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diff --git a/78119-0.txt b/78119-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1991f96 --- /dev/null +++ b/78119-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9733 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78119 *** + + + + + HUMANISM + AND + AMERICA + + ESSAYS + ON THE OUTLOOK + OF MODERN CIVILISATION + + + _Edited by_ + NORMAN FOERSTER + + + FARRAR AND RINEHART + INCORPORATED + PUBLISHERS NEW YORK + + + COPYRIGHT, 1930, BY FARRAR AND RINEHART + PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + ALL RIGHTS RESERVED + + + + +_Preface_ + + +“Life’s a long headache in a noisy street,” sang the poet Masefield +in _The Widow in the Bye Street_ seventeen years ago. Since then, we +have all come to live in Main rather than Bye Street, and our headache +has grown apace despite the best efforts of the physicians of the age. +The noise and whirl increase, the disillusion and depression deepen, +the nightmare of Futility stalks before us in the inevitable intervals +when activity flags. Heroically or mock-heroically we distrust or +reject such stimulants and anodynes as religion, moral conventions, the +dignity of manners, the passion for beauty, and even our recent faith +in democracy, in liberalism, in progress, in science, in efficiency, in +machinery. At length revolt and scepticism themselves have ceased to be +interesting. The modern temper has produced a terrible headache. + +In vain does our Chief Executive assure us that “we have reached a +higher degree of comfort and security than ever existed before in the +history of the world.” Like Mr. Punch when it was announced that the +government would soon be broadcasting intelligence by radio, we wonder +“Where will the government get it?” All governments, all nations, are +to-day in this predicament. + +The alleged Americanisation of Europe appears to signify, at bottom, +that tendencies native to Europe are being worked out most thoroughly +in the United States and are therefore making the United States the +model of twentieth-century Europe. At the same time Europe knows that +the model is, to speak very gently, inadequate. For a good many years +our own writers have deplored the condition of civilisation in the +United States, with exaggeration but essential truth. But they have +generally made of revolt and scepticism ends rather than beginnings +of wisdom. For materialistic complacency they have substituted a +smart superiority resting on the most dubious foundations. Their +feebleness in constructive power is very patent. They are part of the +disease--symptoms not remedies. + +Our “intellectual atmosphere,” however, is now rapidly changing, is +becoming charged with new interests. More and more persons, oppressed +with the stale scepticism of the post-war period, are beginning to +grow sceptical of that scepticism, and are looking for a new set of +controlling ideas capable of restoring value to human existence. +Certain forces are making for order and for new objectives. They are +not strong forces, they can scarcely be called movements, but they are +receiving a hearing and they contain the promise of growth. + +One of these forces is known as “humanism,” which is rapidly becoming +a word to conjure with. In its broadest signification, it denotes a +belief that the proper study of mankind is man, and that this study +should enable mankind to perceive and realise its humanity. But the +study of mankind is capable of yielding all manner of results, so that, +for a long time to come, we may expect the word denoting this study +to carry a large variety of meanings. Since man may be conceived as +living on three planes, the natural, the human, and the religious, the +content of the middle term will frequently tend to be invaded by that +of the extremes. Thus, many persons who call themselves humanists, in +this naturistic era from which we have not yet emerged, are unwittingly +naturists yearning stoically for adaptation to the universe or +mystically for a fusion of the human and the natural. Such persons +might call themselves, paradoxically, humanistic naturists. In the +interest of clearness, as it seems to me, the word humanism should be +confined to a working philosophy seeking to make a resolute distinction +between man and nature and between man and the divine. + +The most fruitful approximation to such a distinction, in the twentieth +century, has been the work of two American scholar-critics, Irving +Babbitt and Paul Elmer More. The characteristic thought of Irving +Babbitt was already adumbrated in 1895 in an address at the University +of Wisconsin on “The Rational Study of the Classics,” published two +years later in the _Atlantic Monthly_ and in 1908 included in his +book on _Literature and the American College_. This book contains in +essence, one may almost say, everything in the series of volumes in +which he has since applied his humanistic standards to various aspects +of modern life and thought. With a tenacity of purpose unexampled in +an age shifting aimlessly from one enthusiasm and disillusionment to +another, with an effect growing more massive as he has worked out +his ideas in such fields as æsthetics, literary criticism, ethics, +psychology, education, and politics, with a remarkable power of +relating his sense of permanent values to an historical sense (so that +his books are in one view works of history, and in another, doctrinal +inductions from facts), with a vast accumulation of learning that has +been thoroughly assimilated, and with a mode of expression notable for +weighty vigour, earnestness, brilliant ridicule, and an instinct for +ruinous quotation, Professor Babbitt has done more than any one else +to formulate the concept of humanism and gain for it an ever-widening +hearing. A great teacher as well as writer, lecturing to students at +Harvard for some thirty-five years, he has done much to shape the minds +and purposes of a whole generation of young men, and thus to render +possible the continuance of his task in the future. + +Paul Elmer More, after a brief experience as teacher of Sanskrit +and Classical literature, entered criticism through the avenue of +journalism, becoming literary editor of the _Independent_ and the New +York _Evening Post_ and editor of the _Nation_. Through his relation +with contributors to the _Nation_, in particular, he exerted a powerful +influence upon the higher critical activity of the country, an +influence extended more widely through his long series of _Shelburne +Essays_, beginning in 1904, in which he united in fine balance a +profound and far-ranging scholarship, unusual psychological insight, +an humanistic point of view, and a gift of firm, luminous, urbane +but penetrating writing. Undervalued because of their hostility to +the popular tendencies of the epoch, these essays will one day be +generally recognised, I believe, as the highest accomplishment in +literary criticism in the whole of American literature. The fundamental +unity in the work of our two leading humanistic thinkers may be seen +by comparing, say, the conclusion of Mr. Babbitt’s _Masters of Modern +French Criticism_ and the “Definitions of Dualism” at the close of the +eighth series of _Shelburne Essays_, or the introduction to _Democracy +and Leadership_ and the first essay in the _New Shelburne Essays_, +Volume I. The main difference, perhaps, lies in emphasis; while Mr. +Babbitt has been first and last concerned with building up a sound +conception of individualism, Mr. More has been progressively absorbed +in the study of the duality of human nature. His strong religious +bent in this study led, in the years following his retirement from +journalism, to the writing of _The Greek Tradition_, in five volumes, +on the relation of Platonic and Hellenistic to Christian thought--a +monumental work, the full significance of which can scarcely be +estimated in its own time. + +In a book recently crowned by the French Academy, _Le Mouvement +humaniste aux États-Unis_, Louis J. A. Mercier, professor of French at +Harvard, restricts his account to Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, and +W. C. Brownell. In a broad view of the “movement” the late Mr. Brownell +doubtless merits a conspicuous place. Entering criticism, like Mr. +More, by way of journalism, Brownell performed valuable service through +his acute non-provincial book on _French Traits_ as far back as 1888, +and through his perennial insistence on high standards in literature +and the fine arts. Never a humanist in the strict doctrinal sense, +before his death he inclined to respond to the humanitarian optimism +of America. The tendency toward humanitarianism, emotional sympathy +with divine or undivine average humanity, appeared more strikingly in +the post-war writings of Stuart P. Sherman. A student under Professor +Babbitt, a contributor to the _Nation_ under Mr. More, Sherman became +the author of two books written in a vigorous and accomplished style +and permeated with humanistic principles, one on Matthew Arnold +conceived as a Victorian humanist, and one _On Contemporary Literature_ +conceived as a chaos of naturalism. Then, carried away by admiration +of Wilsonian idealism and hatred of “Prussian autocracy,” and by an +uncritical devotion to Emerson, he drifted from his humanistic position +into an ever vaguer faith in the common man, and at length, as a +literary journalist in New York, into a rather indulgent impressionism. +In the field of the fine arts, the most humanistic writer has been +Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., of Princeton. Among others who published +significant books in various fields, prior to 1928, are P. H. Frye, +Sherlock Bronson Gass, Robert Shafer, Percy H. Houston, and W. F. +Giese. By 1928 something like a movement could indeed be discerned: +books began to multiply, and periodicals were printing series of +articles--the _Forum_ and the _Bookman_ in America, the _Criterion_ +(edited by T. S. Eliot) and the _Nineteenth Century and After_ in +England. Whether the movement will continue to develop, whether it +will succumb to disunion and vagueness, or be submerged by a narrow +conventionalism of one sort or other, it would be idle to predict. + +Though we have in America the semblance of a new movement, humanism +itself is not new. It was new, I conceive, when human wisdom was new. +It was comparatively new in ancient Greece, Judea, India, and China. It +was rather old by the time of the Renaissance, when the word humanist +came into currency. In one way or another, its doctrine and discipline +have been clarified by persons as various as Homer, Phideas, Plato, +Aristotle, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, Paul, Virgil, Horace, Dante, +Shakspere, Milton, Goethe; more recently, by Matthew Arnold in England +and Emerson and Lowell in America: a strange assortment of names, +no doubt, but also an indication of the inner diversity as well as +the central unity of the humanist ideal. For into the aim of human +perfection enter many elements, no less than that central order which +is the fruit of discipline. + +Yet, if humanism is never new, it must constantly confront new +problems in time and place. In the Renaissance, its great foe was +mediæval otherworldliness; to-day its great foe is thisworldliness, +obsession with physical things and the instincts that bind us to the +animal order--in a word, the many forms of naturism that have all but +destroyed humane insight, discipline, and elevation. In a given age, +humanism may have the task of urging the claims of beauty; in another +age the claims of science, or of conduct. It may have one problem in +France, and another across the Channel. So long as America tends to +set the pattern for the twentieth century, so long will the greatest +problem of humanism lie here in the United States. + +This relativity of humanistic needs will perhaps go far toward +explaining the special traits of the movement in America and the +corresponding special lines of attack by its naturistic opponents. +Romantics, realists, and sceptics are daily attacking on four fronts: +humanists, it is held, are academic, un-American, reactionary, and +Puritanic. + +Humanists are said to be academic. If this means that they are all +university teachers, it is obviously not true. If it means that they +are not interested in the present, it is obviously not true. If it +means that they are interested in theory and not in practical affairs, +it is not true, for what specially concerns them is the relation of +theory and practice. They can scarcely be convicted of displaying what +Stuart P. Sherman, who knew American academic life from the inside, +termed “the professorial vices of pedantry, indolence, timidity, and +intellectual quietism, which is a euphemism for the sluggish tolerance +of men without philosophic conviction or intellectual purpose.” If it +means that our humanists have been more interested than the workaday +journalist critics in concrete knowledge and in general ideas, then +indeed they may be termed academic. They perceive that when a new +movement of thought and life is to be got under way, the first stage +is naturally one of acquiring and organising knowledge--particularly +neglected knowledge. This was clear to Emerson, Longfellow, and Lowell +in our little New England renaissance; it was clear to Lessing, Herder, +and the Schlegel brothers in Germany; it was clear to the humanists +of the Renaissance throughout Europe. Let us remember that the first +of all universities was Plato’s “Academy,” the object of which was to +attain a wisdom deeper than that of the market-place. Let us remember +that “mere” theories are often high explosives, destructive of the +prevailing practical life of the market-place, as witness Locke and +Rousseau and the German thinkers from Kant to Hegel and Nietzsche. + +Humanists are said to be un-American. According to those who cultivate +the nationalist conception, a valid new criticism, new literature, new +culture must spring from our American experience, not from imported +ideas. They forget the lesson of the past that cultural movements have +two sexes, so to speak, one native and one foreign, and that the native +expresses itself in the main unconsciously under the incitement of the +foreign. The native for the most part takes care of itself, the foreign +must be sedulously cultivated. In the Renaissance a humanism imported +from Italy fructified the native genius of most of Europe. Later, +England, for example, drew upon France and then Germany; Germany upon +France and England; France upon Spain and England; the United States +upon England and Germany. Unlike some of his followers our Walt Whitman +himself finally perceived the need of America’s assimilation of foreign +culture--even from “all former lands” beginning with ancient India and +Greece. It is doubtful whether a _real_ American culture could ever +spring from our own experience; it is certain that it could be _caused_ +to spring from our own experience by a happy use of foreign culture. + +Humanists are supposed to be reactionary. According to those who pride +themselves on living in the present if not in the future, humanists +want “to return to Buddha and the Bho Tree, to Socrates and the ilex.” +Being, in the main, historically educated men, however, humanists are +well aware that a return to the past is impossible. On the other hand, +they are also aware that, as cultural movements must draw upon foreign +supplies, so they must also draw upon past culture. If a present age +appears to be bad, it can be changed only by the introduction of forces +not vitally existing in that age, and since the future is always a +blank, these forces can be found only through a reinterpretation of the +past. Thus, to a large extent the Renaissance was rendered possible +through the “revival of learning” by the humanists, and the romantic +movement of the late eighteenth century was in part a “return” to the +Middle Ages and the national past. Even the typical modernist, in his +efforts to escape being a Victorian or a Puritan, is plainly bent on +“returning” to the primitive. + +This brings us to the last and most frequent charge: that humanists are +Puritans in disguise. It is hard to answer. Nobody knows what a Puritan +is, and when he is disguised such a person is not easy to deal with. +Even Professor Percy Gardner, a leading English authority on Greek +art, ventures to speak of the “puritanism” of the Dorians. While in +America humanists are attacked as Puritan, in France they are attacked +as Catholic, and Mr. T. S. Eliot has been attacked as both. Even though +American historians do not agree as to what the distinguishing virtues +and vices of the seventeenth-century Puritans were, it may be suggested +that one of their plainest virtues was the possession of a certain +faith, now extinct. Their successors, wanting this faith, cannot well +be said to have even the Puritan defects of that virtue. Sometimes +those dire opposites of the humanists, the promoters of Uplift, are +called Puritans. For my part, I think of our Uplifters rather as +misguided humanitarians, followers not of Calvin but rather of that +other Genevan, Rousseau. + +What the naturists are really driving at, when they fight this phantom +Puritan, this Feathertop, is regimentation or discipline. Now, humanism +does wish to emphasise discipline, whenever, as to-day, it needs to +be emphasised. It has no desire to measure conduct quantitatively, +according to the familiar formula, as three-fourths of life, but it +does desire to show that the quality of all life is higher or lower +according as our power of vital restraint is exercised. Humanism +conceives that the power of restraint is peculiarly human, and that +those who throw down the reins are simply abandoning their humanity +to the course of animal life or the complacency of vegetables. It +conceives, further, that the attainment of the ideal of completeness +of life, of a human nature rounded and perfect on all its sides, +is fatally frustrated at the start unless the ideal of centrality +or self-control is introduced as the regulating principle. The +substitution of _intensity_ as the regulating principle, which is +proposed by many modernists such as Aldous Huxley, provides for +quantity but not quality of life, and tends to defeat the ideal +of completeness, because certain parts of human nature, if not +disciplined, will always thrive at the expense of other parts. This +fact was glimpsed even by Walter Pater, notwithstanding his doctrine +of the intense moment, when he wrote: “For us of the modern world, +with its conflicting claims, its entangled interests, distracted by so +many sorrows, with many preoccupations, so bewildering an experience, +the problem of unity with ourselves, in blitheness and repose, is far +harder than it was for the Greek within the simple terms of antique +life. Yet, no less than ever, the intellect demands completeness, +centrality.” + +Many other modernists reject the ideal of completeness itself as making +for a dull uniformity, and propose instead the ideal of diversity. Life +is “full of a number of things,” one of them prattles, remembering +his _Child’s Garden_, but forgetting that humanism itself aims at +diversity--not by urging men to be queerly “different,” each in his own +infantile way, but by urging them to develop with mature reasonableness +the diversities latent within themselves and thus to work toward a +many-sided human type. Humanism believes, with Goethe, that “every one +must form himself as a particular being, seeking, however, to attain +that general idea of which all mankind are constituents.” There have +been enough humanists in the world to prove that in fact (and not only +in theory) this image of a dull humanistic uniformity is merely another +scarecrow. It is not the humanists, certainly, who look forward to a +millennium in which all men and women will be superbly alike! If they +speak more of the past than of the future, it is because the wisdom of +the ages is on record and the wisdom of the future a hope devoid of +useful content. But they unreservedly agree with critics who protest +that “beyond anything that has yet been said by the academic humanists, +there is work for the humane imagination to do.” + +This does not exhaust the attacks on the humanists. They are reproached +by romanticists for being romantic, but I let that pass. More sensibly, +they are ridiculed by irreligionists for being religious, but I let +that pass also. Something should be said, however, of still another +attack--the objection, by impressionists, that they employ words and +phrases as catchwords and labels in disregard of the elusiveness +of truth. To offer this objection, surely, is to object to the use +of language itself. If words are not more or less arbitrary labels +for things and ideas and the relationship of things and ideas, all +language is pure nonsense. When Mr. Van Wyck Brooks fifteen years +ago, in _America’s Coming-of-Age_, called for “catchwords” as well +as a “programme,” he showed a sounder instinct than he and his +followers have displayed since: they have found no programme, and are +increasingly averse to catchwords. No doubt the truth _an sich_ is +hopelessly elusive, but the attainment of provisional or human truth +is the reward of courage and labour. We cannot afford to shirk the +task of achieving a reasonably clear and consistent terminology, even +though every definition is by nature an affirmation that tends to shut +out some portion of absolute truth. Whenever words become too hard and +exclusive, humanism is concerned with reconsidering their frontiers; +but whenever, as to-day, they become so vague and fluid as to imperil +human communication, humanism aims to achieve a clear relation of +labels to thought. + +If the object of this book, on the one hand, is to indicate the +fundamental needs of America as the dominant world power and inadequate +model of civilisation in the twentieth century, on the other hand its +object is to inquire into the fundamental needs of humanism--to work +toward a set of definitions and a terminology neither too rigid nor +too loose, to consider the requirements of humanism in the various +activities of modern thought and life, to determine the special tasks +that confront humanism in this latest moment of time, and to enlist the +interest and efforts of that “rather considerable leaven of intelligent +people” who, as the _Forum_ has said editorially, “cannot view with +indifference the general decay of standards and the resultant chaos +into which our intellectual and moral life has been plunged.” The +publication of a symposium addressed to this public was first proposed, +years ago, by Percy H. Houston, and to him as well as to G. R. Elliott +and Robert Shafer, advisory editors in this undertaking, cordial thanks +are due for many valuable suggestions, although I am alone responsible +for the form which the book has finally assumed. The contributors +are for the most part between thirty and forty-five years of age +(perhaps three or four are over, and three or four under these limits). +One-third of them, as it happens, hold or have held important editorial +positions. The academic group comprises several professors of English +literature, one of French and comparative literature, one of the +fine arts (also director of an art museum), and one of physics (also +dean of a graduate school). The youngest contributor, a student and +athlete, represents that rapidly growing part of the rising generation +which is turning from aimless revolt to the quest of standards. In +consequence of a diversity in occupations, as well as in temperament +and personality, the authors of the book display numerous divergencies +in outlook, in emphasis, and especially in tone. While all of them, +for example, are lovers of the law of measure or “Golden Mean,” some +of them seek the way of quiet firmness or “sweet reasonableness,” even +in this blatant age, while others conceive that modern excesses must be + + “Scorch’d by a flaming speech on moderation.” + +As the reader will soon perceive, the contributors agree in certain +broad, fundamental opinions. Without exception they have sought to +work their way free of the dogmatic incrustations that threaten to +corrode even what is sound in characteristically modern thought. None +of them, I think, can be suspect of a secret attraction to those +pseudo-scientific and humanitarian short-cuts to truth and morality +that lead in fact to pure scepticism and anarchy. All of them perceive +that a naturistic humanism is finally a paradox. Some of them might be +termed “pure” or “mere” humanists, others are religious humanists. Each +has been free to speak his own mind, and is responsible only for what +he has himself said. If the reader chances to conceive, as I personally +do, that Irving Babbitt is at the centre of the humanistic movement, +some of the other authors will appear to be near the periphery, +although they too may seem near the centre from some other point of +view. The authors of this symposium, in a word, have no desire to form +a closed school, or party, or cult, or religion. They would agree that +the _ism_ in humanism is at present a necessary evil. They are here +temporarily assembled for the sole end of offering suggestions toward +that new integration of values which may yet justify modernity. + + Norman Foerster. + +_January, 1930._ + + + + +_Contents_ + + + PAGE + PREFACE: _Norman Foerster_ v + + THE PRETENSIONS OF SCIENCE: _Louis Trenchard More_ 3 + + HUMANISM: AN ESSAY AT DEFINITION: _Irving Babbitt_ 25 + + THE HUMILITY OF COMMON SENSE: _Paul Elmer More_ 52 + + THE PRIDE OF MODERNITY: _G. R. Elliott_ 75 + + RELIGION WITHOUT HUMANISM: _T. S. Eliot_ 105 + + THE PLIGHT OF OUR ARTS: _Frank Jewett Mather, Jr._ 113 + + THE DILEMMA OF MODERN TRAGEDY: _Alan Reynolds Thompson_ 127 + + AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY: _Robert Shafer_ 149 + + PANDORA’S BOX IN AMERICAN FICTION: _Harry Hayden Clark_ 170 + + DIONYSUS IN DISMAY: _Stanley P. Chase_ 205 + + OUR CRITICAL SPOKESMEN: _Gorham B. Munson_ 231 + + BEHAVIOUR AND CONTINUITY: _Bernard Bandler II_ 258 + + THE WELL OF DISCIPLINE: _Sherlock Bronson Gass_ 268 + + COURAGE AND EDUCATION: _Richard Lindley Brown_ 285 + + A LIST OF BOOKS 291 + + + _The essence of Elizabethan as of other humanisms is the + understanding of man and the definition of the sphere of properly + human activity. The philosophical mind of Shakespeare’s age began + the work of reflection by cleaving the universe along three levels. + On the lowest level is the natural world, which is the plane + of instinct, appetite, animality, lust, the animal passions or + affections; on this level the regulation is by necessary or natural + law. On the middle level is the human world, which is regulated + and, in a sense, created by the will and knowledge of man; working + upon the natural world; but governed by reason, the special human + faculty; and illuminated more or less from the level above. On + the third level is the supernatural world, which is the plane of + spiritual beings, and the home of eternal ideas._ + + --STUART P. SHERMAN: “ON CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.” + + + + + HUMANISM + AND + AMERICA + + + + +_The Pretensions of Science_ + +LOUIS TRENCHARD MORE + + +I + +Since the time when the Whigs of England fastened the specific title of +_Pretender_ on the son and grandson of James II, the word has retained +in our speech a sinister significance. For us a pretender is one who +makes a false claim to a title. But in speaking of the pretensions of +science, humanists do not mean precisely this. No humanist would deny +that science has a legitimate field of its own when investigating the +phenomena of the objective world and attempting to find law and order +in the flux of events. Nor would he deny that it has added much to our +security and power and has increased our opportunities for a richer +life and character. + +Science has its legitimate pretensions to power; but false claims are +now being advanced on all sides under the shelter of its name, and +it is these false claims which the humanist is concerned to expose. +While our modern pretenders are unfortunately far greater in number +than the two descendants of James, they do fall into two classes. The +first includes those men of science who are not content to work in +their limited field, but are really metaphysicians who have created +a fictitious world of the imagination made out of æthers, electrons, +and mathematical symbols, and have confused it in their own and +others’ minds with the sensible world of brute fact. This class does +comparatively little direct harm, as it merely creates some confusion +in the orderly domain of science; but, indirectly, it has given a +stimulus and specious authority to the pseudo-scientists. The second +class comprises those who are claiming that the phenomena of the +subjective world also lie in the field of science and have imposed on +the age the pseudo-sciences of psychology and sociology. They would +have us believe that all truth is scientific and that the conclusions +of self-examination are but guess-work. By mere verbal analogies they +have linked the study of man’s intellectual and spiritual nature to the +physical world of mechanical matter and motion. It is the false claims +of these pseudo-sciences which must be exposed and renounced in order +that humanism may come again into its own as the arbiter of character. + +As in the Middle Ages canting simulation of goodness, as well as honest +virtue, was covered by the word religion, so to-day vague speculation, +as well as accurate experimentation, is proclaimed as science. By a +curious throw-back we are apparently using the word “science” in the +primitive sense of “all knowledge,” as the Greeks used it. And they, +in spite of their acumen, had not been able to differentiate between +the two equally valid methods of learning by objective experimentation +and by personal experience. We have seemingly forgotten that one +of the greatest achievements of the Renaissance was to discover +this difference of method and to limit “science” strictly to the +investigation of objective phenomena. Even Descartes, who attempted to +create a purely mechanical world, excluded the processes of thought as +something foreign to the scientific method. + +It was the biologists of the nineteenth century, intoxicated with the +delusion that the magic word evolution was a key to unlock all the +mysteries of the universe, who foisted on the world the idea that man +is but a complicated physical and chemical machine, and who sought to +discredit the dualistic philosophy of the Renaissance physicists. And +of all the biologists, Huxley, the militant propagandist, was the +one who did the most to degrade humanism into the pseudo-sciences of +psychology and sociology. He first correctly emphasised the fact that +there is but one scientific method which is best exemplified by the +subject of mechanics. But--and in this lies the source of his mischief +to clear thinking--_he then defined science as merely organised common +sense_. One has only to analyse this definition to discover its +speciousness and its confusion of thought. His definition has been +almost universally accepted, although it undoes all the lessons taught +us by the religious thinkers of the Middle Ages and the scientific +experimentalists of the Renaissance; and its effect has been to drive +theoretical science back into the hypothetical metaphysics of the +Greeks. + +It is merely a truism to say that our contact with the objective +and subjective worlds is based, directly or indirectly, on our +sense-perceptions; and, to be intelligibly transmitted from one person +to another, such data must be common to many individuals. Also, it +is an inevitable tendency of the mind to organise all facts or to +link them together. Thus Huxley really classes all sound knowledge +as science. But, since this sound knowledge, according to him, can +be attained only by following the method of mechanics, which is the +interpretation by the mind of the spatial and temporal relations +between sensible bodies, his inference is clear that the phenomena of +consciousness, the individual mind, and our social relations, are to be +interpreted as problems of matter and motion. + +Yet what, actually, is the process of exact science? The answer to this +question should show us whether or not the term does have any precise +and limited significance, and whether or not fundamental confusion must +result from the attempt to make it synonymous with all knowledge. + +Exact science, then, is first of all based on the naïve belief in an +objective and real world whose events are connected in an orderly and +prescribed manner, and occur independently of our thought or will. The +phenomena of this objective world appeal to us through our sense-organs +by some form of action, which we call energy, and are interpreted by +our minds. We speak of this interpretation as observation; but to be +scientific we must also select the phenomena to be observed, in order +that we may classify their similarities and their dissimilarities. +In the course of time, we have found such precision in many of our +classifications and such regularity in the past actions of phenomena, +that we are able to predict future events. Those predictions, which +from past experience we find to have been accurately verified, we +formulate as laws. For example, we have observed the actions of so +many falling bodies that we have formulated the law of gravitation. It +would be an error to say that a body fell, yesterday, because of this +law; that event was simply one of the observed facts from which the +law was deduced; but it is quite proper to predict that such a body +will fall, to-morrow, in accordance with the law of gravitation. To +sum up, the scientific method is limited to experimental observation +and the formulation of laws; its value lies in the fact that, by its +cultivation, we have done much to allay our apprehensions for the +future and thus have abated the edge of superstition; and we also +have vastly increased our power over our environment, or, in the much +misunderstood aphorism of Francis Bacon, we have found science to be +valuable for its fruits. + +In a general way, we may say that the scientist should follow in his +investigations the phenomena of the objective world only until their +special forms of energy are absorbed by our nervous system. It is in +the province of the humanist to study the phenomena of the subjective +world after these stimuli have been translated into emotion and thought. + +If a scientific prediction, or law, is to be something more than a +vague statement of what will probably occur, we feel the necessity +of measuring the quantity of the event; that is, our minds are not +satisfied until we are able to express it mathematically. Since the +only measurable attributes, concerning which our opinion of more or +less is definite, are geometrical lengths, the aim of all science is, +and must be, to express its laws in the language of mechanics; for that +subject alone deals exclusively with simple, sensible masses and their +geometrical relations in space. We have then the paradox that while +mathematics is the goal of science, in that it is the ideal method, +or language of expression, it is not itself a science since it is +concerned with subjective ideas and is not limited by the restrictions +of sensible bodies. Modern men of science may rebel against this fact; +but even the newer, and more dubious, of the pseudo-sciences are +forced to substantiate their claims with the support of factitious +mathematical formulæ and tables and to simulate the mechanistic method. +The inevitable tendency of science is to investigate all phenomena +quantitatively, and to view the whole universe as a vast and measurable +machine. + +If the phenomena of life are to be classed as an exact science, it is +necessary to postulate that the living organism, also, is a machine,--a +thing of various material parts, acting on each other by mechanical +forces. Such a postulate is pure _fiat_, for we have found no common +factors between what we call vital actions and mechanical and physical +forces. Biology is, at best, confined to the discovery of qualitative +classifications, and the mutual chemical and physical reactions of +the organism; and life is so complex and so variable that very few of +its phenomena can be predicted with any accuracy. For example, the +so-called law of heredity is often cited, but we have made scarcely +any progress towards predicting variations in even an immediately +succeeding generation. Even if a general law of progressive evolution +were granted to have been established, no one could foretell by it the +future variations of any species. + +If the scientific method is badly strained when applied to even the +simplest forms of life, it completely fails when used to elucidate the +phenomena of the mind. The fundamental definition of science excludes +the processes of consciousness from its field, for it assumes that +objective phenomena are to be interpreted by the mind. If we attempt to +study the mind objectively, then we come face to face with the absurd +paradox of a thing investigating itself by means of I itself. And the +gibe cast at the scientific psychologists, that they propose to study +the mind by first denying its existence, is only too well founded. + +The possibility of a scientific method is based on a rational +interpretation of objective phenomena. Psychology, as a science, would +be a solemn version of _Alice Through the Looking Glass_ in which +real persons are viewed and analysed by their images, or rather by +some other intelligence, such as a dog or an inhabitant of Mars. The +futility of such a process should be apparent if we recollect that an +animal’s mental processes can themselves be estimated and expressed +only as a vaguer and more rudimentary sort of human mind. + + +II + +Our modern idea that science embraces all kinds of knowledge is, as +I have mentioned before, a curious reversion to the Greeks. In spite +of the fact that they formulated the great deductive laws of physics, +such as cause and effect, conservation of matter, etc., and developed +an extraordinarily fruitful science of geometry, they remained +indifferent to the experimental method. They developed almost no +apparatus for experimentation, established no standards of measurement, +and their arithmetical symbols were so awkward that only the simplest +calculations could be made. They never succeeded in disentangling +subjective and objective ideas. Plato could anticipate the modern +conception of natural law in his aphorism that God geometrises, but +at the same time he vaguely identified the human soul with the stars +and endued the universe with life. Democritus pictured the world as an +aggregation of atoms, differing only in size, shape, and motion; yet +he also tacitly ascribed to them a will or desire to move which was +only less pronounced than in those finer particles which constituted +the souls of men. Also the four classic elements,--earth, water, air, +and fire,--which combined in different proportions to form all material +bodies, were actuated by the animistic principle that each element +sought its own place. One could multiply these examples of classical +thought which confused mechanical forces with the vital attributes of +will and desire. + +The failure of the Greeks to develop an objective and experimental +method was intensified by the domination of the Christian religion +during the Middle Ages. The emphasis of thought was placed on the +problems of human character. At a time when men were taught that our +environment was a trap set by the powers of evil to allure our souls to +eternal damnation, there could be little stimulus to study the laws of +nature or to apply them to increase our interest in a temporal life. It +is customary for historians to condemn the Church for having crushed +science, but no concerted opposition was necessary in a society which +saw no advantage in gathering its fruits. It was an axiom that truth +was the direct consequence of intuition and revelation, that God had +revealed in the Bible, and through His living Church, all the knowledge +necessary for man’s guidance in a transitory state. To neglect such a +certainty for the perceptions of our fallible and sinful senses, and to +construct a world from them according to our reason, would be to fall +into the sin of the pride of the intellect. Furthermore, in a society +small in numbers and in area, where the greater number were believed to +have been created to minister to the comfort of the few, little need +was felt for mechanical power and industry. The only science which +seemed to be worth cultivating was one which was believed to foretell +human events and to affect our spiritual life. + +It had been generally accepted from ancient times that the stars +influenced our lives and foretold the future. Such knowledge was +eagerly sought by a society which was principally concerned with +religion and was, at the same time, a prey to superstitious fear. +It is not surprising that astrology was seriously cultivated. If we +grant the postulate that the stars do affect us, then we must admit +that astrology was a true science. The positions and the motions of +the planets and stars were observed and recorded as accurately as +possible, and deductions were made according to rules and laws believed +to have been verified by experience. Nor does it seem to me much more +credulous to believe that our character is determined by the relative +positions of the planets, than to assume, as do Mr. Watson and the +modern behaviourists, that our thoughts are caused by the relative +positions and motions of the material atoms which happen to compose +the substance of our brains. The astrologists had, at least, the great +advantage of dealing with real bodies which we can observe, while these +psychologists have for their use only the hypothetical and machine-made +atoms of the chemist which they can never hope to observe. There is +little to choose between the superstition that the planets foretell our +characters and the superstition that atoms constitute thought; both +lead to equally foolish and irrational practices. And there is the +less excuse for the psychologist, since he has had the benefit of a +longer past experience than had the astrologer to convince him of the +futility of identifying mind and matter. + +The only other science which aroused popular interest was alchemy. The +basis of this subject was the postulate that all matter was composed +of the four elements combined in various proportions. By the use +of chemical reagents, the combinations of these elements could be +altered and a given substance be thus changed into another. Alchemy +is generally associated with the attempt to transmute metals and, in +particular, to change lead into gold, because the natural cupidity +of their patrons made it advisable for the alchemists to hold that +prospect before them in order to obtain a livelihood. In principle, +alchemy is but little different from modern chemistry. Our most recent +theory still holds that the difference between lead and gold is due +only to the numerical relations of a single element, the electron. The +difference between chemistry and alchemy does not lie in either their +fundamental hypotheses or their methods, but in our vastly superior +technique of experimentation and accumulated knowledge. The nature of +the modern electronic atom is essentially as fictitious as was the +nature of the mediæval elements. + +Besides exciting the hope of wealth, alchemy was important as an aid +to health and longevity. Since health required that the four elements +of the body should be preserved in their proper balance, illness, and +even death, were but the temporary or permanent loss of their right +proportions. Alchemists, convinced of this truth, were led to seek for +a sovereign substance, the philosopher’s stone, which would have the +power to restore this disturbed balance and give to its fortunate owner +permanent health and life. + +It is a mistake to suppose that the Church oppressed these +sciences--many of its most orthodox fathers and saints eagerly studied +them. The abuses due to the rampant charlatanry of many of their +practitioners were repressed, but their serious doctrines were fused +into the religion of the time much as, in our day, the clergy have +tried to harmonise Christianity and biological evolution. In fact, as +we shall see, the most determined opposition which the new Copernican +theory of the solar system had to overcome was the fusion of Christian +dogma with Aristotelian astrology and alchemy. + +It was natural that the first fruits of the new science of the +Renaissance should have been in astronomy and mechanics. The +accumulated observations of the astrologers had vastly increased the +complexity of the Ptolemaic system, and the discrepancies between +the observed and calculated positions of the planets had become +glaringly evident. When the great treatise of Copernicus was finally +published as he lay on his death-bed, it is altogether probable that +no one suspected that it marked the beginning of a new philosophy. He +had merely proved that the calculations of astronomers were greatly +simplified by assuming that the sun, instead of the earth, was the +fixed centre of the solar system, and that the earth and other planets +revolved about it in circular orbits. It must remain a mooted question +whether Copernicus believed that his discovery was only a mathematical +device; his book states explicitly that he, as a Catholic, still +subscribed to the belief that the earth was actually the fixed centre +of the universe as the Church and the Aristotelians both taught to be +a necessary article of faith. At all events, it was not until Galileo +some sixty years later invented the telescope and turned it on the +heavens, that men saw the significance of the discovery. The eye of +the telescope penetrated the depths of the solar system. It proved +that the planets were not pure celestial matter but were mere masses +like the earth. Their brilliance was not a divine fire but ordinary +sunlight reflected from their dull surfaces; they, like the earth, +were inanimate bodies revolving about the sun and the Copernican system +became a fact instead of a mathematic device. It is not extravagant to +assert that, with the acceptance of Copernican astronomy, the whole +mediæval conception of nature gave place to a reliance on experimental +evidence. + +The work of Galileo in founding the science of mechanics was fatal to +the mysticism of the contemporary alchemists. Instead of the elements +with their natural places, their likes and dislikes, their hierarchy of +nobility, and their subserviency to planetary influences, he laid down +the universal principle that all natural actions were due to mechanical +forces whose only function was to alter the motions of bodies and whose +amount was measurable in mathematical symbols. His significant work for +us was an uncompromising war waged against the scientific dogmatism +of the Aristotelians on the clear-cut issue that knowledge of the +objective world could be obtained only by experimental evidence, and +not by subjective preconceptions. Understood rightly, he had reinstated +the Platonic dualism of two worlds, one of matter, and the other of the +mind or spirit. + +It is significant that during Galileo’s lifetime, so swift was the +movement, Descartes saw the trend of the new science and its inevitable +effect on philosophy and religion. In his _Système du Monde_, he +pictured a universe of matter and motion and nothing else,--a +machine. From matter he tried to strip every sensible attribute +except extension, or its mere geometrical position and extent. All +phenomena became for him merely phases of motion. With the courage +of his conviction, he even tried to imagine plants and animals to be +mechanically acting automata. One thing only he could not include in +this mechanism,--and that was _thought and consciousness_. + +The cosmogony of Descartes has long since crumbled to dust, but the +gap he made between the subjective and objective worlds has never been +closed in spite of incessant later attempts. And these early creators +of science, as something distinct from humanism, were quite conscious +that they were engaged in a revolution which could end only with the +overthrow of the dogmatic science of the Middle Ages, sheltered by the +authority of Aristotle and the Bible. Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, and +Bacon all declared explicitly that the old order must pass. From their +day to ours, we have more and more regarded the universe as a machine, +a combination of inert matter and moving forces, acting not as we may +desire, but according to invariable laws which we have personified as +Nature. Man was left, by the physicists, as a unique outsider who could +interpret this machine in terms of his sensations and mind, but could +neither alter nor avoid its fateful operation. + +Only one step further was needed to identify all science with mechanics +and to compress the scientific method within the limits imposed by +mechanical laws. This fundamental principle was Newton’s discovery +of the universal attraction of matter. According to this law, a +single kind of force, depending only on the amount of matter and the +distance between bodies, operated to hold the stars in their paths +and to cause all the chemical and physical activities of atoms. With +its discovery, the mechanistic theory was complete and dominant, +and science had, in principle, gone as far as it can ever go. But, +what is even more important, Newton grasped in his early years the +fact that the scientific method is limited to the experimental +investigation of objective phenomena, those which can be classified, +measured geometrically, and formulated in laws which predict future +events. He held with absolute consistency and restraint that what is +once accomplished by this method is permanent. The experimental laws +of gravitation, of the pressure of gases, and all others of like +nature, are true within the limits of accuracy of our observation +and measurement. If these improve, such laws do not fail, their +mathematical expression is merely made more precise. They belong to the +permanent acquisitions of the mind. + + +III + +To attempt to explain the nature of matter, or heat, or light, the +mechanism by which they act, or the method by which their energy is +translated into sensation and thought, this, however, is to pass +into the realm of metaphysics, or what Newton excellently called +hypothesis. All such speculations are, at best, transitory, and, +instead of predicting new lines of work, they lag behind the sure and +steady advance of experimentation; they are constantly being revised +to explain new phenomena after they are discovered. A convincing +illustration of this criticism can be found in the history of the +hypotheses of the nature of light. Physicists commonly assert that the +corpuscular hypothesis retarded the advance of the subject of light for +a century; their answer was to replace it by an equally metaphysical +hypothesis of mechanical waves in an æther. After incessantly +patching up this new conception during the next century, they are +again returning to a corpuscular hypothesis, even more metaphysical +and incomprehensible than its prototype. It seems impossible for us +to learn that the trouble does not arise from the weakness of any +particular variety, but lies in the nature of hypothesis, itself. +We have created fictitious æthers, atoms, and electrons which bear +no resemblance to sensible bodies; light is alternately a stream of +corpuscles, or waves, or quanta of energy, or even a mathematical +symbol; space is declared to be impenetrable except along certain +curves; and time is confused with space. What one age proposes as a +great advance is flung aside by the next which makes a new hypothesis +whose only fate is to be rejected. So far have these speculations been +carried that the dogma is seriously maintained that a false scientific +hypothesis is valuable because in some mysterious way it leads to the +discovery of truth. + +As we have advanced in sober experimental science, these hypotheses +have become more and more abstruse and more and more dogmatic until +the most recent of these dreamers, Whitehead, Eddington, Einstein, +have pictured a phantasmagoria, instead of a world, as non-sensical as +the hallucinations of the mediæval monk driven mad by the fevers of +asceticism. + +Such models of the structure of matter may, indeed, be useful to +give substance to our thought and a language for our ideas. They +have something of the same sort of relation to real objects that +portraits do to living persons. But there is this important point to be +remembered. A skilful painter has seen and studied the person and can +make so faithful a likeness as to create the illusion of reality. But +the man of science is attempting to picture things which can never be +seen, for atoms lie in the realm of the infinitely small, whose very +existence is problematical. Models of atoms, of æthers, or of space +have about the same degree of authenticity as the posthumous portrait +of a person whom no one then alive had ever seen. Men of science are +too prone to confuse the thing and the model in their own minds, and +they have certainly been so careless in their teaching that even very +highly educated laymen accept these hypotheses as facts. Is it not true +that the world pretty generally takes the hypothetical explanation of +gravitation by Einstein, which involves the concept of a fictitious +space of more than three dimensions and the fusion of time with space, +to be equally as scientific, and therefore equally as true, as the +experimental law of the attraction of bodies? Do not many accept as +a demonstrated fact one or another of the many hypotheses advanced by +biologists to explain the cause of the observed variations in species? +And having failed to distinguish between scientific fact and fiction, +we have incorporated this mass of speculation into our philosophy of +life and especially into our religion. We are worse confused than the +Deists of the eighteenth century who believed that the mind of God +could be defined by learning the facts and laws of Nature; we now +propose that the intellectual and spiritual attributes of Man be framed +in the hypotheses of dogmatic Science. + +That the scientific method, as evolved from physics and chemistry, is +not applicable to the problems of life has been the settled conviction +of virtually all the investigators in those sciences. In fact, in +order to achieve their results they have had to assume that life is a +perturbation which cannot be included in a mechanical and mathematical +world, and that so far as possible sense-perceptions must be excluded +as criteria of laws. However, it has not been so clear to many of +them that the mechanical method imposes definite, and rather narrow, +limitations even upon the study of physical and chemical problems. +These limitations were clearly defined in the seventeenth century +during the protracted controversy between Newton on the one side, and +Hooke and Huygens on the other, as to the nature of light and the +_modus operandi_, or mechanism, of its transmission. The question +involved was clear-cut; and it will pay to discuss it in some detail +because it settled once for all, I think, the distinction between +science and humanism. + +Theoretical physics, from the very beginning, has been a synthesis of +phenomena in terms of mechanics; that is, in terms of substance and +motion. For example, the physical properties of heat, sound, and light +are expressed by the same mathematical formulæ which express the motion +of a wave in water. To distinguish between them, we assign different +names to the substances involved, as a molecule of air, a corpuscle of +light, or an æther. But whatever names we may give to them, or however +we may try to distinguish them, we assign to all of them the common +attribute of mass, or inertia, which is the only essential coefficient +in a mechanical equation. And we use for all these different phenomena +the same formula of motion, the quotient of the distance by the time. +These quantities, mass and motion, when combined give us the law of +mechanical energy, and our synthesis rests on the single fact that +heat, sound, and light may be changed into mechanical motion, and may +be produced by it. This energy is then their common and mutable factor. + +But the objective phenomena of heat, light, and sound are cognisable +to us through three separate sense-organs and are perceived as +temperature, sight, and tone. These sensations are fundamentally +different and, in fact, to confuse any of them with another is one of +the surest indications of insanity. Thus the world as depicted by the +physicist does not correspond with our world of sensation; nor does he +attempt to do more than to discuss a restricted set of attributes, and +not even those which really distinguish heat, light, etc., as such. + +Newton, in his earliest published work, made evident this essential +difference between the fields of physics and psychology. By means +of a prism he refracted a beam of white sunlight into a continuous +spectrum. He then placed a screen, containing a narrow slit, behind +the prism in such a way as to permit only a very thin ray from the +spectrum to pass on, and through, a second prism fastened parallel to +the first prism. (I call it a homogeneous light ray to distinguish it +from its psychological analogue, colour.) No matter what portion of the +spectrum was used for the second prism, there was no further change of +colour; the ray merely suffered a second angular deviation equal to +that produced by the first refraction. He also recombined the whole +spectrum by a reversed prism and obtained a single ray parallel to the +original ray and pure white in colour. As a result of his experiments, +he announced the following law: a primary ray of light is one which +has a definite and specific angle of refraction by a prism, and each +such primary ray is, to the eye, a primary colour. White is therefore +a mixture of an indefinitely large number of primary rays, each +possessing a different angle of deviation when passed through a prism; +and when so separated each primary ray is seen by the eye as a primary +colour. + +The experiments of Newton were accepted as correct by Huygens and +Hooke, probably the two most eminent physicists of the time. But they +objected to his definition of a primary colour and to his conclusions. +They had found previously, by their own experiments, that certain +pairs of complementary colours, such as a certain red and a certain +blue, gave to the eye the same sensation of white as did clear +sunlight. They had defined them as the two primary colours which, by +different proportions of mixture, would produce all other colours, +including white. They therefore objected that it was unnecessary and +cumbersome to assume an infinite number of primary rays when two were +quite sufficient. By no process of reasoning could these two opinions +be either reconciled or controverted. They involved fundamentally +different criteria. White produced by the combination of a continuous +spectrum and the white produced by a combination of red and blue +were one and the same to Hooke and Huygens because their criterion +of identity was the sensation of sight, and it must be the same for +all psychologists who deal with subjective light. To Newton, the two +whites were altogether different. The one examined by a prism gives a +continuous spectrum, and the other gives two separated bands of blue +and red. What, then, to the physicist is a fundamental dissimilarity +is to the psychologist complete identity. How then can psychological +sensations be studied by physical methods? + +To show that this is not an isolated case, but that this gulf runs +between the entire fields of physics and psychology, I can give an +artificial example. While I deprecate the pseudo-scientific pictures, +now fashionable, of the state of prehistoric man and of the condition +of the earth before its habitability, I am able to imagine a world +in which the eye had never developed, so that all life was blind. I +am sure the word colour would never have been coined in such a world +and that there could be no psychology of sight, but I also know that +the blind race could develop a physical science of light because very +many of its phenomena can be, and are now exclusively, studied by such +apparatus as thermometers and electric galvanometers which can be read +by touch. Or, to cite an everyday example, is not the mere fact, that +the sensation produced by pepper on the tongue cannot be distinguished +from that of heat, sufficient to make us hesitate before trying to +study the sensations objectively, to synthesise the objective and +subjective worlds, or to try to investigate them by the same method? + +The history of physics, since the time of Maxwell, shows a record of +vain efforts to reconstruct a materialistic monism. These attempts +have failed because they involved a supposititious æther and atom +which could no longer satisfy the growing body of experimental facts +about radiant energy. After Maxwell predicted the existence of +electro-magnetic radiation, an æther or atom possessing the ordinary +attributes of matter became an absurdity. + +But our childish, or at least youthful, reluctance to admit our +limitations is so great that we proceeded to repeat the hypothetical +method once more by substituting an energiastic monism. Unmindful of +Pascal’s dictum that man cannot investigate the world of either the +infinitely small or the infinitely large, we are replacing a material +atom and æther by Planck’s hypothesis of discrete and disembodied +_quanta_, or atoms, of energy. Already there have arisen four +insuperable difficulties. + +The hypothesis affirms action without specifying something to act, +unless the word _energy_ is given all the physical attributes of +matter. In which case a _quantum_ of radiant energy is merely our old +friend, a corpuscle of light, masquerading under a new name. Again, it +substitutes the principle of discontinuity of action for continuity, +and one is puzzled to know from what the _quantum_ originates and +in what it ends. And again, it creates the dilemma that light is +simultaneously corpuscular and vibrational, since without the latter +quality none of the phenomena of interference is explicable. Lastly, it +drifts into a pure philosophy of idealism. + +My discussion would not be complete without a reference to the theory +of relativity. It is significant that the earliest serious critique +of Newtonian physics was made by Bishop Berkeley. With the greatest +ingenuity and skill, he pointed out that objects can become known +to us only _by_ the mind and that since light, sound, and motion +are interpreted by the mind as essentially different, they cannot +be synthesised by any experimental and objective process. So far +Berkeley’s critique is thoroughly valid. He proceeded, however, to make +the _non-sequitur_ that objects exist only _in_ the mind. If we accept +this postulate, the logic of idealism is irrefutable; few, however, +will accept it. Idealism fails because it ignores brute fact, and we +accept the answer of Dr. Johnson who made his objection by merely +kicking a large stone in his path. + +Einstein also began with a critique of Newtonian dynamics to prove +that the conclusions we can draw from electrodynamics are as limited +and as relative as those from mechanics. From this denial of our +ability to obtain real or absolute knowledge he, like Berkeley, +has proceeded to construct a positive philosophy of the absolute. +Relativity, as it has now been interpreted by such disciples as +Whitehead and Eddington, is merely idealism under a new guise. The +objective world of sensation and experience is illusion, and truth +exists only in a set of subjective mathematical formulæ of cosmic +_events_. The relativists openly rejoice that mathematics has come into +its own kingdom and is no longer to be the handmaiden of physics, no +longer to be restricted by the limitations of the sense-perceptions. +Euclidean geometry, which is limited to the three dimensions of tactual +space, has been replaced by a geometry of hyper-space, the properties +of which no one can be cognisant of. Subjective time is eliminated, and +objective time is conflated with space. They, too, deny the validity of +the senses, as did the mediæval schoolman, and picture a topsy-turvy +world. They are labouring under the delusion that the limitations of +logic can be avoided by the simple substitution of mathematical symbols +for words, forgetting that mathematical symbols are as meaningless as +words when they are detached from facts. They fail to see that the +equation is but a form of the syllogism. One can trace all through +their argument the old and familiar fallacy of the ambiguous middle. +They are quite reckless, as it suits their convenience, in confusing +physical space of three dimensions with mathematical space of an +unlimited number; neither do they distinguish time as a subjective +sequence of events from time as a measurable component of velocity. The +relativists are as rash as those sociologists who see a real connection +between physical energy of motion and mental energy of thought and so +deceive themselves with the notion that they are scientific. + +A note of uncertainty is beginning to show itself, however, for +thoughtful physicists are seeing the _impasse_ into which their +unbridled hypotheses have led them. Abstruse mathematical analysis is +again proving to us, what Pascal, Newton, Lagrange, and philosophy +had demonstrated in a simpler way, that the mechanistic method can, +at best, only picture an objective world as it seems to us, and not +as it is. As a recent physicist confesses: “The physicist thus finds +himself in a world from which the bottom has dropped clean out; as he +penetrates deeper and deeper it eludes him and fades away by the highly +unsportsmanlike device of just becoming meaningless. No refinement of +measurement will avail to carry him beyond the portals of this shadowy +domain which he cannot even mention without logical inconsistency. A +_bound_ is thus forever set to the curiosity of the physicist. What +is more, the mere existence of this bound means that he must give up +his most cherished convictions and faith. The world is not a world of +reason, understandable by the intellect of man, but as we penetrate +ever deeper, the very law of cause and effect, which we had thought to +be a formula to which we could force God himself to subscribe, ceases +to have meaning.”[1] The answer to this naïve confession is simple +enough: there never was a _bottom_ to his hypothetical world, as he +could have foreseen if he had acquainted himself with the warning of +the more profound men of science, philosophers, and humanists. + +The writer adds that this failure, now proved, “must forever keep the +physicist humble.” But there is no cause for him to think lowly of +himself for what he has accomplished and for what he may achieve. He +should, rather, be modest and restrict himself to what can be done +legitimately by the scientific method. I fear, however, that in spite +of such occasional confessions, the physicists are neither humble nor +modest, but are merely bewildered. The false pretensions of science +must be wholly abandoned, and the problems of our destiny be examined +by a wise judgment drawn from human experience, before we can hope for +a sane and humanistic philosophy. + + +FOOTNOTES + +[1] “The New Vision of Science,” by Professor P. W. Bridgman, _Harper’s +Magazine_, 1929. + + + + +_Humanism: An Essay at Definition_ + +IRVING BABBITT + + +I + +The art of defining is so indispensable that one needs to define the +limits of definition itself. A very eminent humanist, Erasmus, showed +his awareness of these limits when he complained of the attempts of the +theologians of the Reformation to formulate deity that every definition +was a disaster. Though the humanist does not seek to define God and is +in general chary of ultimates, he is wont in more mundane matters to +put the utmost emphasis on definition. This Socratic emphasis would +seem especially needed at a time like the present which has probably +surpassed all previous epochs in its loose and irresponsible use of +general terms. Unless this tendency is corrected, the day may come +when, outside of words that stand for the measurements of science or +the objects of sense, communication between men will be well-nigh +impossible. The exchange of ideas regarding those aspects of life +that fall outside the merely quantitative and material may become +as difficult as economic exchanges would be with coins that have no +definite value. + +This growing debasement of the intellectual coinage may be illustrated +from the word humanism itself. The boundaries of a genuine humanism +are broad and flexible. It is plain, however, that the word is being +appropriated for points of view that cannot be brought within these +boundaries, however generously extended. As a preliminary to pointing +out some of the more serious of the resulting confusions it would +seem desirable to build up the historical background. For what a word +actually has meant should surely throw light on what it ought to mean. + +As is well known, the word humanist was applied, first in the Italy of +the fifteenth century, and later in other European countries, to the +type of scholar who was not only proficient in Greek and Latin, but who +at the same time inclined to prefer the humanity of the great classical +writers to what seemed to him the excess of divinity in the mediævals. +This contrast between humanity and divinity was often conceived very +superficially. However, the best of the humanists were not content with +opposing a somewhat external imitation of the Ciceronian or Virgilian +elegance to the scholastic carelessness of form. They actually caught +a glimpse of the fine proportionateness of the ancients at their best. +They were thus encouraged to aim at a harmonious development of their +faculties in this world rather than at an other-worldly felicity. +Each faculty, they held, should be cultivated in due measure without +one-sidedness or over-emphasis, whether that of the ascetic or that of +the specialist. “Nothing too much” is indeed the central maxim of all +genuine humanists, ancient and modern. + +In a world of ever-shifting circumstance, this maxim is not always of +easy application. Whoever has succeeded in bridging the gap between +the general precept and some particular emergency has to that extent +achieved the fitting and the decorous. Decorum is simply the law of +measure in its more concrete aspects. For every type of humanist +decorum is, in Milton’s phrase, the “grand masterpiece to observe.” +Actually this observation may rest on deep insight, as it did in the +case of Milton himself, or it may degenerate into empty formalism. +The adjustment of which I have spoken between the variable and the +permanent elements in human experience requires spiritual effort and +most men are spiritually indolent. For genuine adjustment they tend +to substitute outer conformity so that decorum itself finally comes +to seem a mere veneer, something that has no deep root in the nature +of things. Moreover the notions of decent behaviour to which men have +conformed at any particular period have always been more or less +local and relative. It is easy to take the next step and assume that +they have been _only_ local and relative, an assumption subversive +not merely of decorum but of humanism itself. Humanism, one of our +modernists has argued, may have done very well for other times and +places, but under existing circumstances, it is at best likely to prove +only a “noble anachronism.” A similar objection to humanism is that +it has its source in a psychology of “escape,” that it is an attempt +to take flight from the present into a past that has for the modern +man become impossible. But humanism is not to be identified with this +or that body of traditional precepts. The law of measure on which it +depends becomes meaningless unless it can be shown to be one of the +“laws unwritten in the heavens” of which Antigone had the immediate +perception, laws that are “not of to-day or yesterday,” that transcend +in short the temporal process. The final appeal of the humanist is not +to any historical convention but to intuition. + +It does not follow that the humanist is ready to abandon history to +the relativist. The main conventions that have prevailed in the past +reveal important identities as well as differences. These identities +cannot be explained as due to their common derivation from some +previous convention. The Chinese made an independent discovery of +the law of measure.[2] An important task, indeed, that awaits some +properly qualified scholar, preferably a Chinese, is a comparison of +Confucian humanism with occidental humanism as it appears, for example, +in the _Ethics_ of Aristotle. The announcement was made recently in +the press that a Harvard astronomer had discovered the “centre of the +universe” (more strictly the centre of our galactic system). In the +meanwhile the far more important question is being neglected whether +human nature itself has any centre. One’s faith in the existence of +such a centre increases when one finds the best commentary on Pascal’s +dictum that the great man is he who combines in himself opposite +virtues and occupies all the space between them, in a Confucian book +the very title of which, literally rendered, means the “universal norm” +or “centre.”[3] Here and elsewhere the Confucian books reveal a deep +and direct insight into the law of measure. Legge’s translation of the +Chinese word for decorum (_li_) as “the rules of propriety” has been +rightly censured as unduly prim and formalistic; though it must be +admitted that a formalistic element is very marked at times even in the +older Confucian writings. + +Practically the assertion of a “universal centre” means the setting +up of some pattern or model for imitation. The idea of imitation goes +even deeper than that of decorum, but is an idea that humanism shares +with religion. Humanism, however, differs from religion in putting +at the basis of the pattern it sets up, not man’s divinity, but the +something in his nature that sets him apart simply as man from other +animals and that Cicero defines as a “sense of order and decorum and +measure in deeds and words.”[4] It dwells on the danger of any attempt +to pass too abruptly to the religious level; it holds, if I may be +pardoned for quoting myself, that the world would have been a better +place if more persons had made sure they were human before setting +out to be superhuman. The virtue that results from a right cultivation +of one’s humanity, in other words from moderate and decorous living, +is poise. Perfect poise is no doubt impossible: not even Sophocles +succeeded in seeing life steadily and seeing it whole. The difference +is none the less marked between the man who is moving towards poise and +the man who is moving away from it. Since the break with the somewhat +artificial decorum of the eighteenth century most men have been moving +away from it. It would not be easy to argue with any plausibility that +the typical modernist is greatly concerned with the law of measure; +his interest, as a glance at our newspapers should suffice to show, +is rather in the doing of stunts and the breaking of records, in +“prodigies, feats of strength and crime,”[5] the very topics that, +according to the traditional report, Confucius banished from his +conversation. “Let us confess it,” says Nietzsche, speaking not merely +for the rank and file but for the leaders, “proportionateness is +foreign to us.” It is foreign to us because we no longer refer our +experience to any centre. With the growth of the naturalistic temper, +the normal has come to have less appeal than the novel. The pursuit +of poise has tended to give way to that of uniqueness, spontaneity, +and above all intensity. “The last remnant of God on earth,” says +Nietzsche himself, “are the men of great longing, of great loathing, of +great satiety.” Once grant that there is no constant element in life +and one might agree with Walter Pater that a man’s highest ambition +should be “to burn with a hard gem-like flame,” to get “as many +pulsations as possible into the given time.”[6] Æsthetic perceptiveness +is an excellent thing, but thus to set it up as an end in itself is +almost at the opposite pole from humanism. Yet Pater has been called +a humanist. One might so regard him if one accepted his view that +the distinctive humanistic trait is an all-embracing curiosity.[7] +Humanism appears primarily, not in the enlargement of comprehension +and sympathy, desirable though this enlargement may be, but in the act +of selection, in the final imposition on mere multiplicity of a scale +of values. Matthew Arnold, with his striving for centrality, has far +better claims to be regarded as a humanist than Pater--and that in +spite of his inadequacy on the side of religion. The model that Arnold +sets up for imitation in the name of culture is a constant corrective +of everything that is one-sided and out of proportion. “I hate,” he +says, speaking not only for himself but for all true humanists, “all +over-preponderance of single elements.” + + +II + +We have seen thus far that the word humanist has two main meanings--an +historical meaning in its application to the scholars who turned away +from the Middle Ages to the Greeks and Romans, and a psychological +meaning, as one may say, that derives directly from the historical +one: humanists in this latter sense are those who, in any age, aim at +proportionateness through a cultivation of the law of measure. Keeping +this definition in mind, we should now be prepared to deal with the +confusions in the use of the word of which I spoke at the beginning. +These confusions have arisen from its misapplication to various types +of naturalists and supernaturalists, especially the former. + +For example, the eminent orientalist, M. Sylvain Lévi, has in a recent +book used the term humanism in speaking of persons as far apart as +Buddha and Rousseau.[8] Buddha, it is true, had his humanistic side: +he recommended that one follow a _via media_ between asceticism and +self-indulgence. But, unlike Confucius, he is in his primary emphasis +not humanistic, but religious. The association of humanism with +Rousseau is especially unjustifiable. Rousseau was, in the current +sense of the word, a highly vital individual, but he cannot be properly +regarded as either religious or humanistic. He attacked both humanism +and religion in their traditional forms, and instead of working out +some modern equivalent for these forms, helped to usher in the era of +free naturalistic expansion in the midst of which we are still living. +He was above all for free temperamental expansion. He was himself +emotionally expansive to a degree that was incompatible not only with +artificial but with real decorum. He encouraged the humanitarian hope +that brotherhood among men may be based on emotional overflow. In +general the most serious confusion in the use of the word humanist +has arisen from its appropriation by the humanitarians. Walt Whitman +was, for instance, highly Rousseauistic in his notion of brotherhood. +We should therefore know what to think of the assertion of Mr. Lewis +Mumford that Walt Whitman was a true humanist; also of the assumption +of the term by the left-wing Unitarians and other Protestants who have +been moving towards humanitarianism.[9] + +The humanitarian has favoured not only temperamental expansion; he +has also, as a rule, favoured the utmost expansion of scientific +knowledge with a view to realising the Baconian ideal. Perhaps indeed +the chief driving power behind the humanitarian movement has been the +confidence inspired in man by the progressive control physical science +has enabled him to acquire over the forces of nature. It goes without +saying that the humanist is not hostile to science as such but only +to a science that has overstepped its due bounds, and in general to +every form of naturalism, whether rationalistic or emotional, that +sets up as a substitute for humanism or religion. In the case of such +encroachments there is not only a quarrel between the naturalist and +the humanist, but a quarrel of first principles. When first principles +are involved the law of measure is no longer applicable. One should +not be moderate in dealing with error. I have pointed out elsewhere +the danger of confounding the humanistic attitude with that of the +Laodicean.[10] + +The reason for the radical clash between the humanist and the purely +naturalistic philosopher is that the humanist requires a centre to +which he may refer the manifold of experience; and this the phenomenal +world does not supply. In getting his centre the humanist may appeal +primarily to tradition, or as I have said, to intuition. In the latter +case he will need to submit to a searching Socratic dialectic the word +intuition itself--to distinguish between intuitions of the One and +intuitions of the Many. Otherwise he will run the risk of not being a +modern but only a modernist. The contrast between modern and modernist +is not unlike that between Socrates and the sophists. Both modern and +modernist are under compulsion to accept in some form the ancient +maxim that man is the measure of all things.[11] Only, the measure of +the modern is based on a perception of the something in himself that +is set above the flux and that he possesses in common with other men; +whereas the perception with which the modernist is chiefly concerned, +to the subversion of any true measure whatsoever, is of the divergent +and the changeful both within and without himself. The present menace +to humanism, it has been said, is less from its enemies than from +those who profess to be its friends. Thus Mr. F. C. S. Schiller of +Oxford proclaims himself a humanist, and at the same time seeks to show +that the true humanist was not Socrates but that precursor of recent +“flowing” philosophers, Protagoras. + +It should be noted that many of our votaries of change and mobility +are more emotional than Protagoras or any other Greek sophist. They +tend to make, not their own thoughts, but their own feelings the +measure of all things. This indulgence in feeling has been encouraged +by the sentimentalists who have discovered in feeling not only the +quintessentially human element, but, as I said in speaking of Rousseau, +the ultimate ground of fraternal union. In our own time, partly perhaps +as a result of the psycho-analytical probing of the sources of the +emotional life in the subconscious, there is a growing distrust of the +sentimentalist. To be sure, one may, according to the psycho-analyst, +turn the emotions to good account by a process of “sublimation.” Why +not escape still more completely from one’s complexes and infantile +survivals by adjusting oneself to the cosmic order that is revealed +to the scientific investigator in his laboratory? One may thus cease +to be ego-centric and become truly mature and disinterested. This is +the attitude that Mr. Walter Lippmann recommends in _A Preface to +Morals_, and it is this attitude that, by a flagrant misuse of the +word, he terms “humanism.” It is well that a man should adjust himself +to the reality of the natural order and, as a preliminary, should +strive to be objective in the scientific sense; but humanism calls +for an adjustment to a very different order that is also “real” and +“objective” in its own way. It insists in short that there is a “law +for man” as well as a “law for thing,” and is in this sense dualistic. +Mr. Lippmann’s attempt to base ethics on monistic postulates is, +from either a religious or humanistic point of view, a revival of the +stoical error. Yet he would have us believe that any one who has become +disinterested after the scientific fashion has got the equivalent not +only of humanism but of “high religion.” By thus dissimulating the gap +between the wisdom of the ages and the wisdom of the laboratory, he is +flattering some of the most dangerous illusions of the present time. +He escapes from the main humanitarian tendency to give to feeling a +primacy that does not belong to it, only to encourage its other main +tendency to accord to physical science a hegemony to which it is not +entitled. + +It is self-evident that humanitarianism of the scientific or +utilitarian type, with its glorification of the specialist who is +ready to sacrifice his rounded development, if only he can contribute +his mite to “progress,” is at odds with the humanistic ideal of +poise and proportion. The religious pretensions of humanitarianism +of this type are even more inacceptable, at least if one understands +by religion anything resembling the great traditional faiths. The +Baconian has inclined from the outset to substitute an outer for an +inner working--the effort of the individual upon himself--that religion +has, in some form or other, always required. The result has been to +encourage the acquisitive life and also the pursuit of material instead +of spiritual “comfort.” A typical example of this utilitarian trend is +Professor T. N. Carver’s _Religion Worth Having_, in which he so exalts +the “productive life” that religion is all but identified with thrift. +At this rate it may soon be possible to get one’s religion securely +tucked away in a safe-deposit drawer! One should, however, be grateful +to Professor Carver for not having called himself a humanist. + +It does not seem possible to supply from the sentimental or +Rousseauistic side of the humanitarian movement the elements that are, +religiously speaking, absent from its utilitarian side. The nature to +which the Rousseauist invites one to return, is, as I have sought to +show elsewhere, only a projection of the idyllic imagination. In the +state of nature or some similar state thus projected, in other words +in Arcadia, man is “good.” Practically this has meant that there is +in the natural man an altruistic impulse that may prevail over his +egoism. The upshot of this myth of man’s natural goodness has been to +discredit the traditional controls, both humanistic and religious. +Humility, conversion, decorum, all go by the board in favour of +unrestricted temperamental overflow. The crucial question is whether +the immense machinery of power that has resulted from the efforts of +the utilitarians can be made, on this basis of unlimited expansion, to +serve disinterested ends. Everything converges indeed on both sides +of the humanitarian movement upon the idea of service. If it can +be shown that there has been no vital omission in the passage from +the service of God to the service of man, one may safely side with +all the altruists from the third Earl of Shaftesbury to John Dewey. +Unfortunately a formidable mass of evidence has been accumulating (the +Great War was for many a convincing demonstration) that, in the natural +man as he exists in the real world and not in some romantic dreamland, +the will to power is more than a match for the will to service. + +The benefits that have ensued from the major concentration upon the +natural order that has been under way since the Renaissance have +been numerous and dazzling. We are still celebrating these benefits +under the name of progress. It is no longer possible, however, to +allay the suspicion that the price which has been paid for progress +of this type has been a growing superficiality in dealing with the +still more important problems of the human order. “Nothing is more +certain,” says Burke in a well-known passage, “than that our manners, +our civilisation, and all the good things which are connected with +manners and with civilisation, have, in this European world of ours, +depended for ages upon two principles; and were indeed the result of +both combined; I mean the spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of +religion.” The whole debate would seem to narrow down to the question +whether it is possible to secure on utilitarian-sentimental lines a +valid equivalent for Burke’s two principles. As for the “spirit of a +gentleman,” its decline is so obvious as scarcely to admit of argument. +It has even been maintained that in America, the country in which the +collapse of traditional standards has been most complete, the gentleman +is at a positive disadvantage in the world of practical affairs; he +is likely to get on more quickly if he assumes the “mucker pose.”[12] +According to William James, usually taken to be the representative +American philosopher, the very idea of the gentleman has about it +something slightly satanic. “The prince of darkness,” says James, “may +be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but, whatever the God of earth +and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.” + +As for the “spirit of religion,” I have already glanced at its +humanitarian substitute. The humanitarian maintains that the spirit +that appears in Christianity will, if disengaged from mere dogma, be +found to be something very similar to his own spirit of service. One +should at least be able to understand the position of the person who +has become convinced that there is a supernatural element in genuine +Christianity, lost in the passage from the old dispensation to the +new, for which mere altruism is no substitute, and who therefore takes +his stand on the side of tradition. Dogmatic and revealed religion, he +argues, was alone capable of rescuing the ancient world from a decadent +naturalism. It alone affords an avenue of escape from the analogous +situation that confronts the world to-day. + + +III + +The relation of the humanist to this religious traditionalist can +scarcely be defined too carefully. Between the humanist and the +humanitarian, I have said, there is a clash of first principles. +Between the humanist and the authentic Christian, on the other hand, +there is room for important co-operation. To be sure, many of the +leaders of the early Church were satisfied with nothing short of a +stark supernaturalism and inclined to reject the genuinely humanistic +elements of the ancient civilisation along with its naturalistic +errors. But the orthodox attitude has, in spite of the difficulties +of reconciling otherworldliness with a merely secular wisdom, come +to be one of friendliness to the classical humanities.[13] Mr. T. +S. Eliot is probably close to this attitude when he maintains that +humanism is of very great value, but only in subordination to the +historical Church. As an independent doctrine, at least in any large +way, it is, he maintains, ineffective. A broad survey of the past +does not, however, confirm the view that humanism is thus either +precarious or parasitical. The two most notable manifestations of the +humanistic spirit that the world has seen, that in ancient Greece and +that in Confucian China, did not have the support of Christianity +or any other form of revealed religion. Take again the humanism of +seventeenth-century France: the ideal of the finely poised gentleman +who “does not plume himself on anything” was often allied with +Christianity (“devout humanism”), but it was also found among the +free-thinkers (“libertines”) who were hostile to every form of belief +in the supernatural. + +In general, why should not the humanist, it may be asked, devote +himself quietly to his own task--that of effecting an adjustment +between the law of measure and the ever-novel emergencies of actual +living, and at the same time refuse to take sides too decisively in +the great debate between the naturalists and the supernaturalists? If +pressed too hard by the supernaturalists in particular, why should he +not reply in the words of Pope: + + “Presume not God to scan; + The proper study of mankind is man”? + +One must, however, admit an element of truth in the assertion of +Plato that things human cannot be properly known without a previous +insight into things divine. Another thinker, Pascal, who had this +religious insight in a high degree, though combined with a form of +dogma peculiarly alien to most modern men, declared that unless man +has the support of the supernatural, unless in short he attains to +true humility, he will fall fatally either into the stoic pride or +else, through the intermediary stage of scepticism, into the epicurean +relaxation. The whole question bristles with difficulties: one thinks +of the immense and, on the whole, salutary influence that two Roman +humanists, Cicero and Horace, have exercised on occidental culture, +though, to adopt Pascal’s classification, the humanism of Cicero leaned +unduly to the stoical side, that of Horace to the epicurean. Yet I +believe that the humanist will finally be forced to recognise that +there is truth in Pascal’s contention, that he will have to take sides +in the debate between naturalists and supernaturalists, however much he +may deplore the frequent failure of both of these fell antagonists to +do justice to the immense range of human experience that is subject +primarily to the law of measure. + +For my own part, I range myself unhesitatingly on the side of the +supernaturalists. Though I see no evidence that humanism is necessarily +ineffective apart from dogmatic and revealed religion, there is, as +it seems to me, evidence that it gains immensely in effectiveness +when it has a background of religious insight. One is conscious of +such a background, for example, in Sophocles, who ranks high among +occidental humanists, as well as in Confucius, the chief exponent of +the humanistic idea in the Orient. The phrase religious insight is in +itself vague. Is it not possible to give the phrase a definite content +without departing from the critical attitude? One may be helped to +such a definition by asking oneself what element has tended to fall +out of the life of the modern man with the decline of the traditional +disciplines. According to Mr. Walter Lippmann, the conviction the +modern man has lost is that “there is an immortal essence presiding +like a king over his appetites.” But why abandon the affirmation of +such an “essence” or higher will, to the mere traditionalist? Why not +affirm it first of all as a psychological fact, one of the immediate +data of consciousness, a perception so primordial that, compared +with it, the deterministic denials of man’s moral freedom are only +a metaphysical dream? One would thus be in a position to perform a +swift flanking movement on the behaviourists and other naturalistic +psychologists who are to be regarded at present as among the chief +enemies of human nature. One might at the same time be in a fair way +to escape from the modernist dilemma and become a thoroughgoing and +complete modern. + +The philosophers have often debated the question of the priority of +will or intellect in man. The quality of will that I am discussing and +that rightly deserves to be accounted superrational, has, however, +been associated in traditional Christianity not primarily with man’s +will, but with God’s will in the form of grace. The theologians have +indulged in many unprofitable subtleties apropos of grace. One cannot +afford, however, as has been the modern tendency, to discard the +psychological truth of the doctrine along with these subtleties. The +higher will must simply be accepted as a mystery that may be studied in +its practical effects, but that, in its ultimate nature, is incapable +of formulation. Herein the higher will is not peculiar. “All things,” +according to the scholastic maxim, “end in a mystery” (_Omnia exeunt in +mysterium_). The man of science is increasingly willing to grant that +the reality behind the phenomena he is studying not only eludes him, +but must in the nature of the case ever elude him. He no longer holds, +for example, as his more dogmatic forebears of the nineteenth century +inclined to do, that the mechanistic hypothesis, valuable as it has +proved itself to be as a laboratory technique, is absolutely true; its +truth is, he admits, relative and provisional. + +The person who declines to turn the higher will to account until he +is sure he has grasped its ultimate nature is very much on a level +with the man who should refuse to make practical use of electrical +energy until he is certain he has an impeccable theory of electricity. +Negatively one may say of the higher will, without overstepping +the critical attitude, that it is not the absolute, nor again the +categorical imperative; not the organic and still less the mechanical; +finally, not the “ideal” in the current sense of that term. Positively +one may define it as the higher immediacy that is known in its +relation to the lower immediacy--the merely temperamental man with +his impressions and emotions and expansive desires--as a power of +vital control (_frein vital_). Failure to exercise this control is the +spiritual indolence that is for both Christian and Buddhist a chief +source, if not the chief source, of evil. Though Aristotle, after the +Greek fashion, gives the primacy not to will but to mind, the power of +which I have been speaking is surely related to his “energy of soul,” +the form of activity distinct from a mere outer working, deemed by +him appropriate for the life of leisure that he proposes as the goal +of a liberal education. Happiness, which is for him the end of ends, +is itself, he tells us, “a kind of working.” Here is a difference, +one may note in passing, between a true humanist like Aristotle and +the epicurean who also has his doctrine of moderation and so often +sets up as a humanist. It is no doubt well, as the epicurean urges, +so to indulge in present pleasures that they may not be injurious to +future ones. To employ the trivial illustration, it is well to avoid +overeating at dinner lest one impair one’s appetite for supper. But the +meaning of the Aristotelian working is that one should not be content +with transitory pleasure at all, but should be striving constantly to +rise from a lower to a higher range of satisfactions. The energy of +soul that has served on the humanistic level for mediation appears on +the religious level in the form of meditation. Religion may of course +mean a great deal more than meditation. At the same time humanistic +mediation that has the support of meditation may correctly be said to +have a religious background. Mediation and meditation are after all +only different stages in the same ascending “path” and should not be +arbitrarily separated. + +This question comes up especially in connection with the rôle of +enthusiasm. Humanism is not primarily enthusiastic, whereas religion +is. There is a touch of enthusiasm even in Aristotle, in general one of +the coolest and most detached of thinkers, when he comes to the passage +from the humanistic to the religious level. “We should not,” he says, +“pay heed to those who bid us think as mortals, but should, as far as +may be, seek to make ourselves immortal.” At the same time it must be +admitted that even a true religious enthusiasm is hard to combine with +poise and that this true enthusiasm has many counterfeits. “For one +inspired, ten thousand are possessed,” wrote the Earl of Roscommon, +having in mind the religious zealots of the English seventeenth +century. The neo-classic gentleman was therefore as a rule distinctly +unfriendly to the enthusiast. The humanist, however, should not deny +enthusiasm but merely insist on defining it. He cannot afford to be +an enthusiast in Rousseau’s sense; on the other hand, he should not +neglect the truth of Rousseau’s saying that “cold reason has never done +anything illustrious.” + +Though one should, in my judgment, side with the oriental as against +Aristotle and the Greeks in giving priority to the higher will over +mind,[14] especially if one attaches importance to the supreme +religious virtue, humility, it yet remains true that this will must +be exercised intelligently. Granted that the existence in man of a +power of control may be affirmed, quite apart from any dogma, as +a psychological fact, the individual must nevertheless go beyond +this fact if he is to decide rightly how far he needs to exercise +control in any particular instance: in short, he needs standards. In +getting his standards the humanist of the best type is not content +to acquiesce inertly in tradition. He is aware that there is always +entering into life an element of vital novelty and that the wisdom +of the past, invaluable though it is, cannot therefore be brought to +bear too literally on the present. He knows that, though standards +are necessary, they should be held flexibly and that, to accomplish +this feat, he must make the most difficult of all mediations, that +between the One and the Many. The chief enemies of the humanist are +the pragmatists and other philosophers of the flux who simplify this +problem for themselves by dismissing the One, which is actually a +living intuition, as a metaphysical abstraction. + +Whatever reality man achieves in his dealings with either the human or +the natural order, is dependent, I have tried to show elsewhere, on the +degree to which he establishes a correct relationship between the part +of himself that perceives, the part that conceives, and the part that +discriminates. The part that conceives, that reaches out and seizes +likenesses and analogies, may be defined as imagination; the part that +discriminates and tests the unity thus apprehended from the point of +view of its truth may be defined as analytical reason; the part that +perceives is, in the case of the humanist, primarily concerned with +the something in man that is set above the phenomenal order and that I +have already defined as a power of control. One may say therefore that +standards result from a co-operation between imagination and reason, +dealing with the more specifically human aspects of experience, and +that these standards should be pressed into the service of the higher +will with a view to imposing a right direction on the emotions and +expansive desires of the natural man. The supreme goal of ethical +endeavour, as Plato pointed out long ago, is that one should come to +like and dislike the right things. + + +IV + +Humanism, even humanism of the distinctly individualistic type I have +been outlining, may, as I have already suggested, work in harmony +with traditional religion. In that case there must be a careful +determination of boundaries. Though humanism and religion both lie +on the same ascending path from the naturalistic flux, one must +insist that each has its separate domain. It is an error to hold that +humanism can take the place of religion. Religion indeed may more +readily dispense with humanism than humanism with religion. Humanism +gains greatly by having a religious background in the sense I have +indicated; whereas religion, for the man who has actually renounced +the world, may very conceivably be all in all. On the other hand, the +man who sets out to live religiously in the secular order without +having recourse to the wisdom of the humanist is likely to fall into +vicious confusions--notably, into a confusion between the things of God +and the things of Cæsar. The Catholic Church has therefore been well +inspired in rounding out its religious doctrine with the teaching of +Aristotle and other masters of the law of measure. It can scarcely fail +to recognise that the position of the positive and critical humanist +is sound _as far as it goes_. It follows that the Catholic and the +non-Catholic should be able to co-operate on the humanistic level. +A like co-operation should be possible between the humanist and the +members of other Christian communions who have not as yet succumbed +entirely to humanitarianism. + +I have tried to show that the weakness of humanitarianism from both +the humanistic and the religious point of view is that it holds out +the hope of securing certain spiritual benefits--for example, peace +and brotherhood--without any ascent from the naturalistic level. The +positive and critical humanist would seem to have a certain tactical +superiority over the religious traditionalist in dealing with the +defects of the humanitarian programme. In the battle of ideas, as in +other forms of warfare, the advantage is on the side of those who +take the offensive. The modernists have broken with tradition partly +because it is not sufficiently immediate, partly because it is not +sufficiently experimental. Why not meet them on their own ground +and, having got rid of every ounce of unnecessary metaphysical and +theological baggage, oppose to them something that is both immediate +and experimental--namely the presence in man of a higher will or +power of control? I use the word experimental deliberately by way of +protest against the undue narrowing of this word by the scientific +naturalists to observation of the phenomenal order and of man only in +so far as he comes under this order. One should also protest against +the restriction of the term reality to observation of this type. +Some of the most monstrous mutilations of reality that the world has +ever seen are being perpetrated at this moment--for example, by the +behaviouristic psychologists--in the name of the “real.” At all events +everything in the modernist movement will be found to converge either +upon the rôle of feeling or upon the rôle of experiment, and the final +question raised in either case is that of the will. As a result of the +combined influence of the various types of naturalists, the present age +is at once more emotional and more mechanical than any other of which +we have historical record. By mechanical I refer primarily not to the +multiplication of machines in the outer world but to the mechanising +of mind itself. An effective procedure is, as I have said, to meet the +mechanist on his own ground and point out to him that he is unduly +dogmatic, if he holds that his hypothesis is absolutely valid even for +the natural order, and that, if he goes further and seeks to make it +cover the whole of experience, to impose a deterministic nightmare on +the human spirit itself, he is abandoning the experimental attitude for +an even more objectionable form of dogmatism. + +Similarly one should meet the emotionalist on his favourite ground +of immediacy. Inasmuch as the higher immediacy has been largely +associated in the Christian occident with the operation of God’s will, +the substitution for it of the lower immediacy has meant practically +the setting up of a subrational parody of grace. In order to make this +parody plausible, the emotionalist has had recourse to the usual arts +of the sophist, chief among which are a juggling with half-truths and +a tampering with general terms. I have commented elsewhere on the way +in which words like “virtue” and “conscience” have been so twisted from +their traditional meaning as to eliminate the dualistic element that +both humanism and religion require. If there is to be any recovery +of the truths of dualism, at least along critical lines, a battle +royal will need to be fought over the word “nature” itself; here, if +anywhere, one needs to practise a Socratic dichotomy. + +The half-truth that has been used to compromise religion in particular +is that, though religion is in itself something quite distinct from +emotion, it is in its ordinary manifestations very much mixed up with +emotion. I give an example of this error in its latest and fashionable +form. In a very learned and, in some respects, able book,[15] the +Rev. N. P. Williams seeks to show that St. Augustine’s experience of +grace or, what amounts to the same thing, his love of God, was only a +“sublimation” of his “lust.” St. Augustine was a very passionate man +and his passionateness no doubt enters into his love of God. But if +it could be shown that the love of God was in St. Augustine or any +other of the major saints merely emotion, sublimated or unsublimated, +religion would be only the “illusion” that Freud himself has declared +it to be. The psycho-analytical divine, who is, I am told, a fairly +frequent type in England, is about the worst _mélange des genres_ that +has appeared even in the present age of confusion. + +One may be helped in escaping from this confusion by considering, so +far as possible from a strictly psychological point of view, what the +exercise of the higher will has actually meant in genuine religion. +One must admit at the outset the difficulty of determining what is +genuine religion. Religion, not merely to-day but always, has been +subject to extraordinary perversions. It has ever been the chosen +domain of self-deception and “wishful” thinking. When one reflects +on the fanaticism, casuistry, obscurantism, and hypocrisy that have +defaced the history of Christianity itself, one is tempted at times +to acquiesce in the famous exclamation of Lucretius.[16] Yet one must +insist that religion is in its purity the very height of man. As to +where this pure religion is to be found, we should keep in mind the +saying of Joubert that in matters religious it is a bad sign when one +differs from the saints. Let us then turn to the saints in whom there +is some authentic survival of the spirit of the Founder. This spirit +surely appears in the author of the _Imitation_ when he writes: “Know +for certain that thou must lead a dying life; and the more a man dies +to himself the more he begins to live in God.” Moreover the author of +the _Imitation_ is at one here not only with Christ but with Buddha, +the chief source of sanctity in the Far East. + +The point on which Christ and Buddha are in accord is the need of +renunciation. It should be abundantly plain from all I have said that +the higher will is felt in its relation to the expansive desires as a +will to refrain. The humanist does not carry the exercise of this will +beyond a subduing of his desires to the law of measure; but it may +be carried much further until it amounts to a turning away from the +desires of the natural man altogether--the “dying to the world” of the +Christian. + +With this background in mind, we should know what to think of the +humanistic and religious claims of the modernist movement. This +movement has, from the eighteenth century and in some respects from +the Renaissance, been marked by a growing discredit of the will to +refrain. The very word renunciation has been rarely pronounced by those +who have entered into the movement. The chief exception that occurs +to one is Goethe (echoed at times by Carlyle). Any one who thinks +of the series of Goethe’s love affairs prolonged into the seventies, +is scarcely likely to maintain that his _Entsagung_ was of a very +austere character even for the man of the world, not to speak of the +saint. The humanitarians in particular, whether of the utilitarian +or of the sentimental type, have put slight emphasis on the inner +control of appetite. They have encouraged, either directly or through +the ineffectiveness of the substitutes they have offered for this +control, a multiplication and complication of desires that is in flat +contradiction with the wisdom of the ages. Judged by the standards of +the great traditional faiths, the religion of “progress” or “service” +or “humanity” merely illustrates on a vast scale the truth of the +old Latin adage that “the world wishes to be deceived.” The various +naturalistic philosophies that have been built up on the ruins of +tradition should, at all events, whatever their merits or demerits, be +made to stand on their own feet. It should be one’s ambition to develop +so keen a Socratic dialectic, supported by such a wealth of historical +illustration, that it will not be easy for the Walter Lippmanns of +the future to propose some form of naturalism as the equivalent of +“humanism” and “high religion.” + +In his attempt to show the inadequacy of humanism apart from dogmatic +and revealed religion, Mr. T. S. Eliot has painted a picture of the +humanist exercising in a sort of psychic solitude self-control purely +for the sake of control. It is evident however that the real humanist +consents, like Aristotle, to limit his desires only in so far as this +limitation can be shown to make for his own happiness. This primary +reference to the individual and his happiness is something with which +we are nowadays rather unfamiliar. Our preoccupation, one is almost +tempted to say our obsession, is, at least in our official philosophy, +with society and its supposed interests. A study of humanism from +the sociological point of view would call for a separate essay. I +may, however, indicate briefly the main issue: the individual who is +practising humanistic control is really subordinating to the part of +himself which he possesses in common with other men, that part of +himself which is driving him apart from them. If several individuals +submit to the same or a similar humanistic discipline, they will become +psychically less separate, will, in short, move towards a communion. A +group that is thus getting together on a sound ethical basis will be +felt at once as an element of social order and stability. + +No doubt a still more perfect communion may be achieved on the +religious level. There are however differences of dogma and +ecclesiastical discipline that make a meeting on this plane difficult +even for the various denominations of Christians. If one’s survey +is extended, as it should be in these days of universal and facile +material communication, to include Mahometans and Hindus and Chinese, +the obstacles in the way of a union among men that is primarily +religious are seen to be well-nigh insuperable. It might, for example, +be conducive to the peace of the world if everybody, East and West, +accepted the authority of the Pope. The chances of such universal +acceptance are, however, short of some very “visible upset of grace,” +practically negligible. One can scarcely remind oneself too often that +the great traditional faiths, notably Christianity and Buddhism,[17] +have their humanistic side where closer agreement may be possible. If +the leaders of the various national and cultural groups could bring +themselves to display in their dealings with one another moderation, +common sense and common decency, they would accomplish a great +deal--vastly more than they have been accomplishing of late. The +difficulties in the way of an understanding, even on this humanistic +basis, not to speak of any deeper religious understanding, have been +augmented by the fact that large numbers in the Christian occident as +well as in the orient, especially in China, are falling away from their +traditional disciplines into spiritual anarchy. The dangers of this +anarchy, combined, as it is, with the accumulation of a formidable mass +of machinery that, in the abeyance of any higher will, is likely to be +pressed into the service of the will to power, are appalling. + +The first step, if there is to be an effective opposition to spiritual +anarchy of the current type, must be, as I remarked at the outset, +right definition. The idea is becoming fairly widespread that there is +needed at present a reaction from the romantic movement and that this +reaction should assume a religious or a humanistic character. This +idea will not in itself take us very far. Even Benedetto Croce, whose +philosophy would seem to be in its underlying postulates almost at the +opposite pole from a genuinely religious or humanistic position, has +declared that we need a “new Christianity” or a “new humanism,” if we +are to escape “from intellectual anarchy, from unbridled individualism, +from sensualism, from scepticism, from pessimism, from every aberration +which for a century and a half has been harassing the soul of man and +the society of mankind under the name of Romanticism.” + +Occasional humanists may appear under existing conditions, but if there +is to be anything deserving to be called a humanistic movement, it +will be necessary that a considerable number of persons get at least +within hailing distance of one another as to the definition of the word +humanism itself and the nature of the discipline that this definition +entails. This preliminary understanding once established, they could +then proceed, in the literal sense of that unjustly discredited term, +to work out a convention. Their next concern would almost inevitably +be with education. Education is, as Professor Gass has remarked, +the one altruistic activity of the humanist. The reason is that if +the humanistic goal is to be achieved, if the adult is to like and +dislike the right things, he must be trained in the appropriate habits +almost from infancy. The whole question should be of special interest +to Americans. Economic and other conditions are more favourable in +this country than elsewhere for the achievement of a truly liberal +conception of education with the idea of leisure enshrined at its very +centre. In the meanwhile, our educational policies, from the elementary +grades to the university, are being controlled by humanitarians. They +are busy at this very moment, almost to a man, proclaiming the gospel +of service. It will be strange indeed if dissatisfaction with this +situation is not felt by a growing minority, if a demand does not arise +for at least a few institutions of learning that are humanistic rather +than humanitarian in their aims. One is at all events safe in affirming +that the battle that is to determine the fate of American civilisation +will be fought out first of all in the field of education. + + Note.--For a humanistic view of the field of education, the reader + may be referred to an article by Irving Babbitt, “President Eliot + and American Education,” in the _Forum_, January, 1929, or to his + book on _Literature and the American College: Essays in Defence + of the Humanities_ (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1908). See also Norman + Foerster’s recent book, _The American Scholar: A Study in Litteræ + Inhumaniores_ (University of North Carolina Press, 1929).--Editor. + + +FOOTNOTES + +[2] For an outline of Chinese humanism, see the article by Chang +Hsin-Hai in the _Hibbert Journal_ for April, 1928 (“The Essentials of +Confucian Wisdom”). + +[3] See _The Conduct of Life_, translation of the _Tsung Yung_ by Ku +Hung Ming (Wisdom of the East series), p. 55. + +[4] “Unum hoc animal sentit quid sit ordo, quid sit quod deceat, in +factis dictisque qui modus.” _De Officiis_, Lib. I. + +[5] See _Analects_ (Wisdom of the East series), p. 109. + +[6] “Conclusion” to his volume _The Renaissance_. + +[7] For Pater’s definition of humanism see the end of his essay on Pico +della Mirandola (_The Renaissance_). + +[8] See _L’Inde el le Monde_, pp. 32, 165. + +[9] See, for example, the symposium entitled _Humanist Sermons_ edited +by C. W. Reese (1927). On page 60 of this volume one encounters the +statement that “all Americans are humanists”! For a fuller elucidation +of the distinction between the humanist and the humanitarian see the +opening chapters of my book _Literature and the American College_ +(1908). + +[10] See my book _Democracy and Leadership_, p. 25. + +[11] For the different meanings that this maxim may have see the last +chapter of my book _The Masters of Modern French Criticism_. + +[12] See “The Mucker Pose” by James Truslow Adams, _Harper’s Magazine_, +November, 1928; reprinted in _Our Business Civilisation_ (1929). + +[13] For the early hostility of certain Christians to Graeco-Roman +culture and the final reconciliation between this culture and the +Church, see E. K. Rand’s _Founders of the Middle Ages_, _passim_. _Cf._ +also P. E. More’s “Paradox of Oxford” (_Shelburne Essays_, Vol. IX). + +[14] See Ch. V of _Democracy and Leadership_ (“Europe and Asia”); also +Appendix A (“Theories of the Will”). + +[15] _The Ideas of the Fall and of Original Sin_ (Bampton Lectures for +1924). See p. 331. + +[16] “Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.” + +[17] Confucianism is of course primarily humanistic. + + + + +_The Humility of Common Sense_[18] + +PAUL ELMER MORE + + +I + +It is a nice question to ask whether belief in the absolute +irresponsibility of the artistic temperament has engendered the modern +ideal of absolute art, or the contrary. Which is first, the complacency +of conceit or of theory? For myself I am willing to leave the solution +of such a problem to the Demon himself, who alone knoweth his own +mind; but from the _Æsthetic_[19] of Signor Croce, the most epoptic +hierophant of the demonic mysteries in these days, I can see how +nearly the two absolutes are related, and can get some glimpse of the +procedure of the metaphysical mind at its highest point of activity. + +Now Signor Croce, though really himself a child of Hegel, makes +good sport of the theoretical æstheticians in the train of Kant and +Hegel who define art as pure hedonism, or pure moralism, or pure +conceptualism; and so far he does well. You might suppose he was taking +the ordinary and sensible point of view, viz., that art must of course +give pleasure, and must be psychologically moral (not pedantically so), +and must contain ideas, but that it is a false sort of simplification +to define art itself therefore _as_ pleasure, or _as_ morals, or +_as_ ideas. If such were the motive behind Croce’s antipathy to the +Teutonic æsthetics of the last century, he would seem, as I say, to +be pleading for the liberty of common sense against the absolutism of +the Demon; but he too quickly dispels any such illusion. “Art,” he +declares, “which _depends_ on morals or pleasure or philosophy _is_ +morals or pleasure or philosophy, and not art at all.” Now what kind of +logic is this that argues: Because art is not pure pleasure, therefore +pure art is absolved from the need of giving pleasure; because art is +not pure morals, therefore pure art is absolved from any concern with +morals? One might as well say, e.g., that cookery which is relished +for the pleasure it gives _is_ pleasure, and not cookery at all; +therefore cookery has nothing to do with pleasure. It is the old story +of Luther’s drunken man on horseback: prop him up on one side and over +he flops on the other. Because one absolute is not true, therefore the +contrary absolute must be true; because art which gives pleasure is not +definable simply as pleasure, therefore art is a hieratic abstraction +entirely independent of pleasure. + +But if such a theory of art would seem to be buzzing in a metaphysical +vacuum, it is not without its very practical aspect, whether as +cause or effect. “The artist,” says Signor Croce, coming down +abruptly to earth, “is always above blame morally and above censure +philosophically.” There you have it, the claim to irresponsibility, so +dear to our militant gentlemen of the press, vested in the authority of +an awesome name. I do not suppose many of our emancipated writers are +deeply versed in the thin dialectic of æsthetics, but they understand +pretty well what is meant when they are told that in their work as +creative artists they need not concern themselves with the ethical laws +supposed to govern life or with the dull maxims of truth. + +It may be a question, as I have said, whether the great Neapolitan +has risen from the popular lust of irresponsibility to his theory +of independent art or has condescended to the lower level from the +heights of abstract reasoning. In either case the next step, from a +definition by negation to a definition by affirmation, carries him +into an altitude beyond the reach of any earthly telescope. Art, he +has shown, is absolutely not pleasure or morals or philosophy; it just +absolutely _is_--but is what? In the answer to this question I seem +to hear no human voice but the very diction of the Demon. Otherwise +I cannot understand whence the avowed foe of Kantian and Hegelian +abstractions has derived his positive definition of art, which of +all abstractions is the most abstract and of all absolutes the most +absolute. “Art is intuition,” he says, that and nothing else; not the +vision of something, mind you, but pure vision. Or, if you desire +more words in your definition, you may have it thus: “An aspiration +inclosed in the circle of a representation, that is art; and in it the +aspiration exists solely by the representation, and the representation +solely by the aspiration.” Which words, if they mean anything, signify, +I suppose, that art is of the spirit of pure creativeness, a reaching +out towards a goal which is non-existent until visualised by the very +act of reaching out. Such a definition may engage the attention of +metaphysicians; in my common-place mind, frankly, it draws blank. I +do not comprehend what is meant by aspiring towards that which is +non-existent until we visualise it by aspiring. + +Croce is the pope of the new school, and as such ought to be immune +from the questioning of the lay intelligence. For a more accessible +exposition of the ideas stirring the young modernists, I turn to the +distinguished critic and philosopher of Spain, José Ortega y Gasset, +and in particular to his essay published under the significant title of +_The Dehumanization of Art_.[20] Unless I mistake his language, Señor +Ortega finds little satisfaction æsthetically in the extreme products +of the movement he describes. But he believes that it is not the +function of a critic to value works of art in accordance with his own +taste or distaste. And especially to-day, when more than ever before +it is a characteristic of art to divide mankind sharply into those who +comprehend and those who do not, the business of criticism should be to +enter into the intention of the artist, and not to judge his work from +some alien point of view, least of all to condemn. Well, Señor Ortega +in a sense comprehends; he states the various theories adopted by the +_jóvenes_ to justify their adventurous ways with admirable perspicuity +and precision--and with that final confusion at the back of his mind +which enables him to speak as one who belongs intellectually to the +movement, however practically his taste may lag a little behind its +utmost advance. + +The central thesis of Señor Ortega’s book, which at once justifies his +title and summarises the most advanced attitude towards art, is exactly +this: “To rejoice or suffer with the human lot which a work of art +may incidentally suggest or present to us, is a very different thing +from the true artistic pleasure. More than that: this occupation with +the human element of the work is essentially incompatible with pure +æsthetic fruition.”[21] + +That clearly is the voice of the Demon once more, appealing to the +same lust for an irresponsible absolute as inspires the Crocean +æsthetics. And now art is to be not only independent of morals but in +its essence divided altogether from human nature; and if it still aims +to please, its pleasure is of a kind peculiar to itself and unrelated +to the coarse fodder of life. Suppose, to take the illustration given +by Señor Ortega, a notable man is lying at the point of death. His +wife will be standing by his bed, a physician will be counting his +pulse, while elsewhere in the house a reporter awaits the news and +a painter is engaged to depict the scene. All four persons--wife, +physician, reporter, painter--are intent upon the same fact, but with +varying degrees of intimacy and with different kinds of interest. To +the wife the event is an occasion of grief and anxiety; she is, as it +were, a part of it; whereas to the artist, at the other extreme, the +situation is entirely divested of human sympathy or sentiment: “his +mind is set solely on the exterior, on certain lights and shadows, +certain chromatic values.” And so it happens that if the natural +emotions felt on such an occasion by the wife, the physician, and +even to a lesser degree by the news-reporter, are what the ordinary +man (the “philistine” or “bourgeois” of the older romantic jargon) +regards as the real stuff of life, then art to the ordinary man is +removed to a sphere of incomprehensible unreality. “An artistic +object,” says Señor Ortega, “is artistic only in the measure in which +it ceases to be real.” Hence, in the scene just described, the actual +death-bed and the artist’s picture of it are two things “absolutely +different (_completamente distintos_).” We may interest ourselves in +one or the other; in one case we live with, or in, the event, in the +other case we “contemplate” an object of art as such, with æsthetic +pleasure perhaps, but with no human emotions. Just in so far as the +picture shows any feeling for, or awakens in the beholder any response +to, the significance of death, it falls below the high function of +art. The tragedy of loss, the frustration of ambition, the humility +of surrender, the consolations of hope, the victory of love, the +sanctities of religion,--any shadow of these resting upon the canvas +will detract from the purity of æsthetic pleasure. The artist and the +connoisseur in the presence of death find only an occasion for certain +lines and colours. And further, as our power of contemplation becomes +more refined, we cease to discern (or, if we are artists, to paint) +even the unreal representation of a real event; a picture will cease to +depend on, or suggest, any subject whatsoever. For art is like a window +through which we look out upon a garden. The ordinary man sees only the +flowers and leaves beyond, and is so absorbed in these as to be quite +unaware of the pane of glass, the more so as the glass is purer and +clearer. But with effort we can make ourselves conscious of the medium +through which we are looking; and as our vision is thus concentrated on +the glass, the garden fades into a confused blotch of colours or even +passes out of conscious perception altogether. + +That is Señor Ortega’s vivid metaphor for the Crocean theory of +art as pure intuition--which he professes to reach, however, by no +theorising of his own but from study of the actual practice of certain +of the _jóvenes_. For those who believe in the divine mission of art +the elevation of society might seem to lie in obeying the command +of Mr. Skionar in Peacock’s _Crotchet Castle_: “Build sacella for +transcendental oracles to teach the world how to see through a glass +darkly.” It all sounds rather funny to me. But I hope I am not laughing +at an unfair caricature. What else in fact is the meaning of those +sapient critics, who might join me in repudiating the language of +metaphysics, yet insist that in judging a picture we shall pay no heed +to the subject represented but consider it as pure representation, +or who say that the value of a work of art depends not at all on +the character of the human experience put into it but only on the +sincerity of self-expression?--as if there were some mystical virtue +in self-expression even when the self has no experience worthy to be +expressed. It is, in fact, pedantic talk of this sort in the mouths of +respected critics that indicates how far the depredations of the Demon +have extended into the realm of common sense. + +As for the creators, so called, there may be a young votary of art +here and there who is trying honestly to put these abstractions into +practice; and for him, I should suppose, the goal of dehumanisation and +derealisation will have been attained when his pictures are simplified +to a cunning design of line and colour with no suggestion of a definite +subject, or still further to a spread of pure colour with no design at +all; his music to a pure tone without melody or even variation; his +poems to a succession of beautiful words unsullied by sense. That would +seem to be the nearest practical equivalent to seeing a pure pane of +glass. One wonders why the pilgrim of vacuity should be so slow and +hesitant in his progress towards so easy a mark. Perhaps he foresees +that absolute art, so reached, will cease to be art at all. Perhaps +he has a foreboding that the prize if obtained would not be very +valuable. It is hard to imagine the pleasure or profit to be derived +from concentrating one’s attention upon a pane of transparent glass +until one sees nothing through it; most of us would prefer to retain +our impure perception of the flowers in the garden beyond. Despite the +majestic logic of youth we persist in thinking that such a picture +as Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper is a truer work of art than the +deftest whirl of colours ever painted; that the _Æneid_ is richer in +poetical joy than _Kubla Khan_ (not to mention the latest lyric from +the American colony in Paris); that Bach’s Mass in B Minor is still a +miracle and a rapture of sound. Yet all these--the painting and the +epic and the mass--are brimming with human emotion and with a brooding +sense of the eternal values of life. They are great for various +reasons, no doubt; but certainly among those reasons is the fact that +they are not art at all as the modernists would have us believe. + +The simple truth is that the effort to create pure art is nothing +more than idolatry to a fetish of abstract reason--unless you prefer +to ticket it as empty conceit--and could never engage the practical +interest of any but a few witless cranks. There is a profound confusion +in Señor Ortega’s interpretation of what is happening among the mass of +the younger artists, as indeed there is often in their own statement of +what they are endeavouring to do. They may be seeking an absolute, but +it is not an absolute of purity in any sense of the word. + +Now I grant at once that there is a difference between art and life, +that the attitude of the painter, to return to the old illustration, +is not identical with that of the wife in the house of mourning. +There is in art a change, a transmutation, a something taken away +and a something added. “Art,” said Goethe, “is art only because it +is not nature.” And Aristotle, perhaps, had the same truth in mind +in his famous theory of the purgation of the human passions. In that +sense we can accept a maxim that comes from Japan: “Art lies in the +shadowy frontiers between reality and unreality.”[22] The point I +would make is the falseness and futility of the logical deduction that +art can therefore dispense with the stuff of humanity or nature, or +can weigh anchor and sail off into a shoreless sea of unreality. What +has actually happened is this. Always the great creators have taken +the substance of life, and, not by denying it or attempting to evade +its laws, but by looking more intently below its surface, have found +meanings and values that transmute it into something at once the same +and different. The passions that distract the individual man with the +despair of isolated impotence they have invested with a universal +significance fraught with the destinies of humanity; the scenery of the +material world they have infused with suggestions of an indwelling +otherworld. And so by a species of symbolism, or whatever you choose +to call it, they have lifted mortal life and its theatre to a higher +reality which only to the contented or dust-choked dwellers in things +as they are may appear as unreal. That, for instance, is precisely what +Perugino has achieved in his picture of a death-scene entitled the +Mystic Crucifixion, where pain and grief and the fear that clutches the +individual heart in its hand of ice have been transmuted into a drama +of divine redemption through suffering, while the tender burgeoning of +spring thrown up against the far-off juncture of earth and sky gives +hints of a mode of existence in joyous and infinite freedom. Even the +lesser creators, those who in innocence of spirit have undertaken +merely to reproduce what they see, may have done so with a clarity and +largeness of vision capable of working a magic alchemy of which they +themselves perhaps never dreamed. + +That was the tradition of agelong practice; it is what we mean, +or ought to mean, by classical. And then, after the devastating +materialism of late eighteenth-century philosophy there came a change +of ideals. The veritable feeling for the otherworld and for spiritual +values was lost, while at the same time the new school, stirred +with vague aspirations, was not satisfied with a simple and, in its +way, wholesome naturalism. Above all these prophets of the romantic +movement, as we designate it, revolted from the restrictive rules +of an art which was neither classical nor innocently naturalistic, +but pseudo-classical, and which had developed from one side of the +Renaissance. They too perceived that no great art was possible without +escape from the levelling tyranny of natural law, and, being unable +to transcend nature, seeing indeed no higher reality into which +nature could be raised, they sought freedom by sinking below nature. +In painting, as Mr. Mather has shown with fulness of knowledge +and admirable acumen, this process of escape meant “a successive +elimination of academic authority, imagination, memory, fidelity to +nature, and nature itself. It would seem as if the last sacrifice had +been made; but no. In all these rejections and in the most grotesque +experiments the painter had retained his seriousness and self-respect. +This too went by the board in a brief moment after the War, when the +Dadaists bade the artist create in a mood of joyous bluff, meanwhile +mocking himself and his world. The oft-repeated demonstration is +complete once more--the latter end of expansive Romantic individualism +is Romantic disillusionment and Romantic irony.”[23] And the same +history might be given of modern music and literature, though in +the case of the latter the disinvolution, by reason of the medium +employed, is more complicated. For instance the liberation of art +from the moral obligations of life, so vaunted by Mr. Cabell and +others of the left wing in America as a new achievement, is really +contemporaneous with the romantic movement. At least as far back as +1837 we find George Sand declaring that by almost universal consent +the arts have become accomplices in this strange tendency towards +“amoralism.” Now conscientious theorists may hold that amoralism is a +step in the direction of freedom; in practice it became commonly a mere +euphemism for immorality, not to say vulgar indecency. The climax of +the movement in that direction was reached in the realism of Zola and +others who, quite frankly and systematically and “scientifically,” made +human nature coterminous with the bestial in man. Art may have been +emancipated from one set of bonds, but it was wrapt and enfolded and +constricted in a bondage tenfold straiter. It may have been dehumanised +in the sense that it had repudiated the government of reason which to +the older humanists was the distinguishing trait of man as man; it +certainly was not purged of its attempt to evoke passions which on a +lower plane are _menschlich allzu menschlich_. + +As a matter of fact the radical writers of to-day who are accomplishing +anything of magnitude are still predominantly of that school of +realism. But a few restless souls, those in particular whom Señor +Ortega has in mind, driven on by the despotic Demon of the Absolute, +have not been content to abide in this halfway house. They see clearly +enough that art has not been purified by such realism, but mixed and +muddied by deliberate opposition to the ethical interpretation of life; +they will detach art from even that poor remnant of deliberation which +made a selection among the elements of composite human nature with +a certain regard, though an inverted regard, for moral values. They +hold deliberation to be the foe of liberation. Hence the later theory, +exemplified in English by James Joyce, that art shall not reproduce +a picture of life as the humanist sees it, or even from the inverted +point of view of the realist, but for its subject matter shall descend +to what they call the pure “stream of consciousness.” The hero of +fiction shall have no will, no purpose, no inhibition, no power of +choice whether for good or evil, but shall be merely a medium through +which passes an endless, unchecked, meaningless flux of sensations and +memories and emotions and impulses. + +And so the limit of elimination has been reached--at least the +practical limit, since below the stream of consciousness there would +seem to remain nothing to represent save bottomless inanity. But +this fact is to be noted: though the process of evolution may seem +to have been carried on in the name of absolute art, the actual goal +attained is an absolute of quite another order; there has been no true +liberation, but a progressive descent in slavery. As, successively, one +after another of the higher elements of our composite nature has been +suppressed, a lower instinct has taken its place. The submergence of +the humanistic conception of man as a responsible creature of free will +has been accompanied by an emergence of the romantic glorification of +uncontrollable temperament; this has been supplanted by a realistic +theory of subjection to the bestial passions, and this, at the last, by +an attempt to represent life as an unmitigated flux, which in practice, +however it be in literature, means confinement in a mad-house. The +practitioners of the newest art call themselves _surréalistes_, +super-realists; they flatter themselves, they are sub-realists. +Art may be dehumanised, but only in the sense that, having passed +beyond the representation of men as undifferentiated from animals, +it undertakes to portray them as complete imbeciles. To speak of the +works produced by the boastful modern school as pure art is, from any +point of view, mere bluff. By their fruits you shall know them. Turn +the pages of the little magazine published in Paris under the title +of _transition_, wherein Mr. Joyce and a group of denationalised +Americans and Americanised Frenchmen collaborate to their own mutual +satisfaction: you will there find what the Simon-pure article is in +theory and practice. For instance a certain M. Louis Aragon,--described +by his admiring introducer as “an intellectual on a lifelong holiday, +a twentieth-century pilgrim with a pack of words on his back,” +etc.,--expounds the theory thus: + + Reason, reason, o abstract day-phantom, I have already driven you + from my dreams. And now I am at the point where they are ready + to blend with the realities of appearance. There is no longer + room only for me. In vain reason denounces the dictatorship of + sensuality. In vain it puts me on guard against error. Error is + here the queen. Come in, Madame, this is my body, this is your + throne. I pat my delirium as I would a beautiful horse.... Nothing + can assure me of reality. Nothing, neither the exactness of logic + nor the strength of a sensation, can assure me that I do not base + it on the delirium of interpretation. + +And so M. Aragon, concluding “that only the syllables of reality are +artistically usable,” exemplifies the new style: + + _Ité ité la réa + Ité ité la réalité + La réa la réa + Té té La réa + Li + Té La réalité + Il y avait une fois LA RÉALITÉ._ + +Such is the manifesto of Super-realism, “the Freudian period,” as the +addicts of the stream of consciousness call it, “to the realistic +misconception.” Their title, I have said, is a pretty mistake for +sub-realism; but they are not mistaken in their claim to have reached +a kind of absolute. At least I cannot imagine what lower level of +imbecility may still be honoured with the name of art. + +(If any votary of “pure art” chances to read this essay, he will say: +So Keats and Milton were treated by critics of their age.) + + +II + +One of the hardest things for a student to learn, which yet, if he +could but know it at the beginning, would save him from endless +perplexities and perhaps from final despair, is just the simple fact +that _brain-power is no guarantee for rightness of thinking_, that on +the contrary a restlessly outreaching mind, unchecked by the humility +of common sense, is more than likely to lead its owner into bogs of +duplicity if not into the bottomless pit of fatuity, that, to repeat +the phrase of Bacon, himself a shining example, the _intellectus sibi +permissus_ is the easiest of all dupes for the Demon of the Absolute. +There has been no more powerful intellect for the past hundred years +than Kant’s; I doubt if any writer ever filled the world with more +confusion of thought or clouded the truth with a thicker dust of +obscurity. And it is in this spirit of distrust, not incompatible with +a kind of admiration, that I criticise the works of one who to-day has +reached the pinnacle of fame as a thinker. + +Professor Whitehead’s philosophy spans the double field of religion and +science; and in each of these, I presume to say, he has come by the +circuitous ways of abstract reasoning to conclusions that in a lesser +man would be regarded as preposterous. If such a statement shocks you +or sounds disrespectful, take yourself the argument of his _Religion in +the Making_ and strip it to the bones. You will find that it proceeds +from the definition of religion as “the longing for justification,” +and is directed by the fact that “to-day there is but one religious +dogma in debate: What do you mean by ‘God’?” Upon this basis, then, Mr. +Whitehead undertakes to find such a meaning for the word “God” as will +satisfy man’s “longing for justification.” Such a simplification of the +religious problem will strike some inquirers as high-handed, but I let +that pass; it has at least whatever merits appertain to simplicity. And +I admit ungrudgingly that in the course of his lectures Mr. Whitehead +makes many shrewd observations on the deeper mysteries of human life. +Memorable passages might be quoted, for instance such sentences as +these, that touch the Crocean metaphysic on the quick: “To be an actual +thing is to be limited,” “Thus rightness of limitation is essential for +growth of reality,” “Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can +procure nothing.” + +But in the end how does Mr. Whitehead reply to his own question: “What +do you mean by ‘God’?” For convenience’ sake I quote this summary of +his answer from a eulogistic article in the _Hibbert Journal_ for July +1927: + + All being does this [_i.e._, “comes to a focus in each thing”] + because it is its nature so to do. _This inherent nature of all + being is God._ All being does this because it is organised + according to the principle of concretion. All being does this + because of a certain order or character which pervades it. That + order pervading the universe that makes it concrete is God. God is + not himself concrete, says Whitehead, but he is the principle which + constitutes the concreteness of things. + +That is to say, in still simpler language: An individual object is not +cut off from the universe, but stands in some relation to all other +objects and owes its character to this relationship; this is so because +it is the nature of things to be so; such is the law of “concretion,” +and the “principle of concretion” is God. + +Now, apart from the final clause, a plain man might suggest that the +argument, so relieved of the obscurantism of metaphysical jargon, is +more true than original--true to the point of insipidity. As for the +conclusion, no doubt, so left in its native jargon, it comes with the +shock of originality; but has it sense? Will any man admit that the God +whom he worships and to whom he prays--and without worship and prayer +the use of the word “God” is a pure solecism--is no more than the +“principle of concretion” in the universe? Has such a definition any +bearing on religion as the “longing for justification”? Is it anything +more than a phantom of abstract science surreptitiously substituted for +the object of faith? The fact is that between the last clause of the +argument and what precedes there is a sheer hiatus. It is the age-old +fallacy of metaphysics: you take a word used in ordinary speech (“God”) +with a perfectly clear connotation; you define the word in a manner +to suit your convenience (“the principle of concretion”); you prove +that there is something in the nature of things corresponding to your +definition, and then casually assume that your proof holds good of the +word in its popular sense. It is the oft-repeated adventure of the +Absolute: you wrap a common-place up in abstract terminology, and then +in that fog of language you find yourself precipitated into an abyss of +nonsense (that the “longing for justification” is satisfied by belief +in “the inherent nature of all being”).[24] + +But this is by the way. Our present topic is rather Mr. Whitehead’s +philosophy of science, which is his real concern, and in which the +terms “God” and “religion” are manifestly unwarranted intrusions. +Here, again, to the student of contemporary thought Mr. Whitehead’s +_Science and the Modern World_ must be in many ways a welcome book. His +comments on the connexion between the poets and the physical theories +of their day are illuminating and bring to the subject a knowledge not +often found in the literary critic. And I for one am much beholden to +him for his treatment of the ghastly relic of materialism bequeathed +to us by our fathers--I would almost say his indecent burial of it, +were the epithet indecent applicable to the disposal of a corpse which +has remained too long above ground. And very cleverly he directs his +attack to the two points where the mechanistic philosophy is most +vulnerable--its apparent simplicity and its presumptive regard of facts. + +There was indeed at first sight a seductive simplicity about the +theories of Huxley and his militant brothers. It is so easy to say +that the world is nothing but a machine nicely constructed of atoms, +running smoothly and undeviatingly under the mechanical laws of +motion; to deny that anything new or incalculable ever breaks in to +disarrange the regularity demanded by science; to dispose of the +passions and appetites and the very consciousness of man as mere +products of atomical reaction. It was the kind of simplification that +promised to solve for us all the annoying problems of life, exactly +the kind of bait that the Demon of the Absolute loves to dangle before +a mind unprotected by the humility of common sense. Certainly if +ever any group of men had a cosmic footrule in their pockets, it was +this particular group of mid-Victorians who married the atheistical +philosophy of the eighteenth century to the physical discoveries of +the nineteenth. Unfortunately, what seemed a process of simplification +has led step by step to such a complexity of adjustments to keep +the machine going that long ago the plain man, if he dared, would +have scouted the whole conception as a fantastic dream. And here Mr. +Whitehead, by virtue of his standing as a mathematician, speaks with an +authority for which the plain man must be very grateful. “The physical +doctrine of the atom,” he says, “has got into a state which is strongly +suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus.” In all +conscience, is it not true that to accept the more recent developments +of scientific mechanism requires about the same sort of credulity as +was demanded of the theologian in the Middle Ages when asked to debate +the number of angels who could stand together on the point of a needle? + +And as the mechanistic theory, when used to explain the inner workings +of matter, instead of simplifying science, breaks down under a weight +of infinite complications, so, when applied to the nature of man, it +shatters itself on what Mr. Whitehead rightly calls certain “stubborn +and irreducible facts”--the most stubborn and irreducible of these +facts being, as every unperverted mind knows, that we are not pure +machines, and that any argument which would subject the human will and +consciousness to the mechanical laws of motion is void because based +on false premises. Against the high-handed assumptions of Darwinian +materialism and the fanatical dogmatism of its votaries (relics of +which still circulate in the backwaters of the biological laboratory), +as against all forms of complacent obscurantism, whether theological or +scientific, “Oliver Cromwell’s cry echoes down the ages: ‘My brethren, +by the bowels of Christ I beseech you, bethink you that you may be +mistaken.’” + +It is the bare truth that one must rake the records of history to +discover a more complete and abject subservience to the Demon of the +Absolute than that of the philosophy, falsely called science, of the +period now closing. And, as I say, any one who clings to common sense +must be thankful to Mr. Whitehead for lending his authority as a +scientist to the unlocking of these shackles. But then, why should so +masterly an intellect, again like Luther’s drunken man, topple over on +the other side into a contrary but equally impossible absolutism? Why? +“The only way of mitigating mechanism,” he says, “is by the discovery +that it is not mechanism.” And so, instead of admitting humbly that +mechanism is mechanism while beside it there exists something of a +totally different nature, and that the ultimate nexus between these two +fields of experience surpasses our comprehension, he must demonstrate +mechanism out of the world altogether. In his philosophy there will be +no more solid obstinate material things such as go to the making of +machines, but only “events.” Time and space, which used to be regarded +as modes of perception, become internal components of things; value, +which used to be a name for our conscious estimation of what we could +do with things or for their effect on our spiritual life, now proves to +be “the intrinsic reality of an event.” There is, you see, an entire +reversal of the mechanistic hypothesis. Formerly it was held that the +human soul obeys the same laws as a stone; now we are to believe that +a stone is of the same nature as the soul. In either case we avoid the +discomfort of a paradoxical dualism and reduce the world to a monism +which may plausibly call itself science, though as a matter of fact Mr. +Whitehead’s theory, if carried out, would simply abolish science. + +And it is clear enough that the new monism is open to precisely +the same criticism as was that of the mechanists which it looks to +supplant. Aiming ostensibly to simplify, it really renders the nature +of things incomprehensibly complex. Promising to release us from the +known paradox of a world composed of two irreconcilable classes of +things, it ends by forcing a perfectly arbitrary paradox upon us in +its definition of inanimate objects. To define a stone as an event +consisting of a bundle of time, space, value, and relationships, does +not seem to me to be moving in the direction of lucid simplicity. “What +is the sense,” Mr. Whitehead asks, “of talking about a mechanical +explanation when you do not know what you mean by mechanics?” And the +question is entirely pertinent, if by the word “mechanics” we mean +slyly to imply something more than the observed actions and reactions +of material bodies in motion. Mr. Whitehead therefore discards the +“traditional scientific materialism” for an “alternative doctrine of +organism,” that is, for a “theory of _organic mechanism_.” Well and +good. But is it unkind to ask the use of talking about an organical +explanation when you do not know what you mean by “organism,” or to +hint that no very clear idea will be evoked by joining together two +unknown quantities, “organism” and “mechanism,” and calling the world +an “organic mechanism”? + +And again, what of the “stubborn and irreducible facts,” in whose name +Mr. Whitehead attacks the rationalism of the Huxleyites and their +predecessors of the eighteenth century? If we are to cast away their +imposing structure of logic as unreasonable for the simple reason +that, after all is said, we still know that the human mind (or soul, +if you please) is something other than a stone, shall we swallow the +contrary theory, which has not even the virtue of logic, and which +transfers human qualities to a stone? Aristotle made the proper and +sufficient distinction long ago, when he said that a stone obeys laws +and a man forms habits: you may throw a stone into the air a thousand +times and it will continue to do the same thing, whereas a man learns +by experience. But alas for those “stubborn and irreducible facts”! How +bravely we all summon them to our aid! How desperately we run from them +when they appear! + +But if this merging together of the animate and the inanimate in a new +naturalism makes a travesty of the inorganic world, its real menace +is that, equally with the older naturalism, it reacts to deprive +humanity of what is distinctly human. The solid objects of “our naïve +experience” have been made organic by a kind of relaxation into fluid +composites of time and space and value and relationships; they have +evaporated into a semblance of psychical events (the very term “events” +indeed is little more than an awkward translation of Berkeley’s “ideas +in the mind”), and the peculiar note of an event is its transitoriness: +“one all-pervasive fact, inherent in the character of what is real, +is the transition of things, the passage one to another.” Thus it +happens that the organic and the inorganic worlds flow together in an +indistinguishable flux, wherein the soul also, dissolved by association +into a complex of relationships, loses that central permanence of +entity which used to be held to mark the dignity of man. Nor, if we +look beyond, is there anywhere “an ultimate reality” to which we can +appeal “for the removal of perplexity,” but only an endless concurrence +of events. “In the place of Aristotle’s God as Prime Mover [itself a +conception, one might suppose, far enough removed from ‘our naïve +experience’ into the abyss of abstraction], we require God as the +Principle of Concretion”--not a person, not an entity of any sort, +nor even a law apparently, but a mere name for the fact that concrete +groups of qualities are everlastingly forming and reforming in the +infinite vortex of existence. A cynic might distinguish between the +old naturalism and the naturalism now proposed to take its place by +saying that under the régime of the former true science might flourish +but no humanism or religion, whereas the metaphysical naturalism of +Mr. Whitehead would leave us neither true science nor humanism and +religion, but only mathematics. The Demon of the Absolute, whether he +appears as the advocate of a mechanical fatalism or of the universal +flux of relativity, is brother germane to Apollyon, the Destroyer. + +The curious thing in all this farrago of insight and error is the +superstitious hold of the word science on a mind otherwise so awakened. +Mr. Whitehead perceives that one scientific hypothesis swallows up +another--as indeed he could not fail to see that his own hypothesis +turns its predecessor upside down; he admits with engaging candour +that one and all they rest on a “naïve faith” which cannot be verified +and is “indifferent to refutation”; yet he clings fanatically to the +scientific attitude as possessing a monopoly of truth and honesty. +“When,” he says, “Darwin or Einstein proclaim[s] theories which modify +our ideas, it is a triumph for science. We do not go about saying that +there is another defeat for science, because its old ideas have been +abandoned. We know that another step of scientific insight has been +gained.” + +I suspect that an utter confusion of thought has arisen here +from the ambiguity of a word--as has happened immemorially with +metaphysicians better and worse than Mr. Whitehead. Science as an +accumulation and classification and utilisation of observed facts +may go on from victory to victory; but science as a name for such +hypothetical theories of time and space, matter and motion and life, +as those broached by the Darwinians of the nineteenth century, or the +Einsteinian relativists of the twentieth, is not a progress in insight +but a lapse from one naïve assumption to another in a vicious circle +of self-contradicting monisms. It really is not easy to understand the +state of mind of one, cognisant of the history of thought, who urges +us to seek relief from the present _débâcle_--Mr. Whitehead himself +places our intellectual and spiritual level lower than it has ever been +since the Dark Ages--by introducing the hypothetical method of science +into religion. This is his analysis of the present condition of the +popular mind: “A scientific realism, based on mechanism, is conjoined +with an unwavering belief in the world of men and of the higher +animals as being composed of self-determining organisms. This radical +inconsistency at the basis of modern thought accounts for much that is +half-hearted and wavering in our civilisation.” My reading of history +is different. I should assert that our vacillating half-heartedness +is the inevitable outcome of the endeavour, persistent since the +naturalistic invasion of the Renaissance, to flee from the paradox of +life to some philosophy which will merge, no matter how, the mechanical +and the human together. I should assert that the only escape from our +muddle is to overthrow this idol of Unity, this Demon of the Absolute, +this abortion sprung from the union of science and metaphysics, and to +submit ourselves humbly to the stubborn and irreducible fact that a +stone and the human soul cannot be brought under the same definition. + + There are two laws discrete + Not reconciled,-- + Law for man, and law for thing; + The last builds town and fleet, + But it runs wild, + And doth the man unking. + +For legitimate science one may have the deepest respect. But to +scientific absolutism masquerading as religion, one may say justly and +truly what was said so unjustly and cruelly to Keats: Back to your +gallipots! + + +FOOTNOTES + +[18] Sections IV and V of the title essay in _The Demon of the +Absolute_ (New Shelburne Essays, Vol. I), 1928; reprinted with the kind +permission of the author and of the Princeton University Press. Section +IV (I, as here reprinted) concerns “The Fetish of Pure Art” and section +V (II) “The Fetish of Pure Science.” + +[19] _Nuovi Saggi di Estetica_, 1920. + +[20] _La Deshumanización del Arte_, Madrid, 1925. + +[21] _Alegrarse o sufrir con los destinos humanos que, tal vez, la obra +de arte nos refiere o presenta, es cosa muy diferente del verdadero +goce artistico. Más aún: esa ocupación con lo humano de la obra es, en +principio, incompatible con la estricta fruición estética._ + +[22] _Masterpieces of Chikamatsu, the Japanese Shakespeare_, translated +by Asataro Miyamori, p. 48. + +[23] _Modern Painting_, by Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., p. 375. + +[24] There are passages in Mr. Whitehead’s books in which the word +“God” is used properly, even nobly, with its religious connotation; and +indeed, as Professor A. E. Taylor has shown in the _Dublin Review_ for +July 1927, part of the difficulty in grasping his argument is owing to +this intellectual double-dealing. But in the end the conception of God +as a physical law, or impersonal principle, quite wins out. + + + + +_The Pride of Modernity_ + +G. R. ELLIOTT + + +I + +In European literature from Homer down to Milton and Racine (not to +speak of Oriental literature) pride, wrong pride, is represented as +far and away the chief of human evils. Such is not the case with the +comparatively brief stretch of literature that ensues. Of course there +are sharp exceptions to the rule. But speaking by and large recent +literature--if that of the past two hundred years may so be termed in +view of the long eras behind it--has not held up pride as the towering +villain of the human drama. That villain has become more and more +shrunken and shadowy. The _hubris_ of the Greeks, the proud presumption +against the high gods that constituted for ancient writers the crown of +human errors, seems now an old, unhappy, far-off thing, quite hopeless +for literary purposes in the opening twentieth century. Even more +hopeless seems the lineal successor to _hubris_, the Pride that led +the seven deadly sins in mediæval pageantry, and doomed the heroes of +humane tragedy in the Renaissance. + +The surface reason for the fading of pride on our literary scene is +obvious enough. Pride used to be considered not only the most immoral +but also the most dramatic quality of human life. But recently life, +or our imaginative way with life, has assumed a non-dramatic air. +The interminable series of the falls of proud heroes and princes, +historical or legendary, that runs through the bulk of the world’s +literature--well, this series seems now to have terminated. +Democracy’s interest in such personages is lackadaisical. I heard +a bright American undergraduate refer to them as “those old guys +that used to get bumped off quick.” And one must bear in mind that +America, if still a bright undergraduate, is widely representative of +modern civilisation. Yesterday a remote collection of insignificant +states, she is now becoming an international state of mind and, more +significantly, of imagination. In this state of imagination the old +proud-falling potentate cuts a small figure. Recently, to be sure, many +princes have fallen, in fact the majority of them; but they have fallen +softly. The downfall of a business corporation is far more noisy and +generally disturbing; but a corporation is impersonal and undramatic. +As for pride, doubtless some American presidents have shown promising +tragic signs of it, but of course these had to be nipped in the bud. +A prince, even so powerful and autocratic a prince as the American +president, cannot fall proudly and dramatically when he has to fall +regularly every four years. + +Pride is not popular with democracy either as a vice or as a virtue. +Even a just pride in oneself is publicly regarded as not justifiable. +Self-esteem must be submerged in party loyalty; and party loyalty, in +turn, must whitewash its rising arrogance with humanitarian sentiment, +with eloquent devotion to the welfare of men in general. To be sure, +intelligent persons dislike the blatancy of this sentiment. Most of +them nevertheless are actually in accord with the very heart of it. +They wince and shrug at the slogan trumpet of “Service to Mankind,” +but they quietly salute the flag. They bow in spirit to the reigning +standard of “Social Value.” Tacitly accepting it as prime motive they +deprecate their own self-esteem. They abet the general feeling that +pride as the ruler of this world, good and evil pride alike, has +modernly been deposed: it is a thing of the past. + +This feeling, more than any other feature of modernity, constitutes our +break with the past. It has inspired the general conviction that the +modern age, so far from being merely one phase, even the most important +phase, of human history, has brought about a permanent alteration in +the basic conditions of human history. And here again the majority +of the leaders of opinion, while disavowing the popular view in its +blatant extreme, have been moulded in spirit by the accumulating +pressure of it. At the same time our knowledge of the _facts_ of the +past has continued to increase. Popular biographies and surveys have +circulated through a vast reading public. Hence has arisen what may be +termed the modern historical paradox. The opening twentieth century has +a wider speaking acquaintance with the past, and a fainter grip of its +essential reality, than was ever the case before. The past is quite +vivid to us, and quite unreal. Its main motif, its pride, is a dramatic +ghost. + +Recently Lytton Strachey’s keen book on Queen Elizabeth and her Essex, +and Francis Hackett’s glowing story of Henry Eighth and his wives, have +made the pageant of the sixteenth century brilliantly alive for us. But +in the end the pageant is more a pageant than ever; the past is more +utterly past. The scene sparkles along before our eyes in sharp and +multitudinous detail. Above all, the persons are amazingly human, as +they loom toward us in vivid “close-ups.” Yet in the end they are human +foreigners. They belong to a remote clime, and our attitude toward them +is ironic and superior even when most sympathetic. In fact they seem +to us _amazingly_ human just because we are surprised that they can be +human at all. For the central motive of their lives, their pride of +spirit, is or seems to us entirely out of date. Their ordinary desires +were the same as ours; we see that more fully every day. But the power +of their pride, which swamped or swept before it all those common +desires, like the gale that ruled their little sailing-ships on the +Atlantic, is obsolete. It appears almost as strange and superstitious, +when we pause to reflect upon it, as the spasmodic fits of humility +that made those proud ghosts grovel at the feet of their kings and +gods. We think we have changed all that. + +But so deep-going an alteration in human nature, such a huge +discrepancy between present and past, is disconcerting to the mind. +It must needs be reduced and accounted for. Our emotional conviction +of the obsolescence of pride, like every other strong and persistent +feeling harboured by human beings, must needs be rationalised. And the +rationalisation is now in progress. Pride has seemed to our imagination +very unreal in the present; therefore our reason is demonstrating that +it was also quite unreal in the past. Historical science aided by other +sciences has undermined the pride of the past. It appears now that +proud princes, as well as proud nations and empires, fell of old not by +reason of pride but by reason of economics--or the lack of economics. +Or else there were geographical, ethnological, biological, or +psychological causes. The last-mentioned category is the most effective +of all for eliminating moral factors from human history. For example, +only an old-fashioned reader may still fancy that Henry the Second, +by conquering the violence of his pride, could have refrained from +causing the slaughter of Becket. That, to be sure, was the subsequent +opinion of Henry himself. But, psychologically speaking, Henry and the +old-fashioned reader are mistaken. Henry was subject to certain stimuli +and certain complexes that completely determined, and completely +explain, his extraordinary behaviour before and after the murder of the +archbishop. + +Emerson, looking back mildly from Concord upon the greedy and murderous +pride of old days, found human history very tiresome because it was +so very bad. To-day many disillusioned persons are finding it still +more tiresome because it seems to them neither bad nor good. It is +non-moral, and therefore non-dramatic. Never does it hang dramatically +in the fearful balance of the free human will between a false pride and +a right humility. It merely moves back and forth like the waves and +currents of the sea. History, unhappily, just happens. + +Perhaps, however, this ultra-modern view of history, in which pride +seems so unreal, is itself the offspring of a very real pride. Modern +pride is not of necessity less real than ancient pride just because, so +far, its way is less conscious and dramatic. After all it takes time +to dramatise ourselves to ourselves; and the modern age, so modernists +say, is not yet in full swing. They say that the modern theatre has +merely made a beginning and that in the future it will do great things. +If so, I would claim that the greatest of those great things must be an +adequate dramatisation of modern pride. But we cannot wait for that. +If we did, it would never come. It cannot come until there is general +recognition of the fact that pride is still the grand protagonist in +the human drama; and that under its drab modern dress it has lost not a +whit of its ancient sinew. + +Pride is most virulent, indeed, when it wears plain clothes, when it +hides itself from itself. Self-blindness, not dramatic display, is +and always has been the very heart of it. Precisely when pride is +most insidious is it least dramatic. Recognition of itself, which is +the preliminary step toward cure, is also the preliminary step toward +dramatic manifestation. Pride was very dramatic in old literature +just because it was unearthed from its very _un_dramatic lair in old +human nature. Discovery is the essence of drama. Life is intensely +dramatic as soon as its least discoverable motive is discovered, as +soon as its “last infirmity,” its most hidden pride of spirit, is shown +in action. Therefore if a superficial glance persuades us, as I said +at the beginning, that pride has faded in modern literature because +modern life is non-dramatic, a deeper search informs us that modern +life _seems_ non-dramatic because the meaning of pride has faded in +our thought. We need to rediscover the truth of the truism that pride +is the most insidious and blinding of all human qualities. Then we may +discover the way of modern pride. We must see how utterly non-dramatic +pride can be before our poets may show us how intensely dramatic +modern life is. We cannot envisage the drama of modern life in its +full reality, we cannot touch the very heart of its tragedy, until we +realise the peculiar blindness of modern pride. + + +II + +For example. Some twelve years ago President Wilson announced on behalf +of the United States, or was quoted as announcing, that we were “too +proud to fight.” Soon afterwards we were fighting, not without martial +pride, in the greatest war of all time. The irony of this sequence was +too broad to escape notice. Yet the notice was comparatively slight. +And the whole matter has faded with ominous speed from the imagination +of a public debauched with the most adulterous mixture of pacific +and pugnacious prides that the world has ever known. The Wilsonian +remark was easily smiled into oblivion. The full dramatic irony of +the situation, and the tragedy behind it, cannot appear until that +proud utterance is recognised, not as the passing whimsy of a single +person or party or nation, but as a vivid symbol of the modern spirit +at large. It may fairly be regarded, indeed, as the verbal apex of +the whole bad pyramid of modern pride--the pride of quick and direct +solutions, the pride of immediacy. + +The basis of that pyramid is religious. No doubt the superstructure +owes much to our triumphantly swift results in science, industry, and +humanitarian reform. But the pride of practical achievement, thoroughly +wholesome in its proper _locale_, would not have formed a modern +Babel unless assembled and underpinned by modern religion. And modern +religion, while denouncing more and more the various arrogancies of our +material civilisation, has not unearthed the deep foundation which it +itself has provided for them. As religion is properly the founder and +guardian of human humility, so religious pride is the prime evil. We +see this very easily in the past. We know that the most blinding and +hateful pride that grew among the ancient Greeks and Romans was not +the pride of city-state, of empire, of symmetric culture. It was the +arrogance of the religious philosophy of the Stoics, their assumption +of a pseudo-divine impassivity of spirit. Likewise the mediæval +glorification of chivalry, and even of ecclesiastic and theological +edifice, is as nothing to modern eyes in comparison with the spiritual +presumption that grew in mediæval asceticism. We see how vicious it was +for the Stoic to be proud of his pride, and for the monk to be proud +of his humility. We have not yet seen how vicious it is for the modern +citizen to be proud of being neither proud nor humble. + +He is spiritually proud of having escaped from spiritual pride. He +believes he has left that historic vice far and forever behind. +In his leisure hours he has learned all about it, he thinks, from +interesting books, periodicals, preachers, lecturers, travels, +historical moving-pictures, and maybe survey courses in college. He +is amused and in better moments saddened at the tremendous dramatic +display of religious pride in old times,--unaware that this evil never +_displayed_ itself to the hearts it mastered, nor does to-day. What, +then, can he know of real humility? “Why,” I was recently asked by +a sincerely puzzled undergraduate whose psychological interests had +led him to scrutinise certain ancient documents, “why were the old +Christians always jawing about humility?” The modern man is conscious, +explicitly or implicitly, of possessing a new form of humility much +superior to the old. He is proud of his freedom from the fearful +self-abasement of his benighted ancestors. He is certain that his own +brand of humility, his kindly modesty in relation to nature and to +other men, is far more reasonable and real. Reality, indeed, is his +keynote. He believes he sees the facts of human nature with a plain +and full reality, or immediacy, that was impossible to men of old, +distracted as their vision was by the extremes of pride and humility. +He has done away with those two “mighty opposites.” His realism, his +direct contact with life, has antiquated their histrionic conflict. +He is superior to that primitive battle in the human breast. He has +emerged from that cave warfare into the light of immediate reality. He +is “too proud to fight.” + +And this pride of immediacy, as I have called it, is at bottom +religious. It was founded by the Protestant Reformation. More broadly +speaking, it grows from that urgent religious revolution still going +on which was publicly begun by the Protestant revolt of the sixteenth +century. It goes on in Catholic and Protestant realms alike and has +many modes, ranging all the way from the glittering wit of French +Catholico-Modernism to the rash eloquence of the Protestant pulpits +of New York. Revolution it is with a vengeance, not re-formation. +And if it be true that the modern intelligence under the influence +of science is coming to see the natural need of ordered evolution, +instead of destructive revolution, in all human affairs, then we should +see this need primarily in religion. Here the cost of revolution is +heaviest. For the mischief of the revolutionary method--namely, that +it externalises the issue--is greatest in that sphere which should be +of all the most internal. The mental surfaces of religion are thrown +into false prominence as the insignia of controversy. Sacred rites and +dogmas, through the protective devotion of the loyalist and the pointed +hostility of the rebel, are externalised. The imaginative flexibility +properly belonging to them is congealed into a stiff surface that +hides their inmost meaning, human and divine. Instead of vital human +organisms, nourished in their growth and change by something of the +divine circulation, they become fixed mechanisms; to be maintained in +running order or else discarded altogether--windmills, pumping the +living water direct to the household of faith, or suddenly assaulted +into junk-heaps by quixotic insurgents.[25] Loyalists and rebels, +in reaction from each other, attribute to their own doctrines an +impossible immediacy of truth. Thus both parties foster the pride of +spiritual immediacy. + +Obviously, however, it is not the conservative but the protestant or +modernist pride of immediacy that, for the time being at least, has won +the day. Indeed it has flourished like a weed in the very midst of our +best achievements. The great achievement of modern times is the general +realisation that life is of necessity experimental, that change is a +constant law for us, and that the human spirit is more important than +human customs and institutions however sacrosanct. Hence our pride of +freedom, freedom from the past. And this pride is proper and sound +in so far as it is a proud gratitude for the general dissemination +of a truth that the great saints and sages, under all dispensations, +knew--the experimentality of life. But our pride is rank and noxious +when we imagine we know this truth as well as the saints and sages knew +it, if not better. To be sure, we know it more widely in a certain +sense than they did, having discovered with the aid of science many +exterior illustrations of it which were unknown to them. We know it +with a wide and superficial immediacy. But they knew it with a profound +immediacy. + +They knew the basal experimentality of life because they knew it was +basifixed. They knew the depth and height of change because they knew +the permanency below and above it. They knew the Permanency that does +the experimenting, the Changeless that enables us to know change. Of +this we have lost hold. And the main source of our modern spiritual +catastrophe, the cancerous growth that disguises itself and induces +the thronging diagnosticians to limit their attention to secondary +symptoms and remedies, is the ancient evil in modern form, blind +spiritual pride. The modern imagination has more and more lost hold of +the changing Permanency as the modern mind has more and more developed +its arrogance of change, its pride of immediacy. This very pride keeps +us from seeing the permanence of the law of pride and humility in +human nature. We patronise the wise men of old--confident writers on +“personal religion” in American magazines patronise them--assuming that +when they signalised spiritual pride as the _permanent_ root of human +ills, they were speaking only for an age and not for all time, at any +rate not for our time. + +This pride means a false emphasis on “personal religion” over against +institutional religion. “Personal religion” now comprises a vast +variety of creeds. Many of these are asserted by their proponents, +sometimes angrily asserted, to be not religious at all, but they really +are religious in the broadest or lowest extension of this term. A few +years ago newspaper reporters discovered in a western state a not +insane man who claimed that the earth was flat. As to the long story +of geodesy, he said it meant little to him, for he had “a science of +my own.” Nowadays many a person has in the same way “a religion of +my own.” But this phenomenon, unlike the other, is too popular just +at present to have any comic news-value. It would start a public +laugh only in the thirteenth or, who knows, in the thirtieth century. +To-day many persons who religiously swallow the authority of science, +who religiously believe that Einsteinism is true and wish they could +understand what it means, reject all authority in religion. + +They say that Jesus himself rejected it, and patronise Him as the first +of the moderns. They isolate Him from the religious organism to which +he was deeply attached; which shaped his principles no less than his +images; and through which indeed, during the long preceding centuries +of Hebrew history, his sublime nature itself had been (if this may be +said without irreverence) gradually “evolved.” Thus they affix to Him a +singularity no less miraculous, no less disruptive of the laws of human +nature and history, than that attributed to him by popular orthodoxy; +but far better calculated to debauch with blind pride the souls of his +worshippers or, as the case may be, his modern rivals or superseders. +They have learned from Him, not wisely but too well, that the Sabbath +was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. They hug the false +inference which he so sternly and constantly rejected, namely, that +man was made to disuse instead of to use the Sabbath, to win spiritual +maturity by discarding institutional religion. Jesus discarded +revolution. He continued and reformed a great religious tradition. He +made it capable of feeding itself--and us--upon the best of Greek as +well as Hebrew thought. He made it nobly catholic in the very process +of nourishing his individual soul upon it. He was crucified because +he was more deeply true to it than the modernists, as well as the +loyalists, of his day. Our modernists, however, deem that his hand was +raised and pierced to direct us to bite the hand that fed us. + +The gnawing pride of religious individualism cloaks itself in the +assumption that the individual has transferred his reverence _entire_ +from the traditional deity to “the present; God” as Emerson called +Him, or to the present Reality as successors of Emerson often prefer +to call It. But actually that transfer is never accomplished. The +reverence never arrives entire. Always some of it, often most of it, +leaks away unnoticed during the transshipment. Therefore this exchange +is never attempted by the greatest men of religion, nor advocated +by the truest realists or humanists. Jesus and Socrates both found +the “Father’s business” in the Temple, in the moral and imaginative +organism of orthodox religion, and never more so than when they were +doing their best to cleanse it of thieves. They were wrongly accused +of an intention for which some of our modern spiritual leaders have +been wrongly praised, the intention of destroying the Temple in order +to rebuild it on their own insights, as it were in three days. No +doubt all men of deepest insight are strongly tempted, in their first +maturity, by this pseudo-divine impatience with tradition. They yearn +to show immediately that the Power within them is more reliable than +the “pinnacle of the Temple.”[26] But they perceive the spiritual +pride of this yearning, its tempting of God, and they forthwith +school themselves to the divine patience. They recognise that the +Temple is essential for _their own_ fullest development. They do not +patronise it diplomatically for the public welfare while deprecating +it for themselves. They see that the fullest type of spiritual life +is attainable only through the unbroken “tension,”[27] the constant +critical interaction, between personal and institutional religion, +between individual inspiration and a rich tradition. They know that +their own humility, like that of the multitudes whom they influence, +must grow and bear fruit in the kind of temple that George Herbert saw, +the temple which is at once, and mysteriously, within and without. In +short, the greatest leaders of the spirit faced the pride of spiritual +immediacy and subdued it. + +But Emerson did not. He only partly faced it, and he very considerably +succumbed to it.[28] He fell, and modern spirituality fell with him. +The greatness of this default in so great a man is admitted very +reluctantly by those of us who have loved him from youth. When they +were beginning life, he told them what a happy day it was for the youth +when he discovered that “the above” was the same as “the within.” He +did not tell them that “the within,” on the same happy day, begins to +leak down through an unseen pride to “the below.” He told them that “I +the imperfect adore my own Perfect.” He was not careful to explain to +them how very imperfect is this Perfect--or else, how scantily It is my +own. + +Emerson’s effect on young men is most significant, I think, in the +case of Matthew Arnold. In Arnold’s Oxford days, Newman impressed +him with a sense of the laborious difficulty of spiritual truth. But +that sense was considerably soothed and weakened, I think, by the +cheery, confident voice that came to him from across the Atlantic; +throwing into contrast the melancholy beauty of Newman’s voice and +relegating its religious message to a past which, however alluring +in its beautiful melancholy, seemed now so utterly past. Arnold lost +Newman for religion while continuing to patronise him for beauty and +culture. He did not discern how greatly Newman, on account of his fresh +and profound humility, joined with a mind unsurpassed in the modern +age for analytic penetration, was needed by this age as a “friend and +aider of those who would live in the spirit.” Therefore Arnold left +the way open for T. H. Huxley to persuade the oncoming generation, in +the blundering pride of his naturalistic sophistry, that Newman’s way +with truth was in the main sophistic.[29] I am very far from wishing to +disparage Arnold, as I am accused of having done in previous papers. +It is just because he was so great and influential a critic, such a +fine stronghold of humanism in the midst of the nineteenth century, +that his deficiency in this matter is costly to-day. His tendency to a +certain superior ease, not free from presumption, in his treatment of +religious truth was doubtless due in good measure to the influence of +Emerson. Hence when Arnold came to America in the eighteen-eighties he +could tell us how matchless Emerson was as a modern “friend and aider +of those who would live in the spirit” without telling us how deficient +this friend was in the pertinent and prime requisite of spiritual +humility. + +Just here, perhaps, some readers are priding themselves on never +having cared for Emerson, in other words on never having been young. +But maybe they have absorbed some jots and tittles of his toxin +by way of Arnold and the college professors, or of Huxley and the +scientific metaphysicians, or of Whitman and the current poets. +By de-personalising his individualism in a rare and not unspecious +fashion, Emerson could send it seeping through an extraordinary variety +of individuals. To-day wherever two or three, or two or three hundred, +are gathered together in the name of God (modern)--in the name of the +Over-Soul or the Under-Soul, of Reality, Nature, Humanity, Hinduism, +Good Will, Progress, World Peace, World Religion, Individual Freedom, +yes and even Enlightened Disillusion--there is Emerson in the midst +of them. To be sure it is but a shade, a distorted shade, of the +master. Yet it reminds us what a crooked, widening shadow is thrown +forward through the years by a hidden grain of pride in a master mind. +Emerson’s spiritual pride was veiled by his personal modesty, which +was the tolerant deference and flexibility of the modern spirit at its +brightest. His luminous nobility of nature and the underlying soundness +of his humanism[30] enabled him to give unexampled force and radiance +to the proud errors he inherited from the eighteenth-century naturists +and the great Romantic poets. It was he, above all, who made naturism +seem deeply natural and Romantic irresponsibility nigh divine. + +He disclaimed responsibility for his words, yet spoke as one +having authority. He claimed the moody freedom of a Romantic poet +together with the plain weight of a prose prophet of common sense. +He consummated the noxious amalgam that his predecessors in prose +and verse had prepared: he _solidly_ confused poetic immediacy of +experience with the immediate presence of Truth. Admirers, half +perceiving his confusion, have wholly excused it on the ground of his +unique constitution--just as he did! If gold rust, what will iron do? +If Emerson could be vitally yet complacently muddled, what of the +Emersonians? If the modern outlook is now confused and unhappy, one +reason is that the chief modern sage was confused and at the same time +spiritually proud. + +The balefulness of his confusion was concealed from him by the subtle +mingling of his pride into his modesty. He was too modest to believe +that his individual outlook could become a public tragedy, and too +proud to doubt that his individual inspirations were universally valid. +He attributed these too much to deity and not at all to Rousseau. He +disavowed all predecessors and all disciples. In his study or along the +woodpath he deemed he was alone with the Soul; never realising how much +the thoughts that arose in him were determined by the souls who had +influenced his soul and by the souls whom his soul wanted to influence. +His solitude of the Soul was thronged with unacknowledged souls. He +dislimned them all into deity. His religious predecessors had loudly +demolished one religious form after another to leave no barrier, so +they thought, between the soul and God. He, the last great Protestant, +serenely set fire to the limits of the soul itself. With suave and +awful presumption, he melted all souls into God. The outcome is a new +barrier between them and Him, a cool, unobtrusive glaze of pride. + +The modern pride that Emerson helped so much to crystallise, wears a +lucent, modest air. It looks like a lens turned directly upon Reality. +But it has the opaqueness of a mirror and is turned upon ourselves--if +only by the grace of God we could see our reflections in it. Its +surface seems plain, undramatic, when compared with the ancient modes +of _hubris_,--until one perceives therein the swarming shapes and +conflicts of the modern tragedy. + +Dramatic enough is the way this pride, during the past two hundred +years, has worked out cogently from its religious centre to its secular +circumference, in recent years with catastrophic speed. In religion +it has meant more and more a blind emphasis upon the _immediacy_ of +spiritual values--as though their close presence to Everyman were +the same, or almost the same, as his real possession of them. Modern +religionists have debased the great doctrine of the Immanence of God +and, therewith, the doctrines of divine love, the brotherhood of man, +the goodness of the human heart, and the “positiveness” of morality. +The results for Everyman are now glaring. + +Deity, from Everyman’s modern viewpoint, is fast disappearing into +human nature; or into that mystic conglomerate of man and the universe +which is either called Nature or, as Mark Twain might say, is “the same +gentleman under another name.” New names are being invented for It +daily by pseudo-science. Advanced Protestant theology lies at the proud +foot of this conqueror. Forgetting that modern religion at the first +did help to wound herself, the more conservative type of theist blames +science for harming religion. The up-to-date theist blames religion +for not equalling the flight of science, unaware how terribly religion +has maimed her wing with pride. A common type of minister deprecates +the spread of atheism while confidently advocating the very doctrine +that fosters it. If he is shrewd enough to glimpse his dilemma, he +can justify himself with Emersonian blandness by pointing out that +the abuse of an excellent idea is not a good ground for the disuse +of it--the excellent idea being a conceited, facile, and slippery +sentiment of divine immanence. + +This immanentism has proudly pawed down holy truths to the everyday +level of Everyman. And he, finding that when thus muddied they sour +the daily bread of his happiness, is now rejecting them wholesale; +thereby exhibiting the destructive aspect of that divine justice, that +relentless Love of Perfection, which his pastors have hidden behind +a gross version of the divine love for men. Our religious leaders, +announcing promiscuously the perfect love that casteth out fear--a +doctrine which the holiest saints approached with awe--have succeeded +in casting out the true fear that belongs with our imperfect love. They +have speciously disparaged “negative” in favour of “positive” morality. +With Emersonian impatience they have shrugged at the _definite_ moral +precepts of the ages, as trite and rather forbidding antiquities, while +advocating an _indefinite_ moral sentiment, as the prime discovery and +panacea of the modern age. They have slurred the divine negation, the +“Everlasting No,” which, acting down through the poor human conscience, +constitutes the great _unadulterable_ factor of positive morals and, in +the end, the most positive provision against positive unhappiness. + +This proud religious blindness has opened the highway for blind secular +naturism. The one has played into the hands of the other; the blind +has led the blind toward the pit of spiritual anarchy. Consider, for +example, the quick succession and interplay of these three phases of +the modern spiritual drama: first, the Protestant notion of immediate +justification by faith in Christ; second, the humanitarian notion of +justification by faith in mankind; and third, the cynical notion of +justification by faith in nothing--except primitive desire. In the +third act of the tragedy, as in the other two, the leading motive is a +specious emotional immediacy fed by subconscious pride. For the Nothing +that modern sceptics are devoted to (its finest dramatic representation +is in the works of Thomas Hardy) includes a concupiscent Something +by the exercise of which, so they feel, we may be saved--or at least +vitally damned. Hence our very disillusion to-day is flown with pride. +Our current disillusionists, not humbled by the fact that the modern +rejection of moral severity is eventuating in a febrile weakness of +the vital human appetites, continue to disparage that severity and to +advocate, as our only hope, a romantic resurgence of those appetites. +They yearn for a flood-tide between rotten banks; fancying, apparently, +that “sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains,” +immediately. They hymn a spurious Primitive as their Protestant +forbears hymned a spurious Christ.[31] + +Consider, too, the dramatic inevitability with which the “psychists” +and the “legislationists,” so to call them, have come swarming more +and more into the breaches that modern religion has made in the human +conscience. The psychists are proudly animated with the old Sophist +hope of reducing that mysterious citadel and of rearranging the +whole soul on modern rational lines. They are teaching the oncoming +generation to _think_ in a fashion indicated in the following remark +made to me by a thoughtful youth: “When a fellow tries to do the right +thing, he has a satisfaction that seems at the time very real; but of +course, as soon as he _thinks_, he sees that this satisfaction isn’t +real at all.” At a recent American congress of thinkers, one of them +explained how religion and morality are being taken over and saved, in +so far as worth saving, by psychology. He was confident of tucking the +setting sun, quite immediately, into his grandstand. + +The legislationists, on the other hand, would save the fading rays +by immediate public measures, national and international. In a world +dim with unprecedented bloodshed, misty with subtle suspicion and +self-seeking, and darkening ever more with impiety and lust, they would +produce by political or social machinery the lights of peace, good +will, purity, and temperance. They are busily wiring a twilight world +for incandescent goodness. They would arrest and soften with electric +legislation the awful working-out of divine laws. The leader in this +project is an ideal figure of Columbia. But under grave scrutiny the +radiant figure reveals a good many lineaments of her who was the leader +of the seven deadly sins. One recalls with something of a shiver the +queenly “progress” of Lucifera in her pleasant twilight--oblivious of +the dead men’s bones thick under foot and the “foggy mist” all along +the way.[32] + +Columbia, the progressive modern spirit, is too proud to face the +fearful carnage of human values and the foggy confusion of principles +brought about by the modern _heart_. Kindly persons after criticising +various modern ills, take comfort by concluding that, after all, the +modern age is sound and right at heart. But here, precisely, is the +source of all those ills. The modern heart has gone wrong. The chief +leaders of imagination during the past two centuries assumed that +modernity meant a real change of heart, a change for the better; that +owing to the long schooling of the past and the new lights of the +present, the human heart could now afford to relax its old combat +with itself. This assumption is parroted to-day, with varying degrees +of subtlety, by preachers, philosophers, educators, youngsters, +legislationists, artists, Rotarians, and disillusionists. At the same +time they are demonstrating conclusively that the old human heart, +unregenerate, is still with us. They are showing its ancient and +amazing capacity for inventing new ways of disguising old Duty,--the +kind of duty that means a daily, painful, but not inglorious battle +within the heart itself. They are showing us how inglorious human +thought and art can become, how shallow, cheap, and in the end +intolerable, when the human _heart_ has become “too proud to fight.” + + +III + +This catastrophe, when fully recognised, can point us to fresh hope +and faith. We may win afresh the old faith which goes hand in hand +with a certain disillusion, a certain kind of scepticism, foreign to +our current disillusionists. This faith, says Newman, “looks for no +essential improvements or permanent reformations in the dispensation +of those precious gifts which are ever pure in their origin, ever +corrupted in man’s use of them.”[33] + +So far, the moral corruption of the twentieth century has not produced +the flagrancy of conduct that characterised a good many earlier ages. +“My _ideas_ of life have become so rotten,” thus a Pragmatised and +Behaviourised youngster confessed to me, “that I wonder my _life_ is +not rottener.” He looked startled when I told him to give his ideas +time. However, it appeared that, partly in spite of and partly by means +of his marked self-consciousness, he had attained to some veracity +of inward unhappiness. We may hope that his case is quite typical. +In other words, our self-conscious modern age has provided a wide +and unprecedented demonstration of the fact that the chief danger to +human happiness is immorality of _ideas_. Previous ages have done +lip-homage to high moral standards while grossly violating them in +practice. The modern age has proudly assumed that it has grown far +beyond such hypocrisy. Meanwhile it has developed the subtler hypocrisy +of cultivating depraved and specious ideas while shrinking from the +_full_ consequences of them in conduct. The result is that life looks +dully undramatic, culture and art degenerate, and thoughtful persons +who are harmless enough in their acts have a real misery in their +spirit. Surely, therefore, we have now a chance to learn afresh the +_inward_ relentlessness of the Moral Laws; particularly that “precious +gift” which we have so bitterly corrupted, the law of humility. We may +now perceive that the universal proverb “Pride goes before a fall” is +no less applicable to our age than to the old aristocratic ages; and +that, far from being merely a maxim of external prudence, it is the +folk-sign of an _inward_ region of cause and effect that we, with all +our self-consciousness, have scarcely penetrated. + +We may find again the inward and yet superhuman rigour of the Laws. We +may learn that they are supernatural without being ever _un_natural; +always immanent in us and yet, in a mystery beyond the reach of our +science, always transcendent of us. Browning’s Paracelsus, embodying +the modern mixture of romance and science, complained in regard to his +own catastrophe that “God’s intimations fail in clearness rather than +in force.” Precisely so; but there is no use in whining about it. The +human task is to clarify and obey, as well as we can, Laws which we did +not invent; which no man, except when stupified by pride--either his +own pride or the pride of his teachers, relentlessly visited upon him +to the third and fourth generation--can conceive to be merely human +inventions. + +Those Laws fail in human clearness, certainly, but not in force. They +came to send a sword into the earth, more than Peace. They have been +the cause of agony and misery for millions of innocent or ignorant +people; and no man has succeeded in making clear the full ground of +this. From the standpoint of human justice, those Laws are fearfully +general, vague, and incalculable. Yet our truest happiness, and indeed +our truest originality, depend on a constant effort to elucidate them +and apply them afresh to each new generation and individual. This task +is of course, in a worldly sense, an impossible one. New sins and +difficulties, or rather old sins and difficulties in inexhaustibly new +modes, appear at every step. Salvation for the individual never becomes +easier; and the social frame is so built, beneath our building, that +it cannot be saved. Old seers and new scientists are true to a deep +human instinct in prophesying that some day the world will be destroyed +by fire, collision, or decay; will “dissolve like an insubstantial +pageant faded.” Our surest Comfort, at the opposite pole from modern +comfortableness and not divisible from right conduct, is in knowing +that those Laws, while “ever corrupted by man’s use of them” are indeed +“precious gifts ever pure in their origin.” Clough, that fine religious +humanist who faced the modern situation without blinking, had a sound +humility when he wrote: + + “I steadier step + When I recall + That though I slip + Thou dost not fall.” + +The fresh humility that we need must be built up patiently by religion +and by humanism; each working in its own way and carefully respectful +of the other, even (perhaps _especially_) when these two approaches are +equally employed by one person. + +Religion is normally theistic, and therewith mediatorial and +sacramental. Otherwise she is not catholic and, _in the long run_, +loses her right humility. This should be evident enough from the long +history of religion, Christian and non-Christian, past and present. +Theism decays continually, but by reason of its own sins rather than +the virtues of opposing doctrines. Pantheism, deism, and all the others +flourish in its decadencies, more or less parasitically, but cannot +take deep root in human humility. I do not mean that theism is true +because it works, but that it works because at its best it is our +truest mode of conceiving the Eternal One. Voltaire’s epigram, “God +created man in His own image and man promptly returned the compliment,” +is superb and lasting because the doctrine here parodied is lasting +and sublime. The parody is catholically critical because the doctrine +itself is deeply catholic. Modernism, when strictly criticising +catholic doctrine, is helpful; when frankly rejecting it, respectable; +when blandly attempting to reduce it to poetry, baneful--baneful in +its hidden pride--and, I trust, hopeless. Not similarly hopeless +is Latin Fundamentalism; by which I mean the attempt of Latinised +theology, no matter in what branch of the Christian church it appears, +to define religious mysteries with a literalism that is too precise +to be accurate. Most hopeful is the work of a small and quiet group +of theologians, belonging to various churches, who are resuming and +carrying forward the thwarted hope of the great Christian humanists +of the Renaissance. They are striving for a non-revolutionary, a firm +and organic, development of Christian doctrine; that is, for a real +catholicity. It is they, studious, ethical, open-eyed, and humble who +are rebuilding the foundations of the Temple. + +Yet the Temple, or let us say “the church militant here upon earth,” +is at its best inadequate. The man of good sense has always found and +will always find it necessary to take the church with a grain of salt, +even though the salt loseth its savour without the church. Good sense +is a distinct foundation; and humanism is built upon it. Humanism +may be theistic or _non_-theistic; it is unsound when it is anything +between. When non-theistic, it falls short of the full truth that is +in the human imagination. The pre-eminent example of course is the +sublime religious humanism of the Buddha. However, if it be true that +the primitive Hindu pantheon had 330,000,000 gods, doubtless the Buddha +had several million good reasons for not being a theist. Theism at +its worst fosters, as nothing else can, the proud imaginations of the +human heart. Humanism, which in one of its most important functions is +a criticism of religion, is essential for sound religious humility. +Religion needs the humility derivable from the consideration that +happiness may be obtained without religion. Humanism is the study +and practice of the principles of human happiness _uncomplicated_ by +naturistic dogmas on the one side and religious dogmas on the other. +When religion, as at present, has degraded “God’s love” and abolished +“God’s anger,” humanism will insist that the former doctrine (though +at its best supreme) is no less _metaphorical_ than the latter, and +not less subject to unconscious superstition. When religion assists +irreligion in softening God’s laws, humanism will insist that a +rediscovery of their severity is essential for right humility and +happiness. + +Just here I am forced to express the hope that those estimable critics, +Mr. T. S. Eliot and Mr. Walter Lippmann, will at one point counteract +each other’s influence upon the public. Mr. Eliot, aiming toward +humane religion, tends to reduce humanism to a mere balance of mind, +a ghost of the Arnoldian culture, subservient to anglo-catholicism. +Mr. Lippmann, aiming toward religious humanism, tends to reduce deity +to “an ideal of the human personality,”[34] a rather ghostly ally of +practical morals. Each is somewhat swayed by the modern desire for +immediate measures. + +Providentially, however, a more catholic attitude has already been +erected by two older critics, Baron Friedrich von Hügel and Professor +Irving Babbitt--the two most potent and distinguished personalities, +though not the finest writers, that have so far appeared in English +literature of the twentieth century. The one, a devout Roman Catholic +of England, has indirectly done much for the best interests of +humanism. The other, a rigorous moral humanist of New England, has +indirectly done much for the best interests of religion. Their +extraordinary scholarship is guided by a sound humility of spirit. In +their writings, neither ventures further than his equipment warrants +into the other’s field, and they do not contradict each other in +fundamental points. They agree in the conviction that now, for the sake +of religion itself, the way of humanism must be clearly discriminated +from the way of religion. Mr. Babbitt has urged that religion at its +best is far above, and at its worst far below, a sound humanism. Baron +von Hügel has urged that Christians should face now, more frankly and +fully than they have ever faced before, the fact that the ethical or +humane way has a distinct and _divinely ordained_ validity of its own +for those who cannot honestly follow the religious way; and that the +full health of each way depends upon the health of the other. + +This truly catholic attitude, which is essential for modern humility, +is not palatable to the pseudo-catholicity of the modern mind. We +have fancied, especially in America, that expert reason aided by +democratic tolerance could soon discover the underlying relationships +between the different ways of salvation, thus federating these in +a single “concern,” a sort of efficient successor and substitute +for the universal infallible church of the Middle Ages. Behind this +enterprise stands the overweening assumption of modern philosophy +that the universe itself is a single organism with a large variety +of inter-assimilable aspects, such as religion and science, love and +morals, good and evil, God and Nature. Tennyson would not have been so +shocked by his rediscovery of the perennial fact that God and Nature +are at strife if he had not been so infected by the modern notion that +they ought not to be,--that properly they belong in a universal banking +trust whose members, however they may quarrel on the surface, never +suffer a real severance of business relations. Nor would our current +disillusionists feel so badly about the inevitable dissolution of that +trust if their grandfathers had not credited it so heavily. Let us +now recognise pride as the grand sponsor of that trust--the pride of +unity and immediacy, or of universal “continuity” as the late T. E. +Hulme would say. Let us humbly admit that the universe is faulted, +geologically speaking, deeper and higher than our knowing. What of +ultimate plan and unity its strata may have, God only knows. + +Our youths who have learned to smile with a weary superior air at +the traditional division of reality into God, Man, and Nature, would +breathe more freely and begin again to taste the vital zest of the +universal drama, if we would now teach them that this traditional +division is _less naïve_ than the theory of universal continuity; is +better grounded in universal human experience; and, above all, is more +truly accordant with the profound division which any thinking man +may find within himself to-day when he is sufficiently self-reliant +and experimental to plumb beneath the surfaces where our ephemeral +psycho-physicisms weave and flutter. Recently humanism, in its attempt +to fulfil and deepen the experimentality of the modern spirit, has +of necessity placed its chief emphasis upon that inward division. It +has insisted that the _opposition_ between the higher and lower wills +within us, whether they be called “divine” and “natural” or what not, +is essentially inexplicable by expert reason and is nevertheless, from +the present standpoint of human happiness, the most important feature +of the universe arrived at by free and full experimentation. + +This humane _dualism_ strikes at the very heart of modern pride, +the pride of spiritual _monism_. It sets a true immediacy over +against a false immediacy. It assigns a central value to the paradox +established by the immediate experience of Everyman when he tries +(in the terminology of common sense) to be “at one with himself” by +keeping his “better self” above his “worser self.” It depreciates +the expert reasonings and romantic emotions which, overriding that +vital paradox of good sense, would leap immediately at spiritual +unity and continuity. Consequently the humane dualism, more than any +other doctrine of recent criticism, has met with angry rejection or +obfuscating comment. A good example of the latter is afforded by +a generous and intelligent reviewer who comments as follows upon +the dualistic humanism of Milton: “Milton, after all, had not read +Darwin; we have ... Milton’s energetic dualism was based on religious +conceptions which are genuinely outlived; the power behind his allegory +of the soul was his belief that the world was shaped and created for +mankind; and, conceiving of ourselves now so much more humbly than he +did, we cannot set our lives on such a stage.... We cannot invent an +opposition we do not feel.”[35] + +The above, in a representative modern fashion, confuses modesty and +humility. The modern modest dogma that the world was not “shaped and +created for mankind” has shown itself, when all its implications are +considered, no less deficient in real humility than the conceited +belief that the world was created for human comfortableness. This +belief was far more radically repudiated by Milton than by us. Only +with the aid of modern pride can we be sure that his _basic_ religious +ideas have been “_genuinely_ outlived” and that we, having read Darwin, +conceive of ourselves “much more _humbly_ than he did.” He, to be +sure, was no adept either in Darwinian or in Emersonian modesty. As a +man among men he had strong intellectual and even personal pride. But +above it he had true spiritual humility; which may consist with, and +derive support from, that virtue too much obscured by modern modesty, +namely “self-esteem, founded on justice and right, well managed.” +This kind of self-reliance enabled Milton to assign full value to +the moral division he found within himself. His “energetic dualism,” +as the reviewer calls it, his dramatic sense of the _real_ opposition +between the nature of lust, pride, and Chaos and the nature of purity, +humility, and Peace, was not “based on” transient religious concepts. +It was “based on” the duality he found at the centre of himself as well +as at the centre of European experience, Christian and pagan. He would +have found it also at the centre of ancient Buddhism, if he had known +this as we know it to-day. But, says my reviewer, “we cannot invent an +opposition we do not feel.” Very true. Nevertheless, with the aid of +right self-esteem and humility, with a patient critical reverence for +what is best in ourselves and in accumulated tradition, European and +Oriental, we may not only “feel” but realise, in thought and conduct, +an opposition we did not invent. + +Only thus can we proceed to a spiritual use of our scientific modesty. +Over against the self-flattery of religious superstition, science +has revealed the indifference of a vast physical universe. Here is +wholesome seed for a fresh humility. But so far its growth in the +modern spirit is blighted; blighted much less by the old superstitions +which the modern religionist enjoys attacking than by the new +superstition which he himself has fostered--the bastard ideal of love. +This ideal, religiously derived from an illegitimate mixture of two +fallibles, democracy and St. John, infects to-day the blood of many +who, rejecting St. John and perhaps also democracy, believe loudly in +Sex; or who, tired of Sex also, believe in nothing because it seems +the sole alternative to the spurious all-immanent divinity of modern +love. This love, though masquerading as powerful and strenuous, is +essentially soft. It has succeeded in masking the Cross, not only +the Christian but the universal Cross, in soft flummeries. The hard +universe of science disowns it. And so does the severity of the divine +Laws. If we learn again to revere these in their full severity as we +find it in history (especially recent history) and in ourselves, to bow +before their awful beauty with a love that fears to call itself worthy +of casting out fear, then the outward laws can again become real images +of the inward Laws. + +Outward nature with her unfathomable self-subsistence, her rigorous +detachment from the egoistic delusions of the human heart, and her +firm satisfactions for those who seek only to know and follow her +laws, can again be seen as a real though very distant representation +of the Divine Nature itself. The dual nature of man, freed from the +intervolving vapours of old metaphysical dualisms and new metaphysical +monisms, guarded from insidious loves, and cultivated with renewed +moral vigour, can be seen again as the isthmus between Time and +Eternity: our firm and fruitful land between unfathomable, unmixing, +but not unkindly seas. + + +FOOTNOTES + +[25] Recently I attended on successive Sundays an extremely Catholic +and an extremely Protestant celebration of the Holy Communion. The +solemnity of the former was injured by the priest’s sermon, which +evinced the pumping process, the “defence-mechanism,” referred to +above. At the other service, the mound of bread-cubes that appeared on +the table below the pulpit, alongside a pitcher of grape-juice, was +suggestive, I fear, of the above mentioned junk-heaps. For the minister +interrupted his readings from old sacramental liturgies to explain how +much the ceremony rightly meant to his sect, and how much it wrongly +meant to the Catholics. + +[26] Luke IV, 9-13. + +[27] This word is borrowed from the late Baron Friedrich von Hügel, in +whose life and writings the truth of it is powerfully and beautifully +illustrated. + +[28] His crucial period in early maturity, his “temptation in the +wilderness,” is examined in my article “On Emerson’s ‘Grace’ and +‘Self-Reliance’” in the _New England Quarterly_, Vol. II, No. 1, 1929. + +[29] See the essays on Newman, Arnold, and Huxley in Robert Shafer’s +_Christianity and Naturalism_, 1926. + +[30] See the chapter on him in Norman Foerster’s _American Criticism_, +1928. + +[31] An interesting critique bearing on this subject is “The Modern +Distemper” by Professor Ralph Barton Perry in the _Saturday Review of +Literature_, June 1, 1929. + +[32] Spenser’s _Faerie Queene_, Book I, canto 4. This great poetic +fable would be studied in our schools and colleges with deeper emotion +if its application to modern pride were not screened off by modern +pride itself. + +[33] From _Parochial and Plain Sermons_, 1880, Vol. II, No. XXXI. + +[34] _A Preface to Morals_, p. 326. + +[35] From a review of my book _The Cycle of Modern Poetry_ in the +_Times Literary Supplement_ (London), June 20, 1929. + + + + +_Religion Without Humanism_ + +T. S. ELIOT + + +I must rely, in these few pages, upon a brief summary of the +limitations within which I believe humanism must work, which I +published in the _Hound and Horn_, June, 1929. In that paper I stated +my belief that humanism is in the end futile without religion. Here I +wish to put forward briefly a view which seems to me equally important, +the counterpart of the other, and one which ought to be more welcome to +humanists. Having called attention to what I believe to be a danger, +I am bound to call attention to the danger of the other extreme: the +danger, a very real one, of _religion without humanism_. + +I believe that the sceptic, even the pyrrhonist, but particularly the +humanist-sceptic, is a very useful ingredient in a world which is no +better than it is. In saying this I do not think that I am committing +myself to any theological heresy. The ideal world would be the ideal +Church. But very little knowledge of human nature is needed to convince +us that hierarchy is liable to corruption, and certainly to stupidity; +that religious belief, when unquestioned and uncriticised, is liable +to degeneration into superstition; that the human mind is much lazier +than the human body; and that the communion of saints in Tibet is of +a very low order. If we cannot rely, and it seems that we can never +rely, upon adequate criticism from within, it is better that there +should be criticism from without. But here I wish to make a capital +distinction: criticism, infidelity and agnosticism must, to be of +value, be _original_ and not inherited. Orthodoxy must be traditional, +heterodoxy must be original. The attitude of Voltaire has value, +because of its place in time; the attitude of Renan has value, in its +historical perspective; Anatole France I can only consider as a man who +came at the most unfortunate date for his own reputation--too late to +be a great sceptic, and too soon to be a great sceptic. There must be +more orthodoxy before there can be another Voltaire. And precisely I +fear lest humanism should make a tradition of dissent and agnosticism, +and so cut itself off from the sphere of influence in which it is most +needed. + +For there is no doubt in my mind that contemporary religious +institutions are in danger from themselves; that they have with few +exceptions lost the “intellectual,” except that pernicious kind of +intellectual who adopts dogma merely because doubt is out of date. +Nowhere is this more obvious than in America. All the religious forms +which have some ancestry, and many which have none, flourish there; +but among persons whom I have known, there is hardly one who had any +connection (not to say any conviction) with any of them. + +But America is not isolated in this respect; it merely shows us under +a magnifying glass what occurs everywhere. The two dangers to which +religion is exposed are apparent everywhere--and they are both cases +for which “humanism” or “culture” might be called in: _petrified +ecclesiasticism_, and _modernism_. + +The great merit of the Catholic Church, from the worldly point of view, +is its catholicity. That is to say, it is obvious that every religion +is effectively limited by the racial characters of the people who +practise it, and that a strictly racial or national religion is certain +to hold many irrelevances and impurities, from lack of an outside +standard of criticism. When the Catholic Faith really is catholic, the +aberrations of one race will be corrected by those of another. But it +is obviously very difficult even for the Roman Church, nowadays, to +be truly catholic. The embarrassment of temporal powers, the virulence +of racial and national enthusiasms, are enormous centrifugal forces. +The great majority of English speaking people, or at least the vast +majority of persons of British descent; half of France, half of +Germany, the whole of Scandinavia, are outside of the Roman communion: +that is to say, the Roman Church has lost some organic parts of the +body of modern civilisation. It is a recognition of this fact which +makes some persons of British extraction hesitate to embrace the Roman +communion; and which makes them feel that those of their race who have +embraced it have done so only by the surrender of some essential part +of their inheritance and by cutting themselves off from their family. + +But if one feels that the culture of the Roman Catholic Church to-day +is imperfect--and also in danger of splitting up into various local +and national bigotries and political factions which will retain only +the name and the observances of catholicism--one cannot get any +satisfaction from what happens outside of that church either. The Roman +Church in America has little contact with some of the most valuable +elements in American culture; it not only lacks humanism, but is in +danger of adding vulgarity. In England it is negligible. But both in +England and America, Protestantism is in still worse case. It can be, +and usually is, equally vulgar; it can be equally narrow and bigoted; +with the alternative that when it is not narrow and bigoted it is +liberal, sloppy, hypocritical and humanitarian. The Roman Church is +dangerous in one direction; the Protestant Churches are dangerous in +two directions. + +I have already said what I think of humanism without religion; I +respect it, but believe it to be sterile. Religion without humanism +produces the vulgarities and the political compromises of Roman +Catholicism; the vulgarities and the fanaticism of Tennessee; it +produces Mrs. MacPherson; and it produces liberal uplift; and it +produces the Bishop of Birmingham. For it is the chief point of this +short paper, that religion without humanism produces the opposite +and conflicting types of religious bigotry (liberalism in religion +is a form of bigotry). We have Cardinal O’Connell; the late W. J. +Bryan; and we have the cultivated divines of the most radical wing +of Unitarianism. The sum of _disjecta membra_ is completed by the +humanists. + +I have examined several popular theological works by Anglican +clergy of the liberal school.[36] It would I am sure be difficult +to convince any of these worthy people that they were humanitarian +without being humanist. Humanitarians (and among them we must include +anti-humanitarians like Dean Inge, a sentimentalist _à rebours_) are +often highly cultivated people who have read many books; some of them, +in England at least, can read Latin and Greek; the Bishop of Birmingham +took honours in mathematics. Yet in surrendering dogmatic faith they +are at the same time surrendering their humanism. It is from such +people that we hear most about “science and religion”; it is such +people who pay, and lead the flock to pay, that exaggerated devotion to +“science” which the true humanist deplores. + +It is curious that whilst on the one hand the liberal theologian tends +to pay homage to an illusory divinity called “science” the advanced +scientist tends to pay homage to an equally vague “religion.” People +seem to suppose that by science yielding points to religion, and +religion yielding points to science, we shall quite soon arrive at a +position of comfortable equilibrium. What will be “real” will be the +technical progress of science, and the material organisation of the +churches: we shall still have professors of physics and we shall still +have clergy, and nobody will lose his job. Scientists and clergy alike +seem to speak nowadays as if they were in terror of the spectre of +unemployment: “I will not make exaggerated claims,” they both seem to +say, “lest I may be discovered to be superfluous.” + +But this apparent approximation of science and religion, which we +discover in such theological works as those I have mentioned, and in +such popular scientific works as those of Whitehead and Eddington, +is a delusion. The meeting is a mere cancellation to zero. Nothing +positive is attained by reciprocal surrender. The theologian says “of +course dogma is not truth,” and the scientist says, “of course science +is not truth.” Every one is happy together; and possibly both parties +turn to _poetry_ (about which neither scientist nor theologian knows +anything) and say “_there_ is truth, in the inspiration of the poet.” +The poet himself, who perhaps knows more about his own inspiration than +a psycho-analyst does, is not allowed to reply that poetry is poetry, +and not science or religion--unless he or some of his mistaken friends +produce a theory that Poetry is Pure Poetry, Pure Poetry turning out to +be something else than poetry and thereby securing respect. + +Both parties, the liberal theologian and the scientist, are deficient +in humanism. But what is more serious, to my mind, is that the humanist +is deficient in humanism too, and must take his responsibility with +the others. What happens, in the general confusion, is not only that +each party abdicates his proper part, but that he interferes with the +proper part of the others. The theologian is terrified of science, and +the scientist is becoming terrified of religion; whilst the humanist, +endeavouring to pay proper, but not excessive due to both, reels from +side to side. And the world reels with him. + +On the following point I speak with diffidence, recognising my lack +of qualification where qualification is severe and exact. Humanism +has much to say of Discipline and Order and Control; and I have +parroted these terms myself. I found no discipline in humanism; only +a little intellectual discipline from a little study of philosophy. +But the difficult discipline is the discipline and training of +emotion; this the modern world has great need of; so great need that +it hardly understands what the word means; and this I have found is +only attainable through dogmatic religion. I do not say that dogmatic +religion is justified because it supplies this need--that is just the +psychologism and the anthropocentrism that I wish to avoid--but merely +state my belief that in no other way can the need be supplied. There +is much chatter about mysticism: for the modern world the word means +some spattering indulgence of emotion, instead of the most terrible +concentration and askesis. But it takes perhaps a lifetime merely to +realise that men like the forest sages, and the desert sages, and +finally the Victorines and John of the Cross and (in his fashion) +Ignatius really _mean what they say_. Only those have the right to talk +of discipline who have looked into the Abyss. The need of the modern +world is the discipline and training of the emotions; which neither +the intellectual training of philosophy or science, nor the wisdom of +humanism, nor the negative instruction of psychology can give. + +In short, we can use the term Humanism in two ways. In the narrower +sense, which tends always under emphasis to become narrower still, it +is an important part in a larger whole; and humanists, by offering +this part as a substitute for the whole, are lessening, instead +of increasing, its importance; they offer an excuse to the modern +theologian and the modern scientist (only too ready to grasp it) for +_not_ being humanistic themselves, and for leaving humanism to its own +specialists. Humanism can offer neither the intellectual discipline +of philosophy or of science (two different disciplines), nor the +emotional discipline of religion. On the other hand, these other +activities depend upon humanism to preserve their sanity. Without it, +religion tends to become either a sentimental tune, or an emotional +debauch; or in theology, a skeleton dance of fleshless dogmas, or in +ecclesiasticism, a soulless political club. Without it, science can be +merely a process of technical research, bursting out from time to time, +and especially in our time, into sentimental monstrosities like the +Life Force, or Professor Whitehead’s God. + +But in the full and complete sense of the word, Humanism is something +quite different from a part trying to pretend to be a whole, and +something quite different from a “parasite” of religion. It can +only be quite actual in the full realisation and balance of the +disciplined intellectual and emotional life of man. For, as I have +said, without humanism both religion and science tend to become other +than themselves, and without religion and science--without emotional +and intellectual discipline--humanism tends to shrink into an atrophied +caricature of itself. It is the spirit of humanism which has operated +to reconcile the mystic and the ecclesiastic in one church; having done +this in the past, humanism should not set itself up now as another +sect, but strive to continue and enlarge its task, labouring to +reconcile and unite all the parts into a whole. It is the humanist who +could point out to the theologian the absurdities of his repudiation, +acceptance, or exploitation of “science,” and to the scientist the +absurdities of his repudiation, acceptance, or exploitation of +religion. For when I say “reconcile,” I mean something very different +from the dangerous and essentially anti-humanistic adventures of the +Bishop of Birmingham or Professor Whitehead. And let us leave Einstein +alone, who has his own business to attend to. + +As I believe I am writing chiefly for those who know or think they +know, what “humanism” means, I have not in this paper attempted any +definition of it. I take it that the reader thinks he knows what it +means, and that he will understand that I am putting before him the +difference between what I think he thinks it means and what I think I +think it means. + +I have just one note to add, which is the preface to an extensive +sequel. I believe that at the present time the problem of the +unification of the world and the problem of the unification of the +individual, are in the end one and the same problem; and that the +solution of one is the solution of the other. Analytical psychology +(even if accepted far more enthusiastically than I can accept it) can +do little except produce monsters; for it is attempting to produce +unified individuals in a world without unity; the social, political, +and economic sciences can do little, for they are attempting to produce +the great society with an aggregation of human beings who are not units +but merely bundles of incoherent impulses and beliefs. The problem of +nationalism and the problem of dissociated personalities may turn out +to be the same. The relevance of this paragraph to what precedes it +will, I hope, appear upon examination. + + +FOOTNOTES + +[36] E.g., _Should Such a Faith Offend?_, by the Bishop of Birmingham; +_I Believe in God_, by Maude Royden; _The Impatience of a Parson_, by +H. R. L. Sheppard. + + + + +_The Plight of Our Arts_ + +FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jr. + + +I + +Any expression of a humanistic society through the arts depends upon +the acceptance by the artist of some sort of central authority. The +authority is not that of official organisations or written codes; it is +rather that of approved traditional ideals in which both the artist and +the laity believe. In their application to the work of art, such ideals +appear concretely as accredited conventions. In a humanistic society, +these conventions assume no burdensome or arbitrarily authoritative +form. They represent merely a body of successful experience--ways +that have been tried and found good. The accepted convention tells +the artist how he must begin; it does not tell him how he must end. +It does, however, warn him off from any too abrupt breaking with +tradition, and from any too urgent assertion of his individual taste +save in so far as that taste finds sanction in precedent and in opinion +other than his own. Right here is the stone of stumbling. The humanist +artist willingly admits that his own genius is not his final authority. +He checks its impulses by the practice and teaching of other geniuses, +and by the degree of acceptance which its expression commands from +competent criticism and patronage. It is not enough that he shall have +expressed just himself; it matters quite as much that he shall have +communicated himself to a fit public with whom he shares a confidence +in the guiding conventions of his art and in ideals mutually honoured. + +On the side of the artist, this relation will indicate a procedure of +delicate adjustment. The accepted conventions of his art and the ideals +of the society for which he works, will of course not fit him precisely +any more than a ready-made suit fits perfectly either the artist or +layman. The practical problem of the humanist artist, then, will be +how far he shall reshape himself to the expectations of his public; +and how far he may change these expectations in a sense favourable to +his individual bent. And this implies chiefly a very superior sort of +judgment and common sense. The humanist artist will feel that it is a +vain thing to have expressed himself, however gorgeously, if nobody +knows that he has expressed himself, and he will also admit that the +mere feelingful and urgent self gains richness and value only when it +is measured by other selves in society. + +On the side of society and patronage, a humanised art would imply +in practice a central authority lightly and genially imposed, a +just offishness towards the artists who too overtly repudiated the +tradition, withal a somewhat sceptical hopefulness towards experiment +and innovation, a hospitable desire to understand the artist even when +his communication is obscure, a wish to have its own ideals expressed +through the arts. In short a humanised society co-operates with the +artist to a degree difficult even to imagine to-day. It provides him +with incentive, furnishes most of his æsthetic notions, helps him to +realise himself through opportune criticism and companionship, thus +taking an active part in what is the essential thing--the formation of +his spirit. + +So far I have dealt in convenient abstractions which are in part +misleading. I have made the reciprocal relation between the artist and +public too conscious, much more conscious than it has been in history. +I shall presently try to correct the error by appealing to precedents +concretely in given time and place. However, the over-emphasis on +consciousness as producing mutuality between artist and public may +well be pragmatically justified. It seems unlikely that our society +will simply gravitate towards humanism. On the contrary, if we are to +achieve a humanistic social balance, it will apparently be done only +through much taking of thought, on the part of both the enlightened +laity and the intelligent artist. So the analysis I have tried to make +of the mutually helpful relation of artist and layman in a humanised +world, though it overstresses the conscious element in this reciprocity +in seeming disregard of past history, may for that very reason suggest +a programme for history yet to be realised. + +Programmes, however, are entirely valueless except as they rest soundly +on dynamic states of mind. Our problem as humanists is to create a +state of mind in which neither artist nor layman will exaggerate +the worth of his idiosyncrasy, nor yet follow the general drift +unthinkingly. We are trying to make a man who is a friendly critic both +of himself and of the society in which he moves, a man who accepts +the growing complexity of living as offering him fascinating and +profitable problems of adjustment. To maintain this hope in the face +of the chicken-and-lobster-eating motorist, the radio fan, the devotee +of the “talkies,” the sycophant artist who bows to base authority, and +the behaviourist artist who admits none but that of his own glands--to +keep the hope of making humanists in the face of the daily American +spectacle requires an audacity which even the Expressionist might +envy. But we contributors to this symposium have actually seen a few +humanists made, have helped a little to make them perhaps; and we are +dealing with spiritual values which transcend ordinary statistics. +A few thousand genuine humanists in America would make our society +humanistic; a hundred humanist painters, sculptors, architects, +musicians, and men of letters would make our art solidly humanistic. +In this hope we keep our tiny banner up beside the hoardings that +promise to beautify our teeth, remove our corns, clothe our bodies +appealingly, or incase the relentlessly exposed legs of our women in +silk as durable as filmy. + + +II + +That adjustment between artist and layman which seems so difficult +to-day, until the seventeenth century and the beginning of modern times +came of itself and in some such fashion as this--it hardly matters +whether the scene be Italy, Spain, France, England, China, Japan, +India, or Persia: in every case the basis was fine craftsmanship. +Pretty much all objects of common use were delicately conceived and +carefully made. The amateur of to-day gladly pays great prices for the +ordinary grave figurines and temple vessels of China, for the horse +trappings of the Scythians, for the common household gear and even the +workman’s tools of the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, for the +comfit boxes and carved fobs of feudal Japan, for the peasant furniture +of Brittany and Scandinavia. This general high level of craftsmanship +depended chiefly on the fact that even the humblest craftsman was also +a designer. To the joy of fit execution was joined that of successful +invention. + +A very few craftsmen became what we now call artists,--that is made +finer inventions on a more impressive scale, designed a cathedral or a +palace instead of a simple house, decorated an entire chapel instead +of a bride chest or tournament shield, made a bronze statue instead +of a chiselled ink stand. But the line between the craftsman and the +artist was not a sharp one. At Florence a Donatello belonged to the +Stonecutters Guild and officially was merely a very highly esteemed +stonecutter. And every future artist entered upon his career as a +simple apprentice in a craft. The tragedy and frustration so common in +the artists’ career to-day were absent. The apprentice with only a fine +craftsman’s endowment lived out his life contentedly as a craftsman. +But he was free, had he the ability, to become an artist and to achieve +the companionship of princes. + +The step from craftsman to artist lay really in the artist’s +intelligent assimilation of greater subject matter or in his fuller +expression of subject matter common to artist and craftsman alike. +Such subject matter was furnished him by his ecclesiastical and +temporal betters; he did not invent it. There was no hardship in this +imposition, for the values of his betters were also his own. There was +a like-mindedness and real co-operation between artist and patron. A +romantic and sentimentally individualistic criticism has challenged +this case. No person who knows either history or human nature, however, +will hold that Giotto was hampered because he had to paint the legends +of Saint Francis and those of the Virgin; that Raphael was great in +spite of the fact that he had to find symbols for syncretic theology; +that Hogarth is belittled by the fact that he so genially followed +the literary, satirical current of his age. A humanistic criticism +will hold, on the contrary, that an essential factor in the greatness +of these artists was that, their themes coming almost ready made, +they were spared the waste and perturbation of so-called original +invention and were free to face in tranquillity their real problem of +transformation and execution. + +To recapitulate: the craftsman, until at most a couple of centuries +ago, depended on a universal taste for the well-made thing, while the +artist depended on the taste of a minority, the taste of an aristocracy +with which he himself felt in harmony. The few remaining fine craftsmen +of to-day find no general taste for the well-made thing upon which they +may depend, while the myriad artists of to-day face no aristocracy +whatever, no accepted body of taste whatever, but rather a congeries +of pseudo-aristocracies each with its shifting preferences, which +hardly deserve the name of tastes at all. + +How the isolation of the artist with the virtual extinction of the +craftsman has come about is a commonplace of history which need be +recalled here only in its broad lines. The factory within a century +has done away with the craftsman designer. Still earlier the crumbling +of the old aristocracy of birth and religion at once put an end to +community of taste at the top, and gave exaggerated scope to the +already strongly rising ideal of originality and individuality as +highest æsthetic values. A stable and spiritually profitable patronage +ceased and was succeeded by a capricious and heavy handed patronage +from a new wealth undisciplined either by tradition or by fine and +broad personal experience. The artist’s immemorial task of realising +himself in society became almost impossibly difficult. If he were +weak and clever, his resort was to sycophancy; if he were strong and +wise, there was little for him but patience, resignation, and a tragic +hopefulness; if he were strong and unwise, he became a rebel. And the +rebel, in a manner perfectly familiar to the neurologist, built up his +compensations, by which he extolled that isolation which was really +his sore misfortune as his superiority and his advantage, until after +three generations it has become a common conviction among artists that +their proper task is self-expression in a void, that there should be no +desire to communicate and, obviously, no need to be understood. + +And just at the moment when the position of the artist was becoming +barely tenable, the number of artists increased inordinately. The +craftsman who didn’t want to go into a factory but wanted to use his +head and hands delicately, had to become an artist, while wholesale +methods of education in the practice of art made the way to becoming an +artist easy to any young person with a modicum of money and diligence. +As if that were not enough, the false glamour thrown about the artist +life by romantic poets and novelists brought new hordes of the unfit to +join the bewildered survivors from the old régime. + + +III + +Now, any going back to the conditions of the Middle Ages or to those of +the Renaissance is of course impossible; but if craftsmanship and art +are again to become normal functions in a helpful social order, the old +formulas, at least in principle, must hold. There will be no generally +fine craftsmanship until most people want well-made things and get +them from craftsmen who design; and the so-called fine arts will have +no general importance until there are many patrons with a common bond +of taste which is sympathetic to most artists. Is there anything which +promises so desirable a reconstruction? + +On the side of craftsmanship, I fear nothing is to be expected. The +gallant counter-attacks of a John Ruskin and a William Morris against +modern industrialism show just how much and how little can be gained +from a militant reaction. A hundred passionate spinsters are printing +batiks or glazing pottery in as many æsthetic last ditches, but they +are mostly doing so at the expense of rich and generous eccentrics, +in short are merely subsidised artists disguised as craftsmen. We +are getting better designed things from the factory--the museums are +working usefully to this end--but this reform only enlists a handful +of professional designers, and does nothing to produce the old type +of creative craftsman. In short we probably must say good-bye to the +craftsman save as a picturesque survival, like the man who is skilful +with the rapier or the long bow. All we can hope for is that some +improvement in the general taste, which I think is reasonable to look +for,--since for a century it could hardly have been lower,--may cause a +discriminating demand for better designed factory goods. This of course +leaves the problem of the artist and the craftsman just where it was, +with the sole difference that the passing of the craftsman shuts off +the possibility of any return of the artist to his traditionally best +school, the shop of a good craftsman. + +So if there is to be any useful rebuilding, I feel it must proceed +after the very modern precedent of the skyscraper, from the top +down. Much might conceivably be done to produce a more coherent and +intelligent patronage for the fine arts, much is already being done +by museums, art dealers, colleges and universities, and all manner of +art societies. Indeed the increased activity of museums, collectors, +and colleges in behalf of the acquisition and appreciation of fine +works of art has persuaded Mr. R. C. Duffus that we are well launched +on an American Renaissance, and to that effect he has published a very +interesting book. Far be it from me to minimise the importance of +activities in which I have been and am deeply engaged myself. One may +gladly admit that to multiply our art treasures--and for a generation +the multiplication has been astoundingly accelerated--is in itself an +unqualified benefit. But the mere accumulation of great works of art +and much talk about them does not imply understanding of them, and the +question the humanist must raise is always--Are these masterpieces +understood? And how are they understood? Mediæval Rome lay in full +artistic decadence when much of the glory of her old art was visible +on every hand. To understand any nobly conceived work of art, one must +have lived nobly in deed, in imagination, or in both. To own a great +work of art may be a mere counsel of personal vanity; to expound a +work of art, a mere assertion of self-importance. A whole school of +interpretation, which has its faculty, museum, and journal, tears the +work of art from its human context and studies its forms as if these +were ends in themselves. And this sort of teaching is popular. Along +such lines one may make a generation of resolute pedants. For the +humanist such teaching is not merely defective but positively harmful. +On the other side, there is much sound and modest teaching, and the +next generation of art patrons will be far better trained than that +which is passing. + +Yet all such useful activities are simply marginal. Without a +predisposition in its visitors, the museum might just as well be +unvisited, since it then has no more dignity or value than the peep +show. It is a proper uneasiness before flattering statistics of +attendance that has rightly induced our museums to inaugurate direct +instruction in appreciation. It is a weakness and limitation of such +teaching that it too often merely foments a diffused interest in art +taken as an entity and not as related to human values generally. For +appreciation really requires a right and balanced attitude towards +life. It was really more important for Florence that her great +citizens, while bowing to the glory that was Greece and the grandeur +that was Rome, wanted a full and honourable life in Florence--it was +really more important, I say, that they cared discriminatingly for the +dignity of their ordinary activities and for the authority of their +faith, than that they cared _specifically_ for painting, sculpture, and +architecture. + +In short some aristocratic vision of the good life has always been the +foundation on which great national art has been reared in the past. +It behooves us then to ask what is in America our accepted vision of +the good life? For upon it must rest our art. What do we all agree to +(saving always negligible minorities of “knockers”)? I fear it would +come to these few articles of faith:--to make a lot of money by fair +means; to spend it generously; to be friendly; to move fast; to die +with one’s boots on. This is a credo which has within its limitations +positive merits, and it is by no means lightly to be decried, but it +palpably offers little spiritual nourishment to the “art-artist,” +to quote a recent mayor of New York. A certain kind of art it feeds +admirably. And it naturally gets the art it feeds--the immaculate bank +clerk in campus clothes, the sylph-like apparition in the porcelain +tub, the beach party in the classy car--the art of the advertisement +generally. And this ideal also finds its authentic expression in the +cheap heroics and shallow idealisms of the moving picture, and the +potpourri of dubious music and eloquence over the radio. These are our +representative arts, as sculpture was the representative art of Greece, +or painting of Florence. + +The prospect is more pleasing when we turn to architecture, really the +only art that is perennial. Here there is at least a great progress, a +far higher level of taste than that of a generation ago, a competent +and audacious coping with unprecedented problems. Yet here as elsewhere +the cult of haste works harm. No architect of a skyscraper is given +time to think his building out. Perfection in the arts rests largely on +trifles lovingly meditated, and what successful architect has time for +meditation? We have in abundance such arts as we deserve, and we shall +have better arts only as we deserve them through better ideals of life +generally. + +Painting and sculpture are kept alive by a sort of artificial +respiration. It is to be hoped that the increasing public use of +both in decoration may restore to these traditionally leading arts +a fuller measure of vitality. As it is, these arts have joined +fine craftsmanship as an elegant survival, like fencing or court +tennis. Since painting and sculpture are the arts I most love, it +would be pleasant indeed to come forward with a programme for their +rehabilitation. But I have no such programme. I feel rather that we +should at once accept the situation and emphasise it. The only remedy, +and a partial one at that, is, I think, this: since painting and +sculpture have become exotic, relatively unwanted, and subsidised +arts, let us rebuild on their rarity value. If instead of making +it ridiculously easy to learn painting and sculpture, we made it +difficult, we should probably have better painting and sculpture. This +could be done by withdrawing charitable support from the art schools, +keeping open such as reasonably pay their way, and by suspending the +artificially encouraged salesmanship of painting and sculpture. There +would remain the human problem of what to do with the thousands of +young men and women who legitimately wish to work delicately with their +hands; but in a civilisation that is supplied from the factory, that +problem seems insoluble. And withal there may be a satisfactory outlet +in amateurism--this has happened notably in the art of the theatre at +the very moment when the moving picture seemed to announce the end +of the spoken play. In general I am not discouraging the support of +survivals. Indeed I see in such support a singularly sympathetic act of +patronage. But one should know what he is about. I have, for example, +a predilection for the quill pen, but I should be very unwise to endow +an institution for writing with the quill. And we are very unwise in +America when, not really wanting their works, we artificially multiply +painters and sculptors. + +Whatever reform comes from within the arts, will probably not come +from carefully fostered survivals nor yet from conscious revivals, +but rather from the response of the wanted arts to a finer demand. +The comic strip and the moving picture seem barometric to me, as does +illustration for advertising. Whenever I see a marked improvement in +these popular arts, I shall expect to find greater improvement in the +traditional fine arts of sculpture, painting, and architecture. And +while I am only a casual observer of these barometric arts, what I +have observed of design for advertising and of the moving picture +does not cause me either to hope unduly nor yet to despair utterly. +Certainly both have improved much within my experience. There remains +the dilemma: can the democratic arts really acquire distinction, that +solicitude for perfecting trifles which we have already remarked, or +must they stop at a certain level simply because they are democratic +arts? It would be hazardous to answer this question, but historically +no democratic art, with the possible exception of engraving, has as yet +transcended fine craftsmanship and successfully invaded the realm of +great ideas. That realm has without exception been occupied by the arts +that were frankly aristocratic. + + +IV + +Our desired rehabilitation of the traditional and also of the new +arts may in the last analysis depend upon the creation _within_ our +democracy of the right sort of an aristocracy. Here we are back to +the central problem of humanism--how to produce a superiority that +is generally accepted and socially available. If we can make such +an aristocracy, it will foster the artist and the arts justly and +generously; it will provide a world in which the creative artist is +no longer a tolerated alien but solidly at home. Whenever such an +aristocracy has a clear and noble vision of the good life, it will want +symbols for its ideals, and will call upon the only man who can provide +such symbols--the artist. + +One would like to think that the oncoming generation, with unparalleled +advantages in museums and in collegiate instruction in art, endowed +with a great open-mindedness, audacity, and hopefulness--one would like +to think, I say, that this young generation will provide the needed +humanistic support for art. But association with youth, delightful as +it is, gives me no very clear hope in any humanistic direction. The +most typical and engaging youths and maidens of to-day illustrate +merely the lovelier and more attractive traits of the barbarian. They +have an unlimited confidence, very beautiful in its way, with the +smallest background of lived or imagined experience. They think life is +so simple that they may ignore all the traditional solutions for its +manifold problems, trusting to their own instinct of the moment to meet +emergencies that have engaged the best wits of generations of sages +and saints. We have, characteristically tinged with humanitarianism, +the mentality of the noble bandit sheik or the generous sea rover, +who knows what he wants and asks nothing from tradition or authority. +To make humanists of this generation of self-elected spiritual +adventurers implies preliminary contrition and moral rebuilding. There +was a better chance really of making humanists out of my own somewhat +over-sophisticated and _fainéant_ generation. At least we started +from the sound postulate that life was complex, and the problem of +living a problem of delicate adjustment in which one needed whatever +help he might draw from any time or source. So I am really glad that +I shall probably not see the young generation when it passes the +forties. Bruised in its self-confidence, perplexed and baffled by a +life envisaged too simply, it is all too likely to manifest a general +revulsion to indiscriminately chosen formalisms--social, political, and +religious--with the result that the middle-aged dull dog of to-day will +be as nothing in view of his successor of twenty years hence. On the +better side, a general return to formalism may be the opportunity for +an intelligently aggressive humanism. It will be an advantage to find, +what we to-day sadly lack, a basis of agreement on any traditional +plane, however narrow. Thus the new generation may after all serve the +ends of a future humanism, if only by living into entire discredit +their barbarous programme of individualism. + +In fine, the problem of a humanistic art is no discrete problem, but +rather that of humanism generally. It has been my task merely to define +the issue in a single aspect, and not at all to find a solution that +could be adopted to-morrow. The deep gap that isolates the serious +artist from a public content with the puerilities of the radio and +the “talkie,” will scarcely be bridged to-morrow or the day after. +Many critics, indeed, hail the latter-day individualist as the finally +liberated artist, and bid us joyously expect even more individualism +than that which has already been so generously vouchsafed us. This +may be a true prognosis. No one can safely deny the possibility that +art may be permanently “on its own.” If so, art will of course become +merely an eccentric activity, an indulgence and luxury of coteries, +hence of no more concern really to the humanist than the trade, say, +of the perfume maker. On the other hand, no one can safely deny the +possibility that art may once again be profoundly integrated with +society. Every contributor to this volume is perforce thinking toward +that reintegration, even if the theme be not in his mind nor the words +on his pen. To my younger colleagues, then, in whom the hope of a +new humanism lies, I leave the problem and the solution, with that +chastened confidence which befits a humanist grown old in the most +unpopular of faiths. + + + + +_The Dilemma of Modern Tragedy_ + +ALAN REYNOLDS THOMPSON + + +I + +Most modern tragedy is depressing; classic tragedy is elevating. +That the best tragic art of the past, in spite of the calamities it +presents, elevates the spirit is obvious; but the cause of the “lift” +it produces is obscure. If the cause were technical and formal beauty, +_Ghosts_ ought to be more inspiriting than _Macbeth_. If it were wholly +the melody of verse--which most modern drama has foregone--no great +classic tragedy could endure translation. But Greek tragedies can +still powerfully exalt an audience, though presented in the English +renderings of Campbell and Potter! + +The problem seems particularly to have appealed to the German +metaphysical mind. Hegel thought tragedy a transcendental +reconciliation of opposites. Schopenhauer found in it resignation to +loss of individuality and return to the universal Will. Nietzsche +turned the latter’s pessimism into the semblance of optimism by +defining the spirit of Dionysus as an intoxicated joy in annihilation +and union with nature. + +But one hardly need resort to metaphysics, since the experience seems +sufficiently explained by psychology. It is in my opinion chiefly +the result of admiration. Every tragedy grows from a struggle of the +individual against circumstance; but this emotional elevation we are +discussing, as distinguished from more melodramatic thrills, seems to +arise not from the mere struggle but from an impressive exhibition +of will. The spectator is inspirited because in tragedy he sees an +exhibition of convincing heroism. The tragic hero achieves a spiritual +victory in spite of a physical defeat. “To affect the soul, and excite +the passions, and above all to move admiration,” says Dryden, “is the +delight of serious plays.”[37] + +In some respects the reverse of this view is the neo-classic doctrine +of poetic justice, which is still held by some critics. According to +poetic justice it is not the hero whom we are to admire, but the moral +law which destroys him. Thus Mr. Ludwig Lewisohn writes: “Traditionally +the serious drama deals with the transgressions of an immutable moral +law by a self-originating will.... In each instance the destruction of +the protagonist reconciles the spectator to a universe in which guilt +is punished and justice is upheld.” That some such view governed the +_intentions_ of religious dramatists like Æschylus or Racine we must +admit; but for the modern sceptic at least their plays are inspiriting +in proportion as the struggle exalts the endurance, if not the goodness +of the hero. That such was even the intention of other dramatists, +Shakespeare in particular, is more than doubtful. + +Other critics like Mr. Joseph Wood Krutch foretell the extinction of +tragedy because it is dependent on an anthropocentric view of the +universe. It is the “tragic fallacy,” says Mr. Krutch, to fancy that +one’s “passions are important throughout all time and all space.” +Though we may agree that they are not, to conclude from that rather +obvious fact that tragedy is dead seems not wholly logical. Whatever +the nature of the world, human greatness remains important for human +beings; and Mr. Krutch would seem to give away his case by so plainly +admiring greatness in the very tragedies whose passing he deplores. + +The ethical victory of the tragic hero is not a vindication of a moral +order in the universe; neither is it a victory for an elaborated system +such as religion fosters. Macbeth is wicked but admirable. Something +primitive and universal in mankind responds to courage, fidelity, +endurance, even for evil ends. Such admiration rises spontaneously +from our strongest impulses, those toward survival and success. In +the theatre to behold a man steadfast in his will even to death is to +feel our own natures enhanced and to discover in ourselves unrealised +powers. Such heroic manifestation of will is essential to tragedy of +the great tradition, and is found in Sophocles, in Shakespeare, in +Corneille alike. + +Several influences have combined in destroying heroic tragedy. It +was the tradition of the Renaissance to make the hero a prince, the +mere semblance of nobility securing a deferential response from the +audience. Modern democracy has changed all that. Industrialism, +furthermore, has fostered the feeling that success is synonymous +with getting rich. And science has not only helped destroy popular +traditions that might have nourished a modern spirit of admiration, +but has fostered a wintry air of scepticism, making man appear not an +imperfect angel but a super-educated monkey. Psychology in particular +has been industriously cutting at the root of heroism, the belief in +free will, by exhibiting the mechanical causes for conduct. + +The writer of tragedy who succumbs to these influences finds himself +thus in a dilemma. Unable to believe in greatness, he cannot inspire +others. If he would gain elevation, he must falsify his beliefs; if +he would express his candid view of life, he must forego the tragic +lift. Heroic tragedy was the outcome of a view perhaps pessimistic +about things in general, but always optimistic about the human quality +of individuals. The modern view is pessimistic about everything. As +Hardy expressed it, the prospect most harmonious with the temper of +the thinking modern would be a gaunt waste in Thule. As a result the +dilemma of the naturalist poet is this: _He cannot be both honest and +sublime._[38] + + +II + +This statement will be more convincing when illustrated with examples +drawn from various manifestations of the tragic spirit--in narrative +poetry and the novel as well as in the drama. + +I have emphasised the effect of science; and at first thought it might +seem that the great romantics of a century ago, who preceded the +scientific disillusionment, still kept the heroic tradition alive. It +is true that they inherited the tradition, but in their hands it became +not heroism but heroics. The romantic tendency was to seek thrills +rather than truth, and to draw less from human nature than from a +literary fashion. + +_Hernani_ and _Ruy Blas_, for example, are highly effective +constructions of clap-trap, to which Hugo’s beautiful and rhetorical +verse gives a semblance of significance. But they can be taken +seriously only by abandoning the intelligence. To-day they seem no more +tragic than Dumas _père_ or the _mélodrames_ of the Boulevards from +which Hugo learned his technic. As melodrama they are, to be sure, +still entertaining. + +Such romantic literature of escape did not of course decrease in +popularity with the development of science, but it distinctly lost +literary prestige. After the fifties and sixties the romantic who would +be taken seriously had to cope with scepticism and disillusionment. +Thus Rostand, writing _Cyrano de Bergerac_, was careful to preserve the +smile of sophistication; he delicately played with pathos, and even +flirted with comedy. We can take the extravagances of the drama half +in the spirit of play and enjoy them as a fairy tale. Its heroism is +the heroism of fancy, not of life. It is in a similar spirit that we +enjoy the thrillers and detective tales of to-day. We seek them for +recreation only; and it is difficult to imagine that such romance can +ever again be thought of as seriously tragic. + +The romantic writer, however, can scarcely be expected to be content +with the rôle of popular entertainer. Though for the past fifty years +on the defensive, he has persisted in attempting the exaltation of +tragic art. Maeterlinck, for example, sought to reconcile pessimism +with romance by developing a fatalistic “static drama” and throwing +over it a Pre-Raphaelite mist of romantic symbolism. With him a symbol +became less a visible sign of another object than a stimulant to +emotional intoxication; and if we look at the early plays with clear +heads we see that they are rooted in a determinism fatal to the heroic +tradition. Later Maeterlinck grew more optimistic, but in _Monna +Vanna_, which was inspired by Browning, we get exaltation of passion +rather than will. + +Whereas Maeterlinck tried to preserve romantic values, if not heroism, +by reconciling them with science, the great Russians, Tolstoi and +Dostoevski, evaded scientific pessimism by escape into a romanticised +Christianity. The result was no less fatal to heroism. As they saw it, +the Christian paradox was that the worst persons achieve the greatest +regeneration; and they presented it with extreme violence. Thus in +Tolstoi’s _The Power of Darkness_ the leading character is not only +a drunkard, a lecher, and a murderer of his own child, but he is +hopelessly craven, stupid, and weak. Yet he wins salvation by public +confession. Such a conversion seems more emotional than religious, +since it is the result of no discipline of the will. But apart from +such questions it would appear obvious that such a play as this is +poles apart from heroic tragedy. It is Tolstoi’s sentimentalised +conception of Christian poetic justice which is exalted. + +The exaltation which the romanticist failed to achieve, the scientific +naturalist did not even attempt. Ibsen, apart from his great intrinsic +importance, is interesting because he shows the transition from the +one mode to the other. His early plays were modelled after Scribe and +Schiller; and use of the sagas links him with the heroic tradition. +Though sceptically, he exalted the will and prophesied the superman. +But his mature work shows the effect of science: men are portrayed +more as victims than shapers of events, and responsibility is shifted +from the individual to society. His transition from romanticism to +scientific naturalism was made easy by the fact that romanticism had +already identified man with nature. Disillusion concerning the latter +brought about degradation of the former. + +Though the increasing use of symbolism gives Ibsen’s later work a +romantic tone, the plays are built on studies of mental abnormalities +which seem almost intended to demonstrate the non-existence of heroism. +The fall of the master builder is indeed a symbol of the falsity of +what Shaw calls “ideals.” But Ibsen’s anti-heroic tendency is seen +perhaps most forcefully in the famous tragedy of his middle period. + +In _Ghosts_ the formal resemblances to Greek tragedy and the element of +human error obscure the essential differences. The animus vitalising +the action is the attack upon a false code of morals--or “ideals”--of +which the heroine is the victim. And, as is proper in a naturalist +tragedy, the _Spirocheta pallida_ is made the _deus ex machina_. The +emotional effect, furthermore, is not elevation but horror. We can +admire the author for honesty and daring, but not the characters. The +best of them, Mrs. Alving, is admirable only in intention, and false to +her convictions, as the author makes a point of showing. She is at the +curtain so far from a “spiritual victory” that there remains for her a +dilemma which is probably the cruelest in dramatic literature: killing +her own son or letting him live an idiot. + +The contrast between this play and, let us say, _Hamlet_ is plain when +we compare Oswald’s cry, “The sun--the sun,” and the final speech of +Fortinbras: + + Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage; + For he was likely, had he been put on, + To have prov’d most royally; and for his passage, + The soldiers’ music and the rites of war + Speak loudly for him. + +The former is the bitter irony of disillusion, the very mockery of the +romantic cliché, “Then came the dawn.” The latter ends the play with +eloquent praise.[39] + + +III + +The elevation which Ibsen gains in _Ghosts_ through beauty of structure +and atmospheric effect does not carry over to the theme; here the +author frankly chooses honesty and foregoes sublimity. Few or no +writers since have been at once as great and as honest. If we observe +the literature of the last quarter century to see how it has met the +dilemma, we shall find perhaps an explanation of current anarchy and +experimentation. Some take refuge in subtle evasions, disguised by the +cleverness of novel technic or material. But those who do not evade the +issue follow two roads: _the road of laughter_, which goes by way of +irony and satire; and _the road of tears_, by way of pathos or cruelty. + +The former path, since it leads away from the tragic emotions, need +not detain us long. With effort the romantic can school himself into +a detachment of head from heart in which he can smile at the contrast +between his dreams and the reality. His laughter may be bitter, but +it is laughter. Pirandello, aware of the flux and illusoriness of +life, deliberately contrasts it with the permanence and significance +of fiction; and extracts mirth from the grotesquerie and cleverness +of his paradoxes, in spite of the disillusionment underlying them. +Anatole France armoured his sensibility with detached artistry and the +_esprit gaulois_. Aldous Huxley, too much the moralist to be wholly +detached, solaces himself with savage satire. The whole work of Cabell +is a series of repetitions of one bitter “jest” involving the night +before and the morning after. Such writers, emotionally romantic but +intellectually sceptical, choose to laugh at their predicament rather +than weep. + +The road of tears concerns us directly. It usually follows the way of +pathos. Though Aristotle made pity and fear correlative emotions, it is +a fact that we feel the former more for the weak victim like Ophelia +than for the hero, and that the more we admire, the less we need weep. +Pathos must be subordinate in heroic tragedy if the play is to elevate +our spirits. Obviously, however, the modern who sees nothing to admire +is left with pathos as his chief effect. + +Pathos and horror we find in Hardy, little mitigated by any admiration +except for the author’s artistry. Rarely we find a heroism of sorts +in characters like Michael Henchard; but it is significant that the +author ended his novels with _Jude_. Galsworthy’s habitual irony always +borders on pathos if not sentiment. French “naturalism” is harsher and +at times, as in _Madame Bovary_, finds expression in bitter irony. But +pathos is none the less its most powerful effect. _The Old Wives’ Tale_ +of Arnold Bennett is an English imitation; here we feel the pathos of +mere mortality quite apart from anything the very ordinary characters +do. In Theodore Dreiser, “naturalism,” though sadly in need of pruning, +still bears its bitter fruit. It is characteristic of its spirit that +Dreiser uses the word “tragedy” with reference to the fate of a Clyde +Griffiths. + +But since pathos skirts the gulf of sentimentality, the “hard-boiled” +generation since the war have turned from it. Those of the younger +group who cannot laugh have as a result begun to explore another +emotion, which lies even deeper in our nature, and which is also +compatible with disillusionment. The savage in all of us finds a fierce +and hard delight in torture. Significantly the word “sadism” has become +fashionable. We may name the emotion “cruelty,” though the word is +perhaps inadequate. + +In the drama an important forerunner of contemporary exploitations +of cruelty and sex, as well as of expressionism, was Frank Wedekind. +Cruelty is manifest in James Joyce. In D. H. Lawrence it accompanies +a pathological exaltation of sexuality, and thus gives him greater +hardness than his American parallel, Sherwood Anderson. A very +interesting instance of it is the work of a contemporary American poet +whose fame is still unequal to his remarkable achievements. I speak of +Robinson Jeffers. + +Jeffers’ long narrative poems spread a more than Thyestian banquet of +horrors. With surprise we learn that in private life the author is so +unwilling to inflict pain that “he never picks a flower wantonly.” +But in his art he more than compensates for such sensibilities. _Roan +Stallion_, for example, depicts the passion of a modern Pasiphaë. The +unlucky husband is trampled by the stallion, and the woman shoots the +animal. _Tamar_ deals with incest between brother and sister, and ends +with a fire which burns down the house and its more or less crazy +inmates. _The Tower Beyond Tragedy_, though treating the Clytemnestra +legend with great power, ends in the incest motive between Orestes and +Electra. + +The perversity of theme, however, is partly compensated by elevation of +treatment, for Jeffers has a certain grandeur of style, drawing as he +does upon Greek literature, the Bible, modern psychology, and physical +science for thought, and the beauty of natural scenery for description. +A passage which illustrates at once his power of style and his drift +toward cruelty is found in preparation for the crucial scene of _Roan +Stallion_. + + Humanity is the start of the race; I say + Humanity is the mould to break away from, the crust to break + through, the coal to break into fire, + The atom to be split. + Tragedy that breaks man’s face + and a white fire flies out of it; vision that fools him + Out of his limits, desire that fools him out of his limits, unnatural + crime, inhuman science, + Slit eyes in the mask; wild loves that leap over the walls of nature, + the wild fence-vaulter science, + Useless intelligence of far stars, dim knowledge of the spinning + demons that make an atom, + These break, these pierce, these deify, praising their God shrilly + with fierce voices: not in a man’s shape + He approves the praise, he that walks lightning-naked on the + Pacific, that laces the suns with planets, + The heart of the atom with electrons: what is humanity in this + cosmos? For him, the last + Least taint of a trace in the dregs of the solution; for itself, the + mould to break away from, the coal + To break into fire, the atom to be split.[40] + +In interpretation of his thought Mr. Louis Adamic quotes Mr. Jeffers +as saying that civilisation tends inevitably toward downfall through +sexual introversion. Although to attempt to “break out of humanity” +after the fashion exalted in _Roan Stallion_ is, to be sure, dangerous, +“misinterpreted in the mind of a fool or a lunatic,” nevertheless the +fault of the civilised person is that he “regards man exclusively,” +“founding his values, desires, his picture of the universe, all on +his own humanity.” Mr. Jeffers thus levels his attack directly at the +foundation of humanism, and allies himself with the naturalists who +seek salvation in the physical. + +He thus flies from normal humanity into cruelty and perversion. But the +end of these is death. And in poem after poem is expressed the longing +for the peace and endurance of granite,--of the grave. The violent +destruction of the individual is the logical outcome of his creed, and +the denial of human values leads to the annihilation of humanity. + +This tendency, the extreme development of which we find in Jeffers, we +find in less degree in our leading American dramatist. But in Eugene +O’Neill it is obscured by other qualities; and generalisations are +rendered difficult because he is groping and experimental, not only in +technic but in philosophy. Because of this difficulty as well as for +his intrinsic importance, O’Neill requires special consideration. + + +IV + +A writer’s ’prentice work is likely to be revealing, and O’Neill’s +is no exception. The one-act play _Thirst_, for example, reveals an +imaginative absorption in the violences and brutalities of life. Most +of the one-acts in the volume with _The Moon of the Caribbees_ have +more normal and convincing characterisation, but about half are built +upon abnormal situations involving incipient insanities or morbid +passions. + +This interest in mental abnormality has not diminished. O’Neill’s plays +are studies in psychopathology. _Beyond the Horizon_ deals with a weak +romantic who takes refuge from harsh reality in dreams, and finally +dies of consumption. _Gold_ is a melodrama growing out of an insane +delusion. _Diff’rent_ is the horrible case-history of a victim of +sex-repression. _The Hairy Ape_ describes a character who, if he is not +a mere symbol, develops from incipient to raving madness. A play with +a normal beginning, “_The First Man_,” turns out to be a study of an +emotional fixation. _Welded_ depicts two egotistical introverts in whom +goes on the torturing conflict between passionate love and uncontrolled +temperament. The flames of lust and greed, fanned into madness--these +are the materials of _Desire Under the Elms_. _The Great God Brown_, +viewed apart from its symbolism, portrays split personality and +madness. _The Fountain_, beneath its exotic romanticism, is the story +of an _idée fixe_. The plot of _Strange Interlude_ might have come +from the case-book of Freud. If we cannot judge the chief character +of _Lazarus Laughed_ by human standards, we can recognise in Caligula +and Tiberius realistic studies of psychic abnormalities born of lust, +cruelty, and fear. And the author’s latest play, _Dynamo_, is a study +of religious mania. + +The blighting effects of our industrial and social life seem hardly +adequate to explain this persistent interest in the pathological. To +follow the method of the new psychology which O’Neill uses so largely, +we are likely to be correct if we seek an emotional frustration; but +American life is hardly the chief cause. Similar interests are seen, +for example, in Ibsen, Strindberg, and Wedekind, all of whom must +have had their effect on the younger dramatist. My suggestion is that +O’Neill has found his highly romantic temperament incompatible with the +teachings of science, and has sought to evade the dilemma of modern +tragedy by the road of tears, exploiting both pathos and cruelty. + +That his temperament is highly romantic is obvious. His early work is +almost Conradian in atmosphere; and his great vigour of imagination is +strikingly displayed in the gorgeous settings and strange situations +of plays like _Marco Millions_ and _The Fountain_. Indeed, in the +melodrama of fear and horror he is a genius, fertile in themes to +startle and amaze, and skilful in adapting them effectively to the +stage. Such a play as _Ile_, moreover, is not only horrible but +poetically true. _The Emperor Jones_ is in my opinion his masterpiece, +perfectly constructed and artistically inevitable. The settings and +plot contribute with as inexorable an art as that of Poe to a single +emotional effect, which is furthermore bound up with a clear and +convincing problem in character. The theme of _The Emperor Jones_ is +the regression of a negro to savagery; and as we watch the succession +of weird visions, and feel the emotional crescendo of the tom-toms, +at the same time we see the disintegration of the negro’s mind. The +parallel progress of outer and inner effects is beautifully executed; +and behind the individual we become aware of the dark tragedy of his +race. + +But with so luxuriant a fancy, O’Neill has never been content to +construct a dream-world of his own, out of despair of the real one. +He has never abandoned the search for his dreams in actual life, and +as a consequence in his later plays his visions of beauty are forever +being distorted by the lurid light of disillusion. Thus he has seldom +written pure romance. _Marco Millions_ becomes heavy satire; and _The +Fountain_ leaves a bitter taste. For the most part he seeks to deal +realistically with contemporary life. + +To see men as mere parts of a mechanistic and soulless universe, and +at the same time to long passionately for the beautiful visions of +imagination, is to find those visions a torture unless they can in some +way be reconciled with reality. Lesser writers have often been diverted +into a seeming reconciliation of them by becoming ardent propagandists; +by adopting programmes of reform, and writing problem or thesis plays. +But while O’Neill shows the romantic’s characteristic hatred of +tradition and restraint, he is not content to do less than face the +fundamental problem. And if he hates “puritanism” and sympathises with +its victim, he by no means blindly admires the libertine. Indeed, he +seems to find no man whom he can whole-heartedly admire; he can exalt +no character or cause, and thus does not gain the elevation of heroic +tragedy. He finds life a muddle; he leaves it a muddle. + +Too often, indeed, the muddlement gets into the construction as well +as the themes of his plays. _Desire Under the Elms_, one of the most +nearly tragic of his plays, starts as a study of greed, with old Cabot +as the central character. Cabot, in fact, has heroic qualities, for +he is a man of will. But half way through, the play turns off into +the more alluring theme of sexual lust; old Cabot is thrust into the +background; and the ending is, surprisingly, the traditional one of +crime and retribution. The play lacks artistic unity; it falls in two. + +The lack of unity is felt, again, in _Anna Christie_, which in spite +of the author’s expressed intention has for the audience simply a +conventional happy ending. It is strikingly manifest in _Strange +Interlude_. The central character of this alone knits together the +various situations and themes of the nine acts. Of the situations +three or four distinct plays might have been built. Of the themes +there are at least eight; and it is impossible to say which the author +considered central. Much, for example, is said about “happiness” +as the end of life. Again, the doubtful value of self-sacrifice is +illustrated. From Darrell’s point of view, love, that blind biological +urge, seems to be a modern variety of Fate. More than once Nina +expresses the notion that God is a woman. The most powerful scene of +the play is where Nina exults over her “three men”: are we to look +for possessiveness in love as a theme? Or a woman’s need of several +sorts of love? Or is the play a study in relativity with reference +to insanity? Certainly the character with the insane inheritance is +actually the most normal person. Or perhaps we have a study in the +results of meddling with other people’s lives. The popular success of +this play is hardly an indication of unification. That success seems +to be attained in spite of lack of unity, and to rest chiefly on the +novelty of the nine acts and of the technic of spoken thought, on the +frank treatment of sex, and on the great power of characterisation and +of separate situations. + +Here is a writer with a genius for the theatre, a powerful imagination, +and great emotional force, who except in shorter studies of +melodramatic horror seems unable to canalise his energies into rounded +and unified works of art. He suffers the conflict he symbolises in +“Dion Anthony,” between his inborn longing for goodness and beauty, +and an acquired frustration, cynicism, and despair. Often the despair +conquers; but we must honour him for the fact that, having no faith, +he persists in seeking one. Unlike lesser writers he is no compromiser +with truth as he sees it; but in one play at least he has persuaded +himself into a positive affirmation. The play is _Lazarus Laughed_. + +The symbolist technic of this play forces attention upon the +underlying theme. Only Lazarus is unmasked, and he is thus shown +freed from the illusions of mortality. The rhythmical repetitions and +symmetrical groups of the choruses materialise ethical sympathies and +antagonisms. And the theme is stated repeatedly: there is no death. + +But when we try to understand this affirmation we are repeatedly +baffled. It cannot be the Christian belief in personal immortality. The +resurrection of Lazarus would give ground for such a view were it not +obvious that the author has taken over a Christian legend merely as +starting point for his non-Christian allegory. Not only is Christian +immortality not preached, but Christian morality is not expounded. +The hero displays not humility but arrogance. For him men are not +evil until redeemed by the grace of God; they are innately good but +perverted by fear. He thus incites them not to love one another because +children of a loving God, but to live passionately and instinctively. +To be freed from the fear of death means for those who come under +his spell not to live on earth after the Golden Rule, in meekness to +forgive and suffer wrong; but to drown all human interests in a mad +delight in death. And they laugh with exultation at the prospect of +annihilation. The paradox seems essentially irrational. + +Cries Lazarus: “Once as squirming specks we crept from the tides of +the sea! Once as quivering flecks of rhythm we beat down the sun. Now +we re-enter the sun! Cast aside is our pitiable pretence, our immortal +egohood, the holy lantern behind which cringed our Fear of the Dark.... +We will to die!” In a manner strikingly similar to that of Jeffers, +O’Neill exalts pan-evolutionary nature; having passed beyond horror at +the scientific demonstration of an inhuman universe, he attempts to +pull himself out of humanity into a rapturous acceptance of Nature. +But Jeffers finds no source for laughter in his god “that laces the +suns with planets, the heart of the atom with electrons.” Whence does +O’Neill derive his mirth? + +He may well have got his inspiration from Nietzsche. I have summed +up Nietzsche’s idea in _The Birth of Tragedy_ as “an intoxicated joy +in annihilation and union with nature.” Significantly it is just +following an attack on Christianity that he exalts the laughing mood. +We must fear the “romantic,” he says, because the romantic tends to end +comforted like a Christian. “No! ye should first of all learn the art +of earthly comfort, ye should learn to _laugh_, my young friends, if ye +are at all determined to remain pessimists: if so, you will perhaps, +as laughing ones, eventually send all metaphysical comfortism to the +devil--and metaphysics first of all! Or, to say it in the language of +that Dionysian ogre, called Zarathustra: + + “‘Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher! And do not forget + your legs! Lift up also your legs, ye good dancers--and better + still if ye stand also on your heads!... + + “‘This crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown--to you, my + brethren, do I cast this crown! Laughing have I consecrated: ye + higher men, _learn_, I pray you--to laugh!’” + +It needs intoxication--of one Dionysian sort or another--to find such +incitements mirth-provoking. It is necessary to abandon all reasonable +grounds for comfort except the rather chilly one that we are physically +made of stardust, and therefore should rejoice to dissolve our living +complexity back into it. _Lazarus Laughed_ indeed arouses a fair +measure of the necessary intoxication, so imaginative and emotional is +it. But its comfort can last, I fear, only while we actually hear the +laughter of Lazarus. + + +V + +Thus our most gifted American dramatist, together with other finer +spirits of to-day, is unable to accept traditional modes or satisfy +the desire for admiration and worship. Romanticism, in identifying man +with nature, hastened the decay of a heroic tradition which it at first +attempted to foster; and under scientific naturalism the decay ended +in dissolution. Whether the author uses a so-called “naturalistic” +technique after Ibsen or Maupassant; or whether, like Wedekind or +Jeffers or Cabell, he seeks other modes of expression, so long as he +thinks of man as in no way superior to the outer world or different +from it, he is none the less subject to the naturalistic point of +view.[41] + +Recently, to be sure, certain developments of science have given rise +to hopes of mysticism within a naturalistic monism. The argument, +so far as an unscientific reader understands it, seems to run thus: +Einstein has offered proof that time and space form a continuum and +that events are “relative.” Studies of the atom have upset orthodox +conceptions of physics, and physicists themselves are beginning to +talk about matter in terms that sound for all the world like Bishop +Berkeley. Science admits a mysterious enveloping Unknown. + +The new hypotheses, of course, merely re-enforce the acknowledgment of +ultimate mystery which thoughtful people have always made. The novelty +of the new mysticism is that it builds not on theology or metaphysics +but mathematics and laboratory experiment. The next step in its +argument is the dubious one. + +If science grants an enveloping Unknown, the man who would explain +that Unknown in terms of his desires is as likely to be right as one +who explains it in inhuman terms. And if there is a chance that one’s +desires may be true, it needs no psychologist to assure us that plenty +of people will immediately assume that they are true. For them science +seems to justify mysticism and open the door for the hosts of dreams, +so long shut out of a rationalistic universe. But the weakness of +such wishful thinking seems obvious; and to the humanist the whole +argument is beside the point because it would vindicate human values by +naturalistic data. + +If some scientists are nowadays growing mystical, it is not therefore +logical to deny the facts that their controlled experiments have +demonstrated. The dilemma of modern tragedy remains very real. There +is no refuge in obscurantism through return to illusions which science +has shattered. Reason denies the objective reality of our dreams; and +so long as the honest man accepts a monism which identifies man with +nature, he can find no justification for tragic exaltation. + +The humanist, however, denies the necessity for this identification. +Without in the slightest degree disparaging the truth or worth of +physical knowledge he maintains that the realm of value has significant +validity when taken as distinct from the realm of fact. The realm of +value belongs to man; that of fact, to outer nature. One depends on the +other, but the two are different. + +Value depends on the operation of physical laws, but it remains value. +The fallacy of the naturalist has been the assumption that to explain +the cause of a thing is to explain away its value. Human emotions may +be caused on the naturalistic plane by the secretion of endocrine +glands or what not; on the human plane they remain what they were to +Homer or Shakespeare. It is interesting to know about chromosomes +and Mendelian laws, about biochemistry and vital machinery; but human +values remain the same. Whatever the findings of science, man humanly +speaking is still what he always was: comic, pitiful, despicable--now +and then sublime. + +The humanist is concerned with the realm of values, and thus is +concerned with ethical laws. The lives of all men progress under +these laws; and the endeavours of great men have been to discover and +formulate them. To the humanist it seems evident that literary art, +dealing as it does with human actions, must deal with ethical laws, +which are the foundation of conduct. And it would seem obvious folly to +attempt to divorce literature from them. + +Romantic art as recreation is a blessing to jaded mortals; and +naturalistic art at its best is, within its limits, penetrating. But +to the humanist it seems that both types of art have failed in dealing +with ethical laws. The romantic is always an extremist, demanding +perfection, or denying the existence of goodness. The naturalist has +become so absorbed in the mechanism of the instrument that he has +become deaf to its music. The humanist desires emotional satisfaction; +he desires to face the truth. But he also wishes to preserve a +normal humanity in which human values are central. Though hearing +the revelations of science, he keeps his ear attuned to the music of +humanity. Though enjoying the thrills of liberated feeling, he is +unwilling to purchase them at the expense of moderation or proportion. +He believes not in prohibition but in temperance. + +Ethical laws are what make man human, and it is these that the artist +must ponder. And to find guidance he cannot do better than follow +Arnold’s advice--not less sound for being tiresomely familiar--to know +the best that has been thought and said in the world. He must break +with the contemporary tradition of romantic scorn for tradition; he +must seek to become a part of the great tradition, by knowing the +best. To become a part of it does not mean to attempt mere imitation; +it means that the artist will be forevermore dissatisfied with +pettiness or insincerity in himself, and will have a lofty but possible +standard by which to measure his work. + +Those who work in the “modern temper” are unable to discover a worthy +heroism to exalt. But if one turns to the records of classic art, he +will find a nobility of spirit no less admirable to-day than in the +past. His response will be an evidence of the existence of heroism, +a proof of its reality in human nature. It will be a proof of its +reality, of course, not in perfection but in aspiration. And if one +looks about him he will find the same aspiration in living men and +women. He will find it even expressed in deeds--imperfectly, humanly. +If he should be artist enough to give adequate expression to what +he feels and sees, he could rise above the dilemma against which +naturalism has forced our modern literature. + +Cynicism will, to be sure, urge that every man finds what he looks +for, and to look for greatness will lead to a denial of evident +imperfections. The humanist professes himself not unaware of the +latter. Long before naturalist novelists pictured the _bête humaine_, +Christianity declared man innately evil; but unlike naturalism, +Christianity believed man capable of redemption by Grace. The humanist +as such is not concerned with theology, and is content to believe that +Grace, however it comes, is sometimes found. He is inclined to doubt +that it comes only to those who have joined a church; he is inclined +to believe that nobility is found now and again in all sorts and +conditions of men. But the main thing is that it exists; and no artist +who does not see the good with the evil sees life steadily and whole. + +To follow the narrow path between cynicism and romantic idealisation; +to recognise the imperfections in man and the inevitable domination of +physical force over the individual, and yet to preserve admiration for +the indomitable spirit which drives the individual to will and to do +nobly; and finally to find adequate means of artistic expression--that +is the task of one who would write great tragedy. Though hard, it is +still possible. Only when the artist follows lofty standards can he +hope to control and guide his own efforts toward sublimity. While +humanism offers him no magic key to success, it offers him hope, and a +discipline. + + +FOOTNOTES + +[37] I have considered the tragic emotions more fully in an article, +“Melodrama and Tragedy,” _Publications of the Modern Language +Association_, September, 1928. + +[38] Since this paper was written my attention has been called to +“Humanism and Tragedy,” an admirable article by Mr. F. McEachran +(_Nineteenth Century and After_, July, 1929). Based on Professor +Babbitt’s three levels of human conduct, naturalistic, human, and +religious, Mr. McEachran’s thesis is that tragedy, since it demands an +assumption of human dignity, cannot develop in a naturalistic age like +the present, and is difficult in a religious one. The age of Pericles, +of Elizabeth, and of Louis XIV were humanistic; they were followed by +naturalistic decadence in which man and nature were equated and tragedy +became impossible. Mr. McEachran’s “human dignity” and my “heroism” +seem equivalent. + +[39] It is to be noted, as further illustration of the anti-heroic +tendency of modern thought, that critics have sought to explain Hamlet +as not a hero but a psychopath. What Shakespeare wished his audience to +feel, however, seems open to no doubt. + +[40] From _Roan Stallion, Tamar, and Other Poems_, Boni & Liveright, +1925. + +[41] Should I remind the reader that in thus generalising I admit +exceptions? One such, whom I have discussed elsewhere (_Sewanee +Review_, April, 1929) is, in my opinion, Joseph Conrad. + + + + +_An American Tragedy_ + +ROBERT SHAFER + + +I + +Mr. Theodore Dreiser’s critical friends have always been ready to admit +his deficiencies as a literary artist, and these deficiencies are +really extraordinary. Nevertheless, by universal consent Mr. Dreiser +stands at the head of the realistic movement in American fiction, not +merely because he is its pioneer, and has endured obloquy and even +persecution for the Cause, but primarily on account of his seriousness +and singleness of purpose, his depth of keen feeling, and his earnest +reflectiveness. His work also anticipates in important respects +the efforts of the post-realists and super-realists, so-called, +and altogether has a present salience which insistently demands +consideration. + +The work, however, cannot be assessed--cannot indeed be +understood--apart from the man; and fortunately Mr. Dreiser has written +much about himself.[42] He was born in 1871 in Terre Haute, Indiana, +of German Catholic parents who struggled vainly against poverty. +In the schools of another Indiana town he received the elements of +an education, but apparently learned little of value to him beyond +reading and writing. In boyhood and youth, in school or out, he became +acquainted with a number of the better-known writers, chiefly of +fiction, of the nineteenth century, but without gaining from them +more than momentary entertainment. He has said that as a boy he “had +no slightest opportunity to get a correct or even partially correct +estimate of what might be called the mental A B abs of life.” [sic] + +If the truth is to be told, one reason for this lay clearly within +himself. For he was, as his records show him, a stupid boy and young +man, lapped in vague reverie and hazy dreams of enjoyment, and roused +slowly to puzzled observation and thought. “No common man am I,” he +used to tell himself when he was scarcely out of his ’teens, with no +evident reason save that with adolescence came an intense craving for +freedom from the shackles of common life--freedom to indulge fully +his temperamental longing for sensuous and materialised delight. This +self-conceit helped to prevent him from learning what could have been +learned during his boyhood, and, as he grew older, aroused in him +bitter resentment against the limitations of his early environment. + +Those limitations, at the same time, were extreme. The Dreiser +household was one combining almost unrelieved ignorance with perfect +tastelessness, presided over by a father whose consuming interest was +a Catholicism degraded into mere ceremonies and prohibitions. Mr. +Dreiser explicitly denotes the quality of the purifying influence +dominant in the home and community of his youth: “One should read only +good books ... from which any reference to sex had been eliminated, +and what followed ... was that all intelligent interpretation of +character and human nature was immediately discounted. A picture of a +nude or partially nude woman was sinful.... The dance in our home and +our town was taboo. The theatre was an institution which led to crime, +the saloon a centre of low, even bestial vices.... It was considered +good business, if you please, to be connected with some religious +organisation.... We were taught persistently to shun most human +experiences as either dangerous or degrading or destructive. The less +you knew about life the better; the more you knew about the fictional +heaven and hell ditto.... In my day there were apparently no really +bad men who were not known as such to all the world, ... and few if +any good men who were not sufficiently rewarded by the glorious fruits +of their good deeds here and now!... Positively, and I stake my solemn +word on this, until I was between seventeen and eighteen I had scarcely +begun to suspect any other human being of harbouring the erratic and +sinful thoughts which occasionally flashed through my own mind.” + +By the time Mr. Dreiser had fairly formed the suspicion that, despite +appearances, other people might not be much better than himself, his +family had begun to break up, following the death of his mother, and he +himself had been thrust into the world--or rather into Chicago, where +the Dreisers by now lived--to earn his way. He did manage to spend one +year at Indiana University, to the great improvement of his health, +but with no positive intellectual benefit, so that he refused to waste +a second year, which he might have had there. He confesses this, it +should be said, in no boastful spirit. He was in fact made to realise +at Bloomington that there were elements of knowledge which it would be +useful to him to acquire--but he found the effort hopeless. His mind +could not be constrained, and, besides, the deficiencies of his earlier +schooling stood in his way. Hence he returned to Chicago, to become a +collector for an easy-payment furniture shop. + +It was at this time that his feelings--scarcely yet his imagination or +his reason--were awakened by the spectacle of “America on the make.” +He found that spectacle intensely vital. At the same time, too, he was +doing the first reading that really came home to him:--he was reading a +daily column of Eugene Field’s in a Chicago newspaper. It gave him the +notion of doing something like that himself, and sent him hunting for a +post on a news-sheet. This he finally obtained, and at the reporter’s +desk achieved his real education, one not beyond his grasp. His first +instructor promptly informed him that “life was a God-damned stinking, +treacherous game, and that nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of +every thousand were bastards.” The truth of this generalisation Mr. +Dreiser proceeded to establish for himself, by observation of those +of life’s realities which constitute news, and by intercourse with +fellow-journalists. He discovered that practically all men, high or +low, were lying hypocrites, outwardly professing a fine morality, but +privately violating this without hesitation whenever it would serve +their turn in the pursuit of gain or in the satisfaction of lust. + +This was the reality, at any rate, which the young reporter saw, and +which, as he says, broadened considerably his viewpoint, finally +liberating him “from moralistic and religionistic qualms.” So +liberated was he, indeed, that he came to judge men “thoroughly sound +intellectually” in proportion as he found them “quite free from the +narrow, cramping conventions of their day.” So liberated was he that he +came to see the “religionist” for what he was: “a swallower of romance +or a masquerader looking to profit and preferment.” He came also to see +behind “the blatherings of thin-minded, thin-blooded, thin-experienced +religionists” only “a brainless theory.” Nor was this the limit of +his discoveries. He came further to see that life was not simply a +ruthless struggle for material advantages, because, howsoever ruthless +and intelligent one’s struggle, still, one might be defrauded by sheer +accident. Chance seemed, at times, the final ruler of all things--many +of the reporter’s assignments combining “to prove that life is +haphazard and casual and cruel; to some lavish, to others niggardly.” + +Mr. Dreiser, it is fair to say, was the more ready to learn these +lessons of experience because, as he plainly tells his readers, +he himself was lustful and passionately eager for the material +satisfactions of life. He longed to join in the antics of the rich, who +alone, as he judged, were bathed in happiness. He felt, as he gazed +enviously upon the gilded sons and daughters of earth, that, from no +fault of his, life was tragically cheating him. And this sense of +grievance, feeding upon itself, passed easily through a sentimental +phase into bitterness, as his reminiscences show: “Whenever I returned +to any place in which I had once lived and found things changed, as +they always were, I was fairly transfixed by the oppressive sense of +the evanescence of everything; a mood so hurtful and dark and yet +with so rich if sullen a lustre that I was left wordless with pain. I +was all but crucified at realising how unimportant I was, how nothing +stayed but all changed.... Life was so brief, ... and so soon, whatever +its miserable amount or character, it would be gone.... But I, poor +waif, with no definite or arresting skill of any kind, not even that of +commerce, must go fumbling about looking in upon life from the outside, +as it were. Beautiful women, or so I argued, were drawn to any but +me.... I should never have a fraction of the means to do as I wished or +to share in the life that I most craved. I was an Ishmael.” + +Not always, of course, was Mr. Dreiser sunk in a bitterness induced +by self-pity and sentimental regret. Often in moments of successful +work or of flattering companionship he was quickly lifted up into a +mood of expansive self-satisfaction, equally unbalanced. Then he would +say to himself: “I must be an exceptional man.... Life itself was +not so bad; it was just higgledy-piggledy, catch-as-catch-can, that +was all. If one were clever, like myself, it was all right.” It was +indeed magnificent, so long as the slave of temperament could dream +of his heroic future as something assured. But dreams, like life, were +unstable, and the fever for self-advancement, becoming intolerable +from its intensity, would transmute itself--not every time into frank +self-pity--but sometimes into tearful “sympathy for the woes of others, +life in all its helpless degradation and poverty, the unsatisfied +dreams of people.” And from the downtrodden for whom he wept he also +drew a lesson. The hideous inequalities both of fortune and of capacity +which he saw, proved to him that democracy, like morality, was a sham, +a hollow convention, irrelevant, indeed opposed, to the facts of life +and practice. + +Mr. Dreiser’s journalistic career took him from Chicago to St. Louis, +and thence, with several stops on the way, to Pittsburgh, during a +period of rather more than three years. In these years, he says, +speaking of his “blood-moods or so-called spiritual aspirations,” he +was “what might be called a poetic melancholiac, crossed with a vivid +materialistic lust of life.” His body, he adds, “was blazing with sex, +as well as with a desire for material and social supremacy.” It is +not surprising, consequently, that he found himself able to entertain +carnal desires for several women at the same time--though this at first +surprised him, and troubled him also, until his day of liberation from +“moralistic qualms.” It is not surprising either that he presently +was captivated by a charming country girl, several years older than +himself, who had no single idea and only one desire in common with +him. He had welcomed his liberation from “moralistic and religionistic +qualms” the more complacently because of the simplification of thought +and conduct to which it pointed. From this time the conduct of life +was to be straightforward as well as simple, in accordance with the +brutish yet vital law of following your dominant impulse regardlessly, +ruthlessly, slavishly. But now this liberation itself was mainly +instrumental in plunging him into a new, long-continued, and grievous +difficulty. For his simple country maiden, though she was drawn to +him as he was drawn to her, was nevertheless rigidly conventional, +immovably “moralistic,” one of the predestined pillars of an ordered +society and a stable family. She steadfastly refused to yield him her +body without marriage, and he, alas, was not only unable to support her +but deeply unwilling to marry her even if he could. + +Clearly this pair did not understand all that divided them in spirit, +but, still, Mr. Dreiser knew from the first some portion of the truth. +For he knew what love really was: it was a mere “blood-mood”; it was a +vivid lust crossed with poetic fires; it was irresistible, of course, +but it was like everything else, transient, shifting, evanescent. He +already suspected, as he later concluded, that monogamy--marriage +indeed of any kind--was a debasing institution which not only killed +the love that brought men to it, but also deformed and dwarfed their +personalities. It might not harm stupid and lethargic men, but the man +of individuality, at least, the highest type of citizen, required utter +freedom to follow his vital impulses--required the joys of the sexual +act “without any of the hindrances or binding chains of convention.” +He knew, in fine, that “the tug of his immense physical desire for his +beloved” might easily have been satisfied, despite his poverty, without +compromising the future, and without doing a hurt to society, had there +only been “any such thing as sanity in life,” outside of himself. He +even knew, after the first raptures of idyllic feeling had passed, +that any other beautiful woman would have served his need as well; +but, nevertheless, he clung to this one, because in fact no beautiful +woman whom he found accessible did keep alive in him the same fever of +desire. Yet his beloved remained immovable, and so drew him on, through +several years of miserably divided feeling, into a marriage finally +accomplished after his carnal fires had cooled, owing to the passage +of time and the casual ministrations of certain other fair creatures, +more pliant, but unsatisfying. + +I dwell upon this painful episode, following Mr. Dreiser’s own example, +because it tells so much. It was the crucial event of his early life, +and it left an ineffaceable scar. The fact is, indeed, that without +definite knowledge of this miserable union, it would not be easy to +understand how Mr. Dreiser became so obstinately fixed in those notions +of life which journalism and its associations gave him and which he was +eager to accept. Without definite knowledge of this marriage, further, +it would be impossible fully to understand his novels; for none of them +could have been written quite as it stands save in the light of this +afflictive experience of his, and several, it is extremely likely, +could not otherwise have been written at all.[43] + +Some knowledge of another side of Mr. Dreiser’s life, however, during +his years of work for the news-sheets, is also necessary for those who +would understand his novels. He has told us that in St. Louis the great +literary idol of his associates was Zola, and after Zola, Balzac. These +novelists, and especially the former, were constantly held up to him as +models by one of his assignment-editors, who made it abundantly clear +what Zola stood for. Mr. Dreiser read none of the Frenchman’s books +at this time, but he did read an unpublished novel by two St. Louis +newspaper men which made a deep and lasting impression upon him and +which, as he later discovered, was wholly inspired by Zola and Balzac. +This was “the opening wedge for him into the realm of realism,” and, +too, “it fixed his mind definitely on this matter of writing,” firing +him with a desire to create something of the sort himself. He thought +the novel “intensely beautiful,” “with its frank pictures of raw, +greedy, sensual human nature, and its open pictures of self-indulgence +and vice.” In these indirect ways, evidently, Zola exerted upon the +young reporter an influence real and significant. It was, indeed, +probably much more important than the direct influence exerted by +Balzac not long thereafter; though the accident which brought Mr. +Dreiser to a fevered and ecstatic reading of many of Balzac’s novels, +while he was in Pittsburgh, marked what was for him “a literary +revolution.” + +The crowning stage of Mr. Dreiser’s education, however, was now to +come, while he was still in Pittsburgh, with his discovery of certain +of the writings of Huxley, Tyndall, and Herbert Spencer. Huxley, Mr. +Dreiser credits with finally dispelling the “lingering filaments” of +Christianity still trailing about him; and Huxley’s work of dispersion +was completed by Spencer’s _First Principles_. This book wholly +“threw him down in his conceptions or non-conceptions of life” by its +“questioning or dissolving into other and less understandable things” +all that he had deemed substantial. “Up to this time,” he says, +“there had been in me a blazing and unchecked desire to get on and +the feeling that in doing so we did get somewhere; now in its place +was the definite conviction that spiritually one got nowhere, that +there was no hereafter, that one lived and had his being because one +had to, and that it was of no importance. Of one’s ideals, struggles, +deprivations, sorrows and joys, it could only be said that they were +chemic compulsions.... Man was a mechanism, undevised and uncreated, +and a badly and carelessly driven one at that.” + +The seeming ill logic of some of these remarks--the sudden concern +over spiritual things felt by one who had hitherto devoted himself +whole-heartedly to the world by sensuous appearances--is not +unimportant. Clearly Spencer’s book left an abiding mark on Mr. Dreiser +because it represented in a general way the abstract conclusion towards +which his own observations had been pointing. Without knowing it, and +without any attempt to set his intellectual house in order, he had +himself been drifting towards a mechanistic naturalism. Spencer made +him aware of this, and if, as he thought, that awareness left him +crushed and hopeless, it at least seemed to clear his mind of rubbish, +and to give his view-point self-consistency and finality. Nevertheless, +he did not come forth a Spencerian; and, indeed, his debt to the +_Synthetic Philosophy_ may easily be exaggerated--the more easily +because it really is important. + +Mr. Dreiser emphasises the fact that his reading of the _First +Principles_ was followed by an emotional revulsion--a revulsion which +the Synthetic Philosopher can scarcely alone have caused. And in +truth just at the time when he stumbled upon Spencer his feelings +were strained to the breaking-point. He had just returned from a last +desperate, yet unsuccessful, effort to seduce his country maiden, +which left him crushed, not only by that defeat itself, but by the +consciousness that the gratification he was bound to secure was now +driving him towards a marriage for which he had no capacity, no desire, +and no prospect of sufficient means. Moreover, immediately after his +Western visit he had gone, for the first time, to New York, where he +had received an extraordinarily vivid impression of all the glories +and delights of that worldly success, with its attendant wealth, which +he so intensely craved. The sight had fired him to renew his efforts +after so grand a reward, but, at the same time, had made him gloomily +feel his distance from it, lodging in his mind a stubborn doubt if it +could, after all, ever be attained by him. The combined weight of these +experiences had intensified his already bitter sense of the world’s +indifference to his desires and aims, of the world’s unconscious +cruelty, and of its brutal injustice. He had eagerly embraced the world +at his earliest opportunity, had reviled those who opposed themselves +to it--and what was the world doing for him, what was it not blindly +and carelessly doing against him? He was brought to the point of +sheer despair, and was ready to turn upon the world--yet not ready to +turn his back upon it. For he had not the slightest conception of any +other than sensuous and worldly values, of any other than material +gratifications which might bring to him fulness of life. Years ago he +had defiantly closed _that_ door, without in the least knowing what +he was doing, and it was never to be opened to him. He was miserably +exasperated by defeat, but the world’s appeal was still insistent and +compelling, and would be heard and obeyed for many a year, whether or +not it became suspect for a siren’s call. + +In these circumstances the _First Principles_ came really as a +god-send. The book had the impressive appearance of being the voice +of science itself uttering at last the Truth. Yet its weight and +authority left undisturbed Mr. Dreiser’s worldliness and some of his +dear prejudices. It left, indeed, everything as it was with him; but +it did appear to rob everything of value, and so, as he thought, left +him crushed and hopeless. Actually, however, it offered him a species +of consolation for the crushed and hopeless state into which he had +already been plunged by his efforts after a “realistic” way of life. +A species of consolation;--because, though the dehumanised conception +of the world and life presented by naturalism was “cold comfort,” +still, it did enable one who felt badly used to turn upon the universe +and _say_, if not feel, that life was a meaningless and unimportant +phenomenon anyhow. + +The _Synthetic Philosophy_, Mr. Dreiser tells the world, “eternally +verified” his “gravest fears as to the unsolvable disorder and +brutality of life.” Precisely; as these turns of phrase show, it left +his feelings what they had been, likewise his desires and aims, and +his sentimental humanitarianism and more. What Spencer gave him was +something to fall back upon and _say_ in hopeless or disillusioned +moments, but something which, leaving him otherwise where he was, +even helped to preserve him inviolate from self-criticism or +self-discipline. Following the guidance of temperament and mood, he +took from Spencer what he wanted, and nothing else; and it so happened +that this included little or nothing specifically characteristic of +Spencer as against various other naturalistic thinkers. The tone, +indeed, of Mr. Dreiser’s naturalism, as well as its emphasis upon +accident and chaotic disorder, is not only more sophisticated than that +of Spencer’s, but abruptly contradictory of the Synthetic gentleman’s +grandiose fancy of one eternal, universal law infallibly working to +bring about perfection in all things earthly. + +His dark emotional naturalism--and, it may be added, several of the +contradictions it has involved him in--bring Mr. Dreiser, as some of +his readers have perceived, close to Thomas Hardy, in proportion as +he is far from Spencer. He does not mention Hardy in the record of +his development which I have been following, but he is said to have +confessed to “an enchanted discovery” of that novelist in 1896, and his +delight is what was to be expected. As far as one can see, however, his +indebtedness to Hardy, though real, is not important. + + +II + +This, in summary form, is the story of Mr. Dreiser’s preparation for +a novelist’s career. His first novel was published in 1900, and his +sixth in 1925. Though from an early time he has had warm friends +amongst the critics, still, even the most devoted of these have harshly +condemned some of his books; and, in general, critical opinion, when +not predominantly hostile, has been sharply divided. Nevertheless, +in the face of whatever difficulties, Mr. Dreiser has slowly won a +leading position in the world of fiction, for reasons which I began by +mentioning. And his sixth novel, _An American Tragedy_, was, upon its +appearance, widely proclaimed a masterpiece. + +Certainly, moreover, _An American Tragedy_ is by all odds the best of +Mr. Dreiser’s novels, though perhaps not the most _interesting_. In +it his language is still faulty, as in his earlier books; the quality +of his style is mediocre, when not worse; his narrative is badly +proportioned;--but, nevertheless, the novel also has excellences which +its author had not previously achieved, and which are seldom to be +found save in works of a serious and mature artistry. It has a sombre +inevitableness, a self-contained adequacy, a restraint, dignity, and +detachment which bespeak not merely the experienced craftsman, but also +the workman’s sure grasp of his theme united with a deeply emotional +confidence in its truth and importance. A far higher intelligence is +exhibited in its execution than in Mr. Dreiser’s play, _The Hand of +the Potter_ (1918), whose theme is similar in several respects. If one +should name a single change indicative of the intelligent masterliness +of _An American Tragedy_, perhaps the most significant is the fact +that in this book, for the first time, Mr. Dreiser has permitted his +characters and events to speak entirely for themselves. + +But though _An American Tragedy_ marks a really notable advance in +technique, and a heightened plausibility thus attained, partly through +restraint, still, it exhibits Mr. Dreiser’s thought and the essential +quality of his realism entirely unchanged. How Mr. Dreiser reached +a mechanistic naturalism has above been shown, and how he became +conscious of the fact. The appropriate result was that all his novels +became tales of human irresponsibility, constructed to illustrate +life’s contradiction of the hollow conventions of society, and life’s +obedience to blind laws which make the individual’s experience a +chaos with an end unrelated to desert. This is the theme of _An +American Tragedy_, as of the earlier novels. It is a tale of human +irresponsibility, supported by youthful prejudices never relinquished, +built up on false antitheses, and capped by a merely circumstantial +realism calculated to give the narrative a deceptive air of importance. + +Youthful prejudice, for example, transparently dictates the important +part played by religion in this novel. Religion is represented as an +illusion capable of deceiving only those blind to life’s realities--the +hopelessly incompetent and unintelligent, those whose advocacy would +itself discredit any doctrine. Religion’s illusory nature is said to +be self-evident, indeed, since it has much to say of Providence, yet +manifestly bestows on the convert no worldly rewards, in satisfaction +of the real needs and desires with which he is endowed, not by his +own design or wish. Convention, too, is represented as a force which +sways only the stupid and lethargic, which makes no demands entitling +it to respect, and which the intelligent disregard deliberately, the +temperamental wilfully. Intelligence itself is pictured as merely an +instrument useful for devising methods of self-advancement;--in other +words, as the servant of inborn temperament. And temperament is the one +irresistible, compelling force in life, to which all else is ultimately +obedient. Hence no one is really responsible for anything;--save, +perhaps, the novelist who sees this important truth, at length, and by +careful selection of appropriate matter is able to picture it for us. + +Not even Mr. Dreiser’s expert care and long practice, however, are +sufficient to enable him to evade a difficulty inherent in the nature +of his theme. For the predicament of Roberta Alden is infinitely sad, +and her creator narrates her history and murder with an exemplary +truthfulness which emphasises that sadness to the full. Nevertheless, +the reader’s sympathy is not invoked. The girl, on the contrary, is +presented as the inevitable resultant of inheritance, environment, +and sex, and she lives as an embodied energy rather than as a person. +Extraordinary pains are taken, with all the multitudinous details +of her story, to balance causes against effects, and she emerges a +plausible creature. There is nothing incredible in her being just +conventional enough and unwary enough and love-sick enough to suit +the story’s purpose; but, too, there is nothing in her nature or her +history to render either important. Indeed, her grievous distress, +leading up to her murder, takes on, under Mr. Dreiser’s hand, the +same significance as the squirming of an angleworm, impaled by some +mischievous boy--no less, but certainly no more. + +“Chemic compulsion” draws Roberta Alden as it draws other substances. +“Chemic compulsion” epitomises the book. It “just happens”--and this is +all--that “chemic compulsion” entangles Roberta with the squid--Clyde +Griffiths, the defeated squid. For readers of Mr. Dreiser’s “epic” +tale, _The Financier_, who recall the apologue of the lobster and the +squid cannot fail to recognise Clyde Griffiths as the embodiment of +the latter--and his cousin Gilbert as the patient, triumphant lobster. +The squid, it need scarcely be said, commands no more sympathy than +Roberta;--indeed, most readers inevitably must sympathise with the +spirit of the “irate woodsman’s” brutal question during the trial. This +undefiled son of the forest asked: “Why don’t they kill the God-damned +bastard and be done with him?” But, just for this reason, it has to be +remembered that Mr. Dreiser exhausts every possible means so to account +for Clyde as to preserve him from all blame. The squid is the complete +plaything of “chemic compulsion,” the paragon of irresponsibility, the +perfect exemplar of the truth as the truth has been revealed to his +creator. + +This being so, it is little less than a miracle that Mr. Dreiser has +contrived--through the infinite detail of a merely circumstantial +realism--to save Clyde Griffiths’ humanity sufficiently to maintain +the reader’s “suspension of disbelief” until the end of the book. +Undoubtedly he has done so, though he has not succeeded in making all +readers feel that patience has been adequately rewarded. They have +been impressed, as is fitting before so monumental a composition; they +have been troubled; they have not been recompensed. Eight hundred +and forty pages devoted to the unconscionable prolongation of a mere +sensational newspaper story! Remarks to this effect I have heard +more than once; and they roughly indicate the real difficulty--the +inevitably self-destroying effect of such an effort as Mr. Dreiser’s, +in proportion as it is successful. + +This difficulty, however, does not actually lie in the plot of _An +American Tragedy_, as the remark just cited implies. The bare plot of +the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus might equally well form the basis of a +mere sensational newspaper story, and Clytemnestra in that play and +in the _Choephori_ makes for herself, not without seeming justice, +the plea that is made for Clyde Griffiths. Not she, but Destiny, she +says, through her its helpless instrument slew Agamemnon; and she also +pleads that she did not make herself, yet can only act out her inborn +nature. But it is not for his plots, nor because he was well acquainted +with Mr. Dreiser’s view of life, that Æschylus lives on still amongst +us. His dramas have a perennial and deep value for mankind because, +rejecting the plausible notion of “chemic compulsion,” he struggled +with profound conviction to convey a very different meaning through +their form, characters, and action. Without evading any of its +difficulty, he asserted his faith that Moral Law uncompromisingly +governs the life of man, making for an order which is divine, in +the face of a chaos intrinsically evil, and that men are fully, if +tragically, responsible for the consequences of their acts, whatever +their motives or compulsions, so that ignorance and self-conceit are +equally as criminal as violence. + +This is not to say all, of course, but it may suffice to show how +Æschylus and, more clear-sightedly, Sophocles cut straight through to +the centre of the human problem and propounded a solution which, if +not the only one, nor by itself a complete one, is still, strictly +speaking, irrefutable, being founded directly upon facts of experience +which have not changed with the passing generations;--an unassailable +solution, moreover, which gives weight and meaning to every individual +and to all of his acts. And hence it is that the bloody and sensational +fables of Æschylus and Sophocles, triumphantly formed in full harmony +with their meaning, have an interest and value for men which time does +not exhaust. + +Mr. Dreiser’s difficulty is not that he has different facts of +experience to interpret;--he has precisely the same facts concerning +an essentially unchanged human nature. His difficulty is that his +mechanistic naturalism compels him so to select and manipulate facts of +experience as to deny, through his narrative, that human life has any +meaning or value. The attempt is suicidal, and the more consistently +it is carried out the more completely is Mr. Dreiser forced to divest +his creatures and their actions of any distinctively human quality and +meaning. The more successful he is the more insignificant his work +becomes. _An American Tragedy_, as I have said, is more skilfully, +faithfully, and consistently executed on the naturalistic level than +any of its author’s earlier novels, and precisely for this reason it +contains no single element of tragedy in any legitimate sense of +the word, and it impresses thoughtful readers as a mere sensational +newspaper story long drawn out. In other words, in proportion as Mr. +Dreiser contrives to accomplish his self-imposed task he has nothing to +tell us except that there is nothing to tell about life until it can be +reduced even below the apparent level of animal existence, to the point +where it becomes a meaningless chaos of blind energies. + +Whether or not any real sense of the self-destroying character of +this effort, to create a literature as valueless and insignificant +as possible, will ever strike Mr. Dreiser’s consciousness, I should +not venture to guess. But only an obstinate self-conceit, or an +invincible stupidity, one imagines, could have kept him from seeing the +absurdities into which he was forced, in the course of half-a-dozen +sentences, when he recently attempted to draw up a brief statement of +his present belief. He wrote: “I can make no comment on my work or my +life that holds either interest or import for me. Nor can I imagine +any explanation or interpretation of any life, my own included, that +would be either true--or important, if true. Life is to me too much a +welter and play of inscrutable forces to permit, in my case at least, +any significant comment. One may paint for one’s own entertainment, +and that of others--perhaps. As I see him the utterly infinitesimal +individual weaves among the mysteries a floss-like and wholly +meaningless course--if course it be. In short I catch no meaning from +all I have seen, and pass quite as I came, confused and dismayed.”[44] + +To this point has Mr. Dreiser’s naturalism driven him. If the general +sense of this awkward yet mannered statement comprised the truth about +him and his work, he would, of course, never have been asked to make +it. He would, in all probability, have been confined long ago to an +asylum; and he would certainly never have written any of his books. +Those books, moreover, have manifestly not been written just for his +own entertainment. They have been written because he felt he had +something to say--because of his certainty that he had come to know the +truth, as men in general knew it not. And with singular faithfulness +of purpose and of industry, involving what for him must have been +almost superhuman effort, because of his defects of mind and training, +he has devoted himself to the struggle to express the truth as he +conceived it--that is, to reduce it to consistency and give it coherent +form. He has also neglected nothing, within his limits, to make it +impressive. He has thus lived a rationally purposive life, reducing at +least to symptoms of order the welter of his impressions and impulses, +controlling at least fitfully his rebellious temperament, and mastering +(or “sublimating”) at least partially his almost pathological obsession +by sex. For the sake of self-expression--or, as I shall presently +suggest, of self-justification--he has thus achieved an appreciably +disciplined life, and so has in his own person, against his own +literary aim, furnished a convincing refutation of his philosophy. He +has effectively proved that _An American Tragedy_ gives form to a view +of life as gratuitous as it is unmeaning. + +Fortunately it is now realised by an increasing number of people that +naturalistic philosophies are merely speculative ventures, which derive +no valid support from “modern science.” And it has, besides, been +shown above how little “science” had to do with the formation of Mr. +Dreiser’s naturalistic prejudice. Mr. Dreiser, on his own showing, was +first awakened to a sense of life as a problem to be solved by his +discovery of the radical contrast between the ethical standards of his +father and his church (as he understood its teaching), and his own +spontaneous impulses and desires. His haphazard, undirected education +gave him an unexcelled opportunity to learn that there were many +others like himself, that they seemed to be the most vigorous members +of their communities, and that they never hesitated to transgress every +ethical standard, when they could get away with it, in their struggle +for self-advancement and self-gratification. He treasured every +impression which seemed to be on his side against ethical standards +by which he stood condemned. His self-esteem had been gravely shocked +by the discordance he had discovered, and he now found the means to +restore it and, indeed, to strengthen it, by appeal from home and +church to the larger world. Not he was in the wrong of it, but the +“senseless,” “impossible” theories which would have convicted him of +shameful tendencies. “In shame there is no comfort, but to be beyond +all bounds of shame,” says one of Sidney’s Arcadians, and this Mr. +Dreiser might thenceforth have taken for his motto. + +Governed by this apolaustic prejudice, he has since continued his +transparent course of seeing only what he has desired to see, or +rather of admitting the reality of only what has suited him, while +setting down all else as either hypocrisy or delusion. And while it is +true that no one escapes the necessity of bringing only a selective +attention to bear upon the outer world, it by no means follows that we +are all alike cut off from “reality.” On the contrary, it does mean +that the basis of our selective attention, the interests and purposes +served by it, are of fundamental importance. And the disastrous effect +of Mr. Dreiser’s apolaustic prejudice is that it encouraged him in +slavery to mere temperament, in helpless surrender to the chaotic flow +of “natural” impulses, while it brought to his attention from the +outer world only what fed itself, the antics of complicated beasts +with strange illusions. The trouble with what he thus saw is not that +it was non-existent, some gross trick of the fevered imagination;--it +was there to be seen--it is there, in grievous plenty. No, the +trouble is that none of it has positive significance. The naturalism +which it fathers lights up the animal in man, but tells man nothing +of that which positively distinguishes him from the beast--more, it +vindictively denies that anything save hypocrisy and delusion does so +distinguish him. And while it seeks to dissolve our humanity, it ends, +as it ends in Mr. Dreiser, in a bottomless morass of misrepresentation +and despair. This is the American tragedy of our confused age which +constitutes the real import of Mr. Dreiser’s masterpiece. + + Note--For permission to quote from the writings of Mr. Dreiser, I + am indebted both to him and to his publisher, Mr. Horace Liveright. + + +FOOTNOTES + +[42] In that which follows I draw chiefly upon _A Book About Myself_ +(1922), but also make use of _A Hoosier Holiday_ (1916), _Twelve Men_ +(1919), and _Hey Rub-A-Dub-Dub_ (1920). _A Traveler at Forty_ (1913) is +also a revealing book. + +[43] I refer particularly to _Jennie Gerhardt_ and _The “Genius.”_ +Limitations of space unfortunately prevent me from considering here any +save Mr. Dreiser’s latest novel, _An American Tragedy_. + +[44] From the _Bookman_, September, 1928 (Vol. 68, p. 25). + + + + +_Pandora’s Box in American Fiction_ + +HARRY HAYDEN CLARK + + +America, Carlyle wrote Emerson, “is verily the Door of Hope to +distracted Europe; which otherwise I should see crumbling down into +blackness of darkness.” + +The Door of Hope! It is perhaps time now to ask down what corridors +this door has led, to scrutinise the precise quality of American hope. +Is it a new hope, or a disguised form of the European hope which has +led “to blackness of darkness”? What, for example, have our fiction +writers, reflecting the American mind, past and present, reported +regarding the success of their quest for happiness? If they have +reported that certain sorts of hope have led to despair, what evidence +is there that other sorts lead to joy? For “the desire for happiness,” +says Arnold, “is the root and ground of man’s being. Tell him and show +him that he places his happiness wrong, that he seeks for delight where +delight will never really be found; then you illumine and further +him.” Let us sketch the quality, first, of the hope of a paradise of +supernal beauty; second, the hope of an American paradise of nature; +and finally, the hope of “A Paradise _within_ thee, happier far.” + + +I + +If we consider the European background of the hope to escape to a +paradise of supernal beauty and bliss, we find that in the classical +legends of the Golden Age, in such Renaissance writers as Lyly, +Sidney, and Spenser, and in such later work as Thomson’s _Castle of +Indolence_, this idyllic Arcadianism was either frankly recreational +and non-philosophic or else a cloak for allegory. Not until the middle +of the eighteenth century was the idyllic dream taken seriously. +Revolting from earlier and contemporary restriction of the imagination, +Akenside advocated refusing to “restrain” one’s “soaring fancy,” Joseph +Warton glorified the “creative and glowing imagination,” and Edward +Young sought to escape “this pestilential earth” by the “creative +power” of the imagination to call forth paradisiacal beauties, “shadowy +beings and unknown worlds,” in the “vast void beyond real existence.” +He exalted a genius which was to “wander wild” in “the fairy land of +fancy,” “reign arbitrarily over its own empire of chimeras,” and “sport +with its infinite objects uncontrolled.” Thus in _Vathek_ Beckford +created a sensuous and erotic paradise with its five palaces which he +destined “for the particular gratification of each of the five senses.” +“The light that never was, on sea or land,” enthralled the youthful +Wordsworth, but he soon questioned it as a “fond illusion.” Keats +sought to escape on “the viewless wings of Poesy” from the “weariness” +of actuality to the “charmed magic casements.” Shelley, the high priest +of this ceaseless and aimless quest for the unattainable, tells us +that only his “fearful and monstrous” story of _The Cenci_ is “a sad +reality”; otherwise he “dreams of what ought to be, or what may be.” +For him the Spirit of Beauty leaves “This dim vast vale of tears, +vacant and desolate.” His is a longing indeterminate, a + + “devotion to something afar + From the sphere of our sorrow.” + + “I loved I know not what--but this low sphere, + And all that it contains, contains not thee.” + +_Alastor_ and _Epipsychidion_ are matchless records of his fruitless +quest for the phantom of desire. DeQuincey’s fantasies are “filled +with perishing dreams, and the wrecks of forgotten deliriums.” _The +Lady of Shalott_ and _The Palace of Art_ testify to Tennyson’s +reluctant renunciation of the life of illusion. Swinburne characterised +himself in _A Nympholept_, while his friend, the author of _The Earthly +Paradise_, strove to + + “build a shadowy isle of bliss + Midmost the beating of the steely sea.” + +With this background in mind, let us see to what extent the American +story-tellers’ hope for a paradise of supernal beauty coincides with +the idyllic, indeterminate hope of the English romanticists. In _The +Author’s Account of Himself_, Irving, our first master of the short +story, states his Old World longing “to escape, in short, from the +common-place realities of the present,” to “the shadowy grandeurs +of the past,” the “earthly paradise” of “Bellissima Granada” and +the legend-haunted Alhambra. _The Legend of Prince Ahmed al Kamel_, +dealing with the quest for the phantom of desire, illustrates the +idyllic quality of his imagination. The Prince, called the “Perfect” +on account of his “super-excellence,” receives from a dove tidings +of a fair princess--“no flower of the field could compare with her +for loveliness.” In the Spanish spring-time the Prince, a “pilgrim of +love,” resolves to “seek this unknown princess throughout the world.” +Guided by a parrot and an owl, he eventually finds her in the court of +her hostile father. The lover produces his “silken carpet of the throne +of Solomon,” and after confessing his devotion, “the carpet rose in +the air, bearing off the prince and princess ... and then disappeared +in the blue vault of heaven.” Irving, however, sought “escape ... from +the common-place” not only in the picturesque fantasies of Old Spain +but also in the glamorous aspects of the American past, as illustrated +in _The Legend of Sleepy Hollow_. In “a remote period of American +history,” among “some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson,” +Ichabod rides on a “fine autumnal day” through the “rich and golden +livery” of a natural paradise to win the “peerless,” “ripe and melting +and rosy-cheeked Katrina” and her “unimaginable luxury.” Introduced +by lines from _The Castle of Indolence_, _The Legend_ illustrates +Irving’s somewhat sentimental and humorous continuation of the merely +recreational Arcadianism of earlier days. And the ruse of the Headless +Horseman, in connection with the “twilight superstitions” of one who +was “a perfect master of Cotton Mather’s _History of New England +Witchcraft_,” suggests the interesting tendency of the native Puritan +interest in things unearthly, with the waning of faith, to become a +subject for the æsthetic imagination as in the case of Hawthorne and +Poe. + +Unlike Irving, Poe takes the idyllic dream seriously. He defines +the Poetic Principle as “simply the Human Aspiration for Supernal +Beauty,” manifested “in an elevating excitement of the Soul.” Of +course, as every one knows, his vigorous reason controlled the decadent +imagination and emotion of the earlier Gothic school and made him +perhaps our greatest master of the short story technique. But let us +illustrate and define the content of his “aspiration,” his “elevating +excitement of the Soul.” Where does he seek happiness? One thinks of +the “delirious bliss” of “the Valley of the Many-Coloured Grass” in +_Eleanora_. We might better, however, turn to _The Domain of Arnheim_, +where Ellison, with “_a fortune of four hundred and fifty million +dollars_,” seeks to satisfy his passion for an exclusively “physical +loveliness,” his “four elementary conditions of bliss,” which are +“free exercise,” “the love of woman,” “contempt of ambition,” and “an +object of unceasing pursuit.” After a four year quest he finds in the +“luxuriant nature of the Pacific Islands” “an elevated tableland of +wonderful fertility and beauty”; it was the “Paradise of Arnheim,” +combining everything rich and voluptuous. Ellison, however, sought to +gratify the “one passion of his soul, the thirst for beauty,” “above +all ... in the sympathy of a woman, not unwomanly, whose loveliness +and love enveloped his existence in the pure atmosphere of Paradise.” +Thus the content of Poe’s aspiration, as well as his references here +to the “chimera of the perfectionists” “Turgot, Price, Priestley and +Condorcet,” to “Fonthill,” the birthplace of _Vathek_, and to the “rapt +day-dreams of De Staël,” suggest that his aspiration is essentially one +with that ceaseless and aimless sensuous longing already illustrated in +the English romanticists. Or take _The Island of the Fay_, which deals +with the contemplation of “the glory of God” in “natural scenery”--“all +within the Spirit Divine”--in a “rivulet and island,” “all one +radiant harem of garden beauties.” Shelley-like, he sees approach the +“enchanted” island a gentle Fay in a “fragile canoe” with a “phantom +of an oar.” This vision of loveliness, however, passed “disconsolately +with her boat into the region of the ebony flood,” and “darkness fell +over all things and I beheld her magical figure no more.” Thus, as +Professor Foerster has so finely said, Poe gives us only “shuddering +harmonies of the murky subconscious, and roseate harmonies of +sensuous longing posing as spirituality.... His vision oscillated not +between the earthly and the supernal, but between the infernal and +the Arcadian.” But what did Poe report regarding the success of his +aspiration for supernal beauty? “To be thoroughly conversant with Man’s +heart,” he concludes, “is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped +volume of Despair.” Thinking of writing a book on his life, he said: +“No man will ever dare write it. No man could write it, even if he +dared. The paper would shrivel and blaze at every touch of the fiery +pen.” + +Perhaps the most vigorous and passionate Arcadian in American +literature is Herman Melville, mariner and mystic. Descended from Dutch +and New England parents proud and conservative, Melville was driven +to “the water world,” he tells us, by “sad disappointments ... united +with a naturally roving disposition.” He deserted his ship and found +in the valley of the Typees “perpetual hilarity. Surrounded by all the +luxurious provisions of nature,” the innocent natives enjoy the idyllic +bliss “that springs principally from that all-pervading sensation which +Rousseau told us he at one time experienced: the mere buoyant sense of +healthful, physical existence.” This was before the missionaries and +“the worst attendances of civilisation” drove “all peace and happiness +from the valley.” In _Mardi_, frankly idyllic and nympholeptic, devoted +to the savages “as they are not,” Melville’s nostalgic idealism and his +hatred of reality become intensified. Here he creates a dream-girl, +Yillah, “the earthly semblance of that sweet vision, that haunted my +earliest thought,” and the book is a record of the allegorical quest +for her through all the nations of the earth. It follows Unitarianism +and Transcendentalism, with their hope for the infinite perfectibility +of men; it is the quest of _Alastor_ and _Epipsychidion_, the quest +of Novalis for the Blue Flower. “But fiery yearnings their own +phantom-future make, and deem it present. So, if after all these +fearful, fainting trances, the verdict be, the golden haven was not +gained;--yet, in bold quest thereof better to sink in boundless deeps +than float on vulgar shoals; and give me, ye gods, an utter wreck, +if wreck I do.” If Melville fled, however, “not so much bound to any +haven ahead as rushing from all havens astern”--such as the “Babylonish +brick-kiln of New York,” “Commonness and Conventionalism,” “mines +and marts,” and Democracy, “the harlot on horseback”--his first-hand +experience with the reality of a sea red in tooth and claw as well as +“the mystery of iniquity” tended to clash with his dreams of Utopia. +_Moby-Dick_ was born of this clash between the hope of a paradise of +supernal beauty and the sight of a malignant reality from the deck of a +whaler. We have his own commentary on the final results of nympholeptic +longing: + + “Explain this darkness, exorcise this devil, ye cannot.... The + truest of men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books + is Solomon’s, and the Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of + woe. All is vanity. All.... He who ... calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, + Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men.... And your only Mardian + happiness is but exemption from great woes--no more.... Sadness + makes the silence throughout the realms of space; Sadness is + universal and eternal.” + +Let us skip the realism of the later nineteenth century, most of which +is essentially arid, and approach such a figure as Floyd Dell. Born +of autobiographical revery, _Moon-Calf_ is the history of a “lonely, +unhappy, desperately desiring and bewildered child” in various Middle +Western towns as he sought refuge in dreams from “the mysterious and +troublesome real world which he feared and disliked.” The avenues of +escape are two: the “gorgeous fantasies which were unrolled for him in +the pages of books,” and the quest of the dream-girl. Lured by the hope +of “freedom, of happiness, of a world altogether new and beautiful,” +Felix becomes a Socialist, only to find later that “that garret +Utopia had somehow lost its savour.” He becomes a factory worker--in +the chaste language of his boss, “the messiest, absent-mindedest, +God-damn carelessest person he had ever seen around a factory.” And +then he tries newspaper work, and is again discharged. Then “he wanted, +with a kind of nostalgia, to write that novel.” Like Shelley, he +sought refuge from a world to which he refused to adjust himself by +turning “his gaze inward upon a world of ideas and dreams.” As Wheels +says, “The world itself is hideous. You can’t do anything with it. +But you can dream beautiful dreams.... There is no other beauty.” +An “incorrigible Utopian,” a member of the Agnostic Society, Felix +escaped to poetry--an “enchanted land”--loving the “drug-like beauty” +of “words, which were like a perfumed breeze out of nowhere, or out of +some strange life lived before, affecting him with a strange nostalgia.” + + “Nay, I was sent a wanderer + On Beauty’s desperate quest-- + To go forever seeking Her, + Nor, ere I find her, rest.” + +And then there is the quest for the dream-girl. First there is Rose, +the gardener’s daughter, whom he meets in the attic and to whom he +reads Rousseau’s _Confessions_. One night they stay in the woods, +watching the stars, and “awakened chill and stiff, a little before +dawn.” In “the innermost caves of fantasy” she was the “Virgin Queen” +of Atlantis, and he her Harper.... “She was ... hope that turns to +despair.” And then there was Margaret, Helen Raymond, Daisy Fisher, +Emily, Mrs. Miller, Lucy, and finally Joyce, with whom he spent the +nights in the cabin. He explains to Joyce that he seeks “something +better than just ordinary, everyday happiness,” that he doesn’t believe +in private property, God, the home, or the support of one’s wife. He +wants a companionship “at once light and gracious, irresponsible and +sincere, generous and self-respecting!” Finally he felt “a discrepancy +between her and a not very distinct ideal of his imagination.” He +“clung to the memory of his shadow-land of ideas” in preference to the +“world of desperate reality,” and when his beloved Joyce tells him she +is to work out her human destiny with another the “world of his dreams +fell shattering about him.” Obviously, _Moon-Calf_ is the creation of +the sort of hope which robbed Shelley of “peace within.” + +Let us turn to Willa Cather, whose main theme is the struggle for +æsthetic or emotional self-realisation amid the sordid environment +of either the frontier or an industrial society. In _O Pioneers!_ +most piteous is the fate of the fair Marie Tovesky, murdered in the +arms of her lover. In _The Song of the Lark_ Thea Kronsburg develops +her rare voice in spite of a gossipy Colorado town. “There is only +one big thing--desire.” In _My Ántonia_ the heroine says, “That is +happiness--to be dissolved in something complete and great.” Her lust +for richness of experience leads to her becoming an unmarried mother +and finally the mother of a large family. In _Youth and the Bright +Medusa_ a typical story is that of Paul, whose longing for an æsthetic +paradise in a flatly stolid industrial town led him to robbery and +to suicide after a week’s fulfilment of his hopes. Most instructive, +perhaps, is _The Professor’s House_, based on the fruitless struggle of +the romantic spirit against materialism and convention. The Professor +does not “think much of science as a phase of human development”; he +resisted the new “commercialism” in education; he preferred his old +dingy study to the one in the pretentious house which his worldly +wife and daughters had planned; he loathes the petty quarrels of his +daughters over fashions; and his wife accuses him of “shutting yourself +away from everybody.” In place of materialism and convention, however, +he seeks to substitute not a central interest in what is most richly +and typically human but rather a refuge in the romantic past: in the +pomp of the Middle Ages when man was “a principal in a gorgeous drama +with God”; in the bygone glories of the Spanish adventurers; in +reliving in revery his youth, “the realest of his lives”; in the loving +study of many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore; and in his +interest in his former student’s worship of the ancient Cliff-dwellers. +The seemingly irrelevant interpolation of Tom Outland’s story of his +inability to interest official Washington, “so petty, so slavish,” +in his “religious emotion” regarding his discovery of the relics of +the Cliff-dwellers is explained by its paralleling and under-scoring +the Professor’s own struggle--the romantic spirit struggling in vain +against materialism and convention. Finally, when the Professor’s +family departed for Europe, he “thought of eternal solitude with +gratefulness,” and “wanted to run away from everything he had intensely +cared for.” One night while he is resting in his old study a storm +blows out his gas stove and slams his window shut: he awakens to find +himself “nearly asphyxiated”; he wished to die. “He hadn’t lifted his +hand against himself--was he required to lift it for himself?” He +cannot bear the thought of his wife’s return and the continuation of +their way of life. Finally an old friend revives him, but he found that +“he had let something go--and it was gone: something very precious.” +He reflects that “his apathy” will not trouble a family “preoccupied +with their own affairs.” No, the merely romantic devotion to what is +picturesque in the storied past will never avail in the quest for peace +in a conventional and materialistic environment. + +Like Poe, Joseph Hergesheimer strives to escape “the dreary and +impertinent duty of improving the world” in his worship of an +unattainable beauty. His friend Mr. Cabell finds “in all the +Hergesheimer novels” “men labouring toward the unattainable, and a +high questing foiled.” For example, in _Linda Condon_, based on this +theme, Peyton, a sculptor, seeks in vain to win the beautiful Linda, +who marries another. The sculptor endeavours to sublimate his passion +in the creation of a great statue, which is destroyed by a mob, and he +dies in forlorn desolation. + + “Love was the supreme force, and its greatest expression a desire + beyond the body.... The endless service of beauty. Of course, + a woman--but never the animal; the spirit always. Born in the + spirit, served in the spirit, ending in the spirit. A direct + contradiction, you see, to nature and common sense, frugality and + the sacred symbol of the dollar.... The old gesture toward the + stars, the bridge of perfection, the escape from the fatality of + the flesh. Yet it was a service of the body made incredibly lovely + in actuality and still never to be grasped. Never to be won.” + +This spiritualised beauty, however, is of course dependent upon +sensuousness, and Mr. Hergesheimer asserts that “the whole discharge +of my responsibility was contained in the imperative obligation to +... put down the colours and scents and emotions of existence.” And, +like Keats, like all who found life on a merely sensuous beauty, +he is haunted by the dread of transience, by “that sharp sense of +beauty which came from a firm, delicate consciousness of certain high +pretensions, valours, maintained in the face of imminent destruction +... in the category none was sharper than the charm of a woman, soon to +perish in a vanity of array as momentary and iridescent as a May-fly.” +He tells us that he creates ideal beauty as a result of “the assault of +a persuasive discontent.” Nothing matters but an unattainable sensuous +beauty; and this merely impresses him with its evanescence. This +transient beauty can be arrested only by art, and he begins a later +essay on art with the words, “I am getting damned tired of art....” + +Perhaps the endless and aimless longing for the unattainable has +received most elaborate treatment at the hands of Mr. Hergesheimer’s +friend, James Branch Cabell. In _Beyond Life_, a series of essays, +he outlines his literary creed, his hostility to realism. Holding +that “veracity is the one unpardonable sin,” he “perceives this race +... to be beyond all wording petty and ineffectual,” and he follows +the “instinct of any hurt animal to seek revenge ... in the field +of imagination” by retreating to Poictesme, “that fair country ... +which is bounded by Avalon and Phæacia and Sea-coast Bohemia, and +the contiguous forests of Arden and Broceliande, and on the west of +course by the Hesperides.” Let us examine the quality and success +of Mr. Cabell’s aspiration as embodied in _The Cream of the Jest_. +Felix Kennaston, the hero, is actually a conventional novelist, a +conservative property-owner, a Presbyterian, and a good husband. +Inwardly, however, he is a dreamer who seeks to escape from the +thralldom of actuality in his quest of “Ettarre, who embodied all +Kennaston was ever able to conceive of beauty and fearlessness and +strange purity, all perfections, all the attributes of divinity, +in a word, such as his slender human faculties were competent to +understand.” “It is the cream of a vile jest,” he says, “that I am +forbidden ever to win quite to you, ever to touch you.” These magic +dreams of Ettarre are induced by a sigil--a broken disc which Felix +found on one of his walks. Finally, near his death, it is discovered +that this magic sigil is only “the metal top of a cold cream jar,” +and his dreams become a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. +This is perhaps the blackest pessimism in American literature--the +conviction that reality is a “dragging nightmare,” and the discovery +that the illusion which alone makes life bearable is founded on nothing +more sacred than the broken “top of a cold cream jar.” And it should +be noted that, all Mr. Cabell’s books being parts of a “Biography,” +Felix is nothing less than a symbol of “humanity.” “His history was, +in essentials, the history of our race thus far. All I advanced for or +against him, was true of all men that have ever lived.” + +_Jurgen_ may be said to deal mainly with the poignancy of the +realisation of the contrast between the veiled loveliness of youthful +illusions and a cold and ugly sensuous reality; relief is sought +through an escape from this reality in dreaming of these illusions now +shattered, or in dreaming of new illusions. In actuality, Jurgen is +only a dirty little pot-bellied pawn-broker of the Middle Ages married +to a shrewish, cowardly wife. Through magic, however, he is enabled to +pack into one year “the follies of a quarter of a century,” to seek +through a land of fabulous loveliness the phantom of desire. There he +meets Dorothy la Désirée, “in all things perfect,” as he had loved +her in the “garden between Dawn and Sunrise”; in reality she was a +“horrible lascivious woman.” And there in her robe of flaming silk is +the young Guenevere, “the fairest of mortal women”; there is the Queen +Sylvia Tereu of pallid charm who vanishes at dawn; there is Anaitis, +the personification of a nature myth, with her ecstatic rites and +sensual orgies; there is the plump Chloris, loveliest of Hamadryads; +there is Queen Helen, for whose fabulous beauty he hungered even in +childhood; there is the proud Dolores, “lovely as a hawk is lovely”; +there is Florimel who dwelt by the Sea of Blood; and there is Phyllis, +Satan’s wife, “the loveliest little slip of devilishness.” Of one and +all Jurgen tires. His remark that his “tender heart and tolerably keen +eyes” force him “to jeer out of season” to avoid “far more untimely +tears” reminds us of the Bohemian Byron who finally confesses with +infinite sadness: + + “If I laugh at any mortal thing, + ’Tis that I may not weep; and if I weep, + ’Tis that our nature cannot always bring + Itself to apathy.” + +And in the end we have Jurgen’s Shelley-like admission of the futility +and hopelessness of his aimless longing: + + “Oh, nothing can help me, for I do not know what thing it is that + I desire!... For I am Jurgen who seeks he knows not what.... I have + gone romancing through the world, ... nowhere have I found what I + desired.... I am compact of weariness and apprehension, for I no + longer discern what thing is I, nor what is my desire, and I fear + that I am already dead.” + +It is evident, then, that in the hope for a paradise of supernal +beauty Americans have been lured as by a Siren to an abyss of despair +of which the English romanticists, who experimented with this idyllic +hope, warned us over a century ago. The Edward Young who sported in +his paradisiacal “empire of chimeras” “cast the total” of his life as +“despair.” Keats reported that in the romantic “Temple of Delight” + + “Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine.” + +And Shelley of the iridescent dreams, who would + + “Hope till Hope creates + From its own wreck the thing it contemplates,” + +confessed in the end: + + “Alas! I have nor hope nor health, + Nor peace within nor calm around.” + +Very beautiful are these rainbow visions--but they are conjured out of +night. + + +II + +Let us turn to a second sort of hope--the hope of an American paradise +of nature. Although the paradise of nature appears in Vergil, in +Renaissance pastorals by Lyly, Sidney, and Spenser, in Perdita’s +shepherd home and in the sylvan cave of Cymbeline’s sons, its use +was mainly either decorative or allegorical until the eighteenth +century. In 1711 Shaftesbury proclaimed the natural man benevolent, +compassionate, and altruistic; and as such he appears in _Ossian_. Pope +said, “The state of Nature was the reign of God.” Rousseau broadcast +the doctrine that civilisation had tended to corrupt the morals of +mankind, while he described the enchanting life of man in a natural +paradise. Cowper united literary simplicity, religious emotionalism, +and the naturalistic humanitarianism of Rousseau. Burns glorified the +simple peasant close to nature. And Coleridge and Southey dreamed +fondly of an American Pantisocracy--“A Dell of Peace and Equality”--on +the banks of the Susquehanna. In 1771, Philip Freneau, our first man +of letters, deriving his radical democracy and his devotion to the +indigenous scene from naturalism, envisaged “The Rising Glory of +America”: + + “A new Jerusalem, sent down from heaven, + Shall grace our happy earth, ... + Thence called _Millennium_. Paradise anew + Shall flourish, by no second Adam lost ... + No tempting serpent to allure the soul + From native innocence.” + +Indeed, it is interesting to speculate upon the extent to which +this English romantic faith in the “native innocence” of mankind, +transplanted to the inexhaustible resources of the American frontier, +has under these unique conditions furnished philosophic sanction +for an unbridled materialism which has become so characteristically +national. Frontier isolation tended to breed self-confidence, equality, +self-reliance, optimism, contempt for artificial distinctions and a +dependence upon the material world. Crèvecœur in 1782 defined “an +American” as a “new man who acts upon new principles.” + + “We have no princes, for whom we toil, starve, and bleed: we are + the most perfect society now existing in the world. Here man is + free as he ought to be.” + +Our first novelist who sought a paradise of American nature was James +Fenimore Cooper. Revolting against both the feudalism of aristocratic +Europe and the crude democracy of Jacksonian America, Cooper sought +refuge in projecting his ideals in the character of Leatherstocking +and also in such a Utopian paradise as in _The Crater_. Whatever one +may think of Cooper’s Indians, his “females,” his woodcraft, or his +rhetoric, Leatherstocking remains a great contribution to the fiction +of the world, “perhaps,” according to Professor Paine, “the greatest +embodiment of native character in American literature.” He is strangely +compounded of Cooper’s memories of his old hunter-friend Shipman, of +the heroic saga of the early frontiersman as synthesised in Daniel +Boone, of the Rousseauistic-Wordsworthian myth of the natural man +spiritualised by contact with forest and stream, and of the idealism of +American manhood. According to Cooper’s summary, + + “... His feelings appeared to possess the freshness and nature of + the forest in which he passed so much of his time, and no casuist + could have made clearer decisions in matters relating to right and + wrong.... In short ... he was a fair example of what a just-minded + and pure man might be, while untempted by unruly or ambitious + desires, and left to follow the bias of his feelings, amid the + solitary grandeur and ennobling influences of a sublime nature.” + +In 1828, however, we find Cooper disillusioned: “All attempts to blend +history and romance in America have been comparative failures.... +The baldness of American life is in deadly hostility to scenic +representation.” And in _The Crater_ (1847) we find him creating a +Utopia in a fabulous mid-Pacific island in order to furnish a contrast +to the wretchedness of contemporary American life. This is a story +of how some folk, shipwrecked on a reef which is the crater of a +volcano, succeed in causing vegetation to grow, of how they create +a “settlement surrounded with a sort of earthly paradise” which is +finally “buried beneath the ocean.” The story, as Cooper conceives it, +is a parable: “Of such is the world and its much-coveted advantages. +For a time our efforts seem to create, and to adorn, and to perfect, +until we forget our origin and destination, substituting self for that +divine hand ...” Already, in _The Monikins_ (1835), born of bitter +disenchantment, Cooper the former idealist had presented the world as +a country ruled by a race of monkeys who laughed to scorn the Yahoo +race of mankind. The hope of an American paradise of nature ended for +Cooper in disillusionment; natural goodness, democracy, human ideals +are revealed here as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. Professor +Pattee compares Cooper’s final pessimism with that of Mark Twain: “Both +began as border-minded individualists, parochial-minded, intoxicated +with American idealism; both by travel and by wide contacts with urban +pessimism were educated into blasé cosmopolitanism ... and both went +out at last in utter misanthropy.... It is an American evolution!” + +The most significant history of our national quest for a material +happiness is perhaps embodied in the work of Mark Twain, whose +much-discussed pessimism may be explained mainly by the fact that, +as the spokesman of frontier America living exclusively “in the +present,” he served as the faithful mirror to a whole nation in which +an Industrial Revolution, philosophic mechanistic determinism, and +the collapse of illusions led to despair. His stories illustrate the +changing importance of the two planes of consciousness in the frontier +mind--the consciousness of a hopeful and radiant illusion, and the +consciousness of a hopeless and sordid reality. Take three stories, +representing three different periods. _The Jumping Frog_ (1865), +dealing with the winning of a bet by roguery, embodies in a humorous +way the reckless exuberance and joyousness of the dawning West after +the Gold Rush. To this type belong also the books which glorify the +“natural man” and the free-born American--_Roughing It_ (1873), _Tom +Sawyer_ (1876), _Life on the Mississippi_ (1883), and _Huck Finn_ +(1884). In contrast, his first book, _Innocents Abroad_ (1869), +represents the frontiersman’s life-long contempt for European tradition +and Europe, “one vast museum of magnificence and misery,” groping “in +the midnight of priestly superstition for sixteen hundred years.” A +story of a second period, _The Million Pound Bank Note_ (1893) mirrors +a materialistic “gilded age” in which, lured on by a fabulous hope, +men bowed to the Golden Calf while the spectre of reality haunted +their thoughts. In this story the two planes of consciousness are in +equipoise until the end, when the plane of illusion prevails. It is +the tale, briefly, of how a poor tramp masquerades as the owner of a +million pound bank note; grim poverty stalks behind him, but every +one worships the illusion of his wealth, and he finally wins the girl +of his heart as well as the million pounds. The story is a parable of +the West: these were the days of illusory fortunes in transcontinental +railroads, in iron and steel, the days of the Morgans and Carnegies +and Fricks and Goulds. “I am,” said Mark Twain, “frightened at the +proportion of my prosperity ... Whatever I touch turns to gold.” In +1895 he was bankrupt. But take a story representative of the third +period--_The $30,000 Bequest_ (1907). A poor book-keeper and his wife, +learning of a promised fortune at the death of a relative, each night +“put the plodding world away, and lived in another and a fairer, +reading romances to each other, dreaming dreams, comrading with kings +and princes.” They increasingly neglect realities and scorn their +associates. “The castle-building habit, the day-dreaming habit--how it +grows! What a luxury it becomes; how we revel in them, steep our souls +in them, intoxicate ourselves with their beguiling fantasies--oh, yes, +and how soon and how easily our dream life and our material life become +so immingled and so fused together that we can’t tell which is which, +any more.” Just as the Golden West was unable to keep its “dream life,” +its illusions, triumphant over its “material life,” its stark reality, +so with the brutal news that the “town had to bury” the deceitful +relative, the poverty-stricken book-keeper and his wife “lived yet two +years, in mental night, always brooding, steeped in vague regrets and +melancholy dreams”--like the modern realists! + +What did Mark Twain report regarding his early hope for a material +paradise? In _The Mysterious Stranger_ (1916) he recorded his final +despair, his conviction that life is cruel and meaningless--a +“wandering forlorn among the empty eternities”--and in that nightmare +of the fancy cowardice, hypocrisy and slavery are all that man can hope +for. After the death of his daughter the master of comedy said, “My +life is a bitterness, but I am content; for she has been enriched with +the most precious of all gifts--the gift that makes all other gifts +mean and poor--death.” His _What Is Man?_ and _To a Person Sitting in +Darkness_ express the same vein. “There is, of course, a Master Mind, +but it cares nothing for our happiness or our unhappiness ... As to the +hereafter, we have not the slightest evidence that there is any ...” To +him man became “a poor joke--the poorest that was ever contrived!” + +Although Hamlin Garland came to believe that “truth was a higher +quality than beauty” and set himself down as “an unflinching realist,” +one must recall that he comes of a race of “potential poets, bards, and +dreamers,” that he traces in general the disillusionment resulting +from an idyllic hope based upon an idealistic quest for an American +paradise of nature. He records the “deep vein of poetry,” the illusion, +through which the pioneer viewed a sordid reality, “the place of the +rainbow, and the pot of gold.” “Beneath the sunset lay the enchanted +land of opportunity.” + + “When we’ve wood and prairie land, + Won by our toil, + We’ll reign like kings in fairy land, + Lords of the soil!” + +Here is Pater’s “Sangreal of an endless pilgrimage” transferred to +prairie-land. Later he confesses, “I had idealised all the figures and +scenes of my boyhood.” “This land of my childhood,” “its charm, its +strange dominion,” he has to admit, “did not in truth exist--it was a +magical world, born of the vibrant union of youth and firelight, of +music and the voice of moaning winds.” Like Wordsworth’s early “light +that never was, on sea or land,” Garland’s illusion “has all the +quality of a vision, something experienced in another world,” covered +with “a poetic glamour.” + +However, if the Son of the Middle Border sought a pot of gold at the +foot of the rainbow which did not exist, if he is pursuing fancifully +a phantom of hope, he is honest enough to record the results of such a +quest. As he grew up he noted a “growing bitterness”--“disillusionment +had begun.” The Shelleyan rainbow of hope faded into the light of +common day. What had been the “marvel of a golden earth before a +crimson sky” became merely “Uncle Sam’s domain, bleak, semi-arid, and +wind-swept.” “I perceived little that was poetic, little that was +idyllic.” + + “What purpose does a man serve by toiling like that for sixty years + with no increase in leisure, with no growth in mental grace?... + At the moment nothing glozed the essential tragic futility of + their existence.... The essential tragedy and hopelessness of most + human life under the conditions into which our society was swiftly + hardening embittered me, called for expression, but even then I did + not know that I had found my theme.... Now, suddenly I perceived + the futility of our quest....” + +It is clear, also, that Garland is attempting a serious generalised +study of the outcome of frontier hope. The young orator, meeting his +father, is shocked at his sudden appearance of age and gloom: “He +had come a long way from the buoyant faith of ’66, and the change in +him was typical of the change in the West--in America.” “The almost +universal disappointment and suffering of the West was typical.” +“All the gilding of farm life melted away. The hard and bitter +realities came back upon me in a flood ... Every house I visited had +its individual message of sordid struggle and half-hidden despair.” +Garland, then, has given us a cross-section of our national history; he +has faithfully recorded the “almost universal” despair which greets men +who would “reign like kings in fairyland.” + +Rolvaag’s _Giants in the Earth_, “A Saga of the Prairie,” is +another impressive record of the Odyssey “Toward the Sunset” of the +frontiersman and the finding of despair instead of the pot of gold. +Per Hansa and his religious wife Beret, Norwegians, journey “straight +toward the west, straight toward the sky line,” “deeper and deeper +into a bluish-green infinity--on and on, ... for Sunset Land.” +Finally they halt and raise a sod hut in “the endless solitude,” the +“eternal, unbroken wilderness”; they plant crops, and winter sets +in; Beret has a child. Here again we meet the two planes of frontier +consciousness--idyllic hope built on illusion and the dread of a sordid +and terrifying reality. + + “That summer Per Hansa was transported, was carried farther and + ever farther away on the wings of a wonderful fairy tale--a romance + in which he was both prince and king, the sole possessor of + countless treasures. In this, as in all other fairy tales, the + story grew ever more fascinating and dear to the heart, the farther + it advanced.... Ever more beautiful grew the tale; ever more + dazzlingly shone the sunlight over the fairy castle.” + +On one side there is the “divine restlessness,” the “enchanting +joyousness” of Per Hansa, on the other, Beret’s poignant yearning for +human companionship and inner spiritual peace which her dread of the +stark reality cannot satisfy. “Bleak, grey, God-forsaken, the empty +desolation stretched on every hand ... How could one lift up one’s +voice against such silence!” As winter came on Beret saw only the snow, +and for her the day “died in a pitch-black night that weighed down the +heart.” Her reflections give the key to the book: + + “The country did not at all come up to her expectations; here, too, + she saw enough of poverty and grinding toil. What did it avail, + that the rich soil lay in endless stretches? More than ever did she + realise that ‘man liveth not by bread alone.’... Even the bread was + none too plentiful at times.... + + “But no sooner had they reached America than the west-fever had + smitten the old settlements like a plague. Such a thing had never + happened before in the history of mankind; people were intoxicated + by bewildering visions; they spoke dazedly, as though under the + force of a spell.... ‘Go west!... Go west, folks!... The farther + west, the better the land!’ Men beheld in feverish dreams the + endless plains, teeming with fruitfulness, glowing, out there + where day sank into night--a Beulah Land of corn and wine!... Ever + westward led the course, to where the sun glowed in matchless glory + as it sank at night; people drifted about in a sort of delirium, + like birds in mating time; then they flew toward the sunset, in + small flocks and large--always toward Sunset Land.... Now she saw + it clearly: here on the trackless plains, the thousand-year-old + hunger of the poor after human happiness had been unloosed!” + +As she expects to die in childbirth, she pleads with Per Hansa to take +the other children back to civilisation: “Human beings cannot exist +here!... They grow into beasts!” And the magic of a fairy tale turns +out to be simply nature red in tooth and claw. In the last section of +the book, entitled “The Great Plain Drinks the Blood of Christian Men +and is Satisfied,” the story is told of how Per Hansa the faithful, the +hopeful, the loving husband and father, is frozen to death while going +for a doctor to help a neighbour. + + “There was the Red Son of the Great Prairie, who hated the + Palefaces with a hot hatred; stealthily he swooped down upon them, + tore up and laid waste the little settlements. Great was the terror + he spread; bloody the saga concerning him. + + “But more to be dreaded than this tribulation was the strange spell + of sadness which the unbroken solitude cast upon the minds of some. + Many took their own lives; asylum after asylum was filled with + disordered beings who had once been human.... Then, too, there were + years of pestilence--toil and travail, famine and disease.” + +The frontier is exhausted, but it should be carefully noted that the +quest for a physical, external paradise lives on in the American +machine-age, in the dream of an industrial Utopia. To take but one +illustration recorded in our fiction, Sherwood Anderson’s _Poor +White_--paralleling the frontier stories--traces the transition +from the optimism born of untapped resources to the despair of a +standardised industrialism. It is the tale of a stolid boy, Hugh McVey, +who manages to invent machines from which every one hopes great things; +it is supposed to be typical, to present a cross-section of American +life. + + “In every mind the future was bright with promise. Throughout the + whole Mid-American country ... a hopeful spirit prevailed.... The + youth and optimistic spirit of the country led it to take hold of + the hand of the giant, industrialism, and lead him laughing into + the land.... The thing that was happening in Bidwell happened in + towns all over the Middle West. Out through the coal and iron + regions of Pennsylvania, into Ohio and Indiana, and on westward + into the States bordering on the Mississippi River, industry + crept. Gas and oil were discovered in Ohio and Indiana. Over night + towns grew into cities. A madness took hold of the minds of the + people.... Wealth seemed to be spurting out of the very earth.... + Farmers owning oil-producing land went to bed in the evening poor + and owing money at the bank, and awoke in the morning rich.” + +But Hugh McVey, “the poor white, son of the defeated dreamer by the +river,” finds mere money and the satisfaction of physical needs +insufficient. “He was unfilled by the life he led.” Conscious of +“some indefinable, inner struggle,” “he fought to accept himself, to +understand himself, to relate himself with the life about him.” For +the sanctity of the individual personality America had substituted the +worship of mass production, of material gain. + + “It was a time of hideous architecture, a time when thought and + learning paused. Without music, without poetry, without beauty in + their lives or impulses, a whole people, full of the native energy + and strength of lives lived in a new land, rushed pell-mell into a + new age.” + +In place of the free workman, joyously expressing with his own hands +the dream of his own mind, came the factory-hand, blindly bitter from +the machine-standardisation which thwarted the self-expression which +even the farmer enjoyed. In the town of Bidwell, Jim Gibson exults +in selling machine-made harnesses and ruining Joe Wainsworth, the +old harness maker. Finally, in a fit of rage Wainsworth kills his +tormentor. Clara, the wife of Hugh McVey, points the moral: + + “In her mind the harness maker had come to stand for all the men + and women who were in secret revolt against the absorption of the + age in machines and the products of machines. He had stood as a + protesting figure against what her father had become and what she + thought her husband had become.... As a child she had gone often to + Wainsworth’s shop with her father or some farm hand, and she now + remembered sharply the peace and quiet of the place.... Everything + worth while is very far away.... The machines men are so intent on + making have carried them very far from the old sweet things.” + +And we have Anderson’s summary indictment of industrialism: + + “Modern men and women who live in industrial cities are like mice + that have come out of the fields to live in houses that do not + belong to them. They live within the dark walls of the houses where + only a dim light penetrates, and so many have come that they grow + thin and haggard with the constant toil of getting food and warmth.” + +Thus those who have sought an American paradise of nature, a physical +paradise, have reported finding only despair. In essentials this hope +is identical with the primitivistic and industrial hope which Europe +found inadequate over a century ago. Wordsworth, the high priest of +naturalism, confessed he had “too blindly reposed” his trust, and he +had the wisdom to seek the support of the classical and the Christian +traditions. And Ruskin and Carlyle exposed the criminal fallacies +involved in setting material gain above the sanctity of the individual +personality. But when this outworn, exploded philosophy, based upon +primitivism, faith in natural goodness, absolute liberty, _laissez +faire_, and reliance upon nature and material things, was transplanted +to the vast material resources of a frontier land, it was given a +new, hysterical lease of life. Now, a century and a quarter later, a +disenchanted America agrees with the English naturalist who testified +of his infinite “dejection” and his conviction that man + + “may not hope from outward forms to win + The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.” + + +III + +If those who have entered the American Door of Hope in quest of +happiness have reported that it is to be found neither in the Land of +the Blue Flower nor in the Land of Sensuous Desire, let us inquire what +those have reported who have sought the happiness of self-perfection, +of an exalted personal life, of “A Paradise within thee, happier +far.” This quest involves a definitely focused aspiration toward, +and a disciplined imitation of what is most richly and deeply human, +of what is most balanced and poised and complete, of what has in the +past been reported to yield lasting contentment and peace. This sort +of quest is very old. To Plato and Aristotle, justice, the crown of +life, consisted of the ideal balance of all the desires. Behind the +Horatian doctrine of the golden mean--_auream mediocritatem_--and +Cicero’s praise of _mediocritatem illam quae est inter nimium et parum_ +is the ideal of mediation and centrality. The Christian tradition, +according to Mr. G. K. Chesterton, is peculiar in its reconciling of +opposites, in its synthetic balance. At any rate, the worldly classical +and the other-worldly Christian traditions have united in upholding +the doctrines of imitation, restraint, of a dualistic conflict in +man between appetite and aspiration, and of a definitely focused +aspiration which culminates in inner peace. In the Middle Ages the +“law for measure” was allied to the theory of the four humours, the +balance of which caused health, the excess of any one of which caused +“one-sidedness” and disease. In the Renaissance the author of _Everyman +in His Humour_ used satire to render eccentricity ridiculous, and the +Hamlet who allowed all to be “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of +thought” recognised that “by the o’ergrowth of some complexion,” by +“one defect,” men “take corruption.” He honoured Horatio, his “soul’s +choice,” because in him “blood and judgment are so well commingl’d.” +The Elizabethans recognised that a great man, like a tall tower, +must be balanced at all points, or be drawn down to ruin by his own +strength. If space permitted, one might trace through the impetus given +scientific specialisation and material progress by Bacon and the Royal +Society, through such figures as Congreve and Pope and Edward Young +and Rousseau, the gradual evolution of the theory of humours into +the theory of the master-passion and the “original genius” of being +idiosyncratic. But let us remember that Milton, uniting the Renaissance +passion for sensuous delight and the Puritan passion for saintliness, +kept his sublime balance, his vision of centrality, his ideal of +self-mastery. His exhortation to Adam as he leaves the physical +paradise of Eden is his exhortation to us: + + “Only add + Deeds to thy knowledge answerable; add faith; + Add virtue, patience, temperance; add love + By name to come called Charity, the soul + Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loth + To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess + A Paradise within thee, happier far.” + +Mindful of the dark impulses of the natural man, the great liberal +distinguished sharply between anarchy and the true liberty resulting +from the substitution of inner for outer control: “License they mean +when they cry Liberty,” he remarks of the Cavaliers, “For who loves +that must first be wise and good.” “He who reigns within himself ... is +more than a king.... Real and substantial liberty is rather from within +than from without.” + +Americans may well be proud that this noble hope partially lives on +in Emerson, our greatest man of letters, who found Milton “foremost +of all men ... to inspire,” to communicate “the vibration of hope, of +self-reverence, of piety, of delight in beauty.” Out of materialistic +America has come this “friend and aider of those who would live in +the spirit,” who strove above all to celebrate “the Ideal and Holy +Life, the life within life, ... the spiritual powers in their infinite +contrast to the mechanical powers and the mechanical philosophy of this +time.” It is true, of course, that Emerson did not altogether escape +the contagion of his romantic age; that in his apparent praise of the +unique and the individual, in his most un-Miltonic faith in natural +goodness, in his belittling of logic, of tradition, and of the aid +which culture can give as a guide to conduct, Emerson has a certain +kinship with Rousseau. Let us grant it--and guard against it! One must +recall, however, that part of his dubious influence has resulted from +a superficial and piece-meal reading of Emerson, encouraged by his +characteristic oracular device of presenting two conflicting statements +rather than a balanced and qualified generalisation. If one reads +all of Emerson, however, in an endeavour to relate and define his +thought, it is apparent, as Professor Harrison and Professor Foerster +have found, that his stronger affinities are not with Rousseau but +with Plato and the humanists. His central doctrine of self-reliance +turns out to be a reliance on a self which is not unique but common to +all men, “a reliance upon man’s share of divinity,” upon his higher, +universal self. “We become divine,” he says, not by eccentricity, by +revolt, but by “obedience,” by conformity to “the common heart,” to +what is normally, typically, and nobly human. In fact he strictly +warns us against the “rudeness” of failing to “distinguish between +the private and the universal consciousness.” He perceived the +unity of man, the need of spiritual concentration; his occasional +assumption of good intentions is balanced by his own Spartan virtue +and his confession that “because the temptations are so manifold and +so subtle,” he agrees with Socrates and the Hindoos in denominating +the Supreme Being the “Internal Check.” In common with the Christian +tradition, he sharply severs the “law for man” from the “law for +thing.” He is aware of “the eternal distinction between the soul and +the world,” aware that too great a preoccupation with the outward, +sensuous, mundane life about us (the “work” rather than the “workman”) +at the expense of “the integrity of your own mind” and deeper spiritual +needs, breeds a dread of transience and hence “uneasiness” and +despair. Behind the fleeting scenes of daily life he perceived “that +which changes not,” permanent human elements common to every one, the +cultivation of which gave him that sweet serenity, that “cheerfulness +and courage” which Arnold pronounced the outcome of his philosophy, +“his abiding word for us.” “Happiness in labour, righteousness, +and veracity; in all the life of the spirit; happiness and eternal +hope;--that was Emerson’s gospel.” + +Here, then, in our own native tradition is a sort of hope which led to +happiness. Can such a hope, however, be reconciled with the artist’s +devotion to beauty? To Emerson, as to the æsthetes, art is simply “the +creation of beauty,” “beauty is its own excuse for being,” and “the +Beautiful is the highest.” But, unlike the æsthetes, he proclaims the +unity and parity of beauty, truth, and goodness--“different faces of +the same All.” Beauty has “its source in perfect goodness”; it is “the +mark God sets upon virtue.” In other words, the rarest beauty is a +by-product of that perfect harmony by which a man realises his complete +humanity, his complete happiness. This ideal of beauty was given the +support of a literary creed by James Russell Lowell, who never feared +to expose the weakness of a romanticism whose ultimate fruit was a +“melancholy liver-complaint.” He urged the study and creation of a +literature which should be an ideal representation of life, “stripped +of all unessential particulars” by an imagination which found “the +true ideal” not by escape but by a purposeful selection of the real. +For Lowell as for Emerson the “first duty” of the artist “is to be +delightful.” He distinguishes, however, between a merely recreational +“literature as holiday” and a literature which, ideally “representing +life, ... teaches, like life, by indirection.” Such a literature, +ministering to all the higher needs of the mind and spirit, yields the +greatest delight and the greatest beauty. + +Aspiration and art of this quality, however, are rare in American +fiction. We looked for them in vain in the seekers for a paradise of +supernal beauty, and in the seekers for an American paradise of nature. +Great as is Hawthorne as an artist, in my judgment he falls short of an +aspiration of the Emersonian quality on account of his penchant for the +eccentric, the fanciful, and the morbid. One seeks it in vain in the +realists’ transcripts from life, which lack the selection and focusing +that distinguish art from experience. There is evidence, nevertheless, +that the novel is no longer hostile to the specifically human destiny +of normal humanity, no longer oblivious to that rare beauty which is +the by-product of the struggle by which a noble character imposes order +on the chaos of natural desire and approaches the imaginative ideal of +a life richly varied, finely poised, and of exalted happiness. + +I have space for but one example in modern fiction--Dorothy Canfield’s +_The Brimming Cup_. This deals with the “eternal triangle” in a +little Vermont town. Marise Chittenden, whose children have gradually +taken her interest from Neale, her husband, becomes lonely when her +children all go to school and she senses that “the days of her physical +flowering are numbered.” She is loved by Marsh, a wealthy man visiting +her elderly neighbour Mr. Wells; Marsh tries to convince her that +she is sacrificing “a world of impassioned living” for “an outworn +ideal” of “the traditional thing to do.” The characters, not always +vividly humanised, symbolise man’s universe. Marise, the “brimming +cup,” “filled with some emotion ... gushing up in a great flooding +rush,” typifies the surge of impulse. Marsh, a “swirly brook,” to +whom life is but a moment’s “blind sensual groping and grabbing” +before the “big final smash-up,” typifies unbridled lust and greed. +The “steady, visible light” of Neale’s life, Neale who had found +true freedom by conquering his “great, fierce, unguessed appetite, +the longing for wandering, lawless freedom,” typifies centrality. +Mr. Wells, who surrenders “the happiness that comes of living as +suits his nature” to help make the world more courteous to negroes, +typifies humanitarian sympathy. The much-travelled Eugenia typifies +“sophisticated cosmopolitanism,” æsthetic escape: to her “everything’s +so common-place”; she cultivates her fading beauty by “breathing in and +out through one nostril, and thinking of the Infinite!” Cousin Hetty +symbolises tradition; the Indian Touclé, mysticism. Marise sees her +conflict as one not between “routine, traditional, narrow domestic life +and the mightiness and richness of mature passion,” but as a conflict +between the lure of sensuousness and “what is deepest and most living +in you.” It is a psychological novel, a novel of introspection: it +is based on the quest, not for what is conventionally moral, but for +what in the end gives the richest human satisfaction. It presents a +struggle based on self-reliance and self-conquest. Neale “wanted her +to be herself, to be all that Marise could ever grow to be, he wanted +her to attain her full stature.” “Nothing is your own, if you haven’t +made it so.” Marise wonders if her mother-love is what Marsh calls +“inverted sensuality”; Neale says, “Look into your own heart and see +for yourself.” He “longed for her sake to have her strike out into the +deep,” he knew that peace could only come from “Marise’s acting with +her own strength on her own decision.” He urges not outer but inner +control--“as few umpires as possible.” In her conflict Marise sought +“what was deepest and most living in her ...; that was what the voices +were trying to cry her down from finding.” She longed to be “one with +the great current”--Emerson’s “stream of power.” She discovers that she +is being lured by “the conventional pose of revolt,” that separation +from her children would not be true “growth and freedom, and generous +expansion of the soul.” Like Milton and Emerson, she finally becomes +free by discovering and obeying what is deepest within: + + “She was a free woman, free from something in her heart that was + afraid. For the moment she could think of nothing else beyond the + richness of that freedom. Why, here was the total fulfilment she + had longed for. Here was the life more abundant, within, within her + own heart, waiting for her!” + +Joyous in her centrality, poise and freedom, she sees Marsh as an +“undeveloped and tyrannical soul, the cramped mind without experience +or conception of breadth and freedom.” “How narrow and cramped,” +and “blinded to the bigness and variety of life” seemed people who +thought that “a woman of beauty and intelligence” was wasting her +life “unless she was engaged in ... stimulating ... sexual desire.” +Marise had the serene joy of her home, her beloved children and her +understanding husband; she had the marvel of her music; and she had +the surpassing wisdom to seek her happiness not in the miraculous but +in the common--in the symbolic neighbourly gathering on the night of +the blooming of the Cereus, that rite of beauty; in the calm strength +of simple folk whom experience has made wise. And this woman, living +out her “heritage, alive and rooted deep,” with her “vivid charm like +an aureole of golden mist,” “felt slowly coming into her, like a tide +of a great ocean,” the ineffable peace which comes from self-mastery, +from the quest of what is most universally and nobly human. Calm and +free, she was lifted “high, high above the smallness of life, up to a +rich realm of security in joy.” + + +IV + +What are we to conclude from this cursory sketch of the quality of +three different sorts of American hope represented in our fiction? +To the hope for a paradise of supernal beauty we owe much delicate +artistry of a high order; one may maintain, however, as Emerson and +Lowell did, that other things being equal, the truthful representation +of typical humanity alone produces that harmony which yields the +highest beauty. To this hope we owe much which, when read for +recreation, can give delight; one takes issue only with those, like +Poe and Cabell, who take Arcadianism seriously as a universal way of +life and would substitute it for a literary ideal which resolutely +confronts life and seeks to solve its meaning. To the hope for a +paradise of American nature, a physical paradise, we owe the imposing +of order upon the natural chaos of the wilderness; we owe the physical +“improvements,” the miracles of the machinery and science of a great +nation. Of what ultimate avail, however, are material resources, +physical comfort, time-saving machinery, and science unless the time +and energy conserved are used for higher intellectual or spiritual +ends, for the attainment of happiness? To those who have recorded this +hope in fiction we owe the faithful preservation of an important aspect +of the social history of America; but literature is greater than social +history: it aspires to embody the meaning of life in terms at once +timeless and universal and beautiful. Our frontier lands are exhausted, +and those who have sought the physical paradise of a standardized +industrialism have found nothing but boredom and despair. In place of +this dead level of repression and standardisation let us develop a new +respect for personality--for personality richly varied and healthily +individual. Let us re-direct the joy-giving passion for creation +through the matchless resources of the realm of the spirit. If both +the rarest happiness and the rarest beauty are the fruit only of the +hope of a paradise within, it would appear that American fiction would +in the future be wise in dealing not with escape or with externalities +but with the infinite variety and eternal mystery of the human soul’s +conflict between appetite and aspiration on its quest for an exalted +inward happiness. Before we can expect American fiction to do this, +however, the way must be prepared by the development of an adequate +social imagination. For great art has always been organic with and +supported by the life and vision of a whole people. Shakespeare was the +“Soul of the Age,” Dante the “voice of ten silent centuries.” A hope +must have throbbed in the breasts of a whole age before a writer can +body it forth with the concentration, the brooding intensity, and the +unerring congruency to human nature demanded of great art. Such a hope, +such a social imagination, such an agreement in aspiration, can be +developed best, perhaps, through education--through our interpreters of +literature in college and university. Mindful of the heritage of heroic +pioneers, we must embark upon our intellectual pioneering with the same +resolute courage, the same loyal devotion, the same consecration to a +high cause. Although our scholars are still being lured aside either to +the camp of the æsthetes or the camp of the philologists, America must +hereafter strive to develop the “middle-of-the-road” scholar who shall +be, as Emerson said, Man Thinking, the delegated mind of society, whose +major aim shall be the purposeful and discriminating interpretation of +the record man has left, in terms of beauty, regarding “the conduct of +life” and the path to peace. When such scholar-critics have developed +such a social imagination, such a popular unanimity of hope, we shall +be ready to receive the artist of genius who is to write for us the +great American novel. + + Note--For copyrighted evidence used in the foregoing essay I am + indebted as follows: Sherwood Anderson, _Poor White_ (Modern + Library, N. Y., 1925); Dorothy Canfield Fisher, _The Brimming + Cup_ (Grosset and Dunlap, N. Y., 1921); James Branch Cabell, + _The Cream of the Jest_ (Modern Library, N. Y., 1922); _Jurgen_ + (Grosset and Dunlap, N. Y., 1927); _Beyond Life_ (Modern Library, + N. Y., 1919); _Straws and Prayerbooks_ (Robert M. McBride and + Co., N. Y., 1925); Willa Cather, _The Professor’s House_ (Alfred + A. Knopf, N. Y., 1925); Floyd Dell, _Moon-Calf_ (Alfred A. Knopf, + N. Y., 1921); R. W. Emerson, _Complete Works_ (Houghton Mifflin + Co., Boston, 1903); _Journals_ (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, + 1909-14); _The Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle_ (Houghton + Mifflin Co., Boston, 1888); Norman Foerster, _American Criticism_ + (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1928); Hamlin Garland, _A Son of + the Middle Border_ (Grosset and Dunlap, N. Y., 1927); Joseph + Hergesheimer, _Linda Condon_ (Alfred A. Knopf, N. Y., 1919); Mark + Twain, _Complete Works_ (American Publishing Co., Hartford, 1903); + A. B. Paine, _Mark Twain, A Biography_ (Harper and Brothers, N. Y., + 1912); F. L. Pattee, “James Fenimore Cooper” (_American Mercury_, + Alfred A. Knopf, N. Y.); Gregory Paine, Introduction to _The + Deerslayer_ (Harcourt, Brace and Co., N. Y., 1927); O. E. Rolvaag, + _Giants in the Earth_ (Harper and Brothers, N. Y., 1929). + + + + +_Dionysus in Dismay_ + +STANLEY P. CHASE + + +Twenty-five years ago, when my generation were beginning to find their +way around in the world of print and paint, a group of us used to +meet occasionally to share each other’s discoveries in contemporary +thought and literature. You may smile at the association of the date +1904 and contemporary literature, and confessedly some of the objects +of our attention were fantastic enough--Elbert Hubbard, Edward Howard +Griggs, and even “I, Mary MacLane.” The more daring among us were +delving in Haeckel and Henry George; our conservatives, according to +their bents, delighted in Kipling and Barrie, or a group of alluring +Celts, or became expert in discriminations between the earlier and the +later manner of Henry James. We all read, of course, William James and +Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells and Chesterton. In poetry, to be sure, we +had no such variegated menu as the contemporary road-house affords; I +should say that our diet was easily digestible and a little saccharine. +For the most part, as I recall, we followed along the vagabondia trail +after Richard Hovey and Bliss Carman. In that old college town near the +coast, we could still thrill to such verses as + + Three of us without a care + In the red September + Tramping down the roads of Maine, + Making merry with the rain, + With the fellow winds a-fare + Where the winds remember. + +Frost and Sandburg, Lindsay and Masefield, had not come into our +world--much less Walter de la Mare or Aldous Huxley or Robinson +Jeffers. But we were not so entirely neglected by the contemporary +muse as you may suppose. We knew the early work of Yeats, and “The +Hound of Heaven” of Francis Thompson; we had discovered the sonnets +of Santayana; we could repeat a large part of _A Shropshire Lad_; and +of course for our more cosmic moods we had Walt Whitman. Hundreds of +other such groups must have existed, like ours callow, inexperienced, +bumptious, but very inquisitive, very receptive. Not against us did the +“new poetry” (no longer such) have to hurl its bolts. + +And even in that distant, unreal decade of the nineteen-hundreds, +before President Roosevelt, by a few kindly pages in the _Outlook_, put +Edwin Arlington Robinson’s name into every one’s mouth, we knew the +poet of “Tilbury Town” (only thirty miles from our own). There was one +poem of his whose meaning used to be a great subject of dispute,--for +we were than naïve enough to think that a poem must be susceptible of +some rational explanation. It was entitled “Cortège,” and had appeared +in the _Captain Craig_ volume of 1902.[45] + + Four o’clock this afternoon, + Fifteen hundred miles away: + So it goes, the crazy tune, + So it pounds and hums all day. + + Four o’clock this afternoon, + Earth will hide them far away: + Best they go to go so soon, + Best for them the grave to-day. + + Had she gone but half so soon, + Half the world had passed away. + Four o’clock this afternoon, + Best for them they go to-day. + + Four o’clock this afternoon + Love will hide them deep, they say; + Love that made the grave so soon, + Fifteen hundred miles away. + + Four o’clock this afternoon-- + Ah, but they go slow to-day: + Slow to suit my crazy tune, + Past the need of all we say. + + Best it came to come so soon, + Best for them they go to-day: + Four o’clock this afternoon, + Fifteen hundred miles away. + +The half-benumbing, half-intensifying effect of the “crazy tune,” the +curious way in which a mere pattern of words can usurp the mind, now +stealing its attention from the very grief they point to, and now +flashing upon it a new aspect of that grief--something like that, +I suppose, accounts for the fascination the poem had for us. But a +number of us were dissatisfied with an explanation so simple. No, we +wanted to know, first, who and how many persons were being buried at +four o’clock to-day, and their relationship to the poet (was it, for +instance, a former sweetheart and her husband?), and whether “she” in +the third stanza was one of the deceased, and in what sense it could +be said that Love “made the grave so soon,” and what “half so soon” +meant--was it any different from “twice as soon”? We even calculated +that the burial must be taking place some fifteen hundred miles to the +_west_, since otherwise, all (Protestant) funerals being held commonly +at two o’clock, the poet’s time would be twelve noon instead of four +afternoon. All, of course, very silly and irrelevant questions. + +Only a few years ago, in a poetry course, I was recalling these old +agitations of ours, as a warning, I feel sure, against such literalness +of interpretation. But, as will happen with class-room instruction, my +admonitions produced quite the opposite effect from that intended, for +one member of the class was so intrigued by the problem, even as we had +been twenty years before, that he evolved the staggering theory that +the poem was not about a funeral at all, but about a marriage. This +ingenious view having been communicated, in a circuitous way, to Mr. +Robinson, he settled the matter quite simply with the following note to +the inquirer: + + “I have long given up attempting to interpret my own poetry, but + in this instance, would go so far as to suggest a funeral rather + than a marriage. I remember this poem chiefly as a more or less + reprehensible experiment in sound and feeling--a performance more + pardonable thirty years ago--perhaps--than it would be to-day.” + +Of course, it was not Mr. Robinson’s performance, but ours, which was +reprehensible. We were treating an “experiment in sound and feeling” +as we might have treated a deposition in court or an application for +the payment of life-insurance; we were bringing to a poem an attitude +of mind alien to its character _as a poem_. It was as if one should +read Mr. Frost’s “The Thatch” and demand to know _why_ he “would not +go in till the light went out.” For “Cortège” in essential matters is +not cryptic in the least; it is only irrelevant, external details that +are left unexplained. And ultimately, I suppose, what we call a taste +for poetry, of any except a very elementary sort, depends upon the +possession of tact or intelligence to perceive just such a distinction. + +I have used this personal recollection because much more frequently +to-day and to a greater degree a somewhat similar feeling of puzzlement +assails the reader of contemporary poetry. This simple instance of an +obscurity gratuitously created by readers may lead to the consideration +of a problem of poetic form more comprehensive than any question of +mere technique (though technical elements of poetry are involved in +it too), I mean the question of those necessities which are laid on +poetry from its being a form of communication between mind and mind. +For, I believe, from misapprehension and confusion in this matter, +on the part now of poets and now of their readers, springs, to some +extent, the unsatisfactory state of poetry at the present time. On +the one side, there is reported a feeling of exasperation, by readers +competent enough in other kinds of literature or in the older poetry, +who “can make nothing of this modernist stuff,” and on the other side +the modernists’ rejoinder that such readers are precisely in the +position of my group of twenty-five years ago--lacking the intelligence +to grasp what is essential and to disregard non-essentials. Surely a +consideration of the nature and limits of that community of mind which +must be assumed to subsist between the poet and his readers is not +foreign to the subject of this book. + + +I + +At the outset we encounter the Crocean view of all art, including +poetry, as expression merely, and conversely of all expression +as art. But leaving the confusions of Signor Croce to be dealt +with by others,[46] we are warranted in assuming, I think, that, +generally and typically, the poet desires communication with other +persons,--conceivably only one other person, or persons of the +future, but at any rate communication and not merely self-expression. +Otherwise, he wouldn’t publish or circulate or read his poems, as +generally and typically poets do. The theory of Laura Riding and +Robert Graves[47] that the poet publishes (or “externalises”) only +out of consideration for the rights of the poem, which, like physical +offspring, has attained an independent status with a life of its own, +is a naïve and superfluous bit of mystification, sufficiently answered +by the query, “Why then sign one’s name?”--and I have not remarked any +unusually wide return to the practice of anonymity. And one is led +to wonder, as one turns the pages of our more advanced periodicals, +what possible readers some of these poets are addressing. After a +moderate success in comprehending, let us say, such diverse productions +as those of the mediæval mystics, the wits of the Roman Empire and +the Restoration, the English metaphysical poets, and the symbolist +group in France, and after a period of conscientious schooling in +the pronouncements of this newest movement, it is disconcerting to +find oneself completely balked by the innocent-appearing contents of +the latest anthology of verse. Among the ten possible but improbable +interpretations of some poem, it seems somehow less than a sporting +chance that the one you finally choose as the least implausible will be +what was intended. + +Take, for instance, this poem of Mr. Wallace Stevens, which I select +not as an example of that writer’s often delightful connoisseurship in +verse, but as fairly representative of this decline in what has been +called “communicative efficacy.” + + ANECDOTE OF THE JAR[48] + + I placed a jar in Tennessee, + And round it was, upon a hill. + It made the slovenly wilderness + Surround that hill. + + The wilderness rose up to it, + And sprawled around, no longer wild. + The jar was round upon the ground + And tall and of a port in air. + + It took dominion everywhere. + The jar was grey and bare. + It did not give of bird or bush, + Like nothing else in Tennessee. + +Now the elements of this experience--the jar, its shape, colour, and +quality, the hill in Tennessee where it is placed, the behaviour or +appearance of the wilderness, the bird, the bush--stand doubtless in +some kind of relation with each other in the poet’s mind, have possibly +certain symbolic values. Since we have no clues to these relationships +and values, our mind is free to do anything it pleases with the bare +grey jar, the hill, and the wilderness. This freedom, however, and any +pleasure we may take in the separate images, in the rhythms, or the +placing of the words, are not sufficient compensation for the state of +uncertainty and slight irritation in which we are left. Very likely +the little poem is meant to suggest nothing more than the superiority, +to an intensely civilised person, of the simplest bit of handicraft +over any extent of unregulated “nature,” but it has been seriously +interpreted to me, by devotees of recent poetry, as, respectively, an +_objet d’art_, a sex-symbol, and a burial-urn containing the remains of +a valued friend. And so it must remain, for me, not only like nothing +else in Tennessee but like nothing else in the universe. + +Considerable damage was done to this shallow affectation of knowingness +of the last few years by Max Eastman’s witty article in the April +(1929) _Harper’s_. A young intellectual from one of our well-known +private schools told me that members of his group were observed to +discontinue their perusal of _transition_[49] upon the appearance +of Mr. Eastman’s “The Cult of Unintelligibility.” But contemporary +poetry is still afflicted by an acute attack of that extreme of +Puritanism--separatism: it asserts the right not only of private +judgment, but of a private symbolism,--which is, æsthetically, of +much graver consequences. My point here, of course, has nothing to do +with the values or qualities of the experience which the writer is +presumably seeking to share. I am simply saying that, in the reading +of the slightest as of the most profound poem, a sense of singleness +or wholeness is the most essential part of the experience, and that +this totality of effect cannot be achieved if all clues to the way the +poem is organised are withheld or too casually indicated. The enigmatic +character of Dr. William Carlos Williams’s poems, we are told, is due +in part to his habit of jotting down free-verse impressions in the +intervals between his professional visits to patients. I can only hope +that in writing out his prescriptions he makes a greater allowance for +the mental capacity of the pharmacist than he seems to make for mine. +To speak bluntly, the difficulty of reading much “modernist” verse is +due less to the superior sophistication or cleverness of these writers +than to their essential lack of art. + +By contrast, in the following lyric of Elinor Wylie, even though it is +a repudiation of something accustomed, beautiful, and comforting, there +is so clear and deft an employment of symbol, so perfect a fusion of +mood with image, that the effect of totality is achieved; the peace +denied to this orthodox landscape (or universe) is momentarily attained +in the very denial of it, and thus one of the functions of poetry is +discharged. + + INNOCENT LANDSCAPE[50] + + Here is no peace, although the air has fainted, + And footfalls die and are buried in deep grass, + And reverential trees are softly painted + Like saints upon an oriel of glass. + + The pattern of the atmosphere is spherical, + A bubble in the silence of the sun, + Blown thinner by the very breath of miracle + Around a core of loud confusion. + + Here is no virtue; here is nothing blessèd + Save this foredoomed suspension of the end; + Faith is the blossom, but the fruit is cursèd; + Go hence, for it is useless to pretend. + +“The transport ... that the poet kindles in us,” observes Professor +De Selincourt in his Inaugural Lecture at Oxford, “springs from our +instinctive recognition that his form, a term that includes both rhythm +and diction, is an entirely faithful rendering of his experience, +so that we gain from it a sudden clear sense of fulfilment, such as +we can hardly hope to gain outside the ideal world of art.” That may +be a rather narrowly æsthetic interpretation of Longinus’s doctrine +of the poetic “transport,” but certainly “a sudden clear sense of +fulfilment” is an experience which it is easy to miss in the poetry of +our contemporaries. + +In fact, this “sense of fulfilment” is precisely what the typical +modernist, experiencing nothing of the sort in life itself and +disdaining an “ideal world” thus cut off from reality, avoids giving +us. He would regard it as part of the old hocus-pocus of orthodoxy. +Life being to him fragmentary, inchoate, he would say that his poetry, +if it is to be “an entirely faithful rendering of his experience,” must +itself produce an effect of inchoateness, fragmentariness. + + THE END OF THE WORLD[51] + + Quite unexpectedly as Vasserot + The armless ambidextrian was lighting + A match between his great and second toe + And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting + The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum + Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough + In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb-- + Quite unexpectedly the top blew off: + + And there, there overhead, there, there, hung over + Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes, + There in the starless dark the poise, the hover, + There with vast wings across the cancelled skies, + There in the sudden blackness the black pall + Of nothing, nothing, nothing,--nothing at all. + +Here Archibald MacLeish, who stands somewhere between the centre and +the extreme left wing in poetry, employs a traditional verse-form +in a poem the theme of which is the absurdity of the spectacle of +human antics in a cosmos without intelligibility or significance. He +guards against any specious effect of “fulfilment” by the unexpected +reiteration of the word _nothing_. Yet there remains the regrettable +necessity of rounding out the sestet and capping the rhyme; and, more +important, the method of presentation has imposed an adventitious +kind of order on a scene which, in the poet’s apprehension of it, is +an even wilder scramble and jumble of absurdities. And so the sonnet, +thoroughly “modern” in spirit, is quite conservative in technique. +The distinctiveness of this new poetry, indeed, is less a matter of +measures, whether new or old, than of the principle of association +by which it is governed. It aims at an organisation of images and a +succession of rhythms which spring more immediately from the poet’s +stream of consciousness. + +In attempting to divert this stream through the reader’s mind, without +spilling over or filtering, some recent poets have adopted startling +innovations in typography, including punctuation, use of capitals and +small letters, spacing, and line-division. The fashion is prompted in +part by a spirit of mere impishness, but back of it also is a certain +amount of genuine experimentation in the resources and the graphical +representation of language, the object being to prod the reader out of +the lethargy and complacency which, it is alleged, are fostered by the +conventions of verse-form and page-arrangement. Undeniably, if one is +willing to play this game and doesn’t mind having the rules made up as +one goes along, some of the results are amusing. You will understand +most readily what it is all about if you first take one of these poems +down from some one’s dictation, then attempt to write it as you think +the poet would do to bring out the subtler shadings and nuances, and +finally compare your representation of the poem with his. Here, for +instance, are the words (written as ordinary prose) of a poem by E. E. +Cummings from a group called “Impressions.” + + “I was considering how, within night’s loose sack, a star’s + nibbling infinitesimally devours darkness, the hungry star, + which will eventually jiggle the bait of dawn and be jerked into + eternity, when over my head a shooting-star burst into a stale + shriek like an alarm-clock.”[52] + +On the chance that at this point the reader may wish to try the +experiment which has been suggested, I postpone to a later page Mr. +Cummings’s original arrangement of the words. If you will compare his +printing of the poem with that above, you will see how the tininess and +the quick little repeated nibbles of the mouse at the grain-sack are +suggested by the short, broken lines; how ingeniously the shooting-star +is made to interrupt the poet’s revery; how the effect of flare, +streaking, and slower fading is conveyed in the printing of “bursts”; +and how the new simile of the alarm-clock impinges upon the retinal +image of the meteor.[53] But--“the pleasures of sudden wonder are soon +exhausted.” After scrambling up a hundred or so of these typographical +escarpments, I found that there was seldom a view from the summit +commensurate with the discomforts of the climb, and my interest in +the new sport began to flag. It is hard to imagine a mature artist +interesting himself for long in this sort of preciosity. + +Though each individual’s inner life is in a measure unique, the +mere attempt to convey some fraction of it to others by written or +printed words presupposes a certain shared and common ground of human +experience. Freshness, piquancy, gusto, can be properly savoured only +when they are delicately blended with “human nature’s daily food.” The +importance of a common understanding upon essentials is clear in the +sphere of our personal relationships, which become rich and satisfying +only with the mutual recognition of things that may be _taken for +granted_; oddities and varieties are most engaging in those with whom +we already own a fundamental bond. Now the forms and conventions of +poetry may be regarded as so many aids to the speedier establishment of +such understanding between reader and poet,--the indispensable means +by which an original experience is so shaped and clarified that it has +significance for others. No one of these conventions, naturally, is +absolutely fixed or static, and skilful manipulation of their elements +is constantly yielding new and unsuspected possibilities of æsthetic +pleasure, and even of social comprehension. For this reason we may look +with a tolerant and not unfriendly eye upon such experimentation by +some of our younger poets as I have described.[54] Nevertheless, it is +imperative that persons who wish to modify or to replace the accepted +vehicles of poetic expression should have a clear understanding of +what convention in literature or art is _for_. Adequate treatment of +this subject would require a separate book, and here I must content +myself with a mere statement of faith: that some set of assumptions as +to the experiences most valuable and important for mankind--in other +words, of universals in the Aristotelian sense--is as necessary in +the establishment or the maintenance of an æsthetic convention as in +any purely social or political activity. Indeed, the most promising +development in American poetry at the present time, I believe, is to +be found, not in these centrifugal and eccentric movements, but in the +considerable amount of genuine if less spectacular work which is being +done upon the lines of a firmly rooted literary tradition.[55] + + +II + +In the last few paragraphs, though concerned primarily with the aspect +of communicability, I have been skirting the topic which lies at the +centre of all movements of thought and feeling in our day, and with +which I shall be concerned through the rest of this essay. I refer +to the prevalent spirit of disillusionment, a state of mind which in +America has made itself felt, acutely and widely, only within the last +three or four years. + +Certainly the mood of the younger generation of poets (the men and +women now in their twenties or early thirties) is very different from +the poetic temper of fifteen years ago--those exciting, strained, +exalted, painful years that witnessed, among other things, the rise +of the “new poetry” in England and America and, somewhat later, the +beginning of the war. Any comprehensive view of the stream of poetry +warns us not to make too much of these twists and turns between one +decade and the next; yet there is some reason to think that we have now +reached or are approaching one of the major bends in the course. The +“poetic renascence” of 1912-1917 was, it is true, in reaction against +certain nineteenth-century attitudes,--against its Puritan code in +morals and its tradition of gentility in belles-lettres; as some one +has said, it delighted in hurling bricks at the silk hat of Hamilton +W. Mabie; but to the most characteristic force of nineteenth-century +thought and life--namely, an expansive philosophy of naturalism, +embraced with enthusiasm and glorified by a romantic imagination--it +merely gave a fresh impetus. + + The serene and humble mould + Does in herself all selves enfold-- + Kingdoms, destinies, and creeds, + Great dreams, and dauntless deeds, + Science that metes the firmament, + The high, inflexible intent + Of one for many sacrificed-- + Plato’s brain, the heart of Christ; + + * * * * * + + Out of the earth the poem grows + Like the lily, or the rose; + And all man is, or yet may be, + Is but herself in agony + Toiling up the steep ascent + Toward the complete accomplishment + When all dust shall be, the whole + Universe, one conscious soul.[56] + +These lines by John Hall Wheelock epitomise the thought that had been +the main inspiration of the nineteenth century. Despite their regular +metrical form, with its reminiscence of Emerson, we recognise in them +the ecstatic evolutionary naturalism of Walt Whitman. + +Indeed, it was the spirit of Whitman, more than any other, that +presided over our “poetic renascence.” Not, of course, that all the +poets who made their appearance in those years were akin to him. Frost, +for instance, was hardly more like Whitman than he was like Pope; +consciously, in his living and in his poetry, he was facing and he has +continued to move in just the opposite direction. Nor perhaps in the +work of Masters or of Robinson[57] is the relation to Whitman at once +apparent, for superficially neither the _Spoon River Anthology_, that +sardonic record of stunted human growths, nor Robinson’s sombre studies +of the thwarted lives of his New Englanders suggest the tolerance, +the breadth and human warmth of the older poet’s sympathies. But the +analysis of these unfortunate victims of a repressive and unhumane +morality (for such is the way the poetry of both writers was commonly +described, and such, in one aspect, it is) was really in line with +Whitman’s gospel of emotional emancipation, as well as with the new +direction given to psychology by Freud and Jung. In the work of Lindsay +and Sandburg, and notably in that of the far less original Oppenheim +(whose disappearance from current collections is itself significant +of the change that has taken place), the influence of Whitman was +patent. All the spokesmen and contemporary critics of the movement, +from Amy Lowell (1917) to Bruce Weirick (1924), with varying degrees +of emphasis, stress Whitman’s primacy in American literature. He had +had his lovers and disciples before, but now for the first time a +group of American poets could give him whole-hearted welcome with no +inner abashment to overcome. Throughout the earlier productions of the +movement, even in the poems of the Imagists, whose theory and practice +of verse were so different from his own, is diffused the vibrant +spirit of Walt Whitman. It is experienced as a certain buoyancy and +expectancy of mood, and most characteristically as an underlying trust +in a life-force which is felt to be working here in America to high, +unforeseen ends. + +It would be an over-simplification, but somewhere near the heart of the +matter, to say that the presence we are most aware of in the poetry of +to-day is not Walt Whitman, but Thomas Hardy--his desolating irony, +at least, if not his artistic and personal elevation. These younger +poets accept, but coldly and without enthusiasm, the account which +contemporary science offers of the universe and of the human make-up, +and they are as hostile to the glowing affirmations of the great +romantics as they are to the evasions and tepidity of the Victorians. +Perhaps this is but an inversion, a different guise, of that restless +and changeable temper which we call romanticism, but to me at least +its emergence seems to be more significant than were any of the varied +energies released by the last poetic movement. This new spirit is not +more characteristic of poetry, of course, than of other expressions +of the age. To some extent, though less here than abroad, it is an +after-effect of the war--the inability of nervous organisations +overstrained by the excitements of those years to respond to normal +stimuli. It may be briefly described as a despair of achieving any +reading of life in its totality which will be tolerable in the light +of all we know and feel. “In the course of a few centuries,” writes +Mr. Joseph Wood Krutch in _The Modern Temper_, “[man’s] knowledge, and +hence the universe of which he finds himself an inhabitant, has been +completely revolutionised, but his instincts and his emotions have +remained, relatively at least, unchanged. He is still, as he always +was, adjusted to the orderly, purposeful, humanised world which all +peoples unburdened by experience have figured to themselves, but that +world no longer exists.” This modern sense of frustration differs +from states of disillusion or pessimism experienced in the past in +two respects. It is, for one thing, more widespread, producing a +considerable body of poetry of sheer negation, turning some writers +to mere elaboration of surfaces and appearances, and making itself +felt as an undercurrent, now cynical, now passionate, in much +writing which seems superficially to be almost free of philosophical +implications. And secondly, this spirit of denial is a more positive +and uncompromising thing than we have known in the past. Not only is it +unable to effect any synthesis of its intelligence and its emotional +promptings; it has come to believe that such a synthesis is in the +nature of things impossible. It grows “more and more likely,” continues +Mr. Krutch, “that [man] must remain an ethical animal in a universe +which contains no ethical element.” His dilemma is that he cannot +either feel as his intelligence bids him or think as his emotions would +have him. Even the highest of the personal emotions, love itself, which +had somehow eluded the cold touch of nineteenth-century science, has +not been able to withstand the psycho-analysis of the twentieth. “Have +you not heard,” asks the lady in _Cavender’s House_, + + “Have you not heard yet, anywhere, death-bells ringing + For Love and poor Romance? Biologists + And bolshevists are ringing them like mad-- + So loud that Love, we’re told, will soon be lost + With dodos, dinosaurs, and pterodactyls.” + +Specifically, a feeling is abroad that poetry is at some kind of crisis +or turning-point, and there are even predictions that poetry of a sort +that the past would recognise as such cannot continue much longer to be +produced. + +The poetry of T. S. Eliot has been praised for its seizing of just +this aspect of the modern situation, the sense of frustration, of +insignificance. “The passions which swept through the once major +poets,” writes Mr. Krutch, “no longer awaken any profound response, +and only in the bleak, tortuous complexities of a T. S. Eliot +does [the present age] find its moods given adequate expression.” +Love-making carried on with an accompanying sense of its futility +and ridiculousness, an acquaintance with art and poetry which serves +only to confirm misgivings as to their relevancy for us to-day, the +employment of religious symbols to arouse a poor mirthless mockery--in +such experiences our young intellectuals find mirrored the age and body +of their time. The cryptic character of the writing, the sometimes +arbitrary connection between one image and the next, the casual +allusions to one person’s recondite reading, are all indications of +the contemporary sense of the individual’s isolation. The broken +rhythms, the fragmentariness of the scenes or movements, the deliberate +foregoing of any rational principle of organisation, reflect the +feeling of the fragmentariness of life itself, the modern inability to +effect any kind of integration of experience. And this, we are told by +some, is the only kind of poetry which an honest and sensitive mind in +an age like ours can be expected to produce. + +Mr. Eliot, though no longer belonging even nominally to American +literature, is worth attention because of his present high reputation +in intellectual circles. He has written literary criticism of a kind +especially needed at the present time, based as it is on a wide +knowledge of literature, informed by a delicate taste, and guided by +severe yet humane standards. And in his poetry he has shown himself +capable of finding a comedy of the mind in these hesitations and +inhibitions of modernity,--as in the early “Love Song of J. Alfred +Prufrock.” By the haunting, individual rhythms of his poems alone, +we are apprised of an exceptional poetic endowment. Yet Mr. Eliot’s +literary output, poetry and prose, constitutes, to my mind, one of the +most arresting paradoxes of this paradoxical age: an advocate of the +sterner disciplines of the past (“classicist in literature, royalist in +politics, and anglo-catholic in religion”), who gives to these causes +all the organising power of a firm intelligence, and is content to let +his poetry express chiefly the states of confusion, doubt, faintness, +with which the positive principles of his thought have had to wrestle. + + “We are the hollow men, + We are the stuffed men.” + +In a recent essay Mr. Eliot has ventured the opinion that a great +event in the intellectual world would be the conversion of Professor +Irving Babbitt to Roman or Anglo-Catholicism, but, he concludes +regretfully, such a consummation, though devoutly to be wished, is +hardly likely, for Mr. Babbitt “knows too much.” Perhaps an even more +salutary conversion, in its immediate effects upon other poets, would +be Mr. Eliot’s compassing, in his creative work, of those genuinely +classical values of which, in his critical writing, he shows such fine +apprehension. For a transformation of that kind, one need not fear that +any man of letters knows too much. One may at least entertain the hope +that Mr. Eliot’s permanent reputation as a poet is not going to lie +in the fact that he has voiced, more completely than any one else in +verse, the confusion and disillusionment of this post-war generation. + +The humanist is aware that poetry, like mythology, possesses no +power of conferring immediate revelation of truth; he knows that its +scenes and personages, its thoughts and passions, from the earthiest +to the most ethereal, belong to the world of unsubstantiality, of +illusion--of dreams, if you will. He will go further: this element of +illusion, this impassable gulf between reality and our comprehension +or representation of reality, is not confined to poetry and mythology; +it is part of all our conscious life; it baffles us even in our +attempt to comprehend that nearest thing of all--ourself. “... beneath +the surface of all we see and feel, beneath the very act of seeing +and feeling, lies the unredeemed chaos of desires and impressions, +unlimited, unmeaning, unfathomable, incalculable, formless, dark. +Life is but appearance, and this personality we call by our name is +but illusion within illusion.”[58] But working within the illusion is +also a power to control and order these impulses, to check them or to +bring them into a harmonious co-operation, yielding a serenity and a +sense of stability which, of all human experiences, seems freest of +illusion. It was the characteristic error of much nineteenth-century +poetry (of Browning’s in England, of Whitman’s in America) to limit +personality to the mere welter of desires and feelings, to find there +its central “urge” (the favourite word of romantic criticism), and +to erect upon such foundations a philosophy of the “ideal.” But the +hollowness of _this_ illusion (the philosophy which found an immediacy +of truth in natural instincts, impulses, and feelings) has to-day +become all too apparent; and when its former adherents ask where then +certainty can be found, they are bidden to direct their gaze to the +abstract world of the physicist and the mathematician. Here, in the +words of Mr. I. A. Richards, “intellectual certainty is, almost for +the first time, available, and on an unlimited scale.”[59] But even +if this were so,--and one hears of developments in these fields that +appear to make the certainty considerably less than absolute,--it would +still be a certainty about matters that have no particular relation to +the behaviour and feelings of human beings, and that give no support +for poetry. The beguiling mirage of an Absolute fostered by romantic +poetry has disappeared, only to be replaced by the mirage of another +Absolute, terrifying though incomprehensible. And so we have come to +the _impasse_ already described. + +From the point of view of the humanist, what has so suddenly collapsed +is the towering structure of nineteenth-century romanticism, not any +dwelling necessary to the continued life of poetry. For he has long +recognised those metaphysical limitations with which contemporary +physics is so deeply entangled; and he has been unwilling to trust +metaphysics, any more completely than natural science, with the whole +determination of a philosophy of life. Instead of asserting that +intellectual certainty in the field of science is available now almost +for the first time on an unlimited scale, he would postulate a large +degree of what amounts to _practical_ certainty, in all that concerns +us most nearly as ethical beings, available now, as it has been for +centuries. This assurance is embodied, for him, in the dualism of the +great historic religions, in the teachings of Socrates and of Jesus, +and in the most persistent traditions of European literature. But +its final sanctions are not found in any “great tradition,” however +imposing; they are arrived at empirically and experimentally by any +one who, divesting his mind of shibboleths and catch-words, will +honestly examine his own impulses and springs of action. In his own +soul he will find the cleavage, the dualism, which runs through human +nature. This opposition of forces, by whatever names he calls them, +by whatever symbols he represents them, may never be resolved; but in +his mysterious power of intervention in their unending conflict lies, +for him, the ultimate reality within the illusion. To the reading of +poetry, then, he will bring the same habit of discrimination that +serves him in the conduct of life, mindful that it is still a world +communicating with ours by the gate of horn and the gate of ivory, and +that the phantasms which issue therefrom may light our way a few steps +nearer truth, or may deepen for us the shadows of the dark, chaotic +flux. + +To the consciousness of intellectual defeat and spiritual dismay, +evidenced so widely in contemporary literature, it is not to be +expected that poetry will for the present make any very direct or +explicit answer. For we do not look to poetry for polemics, for the +formulation of ethical or metaphysical ideas; and when poetry tries +to assume a burden that belongs rather to criticism and philosophy, +the result may have literary interest and excellence, as does Pope’s +_Essay on Man_, but is more likely to be merely dull and forced, like +the later work of Wordsworth or Browning. In either case some fulness +of life belonging to poetry when confident in its own right is missing. +No, what we look for in the poet is some more pervasive or implicit +evidence of his scale of values, some intuitive, and for that reason +more certain, indication of the quality of his response to life, felt +as unmistakably in his imagery, his diction, and his rhythms as in +those more ponderable elements of style which the eighteenth century +called “fable” and “sentiments.” Thus, in two stanzas[60] of A. E. +Housman-- + + The year might age, and cloudy + The lessening day might close, + But air of other summers + Breathed from beyond the snows, + And I had hope of those. + + They came and were and are not + And come no more anew; + And all the years and seasons + That ever can ensue + Must now be worse and few. + +--something that belongs to his deepest intuition (his acceptance, +without evasion and without reconciliation, of life’s transitoriness) +is caught in the very movement of the lines and the simplicity of the +words: + + They came and were and are not. + +This pervasive sense of things chiefly valued and most deeply felt, +which every great poet’s work gives us, is surely not determined +altogether by forces external to him. The poet is something more than a +highly sensitised receiving-set for remote, scattered goings-on in the +world at large. What we prize in every poet we come to know intimately +is some irreducible, _given_ quality of the personality. We shall not +easily accept, therefore, the current argument that, in an age like +ours of dissolving faiths, the only genuine kind of poetry must be one +which has cut itself off from belief of any kind.[61] The history +of English literature is not lacking in instances of poets who have +withstood the pressure of their age: to recall only the greatest, the +poems of Milton, from _Lycidas_ to _Samson Agonistes_, are triumphant +testimonies against the idea that poetry need be so utterly subject to +contemporaneous disintegrating influences. But if we claim for poetry a +certain power of immunity from such forces, neither, by the same course +of reasoning, should we expect too much from the _direct_ effect upon +it of those forces which we think salutary, such as humanism. + +I do not mean to suggest here the notion of poetry’s having a life of +its own in any transcendental sense, or to imply that poets possess +mysterious astral powers. My thought is simply that the new humanism, +before it is given any large imaginative expression in American poetry, +must expect to prove its worth by responding to broadly human, and +not alone specifically poetic needs. It will do this by its power +of bringing harmony into lives which are ordered in accordance with +its insight, of establishing in society “a current of fresh and true +ideas,” and of creating thus “a quickening and sustaining atmosphere” +which poetry can breathe. I feel no need of apologising for my use of +these well-worn phrases of Matthew Arnold; not only was he the best +representative of the spirit of humanism in nineteenth-century England +or America, but also, in his realisation of the hopeless disparity +between natural processes and human aims, he anticipated the very +pattern of our own dilemma. The paralysis which came over Arnold’s +poetic powers in later life is sometimes attributed to the steady +growth of his humanistic interests, requiring the ampler medium of +prose. However that may be, I believe it certain that his humanism--his +sense, that is, of the worth and fruitfulness of human powers when +wisely exercised and his acceptance of the limitations which such a +view imposes--gave to his poetry nearly all that power of invigoration +and refreshment for which we chiefly value it. A contemporary critic, +R. H. Hutton, observed how frequently Arnold closes a poem on the +burdensomeness of existence by some seemingly unconnected figure or +story, such as the simile of the Tyrian trader in “The Scholar Gipsy,” +instinct with the pride and buoyancy of old world enterprise. “‘The +problem is insoluble,’ he seems to say, ‘but insoluble or not, let +us recall the pristine strength of the human spirit, and not forget +that we have access to great resources still.’”[62] In such ways +to-day, indirectly and obliquely, humanism may make itself felt as one +influence among many upon contemporary poetry: by rendering accessible +and operative, for the poets as for the rest of us, some of these +moral energies from times of more robust faith and higher intellectual +vitality than our own. + + +FOOTNOTES + +[45] Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, Publishers. + +[46] “If you disregard critical trivialities and didactic accessories, +the entire æsthetic system of Croce amounts to a hunt for pseudonyms +of the word ‘art,’ and may indeed be stated briefly and accurately in +this formula: art = intuition = expression = feeling = imagination = +fancy = lyricism = beauty. And you must be careful not to take these +words with the shadings and distinctions which they have in ordinary or +scientific language. Not a bit of it. Every word is merely a different +series of syllables signifying absolutely and completely the same +thing.”--G. Papini, _Four and Twenty Minds_, quoted by I. A. Richards, +_The Principles of Literary Criticism_ (1924), p. 255, note 4. + +Mr. Richards adds: “It is interesting to notice that Croce’s appeal has +been exclusively to those unfamiliar with the subject, to the man of +letters and the dilettante. He has been ignored by serious students of +the mind.... [Papini] has here rendered a notable service to those who +have been depressed by the vogue of ‘Expressionism.’” + +_Cf._ also the following from Gilbert Murray’s _The Classical +Tradition in Poetry_ (1927), p. 243: “Everything that a man does is +self-expression. The way a man laces his boots, the way he writes, +the way he says, ‘Good-morning,’ is probably different from the way +followed by any other man, and is thus expressive of his personality. +But it need not be good art for that reason. Imagine a pompous and +egotistic man in a state of personal irritation, having to make an +after-dinner speech. It would probably express him only too well, but +it might not be a good speech.” + +[47] _A Survey of Modernist Poetry_, by Laura Riding and Robert Graves, +1927, p. 125. + +[48] From _Harmonium_, by Wallace Stevens, 1923. Reprinted by and with +permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., +authorised publishers. + +[49] For the sake of “communicative efficacy,” as the editors remind +me, I should explain that _transition_ is “an international quarterly +for creative experiment,” edited in Paris by a group of young Americans +and others. + +[50] From _Trivial Breath_, by Elinor Wylie, 1928. Reprinted by and +with permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., +authorised publishers. + +[51] From _Streets in the Moon_, by Archibald MacLeish, 1926. Reprinted +by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company, Publishers. + +[52] From _Tulips and Chimneys_. Reprinted by permission of Alfred & +Charles Boni, Inc., Publishers. + +[53] For a more elaborate analysis of such effects in Mr. Cummings’s +poetry, see Laura Riding and Robert Graves, _A Survey of Modernist +Poetry_, Chapter I. + +[54] E. E. Cummings’s poem, previously referred to, is printed by him +as follows (_Tulips and Chimneys_, New York, 1924, p. 78): + + i was considering how + within night’s loose + sack a star’s + nibbling in- + fin + -i- + tes- + i + -mal- + ly devours + + darkness the + hungry star + which + will e + -ven + tu- + al + -ly jiggle + the bait of + dawn and be jerked + + into + eternity. when over my head a + shooting + star + Bur s + (t + into a stale shriek + like an alarm-clock) + +[55] Such, for instance, as the poetry of John Crowe Ransom and Donald +Davidson in the South, and of Wilbert Snow and Robert P. Tristram +Coffin in New England. + +[56] From the poem “Earth,” in _Dust and Light_, 1919, published by +Charles Scribner’s Sons. + +[57] Mr. Robinson, of course, had been publishing poetry for nearly +twenty years before the new movement got under way, but his work was +regarded as belonging to it in temper and outlook. + +[58] Paul Elmer More, “Definitions of Dualism,” Section LXXIII, in +_The Drift of Romanticism_ (1913), p. 291. The next section is almost +prophetic of what has happened in American poetry of the last few years: + +“In some men, especially in an age of spiritual apathy, the sense of +disillusion may spring up without the corresponding assurance of faith. +To such men nothing is real; they walk in a place of shadows, and feel +that life is continually slipping away from them into a bottomless +abyss. All their labour is to re-create for themselves the illusion +which has been shattered, or, by ceaseless occupation, to escape the +dull horror of the void.” + +[59] I. A. Richards, _Science and Poetry_, 1926, p. 60. + +[60] From _Last Poems_, by A. E. Housman, 1922, published by Henry Holt +and Company. + +[61] I. A. Richards, _Science and Poetry_, Chapter VII. + +[62] Richard Holt Hutton, _Essays on Some of the Modern Guides to +English Thought in Matters of Faith_, 1891 (Second Ed., revised), p. +146. + + + + +_Our Critical Spokesmen_ + +GORHAM B. MUNSON + + +“Art,” I thought I heard a voice say as I sat down to my table, “aims +to _be_ something; while criticism aims first to clarify and then to +_value_ something. Criticism is talk _about_ something with a view to +passing judgment upon it. It is an aspect of man the valuer, weighing +the actions, impulses, passions, thoughts, and imaginings of his +fellow-men. Study the criticism of a period and it will show you the +state of the general intelligence and the kind of values professed and +in vogue, and above all it will enable you to divine the amount of +consciousness of life’s processes and meanings which is current in this +period.” + +“So,” I remarked to the air, “the subject I have been thinking about +has some importance? It has to do with man in his most human rôle, +that of valuing, and it assists in indicating the range and depth and +intensity of his awareness of life.” + +But there was no reply to this, and perceiving that I must dig with +my own mind, I scratched down what I had previously decided should be +my opening sentence. I had been dwelling on the subject of American +literary criticism from 1915 to the present. About 1915 a new phase in +our national letters began to be manifest. Europe was well drenched +in blood and the _Lusitania_ was torpedoed in 1915--events that were +vitally to affect us. Mr. Dreiser’s _The “Genius”_ came out, and the +next year, 1916, it was suppressed by its publishers out of deference +to the power of a narrow censoring body soon to be effectively +challenged. American liberals in the wake of Bull Moose Progressivism +had hopefully established the _New Republic_. Mr. P. E. More in the +year previous to 1915 had resigned from the editorship of the _Nation_. + +Afterwards there came our participation in the war: the crushing +of liberalism: post-war disillusion. There came a ferment of new +magazines and new publishers, captivating the sons and leaving the +fathers cold. There came a tide of naturalistic novels, a foam of _vers +libre_, a roar of essays attacking the genteel tradition. Since 1915 +the reputations have been made of Messrs. Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood +Anderson, Carl Sandburg, Waldo Frank, H. L. Mencken, and Eugene +O’Neill--to name only enough to establish a contrast with the writers +of the preceding period. Inevitably it happened that some excitable +journalists in the midst of the uprising promptly called this decade +and a half an American literary renaissance. + +To me, on reviewing these years, they seem more like a tragi-comedy, +almost a tragi-farce. So when I penned my premeditated first sentence I +spoke of the tragi-comedy of American criticism. But even if our recent +criticism has been very often foolish, we are to take it seriously for +reasons outside itself,--if my voice out of the air is to be believed. +I must now try to develop the line of thought that moves out from the +opening sentence I wrote down when my aerial counsellor deserted me. + + +I + +There have been no villains in the recent tragi-comedy of American +literary criticism. + +The leading critics of our nation have not been villains--that is, +amazing men of initiative, strength, and will bent on destruction--but +rather they make us think of well-intentioned bookish gentlemen +gyrating in the fields of certain hidden sociological magnets and +vociferating their reflexes to the magnetic attractions. On behalf of +a potential human greatness, there are perhaps great errors in the +present world of literary criticism to be opposed, but there are with +us no great men, no geniuses, to be overthrown. In other words, our +critics are not germinative but derivative. + +I mean, of course, our professional critics. It is plain that I am +not setting out to praise them--not even by calling them villains, +for villains must, to satisfy my conception of the scale on which the +intellectual drama of the race has been played, possess a certain +epical character. There is another world of criticism, the academic +world, whose faults have often been exposed scornfully and truthfully. +Lying out of the eye of the reading public, it never bears any +relation, according to the professional critics, with what is being +currently written. Yet it has its virtues of course: there is a +laudatory paper for some one to write on recent advances in American +literary scholarship: within academic circles there has grown up +the only critical movement in our land now worthy of international +interest, and the leaders of this movement, Professors Irving Babbitt +and Paul Elmer More, are--I have several times committed myself to the +assertion--the best living critics America can show. It is not with the +academic world nor with humanism, however, that I am here dealing, but +with the critics of the past fifteen years who have enjoyed something +like popularity. First, let us follow the figure of the late Stuart P. +Sherman, once a successful university professor, as he flies away from +the campus into the full light of public attention beating upon the +world of professional criticism. + +Stuart P. Sherman is of exceptional interest to us. He admired Matthew +Arnold: he wrote a popular exposition of Arnold, and a course of his +entirely devoted to Arnold is said to have been popular with the +students at the University of Illinois. Let us then, noting this +affinity, measure Sherman by Arnold. The difference in their prose is +the difference between distinction and mere competence. Sherman’s is +democratic: it is as if written in shirt-sleeves or talked with the +feet on the table, the writer or speaker deliberately putting on easy +manners. Note the “It’s-a-plain-man-speaking” effect in the following +typical passage at the beginning of Sherman’s essay, _Towards an +American Type_: “When I was in college, I used to poke around in the +library a good deal looking for books which would take me out of the +shallow water of college life into the deep channel of experience, +into the serious life of the world. And naturally enough the works of +Tolstoy came into my hands. Now one knows what a typical Tolstoy novel +is, etc.”[63] Lucid writing, of course, but it is not charming: it has +none of Arnold’s aristocratic sweetness. + +I am going to try to point out a fatal lack of austerity in Sherman, +a certain ultimate slackness of mind and purpose. The prose, so +lustreless beside Arnold’s, shows that Sherman failed to achieve any of +the rarer virtues of verbal deportment: just as clearly one realises +that not so superficially, so mushily, could Arnold have defined +religion as, in Sherman’s words, “that which binds us and holds us. +Religion is that which at heart we do earnestly believe in, whatever it +is.” Nor could Arnold, doughty wrestler with himself, so easily drop +his hard questions and substitute gentler ones. In the essay quoted +from above, Sherman went on to raise the question all great minds +have most seriously confronted: “Is life worth living, and for what +purpose?” But it did not take him long to say, “Assuming that life is +worth living, what are its durable satisfactions?”--a serious enough +question, but subtly veering the asker away from any tragic vision of +life and encouraging him to settle into a limited pattern of behaviour +that happens to appeal to his temperament rather than to go forth and +lead the great adventure of pursuing perfection. + +In his growth Sherman was influenced by the books of three conservative +critics, Mr. Paul Elmer More, Mr. Irving Babbitt, and the late W. C. +Brownell; and here again his conduct was significant of some lack of +desperation in him or of some softening influence on the fibres of his +mind. For under the pressure of the ideas of Mr. More and Mr. Babbitt +he was a little impatient. They were too austere for his taste, whereas +he could not admire Brownell sufficiently. But of the three critics +Brownell dealt least in the primary ideas of life: he elaborated with a +great deal of fine sense secondary ideas about literature and society. +He had, it appears to me, a mind more localised in the nineteenth +century than the minds of his two colleagues. And nineteenth-century +minded, rather than classical minded, was Stuart P. Sherman: his +perennial enthusiasms were for Emerson, Whitman, and Stevenson. + +Sherman conceived that he was a spokesman for the “average man,” and +the point is important in estimating him. It makes it fitting that his +style should be passably good but inconspicuous in any pageant of fine +styles, fitting that his thinking should constantly deflect from issues +that require an unusual severity of discipline for meeting them to +issues that are less agitating to the pulse, and most fitting that he +should seem not out of joint with his time, like a Forest Philosopher +discoursing with men who regard motor-cars as a convincing symbol of +progress, but that he should seem to be a contemporary with a touch +of conservatism, crying with other average men for Prohibition and +vituperating with them our one-time Teutonic enemies. My reader, are +you now chiding me for drawing an unsympathetic portrait? Recall then +one of the pieces in _Americans_ (1922) and then say, if you can, +that in respect to Sherman’s chief weakness I am wrong. The piece in +evidence is _An Imaginary Conversation with Mr. P. E. More_, wherein, +after paying his respects to Mr. More’s gifts, Sherman complained: “But +he has done too little to meet his poor living fellow-countrymen.” In +fact, he said, and this is the self-incriminating statement, “Mr. More +has not attended to the technique of ingratiation by which a master +of popularity plays upon an unready public with his personality, +flattering, cajoling, seducing it to accept his shadow before his +substance arrives.”[64] It all depends! The genuine writer does seek to +reduce his reader by a species of white magic, he labours to compel him +to be his slave. But this is a more virile conception of the writer’s +rôle than Sherman’s ingratiator embodies. If one puts the emphasis on +ingratiation rather than on the skilful imposition of one’s values, +then as is well known something is likely to happen to one’s values. +Consider the following sad example: Said Sherman, would that Mr. More +had loved the aristocratic Plato less and Socrates more. “If,” he went +on, “Socrates were among us to-day, I am convinced that he would be +a leader of the Democrats in the House; but Plato, I suspect, would +be a member of the Senate from Massachusetts.” Quite apart from the +fact, apparently forgotten by Sherman, that Socrates at his trial spoke +of his brief experience in politics and explained scathingly why he +had thereafter abstained from politics, I say that what has occurred +here in Sherman’s illustration is the domestication of two men so +uncompromisingly at variance with ourselves, so deeply critical of +us that if we really felt their presence to-day, we would be, to put +it mildly, thoroughly uncomfortable. But Senators and Congressmen do +not abash us, and Plato and Socrates transformed into them take on an +undisturbing and familiar air. This, I say, is a vicious technique of +ingratiation. But there is more and worse: in the same paper Sherman +eulogises the average man and then lets himself go deep in the sin of +cant. “If ‘P. E. M.’ had a bit more of that natural sympathy of which +he is so distrustful, he would have perceived that what more than +anything else to-day keeps the average man from lapsing into Yahooism +is the _religion of democracy_, consisting of a little bundle of +general principles which make him respect himself and his neighbour; a +bundle of principles kindled in crucial times by an intense emotion, in +which his self-interest, his petty vices, and his envy are consumed as +with fire; etc.”[65] + +In the lexicon of contemporary humanism there is a damning phrase, +“unselective sympathy.” I think it applies to what Sherman meant when +he said “religion of democracy,” else why does he base so much of his +message on the statistical average man? He could, like Mr. More, have +appealed to the latent common sense of man, which is not a visible +property of the average man to-day any more than it characterises his +leaders, or he could, like M. Charles Maurras, have tried to conceive +clearly of a perfect and normal man and argued for a closer approach to +normality in human affairs;[66] but no--there was working in Sherman +an element of “unselective sympathy” and it made his grasp relax on +enterprises of perfection. It was no divine average man he espoused. + +When in 1924 he became literary editor of the New York _Herald +Tribune_, Sherman had his opportunity to establish what our milieu +sorely lacks, a vigorous _conservative_ literary review. But what he +organised was essentially not different from any intelligent liberal +review with romantic tendencies: many of his regular reviewers were, +for instance, already identified as reviewers for the _Nation_. We +have followed Sherman from the academic world to the professional +literary world, and it would seem to a superficial glance that Sherman +changed remarkably in his transit from one to the other. He had been an +assailant of Mr. Dreiser’s naturalism: he was to praise _An American +Tragedy_. He had sneered, and not very well, at the “moderns”: he was +to become their friendly counsellor. He had learned, he said, that it +was a certain “vitality,” no matter under what guise, that he wanted in +letters, and this platform enabled him to do a great deal of explaining +away of his altered views. He became less provincial. + +But underneath there was no change. He had not the stuff of leadership. +For what was this element of “unselective sympathy” in him which he +called a “religion of democracy”? It was a fear of distinction, a fear +of standing away from the mass, a fear of striving far enough ahead to +be a leader. Was Sherman, I wonder, one of those numerous professors +who are so anxious to be taken as in spirit “one of the boys” that they +will compromise the dignity of their learning, that they will feel +_defensive_ about the life of the mind? As a critic certainly he was on +the defensive in presenting his values to the average audience. Of no +marked force in himself, on him the registry of environment would be +speedily and plainly made. In an academic environment he had fought the +New York critics. He came as an editor to New York and the environment +quickly persuaded him to blend with it.[67] + +When Sherman died, the professional literary world eulogised fulsomely +the _émigré_ from the academy. That already tells us a great deal about +this world. Let us see more distinctly what it was with which Sherman +assimilated. + + +II + +It was a tragi-comedy begun in high spirits and closing now in +disillusion and pathos. Three representative players have been Mr. Joel +Elias Spingarn, Mr. Van Wyck Brooks, and Mr. H. L. Mencken: a study of +their rôles will instruct us in the mediocrity of contemporary American +criticism. The influence of the first of these is a most curious +phenomenon in our recent history. + +In type Mr. J. E. Spingarn is the leisured gentleman and scholar who +adorns all too rarely our national society. His interests are wide: for +a number of years he was in politics and he has distinguished himself +by his generous efforts in behalf of the Negro: he has been an army +officer and has, one fancies, a spark of the old-time gallantry of the +military man. For us, however, he is the wealthy amateur of the arts +and philosophy; but what, one may still ask, are his claims to critical +leadership? + +Like Sherman, Mr. Spingarn spent a number of years teaching in an +academic environment. He specialised in the history of literary +criticism, producing the three-volume compilation, _Critical Essays +of the Seventeenth Century_ (1909) and the volume, _Literary +Criticism in the Renaissance_ (1899), which pleased certain Italian +thinkers and began that friendship with them later to be cemented +by his championship of Croce. Neither of these works is more than +the usual competent product of academic industry and research: Mr. +Spingarn himself revolted against the type of sterile scholarship +they represent. In 1910 he delivered his famous lecture, _The New +Criticism_. He declaimed it at the climax of a spree, for he had +intoxicated himself with the æsthetic theory of Benedetto Croce: he +was in full cry against academic dry rot. Consequently his statements +at the time were more extreme than those he would probably make on the +same theme to-day. + +Nevertheless, for the purposes of a record, we must write down such +pronunciamentos in this lecture, in the addenda to it in _Creative +Criticism_ (1917), in his article, _The Seven Arts and the Seven +Confusions_, and in his contribution to _Civilization in the United +States_ (1921) as bear on the following topics: the essence of art, the +function of the artist, the duty of the critic. + +Literature, he said, pointing to the trend of nineteenth-century +criticism, “is an expression of something, of experience or emotion, +of the external or internal, of the man himself or something outside +the man; yet it is always conceived of as an art of expression.” As for +the artist, he bade him know that “madness and courage are the very +life of art.... For the madness of poets is nothing more or less than +unhampered freedom of self-expression.... To let one’s self go--that +is what art is always aiming at, and American art needs most of all.” +The duty of the critic? To ask and answer these questions: “What has +the poet tried to do, and how has he fulfilled his intention? What is +he striving to express and how has he expressed it? What impression +does his work make on me, and how can I best express this impression?” +With the flourishes of a platform speaker who knows instinctively that +it is not straight hard thinking which sways an audience so much as +the verve with which possibly dubious generalities are pronounced, Mr. +Spingarn exclaimed vehemently that the new critics have done with the +whole question of standards, including genres, hierarchies, and moral +judgments. + +This is, of course, an unsubtilised outright statement of romantic +æstheticism. Mr. Spingarn was positive that the critic’s essential +response to a work of art must be æsthetic, but he has always withheld +what exactly he means by the æsthetic emotion or response or judgment. +(It _is_ hard to make concrete statements about the so-called æsthetic +emotion.) But that did not in the least militate against the “æsthetic +response” being used as a campaign catchword. For Mr. Spingarn had +written the proclamations for a new generation of American writers. +This is the curious phenomenon I spoke of. One is astonished not just +at the slight quantity of Mr. Spingarn’s writing in proportion to his +reputation, but more astonished at the complete lack of originality +in the documents of this apostle for originality. He added nothing +to the Crocean doctrine: he clarified nothing or modified nothing +in it. He did not even apply it, abstaining, then and since, from +concrete criticism of individual works. He merely proclaimed it. And a +widespread revolt against standards followed in American criticism. So +hearty, and eventually so wilful and silly, was the revolt that in 1922 +its opponents were entertained by the issuance from Mr. Spingarn of a +restraining manifesto entitled _The Younger Generation_. This time, +recoiling from the destructiveness of the young men, Mr. Spingarn would +herd them back into an idealistic fold, back to “discipline, character, +morals, imagination, beauty, freedom.” Very often before, romantic +expansiveness has run its course into disillusion: it is a soberer +Crocean who said, “I, who once called upon young men for rebellion and +doubt, now call upon them for thought and faith.” + +It is not Mr. J. E. Spingarn, enthusiastic amateur of letters, trained +scholar, man of feeling, who can detain us, for there is literally +nothing in his writing for the mind to work on: as a thinker, he is +thoroughly derivative and weak on definitions. But what Mr. Spingarn +stands for, the theory of self-expression, still needs a scotching. + +“Self-expression” is simply a magical catchword of the black variety. +It is a good catchword in that it emphasises the self, but it is +pernicious to the best interests of the self. For to express one’s +self means no more than just to manifest oneself, and if we say +self-manifestation instead of self-expression, we see at once how +paralysing the latter term has been. It has placed the emphasis, one +sees, on the artist _as he is_ and not on his possibilities of growth: +thus it has a static effect. Think now: impulses, people say, arise in +them or occur to them; no one claims to create his own impulses, to +self-induce his inclinations; in a manner of speaking, our impulses +come to us from the outside. Therefore, advice to be spontaneous, to +let oneself go without check, to follow one’s impulses is necessarily +advice--to do what?--_to live as unconsciously and mechanically as +possible_. The romantic may just as well hand himself over to the +Behaviourist psychologist, saying, “Here am I, a creature of whim +and impulse, the living proof of your thesis of automatism.” But the +romantic is not sternly logical. He has been proof against the question +as to the value of the self that is being expressed, and not only proof +against it: self-expression as a theory has encouraged his conceit and +sometimes fostered megalomania, thus pitching him deeper into bondage +to _external_ conditions, for conceit makes one exaggeratedly sensitive +to the environment. + +To identify one’s self with the mechanical temperamental flux of +one’s existence and call that freedom is surely strange, and it is no +wonder that it is a strange “science” which has risen to support this +identification. I am of course referring to psycho-analysis, spoken +of respectfully by Mr. Spingarn, utilised as a probing instrument in +biography by Mr. Van Wyck Brooks, and championed by Mr. Mencken. It +does not seem necessary here to make a serious attempt to discredit +psycho-analysis, for that is being done rapidly enough by such +critics of it as Dr. Trigant Burrow, by the Behaviourists, by the +academic psychologists themselves. The facts have never been other +than these: that psycho-analysis is admittedly experimental (and +therefore speculative in its procedures, unsure of itself), that its +central conception, the unconscious, not to speak of its many little +metaphors like the “censor,” has never been objectively established, +and that it has no ideal of psychological health toward which to guide +its adherents (in lieu of such an ideal, the analyst has either gone +in for an excessive relativity or he has taken the “reality” of the +statistical average to be the norm). These are the undeniable facts +and one who would like to take pride in the sturdy commonsense of +the literary profession must regret that they were not kept in mind. +Literary men to-day, one must conclude, are no less gullible than any +other group. Naively, they welcomed the psycho-analytical dramatising +of inhibitions as the causes of ills, they agreed at once that thought +was a sublimation of sex energy and somehow not quite a legitimate +function of man, they wiseacred in jargon about that bastard soul, +the unconscious. Ah, my highly suggestible writers, it is easy come, +easy go with your ideas: within a decade you will be sneering at +psycho-analysis as now you sneer at Christian Science. + +Mr. Van Wyck Brooks in his social studies and biographical +interpretations came to use psycho-analysis with tact: he is not the +sort of critic whose errors will be glaring. A sensitive man but shy +of æsthetic ideas: a sociological critic of letters in control of a +persuasive and considerate prose style: a sentimental naturalist, to +use the terminology of Mr. Irving Babbitt, but far from extreme in his +humanitarian socialism and, despite his psycho-analytic superstitions, +temperate in his faith in emotional expansiveness. + +Who would dispute Mr. Brooks’s central idea, namely, that an +acquisitive society provides unfavourable conditions for the +development of the artistic life? Of course it does. It badly +nourishes its men of genius, and Mr. Brooks became almost obsessed +with literary failure or what he conceived to be literary failure, +as witness his books on Symonds, Mark Twain, and Henry James. He was +continually calling the attention of the new writers to the conditions +in the history of America which had hampered and throttled their +predecessors: he showed how frontier life had made the machinery +of existence, the actual getting of a living, paramount and from +this necessity had originated the contempt for the arts of enjoying +existence, and how this split had perpetuated itself in the divorce +between the world of practice (“lowbrow”) and the world of theory +(“highbrow”): but he failed at the very crux of his pleading. For +struggling and unappreciated writers are too ready to believe that +the hostile environment is responsible for their shortcomings. They +are likely to wilt into self-pity and to feel victimised. That is +precisely the effect that Mr. Brooks’s writings produced, even though +he casually said: “If our literature is to grow it can only be through +the development of a sense of ‘free will’ on the part of our writers +themselves. To be, to feel oneself, a ‘victim’ is in itself not to be +an artist, for it is the nature of the artist to live, not in the world +of which he is an effect, but in the world of which he is the cause, +the world of his own creation.” But Mr. Brooks has not grown eloquent +on this theme. He seems rather to have the sweet wistfulness and +yearning of one pledged to a lost cause. This mood of wistfulness and +yearning, this image of oneself as an outcast, lonely and eager, has +not revived and will never, it seems to me, revive the spirit of the +American writer. + +Was it fortuitous, as in the example of Mr. Spingarn, that Mr. Van Wyck +Brooks should have held a certain leadership, should have put far more +than most of his generation his impress upon American taste and thought +in literary matters? It would seem that he has been a leader _faute de +mieux_, for although a charming minor critic, he has never managed to +awake an indomitable desire among his followers to master the odds. He +voiced the sentiments of a wistfully rebellious generation but shed no +light on the object of their rebellion, the achievement in a democracy +of real individuality. + +That is the problem Mr. H. L. Mencken has at least perceived, and +his bold tone better fits a leader in our present straits than Mr. +Brooks’s gentle accents, but alas! He “solved” the problem of being +an individual in a “democratic” nation simply by striking an attitude +of swagger, and like Midas he is cursed with a touch that changes all +objects into some one thing else. It is easy--and this is the secret +of his influence--to adopt Mr. Mencken’s attitude toward the current +affairs of men. Let me quote his _Catechism_ and you will have it +in one simple lesson. “_Q._ If you find so much that is unworthy of +reverence in the United States, then why do you live here? _A._ Why +do men go to zoos?” But let us observe the man in the zoo, traipsing +open-mouthed and superciliously from cage to cage, grinning in silly +patronage at the imprisoned beasts who at least are true to the laws of +their being, and shall we not mock at man’s cheap sense of superiority +based not on what he (poor lunatic!) has done for himself but only +on what Nature has made of him? No, no, it is not by contempt for +the inferior that man will grow but by dissatisfaction with himself. +The net effect of Mr. Mencken’s writings, however, is to produce +self-satisfaction and a feeling of false superiority, and this +naturally enough makes for personal passivity. + +As for the Mencken touch! It turns everything to horse sense (not to be +confused with the hard-won virtue of commonsense) and it is admirable +when it is applied to current cant, as this: “Law Enforcement becomes +the new state religion. A law is something that A wants and can +hornswoggle B, C, D, E and F into giving him--by bribery, by lying, +by bluff and bluster, by making faces. G and H are therefore bound +to yield it respect--nay, to worship it. It is something sacred. To +question it is to sin against the Holy Ghost.” + +But shrewdness is not enough when one is trying to cope with +master-ideas, and in their realm Mr. Mencken is, as he might say, +a clodhopper. One of the master-ideas in æsthetics and psychology, +one that has engaged great minds and been pondered upon each century +since the _Poetics_ was introduced into European thought, is the +Aristotelian conception of _katharsis_. Hear Mr. Mencken after the +sages and the learned have spoken. He is saying that capital punishment +affords _katharsis_ to modern societies. “_Katharsis_, so used, means +a salubrious discharge of emotions, a healthy letting off of steam. A +schoolboy, disliking his teacher, deposits a tack upon the pedagogical +chair; the teacher jumps and the boy laughs. This is _katharsis_. A +bootlegger, paying off a Prohibition agent, gives him a counterfeit +$10 bill; the agent, dropping it in the collection plate on Sunday, +is arrested and jailed. This is also _katharsis_. A subscriber to a +newspaper, observing his name spelled incorrectly in the report of a +lodge meeting, spreads a report that the editor of the paper did not +buy Liberty bonds. This again is _katharsis_.”[68] And this again is +cheap intellectual vaudeville or--it is clodhopperism. Something like +this always happens when Mr. Mencken fingers the diamond ideas of the +world; the process of degrading intellectual grandeur to horse sense +began when he grossly misunderstood Nietzsche years ago. + +By way of a last word on this idol of the emancipated Rotarian, do +not forget that Mr. Mencken, destructive critic that he is, is also +given to fulsome and extravagant praise of certain transient artists. +Mr. Edgar Lee Masters’ _Spoon River Anthology_, he says, is “the most +eloquent, the most profound and the most thoroughly national volume of +poetry published in America since _Leaves of Grass_.” Conceivably, it +may be the third, but is it eloquent, is it profound? Such judgments +are not uncommon when Mr. Mencken feels a praising mood come on. + + +III + +Into the critical pond presided over by Messrs. Spingarn, Brooks, and +Mencken leapt Sherman. His academic values were in deliquescence, and +he was greeted with cheers when he began to revise his former estimates +and with eulogies when he died untimely. Much may be said for the +three critics I have taken as big frogs in this puddle: do not forget +the gusto of Mr. Spingarn’s temperament, the historical consciousness +and fine humanity of Mr. Brooks, the valuable scavenger-work of Mr. +Mencken. But after all is said there is no seed, no fertility in the +viewpoint of each. We must stress their failures: the failure of Mr. +Spingarn to offer for application and development æsthetic ideas, the +failure of Mr. Brooks to give the new American writers an image of +themselves that would effectively inspire them against the crushing +forces of their environment, the failure of Mr. Mencken to escape +sophisticated superstitions as he escaped gross superstitions. Look +at their disciples and behold clearly the limitations of the pond’s +masters. + +Mr. Mencken has bred a score of little Menckens, men who imitate his +style, who spend their time demonstrating, as Mr. Kenneth Burke said +of Mr. Mencken, the stupidity of many a stupidity and invariably +showing that it is stupid: they have no more capacity for realising +great central ideas than Mr. Mencken. Mr. Brooks has inspired Mr. +Lewis Mumford, who is a pleasing writer on architecture, a literary +critic who seizes on the romantic elements of Emerson, Thoreau, and +Whitman and repeats with spirit what his predecessor has said, a +thinker whose general terms are vague, and who is impractical because +of his credulity as to what modern letters can actually effect in +modern society. His distinguishing trait, like Mr. Brooks’s, is a +certain fine, sensitive, generous humanity, but beware here! Without +a corresponding growth of intellectual power, a corresponding stress +on deeds, this fervour may degenerate into mere emotional bluff. +And the followers of Mr. Spingarn? Are there any now? There is an +æsthetic school of young critics, but they derive rather from Mr. Ezra +Pound and the T. S. Eliot who wrote _The Sacred Wood_. For after all +Mr. Spingarn only winded a horn and left the startled and delighted +self-expressionists to hunt for themselves. + +We have, it would seem, come to the end of a decade and a half of +exuberance. Enter mournfully Mr. Joseph Wood Krutch to confess the +disillusioned after-thoughts of the modern romanticist. It is a +supine admission he makes, without blushes be it added, when he +says in beginning his account of the modern temper or mood: “I have +been compelled to make references to many facts or supposed facts +in biology, psychology, and anthropology. Obviously no person is +qualified to assert them all with authority and obviously I am much +less qualified than many others, but when I state them I do so not as +facts, but simply as commonplaces which we have been taught to believe. +My subject is not any series of objective facts, but a state of mind, +and in the effort to describe and account for it I am responsible not +for Truth, but for the convictions, scientific or otherwise, which +I and my contemporaries have been led to hold ... if the tenets of +Freudianism or the hypotheses of the Darwinian theory are false, they +have at least been so accepted as to influence the modern temper quite +as unmistakably as if they were true ... these supposed facts have an +emotional significance. That is as far as it is necessary to go if +they are to be used as I use them, only in the effort to account for a +mood.”[69] + +Shades of the heroes of the mind! Here is a critic who can entertain +the possibility that much of our contemporary “knowledge” is untrue, +and then merely wring his hands elegantly in the melancholy produced +by _assuming_ that it is true. In _The Modern Temper_ (1929) romantic +criticism in America culminates in weak despair. + +As we should expect, there have been departures lately. There is Mr. +Walter Lippmann,[70] as able a cartographer of the Kingdom of Whirl as +Mr. Krutch. He sees clearly that the bell-tent of civilisation is in +collapse because society has no common human aim, no hold, that is, +on a center-pole capable of raising the whole structure. “The effect +of modernity, then,” he says in _A Preface to Morals_ (1929), “is to +specialise and to intensify our separated activities. Once all things +were phases of a single destiny: the church, the state, the family, +the school were means to the same end; the rights and duties of the +individual in society, the rules of morality, the themes of art, +and the teachings of science were all of them ways of revealing, of +celebrating, of applying the laws laid down in the divine constitution +of the universe. In the modern world institutions are more or less +independent, each serving its own proximate purpose, and our culture +is really a collection of separate interests each sovereign within its +own realm.”[71] And the remedy he proposes, who can quarrel with it? +The “good life,” he says, is an _acquired_ disposition,--surely an +advance over the implication of the other critics we have mentioned +that somehow the “good life” would _naturally_ come to pass, if one +could only eliminate puritanic inhibitions and flow with one’s desires. +No, says Mr. Lippmann, we must develop “detachment, understanding, and +disinterestedness in the presence of reality itself.” We must enter +into a new asceticism--who would have anticipated five years ago such +a phrase from our new critics?--defined as “an effort to overcome +immaturity.” + +This is excellent in that it perceives the problem and the goal of the +clear-insighted modern man, but does not Mr. Lippmann underestimate +the enormous psychological difficulties that block the passage from +unregenerate to regenerate man? One has the feeling that his is a paper +solution, and one is appalled to read of his hopes for psycho-analysis +as a technique for achieving the re-education of desire. The aim of +psycho-analysis is adjustment to reality, and Mr. Lippmann adopts +the dangerous phrase. It is dangerous: for what does “adjustment” +in practice mean but taking the position of maximum comfort, the +following of the path of least resistance? Continual adjustments +by beings to an environment progressively unfavourable mean the +progressive deterioration of a species: ultimately adjustment means +extinction. Perhaps the dinosaurs can give us a lesson in the fallacy +of adjustment. It is farcical for this critic to patronise Pythagoras, +for instance, who “could not have known any tested method either of +equipping his followers to appreciate science or anything besides a +crude asceticism as a means of moral discipline,” as long as we can +contrast the ancient perception of the human necessity of surmounting +the environment with the contemporary belief in the value of adjusting +(merely reacting) to it. + +Nevertheless Mr. Lippmann among others has articulated what will +probably be the fundamental position of American criticism in the +next decade, namely, the conviction that we are thinking and acting +chaotically and senselessly, and the deep surmise that man can “learn +to desire the kind of happiness which is possible.” The brilliant but +eccentric Mr. Waldo Frank has dwelt for some time on the dissolution +of the Mediæval Synthesis of Europe. America he announces is the grave +of Europe and he hopes for a kind of miracle: a generation within +the grave of a mystical revival. He too has had his thoughts turned +to the all-important question of a method of realising Wholeness in +fact as well as in concept. You will find his method outlined at +the close of _The Re-discovery of America_ (1929). It is, I fear, +hastily constructed, and more than smacks of amateurishness and of +the armchair. One wishes that he had not rushed in where sages fear +to tread, but he has at least thrown the question of a method for the +development of human potentialities into open discussion.[72] + +The most impressive of the contemporary critics who offer us “a way +out” is Mr. T. S. Eliot, but before examining him, it is proper to +repeat here that I am excluding from this paper any consideration of +the formidable opposition party to all that has been described thus +far, the new humanists whom the romanticists have found raised up +against them. In passing, I may say that I have before this dipped +my freelance pen to the humanists in salutations of great respect +mingled with a few misgivings, and I have not the least hesitation in +volunteering to defend them against the oblique attack of Mr. T. S. +Eliot. + +This painstaking critic owes much to Professor Babbitt, far more than +does Mr. Lippmann. There is in fact much overlapping between his views +and modern humanism. Yet there is an issue between the new humanists +and Mr. T. S. Eliot: it resolves itself into the question of Authority. +Let us trace out the evolution of Mr. Eliot’s ideas and we shall see +the latent weakness of his position, and those who wish may compare +it with the new humanists’ position. In _The Sacred Wood_ (1921) he +began as an acute æsthetic critic, basing the exercise of criticism +upon sensibility and intellect. He professed to be a classicist. +Opposed to romantic excesses he was, in spite of an admiration for +certain decadent poets, but was he a classicist? If so, what about the +essay on _Tradition and the Individual Talent_, in which the idea of +“creative imitation” is pushed to an extreme that makes one suspicious? +Matters became explicit a few years later when he debated with Mr. +J. Middleton Murry. In this debate Mr. Eliot admitted that such were +the instabilities and insufficiencies of private judgment and private +experience that a man should discipline himself in allegiance to some +outside Authority, and for the literary critic this meant loyalty to +the classical literary tradition. Something was here given away: the +strict corroboration by personal experiment of classical wisdom was +left out. Mr. Eliot was revealed as by disposition a neo-classicist +(with some romantic elements) thoroughly dependent upon literary +authority. + +The next step for him, as a man too intelligent and too serious to +evade the problems of social and moral chaos, was to acknowledge that +criticism in our age could not be so limited as it was conceived to be +in _The Sacred Wood_. On the contrary, the critic he saw must become +philosophic: he must be a creator of values. But here again he was +neo-classical, for he searched for external Authority in politics and +in religion. In the former he is Royalist, in the latter Anglo-Catholic. + +Turn to his essays on style and order entitled _For Lancelot +Andrewes_. They are the work of a fine judicial temperament, but not, +not at all, the work of a general in the warfare of the mind. The +distinction is worth making much of. I have elsewhere[73] analysed the +structure and procedures of Mr. Eliot’s prose to show its thoroughly +judicial characteristics: its calmness and gravity, its balance and +discriminatory powers among precedents, its fulfilment in a final +elucidation arrived at by comparisons and analyses. It is not a +full-bodied prose, the weight of the whole man concentrated on the pen, +but the prose of a judge conscious of the weight of authority _behind_, +not in, him. Now observe that in _For Lancelot Andrewes_ Mr. Eliot, +like a learned judge and with an air of profundity, is continually +pointing to the tradition of a Church, set up as an authority external +to himself. He is at his best when he presents comparatively narrow +ideas, ideas about literary style for the most part, as in his +exposition of the relevant intensity of Andrewes’ prose. At his most +disappointing, he ventures upon a safe common-place generality, as +when he remarks, “The greatest tragedies are occupied with great and +permanent moral conflicts.” The last is true enough, but Mr. Eliot +never talks very much or directly about this occupation, about the +stuff itself of moral conflicts. + +Likewise Mr. Eliot, apologist for religion, does not write about +religion: he points to _a_ Church and the intellectual riches of its +history. “For us,” he declares, “religion is of course Christianity; +and Christianity implies, I think, the conception of a Church.” And +again, “And the spirit killeth, but the letter giveth life”--but +we need both the letter and the spirit! Stress on the letter gives +us legalism in religious thinking, and on the spirit gives us what +Mr. Eliot calls “_Ersatz_-religion”: the two, spirit and letter, +must correspond. There we are! the last critical “leader” in this +examination turns out to be merely sitting on a judge’s bench and +therefore necessarily inactive: he points out where Authority may be +found, but one may doubt from the evidence of his writing whether +Authority resides in him. + + +IV + +Following the course of Sherman, we entered the professional literary +world and explored its criticism, coming finally to Mr. T. S. Eliot, +whose latest departure turns our eyes outwards again to the academic +world, to Professor Babbitt and humanism, or to the worlds of religion +or philosophy. It appears to me that our purely literary critics have +at one point or another all failed fundamentally: they are all leaders +by default only and not by essence. Either they are bound to move +towards the position of Mr. Joseph Wood Krutch, who realises that “all +the bases upon which modern despair rests were laid joyously by people +who were quite sure that they were serving humanity, and all the chains +by which we are now bound so much more firmly to earth than we want +to be were forged amidst shouts of triumph,” or they are spying some +loophole which on inspection seems not to exist. But in either case, +and this is a hopeful sign, they are all converging toward a common +realisation that King Whirl must, if possible, be deposed. The goal is +seen: the reconstructed human spirit. But without adequate leadership +how may we start to approach it? + +Well, it is easy to exaggerate the power of literary criticism. If +certain things in our culture have gone dead, criticism cannot revive +them. The essential “about-ness” of the critical activity limits it +to the guidance, stimulation, and judging of things in which there +is still some life. But assuming that a funeral ceremony such as Mr. +Krutch has conducted is still premature,--and it is premature so long +as any doubt exists of final decay,--we may then try to conceive of +what a genuine leader in critical thought would be like, and by this +ideal measure ourselves. + +Objectivity in judgment would be one of the principal marks of the +leader. That requires a sufficient scale of values to stand outside +not only the frame of one’s century but outside the frames of all +centuries. It means the ascertainment of _primary_ laws in our field, +which may be possible as it has been possible in physics to say that a +few laws are true regardless of what frame of time and space one may +be in. Objectively considered, literature may be found to have been +in decline, not just for a century and a half or just for six hundred +years but almost from its classical sources and from the Scriptures of +ancient lands. Is this depressing? It is not depressing to contemplate +a magnificent mountain from its base. + +On the contrary, a real view of the heights of Parnassus and Olympus +may inspire an uncommon elevation of aim--a second mark of the critical +leader; it seems to me unnecessary to argue that the critics we have +looked at do not realise how high man has ascended in the past or can +conceivably ascend now. Their ideas of human greatness are small. +Really, _are_ we practitioners of literary criticism distinguished by +any grandeur in breadth and elevation of thought? No one can believe it. + +Nor can I believe that we approximate the ideal critic in passion, in +a burning unquenchable indomitable love of perfect things. This is +the spirit that giveth life to standards that otherwise would seem +too skeletal, too non-human to be glamorous and magical in their +remoteness: this is the spirit that killeth despair and compromise. +Infused with it, our imagined critic becomes single-minded and proof +against deviations and resting-places. + +Finally, he would, I conceive, be distinguished by an immense capacity +for relating deeds to words. His interest would not cease with a +beautiful formulation, but would continue until the formulation was +embodied in experience. Not words alone, not deeds alone, but words +_and_ actions would be his great desideratum. + +Of whom am I thinking? It is dangerous in calling attention to concepts +or principles to cite examples until the concept or principle or, in +our case, ideal has been thoroughly understood, and I dare not hope +for that within the space of this paper. But with a caution not to +debate the achievements of him but only to study his framework, I take +the risk of nominating Matthew Arnold as having the build of a great +critic. We need in our national letters a critic of the stamp and +dimensions of Arnold. + + +V + +I append _The Prayer of a Young Critic_. + + But we have heard rumour of the Mistral. + It is a cold wind that blows from the heights, + Day after day it sweeps steadily down, + Cold and from above, changing the air + In the lowlands. + We are dwellers in lowlands + And our air has been breathed before. It is + A sultry air: men talk to each other + In haze and their words are close and fevered. + A warm breeze crosses our little hillocks, + And then the dust settles down again. + Not near the Alps do we live. + Great Genius, + Grant us an electric climate! Touch us + With snowy fire, send the Mistral to sweep + Bare our plain and proclaim the gaiety + Of altitudes, the glory of clear stars, + The exaltation of the sun burning + The rare air. Great Genius, send the Mistral! + + +FOOTNOTES + +[63] From _Points of View_, 1924, Charles Scribner’s Sons, publisher. + +[64] From _Americans_, 1922, Charles Scribner’s Sons, publisher. + +[65] The rest of the sentence is “and he sees the common weal as the +mighty rock in the shadow of which his little life and personality are +to be surrendered, if need be, as things negligible and transitory.” + +[66] Also he could have mastered the philosophy of Mr. John Dewey and +made his “religion of democracy” more respectable. + +[67] A perusal of the _Life and Letters of Stuart P. Sherman_, +published after this essay was written, increases my confidence in the +diagnosis above of Sherman’s weaknesses. Mr. P. E. More wondered many +years ago whether his young reviewer did not have “an inclination to +avoid the central problem.” Later, he warned Sherman: “I do not like to +see a man of your ability and insight deliberately taking up the job of +whitewasher” for democracy. And finally Mr. More said: “Yours is but a +sickly sort of democracy at bottom, and needs a doctor.” + +[68] From _Prejudices: Fourth Series_, Alfred A. Knopf, publisher. + +[69] From _The Modern Temper_, Harcourt, Brace & Co., publisher. + +[70] Mr. Lippmann is not a literary critic but his views are pertinent +to this discussion. + +[71] The Macmillan Company, publisher. + +[72] Even in a footnote I mention Mr. Ludwig Lewisohn with some +reluctance, and only because there are so few critics among us who have +any interest in trying to plot a direction for the future. Pauline +Christianity (grossly libelled by him as akin to the degenerate +puritanism of our day) must be destroyed, he preaches. Salvation lies +in a fusion of Hellenism (Science) and Judaism (which he interprets +selectively and sentimentally). He is a suggestive writer: he is also a +prig, a special pleader, and embarrassing in his frequent intervals of +self-pity and in his intrusions of hearth-side intimacies (proper for +telling only to his closest friends) into the public medium of print. +One cannot take this muddled romanticist seriously. + +[73] In _Style and Form in American Prose_ (1929). + + + + +_Behaviour and Continuity_ + +BERNARD BANDLER II + + +I + +Until humanism and psychology are more suitably defined than they are +at present the task of establishing their relations is hazardous. +Psychology is still in a primitive state: its basic problems and +principles are disputed, its relation to the other sciences is +undetermined, and its method is loose and unsystematic. That it may be +a science, however, is indubitable. The constitution of human nature +is open to analysis: human behaviour no less than the stars and plants +may be observed and hypothesis may be employed to order its seeming +irregularities. But the common scientific ground of purpose which +underlies the differences of psychological theories does not unite the +humanists, and the problem of stating the nature and scope of humanism +is correspondingly difficult. The absence of a common scientific +ground, of an accepted subject matter and a technique, enables any +man interested in human activities to call himself a humanist and to +maintain his contention, whereas no man, unless technically trained, +will consider himself a psychologist. He may observe society and +deliver himself of apothegms and epigrams that characterise people +truly--like the French moralists, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, and +Joubert. He may trace the influence of ideas on conduct, as Mr. Babbitt +has done. But that is ethics and philosophy, not psychology. Psychology +limits itself to studying how human beings behave and to reducing their +most complex actions to primitive elements. Ethics evaluates their +activities and judges them. So, however confusing the positions of +contemporary psychologists and humanists, if we keep in mind the formal +aspects of psychology and ethics, a study of the relations of the two +may be instructive. + +Upon psychology as a science, as upon physics and chemistry, humanism +can have nothing to say. It may examine the logic of psychology and +criticise its presuppositions, although that is properly the task of +the cosmologist, like Mr. Whitehead. But towards the conclusion of +psychology, the “laws” it may formulate, humanism’s only possible +attitude is one of interested acceptance. An ethics should not +prescribe the limits of science, nor dictate the nature of its results. +And if the science deals successfully with human actions, ethics, +instead of criticising, should respect its results, that ideals may not +be founded on ignorance and fancy but rather on knowledge. + +Unfortunately, the amount of psychology which is scientific and +relevant to human nature is small. Much of it reduces to physiology. +The chemistry of the glands and blood, the nature of sensation, +feeling, emotion, and of the thinking processes, and those +predispositions of the body which we call instincts are ultimately +problems of physiology and await the development of that science for +their solution. What distinguishes psychology from physiology is the +study of behaviour in society: the transmutation of the instincts and +temperament into habits and sentiments. Of psychology proper we have, +so far, elaborate programmes, a bewildering variety of theories,--part +epistemology, part logic, part metaphysics, and part mythology,--a +vast accumulation of data, some classifications, and hardly any +science. Yet the studies of “types,” “personality,” “culture forms,” +and particularly the researches of psychiatrists contain many accurate +descriptions of human behaviour. Their endeavour to explain the most +sublimated actions, by reference to the constitution of the organism +and to the determining factors of its environment, approaches sound +science. + +But “behaviour in society” and “the determining factors of environment” +are vague phrases. If there is to be a science of behaviour and society +two conditions are necessary: first, that the organisms in spite of +individual variations should be essentially the same; and second, that +the environment to which they react should be stable and limited. For +if each organism were essentially unique there would be no basis for +the science of psychology, and if the environment were constantly +changing there would be no conditions and no control for studying +the organism. But human environment, the totality of forces which +affect us and help satisfy our needs, is not stable and limited. It is +plastic and relative. Tradition and convention are added to the forces +composing an animal’s environment. These multiply the possibilities of +behaviour indefinitely. In proportion as a man frees himself from a +blind adherence to custom, the more personal his environment will be. +To know such a man’s environment is to become acquainted with a unique +world. It is to know not only his ancestry, his history, his habits, +his occupation, and his social milieu, but also his purposes, the ends +which he consciously seeks and which are the meaning of his actions to +him. It is to know his mind. But a mind, being unique, can never be +absolutely known. Even if it were completely revealed in behaviour, +conversation, and writing, and if all the occasions that have served to +form it were discovered, one could never be certain to capture a man’s +understanding of his words, or his interpretation of his attitude and +actions. + +Behaviourists are therefore right in excluding consciousness, purpose, +and mind from psychology. These are inaccessible to science: first, +because they can never be precisely seized; and second, because they +introduce an indefinite number of objects which preclude a limited and +stable environment. Mind can reflect upon all objects of experience, +and these in turn can become objectives of action. So soon as this +happens the exact control which experimental science demands is +prevented and the progress of psychology is blocked. It thus seems +impossible for psychology to deal with the most interesting aspect +of human behaviour, those where action is guided and dominated by +thought and is not blindly reflexive. To avoid this limitation of +psychology certain behaviourists, in the name of what they conceive +to be mechanism, have denied the efficacy of purpose and mind +altogether. According to the argument, consciousness, purpose, and +mind are waste products, attendant upon natural processes, like sparks +from a locomotive. Or they are like the decorations on illuminated +manuscripts, illustrating the text, and quite superfluous. Otherwise +they would be forces, inexplicably interfering with natural processes. +These arguments fail by misconstruing the notion of purpose, which is +not a force but an end. Purpose does not direct action but _is_ the +direction which action takes. It is the rational explication of the +objects of our desires and wishes. The end has no initial power, but, +once thought has discerned it as the true object of our desires and +they have attached themselves to it, as a lover to his mistress, so +that satisfaction cannot be found elsewhere, then the end acquires a +deputed power which it may never surrender. Since purpose defines the +objects of desire which thereby become objectives of action, it is a +determining factor of human behaviour, and the so-called mechanistic +arguments against it are invalid. Yet, since science deals with +material and efficient causes only, psychologists are compelled to +disregard formal and final causes, purposes, and ends. + + +II + +The goal of ethics, on the other hand, is to discover the most +organised system of ends, of goods, which a rational life can realise. +This goal of ethics can never be fully achieved, for so long as man +acts and reflects he may pursue and conceive novel ends. But though +the most elaborate system of ethics is in origin an expression of +personal preferences, it is not therefore arbitrary and unjustifiable +by reason. My values have their roots in my nature. I can exhibit +them, demonstrate that they are mutually consistent and do not defeat +the interests which underlie them. Furthermore I can declare that if +any one honestly questioned his heart he might find that my values +represented it. It is not to psychology, then, that one must turn for +knowledge of human goods. For psychology, although it may analyse the +efficient causes of desire, cannot estimate the value of its objects, +of the ideal form of a rational life. If psychologists talk of a normal +organism, they mean one whose desires are adjusted to its environment, +the one most likely to survive. If they speak of superior organisms +and civilisation, they mean increased ability for adjustment to a more +complex environment. Thus though psychologists speak of normal and +civilised they are unable either to define or to evaluate them. + +Knowledge of human goods is furnished by philosophers, when they +are frank and speak for themselves; by the founders of religions, +the saints, and the mystics; by the poets, and chiefly, as Socrates +knew, by knowledge of oneself. Self-knowledge, though it may first +look back upon the behaviour studied by psychology, moves in the +opposite direction toward the objects sought. These it endeavours to +comprehend, to purge of contradictions, to regard intently _sub specie +mortalitatis_. From the vantage point of death one becomes a spectator +of human life. Thought acquires the prestige of impersonality, without +the sacrifice of its warm interest in life. The point of view of death +differs from seeing things _sub specie æternitatis_ both in essence +and in purpose. It does not abolish time or elevate mind to the +contemplation of a necessary order, which is the function of seeing +things _sub specie æternitatis_, although consideration of death (as in +the Phædo) may do this. It enables one to regard life in its totality +and, without projecting it against the background of nature, to +estimate each partial aim in the perspective of all others, and thus to +distinguish the objects one truly desires. + +The effort to detach oneself from the present and to incorporate it +with the past and future in a satisfactory whole, which psychology +does not attempt, is what makes action ethical. In the unique self the +past exists in memory, which is one’s personal tradition. Thus memory, +besides being the mother of the muses, is the mother of ethics and +of rational action. It enables us to confront our present condition, +its projects, hopes, and fears, with the past, and by comparison +to evaluate the present action. It enables us to utilise the whole +of our experience in the active organisation of our life and thus +to attain a continuity of being. Consequently a succession of full +moments does not, as Pater thought, constitute a full life. For each +of those separate selves which a past moment represented and which +the subsequent one renounced lives in memory to advance its claim to +existence against the present; and only similar circumstances are +needed, a chance odour, or gesture, or phrase, to revive it, and make +one feel the desolation of its loss. These intermittances of the heart, +as Proust calls them, are dependent on the infinite passive occasions +of sensation, and since they never represented an ideal actively +striven for, no analysis is able to penetrate to an underlying unity. +On the other hand the consequence of dispossessing oneself of the past +in order to live in the moment is a reduction of the personality to +indecision and apathy. Besides, the past preserved in memory and the +future that we anticipate enrich the present and give it its fulness +of being, as a musical phrase has more significance in a symphony than +when played in isolation. + +As one interrogates the present, with its What shall I do? What shall +I be? it expands to absorb the relevant testimony that relates it to +the past and to the future. Ordinarily the present includes a fairly +definite content, some concrete situation and prospect, often trivial, +as a dinner to be ordered. Choice when it is not automatic can easily +review the relevant factors; one’s favourite dishes, the season of +the year; possible illness on the morrow. At other times the relevant +relations are endless, particularly when an irrevocable choice forces +us to discriminate among all the elements of our being: love, honour, +country, and religion each claiming our allegiance. The infinite +variety of situations that may arise and the impossibility of relating +them to a definite past and a definite future are responsible for the +differences of ethical systems. A philosopher’s conception of the +typical situation will define his problems and dictate the general +terms of his solution. Buddha saw sorrow and suffering as the main +portion of human existence. His endeavour, therefore, was to emancipate +mankind from them. Aristotle started with man’s desire for happiness. +Therefore he analysed the actions of men, the pursuit of wealth, of +honour, and of knowledge to see which conformed most with the essential +nature of man. Amiel’s situation was intensely personal, but he stated +his problem in universal terms. Amiel recognised from his youth the +necessity of an organising purpose and a continuous effort. His culture +and sympathies, however, extended to all human actions; to limit his +life to one of the manifold beings he felt contained within himself +seemed a violation of the ideal. + +Now what is the context, the appropriate situation and problem, from +which ethics should start? Is it some general aspect of life common +to all people, like sorrow or suffering, or the generic nature of +man, or the attempt to discover an organising purpose? Or is it our +immediate context, the world to which our traditions, conduct, desires, +and ambitions have engaged us? It is this world that confronts us +daily. Our actions in it are the theme of the novel, the drama, and +the epic, which are an almost inexhaustible field for ethical study. +Each work is a representation of an action, and in proportion as the +writer concentrates his imagination on the situation before him, on his +_donnée_, and reveals its possibilities, the action will illustrate +some ideal. Literature always retains the concrete immediacy of life, +the movement of an action never being from a situation to a principle. +But all the comprehensiveness of a principle, the innumerable +unsuspected relations which it opens when once intuition has leapt the +gap between a formula and the fact it covers is implied by an action +at its close. The characters are still flesh and blood, but as they +finally define themselves their situation includes all their relevant +past and all that is significant in their future, so that they become +transparent, and the whole moral world which they represent shines +clearly through them. Hence it is possible that a profound ethics and a +great work of art may introduce us to the same moral world, so that the +orientation of our being, emotional and intellectual, after reading the +_Ethics_ of Spinoza and _The Wings of the Dove_ say, will be identical. + +If ethics is to be persuasive and reasonable it must be founded on the +most complete experience possible. The context from which it arises, +as in life and literature, should be rich and concrete. The defect of +most ethical systems is that they quit life too abruptly. Instead +of studying the complex conditions which underlie any achieved good, +as psychology is contented to do, philosophers ignore them, except +in their generality, and so attain a factitious unity. Consequently +rationalistic philosophers invert the proper procedure of thought. +They start from the typical, the general, and the rational, whereas +these are the ultimate fruits of reflection. When an ethics, however, +repudiates the purpose of rationalism as well as its method, it severs +itself from all connection with the good. If it speaks of goods and +ideals, it speaks of them only provisionally and instrumentally. Its +excessive preoccupation with the conditions marks the return of ethics +to that immersion in the present from which it initially arose. + +Humanism differs from other ethical systems by its data and by its +method. Its data are each individual in his context; his inherited +values, his body, his capabilities, and the relations formed by them. +It is the task of each individual to preserve himself in the world, +and to establish a continuity of being. The essence of humanism is the +refusal to allow any sudden break of development, any shift of basis +that arbitrarily repudiates one’s past, such as breaking one’s word. +Its method is to survey life in the light of death. By this means one’s +personal situation can be enlarged by history, and by the contemplation +of the ideals which men pursue. The more vivid the conception of +an ideal society and a rational life within it, so long as it does +not weaken one’s personal reality, the more likely is life to yield +happiness. + +Psychology and ethics deal with the same subject matter, human +behaviour, but they regard it from opposite points of view. Psychology +regards it externally as a physical phenomenon having already taken +place in time. Like any other science psychology tries to correlate +its diverse data and to reduce them to the simplest elements possible. +But since psychology requires that the organisms which it studies +should be essentially the same and that the environment to which they +react should be stable and limited, it cannot deal with the behaviour +dominated by mind. For mind is unique and its possible objects are +infinite. Its language is that of meaning, purpose, end. The effort of +a moral individual is to know what he wants, to know his mind. Hence +ethics regards human behaviour internally and as directed towards the +future. The goal of ethics is the satisfactory synthesis of the unique +perspectives of different minds. It approximates this synthesis by +studying the dialectic of desire, the logical implications of each +purpose in relation to all other objects. In this way ethics will +describe ideally how an individual may harmonise with himself and with +society, which psychology can never do, and thus point the way to +happiness. + + + + +_The Well of Discipline_ + +SHERLOCK BRONSON GASS + + +The lapidary precedes the historian, and the sound of the mallet is +heard in the land chipping _Hic Jacet_ on the monuments which humanism +has erected, with an epitaph which runs blithely thus: + + “Humanism enjoyed four hundred years of prosperity in the later + world and then gave way to Modernism. From Mid-Fifteenth to + Mid-Nineteenth Century, Humanism traced the patterns of the + Occident. Then, with a dramatic flourish comparable to that of the + Renaissance, a new pattern was superimposed on the palimpsest of + the West, based on the concepts and methods of Natural Science.” + +Meantime, while the historian waits for a deeper perspective, I am +writing in the belief that there is more vitality in humanism than +the lapidaries have given it credit for. Humanity, at all events, is +perennial, and men are not likely to forget for long that science is +not ineluctable nature itself, but only human knowledge, and that all +knowledge, even knowledge of nature, is pursued at will for whatever +it is worth to them in their own esteem--that behind the pursuit of +natural science lies the authority of the evaluating mind. + +The human worth of the sciences, I ardently echo, is beyond compare. +They have, it is true, played a sardonic trick on their pursuers, +and have seemed for the moment honestly to nullify any significant +worth in human existence. But men may still recollect that it is they +themselves who have made the nullifying discovery. They are worth at +least what that discovery implies--an intelligence, a power to think +and judge, and an impulse to act selectively on the basis of a sense +of values--or why have they pursued the sciences at all? With these +resources to start with, and science in their scrip, they may also have +the humour to see that there remains to them, as of old, the eternal +task of making the best of it--the very task to which science itself is +a contribution. When this perception shall have grown lively enough, +humanism will again come into its own. + +Granted a will to return to humanism, however, the return itself will +not be simple. Something, we shall find, has been lost in the meantime. +Value and significance are not handed to us on a platter; they are +themselves products of thought. If life, then, has seemed to be emptied +of them by the findings of natural science, it is equally possible +to suppose that this bathos is due to a diluted capacity for thought +in precisely the field of thought where value and significance are +conceived. + +This is the possibility that I have set out to examine. The broad +hint of it lies on the surface. If discipline of the mind has any +virtue--and modernism itself with its austere regimen is its current +champion--that virtue has been lifted from the field of thought where +human values are explicitly involved, to a field of thought from which +they are explicitly banned. By every calculation, therefore, the minds +thus affected should have lost something of their capacity to think in +the undisciplined area, and should have lost something of their powers +to conceive or discover the values that, under happier auspices, give +life its significance. + + +I + +In imagination we dramatise the Renaissance as a sweeping revolution. +Whether humanists or modernists, we look upon it as a beginning, +or a resumption, at all events as the turning-point from which we +are the continuators in a straight line. Historians of philosophy, +of letters, of politics, of science all concur. More impressively +still the men of the Renaissance themselves were quite conscious of +the change--Bessarion, Aldus, Erasmus, da Vinci, Galileo, Bruno, to +take names at random. The shift of curiosity from the divine to the +secular, and the responsive shift of discipline from scholasticism to +humanism opened out new vistas to the voyaging mind. It would be hard +to exaggerate the almost theatric reversals which the times witnessed +and welcomed. + +Sweeping as it was, however, the revolution of the Renaissance was +less radical than that of the second half of the nineteenth century. +In contrast to the latter the changes wrought by the Renaissance were +on the level of explicit ideas. The essential stuff of thought was +unchanged. New ideas were astir, but the elements of which they were +built were the old elements. Theology gave way to humanism; God as +the centre gave way to man as the centre. But after all, God had been +conceived as a father and man as a child of God, and, God or man, +their psychology was the same. The very literature which had laid the +premisses of mediæval thought--the Bible--permeated the consciousness +of the humanistic period yet more deeply. + +The shift of discipline from sacred to profane letters, as a +consequence, made no profound break in the consciousness itself. +The major impulses of the two periods blended easily and naturally. +The religious impulse of the Middle Ages lent itself triumphantly +to literary expression; there was the _Divine Comedy_. The literary +impulse of the Renaissance lent itself no less triumphantly to +religious themes; there was _Paradise Lost_. Natural science, indeed, +began its modern course under the impulse of the Renaissance. Still, +from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, while the common +discipline of the West was humanistic, natural science did not +profoundly alter the minds of men. It was an incident, a special play +of curiosity and thought on the part of men whose minds were formed and +informed in the medium of humane letters. Even Doctor Johnson had his +chemical apparatus. + +Not until the latter half of the nineteenth century did the common +discipline of letters begin to give way. Up to that time, therefore, +there had been a basic continuity in the cultivated consciousness of +the West, not only from the Middle Ages but from high antiquity itself. +For the Renaissance was avowedly a resumption of the broken threads +of ancient thought. And its humanism, however loosely it spliced the +break, was evidence that here too the essential elements of its reason +were the same. What so intoxicated the Renaissance mind was the very +spontaneity of its grasp of ancient ideas. And this affinity has been +the mark of humanism ever since. + +Now continuity is not necessarily a virtue. Nothing, alas, is so +persistent as error and evil. One aspect of the shift to modernism, +however, seems to me itself an evil, promising persistence--a rupture +at the basis of reason. Modernism, indeed, also had its dramatic +confrontations, its moments of intense self-consciousness. New +conceptions came into tragic conflict with old, yielding many a Robert +Elsmere, and many a family cleavage like that between the elder and the +younger Gosse. Such conflicts are disconcerting and painful, and for a +generation or two terribly impressive. It is not to such overt changes, +however, that I refer. They belong to the normal life of the mind. +It is the very function of intellect to incur and mediate them. One +is inclined to bid the intellect be a man and face the frank hazards +of the life of reason. I refer rather to a change, not in ideas, but +prior to ideas, among the ultimate premisses of thought, in the +discipline by which the powers of the mind and the fortunes of ideas +are themselves in a large measure disposed. And this change, it seems +to me, has proved a scotching of the goose that lays the golden egg. + + +II + +Where is the bottom of the well into which discipline--vaunted so +highly by both humanist and modernist--is poured? Discipline, as +distinguished from any guise of propaganda, is a delicate affair. Its +concern is not for the specific ideas with which perforce it must do +its deed, and which it pours into the depths in an unremitting stream. +Its subtle task is to enrich and enhance the powers of thought and yet +leave them free--free to think, and free to judge even the ideas by +which they are enriched. + +The bottom lies deeper, therefore, than the level at which the Huxleys, +the Spencers, the Eliots placed the controversy--the relative merits +of two sorts of knowledge, of Homer and Sophocles, of Plato’s Ideas +and Cæsar’s battles, of _Jerusalem Recovered_ and _Paradise Lost_, +as against the constitution of matter and the laws of nature. These +relative merits are themselves matters of judgment, as the controversy +witnesses. And it is precisely the quality of such judgment that is +momentously at stake. + +Of course the Hellenist must know his Greek and the astronomer his +physics. They are specialists, and the question is not of them. +It is a question of that common humanity of which Hellenist and +astronomer, poet and chemist, man of leisure and man of affairs are +alike responsible members. As between humanist and modernist a sort of +official decision has already been rendered, and the common discipline, +together with the faith that animates it, has gone over to the +sciences. Is it ill-humoured to point out that the decision itself has +been arrived at and progressively confirmed in that field of judgment +from which discipline has been progressively withdrawn? At all events, +it is toward that deeper level that I am delving, to get at the roots +of that common humanity. + +The Darwinian hypothesis of the descent of man is a biological way +of dealing with a reflection old in the tradition of humanism. +From Plato down, curiosity has toyed with theories of the origin +of language. Language is patently artificial, a device, a product +of human ingenuity. That a child is born without speech might mean +nothing, since there are instincts that emerge only in the course of +development. But language differs from language; every term in every +language is arbitrary; the child, whatever his blood, picks up the +speech of his community; individuals differ in the extent and character +of their deliberate acquisition. All these considerations point to its +artificiality. One speaks, indeed, before one’s mind is mature enough +to reflect upon the accomplishment. But that is the very point, as will +appear in a moment. + +Whatever the theory, the origin of speech implies ancestors before +speech. And those ancestors--is it fantastic to identify them, in +a slightly modified version of our evolutionary history, with the +prehuman race of the Darwinian rendering? We should not, I think, have +called them men. For bound up with language is all that we think of +as human--the power of communication, the fixation and tradition of +thought, the comparison and criticism of ideas, co-operation on the +basis of common principles, all history and philosophy, all literature +and science, the very process of reason itself prior to its expression. + +I say reason, not intelligence. Intelligence itself--a primary +mystery--is scarcely the monopoly of men. The cat here on the hearth +has a share of it, and the mouse of which she is apparently dreaming. +It is not intelligence that distinguishes the human species sweepingly +from the brute, but a particular deployment of it, a way of using it or +managing it, that we call _reason_. + +To linger in imagination over this moment of evolution is to linger +over a transition from the dumb fluidity of animal consciousness to +its articulation by the use of language. Sheer animal consciousness +may alight, perhaps, upon any imaginable concept. Its rational defect +is its inability to return after departure to the same spot. Who by +taking pains could return again to precisely the number 91 but for the +articulating, identifying, stabilising symbol? The rational use of the +native intelligence thus hangs upon an ability to identify particles of +consciousness arbitrarily shaped, to quit them, and then to return. And +speech serves this end; so far as it is carried it precipitates fluid +consciousness into stable, negotiable blocks for the architectural +structures of thought. + +Now it is true that what is original, what is new, what is invented or +discovered by the thinking mind itself emerges, not in the articulate +particles--they are perforce old stuff--but in the perception by the +intelligence of relations between them. This spontaneous perception +of relationships is the play of reason; thought is a sort of creative +miracle. + +On the other hand--and this is the point I am driving at--just because +thought is the perception of relationships between particles of old +stuff, the particles themselves condition these perceptions. I see only +such relationships as hold between the particles I happen to possess; +certainly I can see none between such as I do not possess. And those I +have are none of my own creation. They are handed down to me. In this +sense the power of thought the “faculty” of reason, is a _tradition_. + +In fancy I may picture a Romulus--abandoned on a hillside and suckled +by a wolf--inventing for himself a system of symbols with which to +articulate his own fluid consciousness, conning them into spontaneity, +and building them into thought. But in reality he would not--he could +not. The actual articulations with which one thinks are not native to +the consciousness. Who of us can count more than a stray one or two of +his own invention, even with the hint and model of a whole armory of +them already in possession? They are, on the contrary, a heritage. And +what one can think is conditioned by that heritage--such items of it as +through hap or care one has previously acquired. + +All that I, for instance, can think in the field of chemistry is +sharply limited to what I can construe with the articulate particles in +that area of my consciousness. In my actual experience that area has +been poorly endowed. All that I can think there I could say in a bad +quarter of an hour. And what I can think there is cabined and cribbed +by the special particles I happen to possess. + +This analysis, so obviously valid in any special field of thought in +which one is aware of one’s ignorance, holds no less, it seems to me, +for that universal ignorance in which all of us are born. If it does +hold there, it may stand as one version of the hypothesis of human +evolution--rational mind out of animal consciousness, man out of brute. +The change that effected this evolution was not accomplished, however, +once for all in some remote past. The outer device was transmissible, +and hence became a racial characteristic. But the change itself +must still be re-enacted in every growing child. Something of it is +re-enacted in the emergence of every idea in the rational mind. How far +it is carried and how complete the evolution depends upon deliberate +cultivation. + +Intelligence is pure gift, the prior condition and animating agent +of all thought. Whether intelligence itself may be increased by +exercise is a matter of faith or doubt, as one chooses. In face of a +primary mystery one can only be humble and dumb. But of that ingenious +artifice, the arbitrary articulation of the consciousness into stable +particles, there can be no doubt. It is a human invention in human +hands. What can be done with these particles by way of thought depends +in a given mind upon their range, the richness of their substance, +their stability, and their clarity. And they can, with care, be +extended, enriched, stabilised, clarified. + +That there are larger units, whole structures of thought, with which +discipline may be occupied goes without saying. Not all the heritage +of the civilised mind is deposited in these particles. But the larger +units are themselves built of the smaller, and what any mind makes of +them hangs on its prior possession of the elements of which they are +built, and the quality of those elements. In childhood one may have +read, say, _Gulliver_, or _Through the Looking Glass_, with delight, +and in maturity may still read them with delight. The outer symbols are +the same now as then, but the responsive thoughts are not. In response +to each symbol now there rises richer substance than the mind then +possessed, grounds for relationships which then escaped detection. + +The two, indeed--particle and structure--are inseparable in practice. +It is in use that the particles have accumulated their substance +and quality; it is by finding them in use that the mind identifies +and enriches and clarifies them for itself. But it is they, I +think--the ultimate premisses of all thought and the basis of all +understanding--that lie at the bottom of the well into which discipline +is poured. + +For in the first place they lie at the deepest level to which +discipline can go. That is something. But by a happy fortuity there, +at the very node between animal consciousness and rational thought, +they occupy a strategic position. Through them the fluid streams of +consciousness, rising from below, are articulated for thought--and +one thinks what he can with the shapes thus formed. And through these +same shapes come the chief enrichments of the consciousness from above. +For in reality what I apprehend of the thoughts of others is not +their thoughts but my own. It is what I build in my own mind with the +particles of my own consciousness called up by the symbols they have +used. They are the determinants, coming and going, and a discipline +that thickens and deepens and clarifies them enhances at one stroke +both the give and the take of the mind, its power to think and its +power to learn. + +They lie at a strategic point, moreover, in another and no less +momentous transaction. They not only articulate the individual mind +for thinking; coming from a common tradition they tend, in the measure +in which that tradition is mastered, to articulate disparate minds +alike. Only so can two minds think the same thought. It is here that +mind comes together with mind--or forever fails to come together. +And situated between two realms of freedom--the wild realm of animal +consciousness and the cultivated realm of reason--they alone are +amenable to coercion. Arbitrary agreements, sheer conventions, +subsequent to all native idiosyncrasies and prior to all conflict of +prejudice or opinion, they are open to utter community. And since in +relation to all thinking they are the ultimate premisses, they afford +the unquestioned common grounds imperative for mutual understanding and +community of idea. + +Discipline can thus bring its pressures to bear upon them with a clear +conscience, assured that here it can do its essential task without +violating its own principles--cultivate the individual judgment without +infringing upon its freedom, and bring mind into community with mind +without the weakness of assumption or the affront of dogmatism. +Assured, too, that in a sort of beneficent circle community itself +breeds both mind and further community. For given a broad community in +these particles, the common legacy comes the purer to its inheritors; +recurrence of each particle confirms and enriches and clarifies it in +the experience of each mind. In a community without community, on the +other hand, occurrence and recurrence tend rather to lead it astray and +confuse it; and though men talk in common symbols, they build them into +tacit obliquities of mutual incomprehension. + +Is it too much to suggest, in passing, that the phenomenon of the +brilliant period, the curious clustering of great names in the +bead-roll of history, may be explained as a moment when by a community +of mind with mind, here at the basis of all thought, a fine individual +clarity and a lively spontaneity of mutual understanding have lifted +the current of ideas to a high level? At all events, by such community +the capacity of the mind both to think and to learn is heightened and +the ardour of thought is stimulated, expression meeting comprehension, +and comprehension quickening the impulse to think. + + +III + +I have gone a long way about and brought up with a conclusion that +on its own showing should be as valid for modernism as for humanism. +That, indeed, is my own sense of it--that here is the organic economy +of thought in whatever field. And in fact, as I have intimated, its +application is likely to be most obvious in the sciences, which we +come upon after the mind is in some measure formed. Each science has a +special articulation and nomenclature outside our normal experience, +without which we can think but meagrely and vaguely in that area. The +part they play there is evident. To these articulate particles it gives +precise definition, at once for the sake of accuracy of calculation +and for the sake of mutual understanding and wide co-operation among +those who pursue it. Incidentally by its technology it escapes the +loose corruptions with which lay usage always threatens a vernacular. +The extraordinary results of the discipline which establishes these +articulations, these precisions, and these communities need no bush. + +It is perhaps less obvious that discipline is even more imperative +in that other area which the casual, voluble experience of living +begins to articulate before we are aware, laying the premisses of that +common mind which we tend to take for granted as a native gift. Though +it is not a native gift, no man feels deficient in it, as Descartes +pointed out. What it yields him is life as he knows it; it is his +apprehension of reality. In one sense this trust is his intellectual +virtue. It marks his faith in the judgments of reason--the best reason +he knows. He may be aware of his ignorance in this or that field of +knowledge--know that he knows nothing of astronomy, of Homer, of +plumbing, of torts. But no one knows everything; these ignorances are +comparable to those of other men; by turning his mind to them he could +master them. + +By turning his mind! This contrast between _mind_, on the one hand, and +on the other hand specific knowledge to which a _mind_ may be turned, +is the very heart of the conflict between humanist and modernist. To +the modernist, justifiably proud of his special methods, that mind +which comes to him unaware is a casual and amateur affair. As a process +of reason it is the way fools think, and asses, and the cohorts of +stupidity. Well, it is. + +To the humanist, however, this liability is precisely its momentous +importance. Here is mind itself by which man becomes human out of +brute, mind in symmetry as it develops by confronting life and carrying +on the adventure. According to its competence it apprehends the scene, +the play, and the players, conceives the significance of the plot, +exercises its judgment, lays its guiding principles, and conducts +its affairs in wisdom or unwisdom, justice or injustice, harmony or +inharmony. That it may be the mind of a fool is always its tragic +possibility. + +In shifting the basic common discipline from humane letters to natural +science, then, modernism has, in so far, _abandoned the mind_. I say +this in conscious enjoyment of hyperbole. There remains just so much +of mind as develops in casual experience--that corrupting casual +experience which science so sedulously avoids in its technology. But +the point at issue is one of discipline, the conscious extension of +mental competence beyond the limits of casual experience. Plainly the +discipline of natural science neglects much of the mind as irrelevant. + +For natural science is an attempt to picture and understand the +material universe as it still would be if the knower were not in +it--things and their relations to each other. The virtue sought by the +man of science is the ability to ignore what he, by the accident of +his conscious existence, thrusts into the situation. Obviously this +discipline will articulate the consciousness for thought only here +within this field of knowledge--among things and their relations, to +the rigid exclusion of the knower and his affairs. + +Humane letters, on the other hand, make no such exclusion. They too +deal with things and their relations. But they include what natural +science ignores--the knower and his responsive evaluation of what +he knows. Literature looks out from the common centre at which the +experience of life itself places us. It is an imaginative, reflective +extension of that experience. And it does directly what experience +itself does only indirectly if at all, for being articulate or +nothing--symbol and meaning forever hand in glove--it specifically +articulates the reader’s mind, enriching and clarifying the premisses +of consciousness with which in turn that mind thinks in the field of +common human responsibility. Here is the telling difference between the +literate and the empiric mind--not in intelligence, not in specific +knowledge, but in the substance and quality of the premisses of thought. + +Literature uses the unprecise vernacular, it is true; but that is its +virtue. For the vernacular, in contrast with any and all technologies, +is the idiom of the mind itself, its fundamental humanising tradition. +It is the essential historic feat of any civilisation, not so much +perhaps to have conceived its guiding ideas--ideas change--as, in +conceiving them, to have slowly evolved the articulate elements by +which its heritors may conceive their own. Nature cares nothing for +them or for what is made of them. They are none of hers. We come by +them only through familiar contact with the tradition which has shaped +and accumulated them. + +Here, then, is the great human task--now for the first time in the +history of the West abandoned to the mercies of casual experience. Man +is a social being in more than his habits and his institutions. His +humanity itself hangs on his sociability. Deprive him of his social +legacy of articulations and he is once again the sub-human animal. +It was the essence of humanism as a discipline that it attempted, +not to inculcate a doctrine, but to carry on and on this ultimate +humanising process. And in this it served three ends, distinct but +interdependent--mind, community, and the tradition on which both mind +and community depend. + + +IV + +From Plato to Irving Babbitt humanists have been occupied with +the idea of leadership, since men are social beings, unhappy and +self-destructive in mutual hostility, happiest and greatest when +co-operating in community in the wisest available ideas. Whose ideas? +Plato proposed the leadership of philosophers. But he himself did all +that a philosopher can do. He was of the greatest; in one of the high +masterpieces of human thought he proposed a scheme for the salvation +of Greece--and while he wrote and Athens read, Greek civilisation +declined. Something had departed that but an age before had made of +Athens the supreme exemplar of what human existence may come to at its +best, in zest of life and ardour of co-operation, in brilliance and +profundity of thought, something that had created a society more lovely +than any other in recorded history, and produced a literature and a +full free current of ideas that are still the model and despair of all +our aspirations. + +May this loss have been loss of disciplined community at the basis of +all thought? Each man thinks not what he will but what he can with +the articulate particles of his consciousness. Only by community here +can one mind think the same thoughts as another. In such community +minds will hold their common ideas with heightened ardour, as in +friendship a common thought rises to new vitality by being shared in +utter comprehension. It was not an accident that friendship played so +profound a part in Greek life, not an accident that thought and letters +so flourished. For expression had met understanding, and understanding +had enriched the common premisses of thought. One among them, at all +events, made the association. + +“Not long afterwards,” says Thucydides, “nearly the whole Hellenic +world was in commotion. When trouble had once begun in the cities, +those who followed carried the revolutionary spirit further and +further.... _The meanings of words had no longer the same relations to +things_....” And he goes on to detail wherein the confused meanings +of terms unsettled the mutual comprehension upon which the harmony of +civilised life depends. + +As for us, we are in something of a like predicament. The most striking +aspect of contemporary life is the contrast between the fruitfulness +of the scientific world, its vitality, its harmony, its world-wide +co-operation, and our frankly acknowledged moral bankruptcy--vigour +and fecundity in the area to which discipline has been shifted, +and futility and chaos in the area from which discipline has been +withdrawn. It is not that men have ceased to be concerned with moral +choice. So long as they pursue on reflection what seems to be good, so +long are they exercising their moral nature. Never, I dare say, has +there been a wilder play of reflection on what seems to be good. + +If we are suffering a moral chaos it is not from the abandonment of +morals but from a helpless discrepancy, an incapacity to think the same +thoughts. Given another Plato, our only chance of accord under his +leadership would be such community with him and with each other in the +articulate elements of his utterance as would evoke the same living +thoughts in our various minds. + +The task of creating such community is a subtle one, immeasurably more +difficult than the corresponding task of modernism. The particles of +consciousness with which we think here are quick with feeling--with +sentiment, impulse, passion, and desire, drawn in each individual from +his own native depths. They are neither such sheer conventions as the +units of measure that make up the syntax of scientific thought, nor +objective and tangible like the data of nature with which science +deals. They are the dynamic forces of life itself, spontaneous and +imperious, and they impel us whether or no. Whether they are to drive +us in anarchy or in harmony, however, depends upon our ability so to +channelise them, so to articulate and identify them for thought, as to +bring us into mutual understanding of those ideas in which they play a +part. The first service of the humanistic discipline was that it put +the individual mind into intimate contact with the tradition of humane +letters in which were embodied and shaped the articulate elements +of such ideas. It was the second and no less significant service of +this discipline that in clinging sedulously to the great tradition +of that literature it tended to give to all minds thus imbued _the +same_ elements filled with _the same_ substance, and so put mind into +community with mind. In abandoning the common discipline of this area +of the consciousness modernism has not only done something to dilute +our powers of thought there, but has left us, mind and mind, out of +community and in a moral confusion that lies, not in the open conflict +of ideas, but in tacit disparities of idea that never meet. + +Modernism reaches its ultimate goal in a knowledge of nature. But +nature has no need of our knowledge. It is _we_ who need it, for our +own ends. In the measure in which, for the conception of those ends, we +lose our powers of thought, so precariously wrought in the long travail +of the past, and so dependent upon unremitting reconquest, we shall in +fact have killed the goose that lays the golden egg. + + + + +_Courage and Education_[74] + +RICHARD LINDLEY BROWN + + +Diverse and variegated as the texture of our contemporary life and +literature is, a great part of it may be shown to have a fundamental +unity. That unity lies in a certain fear and hopelessness,--occasioned +by a mechanistic philosophy and ultimately owing, I think, to the +misapplied and ill-digested implications of a popular scientific +education. One meets everywhere some attempt to analyse and explain +the life and destiny of man solely on the basis of his physique or +environment, or on some other basis equally uncoloured by human +imagination and idealisation. This attitude is not universal with us, +nor is it even general, but it contains almost all that is original +with us, and if we consider what is original as also characteristic, we +can only postulate that the characteristic feature in our contemporary +literature is the interpretation of life as a phase of merely +animalistic existence. + +Now, this admission that man in no way transcends the limits of purely +physical life is an act of cowardice to which no previous generation +has ever so thoroughly committed itself. This admission is directly +contrary to the general spirit of Ancient philosophy, impossible to +the serenity of the Middle Ages, repugnant to the exuberance of the +Renaissance, unnatural to the Romanticism, however defined, of the +early nineteenth century. And even during the faltering generations +just preceding our own, there were still eloquent humanists able to +show that whatever man’s circumstances may be, and whatever his origin +may have been, man was yet able to form for himself an intellectual +and spiritual life and destiny independent of origin and circumstance. + +This courage of the past--this self-confidence of the past by which it +was enabled to broaden the scope of its life and pass on to us a social +and imaginative heritage by which every situation and relationship of +our lives is rendered more beautiful--was not the result of accident. +It was the result of long and untiring efforts in self-cultivation, and +the records of these efforts are to be found in the great literatures +which not only recorded, but inspired and motivated them. In those +times the staple of education was the study of literature; and, for my +present purposes, the important features of this study were, that it +was thorough and exact, that it neglected no labour which might aid in +the central purpose, and that, in requiring a certain common background +in all students, it was eminently a social and even international thing. + +To attain the same degree of courage and self-confidence, it would +be necessary to us to make the same effort of self-cultivation. The +quality of contemporary literature suggests that we are not exerting +that effort; manners and excesses and failures in contemporary life +equally suggest that we are not. And if we examine the habitual methods +of contemporary teachers of literature, we find so many differences +between these methods and those of the past that it is plain that our +educators have all but lost sight of their central objects. + +As early as 1882, in _Literature and Science_, Matthew Arnold set +forth a rather singular prophecy, describing with great exactness much +of our present situation. “As with Greek,” he said, “so with letters +generally: they will some day come, we may hope, to be studied more +rationally, but they will not lose their place. What will happen +will rather be that there will be crowded into education other +matters besides, far too many; there will be, perhaps, a period of +unsettlement and confusion and false tendency; but letters will not in +the end lose their leading place.” + +It is essential to consider how far this prophecy has been realised, +for it penetrates the very heart of our problem; it suggests the entire +lack of a central emphasis which characterises even the literary +education of our day. American education might very well be said to +be passing through a period of unsettlement and confusion and false +tendency, but by no manner of means might it be said that in American +education letters had obtained or regained their leading place. +Although the colleges swarm with students of literature, the greater +part of these students have a more accurate knowledge of the problems +of the natural sciences or of economics than they have of the problems +and methods of literary study. As a plain matter of fact, a great many +undergraduates choose to specialise in literature, and particularly +in English literature, because they believe it a study easier than +any other. And through a smattering of all the ologies which has been +their education from early childhood, they interpret and condemn great +masterpieces of which they have never learned the true significance, +since they have never confronted soberly the old traditions that +illuminate and sustain those masterpieces. It is largely because our +education deals seriously with almost every subject except literature, +that literature has lost its leading place; and it is because +literature has lost its leading place that education has lost much +of its inspiring power, and our contemporary literary innovators are +characterised to such a degree by fear and hopelessness. + +It is not unnatural, however, that popular opinion, which to-day +influences even the teaching of literature, should consider scientific +education so important, for the public sees its leaders in every +field profoundly influenced by science. The leader of our political +organisation, like most of our leaders, happens to be a scientist; most +of our philosophers are scientists, and our magazines deal monthly +with the concessions that our religious leaders are making to the new +implications of science. It is not unnatural that science should be +popularly considered an important study and the study of literature +the recreation of an idle day. And it follows just as naturally that +swarms of undergraduate students should have imposed upon the teaching +of literature much of the dilettantism which this popular view suggests +is inherent in it. The typical student of literature--of English +literature, for example--may be known by four characteristics,--a +fear of Spenser, a dislike of Milton, a hatred of Wordsworth, and +a suppressed desire to write a musical comedy. This is the type of +student that must be taught, and it easily follows that the teaching +of him should come to lack the thoroughness and exactness, the desire +to master ancillary subjects, and the common background, which I have +enumerated above as having once been the ideals of literary study. + +The place of these ideals is taken by a dilettantism which displays +itself in two forms,--in individualism and in sciolism. The first, +a shallow type of individualism, is directed by the theory that a +student’s peculiar tastes are the ultimate criteria by which he +should make his judgments, and that he must be seduced into a liking +for literature by the application of whatever literary candy pleases +his palate. The thought that a man should be somewhat adapted to his +reading, and not his reading to him, is altogether alien to this +theory, and the existence of common social ideals, which, if they are +not present in the student, should be developed, is not suspected by +its propounders. + +It is to the adoption of this principle by many secondary-school +teachers that we owe the presence in our colleges of the campus +radicals who curse their fates and the restraints prohibiting them +from living their own lives. The ordinary progress of students guided +by such principles is to begin easily with something on the level, +say, of Kipling, and gradually to work up to the high seriousness of +the poetry of Oscar Wilde. The popularity and influence of the sort +of contemporary literature which I have mentioned may be very well +explained, I think, by the existence of this view in the minds of many +of our educators. + +The sciolism which is the second form of our literary dilettantism,--a +shallowness which investigates only the superficialities of things, +which delights in accepted definitions and phrases,--is largely +involved in the manner in which our times have forsaken the study of +the classics, as well as of the other literatures and other subjects +without which the study of no one literature can be complete. No +teacher of science would admit to his classes students unversed in +mathematics; he would say that science without some mathematical +knowledge was an impossibility. Now, a knowledge of the literature and +customs of classical antiquity is just as necessary to the student of +a modern literature as a mathematical knowledge is to the student of +science. The teacher of literature, however, who demanded from his +students this indispensable knowledge, would soon lecture to empty +halls. Popular opinion, as reflected by those who are to be taught, is +altogether on the side of those “other matters, far too many,” which +have been crowded into education. + +The teacher of literature may well turn out, in the end, to be the sole +means by which society and literature can be raised from their present +depression, and then only provided his influence be stricter and more +humane. For a materialistic epoch such as ours, the only refuge and +the only basis for further progress is in the idealistic humanity of +the past; but the search of the past must not be such a frail and +self-indulgent one as condemns before it understands. Whether we have +outworn the ideals of history or whether they were projected into a +realm of life beyond our present power of realisation, in either case +they reflect the tendency directing all human achievement,--a tendency +to rise to a plane uncircumscribed by the limits of physical existence. +Accordingly, the teacher of any branch of our cultural heritage has +within his hands the reins of destiny; slackly and half-heartedly he +may lose them from his grasp, or by firmly holding them he may guide +the future toward a new triumph of the human spirit. There is no sound +where there are no ears, nor without the development of the inner +mind and segregated human life, of which our literature has been both +the motivation and the record, could there again be true community or +beauty in the world. + + +FOOTNOTES + +[74] A Senior paper read at Bowdoin College, Commencement, +1929.--Editor. + + + + +_A List of Books Published Since 1900_ + + +Note--The following list contains most of the recent books that are +humanistic in a strict sense, together with a few books humanistic +in a sense more general and indefinite. Magazine articles have been +excluded; but illuminating articles dealing with various aspects of +humanism may be found in the 1928 and 1929 volumes of _The Forum_, _The +Bookman_, _The Hound and Horn_, _The Criterion_, and _The Nineteenth +Century and After_. Helpful recent critiques of the work of Irving +Babbitt and Paul Elmer More are those by a young English critic, Philip +S. Richards, in _The Nineteenth Century and After_ for April, 1928, +May, 1928, and April, 1929, and an article on “Mr. More and the Gentle +Reader” by G. R. Elliott in _The Bookman_ for April, 1929. + +Santayana, George. Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. 1900. + +Brownell, W. C. French Art, Revised ed. 1901. + +---- Victorian Prose Masters. 1901. + +More, Paul Elmer. Shelburne Essays, First Series. 1904. + +Chesterton, G. K. Heretics. 1905. + +Cox, Kenyon. Old Masters and New. 1905. + +More, Paul Elmer. Shelburne Essays, Second Series. 1905. + +---- Shelburne Essays, Third Series. 1905. + +Woodberry, George Edward. The Torch: Eight Lectures on Race Power in +Literature. 1905. + +More, Paul Elmer. Shelburne Essays, Fourth Series. 1906. + +Cox, Kenyon. Painters and Sculptors. 1907. + +Lasserre, Pierre. Le Romantisme français. 1907. + +Babbitt, Irving. Literature and the American College: Essays in Defence +of the Humanities. 1908. + +Frye, P. H. Literary Reviews and Criticisms. 1908. + +More, Paul Elmer. Shelburne Essays, Fifth Series. 1908. + +Seillière, E. Le Mal romantique. 1908. + +Brownell, W. C. American Prose Masters. 1909. + +Chesterton, G. K. Orthodoxy. 1909. + +More, Paul Elmer. Shelburne Essays, Sixth Series. 1909. + +Babbitt, Irving. The New Laokoon: An Essay on the Confusion of the +Arts. 1910. + +More, Paul Elmer. Shelburne Essays, Seventh Series. 1910. + +Cox, Kenyon. The Classic Point of View: Six Lectures on Painting. 1911. + +Babbitt, Irving. The Masters of Modern French Criticism. 1912. + +More, Paul Elmer. The Drift of Romanticism (Shelburne Essays, Eighth +Series). 1913. + +Brownell, W. C. Criticism. 1914. + +Cox, Kenyon. Artist and Public. 1914. + +More, Louis Trenchard. The Limitations of Science. 1915. + +More, Paul Elmer. Aristocracy and Justice (Shelburne Essays, Ninth +Series). 1915. + +Mather, Frank Jewett, Jr. Estimates in Art. 1916. + +Brownell, W. C. Standards. 1917. + +More, Paul Elmer. Platonism (The Greek Tradition, Introduction). 1917, +1927. + +Sherman, Stuart P. Matthew Arnold: How to Know Him. 1917. + +---- On Contemporary Literature. 1917. + +Shorey, Paul. The Assault on Humanism. 1917. + +Adams, George Plimpton. Idealism and the Modern Age. 1919. + +Babbitt, Irving. Rousseau and Romanticism. 1919. + +Gass, Sherlock Bronson. A Lover of the Chair. 1919. + +More, Paul Elmer. With the Wits (Shelburne Essays, Tenth Series). 1919. + +Eliot, T. S. The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. 1920, +1928. + +Inge, W. R. The Idea of Progress. 1920. + +Patrick, G. T. W. The Psychology of Social Reconstruction. 1920. + +Lasserre, Pierre. Cinquante Ans de Pensée française. 1921. + +More, Paul Elmer. A New England Group and Others (Shelburne Essays, +Eleventh Series). 1921. + +---- The Religion of Plato (The Greek Tradition, Vol. I). 1921. + +Canby, Henry S. Definitions. 1922. + +Frye, P. H. Romance and Tragedy. 1922. + +Shafer, Robert. Progress and Science: Essays in Criticism. 1922. + +Foerster, Norman. Nature in American Literature: Studies in the Modern +View of Nature. 1923. + +Houston, Percy H. Doctor Johnson: A Study in Eighteenth Century +Humanism. 1923. + +Massis, Henri. Jugements I. 1923. + +Mather, Frank Jewett, Jr. A History of Italian Painting. 1923. + +More, Paul Elmer. Hellenistic Philosophies (The Greek Tradition, Vol. +II). 1923. + +Waterhouse, Francis A. Random Studies in the Romantic Chaos. 1923. + +Babbitt, Irving. Democracy and Leadership. 1924. + +Brownell, W. C. The Genius of Style. 1924. + +Canby, Henry S. Definitions, Second Series. 1924. + +Criticism in America. (Essays by Irving Babbitt and others, ed. by J. +E. Spingarn.) 1924. + +Eliot, T. S. Homage to John Dryden. 1924. + +Hulme, T. E. Speculations (ed. by Herbert Read). 1924. + +Massis, Henri. Jugements II. 1924. + +More, Paul Elmer. The Christ of the New Testament (The Greek Tradition, +Vol. III). 1924. + +Seillière, E. J.-J. Rousseau. 1924. + +Gass, Sherlock Bronson. Criers of the Shops. 1925. + +More, Louis Trenchard. The Dogma of Evolution. 1925. + +Cerf, Barry. Anatole France: The Degeneration of a Great Artist. 1926. + +Ferrero, Guglielmo. Words to the Deaf. 1926. + +Giese, W. F. Victor Hugo, The Man and the Poet. 1926. + +Shafer, Robert. Christianity and Naturalism: Essays in Criticism, +Second Series. 1926. + +Brownell, W. C. Democratic Distinction in America. 1927. + +Mather, Frank Jewett, Jr. The American Spirit in Art (The Pageant of +America, Vol. XII). 1927. + +---- Modern Painting. 1927. + +More, Paul Elmer. Christ the Word (The Greek Tradition, Vol. IV). 1927. + +Munson, Gorham B. Robert Frost: A Study in Sensibility and Good Sense. +1927. + +Von Hügel, Baron Friedrich. Selected Letters, 1896-1924. 1927. + +Babbitt, Irving. French Literature (A. L. A. booklet). 1928. + +Benda, Julien. La Trahison des Clercs. 1928. (Trans., The Treason of +the Intellectuals. 1928.) + +Eliot, T. S. For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Style and Order. 1928. + +Elliott, W. Y. The Pragmatic Revolt in Politics. 1928. + +Foerster, Norman. American Criticism: A Study in Literary Theory from +Poe to the Present. 1928. + +Maritain, Jacques. Three Reformers: Luther--Descartes--Rousseau. 1928. + +Mercier, Louis J. A. Le Mouvement humaniste aux États-Unis. 1928. + +More, Paul Elmer. The Demon of the Absolute (New Shelburne Essays, Vol. +I). 1928. + +Munson, Gorham B. Destinations: A Canvass of American Literature Since +1900. 1928. + +Rand, E. K. Founders of the Middle Ages. 1928. + +Sherman, Stuart P. Shaping Men and Women: Essays on Literature and +Life. 1928. + +Benda, Julien. Belphégor (Trans., Introduction by Irving Babbitt). 1929. + +Canby, Henry S. American Estimates. 1929. + +Chesterton, G. K. Generally Speaking. 1929. + +---- The Thing. 1929. + +Elliott, G. R. The Cycle of Modern Poetry: A Series of Essays toward +Clearing our Present Poetic Dilemma. 1929. + +Foerster, Norman. The American Scholar: A Study in Litteræ +Inhumaniores. 1929. + +Frye, P. H. Visions and Chimeras. 1929. + +Munson, Gorham B. Style and Form in American Prose. 1929. + +Warren, Austin. Alexander Pope as Critic and Humanist. 1929. + +Wickham, Harvey. The Impuritans. 1929. + +Zeitlin, Jacob, and Woodbridge, Homer. Life and Letters of Stuart P. +Sherman. 2 vols. 1929. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78119 *** |