argue, prove, prick the cuticle\nof sense, so to speak, in a way that is extravagant, unpleasant,\ninsincere (since it purports to be pleasant). The method, in fact, has\nno creative justification: it merely drives home the individual-real,\nwhich is physical emphasis of self-individual because it is physically\nself, real because as physical it shares in the simple reality of\nnature. All this delicacy of style, it appears, is the expression of\nan academic but nevertheless vulgar indelicacy of thought, a sort\nof Royal Academy nudeness, a squeamish, fine-writing lifting of the\ncurtains of privacy. In the third place, it (the individual-real as\nillustrated in this novel) is adultish--advanced but conservative: it\ndoes not belong to childish, democratic mass-art, but neither does it\nbelong to the individual, non-physical, non-collective unreal. It is\nover-earnest constrained, suppressedly hysterical, unhappy, could give\nno one pleasure. Pleasure is doing as one pleases. In works like this\nneither the author, who is obsessed by the necessity of emphasizing the\nindividual-real, nor the reader, who is forced to follow the author\npainfully (word for word) in this obsession, may do as he pleases.\nThere is only one novel-writer who really did as he pleased, let his\ncharacters do as they pleased and his reader to do as he pleased, and\nthat was Defoe. He could do this because he was, as Pope said, \u2018the\nunabashed Defoe,\u2019 and he was unabashed because he was unreal, vividly\nunreal--personal, warm, indifferent to effect (consistency). Mrs.\nWoolf defends herself from any such analysis of her work as I have\nmade here by declaring that there is no such thing as a novel. If _To\nThe Lighthouse_ is not to be treated as a novel, then it must, by its\nlanguage-habits, be treated as a poem. Analyse it then as a poem:\nwhat then? It proves itself to be merely a novel; and an insincere\nnovel--the use of the material of the collective-real to insinuate\ndogmatically the individual-real. Defoe used the material of the\ncollective-real as it could only be used sincerely--to insinuate the\nindividual-unreal: and so Defoe, if you like, did turn the novel into\npoetry.\n\nI once discussed this point with E. M. Forster and we found that we\nhad each read _Roxana_ in entirely opposite senses. Mr. Forster was\ncertain that Defoe followed Roxana in every word he wrote of her, and\nthat Roxana likewise followed Defoe, that there was no do-as-you-please\nbreak between her and Defoe or between her and the reader or between\nDefoe and the reader; that all was one intense, physically compact\nand consistent exposition of the individual-real. I pointed out the\nstriking division in, for example, Roxana\u2019s long feminist declamation\nagainst marriage to her Dutch lover--a division in which all the\n_dramatis person\u00e6_, including author and reader, are released to accept\nthe declamation with whatever bias they please. In this division I\nfind Defoe\u2019s sincerity. Mr. Forster, on the other hand, understands\nthe declamation as a remarkably unified, _innocent_, three-dimensional\nslice of that individual-real which is the story. If I thought that\nDefoe had written that passage innocently, with realistic consistency,\nI should catalogue him as a fine writer and skilful hypocrite. But\nI am persuaded he was neither of these. I am sure that the feminist\nrecital was wilfully unreal, inconsistent, many-dimensional; that it\nwas delicate common sense for the Dutch lover, frank but sentimental\nexpediency for Roxana, sound doctrine for Defoe and undisguised\nstorifying for the reader present in the story; and that none of these\nwas deceived in his bias, but could if he wished change it for any\nother without damaging the consistency of the piece, since there was\nnone. _The Tempest_ has the same sort of inconsistency as a Defoe\nnovel; it is the most unreal of the plays and to me preferable to\nthe more realistic plays. Others are more poetic, as Mrs. Woolf\u2019s\n_To The Lighthouse_ is more poetic than _Roxana_. But they do not\ncontain so many poems, as there is no passage in _To The Lighthouse_\nwith the dimensions (the contradictions) of Roxana\u2019s recital to her\nDutch lover. In _The Tempest_ there is not only a continuous chain\nof such inconsistencies (poems); the characters themselves have the\nsame many-dimensional inconsistency--the unreal Caliban, the unreal\nProspero, interchangeable in their inconsistency.\n\nBefore leaving this question and returning to Herr Spengler, whose\nwrong has not in my opinion been sufficiently disorganized, I must\ncome back to the suffocating, nearly sickening physical quality\nof what I call the individual-real--not a strong, fresh, casual\nfrankness of flesh, but a self-scented, sensuous, unbearably curious\nself-smelling of flesh. The collective-real is crude, symbolic, sham;\nthe individual-real is exquisite, more than symbolic--literally,\nintrinsically metaphorical. I have in mind, in connection with _To The\nLighthouse_, a book of E. M. Forster\u2019s, _A Room With a View_. Before\nreading this book I had met Mr. Forster and found him charming; the\nbook was recommended to me by my friends as a charming book. I read it.\nI could not deny that it was charming. Yet it was to me unpleasantly\npainful to read. It was too charming. I do not mean to be flippant,\nor to disgust, or to alter my original conviction of Mr. Forster\u2019s\npersonal charm, which I have had an opportunity of confirming since\nreading this book. But the truth is that it affected me in the same\nway as would the sight of a tenderly and exquisitely ripe pimple. I\nlonged to squeeze it and have done with it. At the time I could only\nreproach myself with this rather shameful morbidity and admit that my\nreaction seemed preposterous. It was a simple, exquisitely written\nstory about simple, unexciting people; and the unpleasant excitement it\ngave me was unnatural. Since then I have come to be able to identify\nand understand a little the individual-real, and it is now perfectly\nclear to me why Mr. Forster\u2019s book affected me in that way, although\nthen I could only feel a vague physical reaction to its metaphorical\nrealism. That I recognized it as an essay in metaphorical realism is\nproved by the persistent image of the pimple with which the book came\nto be associated in my mind. And indeed, if I had thought a little more\nclosely about metaphorical realism at the time, I might have arrived\nvery soon at the same conclusion that I have here arrived at, _via_\nOtto Spengler, Wyndham Lewis, and so forth.\n\nIn the ordinary time-world or art-world of the collective-real,\nsymbolism, however romantically it may be used, never denies that it\nis symbolism. Its very effectiveness depends on its being recognized\nas such. Further, since symbolism is here collective rather than\nindividual, since the symbol, that is, is _chosen_ to collectivize\nindividual emotions which would otherwise have separate and presumably\nweaker communication with the thing for which the symbol stands, it is\nclear that the symbolic method of the collective-real is selective:\nit implies a graded choice of the things which it seems necessary and\nimportant to symbolize. This method, whose psychology Herr Spengler\nattempts to discover, is all that Mr. Lewis says it is (it is really\nthe symbolic method of the time-world that he attacks). In the\nliterature and art of the collective-real it is easy to recognize\nbecause they are frankly symbolical: it is part of their technique to\ninsist on the symbolic quality of the symbol. This means that symbolic\nart is generally bad art, full of double meanings, vulgar obviousness,\nfacile concessions to sentimentality, flattery of the mass-emotions\nwhich confirm the relation of the symbol with the thing it represents.\n\nYet there is a proficiency, a vulgar good in this bad art that gives\ngreat and pure pleasure--great because it has the strength of what\nis purposively, defiantly bad, pure because it makes no attempt to\nconceal its badness. And there is one further virtue in the symbolism\nof the collective-real, that, being a selective symbolism, it does not\nsymbolize everything--if it symbolized everything it would destroy the\ntime-world, the organ of communication and author of symbols. Instead,\nit lets pass much which it realizes would be proof against symbolism\nand thus threaten its prestige: it admits that there is much that is\nunreal and, in so far as is consistent with its authority, leaves it\nalone. Poetry, therefore, in the world of the collective-real, is given\na little chance.\n\nSymbolism, in the nature-world of the individual-real, denies\nitself to be symbolism. It uses all the tricks of the symbolism of\nthe collective-real, but to insist that it is individually, not\ncollectively real, that it is, therefore, not symbolic but literal,\nnot \u2018artistic\u2019 but natural. It is not selective, since if it were it\nwould admit itself to be symbolical, but makes everything it touches\nequally significant, physical, real. Its technique is to insist on\nthe authentic quality of the symbol. This means that it is only a\nmore ambitious, expert, clever symbolism than the symbolism of the\ncollective-real. It is literally instead of suggestively symbolic. It\nis morbidly physical instead of merely morbidly sentimental. It is\ndifficult (not by nature but by art), adult, aristocratic, _better_.\nThe difference between the collective-real and the individual-real\nas revealed by their respective methods of symbolism proves itself\nto be no more than a snobbish difference of degree: the art of the\nindividual-real is self-appointed good art. And as such it is\nstrained, unhappy-hypocritical, slave to an ideal of superiority that\nI can only properly describe as the ideal of slickness. There is no\nopposition here of right to wrong, only a more academic, individual\nwrong (or real) than even the best democratic, collective wrong. The\nright (the unreal) remains (as it should) categorically non-existent.[3]\n\nI recall with pleasure an outrageous example of the vulgarity,\nsentimentality, proficient badness of collective-real literature; a\nnovel by Rebecca West. It is a long time since I read it, and what\nI can reproduce of it is from memory. I remember in particular one\npassage, in which it was told how delightful it was to hold an egg in\nthe little hollow in the front of the neck, and in which baked potatoes\nwere charmingly mixed up with cirrus clouds. It was all so frankly\nfalse, so enchantingly bad, so vulgarly poetical without the least\nclaim to being poetic, that it was impossible not to enjoy it and not\nto find it good: one was being sold nothing that was not obvious.\nAfter Rebecca West put Katherine Mansfield, a cross between the\ncollective-real and the individual-real, a perplexed effort, a vapour.\nThen put the development of the individual-real, culminating in the\nart of Virginia Woolf, in which nothing is thrown out since it admits\nno unreal, in which poetry has no chance because the individual-real\nitself is so poetic, in which one is sold poetry without being aware of\nit; this super-symbolical, unsufferably slick alchemy that takes poetry\nout of the unreal and turns it into the dainty extra-pink blood by\nwhich reality is suffused with reality:\n\n\u2018She looked up over her knitting and met the third stroke and it seemed\nto her like her own eyes meeting her own eyes, searching as she alone\ncould search into her mind and her heart, purifying out of existence\nthat lie, any lie. She praised herself in praising the light, without\nvanity, for she was stern, she was searching, she was beautiful like\nthat light. It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to\nthings, inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed\none; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one;\nfelt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked at that long steady\nlight) as for oneself. There rose, and she looked and looked with her\nneedles suspended, there curled up off the floor of the mind, rose from\nthe lake of one\u2019s being, a mist, a bride to meet her lover.\u2019\n\nI submit that this is _more wrong_ than Rebecca West\u2019s writing\nbecause it is better, slicker. It bends the bow of taste (to use the\nmanner of Mrs. Woolf) back into a contorted, disdainful, monotonous,\nsensuously bulging circle. The collective-real, when a revolution\ntakes place in it (when it is threatened by the unreal and makes a\nviolent gesture of self-assertion), acknowledges the shadow that\nhas passed over it, accepts the consequences of pledging itself to\nbe with time: shortens its skirts, chops an inch off its hair, puts\na cheerful face on its modernity--its progressive retreat from the\nunreal. The individual-real, on the other hand, secure in Nature\u2019s\nfortress, insists that no shadow of the unreal can fall upon it. It is\neverything--real because it is individualistic, unreal because it is\nsymbolical: it cannot come to harm. If it is threatened, it lengthens\nits skirts, swishes grandly along the ground, grows its fingernails,\nscratches exquisitely the plaster wall that surrounds it, sharpens its\npencil till it has nerves and writes just a little more finely than is\npossible. And whatever it touches turns to spun-silk under it. It is\nthe delamarish memory-fairy.\n\nYet certainly there is much that cannot, except in the fairy-tale\nof memory (the individual-real) be turned into spun-silk. To make\neverything real, no matter how unreal, how personal it may have been\nin its occurrence, is to symbolize it for the democratic mass. Thus\npsycho-analysis is not unacceptable to the individual-real, thus in\nindividual-real literature we find grating public exhibitions of\nindividuality. Any personal incident may be stroked, coaxed, maddened\nby fine torture into symbolic existence. For example: when I was\nfourteen I used to read the _New York Times_ every afternoon for an\nhour (for a pittance) to an old man whose eyesight was poor, a veteran\nof the Civil War. He had a most eccentric mispronunciation, which I\nhad to adopt in reading to him. It was very difficult, as on the other\nside, at school, I was being trained in pronunciation. I concentrated\non mispronunciation, and one day, when I had just about become\nexpert in it, I knocked at his door to find that he had died. There\nI was, with all that mispronunciation on my hands; and to a certain\nextent it is still on my hands. Now, if I were a psycho-analytic\nindividual-realist, I should symbolically refine this. I should have\na mispronunciation complex, I should say that life was like that and\nassociate it with other incidents in which life was like that, I\nshould have a mental ejaculation every time I mispronounced, and so\non. As it is, it is merely an incident--what I may call a statistical\nincident. It happened, I occasionally mispronounce, it is all very\npersonal, unreal, illogical, unsymbolical and poetic to me. I have\nnever told it, poetically, as a good story to illustrate this or that\nor to mean this or that.[4] And in treating it in this way I am sure\nI am closer to the incident as it happened and as it affected me,\nthough I am not closer to what is called the reality of the incident.\nThis is perhaps trivial and even irrelevant to the argument. Yet it is\nto me an exposition in life of the always threatening danger of the\nindividual-real in literature and art.\n\n\n\u00a72\n\nI have already said that I considered Herr Spengler wrong and Mr.\nLewis right. To say that Herr Spengler is wrong is to say that he is\nwrong. To say that Mr. Lewis is right is to imply, because I place\nhis right side by side with Herr Spengler\u2019s wrong, that I regret\nthe argumentative rightness of his right: I not only object to\nHerr Spengler\u2019s systematic wrongness because it is wrong, but also\nbecause it is systematic. Herr Spengler perceives a conspiracy and\nis delighted, Mr. Lewis perceives a conspiracy and is infuriated.\nTherefore, though I admire Mr. Lewis because he is right, I restrict my\nadmiration in so far as he is systematic: the obsession with conspiracy\nis no more wrong in Herr Spengler than in Mr. Lewis. I regret to see\nMr. Lewis decorating his right with the trappings of argument: I\nregret to see him dramatizing his right realistically to impress the\nsame audience as Herr Spengler does--emphasizing the individual-real\nas Spengler does the collective-real. I should like to see Mr. Lewis\nbeing right, being unreal, being himself, rather than sending out his\nright to instruct the democratic mass on the same stage on to which\nHerr Spengler sends out his wrong. It is none of my business, of\ncourse, what Mr. Lewis does with his right; but in admiring Mr. Lewis\nand not admiring Herr Spengler it is only fair to point out that the\nformer as well as the latter is guilty of realistic projections.\n\nBy projections I mean saying more, thinking more, knowing more,\nobserving more, organizing more than is self. I mean creating the real.\nIn Herr Spengler\u2019s writing I find nothing unreal; I find no self. In\nMr. Lewis\u2019s writing I find a considerable unreal projecting itself\nrealistically, organizing itself against, for example, James Joyce. I\ndo not speak merely of attacking James Joyce or Sherwood Anderson or\nD. H. Lawrence. I speak of attacking by advocating a system to take\nthe place of the system which certain aspects of James Joyce\u2019s work,\nsay, represent to Mr. Lewis. I think this system should indeed be\nattacked in so far as it is a system and in so far as is necessary for\na preservation of integrity. I do not think it should be replaced. I\nwant the time-world removed and in its place to see--nothing. I do not\nwant to see the unreal--Mr. Lewis\u2019s, mine, anyone\u2019s--become more than\nitself, become either intellectual (Spengler) or physical (Lewis).\nI want it to remain inhuman and obscure. Both Herr Spengler and Mr.\nLewis make it, the one in his wrongness, the other in his rightness,\nhuman and glaring. To me the secularistic subjective softness of\nthe first is no more aggressively realistic than the secularistic\n\u2018objective hardness\u2019 of the second. For all Mr. Lewis\u2019s unreal, the\nquestion remains to him \u2018whether we should set out to transcend our\nhuman condition or whether we should translate into human terms the\nwhole of our datum.\u2019 I agree with Mr. Lewis in discarding the first\nalternative, but I submit that the second contains in it two other\nalternatives and that in choosing the _wrong one_ of these (as he does\nby creating the original pair of alternatives) Mr. Lewis leans towards\nrather than away from transcendentalism. For what he calls the datum is\nnothing but the unreal; to call it the datum and, further, to suggest\nthe necessity of its translation from the unreal into the real, the\npersonal (inhuman) into the human (physically collective) is only to\noppose one kind of transcendentalism to another--the individual-real\nto the collective-real. In this he is identifying himself with critics\nwho, like I. A. R. Richards, wish to find a place for literature and\nart \u2018in the system of human endeavours,\u2019 to prove the unreal to be but\n\u2018a finer organization of ordinary experiences\u2019; that is, in order to\ncombat the gross romanticism and rhodomontade of democratic realism,\nhe turns merely to a more classical, aristocratic realism.[5] He\nthus reduces the difference between himself and Herr Spengler to a\ndifference in taste rather than in principle; the distinction between\nright and wrong, unreal and real, which Mr. Lewis might be one of the\nfew people able to maintain, becomes, as has already been pointed out,\nmerely the distinction between good and bad, between two types of the\nreal or between degrees in the real.\n\nMan, as he becomes more man, becomes less nature. He becomes unreal. He\nloses homogeneity as a species. He lives unto himself not as a species\nbut as an individual. He is lost as far as nature is concerned, but as\nhe is separated from nature, this does not matter. He is in himself, he\nis unreal, he is secure. This sense of unreality, however, varies in\nindividuals: it is weakest in the weakest individuals. These weakest\nindividuals, missing the physical homogeneity which reality in nature\nwould give man, construct by analogy an ideal homogeneity, a history,\na reality of time. \u2018The means whereby to identify living forms,\u2019\nSpengler says, \u2018is Analogy.\u2019 As systematic analogy with nature becomes\nmore and more difficult, the basis of analogy, parallelism with\nnature, is removed; but the system of analogy remains. A transference\nis made from what Herr Spengler calls morphological equivalence to\nfunctional equivalence. Instead of being nature-like (like the species\n_man_ in nature) he becomes man-like (like the species man in man).\nThe individual is like himself collectively, really, not like himself\nindividually, unreally. It is now possible perhaps to discuss more\nclearly the significance of the terms I have been using: pessimism,\noptimism; collective-real, individual-real; unreal. Herr Spengler, I\nshould say, is pessimistic at the sight of the disintegration of man\nas a natural species; he consoles himself with a vision of man as a\nconsistent analogous rather than homologous social mass. He has, we\nmight say, a melancholy, mystical vision of an eternal structure of\ndecay, whose processes may be collectively appreciated and participated\nin. His vision is the collective-real, by which he manages to transcend\nthe unreal. Mr. Lewis, I should say, is fundamentally optimistic at\nthe sight of the disintegration of man as a natural species. He is\nnot distressed, I believe, by the fact that there is a problem of\nindividualism. He would face it cheerfully if he were not so annoyed\nby Herr Spengler\u2019s gloomy evasion of it--by the whole time-philosophy\nfor which Spengler is but one of many spokesmen. But he is distracted\nfrom his pursuit of the problem of individualism into the unreal, where\nis to be found its only satisfactory conclusion, by his annoyance\nwith evasions of it like Herr Spengler\u2019s or Dr. Whitehead\u2019s. And in\nhis annoyance he remains permanently distracted; he succeeds in doing\nno more than substituting for it another kind of evasion. I do not\nsay that Mr. Lewis is an official spokesman of the individual-real\nin the way in which Herr Spengler is an official spokesman for the\ncollective-real. But in opposing him without fully acknowledging the\nunreal he seems to me to be identifying himself with a brand of realism\nthat is in its way as obnoxious as collective realism.\n\nLet me elaborate what I consider to be the viewpoint of the\nindividual-realists. They perceive the disintegration of man as a\nspecies and resent the philosophical substitute which the collective\nrealists, with the help of history, make for the natural species--this\nanalogical instead of homological species. They recognize that however\nremoved man may now be from nature, analogies of the individual with\nnatural history are less false than analogies of the individual with\nhuman history. Analogies of the individual with nature will become\nless and less exact as man becomes more and more removed from nature.\nBut it is at any rate true that these analogies will hold as long as\nit will be possible to make them. Analogies of the individual with\nhistory will, on the other hand, become more and more exact, since they\nare invented rather than discovered analogies, analogies maintained\nby a system of representational cohesion. Historical analogy thus\nstands for the tyranny of democracy, while physical analogy stands\nfor a Toryish anarchy--the direct communication of a few individuals\nwith the physical world without the intervention of the symbolic\nspecies.[6] I think that anarchism is very nice; but I do not think\nthat anarchism is enough. I agree that morphological analogy is more\nliteral than functional analogy; but as morphological analogy is bound\nto become less and less exact as the individual\u2019s memory of himself as\na member of a species becomes more and more shady, it seems to me idle\nto maintain it at all (except humorously); especially idle to maintain\nit, this individual-real, categorically against the collective-real,\nand in doing so to lose sight of the only quality in which the\nindividual is secure, in a certain personal unreality not affected by\nanalogy of any kind. I am not much concerned about the philosophical\ninvalidity of the individual-real; I am ready to admit that it is\nphilosophically a more tenable position than the collective-real.\nPhilosophical positions have all to do with versions of the real, and\nhave varying degrees of tenability: but if a philosophical position\nhave the maximum degree of intelligibility it does not alter the fact\nthat any philosophical position is irrelevant to the individual and\nrelevant only to a symbolic mass of individuals. The only position\nrelevant to the individual is the unreal, and it is relevant because it\nis not a position but the individual himself. The individual-real is\nmore indulgent of the individual-unreal than any other philosophical\nposition; but this is a disadvantage rather than advantage to the\nunreal, since it actually means an encroachment upon, a parody of\nthe unreal by the individual-real. It is about this encroachment and\nparody as it takes place in literature that I am really concerned.\nTo put it simply, the unreal is to me poetry. The individual-real is\na sensuous enactment of the unreal, opposing a sort of personally\ncultivated physical collectivity to the metaphysical mass-cultivated\ncollectivity of the collective-real. So the individual-real is a\nplagiarizing of the unreal which makes the opposition between itself\nand the collective-real seem that of poetic to realistic instead of\n(as it really is) that of superior to inferior realistic; the real,\npersonally guaranteed real-stuff to a philosophical, mass-magicked\nreal-stuff. The result in literature is a realistic poeticizing of\nprose (Virginia Woolf or any \u2018good\u2019 writer) that competes with poetry,\nforcing it to make itself more poetic if it would count at all. Thus\nboth the \u2018best\u2019 prose and the \u2018best\u2019 poetry are the most \u2018poetic\u2019;\nand make the unreal, mere poetry, look obscure and shabby. And what\nhave we, of all this effort? Sitwellian connoisseurship in beauty and\nfashion, adult Eliotry proving how individually realistic the childish,\nmass-magicked real-stuff can be if sufficiently documented, ambitious\npersonal absolutes proving how real their unreal is, Steinian and\nEinsteinian intercourse between history and science, Joycian release\nof man of time in man of nature (collective-real in individual-real),\ncultured primitivism, cultured individualism, vulgar (revolutionary)\ncollectivism, fastidious (anarchic) collectivism--it is all one:\nnostalgic, lascivious, masculine, Oedipean embrace of the real\nmother-body by the unreal son-mind.[7]\n\n\n\u00a73\n\nIn showing how the distinction between the collective-real and\nthe individual-real meant really no more than a difference of\ndegree--between degrees of good, for example--I might have carried the\nargument further. I might have shown that in thus revealing themselves\nas merely differences of degree, they reduced all oppositions that\nmight be made between them to differences of degree. Take the\nopposition of _intellectual_, of the time-world (collective-real),\nto _physical_, of the selves-world (individual-real): _intellectual_\nproves itself to mean based on an emotionally maintained unity;\n_physical_ proves itself to mean based on a unity maintained by reason.\nThe opposition then of _intellectual_ to _physical_ (of Herr Spengler,\nsay, to Mr. Lewis) or of intuition to intelligence (of John Middleton\nMurry, say, to T. S. Eliot) is a restatement of the more hackneyed\nopposition of _emotional_ to _intellectual_; which in turn proves\nitself to be not an opposition at all but an expression of degrees of\nhistorical advancement.\n\nThus to Herr Spengler \u2018Soul,\u2019 the felt self, is an eternal, romantic\nyouthfulness in man; which expresses itself by comparing itself\n(analogy) continually with the world, the not-self, the unfelt self;\nwhich is the permanently aged, self-apprehending, being self of nature.\nHerr Spengler does not see that once having made this opposition he\nhas placed himself in the position of choosing between them, that one\nor the other must represent the illusion of one or the other. Failing\nto do this, by maintaining a communicative opposition between them, he\nshows that both are illusions (mutually, one of the other). To compare\nmathematics and logic is to show wherein both are false, by reason of\ntheir resemblance to each other. If the likeness were true, it would be\na complete likeness, it would be identity, and one or the other must\ndisappear; and it follows that the one in whose terms the likeness is\nstated is the most false, the most illusory. The likeness is maintained\nby the self\u2019s fear of self, the fear of personal loneliness. The\nmathematical unity of the world sets an example for the historical\nunity of the Soul, the time-child of the world; a community self, a\nCulture, is invented to keep the self company. All the values by which\nthis self is organized are derivative values. \u2018Logic is a kind of\nmathematic.\u2019 Language is an expression of functional relationships,\nit is not just language, the tongue of a self; it must co-ordinate,\n_express_ the members of the community self rather than _say_ each\nself; it must be comprehensible, that is, it must show likeness--if\nit does not show likeness it is attacked as obscure. A painter or a\ncomposer or a sculptor is one who demonstrates, through his medium,\nthis communicative opposition between the world of reality and the\nworld of self. The poet is one who, by personal duplicity, takes it\nupon himself to prove that the opposition is so and not so; his poetry\nis a demonstration of the righteousness of duplicity. \u2018Nature is to\nbe handled scientifically, History poetically.\u2019 Self is poetic self.\nNature, mathematical life, is the become, the eternally grown-up;\nHistory, logical life, is the becoming, the eternally childish.\n\nThe time-advocate, whom I shall call the philosopher, does not see, or\nis afraid to see, that the become and the becoming are both mutually\nillusory Worlds of reality: that they are self-created refutations\nof individuality to which the individual succumbs from imperfection.\nHe forgets, that is, that the individual is an _unbecoming_ and that\nthe categories \u2018becoming\u2019 and \u2018become\u2019 are really a derivation from\nhim, a historical reconstruction. Unbecoming is the movement away\nfrom reality, the becoming unreal. What is called the become is\ntherefore really the starting point of the unbecoming. What is called\nthe becoming is therefore really a hypothetical opposition to the\nunbecoming. The become and the becoming are both oppositions to the\nunbecoming; the become from which the becoming is derived is a static\norder organized against the unbecoming, the become is the material of\ndisintegration. The becoming is an attempt to check the disintegration\nof the become from real to unreal by reversing its direction, turning\nit from real to more real, making Nature suggest History. This is done\nby reading into Nature a necessity and inventing for the species man, a\ndigression from Nature, an analogical Darwinistic Nature. The necessity\nof Nature is then called Causality, the necessity of History, Destiny.\n\nThe philosopher, then, is the formal opponent of the unreal. To him\nthe individual is a piece, Nature is a whole, and the individual\ncannot match the wholeness, the real of Nature, except by sharing\nin a community self, the collective-real. To one who recognizes the\nreality of the unreal, each individual is a positive unit produced\nby the disintegration of the reality of Nature. Nature is a process;\nand the pieces of this process are the wholes, not Nature. To the\nphilosopher thought is a reintegration of the scattered pieces into\na symbolic whole, which may then be related to the literal whole of\nNature; it also brings about a close interrelation of these pieces\namong themselves, a functional conformity. To a believer in the unreal,\nthought confirms disintegration. It is not a collective system. It is\neach self.\n\nThis opposition of the philosopher to the individual-unreal remains\nmerely a philosophical opposition. For it is the nature of the\nbeliever in the unreal to be without a system--a system implies\ncollective association (it is even impossible to give him a label,\nlike \u2018philosopher\u2019); and the philosopher could only be opposed by a\nsystem. Indeed so thoroughly \u2018unselfish\u2019 is the character of the unreal\nself that its just conclusion is a sort of social disappearance. This\nis practically impossible because to the unreal self is attached a\nphysical memory of the process by which the self was made, a birthmark\nof piecemealness opposing to the complete unreal self a reconstructed,\nideal whole of origin. The unreal self is forced to indulge this. Sex,\nfor instance, is an indulgence by the unreal self of romantic physical\nnostalgia. To the unreal self this indulgence is incidental, to the\nphilosopher it is fundamental. Herr Spengler\u2019s whole inspiration is\nnostalgic. (So is T. S. Eliot\u2019s. So is Mr. C. B. Cochran\u2019s--every\n\u2018Cochran\u2019s Revue\u2019 is a variation on the theme of the integration\nof historical pageantry, an epistemological medley of primitivism,\nShakespeareanism, Charlestonianism, etc.)\n\nThe philosopher has, however, his formal opponent. His formal opponent\nis one who resents the gross personification of man as the ideal\nindividual of the species; to whom Spenglerish dualism is only \u2018bad\nphilosophy\u2019 (Mr. Lewis); to whom good philosophy is a severe monism,\na literal, aware dwelling in the mathematical (being) self of Nature.\nInstead of History we have Criticism: the formal opponent of the\nphilosopher is the Critic. And, once more, the difference between them\nshows itself to be only a difference of degree; criticism defines\nitself as \u2018better,\u2019 more intellectual philosophy than \u2018intellectual,\u2019\n\u2018bad\u2019 philosophy. The critic (this new, anti-philosophical type that I\nam speaking of) dismisses the childish, historical self as a travesty\nof the adult self of physical reality; as that sick, inner-eyeish,\nStrindbergian \u2018subjective\u2019 self, which has poisoned instead of\nnourished itself on reality, that the psychologist, physician\nof reality, attempts to redeem from the subconscious (run-down,\npathological reality). For the philosophical system of logic the critic\nsubstitutes the mathematical system of reason. The world of Self is not\nto be deduced from the world of Nature; there is but one world, and\nthe self is in this, a like fact with other facts, not a subjective\nfact in a shadowy world of analogy. What Mr. Lewis calls the \u2018success\nof reason\u2019 would permanently establish self as objective fact, as the\nindividual-real. The language of the individual-real neither expresses\nthe members of a community-self nor isolates each self. It expresses\nthe extrinsic value of the self for a system in which there are only\nextrinsic values; as the language of the collective-real expresses its\nintrinsic value for a system in which there are only intrinsic values,\nwhich are made valid, however, by means of oppositional relation to a\nsystem of extrinsic values. So that for the individual-realist, the\nself is also poetic self; rational instead of intuitive, \u2018physical\u2019\ninstead of \u2018intellectual\u2019; a poetic detail of real reality rather than\na real detail of poetic reality.\n\nThe critic, then, like the philosopher, is an opponent of the unreal.\nThe unreal self is intrinsic self, intrinsic without respect to a\nsystem of extrinsic values; it is without value. It is more than\nanarchistic; it does not treat individualistically with values; it\nsupersedes them. The unreal self is not poetic self, it is self.\nIt is not a detail of co-ordinated reality.[8] It is an absolute,\ndisconnected, hopeless whole. To the philosopher thought is memory of\nMother-Nature. To the critic thought is thoughts--diverse, objective,\nrelated facts of reality. There is no antithesis between the position\nof the philosopher and that of the critic: the philosopher invents\ninstruments for observing and measuring reality from afar and has\ndream-embraces of reality: the critic says: \u2018Sentimental stuff and\nnonsense! I am _in_ reality.\u2019 The critic, that is, is a little more\nsentimental, ambitious, intellectual, poetic, snobbish than the\nphilosopher. To both of them thought means connection with reality. To\nboth of them poetry means eloquent consciousness of life. To the unreal\nself, to whom they are both brother-opponents, thought is separation\nfrom reality, and poetry is the consciousness (the perhaps ineloquent\nconsciousness) of what is not life, of what is self. A tree (even\nthis is doubtful, for it is a late, nearly human form) is not born;\nit lives. What is born ceases with birth to live; it is self, unreal\nself. For this reason it is impossible to call the unreal self poetic\nself: \u2018poetic\u2019 and \u2018poetry\u2019 are words drunk with reality, they have\nindeed become by popular use rhetorical substitutes for \u2018real\u2019 and\n\u2018reality.\u2019 By reality I mean organized, \u2018universal\u2019 reality. It would\nbe possible to speak of the unreal self as the real self, the self of\nseparate reality, were it not for the community sense that belongs to\nphilosophical or critical reality. I might have said, instead of unreal\nself, dissociated self. The problem of the right word is more difficult\nin the case of \u2018poetic\u2019 and \u2018poetry.\u2019 I can point out that the real\nself is poetic, and, in opposition to both real and poetic, put the\nunreal self. It is painful, however, to be forced to leave \u2018poetry\u2019\nto the real self and to call the poetry of the unreal self unreality.\nPoetry is a stolen word, and in using it one must remain conscious of\nits perverted sense in the service of realism, or one suddenly finds\noneself discussing not poetry but realism; and this is equally painful.\nBut if poetry is a stolen word, so is reality: reality is stolen from\nthe self, which is thus in its integrity forced to call itself unreal.\n\nPoetry may perhaps for the moment be saved for the poet and for the\nunreal self if the collective-real, the individual-real, philosophy,\ncriticism, are denominated \u2018literature.\u2019 Literature then clearly\nrepresents the symbolical, the rational, the romantic, the classical,\nthe collective, the individualistic reality of man. Further, if we\nmake it clear to ourselves that all literature is poetic, then we are\nseparating poetry from literature and drawing a sharp line between what\nis poetic and what is poetry. Further still, we are discovering that\nliterature is everything but the unreal self, it is the society of\nreality; it is History, it is Nature, it is Philosophy, it is Reason,\nit is Criticism, it is Art. Most of all perhaps literature is Art, the\nseizure and confirmation of reality by the senses, the literalizing of\nthe world of reality. The more \u2018abstract\u2019 Art is (the less symbolical)\nthe more real it is. Poetry is thus seen to be neither literature nor\nArt. Literature is the ladder of reality: the historian yields to the\nscientist, the scientist to the philosopher, the philosopher to the\ncritic, the high-priest of Reason, of which \u2018great works of art\u2019 are\nthe visible signs: for Reason is Reality.[9]\n\n\n\u00a74\n\nThis has been, so far, the elaboration of a point of view. From here\non will be found various applications of this point of view. Generally\nin expositive writing there is no distinction made between what is\norganically elaborative and what is incidentally applicative: all is\nelaborative and therefore over-elaborative. The argument continues to\nelaborate itself even though it has come to an end; it incorporates\nthe application of the point of view in the development of the point\nof view; it does not distinguish between argument and comment. I\nwish to distinguish carefully here between argument and comment. A\ncertain very small amount of illustration and instancing is necessary\nto focus an argument properly: the smaller the better, since most\nspecific reference and substantiation is a concession to the audience,\nwhich generally cannot think purely, that is, without the machinery\nof learning. Once the argument is focused, it should not develop\nfurther. It should repeat itself, like an acid test, in each fresh\napplication. All philosophical or critical systems are the absorption\nof an original point of view by the facts to which it applies itself:\nthe force of the point of view is lost, it becomes a convenience by\nwhich facts organize themselves and eventually dominate the point of\nview. All philosophical or critical systems are no more than learning,\na synthesis of instances, and therefore develop generalizations that\nmean nothing without instances. I have no philosophical or critical\nsystem to advance; I am interested in generalizations that mean\nsomething without instances, that are unreal, since they mean something\nby themselves. Generalizations of this sort, when applied to instances,\nshould not be absorbed by them. The argument should dismiss instances\nwith comment on instances, remain meaning in itself. If it does this\nthen it is capable of maintaining an opposition between right and\nwrong. If it does not, it only becomes a better wrong than the wrong it\nattacks. It becomes real.\n\nBy this I do not mean that I am a subjective critic. A subjective\ncritic is one who converts his point of view into a system, makes\nit real: his point of view must be continually fed by works of art,\notherwise it ceases. I propose here a point of view that is completely\nunto itself, that is unreal, that is independent of instances. When\nit meets instances it comments on them by repeating itself. Nor is it\nsubjective, since subjectivity implies an objective world of experience\nfrom which it must perpetually derive itself. I speak of a point of\nview which is self and only self, of an unreality which is every\none\u2019s to the extent to which he is able to extricate himself from\nquantitative reality and be, instead of a purse-proud something, a\nproud and purseless nothing. What is this I am describing?--the poetic\n(a stolen word) self.\n\n\n1\n\nMr. Herbert Read (_Reason and Romanticism_).\n\n\u2018That the critical spirit, expressed in reason, will ever evolve a\nsynthesis capable of fulfilling the functions of religion is evidently\nimpossible. Reason and emotion only unite in very rare and special\nperceptions; such perceptions are not capable of generalization....\nEmotions are too diffuse, too widely distributed, ever to be unified\nin reason, which is an evolved possession, never perfect at all,\nand only approaching perfection in the rarest individuals.\u2019 The\nimpossible, Mr. Read admits, is attainable in the rare \u2018universal\nmind.\u2019 Universal in the strict critical sense proves itself to mean\n\u2018broad\u2019 in the eighteenth-century sense--aristocratic. So Goethe\n(both for Herr Spengler and Mr. Read) is the ideal universal type; so\nis Leibnitz, so is Diderot. Mr. Read confirms my description of the\nphilosophico-critical system in his definition of universality as \u2018a\ncapacity _to receive_ all knowledge and events with equanimity and\nunprejudiced percipience; and to build up a positive attitude on this\nclear and perceptual basis.\u2019[10] From here we are gently conducted\nto the proposition that \u2018poetry is, in short, delectation.\u2019 Poetry\nis, in short, a game-like, sporting, snobbish exercise of reason, the\nmost ambitious display of knowledge possible: \u2018and the greater our\nknowledge, the more surcharged it is with the perception of values, the\ndeeper will be the delight aroused in us.\u2019 What is reason? Reason is\nsocialized reality, \u2018the sum total of awareness, ordained and ordered\nto some specific end or object of attention.\u2019\n\nMr. Read on metaphysical poetry: metaphysical poetry is \u2018emotional\napprehension of thought.\u2019 This means, we discover, individual mind\nsystematically apprehending reality: \u2018... we find in Donne a mind\npoised at the exact turn of the course of philosophy drawing his\ninspiration right back from scholastic sources, and yet at the same\ntime eagerly surveying the new future promised by the science of\nCopernicus and Galileo. Chapman, on the other hand, is in a remarkable\ndegree the forerunner of humanist philosophy--of Hume and Spinoza in\nparticular. He is aware, above all things, of \u201cthe constant and sacred\nharmony of life.\u201d\u2019 In this way criticism classifies poetry according\nto the poet\u2019s intelligence of reality--that is, according to his\nconventionality, his politeness; whereas that Donne wrote poetry at all\nwas because he was able to separate himself rudely from the reality of\nwhich he was in a class sense a privileged agent.[11]\n\nOn Dante and Guido Cavalcanti: \u2018Or, more exactly, all experience,\nwhether intellectual or sensual or instinctive, was regarded as equally\nand contemporaneously the subject-matter of their poetry. The result\nwas a desirable continuity or coherence; imagination, contemplation,\nand sensibility becoming fused within the perfect limits of a human\nmind.\u2019 Mr. Read then quotes from William Walrond Jackson, D.D.,\n\u2018Introduction\u2019 to his translation of the _Convivio_ (Oxford, 1909),\np. 18: \u2018The poet was inspired by an overmastering desire to link the\npresent with the past and with the future, to blend all knowledge\ninto one coherent system, and to bring the experiences of life into\none harmonious whole....\u2019 Plainly, this donnish, publicly fostered\nservice of the poet to reason would be absorbed, if he were a poet at\nall, in his essential, enduring unreality by the time his work reached\nthe criticism of four hundred years later. Instead criticism keeps\nartificially alive the derived reality of the work, submerging in it\nwhat intrinsic unreality it may have had. \u2018The true metaphysical poet\nis conscious of no such dualism: his thought is in its very process\npoetical.\u2019 Poetry is reason. \u2018Leibnitz has defined an intelligent\nauthor as one who includes the most of reality in the least possible\ncompass.\u2019 And further ... \u2018the poet is in a very real sense the\nproduct of his age--witness especially Dante\u2019 (\u2018age\u2019 meaning \u2018the\nmost of reality in the least possible compass\u2019). These two statements\ncomment sufficiently on themselves. What recommendation has Mr. Read\nfor the modern poet? He looks \u2018to the modern physicists, whose work\nwould seem to provide a whole system of thought and imagery ready for\nfertilization in the mind of the poet.\u2019 This again, is its own best\ncomment on itself.\n\n\n2\n\nMr. Lewis is merely a pamphleteer of anarchism, T. S. Eliot is a\nserious moralist, bent on professing rather than on attacking. We\ntherefore look to Mr. Lewis for explanatory rhetoric and to Mr. Eliot\nfor explanatory ritual: in many respects his modest behaviour is more\nilluminating than all Mr. Lewis\u2019s language. After years of hard and\nbrilliant service as a poetical yogi Mr. Eliot suddenly discovered\nthat he had all the time been acting on behalf of the universe of\nman, of human nature, instead of in behalf of the universe of reason,\nof natural nature. So he replaced religiousness by priggishness; he\nwent from a popular, mystical cult to an exclusive Thomist club; from\nlarge, symbolical (ironic) outer circle abstractions to small specific\n(concrete) inner circle abstractions.\n\nInstead of attacking the time-mob, like Mr. Lewis, he withdrew\nhimself from it and left it to carry on the orthodox, unanimous\nflux so obnoxious to Mr. Lewis, yet so necessary to both Mr. Lewis\u2019\nand Mr. Eliot\u2019s anarchism: the basis of anarchistic individuality\nis not authentically individualistic, but snobbish. Mr. Lewis\u2019s\nincentives to anarchism are political--\u2018for the sake of the ride\u2019;\nMr. Eliot\u2019s are moral, that is, self-protective--the ride was for the\nsake of running away. He ran away from the collective-real to the\nindividual-real (the _Criterion_ furnishes us with a progressive record\nof Mr. Eliot\u2019s movements). Like Mr. Lewis he opposed aristocratic\northodoxy (anarchism) to democratic orthodoxy (co-operation); he\ndeserted the collective dogma of periods for the collective dogma\nof individuals. \u2018For those of us who are higher than the mob, and\nlower than the man of inspiration, there is always _doubt_; and in\ndoubt we are living parasitically (which is better than not living\nat all) on the minds of the men of genius of the past who have\nbelieved something\u2019 (from the _Enemy_, January, 1927). Mr. Lewis\nadvocates grandiloquently but vaguely aristocratic orthodoxy in\ngeneral; Mr. Eliot is dryly and specifically in pursuit of _the_ or\nat least _an_ aristocratic orthodoxy. The difference is that between\nirritated rightness and alarmed priggishness. Mr. Lewis is merely led\nastray by his extravagant though praiseworthy fury with democratic\northodoxy; his worshipful enthusiasm for the classical man of quiet\nis not dogma but pique against the modern romantic man of action\n(time-flux, space-motion). Mr. Eliot upholds the man of quiet from\ndogma. He is a minority-representative, as the man of the time-flux is\na majority-representative. Mr. Eliot\u2019s position demonstrates clearly\nthe relation of the individual-real to the collective-real: it is a\npriggish, self-protective minority-attitude to the same material which\nis the substance of the dogma of the collective-real. But he objects\nto \u2018mentalism\u2019 not only, I should say, because it generally means\nmob-mentalism, but equally because it may mean unreal, unorthodox\nindividuality; his anarchism is timidity fallen between two stools.\nMr. Lewis, however, objects to mentalism, I feel, chiefly because it\ngenerally means demogogic mob-mentalism. \u2018By this proposed transfer\nfrom the beautiful _objective, material_, world of common sense, over\nto the \u201corganic\u201d world of chronological mentalism, you lose not\nonly the clearness of outline, the static beauty, of the things you\ncommonly apprehend; you lose also the clearness of outline of your own\nindividuality which apprehends them.\u2019 I do not think Mr. Eliot would\nhave been capable of saying \u2018your own individuality\u2019; I do not indeed\nbelieve that Mr. Lewis is naturally an individual-realist, but that he\nhas been unfortunately stung into a pose.[12]\n\nAristocratic (as opposed to democratic) orthodoxy is not, as I have\nalready indicated, a pose with Mr. Eliot. I said he had _an_ orthodoxy.\nIt would be helpful to an understanding of the problem to discover what\nthe nature of an aristocratic orthodoxy may be. In Mr. Eliot\u2019s case,\nthis is all too obviously: a humble, up-to-date respect for the best,\ninternationally sifted great names. A practical-minded Toryism, which\nsays, in gently criticizing Mr. Anthony M. Ludovici\u2019s more journalistic\nToryism (The _Monthly Criterion_, July, 1927): \u2018Mr. Ludovici is engaged\nin forming what might be called a myth or idea for the Tory Party. Such\na myth or idea has much to commend it; and I sympathize with so many\nof his views that I may declare at once what seems to me the great\nweakness of his construction: he isolates politics from economics, and\nhe isolates it from religion.\u2019 What Mr. Eliot\u2019s attitude to economics\nis it is difficult to determine; I should say from various evidences\nthat economics to him did not mean a human problem but an academic\ntradition worthy of study. Mr. Eliot has, from time to time, spoken\nmore specifically on religion. In the review from which I have just\nquoted, Mr. Eliot further says: \u2018Toryism is essentially Anglican;\nRoman Catholicism, which in our time draws its greatest support\nfrom America, is more in harmony with Republicanism. The problem of\nToryism should be rather to make the Church of Laud survive in an age\nof universal suffrage....\u2019 Further, he ardently seconds Mr. Ludovici\nin his recommendation that the Conservative Party should encourage\n_thought_, \u2018the activity of men of thought who are not and who do\nnot desire to be parliamentarians.\u2019 In such quiet language does Mr.\nEliot phrase his gospel of timid, aristocratic mentalism--a kind of\npolitico-literary extract of Anglo-Catholicism, if we may judge by\nsigns. His demands are familiar to every properly brought-up British\nschoolboy: that the Church must have more power, that the Kingship must\nbe strengthened, and that Aristotle must be studied, supplemented by\nan Anglican reading of St. Thomas if the lad is to enter literature.\nYes, literature. I had nearly forgotten that Mr. Eliot began his\nProgress as a Poet. But Mr. Eliot, finding himself higher than the mob\nand lower than the man of inspiration, is modest; he does not ask to\nbe considered, or consider himself, as a poet. Unless we are deceived\nby his modesty, he would be content to be Bishop or to be Professor\nSaintsbury.\n\n\n3\n\nMr. Roger Fry in _Transformations_ concerns himself with the\ndistinction between pure and impure art--\u2018a distinction which Mr.\nRichards has the good fortune to be able to ignore.\u2019 Mr. Richards,\nwe learn from his _Principles of Literary Criticism_ (published in\n1925, the first text-book of psychologico-literary criticism) is\ninterested in value rather than in purity. Criticism is to him a minute\nand comprehensive gradation of what T. E. Hulme called the world of\nreligious and ethical values; purity, a social rather than \u00e6sthetic\nattribute; a moral term, by which a work is described as a public act\nof its author. To Mr. Fry a work is not conduct, it is a thing; its\npurity as a thing depends on its dissociation from authorship. It is\nimpossible not to prefer Mr. Fry\u2019s criterion to Mr. Richards\u2019; the\nformer is plainly trying to discover the laws of goodness in works, the\nlatter, the laws of goodness in humanity. The works we have with us;\nhumanity, the idea of species, must be philosophically evoked.\n\nBut what is the nature of the work as thing? According to Mr. Fry its\nnature would seem to be reality. It is created by a sharp separation\nof the author\u2019s personality from the material with which he works, so\nthat his work, when complete, is to be classified with nature, the\nworld of mathematical reality, rather than with man, to whom reality\nis a sentimental objectification of his subjectivity. I should say\nthat Mr. Fry\u2019s criticism made possible a clearer sense of a work\u2019s\n_self_ than Mr. Richards\u2019, but that it created a misunderstanding of\nthe nature of this self by identifying purity with reality. In Mr.\nFry\u2019s criticism the homologue of a work would be a thing. But what is\na thing and how is it pure? Pure means being whole, single in element,\nnothing but self, thoroughly new and fresh. Impure means being more\nand less than whole, complex in element, not possessing thoroughly new\nand fresh selfhood. The \u2018things\u2019 of what is called reality are mere\ninterpretative morsels, tainted with pedigree. To me the thingishness\nin a work depends on no real homologue; the work is a thing of its own\nkind, without homologue. The material with which an author works is\nnot reality but what he is able to disentangle from reality: in other\nwords I think the identity is rather of purity and unreality. An author\nmust first of all have a sure apprehension of what is self in him, what\nis new, fresh, not history, synthesis, reality. In every person there\nis the possibility of a small, pure, new, unreal portion which is,\nwithout reference to personality in the popular, social sense, self. I\nuse \u2018self\u2019 in no romantic connotation, but only because it is the most\nvivid word I can find for this particular purefaction. When this self\nhas been _isolated_ from all that is impression and impurity of contact\nin an individual, then a \u2018thing,\u2019 a work, occurs, it is discharged from\nthe individual, it is self; not _his_ self, but self. If it is not\ndischarged, it is immediately reabsorbed in that composite accident of\nreality by which he is known to others as a person. Thus many people\nwithout creative ability--the ability to discharge self--must feel for\none passing moment that isolated purity in themselves which might,\nif they were able to sustain it a little longer, turn into \u2018things.\u2019\nIn those who can from time to time discharge self, the power is not\nconstant: if it were, \u2018creation\u2019 would cease--creation is intermittent\nrecurrence and repossession of this power--and there would be death,\nbright death.\n\nThe power, then, is not synthetic, is not to compose things, but to\nisolate them; it is an analytic power. Mr. Fry describes the reaction\nto works of art as a reaction to a relation. This could only refer to\nworks which were compositions, attempts to create, by a synthetic,\nmaterial (non-personal) action of the senses, real things; for relation\ncan only result from synthesis. A work-thing of this kind is a pattern\nof reality, an arrangement of elements; and pattern is accident. The\nauthor of a synthetic work can choose the elements of which it is to\nbe composed, but they work themselves out: the so-called necessity\nof reality is really _accident_. The reaction therefore to the kind\nof work Mr. Fry speaks of, a \u2018real\u2019 work, is a reaction to accident:\nthe critic, himself presumably a pattern of reality, experiences a\nshock from meeting another pattern which is commandingly different\nand hypnotizes him into a rearrangement of the elements of which he\nis composed--\u2018the esthetic emotion\u2019 is here a sensual recombination\nof personality. For this reason I consider such esthetic emotion\nfalse and escapist. The experience, on the other hand, of a critic\nconfronted with an \u2018unreal\u2019 work, would, I believe, be this: if it\nwere a thing of pure, isolated self, he could not perceive it except\nwith what was pure, isolated self in him. He would be forced for the\nmoment to discard what was real in him; he might, by means of the\nthing, succeed in discharging self: the operation of the thing on him\nwould have an analytic effect separating in him the pure from the\nimpure, protecting him for the moment from the \u2018esthetic emotion\u2019 with\nwhich in fact he generally reacts to everything. When Mr. Fry says\n\u2018In literature there is no immediate sensual pleasure,\u2019 he is really\ncommenting on the analytic, unreal quality of the word as opposed to\nthe synthetic (sense-combining), real quality of the instrumentalities\nof the material arts. Word-works in which there is an immediate sensual\npleasure are ones which have been artified, realized. Words in their\npure use, which I assume to be their poetic use, are denials rather\nthan affirmations of reality. The word _hat_, say, does not create a\nreal hat: it isolates some element in the real hat which is not hat,\nwhich is unreal, the hat\u2019s self.\n\nBut my description of this unreality would at first seem to correspond\nwith the unreal world of poetry described by A. C. Bradley. Mr. Fry\nquotes Dr. Bradley: \u2018For its (poetry\u2019s) nature is not to be a part, nor\nyet a copy, of the real world (as we commonly understand that phrase),\nbut to be a world by itself, independent, complete, autonomous.\u2019 The\nkey-word in this definition is _world_: Dr. Bradley is not writing\nabout unreal self but about romantic humanity. Poetry represents to him\nthe world of fancy; and by fancy he means ethical, realistic fancy--the\nreal world of man as opposed to the real world of mathematical nature.\nNor is this a true opposition: it is impossible to overlook the\nsignificance of the term _world_--we have here all over again the\nambitious, analogical Soul-World of Herr Spengler.\n\nMr. Fry is at pains to point out the alien, psychological, literary\nelement in various plastic works, in determining what is \u2018pure\u2019 art.\nThe very term \u2018art\u2019 forces him to confine his definition to the purely\nreal. So that he can do no more than make a sharp distinction between\nthe art of the real world and the art of the unreal (psychological,\nliterary) world. We are to conclude that in its way the art of the\nunreal world (literature) is pure: what is impure is a mixing of these\ntwo worlds. Mr. Fry is only annoyed by literary art, not by artistic\nliterature.\n\nBut the unreal, literary, psychologically organized self-world is the\ncollective-real: its existence depends on a belief in reality, though\nin reality as a myth. Nor is the self of Mr. Fry\u2019s real world any\nless \u2018psychological\u2019: but merely a more anarchistic, individualistic\nassociate of reality, reality hence as reason rather than myth, or,\nas Mr. Lewis might put it, as God Himself rather than religion. And\nso the issue between realism and idealism is no more than a quarrel\nover methods of affirming reality: rationalistic instinct as against\nemotionalistic intellect, short-way-round as against long-way-round,\nanarchistic as against communistic psychology. Realism is the method\nof artistic art, idealism, of literary art. Art is the use of self to\nmake syntheses--things _like_ \u2018real\u2019 things: all controversy about\nart-methods narrows itself down to a disagreement over what real things\nare _like_.[13]\n\nThe controversy, that is, is not over principles but over style; and\nstyle is, ultimately, not so much the manner of a work as the manner\nin which it is talked about. The end of most criticism is not to\ndetermine what a work must be but to fix the language of criticism; and\nit follows that most works are therefore without the quality of self:\nthey are made merely to fit the language of criticism popular at the\ntime or that happens to have made an impression on the author.\n\nCriticism has to do with what is already done, with what has already\nhappened: it is a cataloguing of reality, and reality is the past. A\nwork that invites criticism is an exercise in history, whether its\nauthor has the man-history point of view or the nature-history point\nof view; it is the creation of old stuff. Most works are old stuff,\ndiffering only in style; in how they innovate old stuff; in their\ncritical language: they agree in principle, that only old stuff is\npossible--reality, synthesis, pattern, recombination.\n\nMr. Read blames Mr. George Moore for using the word \u2018objective\u2019\nto describe what he means by \u2018pure poetry\u2019--\u2018objective,\u2019 Mr. Read\ncomplains, is a psychological term. It is not one of the what Mr. Read\ncalls \u2018universal terms.\u2019 A universal term should convey \u2018an inner\nconviction of necessity.\u2019 What Mr. Read is really complaining of is\nthe unsystematic use of a psychological term. Criticism should use the\nsame language about art as it does about reality; it should unite\nphilosophy and art in Reason. Reason is personal, direct, conscious\ntraffic in reality. It is enlightened magic (\u2018an inner conviction\nof necessity\u2019). Primitive man, being more instinctively aware of\nreality, did not need to have his magic (his art) enlightened. The\nprimitive artist was a seer, the civilized artist is a visionary: to\nMr. Read reason is the ability to have correct visions of reality.\nIt is interesting to find that Mr. Lewis uses the same language of\ncriticism. The artist is to him a wide-awake dreamer; \u2018Don Quixote, or\nthe Widow Wadman, is as _real_, to put it no higher than that, as most\npeople ostensibly alive and walking the earth to-day\u2019; \u2018For me art is\nthe civilized _substitute_ for magic.\u2019 To both Mr. Read and Mr. Lewis\npurity means that magical intelligence, that inspired (rather than\nprimitive, stupid \u2018objective\u2019) literalness which may be philosophically\ndefined as the individual-real. Both, moreover, object to art that is\nmagical in the primitive sense as to an anachronism; it is fabricated\nsensationism, it is the collective-real, it is ideological rather\nthan natural symbolism.[14] They are interested in getting man into\nproper focus in reality, and in his usefulness as an instrument of\nmeasurement: they are interested, that is, in psychology, in the\nlanguage of criticism, the mathematics of synthesis.\n\nMr. Richards, too, is primarily interested in the language of\ncriticism. He condemns Beauty-and-Truth terminology--the criticism\nthat treats civilized art as unintelligent magic, in fact. He not only\nrecognizes Reason as man\u2019s participation in the patterns of reality;\nhe insists on Reason as social duty; criticism is to him morality. The\nmathematics of synthesis by which reality may be accurately apprehended\nare to be developed by turning the human world into a world of values:\nmaking conduct (communication, relation) achieve significant pattern.\nConduct is then the training of the community as a whole in traffic in\nreality, with the artist as band-master--\u2018the arts are the supreme form\nof communicative activity.\u2019 Value (the graded necessity of reality) is\nto be discovered by a \u2018systematization of impulses.\u2019 We have here that\nintelligent, superior, adult instinct which Mr. Lewis believes should\nsupply the civilized substitute for magic--the instinct equally of the\ncollective-real, with only a difference of degree in sophistication,\nmanners. Instinct in the collective-real is always either unconsciously\nor consciously flamboyant, grossly poetic; in the individual-real\nalways consciously reserved, meticulously poetic (art, Mr. Richards\nsays, deals with \u2018minute particulars\u2019). But it is always the same\ninstinct, the nostalgic desire to reconstitute an illusory whole that\nhas no integrity but the integrity of accident.\n\nRespect for this accidental quality of reality (necessity) may be\nexpressed either by the enthusiasm of what Mr. Lewis calls the\nRevolutionary Simpleton, who is always religiously anticipating\naccident, or by what I should like to call Mr. Richards\u2019 Moral\nSimpleton, who observes a reverent plasticity in the development\n(accidental rearrangement) of custom. And I should like to add Mr.\nLewis\u2019s own hero, the Individualistic Simpleton, who is to be forced\n\u2018to remain absolutely alone for several hours every day.\u2019 Why? To\nbecome unreal? No, to become more real, to be made into \u2018much better\npeople.\u2019 But if they were much better people already (if a kind of\ncriticism of reality prevailed which satisfied Mr. Lewis), then Mr.\nLewis, however free he might permit himself to be, would certainly not\nworry them with individualism.[15] He wants them free now only as a\nprotest, an act of spiteful superiority against the collective-real.\nThe individual-real is not concerned with self but with exposing the\nstupidity, the hypocrisy of the fanatic mob. Instead of freeing the\nself to self, it frees it to Reason, to prove merely that intelligent\ncivilized individuals can be in closer touch with reality than a\nstupid civilized mob: that they can know more, conform more perfectly\nto customs of more perfect taste, control what is unreal self in\nthem more systematically, respond more respectfully, regularly\n(classical-poetically) to the stimuli of accidental reality. That they\ncan behave, that is, by finding a civilized substitute for magic, like\na perfect primitive mob of philosophy-fed art students.\n\n\n4\n\nMr. Richards quotes Dr. Bradley\u2019s definition of poetry as an\nillustration of the sort of criticism to which he is opposed. In\nprinciple, however, I do not think they are opposed. Dr. Bradley\u2019s\n\u2018world by itself\u2019 is fundamentally allied with Mr. Richards\u2019 world of\nvalues: the difference is that Dr. Bradley\u2019s world--not \u2018a copy of the\nreal world,\u2019 not bound up with human affairs--gets its revelations\nof reality through the imagination, that is, dreaming, while Mr.\nRichards\u2019 world gets its revelations of reality through waking. Both\nworlds are trying to prove how real they are, the one lying down, the\nother standing up. They are the same world in different attitudes,\nthe \u00e6sthetic attitude and the moral attitude. The protagonist of the\nfirst says, \u2018I cannot do two things at once--apprehend reality and\nmake money or eat my supper at the same time, I must set aside a part\nof the day sacred to reality, in which I do nothing else, sleep over\nit, as it were.\u2019 The protagonist of the second says: \u2018Pshaw, affected\nsensitiveness. I can sharpen knives, shave, cook, travel, marry, go\nto church and apprehend reality at the same time: in fact, whatever I\ndo is all the better done for this, and I apprehend reality all the\nbetter for what I do.\u2019 Whether a person apprehends reality from the\nmoral or from the \u00e6sthetic point of view is all a matter of energy:\nwhat seems easy to one person may seem difficult to another, and\n_vice versa_. Thus, to Mr. Richards, the moral theory of art \u2018has the\nmost great minds behind it,\u2019 \u2018the most prominent of these great minds\nbeing Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Dante, Spenser, Milton, the Eighteenth\nCentury, Coleridge, Shelley, Matthew Arnold and Pater.\u2019 Which leads us\nto believe that as a \u2018moral\u2019 critic Mr. Richards is something of an\n\u00e6sthetician.\n\n\n5\n\nModern criticism has supplemented itself with psychology, or rather\nwith its literary version, psycho-analysis. If criticism is primarily\ninterested in the language in which reality is discussed, then\nit must have a partner to deal with the rough physical side of\nreality--a field worker in reality. Criticism confines itself to taste;\npsycho-analysis to substantiating taste with practical data.\n\n\u2018We are our bodies,\u2019 Mr. Richards says: that is, we should try to be\nour bodies, to exist psycho-analytically, to provide criticism with\ndata. The view that we are our bodies, Mr. Richards says, should\nnot be described as Materialism--\u2018it might equally well be called\n_Idealism_.\u2019 All criticism, he means to say, is an appreciation of\nreality; criticisms differ in method, never in principle. With the\nhelp of psycho-analysis we pay reality the compliment of saying \u2018we\nare our bodies\u2019; and reality, with the help of criticism, returns the\ncompliment, permitting us to say \u2018our bodies are us.\u2019\n\nAs bodies we are acted upon by reality; this is the psycho-analytic\nhalf of the trick. The action of reality on us produces effects which\nreveal the nature of this reality which acts on us; a description of\nthis nature is the critical half of the trick. It is not suggested\nthat as bodies we may act on reality, for this would reveal the fact\nthat bodies were not like reality a solid lump, but separate and\nindependently acting; it would indicate a break-up of reality, open up\nthe problem of the unreal, and O! What a mess we should be in then. Let\nus have order while we can.\n\n\u2018To know anything,\u2019 Mr. Richards says, \u2018is to be influenced by it.\u2019\nThis makes things still more simple and comfortable: we do not have to\nworry about anything which is not _here_, which does not affect us,\nwhich is not reality. We are what we know, and what we know is also\nwhat we know. The echo of matter in mind proves that there is matter,\nand also that mind is matter. The mind need have no fear of becoming\nlost in itself so long as it continues to know, to be affected. It\nneed not be afraid to produce art so long as art remains a knowing\nof reality; knowing of reality is reality: as echo of sound is also\nsound. Mr. Read quotes sympathetically Professor Sonnenschein\u2019s\nlearned expression of this echo-theory as applied to poetry: \u2018Rhythm\nis that property of a sequence of events in time which produces on\nthe mind of the observer the impression of proportion between the\nduration of several events or groups of events of which the sequence\nis composed.\u2019 \u2018A good artist,\u2019 Mr. Read says, \u2018is firstly a good\ncritic.\u2019 He predisposes his mind materially to apprehend reality, to\nreceive echoes: \u2018The work of art emerges within a radiation of critical\nperceptions.\u2019\n\nIf every one began systematically treating himself as mind, we should\nall quickly become separate individuals and know ourselves, and the\nsymbols we used would not be echoes of reality but themselves, and\nthen indeed we should be in deep water. To prevent this possibility\npsycho-analysis is called on to supplement \u2018the narrowness of\ncriticism\u2019 (Mr. Read\u2019s phrase). Criticism is presumably narrow because\nit deals with forms, while psycho-analysis can roll up its sleeves,\npoke around in the stuff from which the symbol is derived, and \u2018help\nus test its social validity\u2019 (Mr. Read)--\u2018social\u2019 meaning pro-matter,\nanti-mind: mind can only be pro-matter when it is collective mind.\n\nPsycho-analysis divides people into two types--introverted and\nextraverted. Introversion represents error in man, a straying away from\nreality into self, a going of the mind into mind. Both psycho-analysis\nand criticism agree that this process cannot, or rather _should not_\nproduce art. Both processes, _or their possibility_, exist in each\nindividual (psycho-analysis is forced to admit that introversion always\nexists; extraversion exists if the individual is \u2018successful\u2019). They\nmay, it is held, be combined in _phantasy_, and phantasy produces\n\u2018living reality,\u2019 art. But what is this phantasy but the whole\nintroversive world of man behaving extraversively--the collective-real?\nUnless it is introversion actually transformed in the individual into\nextraversion, individual mind into matter of \u2018more than individual\nuse\u2019 (as Mr. Read defines creative phantasies)--the individual real?\nThe opposition between collective-real and individual-real disappears\nin the general agreement between all parties that, by no matter what\nmethod, introversion must be extraverted. Likewise the opposition\nbetween romanticism and classicism: romanticism is acceptable if it has\nan extraverted, classical touch; classicism is not necessarily damaged\nby an introverted, romantic touch, so long as it does not lose complete\nhold of extraversion.\n\nExtraversion, it is clear, is intelligent body-being. What\nintroversion is it seems difficult to say, since it is always defined\nby defamatory comparison with extraversion. \u2018Jung,\u2019 Mr. Read says,\n\u2018further differentiates _active_ and _passive_ phantasy--the latter\na morbid state which we do not need to stop to consider here.\u2019\nComplete introversion is presumably not intelligent mind-being, but\na pathological condition. Individual mind-being is not intelligent,\npathological, because it does not make for unanimity. And both\npsycho-analysis and criticism want some unanimous, collective mind in\ncontemporary man like the collective mind in primitive man, with the\ndistinction--made in consideration of the grown-up, individualized\ncharacter of modern man--that this must be an intelligent collective\nmind, inspired with Reason, a refined version of brutish objectivity.\n\u2018We need some unanimity,\u2019 Mr. Read says, \u2018to focus the vague desires\nthat exist in the collective mind.\u2019\n\nBut what is the collective mind? A herd of deer clinging together\nmay be said to have unanimity, but it can scarcely be said to have\na mind: it has unanimity because to the extent to which it clings\ntogether it _is_ brutish, natural reality. And the same is true of\nprimitive man up to the point where individual works of art occur;\nat this point the hold on reality has been lost, unanimity can only\nbe maintained by force, and by the force of a few masterful but\npathological, introversive, mind-being individuals. Collective mind is\na contradiction in terms: what is meant is intelligent (self-enslaving)\ncollective matter.\n\nAnd here psycho-analysis is more consistent than criticism because\nit is frankly interested in extraversion rather than in extraversive\nworks: it would not seriously worry psycho-analysis if works and their\nauthors were discontinued: it would still have Case B, in which Mr. X\nand Miss Y.... Criticism, on the other hand, cannot get along without\nfamous works by famous authors, which are, moreover, a continual\nsource of discord since they are all introversive in origin and cannot\nbe allowed to take their place in literature until they have been\nrigorously extraversified.\n\n\n6\n\nPsychoanalytic criticism makes the emotion with which a work is\nexperienced merely a more complicated, appreciative kind of sensation.\nIn sensation the cause of sensation, a real object (experience),\nattacks the individual; he is helpless _not_ to respond, he can only\nclassify his response according to whether he does or does not enjoy\nit. Every sensory experience is a destruction of his originality. The\nwork of art presented to him on this response-basis is a deliberately\naggressive real object intended to usurp his originality in a more\nconstructive way than ordinary sensation. Even the freedom of\nclassifying sensation according to its enjoyableness is denied him: a\nforced classification is contained in the object-work, representing\nnot a principle of personal preference, but of social preference,\nexpressing the criticism, or Reason, of the time. The ordinary object\nhas generally only an immediate, disorganized sensory effect; the\nobject-work reaches back into the whole past of the individual,\nre-adapting it to itself by means of memory. All image-making involved\nin so-called appreciative, reactive experience is a perversion of\noriginality, of the independent power of acting upon initiative, to\nthe derived power of acting upon incentive: the critical bias, first\ninterpreting works as object-works, then inspiring works to be\nobject-works means \u2018imitation\u2019.\n\nSo little does pure, original action seem possible or desirable that\nwe have no word for an impulse contrary in its nature to the nature of\nreaction, for dissociative rather than associative conduct--disaction.\nTo the psycho-analyst all activity is interpretable only as reaction\nto sensation; to the professional critic (Mr. Richards, for example)\nall critical conduct is imaginary re-activity: we have the individual\u2019s\noriginality not momentarily eclipsed, but actually engaged in\ndestroying itself, enriching sensation with the complicated depth of\npersonality.\n\nArt so conceived thus becomes a skilful thwarting of originality.\nThe immediate shock to the consciousness which a work brings, which\nmight be expected to encourage an independence in the consciousness,\na dissociation from reality (influences) and a development of its\ndifferences from reality, is utilized to possess the consciousness for\nreality, to force it to organize itself according to its resemblances\n(responses) to the particular object-work by which it is attacked.\nArt is an exaggeration of the hostile operation of reality on the\nindividual consciousness, an exaggeration proportioned to overcome\nthe originality which offers a casual, disorganized resistance to\nordinary objects. Between object and object there is a complete\nhypnotic interaction by which reality is maintained and which exists\nonly partially between man and object because man is possessed of\noriginality. The object-work is therefore an object especially designed\nto correct this originality in man by ensnaring him in a more than\nordinarily intense field of hypnotic action.\n\nA poem, then, in the critical scheme, is only a work in the sense that\nit achieves a value equal to an exceptionally \u2018good\u2019 experience; it is\nan especially high-class object, one that makes use of all man\u2019s powers\nfor reconstructing reality: a model object, as the poet is supposed to\nbe a model man. But man\u2019s powers for reconstructing reality are really\na misuse of his powers for constructing himself out of the wreckage\nwhich is reality. The only true entity possible to man is an analytic\nentity: the synthetic entities of art are all parodies of self. An\noriginal poem is only seemingly synthetic; the words of which it is\nmade are both the instrument of the analysis and the substance of the\npure self of the poem which emerges from the analysis. Every poem of\nthis kind is an instance of fulfilled originality, a model, to the\nreader, of constructive dissociation: an incentive not to response\nbut to initiative. Poetry is properly an art of individualization as\nopposed to the other arts, which are arts of communication. To compare\na poem with a picture or with a piece of music or sculpture, is to\ntreat analytic entities and synthetic entities as if they were objects\nof similar reality. Synthetic entities are imitative, communicative,\nprovocative of association: their keynote is organized social sanity.\nAnalytic entities are original, dissociative, and provocative of\ndissociation: their keynote is organized personal insanity. This\nis why, in hurried scientific fear, the shamen of psycho-analysis\nand criticism explain as pure introversion only obviously morbid\nconditions, making out art to be, wherever possible, redeemed\nintroversion. If criticism of this sort persists there is no doubt that\nart will in time produce only synthetic entities: that is, poetry will\ndisappear. Indeed it may be the prevalence of such criticism that is\nresponsible for the present situation of poetry; why, in Mr. Read\u2019s\nwords, there is \u2018no adequate literary equivalent in England for the\nimpressive organization and intellectual content of the modern movement\nin painting.\u2019 For poems as synthetic entities must obviously always run\na very poor second to pictures.\n\n\n7\n\nAs to the problem of rhythm and the point of view I have been applying.\nRhythm in the decorative poetic sense in which it is generally used\nis, I believe, a strictly prose property. Prose is an inclusive medium,\nits merit depends on its fullness. The more rich in illustration,\ndetail, rhythmic intricacies it is, the better prose it is, the more\neffective as an instrument of synthesis. It is poetry, on the other\nhand, which is properly harsh, bare, matter-of-fact. Punctuation, the\nnotation of rhythm, is essentially a prose development, a means of\nmanaging the intricate language-flow. Prose is the social, civilized\ninstrument of communication. The restraints put on it are like the\ncomplicated conventions that govern an apparently free-and-easy but\nactually rigidly prescribed drawing-room atmosphere.\n\nThe purpose of poetry is to destroy all that prose formally represents.\nIt is an exclusive medium, and its merit depends on the economy with\nwhich it can remove the social rhythmic clutter of communicative\nlanguage. The savage _tom-tom_ is poetry of a brutally specialized\nkind used to eliminate everything in the listeners but the purpose\nwith which it has been argumentatively overloaded. Non-purposive\npoetry has all the eliminating force of the _tom-tom_ without the\ngrotesque effects of special pleading. A suppression of all associative\nobligations that might hinder analysis takes place in the poet: by\nthis narrowness he is free as by the synthetic broadness of prose\nthe prose-writer is bound. And it is this narrowness that is the only\nrhythm proper to poetry. Metre is an attempt to soften the economy\nand narrowness requisite in poetry; and it is likely to cause, and in\nthe main has caused, only a more fancy, mannered prose than prose; to\nmisrepresent the nature of restraint and limitation in poetry. The end\nof poetry is to leave everything as pure and bare as possible after\nits operation. It is therefore important that its tools of destruction\nshould be as frugal, economical as possible. When the destruction\nor analysis is accomplished they shall have to account for their\nnecessity; they are the survivors, the result as well as the means of\nthe elimination. They are the pure residue, and the meaning if there\nis any; and they vary in each poem only according to the amount of\ndestruction they have done and the clutter with which they began. The\ngreater the clutter attacked and the smaller, the purer, the residue to\nwhich it is reduced (the more destructive the tools), the better the\npoem.\n\nRhythm in poetry is therefore a deadly hammer, hammer away in\nwhich each word demonstrates its necessity and in which each word\nis accented. In prose there is accenting, then a long period of\nrelaxation, the harshness of the important words is absorbed in the\nunimportant words: it is rhythmic. Prose is skilful manipulation\nof the whole standing vocabulary, and a great deal of poetry merely\ncompetes with prose in vocabularistic manipulation. Poetry is a\nselection of a few words from this inert mass, which justify, quicken\nthemselves, in its destruction. The abruptness of poetry, commonly\nsoftened into prosaic musicalness, is due to the implied omission at\nevery point of rhythmic prose language. Poetry is narrow (like the poem\non the page), broken, quick; prose is broad, rhythmic, slow. Poetry is\npersonal, prosaic. Prose is social, dressed out in verbal amenities,\npoetic.\n\n\n8\n\nAs to the application of the kind of point of view that I have outlined\nto an individual\u2019s relations with his fellows and, beyond that, to\nthe relations of a poem with reality. As to fellows: the unsocial,\nascetic concentration of self on self, the analytic intensification\nof personality to a state of unreality, makes personality a pure,\nnot diffuse, a restrained and completely private activity. Where\npersonality was of this nature, all synthetic, public, real life\nwould be impersonal and formal--it would have manners for the sake of\ncommunicative ease, not for the sake of concealing or discovering,\nor suppressing or standardizing personality. Real life, I mean, as\nan abstract, general life would be happier so than as a concrete\nsynthesis of personalities. It would not be a source of physical\nnourishment for personality. The unreal person would not feed on or be\nabsorbed in the pattern; he would sharpen and try his asceticism in\nit. A view of this kind, making society an artificial pattern based\non accident instead of a \u2018real\u2019 pattern based on necessity, is the\nonly possible clue to the reconciliation of freedom and formality.\nTo attempt to discover and form personality in the social pattern\nis to make social life dull, vulgar and aggressive, and life with\nself, dull, morbid and trivial. To treat social life as an impersonal\npattern is to give it the theatrical vitality of humour and to make\nlife with self strong and serious. The social problem is for each\nindividual how to reach the proper degree of humorous formality in\nhis communicative language, his clothes, his home; not how to acquire\na vicarious personal life which has no content but a gross synthetic\npersonality-desire. Social life (life with others) as opposed to\npersonal life (life with self) should be as dancing opposed to\nwalking--formal meaningless gesture as opposed to eccentric significant\ncharacter. Certain strictly social arts such as music would become\nimmediately tolerable and desirable if treated as arts of gesture\nrather than of character.\n\nNow as to poems and reality. A poem is an advanced degree of self, as\nreality is an advanced degree of social life. The poem dances the\ndance of reality, but with such perfect artificiality that the dance,\nfrom very perfection, cancels itself and leaves, as far as reality is\nconcerned, Nothing. But as far as the poem is concerned, Nothing is\na dancer walking the ruins; character, by the ascetic nature of its\nenergy, surviving gesture. This asceticism is the creative formality of\nthe poem. Its critical formality is its original deadly participation\nin the dance. Where we find no critical formality the poem represents\ndiffusion of self in the literary, synthetic self of reality;\nwantonness of gesture; sentimental corruption of character; tedious\nextension of reality beyond decent limits of sociality; instead of the\ndance, an orgy of improprieties. Where we find only critical formality,\nthere is the same moral laxity, but concealed under a squeamish\ndisciplinary veneer; the difference between \u2018romantic\u2019 and \u2018classical,\u2019\nmerely.\n\n\n9\n\nMr. Lewis\u2019s ambitious offensive against wrongness makes a nice point\nof conclusion, as it made a nice starting-point, for this exercise.\nMost of Mr. Lewis\u2019s confusions are due to his attempt to correlate his\npolitical system with his taste. His political system is consistent\nwith itself; we agree with it unreservedly or we agree with it not at\nall. His taste is inconsistent with itself wherever it has been made\nto conform with his political system: it becomes a nagging, expedient\nright, lacking the proper indifference of taste and the proper\nconsistency of a political attitude. It is therefore obviously futile\nto treat with Mr. Lewis on matters of taste; while, on the other hand,\nit may be helpful to consider certain clear features of his political\nsystem.\n\n(_a_) To the popularist progress is socially continuous; culture\nis the large-scale, accumulative participation of everyman in\nprogress; conduct is behaviourism, perfect social automatism.\nTo the individualist progress is political rather than\nsocial--aristocratically hereditary through that bluest blood, Reason;\nculture is eclectic, conduct is anarchistic, the perfection of the\nindividualism of the few who are in this system responsible for the\nsocial conformity of the rest. They differ in their opinion of the size\nof a potent political group: the former believes that the entire social\ngroup may form the political group, the latter that the political group\nis an independent minority representative of the social group. But both\nsupport the idea of a progressive tradition; to the one it is mystical\nand collective, to the other rationally and personally maintained.\nAnd to both the idea of a non-social self outside the tradition and\nwithout reference to a cultural line of succession (a self, rather,\n\u2018beginning again and again and again\u2019) would be equally foreign and\nrepulsive. Mr. Lewis\u2019s concrete, \u2018stable\u2019 person is only an upper-class\nversion of the hysterical, hypnotic, mass social self--more realistic,\nsteady, decorous, common-sensible. The suppression of individual will\nby mass-will of which Mr. Lewis complains refers only to checks on\npolitical opportunism: what he is really interested in is power not\nindividuality. He appreciates the fact that sociality means loss of\npersonal consciousness. His solution is that the few strong individuals\nwho object to loss of consciousness should benefit by an anarchistic\ndispensation that leaves them their consciousness intact in order that\nthey may politically administer sociality to the unconscious.\n\n(_b_) Mr. Lewis\u2019s individualistic compromises come from his\nunwillingness to face the dualistic character of the individual--his\nreal, social effect, his unreal, more-than-anarchistic self-subtraction\nfrom the social group for purposes of identity. For various reasons\nMr. Lewis has not been able to shake himself free of the academic,\nphilosophical force of the language that he uses; the problem is in\nany case too fine for his rough argumentative methods. He would have\nfirst to overcome his prejudice against dualistic concepts arising\nfrom their shady association with romantic ventures in philosophy, a\ntask of patience not in harmony with his temperament. In any case,\nhis political sense is too strong, too orthodox, to permit of his\nadmitting that the identity of the individual may be established\noutside the social group. We may find the clue to his dogmatism in this\nrespect in the accent of philosophical awe with which he pronounces\n\u2018reality.\u2019 Reality\u2019s the thing; the individual is only (in a few\nindividuals specializing in individualism) an honourable second. Even\nunreality may not be a thing by itself: it is (and this seems to be\nMr. Lewis\u2019s general conclusion) the queer slant at which reality is\nseen. To say that reality is unreal, from Mr. Lewis\u2019s viewpoint, is\nlike saying that sugar is sweet: the queer slant is in reality, not in\nthe individual, as the sweetness is in the sugar, not in the tongue.\n\u2018Unreal\u2019 is in this usage merely a more philosophic-sounding word\nthan \u2018pretty,\u2019 \u2018spiritual,\u2019 \u2018mysterious\u2019 or \u2018queer.\u2019 \u2018The reality,\u2019\nMr. Lewis complains, \u2018has definitely installed itself inside the\ncontemporary mind\u2019--it has become what I have called the fairy-tale\nof the collective-real. Mr. Lewis, that is, is more interested in the\nprestige of reality than in the general integrity of the individual\nmind. His implication being that if the contemporary mind had\ndefinitely installed itself in \u2018the reality\u2019 all would be well. We\nshould have a social group psycho-physically imbedded in reality, the\nindividual consciousness being in this case the fairy-tale--with a\nfew independent individual consciousnesses wagging themselves wisely\nand anarchistically in political appreciation of the situation.\nFarther than this Mr. Lewis is unable to go. He contents himself\nwith establishing the concreteness, the social security of the\nwiseacres. His brand of individualism depends on the social setting for\nauthentication; he does not dare to separate the fact of individuality\nfrom the fact of sociality and reveal how they maintain themselves\nin one person through a contradiction, not through \u2018reason.\u2019 The\ncontradiction is difficult to grasp, as is the dualism from which it\nproceeds, and difficult to persevere in clearly and equitably once it\nis grasped; demanding infinite precision and much active distress and\nconferring few brilliant occasions on those who do grasp it. And Mr.\nLewis\u2019s brand of individualism is more immediately ambitious, more\nimpatient, more realistic. He does not trust himself to wait upon\nsuccesses or brilliant occasions. He skilfully glozes over the fine\ndistinctions, makes politic compromises with the reality sufficient\nto assure the more astute members of the social group of a few ready\nindividualistic privileges, and sneers down with aristocratic scorn the\npolitical idealism of the mob. He is willing to go all the way back to\nwipe out the effects of historical romancing; he is unwilling to come\nall the way forward again and risk doing the job thoroughly (the job,\nthat is, of thinking through to the fine distinctions), as it might be\nnow done. And so he remains, for all his intellectual swagger, a mere\nreactionary and anarchist. Another hero who, having fought just hard\nenough to permit him to celebrate a triumph, but not hard enough to\nforce a conclusive battle, has claimed his laurels in Rome and retired\nto live upon them; the fine distinctions still untaken. \u2018For the former\ngenerals, as soon as they believed their exploits had entitled them\nto the honour of triumphal distinctions, always abandoned the enemy.\nInsomuch that there were already in Rome three statues adorned with\nlaurel; but still Tacfarinas was ravaging Africa....\u2019\n\n(_c_) Mr. Lewis\u2019s world of reality is what we see plus what we know:\nwhat we know is the queer slant in what we see, not the queer slant\nin us. Our knowledge is the poetic touch in reality. The world of\nreality for the collective-real is what we see, alone; the fact\nitself of reality is poetic. But the differences are fundamentally\nslight. Knowing is the individualistic comprehension of seeing;\nconscious, literal perception versus crude, mystical mass-sensation;\nprivate ownership of reality versus the vulgar, public, figurative\nparticipation in reality of the impoverished working-class mob--that\nis, anarchistic, personal seizure of reality made possible by the\nphilosophical vagueness of the mob. (For example, Mr. Lewis could\nnot argue his position either with success or impunity in Russia.) I\nrepeat, then, that the differences between the collective-real and the\nindividual-real are fundamentally slight. Both defer to the snobbism\nof reality: it is reality and not the individual that matters. And\nboth are poetic, a sentimental fusion of two contradictory categories,\na wilful blurring by the intelligence of the dualism upon which it is\nbased. Both, for example, have difficulty in defining \u2018the object,\u2019 due\nto their unwillingness to admit this duality; so that the same fusion\nand blurring that takes place in the individual takes place in the\nobject as well. The romantic inwardness of the one inflates its faults\nand delusions to a degree of obviousness that invites and facilitates\nattack. The common-sense outwardness of the other is more aggressive,\nbut more discreet, hiding under its well-bred anarchism and upper-class\nself-deprecation an enormous greed of possession. The one is childishly\ncontent with a fairy-tale of possession; the other insists haughtily\nupon a true story. But for both the problem, whether as seeing or\nseeing and knowing, is essentially the same: to have or not to have. As\nfor being, it is not a proper poetic, not a proper philosophical and\ntherefore not a proper political question, and therefore out of order.\n\n(_d_) The evasion of both of these two systems of the dualism that\nI have attempted to suggest without romantic prejudice is reflected\nin their respective treatment of time and space. Recognizing the\nantinomy of time and space, they dismiss the possibility of enforcing\nit practically as too frightening: if what is is made to be what is,\nthen we have nothing but what is; we cannot fool ourselves; therefore\nevasion and philosophy. The antinomian pie is cut. Mr. Lewis\u2019s side\ntakes space; the other side takes time; and both sides now devote their\nenergies to proving that each has the better piece. And certainly\nboth have very good pieces. In space occurs a disintegration that\nmay prove space, through its particulars; in time, an assemblage of\nparticulars that need not however develop particularity, but merely\nprove time, through the standardizing of its particulars. Good pieces.\nBut only pieces. Space suffering from excessive definiteness; time\nfrom excessive indefiniteness. Each trying to pretend it is the whole\npie, but each remaining just a self-infatuated piece. Space-synthesis,\ntime-synthesis--philosophical impostures with different political\nmethods, one conservative, old-fashioned, the other revolutionary,\nmodernist. Time a sort of negative space, space a sort of positive\ntime. Space-ist philosophy belied by its individualism, time-ist\nphilosophy by its generalism. To the time-men the wholeness, the\nreality, is administered by a democratic Self; a Self not sufficiently\nself-ish, nothing-ish, unreal, small, instantly conceived, to be\nreal in a time-scheme; therefore mystical, poetic. To the space-men,\nthe wholeness, the reality, is administrated by an anarchistic,\naristocratic God; a God too personal, too concretely particular, too\nspecially knowable, too real, in fact, to be real in a space-scheme;\ntherefore rationalistic, poetic. The time-men re-inforce the democratic\nSelf with Everybody. The space-men re-inforce God with Art, which is\na few superior minds capable of animating the material world \u2018with\nsome degree of mental existence.\u2019 For by itself--and this is Mr.\nLewis\u2019s astounding conclusion--the material world is unreal. And we,\ntoo, are unreal--we should regard ourselves, he thinks, as surface\ncreatures. But his conclusion is less astounding if we understand it\nas the debater\u2019s final shock that clinches the argument: the material\nworld is unreal and we too are unreal _if_ we do not believe in\nreality. If we believe in reality \u2018God becomes the supreme symbol of\nour separation and of our limited transcendence.\u2019 God is the queer\nslant which through faith (the proper geometric point of view) may be\nconceived as ultimately (that is, in the absolute sense) straight. And\nfaith is reason. In the time-scheme the democratic Self is the queer\nslant; it is a sceptical, an ultimate queer slant. And scepticism\nis romanticism: vague, insincere, sweeping transcendence of the\nmaterial world. Mr. Lewis, then, is not, as it at first seemed, against\ntranscendence, but only against temporal transcendence. He does not\nobject to evasion and philosophy, but rather wishes them to be more\nzealous, individualistic, spatial; more evasive and philosophical; to\nbe Art. The temporal what-may-be comes too carelessly close to the\nwhat-is. Art, backed up by God, begs the question more efficiently;\nanarchistic but timid instead of socialistic but bold. It now only\nremains to be decided whether Mr. Lewis\u2019s stand-by is Art or God; and\nsince God was a late-comer in his scheme we can decide in favour of\nArt--and Mr. Lewis.\n\n(_e_) But Art. Art is artists. And what is artists? Artists is a few\nsuperior minds. Artist is short for artists. Mr. Lewis is not short\nfor artists but long for himself. As between artists and himself, Mr.\nLewis decides in favour of himself; it is therefore still easier for\nus to decide in favour of Mr. Lewis. Against artists. What is artists?\nFor example, Mr. E. M. Forster is artists, as is to be seen in his book\n_Aspects of the Novel_. The novel is a \u2018spongy tract.\u2019 It is \u2018bounded\nby two chains of mountains ... Poetry and History....\u2019 The novel tells\na story. The characters are either flat or round. The \u2018element of\nsurprise\u2019 ... is of great importance in a plot. Then Fantasy. (Here\ncompare Mr. Lewis\u2019s treatment of _Ulysses_ with Mr. Forster\u2019s and you\nwill understand perhaps why Mr. Lewis is not artists.) Then prophecy:\n\u2018In Dostoevsky the characters and situations always stand for more\nthan themselves; infinity attends them; though they remain individuals\nthey expand to embrace it and summon it to embrace them; one can apply\nto them the saying of St. Catherine of Sienna, that God is in the\nsoul and the soul is in God as the sea is in the fish and the fish is\nin the sea.\u2019 D. H. Lawrence is \u2018the only prophetic novelist writing\nto-day ... the only living novelist in whom the song predominates,\nwho has the rapt bardic quality, and whom it is idle to criticize.\u2019\n(Compare Mr. Lewis\u2019s criticism of Lawrence with Mr. Forster\u2019s, and you\nwill understand further why Mr. Lewis is not artists.) Then Pattern\nand Rhythm. _Thais_ is the shape of an hour-glass. _Roman Pictures_,\nby Percy Lubbock, is shaped like a grand chain. Also Henry James. But\na pattern must not be too rigid. If it is, \u2018beauty has arrived, but\nin too tyrannous a guise.\u2019 For \u2018the novel is not capable of as much\nartistic development as the drama: its humanity or the grossness of\nits material hinder it.... Still, this is not the end of our quest.\nWe will not give up the hope of beauty yet. Cannot it be introduced\ninto fiction by some other method than pattern? Let us edge rather\nnervously towards the idea of \u201crhythm.\u201d\u2019 We then learn that \u2018rhythm\nis sometimes quite easy.\u2019 And so to bed and pleasant dreams about the\ndevelopment of the novel mixed up with the development of humanity\n(\u2018the interminable tape-worm,\u2019 as Mr. Forster had called it earlier\nin the day when it was \u2018wriggling on the forceps\u2019). No, Mr. Lewis is\nnot artists. He is not an aristocrat, but a distracted and disaffected\nrough-neck. He has no more real connection with aspects of the novel\nthan Nietzsche with any of the numerous \u2018\u00e6sthetic revivals\u2019 of his\ntime. Like Nietzsche his politics and philosophy are \u00e6sthetic only in\nthe sense that they are personal. His few \u2018superior minds\u2019 are himself.\nIf he had made this clear in the very beginning he would have saved\nhimself and those who have been good enough to follow him a great deal\nof unnecessary distraction. Politeness, God, reality--these are all\nMr. Lewis in kid gloves embracing himself. His rightness consists in\nhis embracing himself, his wrongness in his wearing kid gloves. For\nanarchism is not enough. It is obviously not enough for Mr. Lewis.\nThe kid gloves which enabled him to rush into society confused the\ndualism on which selfhood certainly depends. When he takes them off\n(as it is probable he will in time, for he does not seem happy in\nthem) and shakes himself by the bare hand, his enthusiasm over his\nown unreal individuality will have a bare-handed social concomitant\nmore like Bolshevism than anarchism. Or rather, Mr. Lewis will find\nthat not even Bolshevism is enough. What is enough? Nothing is enough.\nAnd until Mr. Lewis finds this out he will go on celebrating more and\nmore ferociously his ferocious pangs of hunger, seconded by dozens of\nfamished \u00e6sthetic revivalists.\n\n\n\n\nHOW CAME IT ABOUT?\n\n\nHow came it about that Mrs. Paradise the dressmaker is here to dress\nme, and Mr. Babcock the bootmaker to boot me and a whole science of\nservice to serve me, and that I am precisely here to be served? Do not\nspeak to me of economics: that is merely a question of how we arrange\nmatters between us. And do not speak to me of genesis: I am discussing\nthe question of Mrs. Paradise and Mr. Babcock and myself and the others\nas immediate causes of one another, I am not discussing creation.\nPersonally, I do not believe in creation. Creation is stealing one\nthing to turn it into another. What I _am_ discussing is existence,\nuncorrupted by art--how came it about, and so forth. Do not speak to me\nof love: Mrs. Paradise and Mr. Babcock and myself and all the others\ndo not like each other, in fact, we dislike each other because each of\nus is most certainly the cause of the other. I am the reason for Mrs.\nParadise\u2019s making frocks and Mrs. Paradise is the reason for my wearing\nfrocks. If it were not for each other we should be occupied only with\nourselves; we should not exist. How then came we to exist? I ask\nthis question. Mrs. Paradise asks this question. I am Mrs. Paradise\u2019s\nanswer. Mrs. Paradise is my answer. As for Mr. Babcock, he has hair on\nhis nose and I never look at him. As for all the others, I must put up\na notice asking them to ring the bell gently.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere is a woman in this city who loathes me. There are people\neverywhere who loathe me. I could name them; if they were in a book I\ncould turn to the exact page. People who loathe me do so for one of\ntwo reasons: because I have frightened them because I have loathed\nthem (that is, made my death-face at them, which I shall not describe\nas it might in this way lose some of its virtue) or because they are\ninterested in me and there seems no practical way of (or excuse for)\nsatisfying their interest. As to love, that is another matter--it has\nnothing to do with either interest or fear. Love is simply a matter of\nhistory, beginning like cancer from small incidents. There is nothing\nfurther to be said about it.\n\nBut as to loathing: I feel an intense intimacy with those who have this\nloathing interest in me. Further than this, I know what they mean, I\nsympathize with them, I understand them. There should be a name (as\npoetic as love) for this relationship between loather and loathed; it\nis of the closest and more full of passion than incest.\n\nTo continue about this woman. What is to her irritation is to me\nmyself. She has therefore a very direct sense of me, as I have a very\ndirect sense of her, from being a kind of focus of her nervous system.\nThere is no sentiment, no irony between us, nothing but feeling: it is\nan utterly serious relationship.\n\n  For if one eat my meat, though it be known\n  The meat was mine, the excrement is his own.\n\nI forget in what context these words were used by Donne--but they\nexpress very accurately how organic I feel this relationship to be. The\ntie between us is as positive as the tie between twins is negative.\nI think of her often. She is a painter--not a very good painter. I\nunderstand this too: it is difficult to explain, but quite clear to\nmyself that one of the reasons I am attached to her is that she is\nnot a good painter. Also her clothes, which do not fit her well: this\nagain makes me even more attached to her. If she knew this she would be\nexasperated against me all the more, and I should like it; not because\nI want to annoy her but because this would make our relationship still\nmore intense. It would be terrible to me if we ever became friends;\nlike a divorce.\n\n\n\n\nHUNGRY TO HEAR\n\n\nHungry to hear (like Jew-faces, kind but anticipating pain) they sit,\ntheir ears raw. The conversation remains genteel, of motor cars: her\nbrother bought a car, he was having a six months\u2019 vacation from an\nIndian post, he should have known better than to buy an American car,\nthe value depreciates so, and _she_ (his sister) should not have lent\nit to _her_ (her friend) even though it wasn\u2019t her fault that the car\nonly did fifteen miles to the gallon after she returned it. A clear\nsituation like this, in which life is easy to understand, is cruel\nto them. It leaves no scratches in the mind around which opinions,\nsympathies, silly repetitions can fester and breed dreams and other\nremote infections--too remote always to give serious pain. They long\nto be fumbled, to have confusion and uncertainty make a confused and\nuncertain end of them. There they sit, having pins-and-needles of\nobscurity which they mistake for sensation. They open their newspapers:\n\u2018I suppose it is foolish to spend all this time reading newspapers?\nThey are lying and dishonest and devoted to keeping a certain portion\nof the population in ignorance and intellectual slavery? Or is it\nfoolish to take it so seriously? I shall go on reading them out of\nsophistication?...\u2019 Oh, go to hell.\n\n\n\n\nIN A CAF\u00c9\n\n\nThis is the second time I have seen that girl here. What makes me\nsuspicious is that her manner has not changed. From her ears I should\nsay she is Polish. If this is so, is it not dangerous to drink coffee\nhere? Does anyone else think of this, I wonder? Yet why should I be\nsuspicious? And why should her manner not remain unchanged? She has\nprobably been cold, unhappy, unsuccessful or simply not alive ever\nsince I saw her last. Quite honestly I wish her success. The man who is\nmaking sketches from pictures in the Art Magazine may find her little\nPolish ears not repulsive. For good luck I turn away and do not look\nat her again. I, who am neither sluttish nor genteel, like this place\nbecause it has brown curtains of a shade I do not like. Everything,\neven my position, which is not against the wall, is unsatisfactory and\npleasing: the men coming too hurriedly, the women too comfortably from\nthe lavatories, which are in an unnecessarily prominent position--all\nthis is disgusting; it puts me in a sordid good-humour. This attitude\nI find to be the only way in which I can defy my own intelligence.\nOtherwise I should become barbaric and be a modern artist and\nintelligently mind everything, or I should become civilized and be a\nChristian Scientist and intelligently mind nothing. Plainly the only\nproblem is to avoid that love of lost identity which drives so many\nclever people to hold difficult points of view--by _difficult_ I mean\nbig, hungry, religious points of view which absorb their personality.\nI for one am resolved to mind or not mind only to the degree where my\npoint of view is no larger than myself. I can thus have a great number\nof points of view, like fingers, and which I can treat as I treat the\nfingers of my hand, to hold my cup, to tap the table for me and fold\nthemselves away when I do not wish to think. If I fold them away now,\nthen I am sitting here all this time (without ordering a second cup)\nbecause other people go on sitting here, not because I am thinking.\nIt is all indeed, I admit, rather horrible. But if I remain a person\ninstead of becoming a point of view, I have no contact with horror. If\nI become a point of view, I become a force and am brought into direct\ncontact with horror, another force. As well set one plague of cats\nloose upon another and expect peace of it. As a force I have power, as\na person virtue. All forces eventually commit suicide with their power,\nwhile virtue in a person merely gives him a small though constant pain\nfrom being continuously touched, looked at, mentally handled; a pain by\nwhich he learns to recognize himself. Poems, being more like persons,\nprobably only squirm every time they are read and wrap themselves round\nmore tightly. Pictures and pieces of music, being more like forces, are\nsoon worn out by the power that holds them together. To me pictures and\nmusic are always like stories told backwards: or like this I read in\nthe newspaper: \u2018Up to the last she retained all her faculties and was\nable to sign cheques.\u2019\n\nIt is surely time for me to go and yet I do not in the least feel like\ngoing. I have been through certain intimacies and small talk with\neverything here, when I go out I shall have to begin all over again in\nthe street, in addition to wondering how many people are being run over\nbehind me; when I get home I shall turn on the light and say to myself\nhow glad I am it is winter, with no moths to kill. And I shall look\nbehind the curtain where my clothes hang and think that I have done\nthis ever since the homicidal red-haired boy confided his fear to me\nand I was sorry for him and went to his room and did it for him. And my\nfirst look round will be a Wuthering-Heights look; after that I shall\nsettle down to work and forget about myself.\n\nI am well aware that we form, all together, one monster. But I refuse\nto giggle and I refuse to be frightened and I refuse to be fierce. Nor\nwill I feed or be fed on. I will simply think of other things. I will\ngo now. Let them stare. I am well though eccentrically dressed.\n\n\n\n\nFRAGMENT OF AN UNFINISHED NOVEL\n\n\nWhat could I do but treat my secret as if it did not exist, that is,\nas my mother did hers until she confided it to me? which was not\nconfiding, but a necessary explanation of the curious gift or curse\n(you will decide which for yourself before many pages) that I had\nfrom her (the flesh only knows how) when she put me into this world\nfifty-four years ago in a carved bed made of an old sea-chest that she\nhad of her father (together with many other things) who was a Dutch Jew\nof a family that had fled from Spain and made its fortune as merchants\nand traders and in African mines and which disinherited him when he ran\naway to sea from school and saw things in China which neither white man\nnor Jew might see without death, but which long afterwards recalled him\nwhen he was in America and too proud to accept the portion denied him\nin his youth, which my mother never forgave him but continually during\nher lifetime besought me to apply for in my own person, which was\npleasing and persuasive.\n\nMy mother, I say, broke her secret to no one, excepting me, and this\nwas not breaking it, since I had the same secret, and I broke my secret\nto no one, which was either wise or foolish (I can\u2019t say which) but not\nwicked, for had I wished it was a thing that could go against no one\nbut myself (as you shall see). How my mother had it, she did not know,\nalthough she was of the opinion that she caught it from a travelling\nbookseller who secretly sold romances to the pupils of the French\nconvent in New Orleans where her father kept her--over the garden\nwall. It could not be the books, she said, for they were as innocent\nas the Bible, with no more rapes and indeed fewer mysteries. The\ncontamination, if it was such, must have been from his eyes, if at all,\nwhich were long-lasting ones, she remembering them many days after each\nvisit and for a long time seeing through them, as it were. She knew\nnothing about him but that he was Mexican, of a poor breed but of such\ncharm (he dressed in the Mexican manner) that she would have run away\nwith him had not her strange possession come over her at about this\ntime and changed the whole course of her life.\n\n\u2018Perhaps,\u2019 I suggested, when she told me this, \u2018he used a charm against\nyou. It is known there are certain herbs to be found in Mexico which\nmay be used to cunning ends.\u2019\n\n\u2018That may indeed be so,\u2019 my mother said, \u2018for I remember he once gave\nme a fine gold chain to wear on which was suspended an image of a pale\nblue stone, and I could never make out what it represented, as it was\nall twisted and seemed a different thing each time I looked at it, now\nlike a snake, now like a clenched hand or like a troll\u2019s face.\u2019\n\n\u2018Surely,\u2019 I cried, \u2018it was this charm that brought the thing upon us.\u2019\nFor I thought, if it was a charm that brought this thing on my mother,\nit might be a charm that would take this thing from me; and for this\nreason I have ever been one easily affected by superstitions of all\nkinds and ready to put my faith in what is but circus farce to others,\na weakness that has been as great a source of misfortune to me as my\npossession.\n\n\u2018It might indeed have been so,\u2019 replied my mother, \u2018but I cannot be\nsure. At about the same time Sister Mathilde began praying for me, as\nif God had sent her against this journeyman for my sake. She prayed in\nmy room and soon she slept in my bed the better to protect me, and I\nbegan strongly to dislike it for she sweated powerfully and loved me\nmore tenderly than is good for girlish sleep. Wherever I was between\nthese two I shall never know. If one was of God and the other of the\nDevil, then there is a third power which exists to save the human soul\nfrom both, I hesitate to say with what intentions or effects. For as I\nwas one morning sitting on my pot and enjoying innocent conversation\nwith myself, suddenly I looked up, feeling myself not alone. Think\nhow my modesty fainted to behold the room full of people all looking\nintently (and kindly) at me. I covered my face with my hands. I dared\nnot rise.\n\n\u2018\u201cNever mind, child,\u201d said a shrill voice at my ear that sounded like\nan aunt\u2019s, \u201cit will soon be happily over.\u201d\n\n\u2018\u201cHappily over!\u201d I tried to shriek but could not, trying to rise and\nbutton myself.\n\n\u2018\u201cLeave your dress alone, chicken, you could not look better,\u201d said\nanother voice at my nose, a third cousin\u2019s by its sound. Nor could I\nhave--I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror just then, and I was a\nbride! This is how I found myself married to Mr. Pink, whose calling\nwas jobs for which no name could be found, and could ask no questions\nfor shame, since the last I knew of myself was on a chamber-pot, but\nonly pretend to be possessed, as seemed reasonable in the principal\nparty of the event, of full knowledge of what was going on about me.\u2019\n\nThis martyr\u2019s discretion in my mother has ever been a noble example to\nme in my own endurance of that cruel idiosyncrasy which she, to her\neverlasting grief, passed on to me. \u2018Never lose self-possession,\u2019 she\ncontinually besought me, \u2018or contradict circumstances, which cannot\nlie and which know you better than yourself.\u2019 Dearest Mother! Shall\nI blame her for that inheritance she gave me against her heart and\nwill and by which I had the blessing of her eternal (so long as she\nlived) solicitude? Not to mention (petty recompense and enjoyment) the\nliberty she gave me beyond all reasonable expectation I could have had\nof remorseful indulgence from her, which included the privacy of her\npapers which I could not read since she wrote always in bed and upon\nbrown paper, from sombreness of spirit, and the treasures her father\ngave her out of spite to her mother, for bearing him a black child by\nperfidy of blood or whoring, it exasperated him not to know which, and\nof which, though all were mine from childhood, I loved and attached\nto me but one shabby trifle, a totem six inches long that did me for\na doll while I remained a child and for a child when I became a woman\nand dared not breed, confide, form honourable attachments or soften my\nheart save to that which, being wooden, could not soften its heart to\nme.\n\nMy mother, as I said, having once grasped her unspeakable peril,\nresolved to protect herself with the means at hand, that is, to remain\nMrs. Pink, if she could, until she found herself something else. And\nto further her security in this she formed a second painful resolve,\nnever while she could help it to leave her bed, thinking that she might\nthus restrain her visitations or at least govern the place in which\nthey seized her. Alas! restrain them she could not, and alas! a bed (as\nshe learned too late) was more ungovernable than a chamber-pot, for in\nthis bed she got me, in a cruel lapse when Mr. Pink her husband was in\nthe Argentine collecting the names of common tropical plants for the\nSecretary of State known in private life as a gifted maker of South\nAmerican tales, and when she must undoubtedly have been visited by\nhundreds of Mr. Pink\u2019s friends and relatives, Mr. Pink, who understood\nmy mother\u2019s infirmity and never blamed it except as such, insisting\nthat it was his uncle the Chicago photographer who had nearly an\nartist\u2019s appreciation of the human form, of which my mother being half\nJew and perhaps a dash negro, was an exotic and irresistible example.\n\nThis unavoidable slip, of which I was a living and growing reminder,\nnever prejudiced Mr. Pink my mother\u2019s husband against me, but on the\ncontrary seemed to stimulate his curiosity in me. He was a thin man,\nbut I think of a passionate imagination, and I wanted nothing. Nor was\nhe quite certain that it was his uncle the Chicago photographer, but in\nthe wistful hope that it might have been Prince Moredje, the famous\nBalkan adventurer whom he used to decorate official banquets of which\nhe was responsible for the seating plan, he provided me with a riding\nmaster though we lived in an unimproved flat in the rear and bought me\nwhen I was quite young a green plumed hat from an auctioneer friend\nof his who specialized in theatrical costumes. Himself he dressed\nshabbily, as his profession required. I never knew him otherwise than\nin his black and white checked suit and red tie, and it was one of the\nsorrows of his life that he could not wear black, for he was a quiet\nman, since his greatest attraction to his clients was that he was not\ngenteel, by which he seemed more efficient, mysterious, quaint and\ncriminal. My mother required very little beyond bed shawls, of which\nshe kept two, one for company and one for private, the company one\nbeing pure white, that she might be thought of by visitors as a pale\nobject martyred to her bed and so not excite experiences; I have this\nvery shawl to thank for myself, which she was wearing when her sense\nwas suddenly transported in time and she found herself with me in her\nwomb and could make no denial or protest, and her white shawl on her\nshoulders though in private, that is, alone with her husband Mr. Pink\nwho had just let himself in at the door from the Argentine, whence he\nhad come in all haste to embrace her, having been made anxious by\ncertain reports which his friends and relatives maliciously wrote\nhim of my mother. Her private shawl, a red cashmere, she consoled\nherself in; she only wore it when she felt safe. In this shawl too\nshe consented to rise for her needs and melancholies. How often have\nI come upon her standing in her shirt at the window, only half of her\ndecently covered, the rest of her naked and unhappy--a pair of pretty\nbuttocks that she could scarcely trust as far as the door and ready\nto betray her at the least winking of her eye and plant her where she\nmust acknowledge her position by that she sat in it with them. It was\nto our further mortification that our sad affliction only came over\nmy mother and me when we were sitting, an attitude that by its ease\nsoothes suspicion, and that we have never come to ourselves except in\nthis attitude, which may try dignity painfully, as I have reason to\nknow. \u2018To find one\u2019s feet\u2019--how well, alas, do _I_ know the tragic\nsignificance of that phrase....\n\n\n\n\nWILLIAM AND DAISY: FRAGMENT OF A FINISHED NOVEL\n\n\nWilliam and Daisy lived in Cemetery Street. They had no connection\nwith each other except that they were not attracted by life or death;\nso they lived in Cemetery Street. William was pessimistic because he\ndisliked life a little more than death, Daisy was optimistic because\nshe disliked death a little more than life. William had two memories:\none, that he had been familiar with harlots; two, that he had been\nfamiliar with famous writers. These two memories mixed and he could\nmake nothing of them. Daisy had two memories: one, that she had once\nbeen a harlot; two, that she had in her time known several famous\nwriters. These two memories mixed and she could make nothing of them.\nThey could make nothing of their memories except that they both felt\ndignified and did not wish to end their days in a workhouse. So they\nlived in Cemetery Street.\n\nEvery night Daisy went for a walk down Cemetery Street and said \u2018What\na lovely night,\u2019 and passed William on her walk and said \u2018What a\ncoincidence\u2019; and every night William, too, said \u2018What a lovely night\u2019\nand \u2018What a coincidence.\u2019 They began to know each other\u2019s thoughts and\nwere more bored with each other than ever.\n\nThey had their shoes mended by the same shoemaker. Each knew the\nshoemaker had taken a girl to live with him behind the shop and then\nthrown her into the street when his wife had learned about it. Yet each\ncontinued to think him a nice man because they could not be bothered\nto think him a mean man. They became more and more absolute in their\nthoughts and habits until ...\n\nI do not know what happened to them, nor do they.\n\n\n\n\nAN ANONYMOUS BOOK\n\n\n\u00a71\n\nAn anonymous book for children only was published by an anonymous\npublisher and anonymously praised in an anonymous journal. Moreover,\nit imitated variously the style of each of the known writers of the\ntime, and this made the responsibility for its authorship all the\nmore impossible to place. For none of the known writers could in the\ncircumstances look guilty. But every one else did, so this made the\nresponsibility for its authorship all the more difficult to place.\nThe police had instructions to arrest all suspicious-looking persons.\nBut as every one except the known writers was under suspicion the\ndepartment of censorship gave orders that the known authors should be\nput in prison to separate them from the rest of the population and that\nevery one else should be regarded as legally committed to freedom. \u2018Did\nyou write it?\u2019 every one was questioned at every street corner. And as\nthe answer was always \u2018No\u2019, the questioned person was always remanded\nas a suspect.\n\nThe reasons why this book aroused the department of censorship were\nthese. One--it imitated (or seemed to imitate) the style of all\nthe known authors of the time and was therefore understood by the\nauthorities to be a political (or moral) satire. Two--it had no title\nand was therefore feared by the authorities to be dealing under the\ncover of obscurity with dangerous subjects. Three--its publisher could\nnot be traced and it was therefore believed by the authorities to have\nbeen printed uncommercially. Four--it had no author and was therefore\nsuspected by the authorities of having been written by a dangerous\nperson. Five (and last)--it advertised itself as a book for children,\nand was therefore concluded by the authorities to have been written\nwith the concealed design of corrupting adults. As the mystery grew,\nthe vigilance of the police grew, and the circulation of the book\ngrew: for the only way that its authorship could be discovered was by\nincreasing the number of people suspected, and this could only be done\nby increasing the number of readers. The authorities secretly hoped to\narrive at the author by separating those who had read the book from\nthose who had not read it, and singling out from among the latter him\nor her who pretended to know least about it.\n\nAll the stories in the book were about people who did not like the\nworld and who would have been glad to be somewhere else. Some were\nirreligious, some were ungrateful, some were scornful, some were openly\nrebellious, some were secretly rebellious, some were merely ironical,\nsome were merely bored. Many were too good, many were too bad. All were\ndisobedient, and all wanted to go away. Wanting to go away to somewhere\nelse did not mean wanting to go away to somewhere else with the rest\nof the entire population of the world. It meant in all the stories\nwanting to go away alone. All the stories in the book were about people\nwho wanted to go away to somewhere where they would be, no matter how\nmany other people they found there, the only one. All the people in the\nbook thought the world fit only for light, heat, moisture, electricity,\nplants, the lower animals, and perhaps for occasional parties,\nexcursions, commemoration days, Sunday afternoons, exhibitions,\nspectacles, concerts, sight-seeing and conversation. But none of them\nthought it fit for higher creatures to live in permanently, because all\nwho were in it, they said, were the only one, and were thus objects of\nhate, ridicule or mock-adoration for one another, being each by his\nmind freakish and uncommon but by his brain natural and common.\n\nSuch was the philosophical import of this book. But its philosophical\nimport was got only if the reader had a taste for, a passion for,\na suspicion of, an obsession with, or instructions to look for\nphilosophical imports. Or if he shrank from stories. What was plain and\ncomprehensible before all philosophical imports was just stories. The\nfour upon which most suspicion was fixed were _The Flying Attic_, _The\nMan Who Told Lies To His Mother_, _The Woman Who Loved an Engine_, and\n_The Woman Who Was Bewitched By a Parallel_.\n\nIt was impossible to say particularly which story was written in the\nstyle of which author. The effect of imitation that the book gave\nwas rather a mixed one; that is, it was generally and throughout a\nwitty, energetic, beautiful, simple, earnest, intricate, entertaining,\nironic, stern, fantastic, eloquent, modest, outspoken, matter-of-fact\nand so-forth book, so that generally speaking it could not be read\nbut as a conglomerate imitation of the noted literary manners of the\ntime, of the well-known author who wrote so wittily, of the well-known\nauthor who wrote so energetically, of the well-known author who wrote\nso beautifully, of the well-known author who wrote so simply, of the\nwell-known author who wrote so earnestly, of the well-known author\nwho wrote so intricately, of the well-known author who wrote so\nentertainingly, of the well-known author who wrote so ironically, of\nthe well-known author who wrote so sternly, of the well-known author\nwho wrote so fantastically, of the well-known author who wrote so\neloquently, of the well-known author who wrote so modestly, of the\nwell-known author who wrote so outspokenly, of the well-known author\nwho wrote so matter-of-factly, and of the well-known author who wrote\nand-so-forthly.\n\nIt is not the object of this account, whose purpose is chiefly\nhistorical, to transcribe in detail all or even many of the stories\nof which the book was composed, or to analyse, criticize, praise or\ncondemn the few that shall be reproduced (in whatever way seems most\neconomical) here. It is rather intended to give an honest, accurate,\nelementary notion of the book from which the reader may form a\nscholarly opinion of its character that shall be in restrained harmony\nwith his own. Several of the stories (those cited above, for example)\nwill be elaborately summarized, according to the degree of eccentricity\nthey possess in comparison with other stories which fall more naturally\ninto a group-significance or classification. Some will appear only in\na table of constructional correspondences; others as interesting or\ncorroborative or contradictory points of reference: still others as\nproblems of too fine difficulty for the moment, here put aside and\nmarked out for the future specialist.\n\n\n\u00a72\n\n_The Flying Attic_ is the first of the miscellaneously significant or\ndangerous stories. The central character is a cook who had never in\nher life been guest to anyone and who had never in her life ascended\nabove the kitchen floor of any house. No description of the character\u2019s\nappearance, age or parentage is given, so that the atmosphere of\nthe story, intentionally or unintentionally, is one of allegory, or\nmorality, or symbolism--as you like. This creature, the story tells\nus, conceived the fantastic ambition of living permanently in a guest\nattic, descending only at the new moon, and then to find herself each\ntime in a different house, each time guest to a different host or\nhostess.\n\nThe realization of this ambition is made technically possible by the\ndismissal of the cook for serving a custard made from a manufactured\npink powder, instead of from original ingredients. No complaint seems\nto have been made against the excellence of taste or quality of the\ncustard. Its very excellence in fact is what arouses suspicion. And so\nafter coffee the cook is dismissed. The family chats, finally goes to\nbed. Then the cook steals out of the kitchen and up to the attic, at\nthe moment unoccupied but in a state of preparation for a guest who\nis expected to arrive the following day. The cook draws the curtains,\nlights a candle, gets into bed. The beams are made of old ship\u2019s\ntimber; the sharp-ribbed roof suggests an inverted ship\u2019s bottom. The\ncandlelight, the drawn curtains, the architectural irregularities of\nthe attic, the distorted, ship-like sense of motion faintly conveyed\nby the crazy contour of the attic in candlelight to the mind of the\ncook now floating in the unreality of the fulfilment of an impossible\nambition--all these factors contribute to what must count--in the story\nat any rate--for a genuine disturbance of forces: the attic moves, the\ncook\u2019s mind swoons with pleasure, day and night the curtains remain\ndrawn (otherwise the problem of _locale_ would seriously interfere with\nthe narrative device), she passes her time in a passive delirium of\nsatisfaction, and at the morning of new moon punctually descends. The\nfirst and last descents will be given in detail, the intervening ones\nonly listed.\n\nFirst descent: as the breakfast bogy, in the costume of a German\npeasant--green jacket, flat, ribboned hat; into the house of a country\nlady, mother of three young children, recently widowed. Cook unlatches\nthe attic door and walks slowly downstairs--a heavy male step. Cultured\nand terrified children\u2019s voices are heard as the steps pass the night\nnursery: \u2018Oh mother, the breakfast bogy--we are afraid to get up.\u2019\n\u2018Nonsense, children,\u2019 the mother calls back, \u2018come down immediately.\u2019\nThe steps continue, Cook enters the dining-room, sits down at the table\nin the chief chair as master of the house. The mother enters from the\nkitchen with large porridge basin, sees Cook, screams. Children come\nrunning down. \u2018The breakfast bogy, the breakfast bogy!\u2019 they cry.\n\u2018We told you so, Mother.\u2019 Cook says: \u2018I am master here now. We will\nall have breakfast together and you will pay me every respect. After\nbreakfast I shall go away and not return till luncheon. The same for\ntea and dinner. You must guess what I like to eat and after each meal\nthank me for the food. And you must kiss me good night. That is all.\u2019\nIt is to be noted that whenever the central character of any of these\ntales gives an order, it is always obeyed without question, however\nwicked, unreasonable or fantastic it may be. Thus in _The Dishonest\nScales_ the grocer-woman not only cheats her customers in the weight of\nwhat they buy (though the scales whenever tested seem to record quite\nhonestly), but after taking their money she says firmly \u2018Now that is\nall,\u2019 and sends them away unprotesting without their purchases.\n\nAfter breakfast Cook retires to the attic and appears again at\nluncheon. All this happens in the most orderly manner imaginable.\nThe widow even smiles prettily to Cook after luncheon and \u2018hopes the\ngentleman finds all satisfactory.\u2019 Cook here nods stiffly. There is no\nclue given as to what either Cook or the family do during the intervals\nbetween meals. Only one rather shocking mischance occurs: the oldest\nof the children, a boy, spies upon the cook between tea and dinner and\nis snatched angrily into the attic. At dinner only two children appear,\nand Cook announces quietly: \u2018Your oldest child attempted to spy upon\nme, so I turned him into an eiderdown to keep me warm.\u2019 To which the\nwidow replies \u2018It serves him right,\u2019 and goes on eating. After dinner\nCook is kissed good night affectionately by the widow and her two\nremaining children, goes up to the attic, fastens the door, gets into\nbed and tucks herself round with her new eiderdown.\n\nSecond descent: Cook comes down into a prison tower as a captive queen,\nmurders her warder, takes upstairs with her her warder\u2019s poodle, the\npillow she stabbed him on, and his wife\u2019s lace cap, saying: \u2018All this\nwill contribute to the comfort of my old age.\u2019\n\nThird descent: Cook comes down into a full-rigged ship about to sink\nin a storm off the Gold Coast, rescues the captain, a villainous\nbut hearty old man, and carries him off to her attic with great\nsatisfaction.\n\nFourth descent: Cook comes down into a great kitchen as a cook and\ncarries the whole kitchen up with her in one armful.\n\nFifth descent: Cook comes down into a library as a respectable young\nworking man inquiring from the lady librarian for a book on how to mend\nleaking roofs. The lady librarian strongly resembling Cook in her\nyouth, the young working man is smitten with a great fancy for her,\nmarries her, takes her up to the attic, where she becomes cook to Cook.\n\nSixth descent: Cook opens her attic door to walk out as herself for\na breath of fresh air, steps upon nothing and begins to fall. While\nfalling she looks up, sees her attic far above her, flying off at great\nspeed toward the east, where it is growing dark. \u2018However will I get\nback to it?\u2019 she thinks mournfully to herself. At this point there\nis a long passage describing intimately all of her anxieties in her\nfall, such as what will happen to her poodle, who will smooth out her\neiderdown, what will her captain have for dinner all by himself, down\nto the last, which is, what shall she give them for a pudding to-night?\nShe decides, since it is so late already (it is now quite dark in the\neast and her attic has completely disappeared) to give them a custard\nmade from a manufactured pink powder, which will take only a moment\nto stir up and only fifteen minutes on the window-sill to cool. It\nwould be impossible without exact quotation from the original (which\nis outside the modest scope of the present volume) to reproduce the\ndelicate transition that takes place just here from one level of the\nepisode to the next (from the higher to the lower, or the fantastic\nto the factual, I might say). Suffice it for our purposes that there\noccurs at this point a shock, the contact on the one hand of Cook\u2019s\nfeet with the ground, on the other of Cook\u2019s right ear with church\nclock just striking seven. \u2018And there will be a guest to-night,\u2019 she\nexclaims to herself, tasting and stirring, chopping and sprinkling. At\nlast dinner is served, eaten, over. \u2018Dear kind Cook,\u2019 Mistress says\nto her before retiring, \u2018aren\u2019t you going upstairs to-night?\u2019 \u2018My\ngoodness, is it so late?\u2019 replies Cook. \u2018I was just cooling myself a\nbit\u2019--for Cook was standing on the kitchen doorstep gazing east. So she\ngoes upstairs to her attic and fastens the door behind her. Upon which\nunsatisfactory note this story concludes, leaving the reader uneasy and\nsomewhat cheated of that general resolution of himself in the story\nwhich it is his right to expect from every upright invention--an effect\nall the more disquieting in that it seemed everywhere in this work\narrived at rather by art than by accident or inferiority of execution.\n\n\n\u00a73\n\nIt would be well at this point to uncover a little of the philosophical\nskeleton of this book for the benefit of the reader likely to become\ntoo absorbed in the narrative surface, so to speak. It would also be\nwell to emphasize, on the other hand, the fact that the anonymous\nauthor was if anything over-precious in the technical brilliance of\nhis stories: he seemed to wish, by ringing from them a pure, glassy\nartificiality, that their perfection as stories should make them as\ntrivial and false-true as stories, so that they held the moral more\nobediently. There is therefore little or no hint of moral in any of\nthe stories, the sincerity of the narration in every particular being\nthe best guarantee (according to the principles of his writing) of the\npresence of the skeletal sense beneath it. We might, for the purpose\nof analysis, call this obsession with fictitious fact an obsession\nstatistical. And we might likewise call (for the same purpose) the\nstyle of the book the style of curiosity. The effect of this style on\nthe reader is indeed an effect of curiosity--curiosity in the general\nusage of the word. That is, it makes the reader first inquisitive of\nthe course and conclusion of the narrative, then suspicious of the\nphilosophical import of the narrative, and finally resolved to track\ndown angerly (as our Elizabethan might have said) the chief mystery\nof each narrative, namely the anonymity of the author: as indeed the\npolice of his time were angered into doing (without success). The style\nof curiosity, itself, however, was of a different order of curiosity\nfrom this. If you will look out this word in any full contemporary\ndictionary you will find that while the current meaning is this precise\n_effect_ of curiosity, the two first (and previous) meanings have a\nmore particular application:\n\n(1) Scientific attentiveness; technical nicety; moral exactness;\nreligious fastidiousness. Obsolete.\n\n(2) Honest or artistic workmanship; generous elaboration; charitable\ndetail. Obsolete or archaic.\n\nAnd such, in fact, was the style of curiosity: so that the effect of\ncuriosity on the reader had in it a touch of quaintness; which is\nthe reason why, in fact, the anonymous author seemed to his critics,\ncensors and readers to be imitating the style of all the well-known\nwriters of the time and yet to be clearly not among them.\n\nPerhaps I can best illustrate this obsession statistical and this\nstyle of curiosity (both in origination and effect) by a direct\ntranscription. It is to be found (by those fortunate enough to lay\nhands upon the book itself) in the story (untitled) about the man who\ncould not help stealing his friends\u2019 matches though his father was a\nprosperous match-manufacturer, though he had a generous allowance from\nhim and though he had no interest in the match business:\n\n  \u2018He paid his fare exactly, having the scale of fares off by\n  heart (more thoroughly than the conductor) and having always\n  in his pocket such a variety of small coins as should make it\n  unnecessary for him to be given change in his fares, purchases\n  and contributions to charity. He sat on top, on the left, in the\n  fourth row from the front, by the rail, a habit so strong and\n  methodical in him that he never thought (and was never obliged)\n  to sit elsewhere. He made a minute comment to himself upon the\n  flower stalls or stands along the route, concluding with the\n  generalization that the predominating colour among the flowers\n  sold by the lame or the ugly was mauve. He then went to sleep,\n  timing himself to awake a minute before the arrival of the bus at\n  the railway station. He rehearsed his itinerary, which was to miss\n  his train at the first change and so at the second change and so\n  to have to wait an hour there and two hours there and to examine\n  more particularly during this time the generalization regarding\n  lame or ugly flower-vendors. While asleep he followed his usual\n  practice of descending from the state of personality to the state\n  of thingality, and in this dreamy condition of passive matter he\n  enjoyed the same security that an apple has up to the moment of\n  its fall. And so upon waking he fell from the top of the bus--as\n  if blown down by a strong wind--and broke his nose, one leg, two\n  fingers, cut his left cheek beneath the eye and sustained an injury\n  to his back that left him upon his recovery with a permanent\n  thoughtful posture.\u2019\n\nFrom this short extract it will perhaps be clear how he teased his\nreader with sincerity and how his statistical straightforwardness\ncarved out patiently a mysterious block of significance which was not\nbrought upon the platform of the story but which the reader found\nobstructing his exit, as it were, when the curtain had come down and\nhe attempted to leave the theatre. It was this seemingly innocent\nobstructionism of course that aroused the authorities to such a violent\npitch of antagonism to the book; and which remains to this day a\nchallenge almost impudent (so it sometimes seems) to the endurance of\nall scholars, philosophers and simple lovers of knowledge. For often,\nat our greatest moments of ingenuity and science, indeed, we find\nourselves suddenly uncertain of our premises and forced to begin once\nmore at the beginning, yielding our own philosophical curiosity to\nthe statistical curiosity of the author. It might therefore be wise,\nbefore we entangle ourselves further in scholarly ramifications of\nour own, to return to the document itself. In this sober intention\nI mean to present, in as unmeddlesome and economical a fashion as I\nam capable of, the conspicuous features of one of the most baffling\n(though to outward appearance one of the most unaffected) stories in\nthe collection, _The Man Who Told Lies To His Mother_.\n\n\n\u00a74\n\nHe was an author. He wrote books one after the other. It was\nimpossible, we are told, to understand, say, the tenth book without\nreading all the preceding nine. And it was impossible to understand\nthe tenth without the book that followed it. And whatever number the\nbook was, there was always one following it, so that the author was\ncontinuously being understood by his readers. The chief character in\neach of the books was always the same. Half of him was the author\nhimself, the other half of him was the only son of the author\u2019s\nmother. He called the first half I, the second half He. I thought,\nwrote books, knew all about everything, did nothing. He knew nothing\nabout anything but could do everything. I was wise, He was happy. I\nwas careful to keep himself to himself so as not to have his wisdom\nspoiled by He or He\u2019s fun spoiled by his wisdom. I kept himself in his\nstudy, He in the world. I did not permit He to share his study with\nhim because this would have been like denying that there was a world\noutside of his study and, since he knew there was such a world, making\na ghost of himself. I did not want to be a ghost and yet he wanted to\nremain in his study, so he supported He in the world on the books he\nwrote in his study. This kept up the world, it kept up He, it made I\ncomplete without his having to be complete, that is, to be both I and\nHe. Moreover, though I supported He in the world, he made no attempt\nto track him, curb him or even share occasionally in his activities.\nI was continually disciplining himself against such temptations: in\norder not to corrupt his wisdom by making it a criticism of He and in\norder not to corrupt the fullness of He\u2019s pleasure by making it have\nanything to do with sense. The important thing for I, inasmuch as He\nexisted and the world existed, was to keep them employed in each other,\nso that he could be truly, wisely, actually, employed in himself. I\nsaid: I am I, therefore I am true, I am not He, therefore he is false;\nbut He is He, therefore He is false-true so long as I encourage him in\nfalsehood. He could not, however, be false by himself--this would have\neventually made him true. To be false he needed something to be false\nwith, he needed the world, he needed other He\u2019s. For a long time He\nand the world conducted each other toward themselves with the closest\nand strictest falsehood; so close and strict in fact that the world,\nthis conglomeration of other He\u2019s, became a single close, strict, false\nShe. He and She went on loyally enjoying themselves in each other as He\nand the world had done, until this falsificatory attachment became so\nutter that it reproduced I in his study. It reproduced I, it reproduced\nHe and She. It did all this without giving to her only son\u2019s mother a\ngrandchild.\n\nAnd so, the story goes on, the books went on. And so we the readers\nof the story (story-readers of the books described in the story)\nwitness how I told lies to his mother without committing a single\nfalsehood. For he sent his books to his mother in her province in place\nof letters, saying: This is a true account of the doings of your only\nson. And she read them lovingly as a true account of the doings of her\nonly son, whom she always thought of as He, taking I to be merely the I\nauthorial, which it was. And so I told lies to his mother and they were\nnot lies but a true account of the doings of He.\n\nNow when the author of the story has trained his reader to understand\nthe author in the story who was one-half of the chief character of his\nown stories, he begins without further explanation a long chronicle of\nthe experiences of the other half of the chief character of his stories\nunder the title of _Lies To His Mother_. We do not know whether these\nstories are supposed to have appeared in the author-in-the-story\u2019s\nbooks as they appear here in the story: probably not, since there is\nin them no mention of I, and I, we must remember, was one-half of the\nchief character of these books. Or perhaps so, since it is not unlikely\nthat everything relating to I in his books was meant to be supposed to\nhave been described separately, as for example in the form of authorial\ninterludes between the passages relating to He. At any rate, for our\nconvenience it may be best to retitle the stories (a few of which are\nhere summarized) which the author introduces to us under the title of\n_Lies To His Mother_, as _What His Mother Believed Of He_. It might\nalso be helpful for me to announce here that since further analysis\nseems hopeless I shall add nothing to these summarizations; except\nto say, perhaps, that they all confirm us in what we have already\nobserved of the temper of the anonymous author of the book that we are\nstudying: his statisticality, his curiosity and, we might now add, his\nfalsificality.\n\n(_a_) That He one day drank water in such a way as to be drunk of it,\nand in this condition found himself the hero of an Arabian Nights\nEntertainment, bathing, with the privilege of a jokester, in the\nwomen\u2019s pool. And they would not let him come out for a whole day.\nThey kept him in the water a whole day, a whole long day, during which\nthey did many things to him, all of which are faithfully recorded in\nthe original, of which two may with propriety be given here: that they\nwould at intervals very slowly drain all the water from the pool and\nthen as slowly let it fill up again; and that they fed him on nothing\nbut fish, and would not give him drink, forcing him to water himself\nfrom the pool. He was allowed to leave the pool at sunset, on the\npromise that he would amuse them with tales for three days, which he\npromised. For three days then He amused them with tales, two of which\nmay with propriety be outlined here: the first, of a man bewitched\nin such a manner that he would do on every occasion the opposite of\nwhat it was his will to do; the second, of a far-off city in which\nthe people were silent and their clothes spoke, and of how a quarrel\narose between two identical black lace frocks, as to which was which,\nand of how in anger they tore themselves off their wearers, and became\nconfused in the broil that followed, so that their owners were also\nconfused and uncertain, when the frocks were put on once more, whether\ntheir speech matched their silence.\n\n(_b_) That He another day woke to find himself speaking a strange\nlanguage, in which everything was known and clear--as if all\ndifficulties of the intelligence were difficulties of language alone:\nin this language He had but to speak to discover, as, for instance,\nthe word for _horse_ here not only stood for horse but also made plain\nthe quality of horseliness, what it was. He woke to find himself\nspeaking this language, he was a boy, he was in a classroom, he had\nblue eyes (they were actually grey), his teacher was a remarkable\nwoman in a pompadour and a large hat who was fond of him, fixing\nher gaze on his blue eyes when she entered the room and keeping it\nthere until she left; who knew everything and recited it without\npause, without sympathy, without antagonism, so that whatever she\nsaid meant all and nothing--history, the uses of waste paper, the\ntraditions of pawnbrokers, anything, everything. Then He woke up\nagain to find himself no longer speaking the strange language but as\ndumb, in his ordinary language, with dumb memory of it. So when He\nspoke his ordinary language he found it all twisted of sense, which\nmade him abandon it: he uttered only expressive sounds, which others\ndisregarded as nonsensical, composed as they were of soft and shrill\nshrieks, whistlings, bellowings and blowings. So He went mad and in his\nmadness began speaking his ordinary language again, all nonsensical,\nbut conceived sane by others because it was the ordinary language.\nAnd so He was discharged from the madhouse raving and only by slow\nstages came to regard himself, since others did so, as sane. The theme\nof a language of complete intelligence, it is to be remarked, occurs\nin two other stories in the book--in one there is even an attempt,\nimpossible to reproduce here, to give specimens of the language. To\nall appearances indeed it is the ordinary language in which he (the\nanonymous author) wrote, with perhaps an outlandish twist due merely\nto an increase of his usual severity--the authorities explained it by\nreading it as an imitation of the style of the most wilfully ingenuous\nauthor of the time. But it might very well have meant something to the\nauthor it could not mean to the reader, which is not at all improbable,\nsince to myself, after long study and, I may say, an application\nit would be difficult to surpass, it meant only what it said--and\nthis only with the greatest imaginative stretch possible to me in my\nliveliest moments of inquiry. The story, for the benefit of those few\nwho may have access to the book, is, of course, _The Whisper_.\n\n(_c_) That He one day woke to find himself Professor in Time at the\nUniversity of Colour: he was addressing a class of old, old men on the\nprinciple of greenishness. \u2018For example,\u2019 he said, \u2018there are many\nmodern artists who will not use green at all in their pictures: it is\na foreign colour, an outside colour, an extra colour--the colour of\nconclusion. Therefore the colour of haughty youth, which is final, and\nof weird old age, which is beyond finality. The modern painter who\nbanishes green does so from ambition: he means to show that he can\ngive his pictures an effect of conclusion without making use of the\nwittiness of green. Primitive people make use of green with religious\nbrutality to clinch any argument in colour. Flowers, on the other\nhand, never use green, nor the sky; unless unwholesome--an eccentric\navoidance of a banal they-know-not-what. Earth-green is the symbol of\ntime overcoming time. Green is a colour of sophisticated crudeness\nand of crude sophistication. A brute thing is in its heart of hearts\ngreen, and a casuistical mind is in its heart of hearts green. The\ngrave mathematical most is green, and the silly poetical least is\ngreen. The new-born baby is green and the newly-dead person is green.\nAnd the extreme of tragedy is green, and the extreme of comedy is\ngreen.\u2019\n\nAt this moment the oldest of the old, old men got up and shrieked,\nsmilingly through his three teeth, saying: \u2018I spent my whole fortune\nin one night in music and food on a girl whose mother was a singer and\nwhose father was a chef. \u201cTrrup,\u201d she said, snapping her fingers, \u201cyou\nare an old man, and I love a boy who blacks my boots.\u201d\u2019 \u2018Trrup,\u2019 he\nshrieked, smiling through his three teeth, \u2018I am green, I am green, and\nthis is my life\u2019s story.\u2019 And \u2018Trrup,\u2019 shrieked all the old men, \u2018we\nare green, we are green.\u2019 Until He could not bear the noise and stopped\nhis ears with his fingers, and closed his eyes.\n\nWhen He removed his fingers from his ears and opened his eyes, he was\nsitting by his own fireside, and his cat was on the hearth-rug and She\nwas near him, knitting him a green jacket. \u2018Trrup,\u2019 said the cat\u2019s\neyes, \u2018what a fool you are to dream such sense,\u2019 and \u2018Trrup,\u2019 said She,\n\u2018what a dear silly you shall be napping in my green jacket.\u2019\n\n\u2018I,\u2019 said He to himself, \u2018must tell this story to my mother, it will\namuse her.\u2019\n\nAnd it was told, and it did, and she believed it of He, and everything\nelse that was told of him, and put another lump of sugar in her tea,\nnear the bottom of the cup, saying to herself: \u2018Is it not so? Sometimes\nI like Mrs. History, and sometimes I do not. Sometimes I pity her, and\nsometimes I wish her worse trouble. And what does it matter, since she\nis all this, and I am all that, and each of us always, no matter what\nhappens, a bit of herself? When I am angriest I am nearest to kindness,\nand when I am clearest in my head I am nearest to confusion. Is it not\nso? I am sure I never know what I am going to do next. For instance,\nthere are those wicked loves who follow a certain red flag: I am sure\nI should forget myself and join them if it were a green one.\u2019 For she,\ntaking after her own son, was also a liar.\n\n\n\u00a75\n\nThe most curiously integrated of the groups of stories which may be\nclassified as a single dramatic (or philosophical) unit of the book\nis the queen-group. Indeed it is possible to discuss this group as\nif it were but one story, the episodic variations seeming no more\nthan caprices of style--the same story told in different degrees of\nearnestness and so in different personalities, as it were. The one\nfixed personality of the group is the Queen herself; the others are\nall stylistic personalities. The Queen began as a photograph used by a\nnewspaper at discreet intervals to represent the female bandit of the\nmoment or the murder-victim or the fire-heroine or the missionary\u2019s\nbride. By experience and variety she became a personality, and a fixed\npersonality. It is quite remarkable in fact how under our very eyes\nthis anonymous author should be able to transform a fiction into a\nfact: for the Queen is as true for always as the photograph is each\ntime false. Indeed, the whole transformation is merely a matter of\nstyle. To illustrate: \u2018As Maxine, the world\u2019s sleeplessness champion,\nthe photograph had great momentary importance but did not know it\nbecause it was part of a newspaper dynamic in which everything happened\nwith equal fatalistic effect, everything was accident, in the moment\nsucceeding accident it was always clear that nothing had happened. As\nphotograph therefore the photograph saw all this; it was permanently\nunimportant but it knew this. And as it had a knowledge of its\nunimportance, it also had a knowledge of the importance of accident;\nand as the first knowledge made it insignificant so the second\nknowledge made it Queen. The Queen, the photograph without identity,\nthis anonymous particularity, did in fact dwell in a world in which\nshe was the only one and in which the world of many was only what she\ncalled \u201cthe chaotic conversation of events.\u201d So she resolved to put\nher queendom in order, not by interrupting the conversation, which\nwould only have increased the chaos, but by having minutely recorded\nwhatever \u201chappened,\u201d whatever \u201cwas.\u201d Nothing then in her queendom\ncontradicted anything else, neither the argument nor its answer,\nneither the burglar-proof lock nor the burglar against whom it was not\nproof: everything was so, everything was statistical, everything was\nfalsification, everything was conversation, and she was an anonymous\nparticularity conversing with herself about her own nothingness, so she\nwas outside the chaotic conversation of events, she was Queen.\u2019\n\nHer three chief statisticians (we learn) were publishers. They were\nall pleasant fellows, each with a touch of the universal in him, and\ncame and went without suspicion everywhere in the queendom because of\ntheir peoplishness: they too, like all the rest, were statistical,\nso statistical indeed that they were statisticians. They went about\npreaching the gospel of the communal ownership of events. They said:\n\u2018Primitive man believed in things as events. As civilized man it is\nyour duty to believe in events as things.\u2019 And the people did. And they\npermitted the statisticians (or publishers) to know what happened to\nthem and what they did with what happened to them as faithfully as they\nreported their possessions each year in the great Common Book. In this\nqueendom there was no loss and no mystery and no suffering, because\neverything was reported as conversation and nothing therefore thought\nabout. All was automatic spontaneity, even their love for their Queen.\nAs for the Queen, she would walk (we are told) through the dark rooms\nof her palace at night, having each room lit only upon her leaving\nit, until she reached her own small chamber, which remained unlit all\nnight while the others shone; until morning, when in her own small\nchamber the curtains were drawn, the lamps lit, while in all the other\nrooms of the palace there was daylight. The meaning of this is plain:\nthat in the anonymousness of the Queen lay her non-statistical, her\nnon-falsificatory individuality. She is the author, the queendom is\nher book. She is darkness and mystery, the plain, banal though chaotic\ndaylight is her unravelling. By making the unravelling more methodic\nand so more plainly banal she separates in people the statistical from\nthe non-statistical part, the known from the anonymous. She shows\nherself to be a dualist of the most dangerous kind.\n\nFor a long time the authorities from the internal evidence of the\nqueen-stories suspected the anonymous author of being a woman.\nThey said that it was not improbable that the book was the Bible\nof an underground sect devoted to educating female children to be\nstatistical queens. But this view had to be abandoned as unscholarly,\neven ungentlemanly, because in nothing that the Queen said or did was\nthere any accent of disorder or ambition: she merely, with miraculous\npatience and tact, saw to it that records were kept of everything.\nThe authorities eventually concluded that she was a Character of\nFiction, and so stainless, and could not help them. For some time\ntheir suspicion was fixed on a character in one of the stories with\nwhom the Queen fell in love. But as he was Minister of Pastimes to\nthe Queen it was thought that it might prove generally disrespectful\nto State officials to pursue the matter further (as when, in the\nstory _Understanding_, suspicion was fixed on the character who\nbribed the magistrates to convict him, the inquiry was stopped by\nthe authorities--the detectives even put on the wrong scent--as too\nmetaphysical and cynical).\n\nIt must now be clear that the strain of my task is beginning to tell on\nme. I have become very nervous. In the beginning my emotions were all\nscholarly, my task was a pleasure, I had the manner of calmness with\nan antiquity. Toward the end fear has crept upon me. I must speak, and\nafter that go on till I can go on no longer: till I am prevented. I say\n_prevented_. For I am haunted by the obsession that the authorities\nare still watching. They do not suspect the Queen. She was or is a\nfixed personality, so anonymous as to be irreproachably a Character of\nFiction. The others vary in earnestness; in anonymity; they are, as I\nhave suggested, personalities of style; they point to the probability\nthat the author was not or is not a Character of Fiction. I dare go no\nfurther. I have become very nervous. I shall nevertheless attempt to\ncontinue my task until--I am prevented.\n\nOne of the three publishers was a Jew. He was tall, his ears\noutstanding, his grin long, his voice loose in his mouth. He had\nbeen financial adviser to a charitable organization and had had much\ngeneral statistical though humane experience. He was gross but kind\nand therefore in charge of all sentimental records: his grossness\nassured accuracy, his kindness, delicacy. He had the historical genius,\nand several specimens of his work are given--though with a touch of\ndryness in the author himself which makes it impossible to enjoy\nthem as we might have were the book without an author. Indeed, they\nwere not meant to be read at all, but merely written to satisfy the\npolitical instincts of the Queen, who never read them herself. I find\nit difficult to pass over them myself, for aside from their part in the\nbook they are very interesting. There are several small extracts that\nmight be used here with complete propriety and even in a scholarly\nway. And after all, the author wrote them down himself, did he not? But\nhe was writing and not reading. But am I not writing and not reading?\nMy position becomes more and more uncertain. I shall hurry on.\n\nI shall give one of the Queen\u2019s monologues, to tide us over this\ndifficult period. The monologue does not appear in the book itself: it\nwould have been a piece of naturalism contrary to the theory on which\nthe book was built. Therefore I give it here, as reading. No questions\nmust be asked of me, for as a scholar I should feel obliged to answer\nthem; and the passage would then become writing; and I should have\nproduced a piece of naturalism. Here then is, shall I say, a variety:\nwhich is not the anonymous author\u2019s writing but we might almost say his\nreading, and after that my writing but of his reading, which remains\nreading for all my writing. My conscience is in your hands: the burden\nof curiosity and falsification falls upon you. With you rest also\nthe rights of anonymity, the reputation of style, the fortunes of\npublication, the future of philosophy and scholarship and the little\nchildren, for whom these contrive sense. Sense, I say, not satire.\n\nAnd now for the Queen\u2019s monologue, which the anonymous author did not\nwrite and which for this very reason requires, as the reader\u2019s part,\nsense, I say, not satire, even more immediately than what he did\nwrite. Furthermore, you will have to discover for yourself where it\nbegins and where it ends: were I to mark it off it would become writing\nand so a piece of naturalism and so bely sense and give encouragement\nto satire. I mean: restraint, statistics, falsification, is more\naccurate than courage, reality, truth, and so truer. For the Queen\u2019s\nmonologue, since the anonymous author did not write it down, is true;\nhad he not statistically, falsificatorily, restrained himself from\nwriting it down it would have become a piece of naturalism and so a\nsubject of satire. To tide us over a difficult period I set myself the\ndifficult task of writing down the Queen\u2019s monologue without turning\nit into writing, and so defying satire (if I succeed, which depends on\nyou). The important thing is to defy satire. Satire is lying: falsity\nas opposed to truth and falsity as opposed to falsification. It is\nbetwixt and between; against sense, which, whatever it is, is one thing\nor the other--generally the other, it being for practical purposes\nimpossible for it to be perpetually one thing. By practical purposes\nI mean of course the question of boredom, as truth finding truth\nmonotonous. Therefore things happen. Sense, I say, not satire. Imagine\na woman has her heart broken and imagine a man breaking it, then her\nheart heals and he ceases to be a villain, and then they meet again\nand her heart is whole and he is not a villain. Does she weep because\nher heart was once broken and does he blush because he once broke it?\nThis would be satire. No, they both smile, and she gives him her heart\nto break again, and he breaks it. This is sense. Or they both smile\nand turn away from each other, and this, too, is sense, but sense too\nacademic to survive the strain of academically enforcing itself. The\nOne Thing must be saved from itself, it must not be allowed to overwork\nitself or go stale. That is why sense is one thing or the other and\ngenerally the other: falsification to relieve truth, broken hearts to\nprotect whole hearts, weakness to spare strength. Fact is fancy and\nfancy is desire and desire is puff! puff! everything that satisfies\nit and which must be carefully recorded in spite of contradictions\nand lengthiness. Desire is the other things, in great number. And\nwhat is satisfaction? Not the other things, that satisfy, but the one\nthing, that cannot satisfy or be satisfied, and so, though but one\nthing, equal to desire, and so to all the other things. Fact is _it_\nnot _me_; fact is fancy and fancy is desire and desire is the other\nthings. Satisfaction is _me_, which _it_ calls Queen. _It_ is a lot\nof him\u2019s, _it_ is a queendom, _it_ is desire speaking the language of\nsatisfaction, _it_ is a great looseness and restlessness of fact and\nconfusion of eyesight and costume, into which the Queen brings sense\nthrough order. And what is order? Order is observation. Her first\npublisher (or statistician) is a gross, kind Jew. Her second is a\nsubtle, cruel Turk, who brutally forced events: he has the political\ngenius. But the people do not mind, since the events happen anyhow:\nthey shrug their shoulders good-naturedly and say \u2018Old Hassan Bey\nsmiling with Turkish teeth,\u2019 and call on the first publisher to take\nnotice how smilingly they wince back. Her third is a Christian, and\nhe does nothing: he has the philosophical genius. His idleness and\ntalkativeness exasperate the other two into efficiency. His favourite\nharangue is: \u2018Let the people create their own order.\u2019\n\n\u2018But how, their own order?\u2019\n\n\u2018Let them think.\u2019\n\n\u2018But if they think, they will all think differently, and not only\ndifferently--some will think more powerfully than others.\u2019\n\n\u2018Exactly: those who think more powerfully than others will create\norder.\u2019\n\n\u2018But this would not be real order, rather the disorder of a false order\ncreated by the most powerfully thinking individual or individuals of\nthe moment. This would be anarchism, and anarchism is not enough.\u2019\n\n\u2018I have heard that said before, but how is the order created by the\nQueen not anarchism?\u2019\n\n\u2018The Queen does not create order, she observes methodically, she\ncreates _her_ order. That is why _it_ is _her_ queendom.\u2019\n\n\u2018But is this not merely a refined form of anarchism?\u2019\n\n\u2018No, it is more than anarchism. The Queen is not the chief individual\nof her queendom; she is the _me_ of the _it_; she is the one thing,\nher queendom is the other things; she is satisfaction, her queendom is\ndesire, a lot of _him\u2019s_. The more _me_ she is, the more _it_ it is,\nand the more anonymous she is, and the more she and her queendom are\ndiplomatically indistinguishable. The domestic situation is of course\nanother affair. But to carry the distinction beyond the boundaries of\nthe book is to fall betwixt and between, into satire.\u2019\n\n\n\u00a76\n\nTherefore the time has come to close. I am discovered, or rather I\nhave discovered myself, for the authorities lost interest in me when\nthey saw that I would discover myself before I could be officially\ndiscovered, that I would in fact break through the pages and destroy\nthe strongest evidence that might be held against me, that is, that\n\u2018An anonymous book----\u2019 etc. I understand now that what they desired\nto prevent was just what has happened. You must forgive me and believe\nthat I was not trying to deceive, but that I became confused. I\nover-distinguished and so fell into satire and so discovered myself\nand so could not go on, to maintain a satiric distinction between\nauthorship and scholarship.\n\nAnd what of the woman who loved an engine? I cannot say. And the woman\nwho was bewitched by a parallel? I cannot say. They come after the\nplace where I left off.\n\n\n\n\nTHE DAMNED THING\n\n\n\u00a71\n\n\u2018Sex\u2019 is crude sex, resembling other crude appetites which similarly\nlose significance as soon as satisfied; and it is translated sex--sex\nsurviving the satisfaction of the appetite. As the first it applies to\nthe mechanics, as the second to the sentiment of sex.\n\nThe child begins with crude sex alone. It innocently indulges itself in\nsensual pleasures. It loves kissing and to be kissed, stroking and to\nbe stroked, fondly contemplating its excretions. The civilized society\ninto which it is born magnifies the importance of these insignificant\nlocal sensations, gives them intellectual depth. It creates a handsome\nreceptacle, love, to contain the humours of this unnaturally enlarged\ninstinct.\n\nSo much at any rate for the male child: parental care nurtures\nmasturbation into love and marriage. Sex may stop short of love at\nlust. It may be anything it pleases, so long as it satisfies the\nstandard measurements for social impressiveness.\n\nThe female child has a different history. She shares a short period\nof sexual casualness with the male child, at the end of which she\nimmediately becomes a candidate for the recipience of masculine love;\nwhile the sexual training of the male child is intensified at this\npoint. This difference accounts for the so-called early maturity of\nthe female child. For at the time when her male contemporary is only a\nfirst-year man she is already a graduate without benefit of education;\nand her proper mate is therefore a graduate.\n\nAlthough intelligent people are generally aware of the equivocal\nbackground of love and marriage, they nevertheless go on marrying for\nthe relaxation and social ease that comes of doing what every one\nelse is doing. Any other course would be socially unintelligible; and\nexplanations are indecent. Imagine a man and a woman both undeformed by\nsex tradition and that an intimacy exists between them. The intelligent\nmajor part of their intimacy incorporates sex without sentimental\nenlargement: it is an effect rather than a cause. And it is eventually\nabsorbed, it undergoes a diffusion, it is the use of an amenable\nphysical consciousness for the benefit of mental consciousness.\n\nBut traditionally sex would be the cause not the effect of such an\nintimacy. The conventional language of love could scarcely express\nit otherwise; the only diffusion recognized would be the verbal\nsubstitution of commendable emotions for gross passions. When the\nlover said \u2018I love you\u2019 it would be socially impossible for him to\nmean: \u2018Our personalities have an intense and irresistible sympathy. I\nam so conscious of you and myself together that sometimes my sexual\nglands are stimulated by the very thought of you.\u2019 It would be\nimpossible for him not to mean: \u2018My sexual glands, by the ingrowing\nenlargement of my sex instinct since childhood and its insidious,\ncivilized traffic with every part of my mental and physical being,\nare unfortunately in a state of continual excitement. I have very\ngood control of myself, but my awareness of your sexual physique and\nits radiations was so acute that I could not resist the temptation to\ndesire to lie with you. Please do not think this ignoble of me, for I\nshall perform this act, if you permit it, with the greatest respect\nand tenderness and attempt to make up for the indignity it of course\nfundamentally will be to you (however pleasurable) by serving you in\nevery possible way and by sexually flattering manifestations of your\npersonality which are not strictly sexual.\u2019\n\nThe diffusion which modern society calls love is the colouring of sex\nwith sentiments which have no connection with sex, sentiments which\nare not served by sex but serve sex, by making attractive to the\nfinical civilized mind an instinct naturally repulsive to it. They are\nliterary. Sex, in the imagery of Stendhal, is the naked branch which,\nwhen introduced into the salt mine, comes out covered with crystal\nformations: love is the imaginative crystallization of naked instinct.\nThe naked instinct is the monstrous male instinct. The crystallization\nis an aphrodisiac for the female, in whom sex is comparatively casual:\nthe sparkling branch creates in her an appetite for love equal to the\nmale\u2019s tremendous sexual offering, which she would otherwise shrink\nfrom accepting. By this stratagem the male himself does not seem to\nthe female to be touching her; in love virginity remains spiritually\nundamaged. It is like the doll in a recent Oxford smoker. Whenever the\ndoll was touched, the young person of the piece, who had a psychic\nconnection with the doll, was affected, though untouched herself,\nso the nun conceals carnality from herself by washing herself in\ndollish instalments. Love is Masoch\u2019s stately and marble-like Demon of\nVirginity (\u2018the deeply rooted fear of existence every creature feels\u2019),\na lewd and prudish Shepherdess.\n\nThe only courses possible in sex then are love and marriage, misconduct\nand perversion. Misconduct is masculine brutality, the male\u2019s refusal\nto dress up the overgrown branch; and feminine indelicacy, the female\u2019s\nwillingness to accept the overgrown branch in spite of its unromantic\nnakedness. Perversion varies in character. It may be mere animal-like\nsexual levity. Or the biological cynicism of the species. Or it may\noccur in the male when love and marriage or ordinary misconduct seem\ninsufficient to his exaggerated sex instinct, which can only be\nsatisfied by an instinct as exaggerated as his own. Or it may occur in\nthe female as a feministic improvement on man-made sex, nevertheless\nimitating it in its mechanism from an irrepressible sexual nostalgia.\nOr it may occur, as also in the male, through deprivation of normal\nsex life--though more rarely than in the male, since her sex instinct\nis less demanding. Active Lesbianism is a form of sexual derangement\nresulting from the female\u2019s mistaken effort to become sexually\nequivalent to the male: passive Lesbianism is a romantic substitution\nof the feminine branch for the masculine branch in the forced absence\nof the latter, the crystallization remaining the same.\n\nThere is an intellectual side to masculine homosexuality that is never\nvery strong in Lesbian alliances. Homosexuality in men indeed is more\noften intellectually induced than in women: it is ascetic, whereas\nwomen are not sexually fanatic enough for sexual asceticism. The\ndisgust of homosexual men with civilized heterosexual love becomes a\ndisgust with the crystalline aggressiveness of the female body. If a\nwoman is attractive to a homosexually minded man it is because she\nseems what he calls \u2018pure and virginal\u2019--aloof, that is, from her\nsexual uses. The disgust is really with the aggressive male sexuality\nwhich is responsible for the crystallization. Wherever there is great\ncynicism about sex, in Islam, say, or in France, homosexuality is\nconnived at as an intellectual supplement to heterosexual life. The\nclassical type of homosexuality was far less exclusive and severe than\nthe modern type: it was sophistication rather than specialization.\n\nWhether or not homosexuality is found a satisfactory intellectual\nsupplement, it is at any rate so that it is easier for male than for\nfemale mentality to escape from socialized sex. Woman has been too\nmuch under the necessity of self-preservation to lay down the weapons\nof feminine personality and risk the disarmed independence of sexual\nimpersonality. She is the object, or prey, of male sexuality, and\nher strength lies in the pride and in the obstacles with which she\nconditions her capture. Much modern feminism is only a sentimental\nenlargement of this pride, only a shrewder insistence on her value as\na prize. For the most part the feminist still has the mentality of\nthe recipient in sex demanding compensation for the indignity of her\nposition; feminism is an unnatural preoccupation in woman with her\nsexual self.\n\nWoman\u2019s case is nearly hopeless, then. Man is just a little better off:\nhis position affords him the relief, if he is intellectually capable of\ntaking it, of sexual suicide.\n\n\n\u00a72\n\nOften we spend hours disposing of some small thing not worth five\nminutes\u2019 thought. We have had it a long time, it is occasionally\nuseful, some one has given it to us, it would be a pity to throw it\naway, it has become quite a part of us, and so on. And yet it is in\nthe way. Yielding to the tyranny of the trivial hanging-on thing\nis adaptation. Outwardly we seem to make the thing adapt itself to\nus. Actually we are adapting ourselves to the thing--a grotesque\nadaptation. Such a thing is sex, the small physical thing; such an\nadaptation is the ceremony with which it is decently installed in the\nopinion.\n\nWith sex there seems to be nothing between masturbation (throwing\nthe damned thing out) and romance (grotesque adaptation). Even\nthe scientific attitude is romantic: the implied title of every\nlearned book on sex is _De l\u2019Amour_. The cases in such series as\nHavelock-Ellis\u2019s books on sex belong to romance; they are the\nscientist\u2019s storification of sex. After the reader has grown used\nto the laboratory manner of the scientist he continues to read from\nsentiment not science; and the author himself continues, like any\nromantic author, only from the growing morbid fascination of the\nsubject--a tediously energetic mind unhinged by the baffling triviality\nof sex. Every psychologist of sex is a psychologist of sex because he\nsuffers from a sex-fixation. He is the principal case of his work.\n\nMasturbation is reckoned disgraceful only because it debases sex\nto less than what it is; the damned thing is passionately shoved\nout of sight instead of granted pious functional importance in the\nhousehold of the mind. There is much less disgust felt toward venereal\ndisease than toward masturbation simply because the former is a large\nsubject, the latter a small one. The campaign against masturbation\nin homes, boys\u2019 schools and sex books is much more intense than the\ncampaign against prostitution. Masturbation cannot be sentimentalized.\nProstitution, \u2018the oldest profession in the world,\u2019 has an honoured\nritual of obscenity and an equally honoured ritual of commerce.\n\nSo great is the importance of accepted sex symbolism--the authorized\npoetry of sex--that any departure from it is classified as a\nperversion, as \u2018erotic\u2019 symbolism. \u2018Normal\u2019 symbolism does not even\ngo by its name: it is love. It is not recorded among the cases of\nerotic symbolism that so-and-so continually wrote of women\u2019s lips, or\nso-and-so of women\u2019s breasts. But several pages (fine print) must of\ncourse be devoted to a few notorious cases (French) of foot symbolism,\nand of course to the national case of China, a horrible example\nto the Western sexual mind of perverse symbolism. Lip-worship and\nbreast-worship are normal because they are generalizations: the kiss\nhas become so poetically diffuse in meaning that it does not represent\nthe precise local excitement which is its actual sexual r\u00f4le, but a\nvague spiritual lippishness; the breasts, likewise, are officially not\npart of the sexual apparatus, but the semi-divine sensual equivalent of\nthat heart-bosom-and-chest sentiment into which humanity has glorified\nmean sex-feeling.\n\n  \u2018And up the rosy pathway to her heart\n  The uncapped pilgrim crept.\u2019\n                                --_Byron._\n\nFoot-worship is unnatural because it is local and particular; it\nconnects sex with a physical triviality. It is nearly as disrespectful\nto romance as if the sexual parts themselves were worshipped.\n\nSexual energy, if left alone, would adapt itself instead of forcing\nadaptation, be diffused instead of diffuse. The social mechanism\nfor disposing of sex makes sex as large and complicated as itself,\nintensifies its masculinity. Its femininity reduces merely to an\nabstract, passive principle of motion in the great moving masculine\nmachine; without separate social personality. The social self is\nthe sexual self, and the sexual self is the male sexual self: the\ndramatic pleasure which woman feels in sex romance is masculine\npleasure; in witnessing sexual embrace on the screen or on the stage\nshe adopts the emotions of the male. Her innate sexual impersonality\nif not philosophized, would wreck the solemn masculine machine;\nit is therefore socially interpreted as mechanical receptiveness,\nmetaphysical unconsciousness, social helpfulness. In self-defence\nwoman becomes sentimentally attached to this r\u00f4le: the sexual machine\nso elaborately concentrated on her confers on her an indignity loaded\nwith prerogatives. Slavish sex modesty is converted into sex vanity.\nMilitant (feministic) woman can do no more than piously emphasize\nthe negative, obstetrical instrumentality of female sex; pretending\nthat motherhood is a rational social end instead of a bigoted natural\nidiosyncrasy.\n\nThis grotesque of socialized sex comes of the stupid attempt of\nintelligent man to make nature intelligent. Society is the genteel\nhuman version of nature. It is based on the assumption that man is a\nproduct of the refined integration of nature by time and that it is\ntherefore a superior, evolved nature. A constant forced transference\nthus takes place from the slums of nature into the respectable terraces\nand squares of society.\n\nBut the very existence of society, of an improved nature, proves\nrather that man is a product of the refined disintegration of nature\nby time; that society is in fact a defensive alliance by conscious,\ncontradictory nature against unconscious, consistent nature. And\nman stands in deformity between them, a creature part social, part\nnatural; but also something else, himself. What is social is unreal.\nWhat is natural is unreal. What is himself is also unreal; but unreal\nintrinsically, not from deformity.\n\nReproductive sentiment, for example, is an emotional screen to conceal\nhow little we belong to nature. For were we to appreciate this little\nwe should soon appreciate how little we belonged to society. Sex is\neven more separate from reproductive instincts in human beings than in\nanimal beings. Society therefore strengthens the sympathetic connection\nbetween them, this last crucial bond with nature.\n\nBut what is this sex that society has raised from a state of nature\nto a state of respectability among the intelligent passions? A myth\nin which people half believe to keep up appearances of which they are\nhalf ashamed. Only in the private consciousness is it not a fraud; and\nhere, an eccentric mark of physical loneliness, a sort of memory of\nbelonging; when actualized, a momentary extinction of consciousness,\nas it means momentary consciousness to beasts that belong much to\nnature. As a public ceremony sex is constantly in need of artificial\nstimulation; its technique is scarcely more than the technique of\ncostume. It persists through the illusion of numbers, which perform a\ngross sex-masque, a lascivious fancifying of nature.\n\nSex is the tribal totem through which society sues Nature for\nprotection and recognition, and through which Nature is ritually\nflattered. To the Church sex is the essence of flesh. Man is afraid to\nadmit that he lives largely outside of nature, that his body is only a\nsoul, a myth. Instead, he uses the myth to re-establish flesh; God is\nthe authentication of the body.\n\nSex is the chief religious mystery of man, his most theatrical\nexhibition of reality. Parents lie in wait for their children, to\nchange their little sexual sillies into portentous symbols. Either\nthey significantly do not \u2018tell\u2019 them but work their transformations\nby a dark force of silence and suggestion; or they significantly and\npoetically \u2018tell\u2019 them. Is the child expected not to see that what is\nperhaps pretty in flowers is rather ridiculous in people, who for the\nmost part have other interests besides seed-making and seed-scattering?\nOr to treat as religious truth the crazy information that baby comes\nout of mother? Unprompted, it finds this just a third-rate curiosity.\nIf it hears its mother shrieking in labour it will report without\nmalice but without sentiment that mother squealed like a pig.\nNaturally without a sexual conscience, it is gradually bullied into\nsuperstitiousness, reverence or horror of sex. Shelley, on being read\nthe passage about Geraldine\u2019s breast in _Christabel_, saw a vision of\na woman with eyes instead of nipples. The child\u2019s sight is poetically\ntwisted to see the nipples either so or as sacred knobs of coral. The\nonly way a child can be initiated into socialized sex without deformity\nof his comic sense is through obscenity, the cynical and painful adult\nversion of the child\u2019s sexual insouciance.\n\nPsychology is the modern church of sex, provoking an obscene Tolstoyan\npiety. Havelock-Ellis says: \u2018We must, as B\u00f6lsche declares, accustom\nourselves to gaze on the naked human body exactly as we gaze at a\nbeautiful flower\u2019; and quotes the following account of a totem mystery\nfrom Ungewitter\u2019s _Die Nacktheit_: \u2018They made themselves as comfortable\nas possible, the men laying aside their coats, waistcoats, boots and\nsocks; the women their blouses, skirts, shoes and stockings. Gradually,\nas the moral conception of nakedness developed in their minds, more\nand more clothing fell away, until the men wore nothing but bathing\ndrawers and the women only their chemises. In this \u201ccostume\u201d games were\ncarried out in common, and a regular camp-life led. The ladies (some\nof whom were unmarried) would then lie in hammocks and we men on the\ngrass, and the intercourse was delightful [sic]. We felt as members of\none family, and behaved accordingly [sic].\u2019 And Havelock-Ellis himself\nagain: \u2018The nose receives the breath of life; the vagina receives the\nwater of life.... The swelling breasts are such divinely gracious\ninsignia of womanhood because of the potential child that hangs at them\nand sucks; the large curves at the hips are so voluptuous because of\nthe potential child they clasp within them.\u2019 The juvenile delinquent of\nthe streets reacts to this no more obscenely by singing \u2018Mother caught\nher titties in the mangle.\u2019\n\nLofty reverence of the female sexual organs conceals a fundamental\ndisgust with them. Woman is the symbol to man of the uncleanness of\nbodily existence, of which he purifies himself by putting her to noble\nuses. She thus has for a him a double, contradictory significance;\nshe is the subject of his bawdry and the subject of his romance. The\nsex totem is made in her image and embodies for him the conflict\nbetween suicide and immortality. Man himself is unreal. On woman he\ngets physical reality. She is his nature, the realistic enlargement of\nhis own small sexual apparatus. She is the morphological supplement\nof his phallus. Through her he can refine, ritualize and vary his\nmonotonous and trivial appendage. She is the means by which he adapts\nhimself to what he is unable to assimilate mentally, to the absurd\nphysical remnant which pursues him in his pilgrimage to extinction and\nwhich he appeases by turning aside to reverence. Sex is a perfidious\nintellectual digression into physical reminiscences.\n\nHow does woman play her part as the sacred animal of the sex totem?\nWith ease, since she is quantitatively more sexual than man, more\nliterally sexual; therefore more impersonally sexual. Sex in woman\nis unemotional, constitutionally well-blended--apart, that is, from\nthe ritualistic education in love that she is subjected to by a\nmasculine society. Sex in man is emotional; it is segregated; it is\nthe last touch of nature in him that haunts and torments him and that\nhe propitiates with pompous and evasive rites. Although, like man,\nwoman is largely not of nature, what nature remains in her satisfies\nitself without pomp or pathos. That civilized woman is slower than\nman in arriving at sexual climaxes is due to the fact that her native\nsexual ease had been perverted by man\u2019s tortuous psychology into a\nself-stupefying philosophical passivity.\n\nWoman, indeed, is so nearly complete in herself, except for the\nphallus, that it is difficult to see how it happened, if one sex\nmust instrumentalize the other, that she rather than man became the\nauxiliary apparatus. Phallic worship in man is not pious but politic\n(unless he is homosexual, which is another matter); an institution for\nadvertising the phallus to woman, hypnotizing her with it, protecting\nher from the knowledge that she holds the strategical sexual position.\nIt is perhaps fair to say that as a consciousness man is woman\u2019s\nequal. As a physical apparatus he is a clumsily devised gadget. From\nthe point of view of their fertilizing powers there are millions and\nmillions more men alive than necessary. With proper husbanding of\nsperm (an economy already practised with prize bulls and stallions)\none man might conceivably maintain the world-population if a somewhat\nsmaller figure than the present were agreed upon as more reasonable\nand if birth-control were somewhat relaxed. All propagandist display\nof physical and mental superiority on man\u2019s part, all Rabelaisian\ngizzard and brain tickling, is an attempt to detract attention from his\nobviously incidental character as a physical apparatus.\n\nBut it is unkind and even irrelevant to over-press the point. What\nis relevant is that we are in a state of semi-conscious transition\nbetween nature and nothing, and the more conscious we grow, the nearer\nwe are to nothing. In this passage sex comes quietly along, obligingly\ndiminishing itself except when man, in panic of annihilation, whips it\nup and tries to ride himself back to nature upon it. But the passage\ncontinues, his hobby-horse is a phantom.\n\nPanic of annihilation, resistance to sexual diminution, is a social\nemotion. Resistance to sexual enlargement is a personal emotion, the\nfear of a more brutal kind of annihilation. Sex brings shock; to some\nrudimentary forms, simple death; to human beings, intricate death,\ndeath of self, death of death. Homosexuality is an oblique escape from\nthe violence of this shock. Polygamy and polyandry distribute the\nfrightening physical solidarity of monogamy. Monogamous couples are\nalways hungry for company: to dilute sex. This hunger for dilution is\none-half of parenthood; the other half is the regressive hunger for\nsolidarity.\n\nThis natural difference between creatures intellectually like is the\nreal perversion. Man is a poetic animal; what is natural in him is\npathological. Poetically he is unisexual; when he attempts to make the\nnature in him poetic he becomes bisexual or homosexual not poetic. It\nis impossible that through sex nature should approve of man or man of\nnature. The only way to prevent sex from being a greater source of\ndiscomfort than need be is to recognize it as an anomalous hanger-on\nin man\u2019s journey away from nature and to make it reveal its presence\nby behaving naturally: bringing about a literal diffusion of physical\nnature in human nature instead of a monstrous hermaphroditism or a\nmonstrous monomania.\n\n\n\u00a73\n\nSex as a petty eccentricity of the individual can be easily disposed of\nby the individual. As a social symptom it assumes large metaphysical\nproportions; it becomes a crux between matter and mind. It demands\nlegal control, giving society an excuse for power; economic control (as\na medium of exchange), giving society an excuse for motion; ceremonial\ncontrol, giving society an excuse for language, manners, communication.\nThat is, it gives society an excuse for society.\n\nSociety keeps control of sex by so embroidering it with sentiment that\nthe individual scarcely realizes that he is serving society instead\nof society him. Every one knows, in the abstract, for instance, that\nmonogamy is an economic expression; yet individuals participating in\nmonogamy would be horrified at the suggestion that they were confirming\nan economic expression. Marriage is not an economic expression, but\na \u2018sacrament.\u2019 Havelock-Ellis says: \u2018Since marriage is not a mere\ncontract, but a fact of conduct, and even a sacred fact, the free\nparticipation of both parties is needed to maintain it.\u2019 And not only\nis the economic significance of monogamous marriage concealed by an\nargument of spiritual significance, but by a biological argument\nas well. Havelock-Ellis further says: \u2018Monogamy, in the fundamental\nbiological sense, represents the natural order into which the majority\nof sexual facts will always naturally fall, because it is the\nrelationship which most adequately corresponds to all the physical and\nspiritual facts involved.\u2019 (Compare Shelley\u2019s argument that polygamy\nwas a biological necessity because the noble horse was polygamous.)\n\nThere develops, as a counterpart to public sex, not private sex but\nacademic sex, sex the tradition rather than sex the practice. Sex shows\nitself proudly as an art. It _is_ art. And as it is the male not the\nfemale who tends to express himself traditionally as _man_, art is male\nart. It is therefore foolish to point out that there have been very few\ngreat women artists: why should one look for women artists at all in\nmale art? Art is to man the academic idea of woman, a private play with\nher in public. It is therefore foolish to point out that many artists,\nperhaps the best, are homosexual. They are not homosexual. Art is their\nwench.\n\nBy man\u2019s abstractness of mind is meant his personal anonymity; he is a\npublic creature, only mathematically existent. By woman\u2019s concreteness\nof mind is meant the individuality (man calls it \u2018reality\u2019) he\nrecognizes in her and which he attempts under cover of love, to\nsteal. Woman wears clothes, man wears a social uniform. Woman is\nindividual-power (brain); man is mass-power (brawn). Therefore man,\nthough individually a negative force, is as a unit a positive force;\ndefeating woman as a unit, since the fact that she is individually a\npositive force makes her collectively a negative force. Here is the\nsecret of man\u2019s power over woman and of a woman\u2019s power over a man.\n\nThe mysterious \u2018reality\u2019 of woman is responsible for her mysterious\nposition. The only way to correct this position is for her to make\na mystery of man, to flatter, cajole, bully him into individuality.\nFeminism\u2019s great mistake is in concentrating on woman rather than on\nman. Concentration on woman can only increase the mysteriousness of her\nposition.\n\nThe antithesis between intellectual and intuitional faculties is\nreally an antithesis between conventionality and unconventionality.\nMrs. Willa Muir, is a short essay on _Woman_, says: \u2018Unconscious\nlife creates, for example, human beings: conscious life creates, for\nexample, philosophy.\u2019 Human beings are not created by woman\u2019s intuition\n(Mrs. Muir should know this), but by the fertilization of the female\novum by the male sperm. What is meant is that philosophy springs from\nthe conventional male mind; but that human beings spring from the\nunconventional female body; and that the female mind is therefore also\nunconventional.\n\nThe male mind is conventional because the male body is a mere\nconvention. The female body is unconventional because it is\nindividualistic: man gets somewhat socially and vaguely just children,\nwoman gets personally and precisely _a_ child. The female mind is\ntherefore unconventional because it is individualistic, that is,\nbecause woman is physically an individual to a degree to which man\nis not. Therefore man is intellectual, woman is intuitional: man is\nunconquerable monotony, woman conquerable variety. He has a formal,\nvacant simplicity, she has an informal, experimental complexity.\nTherefore, since he cannot be entrusted with creating human beings and\nshe can, she must not be entrusted with creating philosophy, which is\nall he can be entrusted with. She is not good enough to be entrusted\nwith creating philosophy because she is intuitional: she is too good to\nbe entrusted with creating philosophy because she is unconventional.\n\nIt is fair to generalize about man because he is a generalization,\nunfair to generalize about woman because she is not. Man is male,\nman is \u2018the sex,\u2019 not woman; woman is temperamentally unisexual, a\nperson; for this reason perhaps a mystery. Her sex play is literal,\nhard, matter-of-fact, truly theatrical; the rest is unconventional,\na mystery. With man, all is sex; he cannot easily grasp the dualism\nnecessary to any real individual sense. His play is symbolical,\nrealistic; it is \u2018the reality,\u2019 protracted by a tiresome, childish\npatience that never wears out. Woman, to save herself from boredom,\nis obliged to enliven the scene with a few gratuitous falsetto turns,\nwhich he interprets as co-operation. Even at his boldest man cannot\nget beyond a conventional anarchism. He cannot see that he is on a\nstage and therefore he cannot see that it is possible to get off; so\nthat his performance is continuous. And he will perhaps never learn\nthat anarchism is not enough. His fine phallus-proud works-of-art,\nhis pretty masterpieces of literature, painting, sculpture and music,\nbear down upon woman\u2019s maternal indulgence; she is full of admiration,\nkind but weary. When, she sighs, will man grow up, when will he become\nwoman, when will she have companions instead of children?\n\n\n\n\nLETTER OF ABDICATION\n\n\nI have done all I could for you, but the only consequence is that you\nare the same as always. I had the alternative of ordering a general\nmassacre, but I should then have had to go away anyhow. It is simpler\nto abdicate. It certainly makes no difference to the situation whether\nI leave you behind dead or alive. Therefore I will leave you behind\nalive, to afford myself the bitter satisfaction of telling you what I\nthink of you. You will not listen any more than you would if you were\ndead, but I should not address you if you were dead. Therefore I will\nleave you behind alive, to afford myself the bitter satisfaction of\ntelling you what I think of you.\n\nYou are not gay. You are sticky instead of rubbery. You represent\nyourself with priggish sincerity instead of mimicking yourself\nwith grotesque accuracy. Because you are photographs you think the\nphotographs are originals. You think seeing is being.\n\nYou do not know what you are. I will tell you, though it will not\nmake the least difference to you, since you do not know what you\nare. You are a conceit. You are what you are not. You are a very fine\npoint of discrimination. But since you do not discriminate, since you\nare not gay, since you think what you are is what you are, therefore\nyou are not: this indeed is why massacre was unnecessary. You are\nblind, from seeing; you cannot appreciate the identity of opposites.\nYou are feeble, from a loutish strength of doing; so that you cannot\nsurpass doing, let doing instead of yourselves do; so that you cannot\nrepose. You are cowards, afraid to be more than perfect and more than\nformal; so that you are only what you are; you have the perfection of\nmediocrity, not the irregularity of perfection. You are superstitious;\nyou will season the dish with salt, but you will not taste salt\nitself. You are ignorant; not only do you not know what you are; you\ndo not know what you are not. You are lazy; you will do only one thing\nat a time; you will act; but you will not act and not act. You are\ncriminal; what you do is all positive, wicked, damaging; you make no\nretractions, contradictions, proofs of innocence. You are without\nhonour; over-sincere; hypocritical.\n\nI will tell you a story which is in my mind at the moment and may\ntherefore have some bearing on the question. There was once a woman\nwhose mind was as active as her body. And there was once a man who was\nconstituted in the same way. And the combination of them produced a\nchild which was all mind and no body. And no one knew about it. She\nwas, naturally, a woman. Her parents gave her no name but referred\nto her in a historical manner as \u2018The Deliverer.\u2019 Whenever anything\nwent wrong in any part of the world she put it right because she was\nall mind. But no one knew about it and so it made no difference. When\nthey became quite hopeless her parents referred to her merely as \u2018The\nAngel.\u2019 In the end she was plain \u2018she\u2019 to them. At her death she became\nall body, and her parents, frenzied with disappointment, drove her out.\nAnd no one knew about it. Her parents gave her no name but referred to\nher in a historical manner as \u2018The Destroyer.\u2019 Whenever anything went\nright in any part of the world she put it wrong again because she was\nall body. But no one knew about it and so it made no difference. When\nthey became quite hopeless her parents referred to her merely as \u2018The\nBeast.\u2019 In the end she was plain \u2018she\u2019 to them. At her death she became\nall mind, and her parents, frenzied with disappointment, took her in\nagain. And no one knew about it.\n\nThis is the story which was in my mind and which may have some bearing\non the question. The point of it is, I think, that we are all in an\nimpossible position; which you handle by making less, myself more,\nimpossible. For example, it is unlikely that the story that I have\njust told you would ever have occurred to you. Or if it had, you would\nhave broken down in the middle and called it the end. You stop half-way\nround the circle in order to spare yourself the humiliation of missing\nthe true end, which is not perceptible in the ordinary way. Indeed if\nit is not perceived, it makes no difference, the circle goes round and\nround upon you. On the other hand, it makes no difference even if it\nis perceived, except the difference of perceiving it, which makes the\nposition, as I have said, more rather than less impossible. So do as\nyou like.\n\nBut I shall abdicate if you do, and since you do, I abdicate. You are\nall asleep, because being awake means being dreamless, and you can only\nbe awake by dreaming to be awake, by dreaming to be dreamless. You turn\nyour back on your own non-existence and are therefore non-existent.\nWhen you love, you turn your back on what you love. When you sweep,\nyou turn your back on the dirt. When you think, you turn your back on\nyour mind. Well, keep looking the other way so that I can kick you\nwhere you deserve to be kicked. And you will not turn on me but flatter\nyourselves that you are having spasms of profundity.\n\nAnyway, this is how it is, little wise-bottoms. There is Cleopatra,\nRome, Napoleon and so forth on one side, and there is the future on\nthe other side, and there you are in the middle alive. There is that\ngreat churning, that continuous tossing up and making of a middle,\nthat bright ferment of centrality; and it is you. My o my o my o, what\na thing! But when it was Cleopatra, Rome, Napoleon or any of them of\nthen, or when it will be who it will be, my o my o my o, what a thing.\nIt was not, it will not be you. And what was you and what will you be?\nYou was and you will be dead. And why? Because you are alive now. But\ncome a little closer, darlings, that I may kick you a little harder.\nListen: if you was dead and if you will be dead, each of you, then you\nmust be dead now, each of you, you must be dead and alive. Now o now\no now o, pumpkins, don\u2019t cry. For just think: there is that great big\nlive middle and it is nice and warm and it is you. But it may also be\nit. And what would become of you then out in the cold if you didn\u2019t\ntake yourselves in, if you weren\u2019t also you, if you weren\u2019t each of you\ndead as well as alive? And what difference does it make? None whatever,\npets, except the difference of a difference that makes no difference.\n\nI will argue further against what I am arguing for. The you which is\nyou is only you, and not only dead but invisible. And you can never be\nthis you unless you see the you which is it and every one hard round\nthe circle to the end, where you can no longer see, and are you alone.\nAnd the result, if you do this? You will be so alive that you will be\ndeader than ever; you will have achieved the identity of opposites; you\nwill have brought two counter-processes to rub noses, the you which you\nare not, which is you alone, and the you which you are, which is it,\nevery one, not you--and much good may it do you, except to make you\ndeader than ever. And the result, if you do not do this? You will save\nthat much life from death, and much good may it do you--enough to wipe\nyour nose on, when it runs with nervousness at the thought that you\nwill have to die anyway.\n\nYes, I once knew a woman who spent all her time washing her linen, in\norder to be always fresh and sweet smelling. But as she was always\nwashing dirty linen and thus making the linen she wore dirtier than\nit might have been if she had washed less, she smelled of nothing but\ndirty linen. Any why? Because she was over-sincere and a hypocrite. She\ngot stranded in the fact of clean linen instead of moving on to the\neffect of clean linen, which is the end of the circle. And you are all\nlike that.\n\nAnd again. Believing it to be you alone and that you are only what you\nare, think what a small, mean, cosy, curly, pink and puny figure you\ncut when you set out to be it at a party of it\u2019s, naked as in your own\nbath. Whereas, ladies and gentlemen, if you understood the identity of\nopposites, your nakedness would be an invisibility which you would\nhave to dress large, from the point of view of visibility. And to\nthis it-ish rather than you-ish exterior you would add an even larger\nand looser-fitting social skin, a house in most it-ish order, a most\nit-ish interior, in fact. But you do not understand. \u2018Boo-hoo!\u2019 you\ncry. \u2018What, hide our naked hearts, paralyse our heroic breasts, sit\nupon our grave bottoms, swallow back our great acts?\u2019 \u2018Hush-a-bye,\u2019 I\nreply, \u2018there is enough going on for you forrard without your great\nacts: drinks free, if you will only drink, scenery on view, if you will\nonly look, music keeping step for you if you will only supply the feet.\nInstead of spending money on what you can only get for nothing. Life,\nlads, is a charity feed the fun of which is in everybody pretending\nto be a swell and everybody treating everybody else like a swell and\neverybody knowing everybody is a fraud and no matter. No matter because\nof death, in which each may be rich and proud, and no fooling. And\nyour great acts? When you are bursting with fraud and charity and can\nstand no more, sneak aft and do your great acts, like private retchings\nand acts of death. If they will not come on, repeat to a point of\nmechanical conviction some formula of dreary finality, such as, \u201cThe\nfathers of our girl friends are lecherous,\u201d or \u201cPhilosophy is teetotal\nwhisky.\u201d\u2019\n\nBut you are all sluts, your efforts are not biggish, and so your fine\npoints are only untidy and trivial. If you would neatly calculate, you\nmust calculate grossly the whole pattern of it, which is the making\nof the middle; you must conceive first tremendously, then accurately;\nyou must grasp the general initiative which is it not you. From this,\nif your application be fine enough, the fine points will resolve\nthemselves. But remember you are no fine small point yourself; you\nare more and less than one; you are the littlishness of biggishness;\nyou are no fine small point but a fine small point of discrimination.\nMy o my o my o, what a thing, poor beastie, to be but dainty when\nyou would be statistical. The best of you are the worst of you: they\nover-discriminate, put their hand to their chin, stand upon taste, pick\nthe highest and most delicately scorched plum, and then choke over the\nstone, dying the death of an \u00e6sthete. For what is a single plum, too\nfine for the eye and not fine enough for the throat?\n\nI might advise you to think; but you are over-eager, all for gain. And\nthought is just a power of potentiality; as you are of it; as death is\nof life; without gain. You would make potentiality where there is none,\nin order to have more thought than is possible; you would turn the\nfuture into a bank, as you now do the past, from greed of time.\n\nOr I might say: \u2018Have shame.\u2019 But you would only expose yourselves\na little more outrageously and hang your heads a little lower. You\nwould not understand that only truly abandoned boldness breeds truly\nabandoned decorum. Your interpretations are ignoble and indecent.\nYou begin with contradictions instead of ending with them; efface\nthem instead of developing them. As, for example, with sex: you seize\nupon it at the beginning, tease it, worry it, transform it, until you\nthink you have ironed it out thoroughly, whereas you have only ironed\nyourselves out thoroughly. While if you had not seized upon it, you\nwould have found it at the end of the circle, had you reached the\nend, an achieved confirmation of the impossibility that makes things\npossible.\n\nThis is one of my favourite subjects; if I were not abdicating I might\ndiscuss it elaborately, for your good. Since I am abdicating, I will\ndiscuss it simply, for my own good; for it is one of my favourite\nsubjects. The balance of interest in man, I should say, is with the\nmaking, with it, with life; in woman, with the breaking of the making\ninto the you which is you alone, into death. Woman is at the end of the\ncircle, she has only to rearrive at herself; man has first to learn\nthat there is an end, before he can set out for it. And the learning\nhe scorns as childish and the setting out as a deathbed rite. Woman\nhe counts passive because she is at the end, and inferior because,\nbeing there, she turns round and starts all over again, to rearrive at\nherself. He adores her when she remains passive, that is his inferior;\nand despises her when she becomes his equal, that is, his superior.\nWell, they are worthless, both orders, when they are no more than\nthey are. And when they are more than they are they are of no use to\nanyone but themselves; which is right but sudden and perhaps too mean\nfor these mean times. For myself, I might confess to you, now that we\nare parting, that my happiest hours have been spent in the brotherly\nembrace of a humbug, not from want of womanliness in me or humbuggery\nin him, but because I was queen and needed repose. Ah me ah me ah me,\nwhat is this all about?\n\nAnd such stickiness. How am I better than the rest of you? Because I\nhave converted stickiness into elasticity and made myself free without\nwrenching myself free like a wayward pellet of paste. And what of\nso-and-so, your popular idol and my late consort? He was a strong\nman, powerfully sticky but not elastic; when he moved, he carried you\nalong with him, he could not have moved otherwise, freely. And so he\nhad great moments but not free moments. He was terribly alive but too\nterribly, never more than alive. He was merely monstrous, without\nthe littlishness of biggishness. And what of so-and-so, my sometime\nlover? He was indeed a darling but an insufferable fop, washing away\nthe stickiness till there was nothing left of him. And many others were\ndarlings, of a sticky gracefulness and rhythm. But send me no more\ncandidates, their embraces are either too heavy or too feeble; and I\nam light, hollow with death, but strong, of a tough, lively, it-ish\nexterior.\n\nThat is the trouble. You have no comprehension of appearance, what it\nis. Appearance is everything, what you are, what you are not. But your\nreach is sticky, not elastic; and so you get no further than reality, a\npathetic proportion. Appearance is where the circle meets itself, where\nyou live and do not live, where you are and are not dead. Appearance is\neverything, and nothing; bright and uppermost in a woman, to be sunk\ndarkly inward; dumb, blind, darkly imbedded in a man, to be thrust\nbrutally outward.\n\nNo, I am not confused, my blinking intelligences, but understand too\nclearly, and that is the trouble. I am unnecessary to you and therefore\nabdicate. Nor do I deny that blinking is sufficient for your purposes,\nwhich are sincere rather than statistical. Or that it would be for\nmine, for that matter--if I had purposes instead of queenliness.\nWhich is my weakness, if you like--the tiresomeness of insisting upon\nthe necessity of what is not necessary. I admit all; I am not wise\nbut insistent, I am an unpaid hack of accuracy. I was queen from\ntiresomeness, and I abdicate from tiresomeness. I am not enjoying\nmyself.\n\nBut perhaps you would like to know a little of my history, before I\nretire finally. My mother imagined that she suffered from bad eyesight;\nand to make it worse she wore a stocking round her eyes whenever\npossible: at home, a white stocking; abroad, a black stocking; and\noccasionally, to depress circumstances completely, a grey sock of my\nfather\u2019s, fastened at the back of her head with a safety-pin. From\nwhich, our house was full of small oval rugs made by my mother out of\nthe mates of the stockings which she wore round her eyes and which\nshe was always losing. And these rugs made by my mother were not well\nmade, because she imagined that she suffered from bad eyesight. From\nwhich my mother, whose character was all dreariness, acquired in my\nmind a hateful oddness. From which, I resolved to outdo her in oddness,\nso that I not only imagined that I suffered from good eyesight: I did\nactually suffer from it. And with this effect, that by the time I was\nof age I had no more than one rug, and this was very large and square,\nand it was well made, and not by me, though I suffered extremely from\ngood eyesight. I lived far away from my mother, having no connection\nwith her except to insist that she live far away from me; and my rug\nwas composed of many small squares; and the pattern of each square\nwas different; and yet the whole harmonious because the stuff was\nprovided by me--the finest silk and velvet rags that I could command\nfrom others, and which I sorted and returned to them to be made into\nsquares, a square by each of them. And so each who made a square was\nmy subject. And so I became Queen. Perhaps now you will understand\nme better. But I am determined to abdicate, however you dissuade me.\nBefore I was in reach of your praise, and liked neither your praise nor\nlack of it. It would not improve my feelings to put myself in reach of\nyour pity. It was not for this that I told you my story. I told you my\nstory to make my abdication irrevocable.\n\nYes, even now, it is painful to leave you. Not because I love you but\nbecause I am still untired; and after I leave you there will be no more\nto do. I shall indeed be more untired than ever. For while I was with\nyou I worked hard (as you will not deny) and achieved a certain formal\nqueenly tiredness from being unable to tire myself out no matter how\nhard I worked. But now concealment will be impossible: my insistence,\nthat before I tried to make pleasant to myself (and to others) by\ntrying to interest it in your affairs, will in the future be plainly\nhorrible, as everything is horrible if sufficiently disinterested, that\nis, insistent. But the horror of my insistence will not be known to\nyou, because I am abdicating. Nor am I to be dissuaded. The stroke that\nputs me in reach of your pity puts me out of reach of it as well.\n\nI have said more than enough to satisfy my contempt of you. But I once\nloved you; and I have not punished myself sufficiently for that. What\ndo I mean when I say that I once loved you? That I knew that being\nalive for you and me meant being more than alive. But you were afraid\nto admit it, though I was willing to take all the responsibility upon\nmyself. Then I tried pretending to be just alive, I became for a time\na partisan of timidity, in order to show you that being just alive\nwas just pretending to be just alive. But when, aside, I reached\nfor your hand, to press it, you dishonourably misunderstood me, you\nput me in the loathsome position of flirting with you. Then I tried\nextorting from you everything by means of which you lived, to show you\nthat when you did not live you still lived. But again you wilfully\nmisunderstood me and over-exerted yourself to supply me with what you\nthought to be my needs and what you assumed to be yours; and stubbornly\nrefused to not live; and were disappointed when I did not applaud\nyour inexhaustibility. And then once more I tried. I loaded you with\nfavours in order to show you that nothing made any difference; that the\nmost as well as the least that you could endure by belonged to being\njust alive; that you were more than alive, dead. But you repulsed me\nwith praise and gratitude; as you would now with pity and ingratitude\nif I permitted.\n\nThen I said: \u2018I will leave them alone. I will content myself with being\nqueen. Perhaps if I play my part conscientiously, at no time abandoning\nmy royal manner, they will admit everything of their own accord,\nlike a good, kind, though stupid, timid people.\u2019 But my grandeur you\ninterpreted meanly as the grandeur of being just alive, instead of\ngrandly, as the showy meanness of being just alive. You watched me act\nand admired my performance, but credited me with sincerity rather than\ntalent; you refused to act yourself, paralysed by the emotions of an\naudience. My challenge, my drastic insistence, made you if anything\nmore timid than you already were. You were hypnotized with admiration,\nyou were, from the vanity you took in watching me, less than just\nalive. The men behaved more disgracefully than the women because to be\na woman requires a strong theatrical sense: requires of one who is more\nthan man to be less than man. For this reason I took many lovers, to\nhumble back as many as possible into activity. And this brought all of\nus to where we were in the beginning. And so I abdicate, leaving you\nonce more to your heroism. With it you were intolerable to me; without\nit you were not only intolerable to me, but you would have eventually\nbecome intolerable to yourselves, especially after I had left you.\n\nYou know only how to be either heroes or cowards. But you do not know\nhow to outwit yourselves by being neither, though seeming to be both.\n\u2018What,\u2019 you say indignantly, \u2018would you have us be nothing?\u2019 Ah, my\ndear people, if you could you would all shortly become Queens.\n\nBut perhaps it is best that you cannot. For if you became Queens you\nwould in time find it necessary to abdicate, as I have; and you would,\nlike me, be left extremely unhappy, of having succeeded in yourselves\nbut failed in others.\n\nYes, it is true that I concealed from you the colour of my eyes. But\nthe distance at which I kept you from myself was precisely the distance\nbetween being just alive and being more than alive. I was giving you a\nlesson in space, not a rebuff. Since we are at the end of things, you\nmay come close to me and look well into my eyes; but since you have not\nlearned your lesson, you will still remain ignorant of their colour.\nGood-bye. I am going back to my mirror, where I came from.\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n[1] Mr. Lewis takes a fierce, acquisitive joy in being right: as\nif it were an honour to be right, and his unique honour. But many\npeople, alas, are right, only with more quietness and less joy than\nMr. Lewis. To be right (to see wrong) is properly a sad, not a joyous\nmental condition. To be right in Mr. Lewis\u2019s manner is to become a\nself-appointed destroyer of wrong; and so to make oneself a candidate\nfor destruction, in turn. To be right in his manner--so righteously\nright--is to be God; and so to chasten every one into wrong.\n\n[2] The adultishness of the individual-real is an abhorrence (as Mr.\nLewis shows it to be) of intellectualism (organized fear) in the\nup-to-date White mass, which to Mr. Lewis is sentimental Bolshevism,\nBohemianism. But such an abhorrence of intellectualism in the\nup-to-date White mass, if one is not careful, becomes (as in Mr. Lewis)\nan adultish championship of intellectualism (organized bravado) in a\nprivileged White few (as any _system_ of individualism must mean by\nindividualism the individualism of a few)--a sentimental Toryism, in\nfact, Academianism. And in what few? The few, of course, swept aside\nby the time-current; the few, indeed, who might be truly individual\nwere they not organized into a system of individualism. Mr. Lewis\u2019s\nToryism would be perhaps apt if he were trying to be only politically,\nnot philosophically right as well. But in the circumstances his satire\nis as irrelevant to his right, which is philosophical, as Swift\u2019s\nwould have been, had it been philosophical, to his right, which was\npolitical. The only satire relevant to a philosophical right is a\nsatire like Blake\u2019s: Blake\u2019s faith showed the people who were wrong\nto be enemies, it was not a system organizing himself into an enemy.\nMr. Lewis does not like Blake because he said that the roads of genius\n(right) were crooked: Mr. Lewis believes that the roads of right should\nbe systematic, that the person who is right should be an enemy, a\nrighteous, sentimental Tory rather than a sad though angry spirit.\n\n[3] The symbolism of the individual-real in its scientific aspects is\nbest explained in C. K. Ogden\u2019s and I. A. Richards\u2019 _The Meaning of\nMeaning_. In this confused mixture of philosophy, psychology, ethnology\nand literature it is just possible to distinguish between what is meant\nby \u2018bad\u2019 and \u2018good\u2019 symbolism. To begin with, the assumption must\nbe made for both varieties of symbolism that words mean nothing by\nthemselves. Bad symbolism is apparently the use of words for collective\npropagandist purposes which distort the \u2018referents\u2019 (original objects\nor events) of which the words are signs; good symbolism makes language\nnot an instrument of purposes but of the \u2018real\u2019 objects or events for\nwhich it provides a sort of mathematic of signs. Words in this reformed\ngrammar are thus not vulgar stage-players of images; they are certified\nscientific representatives of the natural objects, or constructions of\nobjects called events, which man\u2019s mind, like a dust-cloud, is assumed\nto obscure from himself. To Mr. Ogden and Mr. Richards language is\nideally a neutral region of literalness between reality and its human\nperception. Signs (of which language is this precise mathematical\ngrammar), being the closest the perceiving mind can come to reality,\nmust for convenience be regarded as reality itself; the more faithfully\nthey are defined as signs, the more literally they represent\nreality. There is no evidence anywhere in this book that perception\nis properly anything other than a slave of reality. Disobedient\nperception--language by itself--is an \u2018Enchanted Wood of Words.\u2019 There\nis no hint that individual perception, instead of making a separate\napproximation of the general sign conveying the object, does in fact\nwhere originality is maintained experience a revulsion from the object\nor event concerned. No hint that the very genesis or _utterance_ of a\nsign is an assertion of the independence of the mind against what the\nauthors call the sign-situation. Or that the mind is a dust-cloud only\nwhen perceptively organized to define reality. Or that language is only\nan Enchanted Wood of Words when the dragon Reality is searched for in\nit. Or that words are literal man, not \u2018main topics of discussion,\u2019 not\nliteral perception or the science of reality.\n\nThe conclusion of this study, if one has patience to extract a\nconclusion from this science-proud collation of verbal niceties, is\nthat man has no right to meaning: meaning is the property of reality,\nwhich is to be known scientifically only through symbols, which in\nturn are to be regulated as to interpretation by limitations on the\nuse of symbols, called definitions. \u2018But in most matters the possible\ntreachery of words can only be controlled through definitions, and the\ngreater the number of such alternative locutions available the less\nis the risk of discrepancy, provided that we do not suppose symbols\nto have \u201cmeaning\u201d on their own account, and so people the world with\nfictitious entities.\u2019\n\nBut what, then, in this stabilizing of the scientific or symbolic use\nof words, is to happen to poetry, which is assumed as the deliberately\nunscientific use of words? Poetry, it appears, deals with evocative\nas opposed to symbolic speech. \u2018In evocative speech the essential\nconsideration is the character of the attitude aroused.\u2019 The corollary\nto this proposition, which the authors imperfectly and insincerely\ndevelop, is that there is no true antithesis between evocative\n(partisan) speech and symbolic (logical) speech. We deduce that\nevocative speech is in fact not an independent speech of its own but a\npersuasive quality that may be added to symbolic speech: the \u2018attitude\naroused,\u2019 that is, is an attitude toward _something_--evocative\n(poetic) speech is false _by itself_ (in opposition to symbolic\nspeech), it is scientifically admissible only where it shows close\ndependence on symbols meaningless in themselves but showing close,\nscientific dependence on reality.\n\nThis deduction we find confirmed in a little book by Mr. I. A.\nRichards, _Science and Poetry_. \u2018The essential peculiarity of poetry as\nof all the arts is that the full appropriate situation is not present.\u2019\nThe fact that poetry is evocative rather then symbolic gives it a\nfreedom from the hard-and-fast laws of reality that often enables it\nto convey a more faithful impression of the \u2018real thing,\u2019 by a sort of\nloyal lying, than would painfully truthful symbolic speech. Thus, by\nmaking symbolism the purpose of science rather than of art (as it is\nin the vulgar collective-real) Mr. Richards is able to allow poetry\n(always by scientific leave, of course) certain aristocratic latitudes\nof expression--a certain rhetorical _finesse_--that it lacks when it\nis erroneously used as symbolic (pseudo-scientific) speech. Poetry as\nsymbolic speech is only figurative speech; it invents a fairy-story\nof reality. Poetry as evocative speech takes its clue from external\n(scientific) symbols of reality rather than from internal (imaginative)\nsymbols of reality--it means, in Mr. Richards\u2019 words, \u2018The transference\nfrom the magical view of the world to the scientific.\u2019\n\nIn the magical view the \u2018pseudo-statements\u2019 of poetry were connected\nwith belief. In the scientific view they are disconnected from belief;\nwe are returned to the assumption scattered through the pages of\n_The Meaning of Meaning_, that man has no right to meaning. The poet\narmed with the scientific view accepts the \u2018contemporary background\u2019\nas tentative meaning: so that \u2018the essential consideration is the\ncharacter of the attitude aroused.\u2019 This attitude has literary licence\naccording to the degree of scientific acceptance: the more complete the\nacceptance, the greater the \u2018independence\u2019 (meaninglessness) of the\npoetry.\n\nPoetry is according to such criticism, therefore, a socially beneficial\naffirmation of reality by means of a denial, or phantasization, of\nindividual mind. In symbolic (magic) poetic speech reality itself is\nthe principal of the fairy story; in evocative (scientific) poetic\nspeech the principal of the fairy-story is the individual mind. In both\ncases the one belief from which the poetic mind must not disconnect\nitself is the belief in reality; which proves itself in either case to\nbe only the most advanced \u2018contemporary background\u2019 appreciable.\n\n[4] Except here!\n\n[5] As instead of opposing a fine sexual indifference to the sexual\nimpotence or sentimental feminism that he finds in modern life he\nflaunts a sentimental Spartan masculinity.\n\n[6] Deity to the collective-realist is reality as symbolic oneness; to\nthe individual-realist, reality as rationalistic oneness. To the former\ntherefore personality is an instrument for conceiving emotionally\nthe mass character of this oneness; to the latter, an instrument\nfor corroborating intellectually the individualistic character of\nthis oneness. (Intellectual democracy as opposed to intellectual\nanarchy.) Mr. Lewis says: \u2018We have a god-like experience in that only\u2019\n(personality). The collective-realist would say: \u2018We have a god-like\nexperience in that only\u2019 (personality). The only difference between\nthese two expressions is political. \u2018Evidences of a oneness seem\neverywhere apparent,\u2019 Mr. Lewis says. \u2018But we _need_, for practical\npurposes, the illusion of a plurality.\u2019 The \u2018practical purposes\u2019 are,\npresumably, the necessity of protecting this democratic oneness from\nthe democratic mass: \u2018plurality\u2019 here means the plurality of the\nfew. It is comprehensible, then, that Catholic thought should, by\nits scholasticism, appeal to Mr. Lewis--the political wisdom of an\ninstitution that keeps a small body of well-paid intelligentsia to\nadminister Godhood to the not so individualistic, the not so well-paid\nworshipping mass. And Mr. Lewis is here at one with his rather more\nscholastic colleague in individualism, Mr. Eliot, who with his French\nco-litt\u00e9rateurs phrases the conflict between symbolic oneness and\nrationalistic oneness, or symbolic personality and rationalistic\npersonality, more elegantly as the conflict between intuition and\nintelligence (between the feeling whole and the thinking whole, in\nMr. Lewis\u2019s language). Individuality to the individualist is thus an\nintellectual fiction, as to the collective-realist it is the oneness\nwhich is the fiction (\u2018Human individuality is best regarded as a\nkind of artificial Godhood\u2019--Mr. Lewis. And again: \u2018We at least must\n_pretend_ not to notice each other\u2019s presence, God and ourselves to be\nalone.\u2019)--the difference here being merely the difference between a\nsentimentalized Tory absolute and a sentimentalized Communist absolute.\n\n[7] Spenglerism is male religiosity and symbolism of the vulgar\nromantic as opposed to the refined classical kind. \u2018The Faustian\nsoul looks for an immortality to follow the bodily end, a sort of\nmarriage with endless space ... till at last nothing remains visible\nbut the indwelling depth-and-height energy of this self-extension.\u2019\nThe historical mind (the \u2018Faustian soul\u2019) overcomes its perpetual\ntemporariness by a perpetual give-and-take between itself and the Great\nMother reality, whom it honours with its philosophical erections (what\nHerr Spengler calls third-dimensional extension) and from whom it\nreceives sensations of infinity--the Great Mother\u2019s gratitude for this\nmasculine \u2018conquest\u2019 of herself. To the Spenglerist (the modernist)\nthis infinity is vague, collective, metaphorical: \u2018somehow we are in\nnature\u2019; somehow \u2018the \u201cI\u201d overwhelms the \u201cThou.\u201d\u2019 The scientific world,\nthe Great Mother, is dead; it is the fairy-tale brought to life in each\nfresh embrace of it by the historical world. To the individual-realist\n(the classicist) the masculine extension is actual and personal rather\nthan metaphorical and collective: the fairy-tale individual mind\nacquires an immediate ahistorical liveliness from its intercourse with\nthe Great Scientific Mother. Herr Spengler despises the classical\nahistorical attitude to reality. But overstudiously; for it is rather\nmore than less than modern; it is based on the minute of the moment,\nnot on the age of the moment. Both the collective-realist and the\nindividual-realist function by sexual phantasia; the only difference\nbetween them being that the latter claims to be able to have closer\ncontact with the Great Mother than the former--one merely historically,\nthrough the experience of the time-group to which he belongs, the other\nscientifically, through _his_ experience _now_.\n\n[8] These positions might perhaps be more clearly illustrated in their\nrespective attitudes to place. The collective-realist is poetically\nattached to the idea of the _there_; reality is romantic, far-away,\ncollective--superior to the personal _here_; it is the eternally old\nfountain of eternal youthfulness. From this feeling comes the morbid\nfondness of Western man for other races, so severely condemned by\nMr. Lewis. The individual-realist is poetically attached to the idea\nof the _here_; reality is classical, local, individual--superior to\nthe collective _there_; it is the eternally old fountain of eternal\nadultishness. The first attitude ends in doctrinaire universalism,\nthe second in doctrinaire provincialism: both the collective-realist\nand the individual-realist believe in the social significance of\nlocality, differing only in their location of locality. Both, in\nfact, suffer from this obsession with social significance. Take, for\nexample, niggerish jazz: its real strength and attraction is that it\nis movement free from significance; pure, ritualistic, barbaric social\npleasure that can only be properly understood and enjoyed by those who\nunderstand and enjoy the civilized individuality of significance. To\nthe romantic universalist niggerish jazz is a religious devotion of the\nsensations to eternal youthfulness. To the classical provincialist it\nis a depraved, democratic infantilism. Both emotionalize it, the one\nas elevation, the other as degradation: to one the jazz nigger is the\nangel-symbol, to the other the devil-symbol. While the only one able\nto intellectualize it properly is the jazz nigger himself--generally\nan individual, unreal, paleface Jew with a dusky make-up of social\nclownishness.\n\n[9] Or again, these positions might be illustrated in their respective\nattitudes to size. The collective-realist thinks of society as a\nbig, symbolical unit, the individual-realist as a small, concrete\nunit. The unreal self does not think of size, or of society, as\nsignificant concepts at all. The collective-realist makes the\nindividual emotionally as large as the many. The individual-realist\nmakes the individual intellectually as large as himself--that is,\nof a standard realistic size. The unreal self gets rid of even the\nfractional reality of the self of the individual-realist: it is not the\nquantitative nothing derided by Mr. Lewis, but a sizeless invisibility\nfrom reality. Mr. Lewis disapproves of nothing; and he disapproves of\nBradley\u2019s Absolute because \u2018he did not succeed in relieving it of a\ncertain impressive scale and impending weight.\u2019 What he seems to imply\nis an Absolute temperately placed between all and nothing--a sort of\nsafely quantitative qualitative absolute; a short, certain, academic\neternity as opposed to a vulgar, tentatively eternal eternity; a small,\nwell-bred, provincial church in which to worship a congregationalist\nAbsolute as opposed to a popular arena erected to a universalist\n(demogogic as opposed to pedagogic) Absolute.\n\n[10] We observe the same aristocratic bias in Mr. Lewis. The universal\nmind (the artist\u2019s or seeing mind) is not lodged in a collective\nall but in a selected few for all: individual-real (cultured\nanarchism) opposed to collective-real (cultured democracy) and to\nindividual-unreal (anarchism is not enough). The anarchistic, artistic,\ncritical mind is not interested in individuality as individuality but\nas superior individuality, as reason: it is an expert in reality, it\nsees what is \u2018here.\u2019 It is a poetic common-sense seeing (through its\nmonocle) a vision \u2018classical,\u2019 \u2018geometric,\u2019 \u2018severe\u2019 (\u2018\u201cClassical\u201d is\nfor me anything which is nobly defined and exact, as opposed to that\nwhich is fluid\u2019--Mr. Lewis). It does not believe in lower-class doing\nbut in upper-class thinking: _laissez-faire_ anarchism. It is against\nviolent sympathies and antipathies; it is provincial but informed.\nReason is aloof, courteous prejudice (\u2018we should grow more and more\npolite\u2019--Mr. Lewis); intelligent conventionality, haughty submission\nto reality. For example, Mr. Lewis\u2019s objections to Bolshevism only\napply to it where it is in action, not anarchistic; not to Bolshevism\nas a polite \u2018vision\u2019--that is, in so far as it is the gospel of an\nuncultured many rather than the dogma of a cultured few.\n\n[11] Again we perceive the same emphasis on superior as opposed to\nplain, ordinary individuality. The man of reason is an aristocrat of\nrace-individuality; the race, of course, being a superior race--if it\nwere not superior it would be unendowed with reason. But (and this is\na point for which we must be grateful to Mr. Lewis) race-superiority\n(individuality) is administered for the whole race by only one class in\nthe race; so that while \u2018char-lady\u2019 is lady by race, she is not lady\nby class (lady of reason). Char-ladies who confuse race with class\nand forget their place do so \u2018to their undoing.\u2019 Their undoing is\napparently a muddy-watery, unladylike laughter that is not, of course,\nreason. What is reason? Mr. Lewis tells us: \u2018Let us rather meet with\nthe slightest smile all those things that so far we have received with\ndelirious rapture.\u2019 The change is not so much from laughing rapture to\nhaughty smiling as from one we to another kind of we--a democratic we\nto an aristocratic we. Thus, the true we of the Machine Age is not,\naccording to Mr. Lewis, the mob but the capitalistic, anarchistic\nindividualists--the Mr. Ford\u2019s. Mr. Ford admits, Mr. Lewis points out,\nthat he could not live the life of one of his workmen. While in a\nruthlessly democratic scheme (Bolshevism or Spenglerism) there is only\na mob-life disguised as Culture. Spengler would be the ideal romantic\nmob-historian; Tacitus, possibly, the ideal classical, urbane polite,\nsmiling, anarchistic, _laissez-faire_, perspectiveless, ahistorical,\ngeometric individualist-historian. To the collective-realist the mob\nmoves, to the individual-realist it is static (\u2018The Russian workman\nand peasant under the Bolshevik is the same as he was under the Tsar,\nthough less free and minus the consolations of a religion\u2019--Mr. Lewis).\nMob-philosophy (mob-individualism, liberty, organized _laissez-faire_)\nis \u2018against human reason, motiveless and hence mad\u2019 (again Mr. Lewis).\nWhat is human reason? Mr. Lewis\u2019s \u2018young catholic student\u2019 tells us:\n\u2018not that some bank-clerk on a holiday has discovered that trees\nhave something to say for themselves.\u2019 But when some bank-president,\nsuperman or Saint \u2018traverses a wood with complete safety\u2019--that is with\nproud, rational, individualistic submission, with sedate, conventional,\ngeometric curiosity. Human reason is Authority, authority received and\nauthority administered; and it is interesting that both Mr. Lewis and\nhis young catholic student emphasize this sexual duality of reason.\nTo Mr. Lewis reason is the quiet, conventional, slightly smiling she\navailing herself of her feminine privilege to remain seated, and also\nthe conventional, brainy, impressive, standing-up he, viewing the\ngeneral situation with brilliant restraint. The young catholic student\noutlines Baron von Hugel\u2019s definition of authority: \u2018By it, the force\nand light of the few are applied to the dull majority, the highest in a\nman to his own average.\u2019 Baron von Hugel\u2019s own words on this Church of\nIndividualism (for the few), quoted by him, are: \u2018The Church is thus,\nboth ever and everywhere, progressive and conservative; both reverently\nfree-lance and official; both, as it were, male and female, creative\nand reproductive....\u2019\n\n[12] Mr. Lewis\u2019s predominant emotion is disgust and he is therefore\nsnobbishly old-fashioned; Mr. Eliot\u2019s is moral anxiety, and he is\ntherefore snobbishly \u2018advanced\u2019--what seems old-fashioned or medi\u00e6val\nor Thomist in Mr. Eliot is really his greater (than the silly\nemotional orthodox mob\u2019s) strictness in keeping up-to-date, in time\nwith the universe of reason. He is at pains to discover the right\nside and to fight on it. Mr. Lewis is so disgusted with everything\nthat he has abandoned all positive questions of right, and like a\nSwiss, retained nothing but his fighting conscience, a haughtiness of\nbearing in which alone he finds himself in sympathy with Mr. Eliot. In\nmatters of faith they must certainly disagree. Mr. Eliot\u2019s Toryism is\nmodern, intellectual, in sober perspective. Mr. Lewis\u2019s is petulantly\nold-fashioned, sentimental, \u2018geometric\u2019: the good, Swiss stern old days\nwhen everything happened anyhow, without historical significance or\nmorality, are his fighting, anarchistic slogan against the presumptuous\nmob-consciousness of modern life. What Mr. Lewis fails to see is\nthat if he devoted his energy to individualism (cultivating his own\nindividuality) instead of anarchism (knocking the mob on the head\nwith his individuality) the mob might develop a social regularity, an\nautomatic geometricity that even he might share in without disturbance\nto his individuality; that it is the anarchism of a few that gives\nfalse historical significance to the days of man, not the co-operative\nunanimity of the many.\n\n[13] See, for example, in Mr. Lewis\u2019s _Time and Western Man_, the\nchapter _The Object as King of the Physical World_.\n\n[14] To Mr. Lewis, Science, popularized magic, rather than Reason,\nthe artist\u2019s personal magic. (Compare, similarly, New Testament\npseudo-primitive communism, with properly modernized Old Testament\nindividualism.)\n\n[15] \u2018I, of course, admit that the principle I advocate is not for\neverybody.\u2019--Mr. Lewis.\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber\u2019s Notes\n\n\n  The book cover image that accompanies some ebook formats was made by\n    the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.\n  Surrounding characters have been used to indicate _italics_.\n  Inconsistent use of hyphens has been retained save as noted below.\n  Footnotes have been moved to the end of the book.\n  The following changes to the original text are noted:\n  p. 36 added period following \u2018And it is.\u2019\n  p. 86 changed single quotes to double quotes around \u201cthe constant\n    and sacred harmony of life.\u201d; added close single quote immediately\n    after\n  p. 98 retained spelling of \u2018esthetic\u2019\n  p. 109 added close parenthesis in \u2018(Mr. Read\u2019s phrase).\u2019\n  p. 109 added hyphen to \u2018the individual-real\u2019\n  p. 128 added hyphen to \u2018re-inforce\u2019 in \u2018space-men re-inforce\u2019\n  p. 155 capitalized \u2018To\u2019 in \u2018_The Man Who Told Lies To His Mother_\u2019\n  p. 178 uncapitalized \u2018queendom\u2019\n  p. 196 changed \u2018role\u2019 to \u2018r\u00f4le\u2019\n  p. 199 changed \u2018B\u00f6lshe\u2019 to \u2018B\u00f6lsche\u2019\n  p. 204 added close quote following \u2018maintain it.\u2019\n  p. 209 joined unhyphenated \u2018sincerity\u2019\n  p. 215 changed single quotes to double quotes around \u201cThe fathers of\n    our girl friends are lecherous,\u201d and \u201cPhilosophy is teetotal\n    whisky.\u201d; added close single quote immediately after\n  p. 216 changed \u2018\u00e6sthlete\u2019 to \u2018\u00e6sthete\u2019\n  footnote 3 changed \u2018considerations\u2019 to \u2018consideration\u2019 in \u2018the\n    essential consideration is\u2019","title":"Anarchism is not enough","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":47829}