Initial commit of ebook 78380 filesHEAD main

author: www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org> 2026-04-07 01:58:50 -0700
committer: www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org> 2026-04-07 01:58:50 -0700
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+      Anarchism is not enough | Project Gutenberg
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78380 ***</div>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h1><i>ANARCHISM</i><br>
+<span class="front">is not enough</span></h1>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="front">Laura Riding</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="center">JONATHAN CAPE<br>
+London
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center">FIRST PUBLISHED MCMXXVIII</p>
+<br><br>
+<p class="center">PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY<br>
+BUTLER &amp; TANNER LTD<br>
+FROME
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[p. 5]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">
+    CONTENTS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="toc-container">
+<table class="autotable">
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#THE_MYTH">THE MYTH</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">Page 9</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#LANGUAGE_AND_LAZINESS">LANGUAGE AND LAZINESS</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">13</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#THIS_PHILOSOPHY">THIS PHILOSOPHY</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">15</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#WHAT_IS_A_POEM">WHAT IS A POEM?</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">16</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#A_COMPLICATED_PROBLEM">A COMPLICATED PROBLEM</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">19</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#ALL_LITERATURE">ALL LITERATURE</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">20</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#MR_DOODLE-DOODLE-DOO">MR. DOODLE-DOODLE-DOO</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">22</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#AN_IMPORTANT_DISTINCTION">AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#THE_CORPUS">THE CORPUS</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">27</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#POETRY_AND_MUSIC">POETRY AND MUSIC</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">32</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#POETRY_AND_PAINTING">POETRY AND PAINTING</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">37</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#POETRY_AND_DREAMS">POETRY AND DREAMS</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">39</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#JOCASTA">JOCASTA</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">41</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#HOW_CAME_IT_ABOUT">HOW CAME IT ABOUT?</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">133</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#HUNGRY_TO_HEAR">HUNGRY TO HEAR</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">136</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#IN_A_CAFE">IN A CAFÉ</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">138</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#FRAGMENT_OF_AN_UNFINISHED_NOVEL">FRAGMENT OF AN UNFINISHED NOVEL</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">142</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#WILLIAM_AND_DAISY">WILLIAM AND DAISY: FRAGMENT OF A FINISHED NOVEL</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">150</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#AN_ANONYMOUS_BOOK">AN ANONYMOUS BOOK</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">152</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#THE_DAMNED_THING">THE DAMNED THING</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">187</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#LETTER_OF_ABDICATION">LETTER OF ABDICATION</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">209</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p class="fh3">ANARCHISM IS NOT ENOUGH</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_MYTH">
+    THE MYTH
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>When the baby is born there is no place to
+put it: it is born, it will in time die, therefore there
+is no sense in enlarging the world by so many miles
+and minutes for its accommodation. A temporary
+scaffolding is set up for it, an altar to ephemerality—a
+permanent altar to ephemerality. This altar is
+the Myth. The object of the Myth is to give happiness:
+to help the baby pretend that what is ephemeral
+is permanent. It does not matter if in the
+course of time he discovers that all is ephemeral: so
+long as he can go on pretending that it is permanent
+he is happy.</p>
+
+<p>As it is not one baby but all babies which are laid
+upon this altar, it becomes the religious duty of each
+to keep on pretending for the sake of all the others,
+not for himself. Gradually, when the baby grows
+and learns why he has been placed on the altar, he
+finds that he is not particularly interested in carrying
+on the pretence, that happiness and unhappiness
+are merely an irregular succession and grouping
+of moments in him between his birth and his death.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span>Yet he continues to support the Myth for others’
+sake, and others continue to support it for his. The
+stronger grows the inward conviction of the futility
+of the Myth, the stronger grows the outward unity
+and form of the Myth. It becomes the universal
+sense of duty, the ethics of abstract neighbourliness.
+It is the repository for whatever one does without
+knowing why; it makes itself the why. Once given
+this function through universal misunderstanding,
+it persists in its reality with the perseverance of a
+ghost and continues to demand sacrifices. It is
+indifferent what form or system is given to it from
+this period to that, so long as it be given <i>a</i> form and
+<i>a</i> system by which it may absorb and digest every
+possible activity; and the grown-up babies satisfy it
+by presenting their offerings as systematized parts
+of a systematized whole.</p>
+
+<p>The Myth may collapse as a social whole; yet it
+continues by its own memory of itself to impose
+itself as an æsthetic whole. Even in this day, when
+the social and historical collapse of the Myth is
+commonly recognised, we find poets and critics with
+an acute sense of time devoting pious ceremonies
+to the æsthetic vitality of the Myth, from a haunting
+sense of duty which they call classicism. So this
+antiquated belief in truth goes on, and we continue
+to live. The Myth is the art of living. Plato’s censorship
+of poets in the interests of the young sprang from
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span>a realization of the fact that poetry is in opposition
+to the truth of the Myth: I do not think he objected
+to poetry for the old, since they were nearly through
+with living.</p>
+
+<p>Painting, sculpture, music, architecture, religion,
+philosophy, history and science—these are essentially
+of the Myth. They have technique, growth,
+tradition, universal significance (truth); and there
+is also a poetry of the Myth, made by analogy into
+a mythological activity. Mythological activities
+glorify the sense of duty, force on the individual a
+mathematical exaggeration of his responsibilities.</p>
+
+<p>Poetry (praise be to babyhood) is essentially not
+of the Myth. It is all the truth it knows, that is,
+it knows nothing. It is the art of not living. It
+has no system, harmony, form, public significance
+or sense of duty. It is what happens when the baby
+crawls off the altar and is ‘Resolv’d to be a very
+contrary fellow’—resolved not to pretend, learn to
+talk or versify. Whatever language it uses it makes
+up as it goes and immediately forgets. Every time
+it opens its mouth it has to start all over again.
+This is why it remains a baby and dies (praise be
+to babyhood) a baby. In the art of not living one
+is not ephemerally permanent but permanently
+ephemeral.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span></p>
+
+<p>Because most people are not sufficiently employed
+in themselves, they run about loose, hungering for
+employment, and satisfy themselves in various
+supererogatory occupations. The easiest of these
+occupations, which have all to do with making
+things already made, is the making of people: it is
+called the art of friendship. So one finds oneself
+surrounded with numbers of artificial selves contesting
+the authenticity of the original self; which,
+forced to become a competitive self, ceases to be
+the original self, is, like all the others, a creation.
+The person, too, becomes a friend of himself. <i>He</i>
+no longer exists.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Words have three historical levels. They may be
+true words, that is, of an intrinsic sense; they may
+be logical words, that is, of an applied sense; or they
+may be poetical words, of a misapplied sense, untrue
+and illogical in themselves, but of supposed suggestive
+power. The most the poet can now do is to
+take every word he uses through each of these levels,
+giving it the combined depth of all three, forcing
+it beyond itself to a death of sense where it is at
+least safe from the perjuries either of society or
+poetry.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="LANGUAGE_AND_LAZINESS">
+    LANGUAGE AND LAZINESS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Language is a form of laziness; the word is a
+compromise between what it is possible to express
+and what it is not possible to express. That is,
+expression itself is a form of laziness. The cause of
+expression is incomplete powers of understanding
+and communication: unevenly distributed intelligence.
+Language does not attempt to affect this
+distribution; it accepts the inequality and makes
+possible a mathematical intercourse between the
+degrees of intelligence occurring in an average
+range. The degrees of intelligence at each extreme
+are thus naturally neglected: and yet they are
+obviously the most important.</p>
+
+<p>Prose is the mathematics of expression. The word
+is a numerical convenience in which the known and
+the unknown are brought together to act as the
+meeting-place of the one who knows and the one
+who does not know. The prose word accomplishes
+no redistribution of intelligence; it merely declares
+the inequality, and so even as expression it has no
+reality, it is an empty cipher.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span></p>
+
+<p>Poetry is an attempt to make language do more
+than express; to make it work; to redistribute intelligence
+by means of the word. If it succeeds in this
+the problem of communication disappears. It does
+not treat this problem as a matter of mathematical
+distribution of intelligence between an abstract
+known and unknown represented in a concrete
+knower and not-knower. The distribution must
+take place, if at all, within the intelligence itself.
+Prose evades this problem by making slovenly
+equations which always seem successful because,
+being inexact, they conceal inexactness. Poetry
+always faces, and generally meets with, failure.
+But even if it fails, it is at least at the heart of the
+difficulty, which it treats not as a difficulty of minds
+but of mind.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="THIS_PHILOSOPHY">
+    THIS PHILOSOPHY
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>This philosophy, this merchant-mindedness:
+how much have we here? what sum? And of what
+profit? Somewhere, in the factories of reality, all this
+has been produced which now floods the market of
+wisdom, awaiting its price-ticket. What is science?
+yard-measure and scale to philosophy, expert-accountant,
+bank clerk. What is poetry? miserable,
+ill-fed, underpaid, ununionized labourer, pleased to
+oblige, grateful for work, flattering himself that
+poverty makes him an aristocrat.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Only what is comic is perfect: it is outside of
+reality, which is a self-defeating, serious striving to
+be outside of reality, to be perfect. Reality cannot
+escape from reality because it is made of belief, and
+capable only of belief. Perfection is what is unbelievable,
+the joke.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="WHAT_IS_A_POEM">
+    WHAT IS A POEM?
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In the old romanticism the poem was an
+uncommon effect of common experience on the
+poet. All interest in the poem centred in this
+mysterious capacity of the poet for overfeeling, for
+being overaffected. In Poe the old romanticism
+ended and the new romanticism began. That is,
+the interest was broadened to include the reader:
+the end of the poem was pushed ahead a stage, from
+the poet to the reader. The uncommon effect of
+experience on the poet became merely incidental
+to the uncommon effect which he might have on the
+reader. Mystery was replaced by science; inspiration
+by psychology. In the first the poet flattered
+himself and was flattered by others because he had
+singular reactions to experience; in the second the
+object of flattery makes himself expert in the art of
+flattery.</p>
+
+<p>What is a poem? A poem is nothing. By persistence
+the poem can be made something; but then
+it is something, not a poem. Why is it nothing?
+Because it cannot be looked at, heard, touched or
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span>read (what can be read is prose). It is not an effect
+(common or uncommon) of experience; it is the result
+of an ability to create a vacuum in experience—it is
+a vacuum and therefore nothing. It cannot be looked
+at, heard, touched or read because it is a vacuum.
+Since it is a vacuum it is nothing for which the poet
+can flatter himself or receive flattery. Since it is a
+vacuum it cannot be reproduced in an audience. A
+vacuum is unalterably and untransferably a vacuum—the
+only thing that can happen to it is destruction.
+If it were possible to reproduce it in an
+audience the result would be the destruction of the
+audience.</p>
+
+<p>The confusion between the poem as effect and the
+poem as vacuum is easily explained. It is obvious
+that all is either effect or it is nothing. What the old
+romanticism meant by an uncommon effect was
+a something that was not an effect, an over-and-above
+of experience. Although it was really not an
+effect, it was classified as an effect because it was
+impossible to imagine something that was not an
+effect. It did not occur to anyone to imagine
+nothing, the vacuum; or, if it did, only with abhorrence.
+The new romanticism remedied this inaccuracy
+by classifying the poem as the cause of an
+effect—as both cause and effect. But as both cause
+and effect the poem counts itself out of experience:
+proves itself to be nothing masquerading as something.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>As something it is all that the detractors of
+poetry say it is; it is false experience. As nothing—well,
+as nothing it is everything in an existence
+where everything, being effect of effect and without
+cause, is nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever this vacuum, the poem, occurs, there is
+agitation on all sides to destroy it, to convert it into
+something. The conversion of nothing into something
+is the task of criticism. Literature is the storehouse
+of these rescued somethings. In discussing
+literature one has to use, unfortunately, the same
+language that one uses in discussing experience.
+But even so, literature is preferable to experience,
+since it is for the most part the closest one can get
+to nothing.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The only productive design is designed waste.
+Designed creation results in nothing but the destruction
+of the designer: it is impossible to add to what
+is; all is and is made. Energy that attempts to
+make in the sense of making a numerical increase
+in the sum of made things is spitefully returned to
+itself unused. It is a would-be-happy-ness ending
+in unanticipated and disordered unhappiness.
+Energy that is aware of the impossibility of positive
+construction devotes itself to an ordered
+using-up and waste of itself: to an anticipated unhappiness
+which, because it has design, foreknowledge,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span>is the nearest approach to happiness. Undesigned
+unhappiness and designed happiness both
+mean anarchism. <i>Anarchism is not enough.</i></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="A_COMPLICATED_PROBLEM">
+    A COMPLICATED PROBLEM
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>A complicated problem is only further complicated
+by being simplified. A state of confusion
+is never made comprehensible by being given a plot.
+Appearances do not deceive if there are enough of
+them. The truth is always laid out in an infinite
+number of circles tending to become, but never
+becoming, concentric—except occasionally in
+poetry.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="ALL_LITERATURE">
+    ALL LITERATURE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>All literature is written by the old to teach the
+young how to express themselves so that they in
+turn may write literature to teach the old how to
+express themselves. All literature is written by
+mentally precocious adolescents and by mentally
+precocious senescents. How not to write literature,
+how not to be precocious: cultivate inattention, do
+not learn how to express yourself, make no distinction
+between thoughts and emotions, since precocity
+comes of making one vie with the other, mistrust
+whatever seems superior and be partial to
+whatever seems inferior—whatever is not literature.
+And then, if you must write yourself, write
+<i>writing-matter</i>, not <i>reading-matter</i>. People will think
+you brilliant only if you tell them what they know.
+To avoid being thought brilliant, avoid knowing what
+they know. Write to discover to yourself what you
+know. People will think you brilliant if you seem
+to be enjoying yourself, since they are not enjoying
+themselves. To avoid being thought brilliant, avoid
+pretending to be enjoying yourself. Make it clear
+that you know that they know that nothing is really
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span>enjoyable except pretending to be enjoying yourself.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>People may treat themselves as extraneous phenomena
+or as fundamental phenomena—it does
+not matter which. It does not matter, so long as
+they behave consistently as one or the other. What
+discredits character is not self-importance or self-unimportance,
+but the adjustment of personal
+importance according to expediency.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="MR_DOODLE-DOODLE-DOO">
+    MR. DOODLE-DOODLE-DOO
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Doodle-Doodle-Doo, the great mathematician
+and lexicographer, then put aside his
+work and said: ‘<i>adultery</i> and <i>adulteration</i> can wait
+until I return.’</p>
+
+<p>For Mr. Doodle-Doodle-Do was at one thing or
+the other by turns, and this particular morning he
+felt his mathematical genius complaining: it was
+undoubtedly true that it was a long time since he
+had been out to get Numbers. So, leaving <i>adultery</i>
+and <i>adulteration</i> to take care of themselves, he
+walked out into the Square, and from the Square
+into the Gardens; and in the Gardens he sat down
+on a bench near the rockery and began to think
+with the mathematical half of his brain.</p>
+
+<p>‘Let me see. I left off with <i>honey</i> last time. Now
+the problem will be to show that honey as a purely
+mathematical symbol is equivalent to honey as a
+philological integer. If I can do this I have once
+more proved that 2 × 2 = 4 is the equivalent of
+“two times two is four.” For it’s not enough to
+show a thing is true: you must also show that true
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span>is true. By being a mathematical lexicographer and
+a lexicographical mathematician, I am therefore
+able to check the truth with the truth. My last
+words are never “that’s true” but “that’s correct,”
+which explains how I can be a philosopher and a
+gentleman at the same time.’</p>
+
+<p>With this Mr. Doodle-Doodle-Doo crowed three
+times: once for lexicography (Doodle), once for mathematics
+(Doodle), and once for himself (Doo), wherein
+the truth was checked by itself and found correct.
+The immediate matter in hand, however, was honey.
+So he left off crowing and proceeded with his calculations,
+which went so quickly that it is very difficult
+to record them. But they were something like this:—</p>
+
+<table class="autotable">
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">H O N E Y</td>
+  <td class="tdc">=</td>
+  <td class="tdl">HONE + Y</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">G O N E + Y</td>
+  <td class="tdc">=</td>
+  <td class="tdl">GONEY (sailors’ term for albatross)</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">L O N E + Y</td>
+  <td class="tdc">=</td>
+  <td class="tdl">LONE(L)Y</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">B O N E + Y</td>
+  <td class="tdc">=</td>
+  <td class="tdl">BONEY</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">O N E + Y + M</td>
+  <td class="tdc">=</td>
+  <td class="tdl">MONEY</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<table class="doo">
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdcb">BONEY</td>
+  <td class="tdcb">GONEY</td>
+  <td class="tdcb">HONEY</td>
+  <td class="tdcb">LONE(L)Y</td>
+  <td class="tdcb">MONEY</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdcb">1</td>
+  <td class="tdcb">2</td>
+  <td class="tdcb">3</td>
+  <td class="tdcb">4</td>
+  <td class="tdcb">5</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdcb">H</td>
+  <td class="tdcb">O</td>
+  <td class="tdcb">N</td>
+  <td class="tdcb">E</td>
+  <td class="tdcb">Y</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdcb">1</td>
+  <td class="tdcb">2</td>
+  <td class="tdcb">3</td>
+  <td class="tdcb">4</td>
+  <td class="tdcb">5</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span></p>
+
+<p>At this point he stopped following him. But that
+his researches must have reached some happy conclusion
+was obvious from the enthusiasm with
+which he later returned to his lexicography. His
+calculations then ran something like this:—</p>
+
+<table class="tleft">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">1</td>
+<td class="tdc">2</td>
+<td class="tdc">3</td>
+<td class="tdc">4</td>
+<td class="tdc">5</td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">H</td>
+<td class="tdc">O</td>
+<td class="tdc">N</td>
+<td class="tdc">E</td>
+<td class="tdc">Y</td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">1</td>
+<td class="tdc">2</td>
+<td class="tdc">3</td>
+<td class="tdc">4</td>
+<td class="tdc">5</td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">A</td>
+<td class="tdc">D</td>
+<td class="tdc">U</td>
+<td class="tdc">L</td>
+<td class="tdc">T</td>
+<td class="tdc">[</td>
+<td class="tdc">E</td>
+<td class="tdc">R</td>
+<td class="tdc">Y</td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr class=lowht><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">1</td>
+<td class="tdc">2</td>
+<td class="tdc">3</td>
+<td class="tdc">4</td>
+<td class="tdc">5</td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">H</td>
+<td class="tdc">O</td>
+<td class="tdc">N</td>
+<td class="tdc">E</td>
+<td class="tdc">Y</td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">1</td>
+<td class="tdc">2</td>
+<td class="tdc">3</td>
+<td class="tdc">4</td>
+<td class="tdc">5</td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">A</td>
+<td class="tdc">D</td>
+<td class="tdc">U</td>
+<td class="tdc">L</td>
+<td class="tdc">T</td>
+<td class="tdc">[</td>
+<td class="tdc">E</td>
+<td class="tdc">R</td>
+<td class="tdc">A</td>
+<td class="tdc">T</td>
+<td class="tdc">I</td>
+<td class="tdc">O</td>
+<td class="tdc">N</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p class="center">∴ H O N E Y E R Y ∵ H O N E Y E R A T I O N</p>
+
+<table class="autotable">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc">1</td>
+<td class="tdc">2</td>
+<td class="tdc">3</td>
+<td class="tdc">4</td>
+<td class="tdc">5</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc">1</td>
+<td class="tdc">2</td>
+<td class="tdc">3</td>
+<td class="tdc">4</td>
+<td class="tdc">5</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">But</td>
+<td class="tdc">H</td>
+<td class="tdc">O</td>
+<td class="tdc">N</td>
+<td class="tdc">E</td>
+<td class="tdc">Y</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc">=</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc">S</td>
+<td class="tdc">W</td>
+<td class="tdc">E</td>
+<td class="tdc">E</td>
+<td class="tdc">T</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc">5</td>
+<td class="tdc">4</td>
+<td class="tdc">3</td>
+<td class="tdc">2</td>
+<td class="tdc">1</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc">5</td>
+<td class="tdc">4</td>
+<td class="tdc">3</td>
+<td class="tdc">2</td>
+<td class="tdc">1</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p class="center">∴ S W E E T E R Y ∵ S W E E T E R A T I O N</p>
+
+<p>Which went far enough to persuade him that in
+lexicography he was, if anything, even more skilled
+than in mathematics.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="AN_IMPORTANT_DISTINCTION">
+    AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The important (but infrequently drawn) distinction
+between what is gentlemanly and what is
+dull in poetry. Most people read poetry because it
+makes them feel upper-class, and most poetry is
+written by people who feel upper-class; at least by
+people who take pleasure in describing themselves
+as upper-class; for instance, by men who make
+themselves feel upper-class by holding gentlemanly
+feelings toward woman, and by women who make
+themselves feel upper-class by acknowledging these
+feelings. This poetry is idealistic poetry: it dramatizes
+a non-existent emotional life and seems real
+because it is not real. It also seems ‘interesting’
+because it is not real.</p>
+
+<p>Practical poetry is written by people who do not
+feel upper-class: who do not feel anything. It
+describes themselves, but not as upper-class, not,
+in fact, as anything. It is real and therefore not
+dramatic and therefore seems unreal. It therefore
+seems (and is) dull. The only reason that people ever
+read dull poetry (such as some of Shakespeare’s) is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span>that they mistake it for gentlemanly poetry (such as
+all of Browning’s). For few people are really interested
+in anyone else’s description of himself except as
+it makes them feel upper-class. They mistake it for
+gentlemanly poetry because of their inability to distinguish
+between the interestingness of dull poetry
+and the dullness of ‘interesting’ poetry.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_CORPUS">
+    THE CORPUS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The first condition was chaos. The logical
+consequence of chaos was order. In so far as it
+derived from chaos it was non-conscious, but in so
+far as it was order, it had an increasing tendency
+to become conscious. It therefore may be said to
+have had a mind of which it was unconscious and
+of which it remained unconscious in its various
+evolutionary forms until the mind developed to
+a point where it in turn separated from order and
+invented the self. The occasion of the self was a
+stage in the most anarchic evolutionary form, man,
+coeval with the general transformation of chaos into
+a universe. A consciousness of consciousness arose
+and at the same time divided between order, in
+which mind was the spirit of cohesion, and the
+individual, in whom mind was the spirit of separation.
+In the ensuing opposition between these two,
+order yielded to the individual by allowing him to
+call it a universe, but triumphed over him since,
+by naming it, the individual made the universe his
+society and therefore his religion. Order was the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span>natural enemy of the individual mind. To conciliate
+it order appealed to the individual mind for
+sanction. This sanction, the original social contract,
+was not between man and man, but between man
+and the universe as men, or society. Although the
+sanction was given on the basis of natural instinct,
+or the non-conscious identity of man and the
+universe, society has always claimed authority over
+conscious thought and purpose. In incorporating
+the man it attempts to incorporate the mind and in
+turn to give the mind its sanction through the
+sanction which it first had from the man: it constitutes
+itself the parent past and the mind present
+memory of it.</p>
+
+<p>The social corpus is tyrannically founded on the
+principle of origin. It admits nothing new: all is
+revision, memory, confirmation. The individual
+cosmos must submit itself to the generalized cosmos
+of history, it must become part of its growing
+encyclopædia of authorities. Such a generalized
+cosmos, however, must have been formulated more
+by the desire of people to define themselves as a
+group than to account for the origin of their personal
+existence. Origin, indeed, is properly the preoccupation
+of the individual and not a communal
+interest. The group is only interested in the formal
+publishing of individuals for the purpose of establishing
+their social solidarity. Art, for example,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span>is record not creation. The question of origin is
+only emphasized in so far as it proves the individual
+a member of the group, as having a common pedigree
+with the other members of the group. Thus
+God, the branding-iron of the group idea, does
+not appear in societies where as yet there is imperfect
+differentiation between the individual and the
+type; where as yet there is no need for branding.
+Once the distinction between the group mind
+and the individual mind could be made the group
+mind really ceased to exist. The distinction, however,
+could only be made by minds complete in
+themselves, and as such minds have always been
+extremely rare, the fiction of a group mind has been
+maintained to impose the will of the weak-minded
+upon the strong-minded, the myth of common origin
+being used as the charter of the majority. The
+tyranny by which this majority can enforce its will
+may be either democratic or oligarchic. The only
+difference is that in the first case, provided that the
+democracy is a true democracy (which it very rarely
+is), the group mind is so efficient that it acts despotically
+as one man; in the second case the group
+mind is less efficient and, by a process of blind
+selection, the most characteristic of the weak-minded
+become the perverse instruments of unity.</p>
+
+<p>Both the individual mind and the group mind are
+engaged in a pursuit which may be described as
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>mind-making or, simply, truth. The object of
+group truth is group-confirmation and perpetuation;
+while individual truth has no object other than
+discovering itself and involves neither proofs nor
+priests. In order, however, to win any acceptance
+it must translate itself into group truth, it must
+accommodate itself to the fact-curriculum of the
+group. But not only is such truth forced to submit
+to group terminology and order, but the group
+conscience demands that the individual mind serve
+it by working with the purposes of the group. The
+group, indeed, tries to preclude all idiosyncratic
+thought-activity and to use what intelligence it can
+control against it. This civic intelligence is found
+simplified in the catechism instructing children
+‘to order themselves lowly and reverently before
+their betters and to do their duty in that state of
+life unto which it has pleased God to call them.’</p>
+
+<p>The confirmation of the candidate as a member
+of the group establishes the superiority of group
+opinion over individual opinion and the authority
+of the group to define this relationship as one
+governed by civic duties. It is the nature of these
+duties which determines the categories into which
+civic intelligence falls. The group can never be
+anything more than a superstition, but the categories
+assemble all available material into a textual
+Corpus. There being no real functional group surviving,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span>this Corpus of group texts is used as the
+rallying point of the group, the counterpart of
+the primitive clan totem, the outward and visible
+sign of a long-extinct grace.</p>
+
+<p>The Corpus, in making categorical demands upon
+the individual, thus limits the ways in which works
+may be conceived and presented. These demands
+become the only ‘inspiration’ countenanced, and
+theoretically all creative supply has its source in
+them. This seems a fairly plausible view of the
+status of the arts and sciences in human society.
+The occurrence of a supply independent of
+Corpus demands, its possibility or presence, is a
+question that the social limitations of our critical
+language prevent us from raising with any degree
+of humane intelligibility.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>We live on the circumference of a hollow circle.
+We draw the circumference, like spiders, out of
+ourselves: it is all criticism of criticism.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="POETRY_AND_MUSIC">
+    POETRY AND MUSIC
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>There is a weakling music and a weakling
+poetry which flatter each other by making critical
+comparisons with each other: there is a literary
+criticism of music in which words like ‘wit’ and
+‘rhetoric’ excuse musical flabbiness, and a musical
+criticism of poetry in which words like ‘symphonic’
+and ‘overtone’ excuse poetic flabbiness. This mutual
+tenderness leads to false creative as well as false
+critical analogies between poetry and music; to
+the deliberate effort to use the creative method
+of one art in the other.</p>
+
+<p>I am not distressed by the poeticization of music
+because I do not much care what happens to music;
+it is a nervous and ostentatious performance, and
+little damage remains to be done to it. I am, on
+the other hand, distressed by the musicification of
+poetry because poetry is perhaps the only human
+pursuit left still capable of developing antisocially.
+Musicified or pictorialized it is the propagandist
+tribal expression of a society without any real
+tribal sense. We get a ‘pure’ poetry, metaphysically
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>musical, that reveals a desire in the poet for a
+civilized tribal sense and for poetry as an art intellectually
+coördinating group sympathies: and we get
+a sort of jazz poetry, politically musical, that reveals
+a desire in the poet for a primitive tribal sense and
+for poetry as an art emotionally coördinating group
+sympathies.</p>
+
+<p>Art indeed is a term referring to the social source
+and to the social utility of creative acts. Poetry I
+consider to be an art only when the poet consciously
+attempts to capture social prestige: when
+it is an art of public flattery. In this sense Beaumont
+and Fletcher were greater artists than Shakespeare—better
+musicians. Shakespeare alternated
+between musical surrenders to social prestige and
+magnificent fits of poetic remorse.</p>
+
+<p>To explain more precisely what I mean by this
+distinction between what I believe to be poetry and
+what I believe to be art I shall set down a number
+of contrasts between poetry and music.</p>
+
+<p>1. All real musicians are physically misshapen as
+a result of platform cozening of their audience.
+They need never have stood upon a platform: there
+is a kind of ingratiating ‘come, come, dear puss’ in
+the musical brain that distorts the face and puckers
+up the limbs. All real poets are physically upright
+and even beautiful from indifference to community
+hearings.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span></p>
+
+<p>2. The end of a poem is the poem. The poem is
+the only admissible test of the poem; the reader gets
+poetry, not flattery. The end of a musical work is
+an ear, criticism, that is, flattery.</p>
+
+<p>3. A musical work has a composer; it is an invention
+with professionally available material and
+properties. A poem is made out of nothing by a
+nobody—made out of a socially non-existent element
+in language. If this element were socially existent
+in language it would be isolated, professionalized,
+handed over to a trained craft. Rhyme and rhythm
+are not professional properties; they are fundamentally
+idiosyncratic, unavailable, unsystematizable;
+any formalization of them is an attempted imitation
+of music by poets jealous of the public success
+of music.</p>
+
+<p>4. Music is an instrument for arousing emotions;
+it varies only according to the emotions it is intended
+to arouse and according to the precision with which
+these emotions are anticipated in the invention
+of the music. Emotions represent persons; not persons
+in particular but persons in general. Music is
+directed toward the greatest number of persons
+musically conceivable. It is a mass-marshalling
+of the senses by means of sound. Poetry is not an
+instrument and is not written with the intention
+of arousing emotions—unless it is of a hybrid musico-poetical
+breed. The end of poetry is not to create
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>a physical condition which shall give pleasure to
+the mind. It appeals to an energy in which no distinction
+exists between physical and mental conditions.
+It does not massage, soothe, excite or entertain
+this energy in any way. It <i>is</i> this energy in
+a form of extraordinary strength and intactness.
+Poetry is therefore not concentrated on an audience
+but on itself and only produces satisfaction in the
+sense that wherever this energy exists in a sufficient
+degree of strength and intactness it will be encouraged
+by poetry in further concentration on itself.
+Poetry appeals only to poetry and begets nothing
+but poetry. Music appeals to the intellectual disorganization
+and weakness of people in numbers
+and begets, by flattering this weakness (which is
+sentimentality), gratifying after-effects of destructive
+sociality. The end of poetry is not an after-effect,
+not a pleasurable memory of itself, but an
+immediate, constant and even unpleasant insistence
+on itself; indeed, it has no end. It isolates
+energies in themselves rather than socially dissolving
+one in another.</p>
+
+<p>5. Music provides the hearer with an ideal
+experience, a prepared episode. Poetry is not idealistic;
+it is not experience in this episode or programme
+sense. There is an entertaining short-story
+variety in music; a repellent, austere monotony in
+poetry. Poetry brings all possible experience to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span>same degree: a degree in the consciousness beyond
+which the consciousness itself cannot go. Poetry is
+defeat, the end which is not an end but a stopping-short
+because it is impossible to go further; it makes
+mad; it is the absolutism of dissatisfaction. Music
+brings not the consciousness but the <i>material</i> of
+experience to a certain degree, always to different
+degrees. It makes pleasantly happy or unhappy. It
+is the vulgarity of satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>6. Music disintegrates and therefore seems active,
+fruitful, extensive, enlarging. Poetry isolates all
+loose independencies and then integrates them into
+one close independency which, when complete, has
+nothing to do but confront itself. Poetry therefore
+seems idle, sterile, narrow, destroying. And it is.
+This is what recommends it.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="POETRY_AND_PAINTING">
+    POETRY AND PAINTING
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Painters no longer paint with paint except in
+the sense that poets write with ink. Paint is now only
+a more expensive, elegant ink. What do painters
+paint with, then? They paint with poetry. A picture
+is a poem in which the sense has been absorbed
+by the medium of communication of sense. It is
+not an intelligible series of hieroglyphics, but the
+poem itself forced into a kind of outrageous, unnatural
+visibility: as if suddenly the thing mind
+were caught in the hand and made to appear painfully
+and horribly as a creature. The development
+of painting is toward this poetic quality; the better
+(the more literal, the less realistic) it gets, the more
+horrible. So much for the so-called abstractness
+of painting: the sense is made identical with the
+medium by forcibly marrying it to the medium.
+Medium and sense are a legally fictitious One in
+which the medium, the masculine factor, forces the
+sense, the feminine factor, to bear his name and do
+honour to his bed and table. <i>She</i> is all meek, hopeless
+amicability, <i>he</i> is all blustering, good-humoured
+cynicism.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span></p>
+
+<p>This poetic progress of painting influences the
+pictorial progress of poetry. There is a great response
+in modern poetry to the demand by painters
+that it should be more poetic. See for yourself how
+many of the newest poems have not their names
+lettered in aluminium on their doors, with a knocker
+designed by the latest French abstract sculptor
+(master also of golf), humanly visible furniture
+within (all primary colours), and nobody home.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="POETRY_AND_DREAMS">
+    POETRY AND DREAMS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>I do not believe there is any more relation
+between poem-making and dream-making than
+between poem-making and child-making. The
+making of poems, dreams and children is difficult
+to explain because they all somehow happen and
+go on until the poem comes to an end and the
+sleeper wakes up and the child comes out into the
+air. As for children, there are so many other ways
+of looking at the matter that poetry is generally not
+asked to provide a creative parallel. As for dreams,
+they are the dregs of the mind, anxious to elevate
+themselves by flattering comparisons. As for poems,
+they are frequently (more often than not) concocted
+in the dregs of the mind and therefore happy in an
+understanding of mutual support between themselves
+and dreams.</p>
+
+<p>The only real resemblance between poetry and
+dreams is that they are both on the other side of
+waking—on opposite sides. Waking is the mind in
+its mediocrity. Mediocrity is of such large extent
+that it pushes off into obscurity the mental degree
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span><i>beyond</i> mediocrity, in a direction <i>away from</i> sleep.
+The mental degree <i>before</i> mediocrity, <i>toward</i> sleep,
+is the dream. So the stage before the lowest degree
+of mediocrity and the stage beyond the highest
+degree of mediocrity are bracketed together by
+mediocrity because they are both outside of mediocrity—the
+mind at its canniest intelligence and
+the mind at its canniest imbecility.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="JOCASTA">
+    JOCASTA
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3>§1</h3>
+
+<p>The pathetic differences between wrong and
+right are well illustrated in the persons of Otto Spengler
+and Wyndham Lewis. Herr Spengler is a pessimist
+who has succeeded in cheering himself up
+with a romantic view of Decline. Mr. Lewis is an
+optimist because he is right, forced into pessimism by
+the general prevalence of wrong. He sees wrong
+(rightly) as Time, Romance, Advertisement (forced
+optimism), Righteousness, Action, Popular Art
+(Time, Romance, Advertisement, Righteousness,
+Action, united in an inferiority complex). Since he
+is right his right quarrels with the various manifestations
+of wrong he is able to distinguish: the more
+he is able to distinguish the more corroborations he
+has of his rightness. Herr Spengler, being wrong,
+has this advantage therefore over Mr. Lewis: whereas
+Mr. Lewis’s success must be confined to seeing
+wrong in the most unorganized (that is, various)
+manner possible, <i>his</i> success depends on his being
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span>wrong in the most organized manner possible—the
+more organized he seems, the more right he seems.
+Unfortunately this situation brings about a competition
+between Herr Spengler and Mr. Lewis: Mr.
+Lewis feels obliged to organize his unorganized view
+of wrong, which cancels the potency of his rightness,
+which is only valid so long as it is unorganized (that
+is, commentarial instead of systematic). So he becomes
+a colleague of Herr Spengler in righteousness,
+the advocate of a vocabulary. We find him, as he
+himself admits, trying to give ‘compendious’ names
+to what is wrong: which places him immediately in
+Herr Spengler’s class.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_1_1" href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>To be right is to be incorruptibly individual.
+To be wrong is to be righteously collective. Herr
+Spengler is a collectivist: he believes in the absorption
+of the unreal (right) individual in a collective
+reality (History or Romance)—by which the individual
+becomes functionally (as opposed to morphologically)
+really-real. Mr. Lewis is an individualist
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span>in so far as he is opposed to organized functional
+reality. But he is unable to face the final conclusion
+of individualism: that the individual is morphologically
+as well as functionally unreal, and that herein
+alone (in this double withdrawal from both nature
+and human society, or history) can he be right. How
+does Mr. Lewis come to believe in the morphological
+reality of the individual? By devoting himself
+so violently to revealing the sham of historical
+action in art—the unreality of functional
+reality—that he creates by implication a real which,
+since it cannot exist in historical romance (society),
+which is all sham, must exist in non-historical
+romance (nature). Further, both Herr Spengler
+and Mr. Lewis think through the same machinery—the
+machinery of knowledge. Indeed it appears as
+if they thought because they possessed this machinery
+and had to use it: this is the constant impression
+made by Herr Spengler, the frequent impression
+made by Mr. Lewis. I do not think that Mr. Lewis
+really thinks because of and by means of knowledge.
+I am convinced that he thinks. But I see also
+that he is unable to face uncompromisingly the problem
+of individualism. He is not content with being
+right; he is stung by his irritation with what is
+wrong into the desire to be real as well as right. He
+therefore organizes the same material that Herr
+Spengler organizes—to prove that it is sham, as
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span>Herr Spengler to prove that it is real. He even uses
+the same false organizing system as Herr Spengler—analogy.
+Herr Spengler, by proving the analogical
+consistency of his views, merely proves that wrong
+is wrong. Mr. Lewis, by overstudying the analogical
+consistency of wrong, establishes his right by the
+same system that Herr Spengler uses in establishing
+his wrong. He is making of his right a competitive
+Romance to argue with Herr Spengler’s Romance.
+With both Herr Spengler and Mr. Lewis I feel in
+the presence of realists. Herr Spengler, I feel, is
+happy in being a realist, Mr. Lewis, I feel, is not.
+He is not, I think, because he is fundamentally
+right, but afraid of facing the unreality of rightness.
+It is difficult to explain this because it is a difficult
+situation; and I wish if possible to avoid compendious
+names. It would perhaps be simplest to say
+that Mr. Lewis is timid (as he has himself privately
+admitted).</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lewis attacks the principle which is to Herr
+Spengler the right of his wrong. He attacks the
+reality of the collective-real. But in doing so he
+opposes to it an individual-real. The collective-real
+is man in touch with man. The individual-real is
+man in touch with the natural in him, in touch with
+nature. Neither Herr Spengler nor Mr. Lewis dares
+face the individual-unreal: both believe in unity
+and integration, Herr Spengler in the unity and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span>integration of history, Mr. Lewis in the unity and
+integration of natural as opposed to historical existence.
+‘I am for the physical world,’ Mr. Lewis says.
+One of the reasons he is for the physical world is,
+apparently, that the historical world, in keeping
+up with itself, not only worships the fetich of
+Romance, but the fetich of childishness as well. In
+pointing this out Mr. Lewis is both wise and courageous;
+but he reveals at the same time an important
+fetich of the individual-real, adultishness. Nor,
+maddened by the vulgar success of the historical
+world with itself, can he see that the fetich of childishness
+in only a half-clue to the story of Gertrude
+Stein, that Miss Stein has one foot in the collective
+real and one foot in the individual-unreal—which
+is more than can be said of Mr. Lewis,
+who has both feet planted in the individual-real.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_2_2" href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span></p>
+
+<p>I must next give an illustration of the individual-real
+in contemporary literature. This will perhaps
+not please Wyndham Lewis and will certainly not
+please its author, Virginia Woolf. I can only say that
+I do not mean to attack either of them but merely to
+explain the individual-real. And Mrs. Woolf’s most
+recent book, <i>To the Lighthouse</i>, seems to me a perfect
+example of the individual-real. In the first place, it is
+individual: not in the sense that it is personal, warm,
+alive to itself, indifferent to effect or appreciation,
+vividly unreal, but in the sense that it individualizes
+the simple reality of nature, gives it distinction—shade,
+tone, personal subtlety. In the second
+place it is real—meticulously, mathematically like
+life: not historical time-life, which is an easy
+approximation, but natural flesh-life, which must
+be laboriously, exquisitely, irritatingly, painfully
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span>rendered. To do this language must be strained,
+supersensitized, loaded with comparisons, suggestive
+images, emotional analogies: used, that is, in a
+poetic way to write something that is not poetry—used
+to argue, prove, prick the cuticle of sense, so to
+speak, in a way that is extravagant, unpleasant,
+insincere (since it purports to be pleasant). The
+method, in fact, has no creative justification: it
+merely drives home the individual-real, which is
+physical emphasis of self-individual because it is
+physically self, real because as physical it shares in
+the simple reality of nature. All this delicacy of
+style, it appears, is the expression of an academic
+but nevertheless vulgar indelicacy of thought, a
+sort of Royal Academy nudeness, a squeamish, fine-writing
+lifting of the curtains of privacy. In the
+third place, it (the individual-real as illustrated in
+this novel) is adultish—advanced but conservative:
+it does not belong to childish, democratic mass-art,
+but neither does it belong to the individual, non-physical,
+non-collective unreal. It is over-earnest
+constrained, suppressedly hysterical, unhappy, could
+give no one pleasure. Pleasure is doing as one
+pleases. In works like this neither the author, who
+is obsessed by the necessity of emphasizing the individual-real,
+nor the reader, who is forced to follow the
+author painfully (word for word) in this obsession,
+may do as he pleases. There is only one novel-writer
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>who really did as he pleased, let his characters do
+as they pleased and his reader to do as he pleased,
+and that was Defoe. He could do this because he
+was, as Pope said, ‘the unabashed Defoe,’ and he
+was unabashed because he was unreal, vividly
+unreal—personal, warm, indifferent to effect
+(consistency). Mrs. Woolf defends herself from any
+such analysis of her work as I have made here by
+declaring that there is no such thing as a novel. If
+<i>To The Lighthouse</i> is not to be treated as a novel,
+then it must, by its language-habits, be treated as a
+poem. Analyse it then as a poem: what then? It
+proves itself to be merely a novel; and an insincere
+novel—the use of the material of the collective-real
+to insinuate dogmatically the individual-real.
+Defoe used the material of the collective-real as it
+could only be used sincerely—to insinuate the
+individual-unreal: and so Defoe, if you like, did
+turn the novel into poetry.</p>
+
+<p>I once discussed this point with E. M. Forster and
+we found that we had each read <i>Roxana</i> in entirely
+opposite senses. Mr. Forster was certain that Defoe
+followed Roxana in every word he wrote of her, and
+that Roxana likewise followed Defoe, that there was
+no do-as-you-please break between her and Defoe
+or between her and the reader or between Defoe
+and the reader; that all was one intense, physically
+compact and consistent exposition of the individual-real.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span>I pointed out the striking division in, for example,
+Roxana’s long feminist declamation against
+marriage to her Dutch lover—a division in which
+all the <i>dramatis personæ</i>, including author and reader,
+are released to accept the declamation with whatever
+bias they please. In this division I find Defoe’s
+sincerity. Mr. Forster, on the other hand, understands
+the declamation as a remarkably unified,
+<i>innocent</i>, three-dimensional slice of that individual-real
+which is the story. If I thought that Defoe had
+written that passage innocently, with realistic consistency,
+I should catalogue him as a fine writer and
+skilful hypocrite. But I am persuaded he was
+neither of these. I am sure that the feminist recital
+was wilfully unreal, inconsistent, many-dimensional;
+that it was delicate common sense for the
+Dutch lover, frank but sentimental expediency for
+Roxana, sound doctrine for Defoe and undisguised
+storifying for the reader present in the story; and
+that none of these was deceived in his bias, but
+could if he wished change it for any other without
+damaging the consistency of the piece, since there
+was none. <i>The Tempest</i> has the same sort of inconsistency
+as a Defoe novel; it is the most unreal
+of the plays and to me preferable to the more
+realistic plays. Others are more poetic, as Mrs.
+Woolf’s <i>To The Lighthouse</i> is more poetic than
+<i>Roxana</i>. But they do not contain so many poems,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>as there is no passage in <i>To The Lighthouse</i> with the
+dimensions (the contradictions) of Roxana’s recital
+to her Dutch lover. In <i>The Tempest</i> there is not only
+a continuous chain of such inconsistencies (poems);
+the characters themselves have the same many-dimensional
+inconsistency—the unreal Caliban, the
+unreal Prospero, interchangeable in their inconsistency.</p>
+
+<p>Before leaving this question and returning to
+Herr Spengler, whose wrong has not in my opinion
+been sufficiently disorganized, I must come back to
+the suffocating, nearly sickening physical quality of
+what I call the individual-real—not a strong, fresh,
+casual frankness of flesh, but a self-scented, sensuous,
+unbearably curious self-smelling of flesh. The
+collective-real is crude, symbolic, sham; the individual-real
+is exquisite, more than symbolic—literally,
+intrinsically metaphorical. I have in mind, in
+connection with <i>To The Lighthouse</i>, a book of E. M.
+Forster’s, <i>A Room With a View</i>. Before reading this
+book I had met Mr. Forster and found him charming;
+the book was recommended to me by my
+friends as a charming book. I read it. I could
+not deny that it was charming. Yet it was to me
+unpleasantly painful to read. It was too charming.
+I do not mean to be flippant, or to disgust, or to
+alter my original conviction of Mr. Forster’s personal
+charm, which I have had an opportunity
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span>of confirming since reading this book. But the
+truth is that it affected me in the same way as
+would the sight of a tenderly and exquisitely ripe
+pimple. I longed to squeeze it and have done with
+it. At the time I could only reproach myself with
+this rather shameful morbidity and admit that my
+reaction seemed preposterous. It was a simple,
+exquisitely written story about simple, unexciting
+people; and the unpleasant excitement it gave me
+was unnatural. Since then I have come to be able
+to identify and understand a little the individual-real,
+and it is now perfectly clear to me why Mr.
+Forster’s book affected me in that way, although
+then I could only feel a vague physical reaction to
+its metaphorical realism. That I recognized it as an
+essay in metaphorical realism is proved by the persistent
+image of the pimple with which the book came
+to be associated in my mind. And indeed, if I had
+thought a little more closely about metaphorical
+realism at the time, I might have arrived very soon
+at the same conclusion that I have here arrived
+at, <i>via</i> Otto Spengler, Wyndham Lewis, and so
+forth.</p>
+
+<p>In the ordinary time-world or art-world of
+the collective-real, symbolism, however romantically
+it may be used, never denies that it is symbolism.
+Its very effectiveness depends on its being
+recognized as such. Further, since symbolism is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>here collective rather than individual, since the
+symbol, that is, is <i>chosen</i> to collectivize individual
+emotions which would otherwise have separate and
+presumably weaker communication with the thing
+for which the symbol stands, it is clear that the
+symbolic method of the collective-real is selective: it
+implies a graded choice of the things which it seems
+necessary and important to symbolize. This method,
+whose psychology Herr Spengler attempts to discover,
+is all that Mr. Lewis says it is (it is really the
+symbolic method of the time-world that he attacks).
+In the literature and art of the collective-real it is
+easy to recognize because they are frankly symbolical:
+it is part of their technique to insist on the
+symbolic quality of the symbol. This means that
+symbolic art is generally bad art, full of double
+meanings, vulgar obviousness, facile concessions to
+sentimentality, flattery of the mass-emotions which
+confirm the relation of the symbol with the thing it
+represents.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there is a proficiency, a vulgar good in this bad
+art that gives great and pure pleasure—great because
+it has the strength of what is purposively,
+defiantly bad, pure because it makes no attempt
+to conceal its badness. And there is one further
+virtue in the symbolism of the collective-real, that,
+being a selective symbolism, it does not symbolize
+everything—if it symbolized everything it would
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span>destroy the time-world, the organ of communication
+and author of symbols. Instead, it lets pass
+much which it realizes would be proof against symbolism
+and thus threaten its prestige: it admits that
+there is much that is unreal and, in so far as is
+consistent with its authority, leaves it alone.
+Poetry, therefore, in the world of the collective-real,
+is given a little chance.</p>
+
+<p>Symbolism, in the nature-world of the individual-real,
+denies itself to be symbolism. It uses all the
+tricks of the symbolism of the collective-real, but to
+insist that it is individually, not collectively real,
+that it is, therefore, not symbolic but literal, not
+‘artistic’ but natural. It is not selective, since if it
+were it would admit itself to be symbolical, but
+makes everything it touches equally significant,
+physical, real. Its technique is to insist on the
+authentic quality of the symbol. This means that it
+is only a more ambitious, expert, clever symbolism
+than the symbolism of the collective-real. It is
+literally instead of suggestively symbolic. It is
+morbidly physical instead of merely morbidly sentimental.
+It is difficult (not by nature but by art),
+adult, aristocratic, <i>better</i>. The difference between
+the collective-real and the individual-real as revealed
+by their respective methods of symbolism
+proves itself to be no more than a snobbish difference
+of degree: the art of the individual-real is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>self-appointed good art. And as such it is strained,
+unhappy-hypocritical, slave to an ideal of superiority
+that I can only properly describe as the ideal
+of slickness. There is no opposition here of right to
+wrong, only a more academic, individual wrong (or
+real) than even the best democratic, collective
+wrong. The right (the unreal) remains (as it
+should) categorically non-existent.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_3_3" href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span></p>
+
+<p>I recall with pleasure an outrageous example of
+the vulgarity, sentimentality, proficient badness of
+collective-real literature; a novel by Rebecca West.
+It is a long time since I read it, and what I can
+reproduce of it is from memory. I remember in
+particular one passage, in which it was told how
+delightful it was to hold an egg in the little hollow
+in the front of the neck, and in which baked potatoes
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span>were charmingly mixed up with cirrus clouds.
+It was all so frankly false, so enchantingly bad, so
+vulgarly poetical without the least claim to being
+poetic, that it was impossible not to enjoy it and not
+to find it good: one was being sold nothing that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span>was not obvious. After Rebecca West put Katherine
+Mansfield, a cross between the collective-real and
+the individual-real, a perplexed effort, a vapour.
+Then put the development of the individual-real,
+culminating in the art of Virginia Woolf, in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span>which nothing is thrown out since it admits no
+unreal, in which poetry has no chance because the
+individual-real itself is so poetic, in which one is
+sold poetry without being aware of it; this super-symbolical,
+unsufferably slick alchemy that takes
+poetry out of the unreal and turns it into the dainty
+extra-pink blood by which reality is suffused with
+reality:</p>
+
+<p>‘She looked up over her knitting and met the
+third stroke and it seemed to her like her own eyes
+meeting her own eyes, searching as she alone could
+search into her mind and her heart, purifying out
+of existence that lie, any lie. She praised herself in
+praising the light, without vanity, for she was
+stern, she was searching, she was beautiful like that
+light. It was odd, she thought, how if one was
+alone, one leant to things, inanimate things; trees,
+streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they
+became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were
+one; felt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked
+at that long steady light) as for oneself. There rose,
+and she looked and looked with her needles suspended,
+there curled up off the floor of the mind,
+rose from the lake of one’s being, a mist, a bride to
+meet her lover.’</p>
+
+<p>I submit that this is <i>more wrong</i> than Rebecca
+West’s writing because it is better, slicker. It bends
+the bow of taste (to use the manner of Mrs. Woolf)
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>back into a contorted, disdainful, monotonous, sensuously
+bulging circle. The collective-real, when a
+revolution takes place in it (when it is threatened
+by the unreal and makes a violent gesture of self-assertion),
+acknowledges the shadow that has passed
+over it, accepts the consequences of pledging itself
+to be with time: shortens its skirts, chops an inch off
+its hair, puts a cheerful face on its modernity—its
+progressive retreat from the unreal. The individual-real,
+on the other hand, secure in Nature’s fortress,
+insists that no shadow of the unreal can fall upon it.
+It is everything—real because it is individualistic,
+unreal because it is symbolical: it cannot come to
+harm. If it is threatened, it lengthens its skirts,
+swishes grandly along the ground, grows its fingernails,
+scratches exquisitely the plaster wall that
+surrounds it, sharpens its pencil till it has nerves
+and writes just a little more finely than is possible.
+And whatever it touches turns to spun-silk under it.
+It is the delamarish memory-fairy.</p>
+
+<p>Yet certainly there is much that cannot, except in
+the fairy-tale of memory (the individual-real) be
+turned into spun-silk. To make everything real, no
+matter how unreal, how personal it may have been
+in its occurrence, is to symbolize it for the democratic
+mass. Thus psycho-analysis is not unacceptable
+to the individual-real, thus in individual-real
+literature we find grating public exhibitions
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span>of individuality. Any personal incident may be
+stroked, coaxed, maddened by fine torture into
+symbolic existence. For example: when I was fourteen
+I used to read the <i>New York Times</i> every afternoon
+for an hour (for a pittance) to an old man
+whose eyesight was poor, a veteran of the Civil War.
+He had a most eccentric mispronunciation, which I
+had to adopt in reading to him. It was very difficult,
+as on the other side, at school, I was being trained
+in pronunciation. I concentrated on mispronunciation,
+and one day, when I had just about become
+expert in it, I knocked at his door to find that he
+had died. There I was, with all that mispronunciation
+on my hands; and to a certain extent it is still
+on my hands. Now, if I were a psycho-analytic
+individual-realist, I should symbolically refine this.
+I should have a mispronunciation complex, I should
+say that life was like that and associate it with
+other incidents in which life was like that, I
+should have a mental ejaculation every time I
+mispronounced, and so on. As it is, it is merely an
+incident—what I may call a statistical incident. It
+happened, I occasionally mispronounce, it is all
+very personal, unreal, illogical, unsymbolical and
+poetic to me. I have never told it, poetically, as a
+good story to illustrate this or that or to mean this
+or that.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_4_4" href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> And in treating it in this way I am
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span>sure I am closer to the incident as it happened and
+as it affected me, though I am not closer to what is
+called the reality of the incident. This is perhaps
+trivial and even irrelevant to the argument. Yet it
+is to me an exposition in life of the always threatening
+danger of the individual-real in literature and art.</p>
+
+<h3>§2</h3>
+
+<p>I have already said that I considered Herr Spengler
+wrong and Mr. Lewis right. To say that Herr
+Spengler is wrong is to say that he is wrong. To say
+that Mr. Lewis is right is to imply, because I place
+his right side by side with Herr Spengler’s wrong,
+that I regret the argumentative rightness of his
+right: I not only object to Herr Spengler’s systematic
+wrongness because it is wrong, but also because
+it is systematic. Herr Spengler perceives a
+conspiracy and is delighted, Mr. Lewis perceives a
+conspiracy and is infuriated. Therefore, though I
+admire Mr. Lewis because he is right, I restrict my
+admiration in so far as he is systematic: the obsession
+with conspiracy is no more wrong in Herr
+Spengler than in Mr. Lewis. I regret to see Mr.
+Lewis decorating his right with the trappings of
+argument: I regret to see him dramatizing his right
+realistically to impress the same audience as Herr
+Spengler does—emphasizing the individual-real as
+Spengler does the collective-real. I should like to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span>see Mr. Lewis being right, being unreal, being himself,
+rather than sending out his right to instruct the
+democratic mass on the same stage on to which
+Herr Spengler sends out his wrong. It is none of
+my business, of course, what Mr. Lewis does with his
+right; but in admiring Mr. Lewis and not admiring
+Herr Spengler it is only fair to point out that the
+former as well as the latter is guilty of realistic
+projections.</p>
+
+<p>By projections I mean saying more, thinking
+more, knowing more, observing more, organizing
+more than is self. I mean creating the real. In
+Herr Spengler’s writing I find nothing unreal; I
+find no self. In Mr. Lewis’s writing I find a considerable
+unreal projecting itself realistically, organizing
+itself against, for example, James Joyce. I do
+not speak merely of attacking James Joyce or Sherwood
+Anderson or D. H. Lawrence. I speak of
+attacking by advocating a system to take the place
+of the system which certain aspects of James Joyce’s
+work, say, represent to Mr. Lewis. I think this
+system should indeed be attacked in so far as it is a
+system and in so far as is necessary for a preservation
+of integrity. I do not think it should be replaced. I
+want the time-world removed and in its place to
+see—nothing. I do not want to see the unreal—Mr.
+Lewis’s, mine, anyone’s—become more than itself,
+become either intellectual (Spengler) or physical
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span>(Lewis). I want it to remain inhuman and obscure.
+Both Herr Spengler and Mr. Lewis make it, the
+one in his wrongness, the other in his rightness,
+human and glaring. To me the secularistic subjective
+softness of the first is no more aggressively realistic
+than the secularistic ‘objective hardness’ of the
+second. For all Mr. Lewis’s unreal, the question
+remains to him ‘whether we should set out to transcend
+our human condition or whether we should
+translate into human terms the whole of our datum.’
+I agree with Mr. Lewis in discarding the first alternative,
+but I submit that the second contains in it
+two other alternatives and that in choosing the
+<i>wrong one</i> of these (as he does by creating the original
+pair of alternatives) Mr. Lewis leans towards rather
+than away from transcendentalism. For what he
+calls the datum is nothing but the unreal; to call
+it the datum and, further, to suggest the necessity of
+its translation from the unreal into the real, the personal
+(inhuman) into the human (physically collective)
+is only to oppose one kind of transcendentalism
+to another—the individual-real to the collective-real.
+In this he is identifying himself with critics
+who, like I. A. R. Richards, wish to find a place for
+literature and art ‘in the system of human endeavours,’
+to prove the unreal to be but ‘a finer organization
+of ordinary experiences’; that is, in order to
+combat the gross romanticism and rhodomontade of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>democratic realism, he turns merely to a more
+classical, aristocratic realism.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_5_5" href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> He thus reduces the
+difference between himself and Herr Spengler to a
+difference in taste rather than in principle; the distinction
+between right and wrong, unreal and real,
+which Mr. Lewis might be one of the few people
+able to maintain, becomes, as has already been
+pointed out, merely the distinction between good
+and bad, between two types of the real or between
+degrees in the real.</p>
+
+<p>Man, as he becomes more man, becomes less
+nature. He becomes unreal. He loses homogeneity
+as a species. He lives unto himself not as a species
+but as an individual. He is lost as far as nature is
+concerned, but as he is separated from nature, this
+does not matter. He is in himself, he is unreal, he
+is secure. This sense of unreality, however, varies
+in individuals: it is weakest in the weakest individuals.
+These weakest individuals, missing the
+physical homogeneity which reality in nature would
+give man, construct by analogy an ideal homogeneity,
+a history, a reality of time. ‘The means
+whereby to identify living forms,’ Spengler says, ‘is
+Analogy.’ As systematic analogy with nature becomes
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>more and more difficult, the basis of analogy,
+parallelism with nature, is removed; but the system
+of analogy remains. A transference is made from
+what Herr Spengler calls morphological equivalence
+to functional equivalence. Instead of being nature-like
+(like the species <i>man</i> in nature) he becomes man-like
+(like the species man in man). The individual
+is like himself collectively, really, not like himself
+individually, unreally. It is now possible perhaps to
+discuss more clearly the significance of the terms I
+have been using: pessimism, optimism; collective-real,
+individual-real; unreal. Herr Spengler, I
+should say, is pessimistic at the sight of the disintegration
+of man as a natural species; he consoles
+himself with a vision of man as a consistent analogous
+rather than homologous social mass. He has,
+we might say, a melancholy, mystical vision of an
+eternal structure of decay, whose processes may
+be collectively appreciated and participated in.
+His vision is the collective-real, by which he
+manages to transcend the unreal. Mr. Lewis, I
+should say, is fundamentally optimistic at the sight
+of the disintegration of man as a natural species.
+He is not distressed, I believe, by the fact that there
+is a problem of individualism. He would face it
+cheerfully if he were not so annoyed by Herr Spengler’s
+gloomy evasion of it—by the whole time-philosophy
+for which Spengler is but one of many
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>spokesmen. But he is distracted from his pursuit of
+the problem of individualism into the unreal, where
+is to be found its only satisfactory conclusion, by his
+annoyance with evasions of it like Herr Spengler’s
+or Dr. Whitehead’s. And in his annoyance he
+remains permanently distracted; he succeeds in
+doing no more than substituting for it another kind
+of evasion. I do not say that Mr. Lewis is an official
+spokesman of the individual-real in the way in which
+Herr Spengler is an official spokesman for the
+collective-real. But in opposing him without fully
+acknowledging the unreal he seems to me to be
+identifying himself with a brand of realism that is
+in its way as obnoxious as collective realism.</p>
+
+<p>Let me elaborate what I consider to be the viewpoint
+of the individual-realists. They perceive the
+disintegration of man as a species and resent the
+philosophical substitute which the collective realists,
+with the help of history, make for the natural species—this
+analogical instead of homological species.
+They recognize that however removed man may
+now be from nature, analogies of the individual with
+natural history are less false than analogies of the
+individual with human history. Analogies of the
+individual with nature will become less and less
+exact as man becomes more and more removed
+from nature. But it is at any rate true that these
+analogies will hold as long as it will be possible to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span>make them. Analogies of the individual with history
+will, on the other hand, become more and more
+exact, since they are invented rather than discovered
+analogies, analogies maintained by a system of
+representational cohesion. Historical analogy thus
+stands for the tyranny of democracy, while physical
+analogy stands for a Toryish anarchy—the direct
+communication of a few individuals with the
+physical world without the intervention of the symbolic
+species.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_6_6" href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> I think that anarchism is very nice;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span>but I do not think that anarchism is enough. I agree
+that morphological analogy is more literal than
+functional analogy; but as morphological analogy
+is bound to become less and less exact as the individual’s
+memory of himself as a member of a species
+becomes more and more shady, it seems to me idle
+to maintain it at all (except humorously); especially
+idle to maintain it, this individual-real, categorically
+against the collective-real, and in doing so to lose
+sight of the only quality in which the individual is
+secure, in a certain personal unreality not affected
+by analogy of any kind. I am not much concerned
+about the philosophical invalidity of the individual-real;
+I am ready to admit that it is philosophically
+a more tenable position than the collective-real.
+Philosophical positions have all to do with versions
+of the real, and have varying degrees of tenability:
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>but if a philosophical position have the maximum
+degree of intelligibility it does not alter the fact that
+any philosophical position is irrelevant to the individual
+and relevant only to a symbolic mass of
+individuals. The only position relevant to the individual
+is the unreal, and it is relevant because it is
+not a position but the individual himself. The individual-real
+is more indulgent of the individual-unreal
+than any other philosophical position; but
+this is a disadvantage rather than advantage to the
+unreal, since it actually means an encroachment
+upon, a parody of the unreal by the individual-real.
+It is about this encroachment and parody as it
+takes place in literature that I am really concerned.
+To put it simply, the unreal is to me poetry.
+The individual-real is a sensuous enactment of the
+unreal, opposing a sort of personally cultivated
+physical collectivity to the metaphysical mass-cultivated
+collectivity of the collective-real. So the individual-real
+is a plagiarizing of the unreal which
+makes the opposition between itself and the collective-real
+seem that of poetic to realistic instead
+of (as it really is) that of superior to inferior
+realistic; the real, personally guaranteed real-stuff
+to a philosophical, mass-magicked real-stuff.
+The result in literature is a realistic poeticizing
+of prose (Virginia Woolf or any ‘good’ writer)
+that competes with poetry, forcing it to make itself
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>more poetic if it would count at all. Thus
+both the ‘best’ prose and the ‘best’ poetry are the
+most ‘poetic’; and make the unreal, mere poetry,
+look obscure and shabby. And what have we, of
+all this effort? Sitwellian connoisseurship in beauty
+and fashion, adult Eliotry proving how individually
+realistic the childish, mass-magicked real-stuff can
+be if sufficiently documented, ambitious personal
+absolutes proving how real their unreal is,
+Steinian and Einsteinian intercourse between history
+and science, Joycian release of man of time
+in man of nature (collective-real in individual-real),
+cultured primitivism, cultured individualism,
+vulgar (revolutionary) collectivism, fastidious
+(anarchic) collectivism—it is all one: nostalgic,
+lascivious, masculine, Oedipean embrace
+of the real mother-body by the unreal son-mind.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_7_7" href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span></p>
+
+
+<h3>§3</h3>
+
+<p>In showing how the distinction between the
+collective-real and the individual-real meant really
+no more than a difference of degree—between
+degrees of good, for example—I might have carried
+the argument further. I might have shown that
+in thus revealing themselves as merely differences
+of degree, they reduced all oppositions that
+might be made between them to differences of
+degree. Take the opposition of <i>intellectual</i>, of the
+time-world (collective-real), to <i>physical</i>, of the selves-world
+(individual-real): <i>intellectual</i> proves itself to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>mean based on an emotionally maintained unity;
+<i>physical</i> proves itself to mean based on a unity maintained
+by reason. The opposition then of <i>intellectual</i>
+to <i>physical</i> (of Herr Spengler, say, to Mr. Lewis)
+or of intuition to intelligence (of John Middleton
+Murry, say, to T. S. Eliot) is a restatement of the
+more hackneyed opposition of <i>emotional</i> to <i>intellectual</i>;
+which in turn proves itself to be not an opposition
+at all but an expression of degrees of historical
+advancement.</p>
+
+<p>Thus to Herr Spengler ‘Soul,’ the felt self, is
+an eternal, romantic youthfulness in man; which
+expresses itself by comparing itself (analogy)
+continually with the world, the not-self, the unfelt
+self; which is the permanently aged, self-apprehending,
+being self of nature. Herr Spengler does
+not see that once having made this opposition he
+has placed himself in the position of choosing
+between them, that one or the other must represent
+the illusion of one or the other. Failing to
+do this, by maintaining a communicative opposition
+between them, he shows that both are
+illusions (mutually, one of the other). To compare
+mathematics and logic is to show wherein both
+are false, by reason of their resemblance to
+each other. If the likeness were true, it would
+be a complete likeness, it would be identity,
+and one or the other must disappear; and it follows
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span>that the one in whose terms the likeness is
+stated is the most false, the most illusory. The
+likeness is maintained by the self’s fear of self, the
+fear of personal loneliness. The mathematical unity
+of the world sets an example for the historical unity
+of the Soul, the time-child of the world; a community
+self, a Culture, is invented to keep the self
+company. All the values by which this self is organized
+are derivative values. ‘Logic is a kind of
+mathematic.’ Language is an expression of functional
+relationships, it is not just language, the
+tongue of a self; it must co-ordinate, <i>express</i> the
+members of the community self rather than <i>say</i> each
+self; it must be comprehensible, that is, it must
+show likeness—if it does not show likeness it is
+attacked as obscure. A painter or a composer or a
+sculptor is one who demonstrates, through his
+medium, this communicative opposition between
+the world of reality and the world of self. The poet
+is one who, by personal duplicity, takes it upon himself
+to prove that the opposition is so and not so; his
+poetry is a demonstration of the righteousness of
+duplicity. ‘Nature is to be handled scientifically,
+History poetically.’ Self is poetic self. Nature,
+mathematical life, is the become, the eternally
+grown-up; History, logical life, is the becoming, the
+eternally childish.</p>
+
+<p>The time-advocate, whom I shall call the philosopher,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span>does not see, or is afraid to see, that the
+become and the becoming are both mutually illusory
+Worlds of reality: that they are self-created
+refutations of individuality to which the individual
+succumbs from imperfection. He forgets, that is,
+that the individual is an <i>unbecoming</i> and that the
+categories ‘becoming’ and ‘become’ are really a
+derivation from him, a historical reconstruction.
+Unbecoming is the movement away from reality,
+the becoming unreal. What is called the become
+is therefore really the starting point of the unbecoming.
+What is called the becoming is therefore
+really a hypothetical opposition to the unbecoming.
+The become and the becoming are both
+oppositions to the unbecoming; the become from
+which the becoming is derived is a static order
+organized against the unbecoming, the become is
+the material of disintegration. The becoming is an
+attempt to check the disintegration of the become
+from real to unreal by reversing its direction,
+turning it from real to more real, making Nature
+suggest History. This is done by reading into
+Nature a necessity and inventing for the species
+man, a digression from Nature, an analogical
+Darwinistic Nature. The necessity of Nature is
+then called Causality, the necessity of History,
+Destiny.</p>
+
+<p>The philosopher, then, is the formal opponent of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span>the unreal. To him the individual is a piece, Nature
+is a whole, and the individual cannot match the
+wholeness, the real of Nature, except by sharing in
+a community self, the collective-real. To one who
+recognizes the reality of the unreal, each individual
+is a positive unit produced by the disintegration of
+the reality of Nature. Nature is a process; and
+the pieces of this process are the wholes, not
+Nature. To the philosopher thought is a reintegration
+of the scattered pieces into a symbolic
+whole, which may then be related to the literal
+whole of Nature; it also brings about a close interrelation
+of these pieces among themselves, a
+functional conformity. To a believer in the unreal,
+thought confirms disintegration. It is not a
+collective system. It is each self.</p>
+
+<p>This opposition of the philosopher to the individual-unreal
+remains merely a philosophical
+opposition. For it is the nature of the believer in
+the unreal to be without a system—a system implies
+collective association (it is even impossible to give
+him a label, like ‘philosopher’); and the philosopher
+could only be opposed by a system. Indeed so
+thoroughly ‘unselfish’ is the character of the unreal
+self that its just conclusion is a sort of social disappearance.
+This is practically impossible because
+to the unreal self is attached a physical memory of
+the process by which the self was made, a birthmark
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>of piecemealness opposing to the complete
+unreal self a reconstructed, ideal whole of origin.
+The unreal self is forced to indulge this. Sex, for
+instance, is an indulgence by the unreal self of
+romantic physical nostalgia. To the unreal self this
+indulgence is incidental, to the philosopher it is
+fundamental. Herr Spengler’s whole inspiration is
+nostalgic. (So is T. S. Eliot’s. So is Mr. C. B.
+Cochran’s—every ‘Cochran’s Revue’ is a variation
+on the theme of the integration of historical
+pageantry, an epistemological medley of primitivism,
+Shakespeareanism, Charlestonianism, etc.)</p>
+
+<p>The philosopher has, however, his formal opponent.
+His formal opponent is one who resents the
+gross personification of man as the ideal individual
+of the species; to whom Spenglerish dualism is only
+‘bad philosophy’ (Mr. Lewis); to whom good
+philosophy is a severe monism, a literal, aware
+dwelling in the mathematical (being) self of Nature.
+Instead of History we have Criticism: the formal
+opponent of the philosopher is the Critic. And,
+once more, the difference between them shows
+itself to be only a difference of degree; criticism
+defines itself as ‘better,’ more intellectual philosophy
+than ‘intellectual,’ ‘bad’ philosophy. The
+critic (this new, anti-philosophical type that I
+am speaking of) dismisses the childish, historical
+self as a travesty of the adult self of physical
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span>reality; as that sick, inner-eyeish, Strindbergian
+‘subjective’ self, which has poisoned instead of
+nourished itself on reality, that the psychologist,
+physician of reality, attempts to redeem from the
+subconscious (run-down, pathological reality). For
+the philosophical system of logic the critic substitutes
+the mathematical system of reason. The
+world of Self is not to be deduced from the world of
+Nature; there is but one world, and the self is in
+this, a like fact with other facts, not a subjective fact
+in a shadowy world of analogy. What Mr. Lewis
+calls the ‘success of reason’ would permanently
+establish self as objective fact, as the individual-real.
+The language of the individual-real neither
+expresses the members of a community-self nor
+isolates each self. It expresses the extrinsic value
+of the self for a system in which there are only
+extrinsic values; as the language of the collective-real
+expresses its intrinsic value for a system in
+which there are only intrinsic values, which are
+made valid, however, by means of oppositional relation
+to a system of extrinsic values. So that for the
+individual-realist, the self is also poetic self; rational
+instead of intuitive, ‘physical’ instead of ‘intellectual’;
+a poetic detail of real reality rather than a real
+detail of poetic reality.</p>
+
+<p>The critic, then, like the philosopher, is an
+opponent of the unreal. The unreal self is intrinsic
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>self, intrinsic without respect to a system
+of extrinsic values; it is without value. It is more
+than anarchistic; it does not treat individualistically
+with values; it supersedes them. The unreal self is
+not poetic self, it is self. It is not a detail of co-ordinated
+reality.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_8_8" href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> It is an absolute, disconnected, hopeless
+whole. To the philosopher thought is memory
+of Mother-Nature. To the critic thought is thoughts—diverse,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>objective, related facts of reality. There is
+no antithesis between the position of the philosopher
+and that of the critic: the philosopher invents instruments
+for observing and measuring reality from afar
+and has dream-embraces of reality: the critic says:
+‘Sentimental stuff and nonsense! I am <i>in</i> reality.’
+The critic, that is, is a little more sentimental,
+ambitious, intellectual, poetic, snobbish than the
+philosopher. To both of them thought means connection
+with reality. To both of them poetry means
+eloquent consciousness of life. To the unreal self,
+to whom they are both brother-opponents, thought
+is separation from reality, and poetry is the consciousness
+(the perhaps ineloquent consciousness)
+of what is not life, of what is self. A tree (even this
+is doubtful, for it is a late, nearly human form) is
+not born; it lives. What is born ceases with birth
+to live; it is self, unreal self. For this reason it
+is impossible to call the unreal self poetic self:
+‘poetic’ and ‘poetry’ are words drunk with reality,
+they have indeed become by popular use rhetorical
+substitutes for ‘real’ and ‘reality.’ By reality I mean
+organized, ‘universal’ reality. It would be possible
+to speak of the unreal self as the real self, the self of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span>separate reality, were it not for the community
+sense that belongs to philosophical or critical reality.
+I might have said, instead of unreal self, dissociated
+self. The problem of the right word is more difficult
+in the case of ‘poetic’ and ‘poetry.’ I can point out
+that the real self is poetic, and, in opposition to both
+real and poetic, put the unreal self. It is painful,
+however, to be forced to leave ‘poetry’ to the real
+self and to call the poetry of the unreal self unreality.
+Poetry is a stolen word, and in using it one must
+remain conscious of its perverted sense in the service
+of realism, or one suddenly finds oneself discussing
+not poetry but realism; and this is equally painful.
+But if poetry is a stolen word, so is reality: reality
+is stolen from the self, which is thus in its integrity
+forced to call itself unreal.</p>
+
+<p>Poetry may perhaps for the moment be saved for
+the poet and for the unreal self if the collective-real,
+the individual-real, philosophy, criticism, are
+denominated ‘literature.’ Literature then clearly
+represents the symbolical, the rational, the romantic,
+the classical, the collective, the individualistic
+reality of man. Further, if we make it clear to ourselves
+that all literature is poetic, then we are
+separating poetry from literature and drawing a
+sharp line between what is poetic and what is
+poetry. Further still, we are discovering that literature
+is everything but the unreal self, it is the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>society of reality; it is History, it is Nature, it is
+Philosophy, it is Reason, it is Criticism, it is Art.
+Most of all perhaps literature is Art, the seizure and
+confirmation of reality by the senses, the literalizing
+of the world of reality. The more ‘abstract’
+Art is (the less symbolical) the more real it is.
+Poetry is thus seen to be neither literature nor Art.
+Literature is the ladder of reality: the historian
+yields to the scientist, the scientist to the philosopher,
+the philosopher to the critic, the high-priest of
+Reason, of which ‘great works of art’ are the visible
+signs: for Reason is Reality.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_9_9" href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+
+<h3>§4</h3>
+
+<p>This has been, so far, the elaboration of a point
+of view. From here on will be found various applications
+of this point of view. Generally in expositive
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span>writing there is no distinction made between
+what is organically elaborative and what is incidentally
+applicative: all is elaborative and therefore
+over-elaborative. The argument continues to
+elaborate itself even though it has come to an end;
+it incorporates the application of the point of view in
+the development of the point of view; it does not
+distinguish between argument and comment. I wish
+to distinguish carefully here between argument and
+comment. A certain very small amount of illustration
+and instancing is necessary to focus an argument
+properly: the smaller the better, since most
+specific reference and substantiation is a concession
+to the audience, which generally cannot think
+purely, that is, without the machinery of learning.
+Once the argument is focused, it should not develop
+further. It should repeat itself, like an acid test, in
+each fresh application. All philosophical or critical
+systems are the absorption of an original point of
+view by the facts to which it applies itself: the
+force of the point of view is lost, it becomes a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span>convenience by which facts organize themselves and
+eventually dominate the point of view. All philosophical
+or critical systems are no more than
+learning, a synthesis of instances, and therefore develop
+generalizations that mean nothing without
+instances. I have no philosophical or critical system
+to advance; I am interested in generalizations that
+mean something without instances, that are unreal,
+since they mean something by themselves. Generalizations
+of this sort, when applied to instances,
+should not be absorbed by them. The argument
+should dismiss instances with comment on instances,
+remain meaning in itself. If it does this then it
+is capable of maintaining an opposition between
+right and wrong. If it does not, it only becomes a
+better wrong than the wrong it attacks. It becomes
+real.</p>
+
+<p>By this I do not mean that I am a subjective
+critic. A subjective critic is one who converts his
+point of view into a system, makes it real: his point
+of view must be continually fed by works of art,
+otherwise it ceases. I propose here a point of view
+that is completely unto itself, that is unreal, that is
+independent of instances. When it meets instances
+it comments on them by repeating itself. Nor is it
+subjective, since subjectivity implies an objective
+world of experience from which it must perpetually
+derive itself. I speak of a point of view which is self
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>and only self, of an unreality which is every one’s
+to the extent to which he is able to extricate himself
+from quantitative reality and be, instead of a
+purse-proud something, a proud and purseless
+nothing. What is this I am describing?—the poetic
+(a stolen word) self.</p>
+
+
+<h4>1</h4>
+
+<p>Mr. Herbert Read (<i>Reason and Romanticism</i>).</p>
+
+<p>‘That the critical spirit, expressed in reason, will
+ever evolve a synthesis capable of fulfilling the
+functions of religion is evidently impossible. Reason
+and emotion only unite in very rare and special
+perceptions; such perceptions are not capable of
+generalization.... Emotions are too diffuse, too
+widely distributed, ever to be unified in reason,
+which is an evolved possession, never perfect at
+all, and only approaching perfection in the rarest
+individuals.’ The impossible, Mr. Read admits,
+is attainable in the rare ‘universal mind.’ Universal
+in the strict critical sense proves itself to
+mean ‘broad’ in the eighteenth-century sense—aristocratic.
+So Goethe (both for Herr Spengler and
+Mr. Read) is the ideal universal type; so is Leibnitz,
+so is Diderot. Mr. Read confirms my description of
+the philosophico-critical system in his definition of
+universality as ‘a capacity <i>to receive</i> all knowledge
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span>and events with equanimity and unprejudiced percipience;
+and to build up a positive attitude on this
+clear and perceptual basis.’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_10_10" href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> From here we are
+gently conducted to the proposition that ‘poetry is,
+in short, delectation.’ Poetry is, in short, a game-like,
+sporting, snobbish exercise of reason, the most
+ambitious display of knowledge possible: ‘and the
+greater our knowledge, the more surcharged it is
+with the perception of values, the deeper will be the
+delight aroused in us.’ What is reason? Reason is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span>socialized reality, ‘the sum total of awareness,
+ordained and ordered to some specific end or object
+of attention.’</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Read on metaphysical poetry: metaphysical
+poetry is ‘emotional apprehension of thought.’ This
+means, we discover, individual mind systematically
+apprehending reality: ‘... we find in Donne a mind
+poised at the exact turn of the course of philosophy
+drawing his inspiration right back from scholastic
+sources, and yet at the same time eagerly surveying
+the new future promised by the science of Copernicus
+and Galileo. Chapman, on the other hand,
+is in a remarkable degree the forerunner of humanist
+philosophy—of Hume and Spinoza in particular.
+He is aware, above all things, of “the constant and
+sacred harmony of life.”’ In this way criticism classifies
+poetry according to the poet’s intelligence of
+reality—that is, according to his conventionality, his
+politeness; whereas that Donne wrote poetry at all
+was because he was able to separate himself rudely
+from the reality of which he was in a class sense a
+privileged agent.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_11_11" href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span></p>
+
+<p>On Dante and Guido Cavalcanti: ‘Or, more
+exactly, all experience, whether intellectual or
+sensual or instinctive, was regarded as equally and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span>contemporaneously the subject-matter of their
+poetry. The result was a desirable continuity or
+coherence; imagination, contemplation, and sensibility
+becoming fused within the perfect limits of
+a human mind.’ Mr. Read then quotes from
+William Walrond Jackson, D.D., ‘Introduction’ to
+his translation of the <i>Convivio</i> (Oxford, 1909), p. 18:
+‘The poet was inspired by an overmastering desire
+to link the present with the past and with the future,
+to blend all knowledge into one coherent system,
+and to bring the experiences of life into one harmonious
+whole....’ Plainly, this donnish, publicly
+fostered service of the poet to reason would be
+absorbed, if he were a poet at all, in his essential,
+enduring unreality by the time his work reached
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span>the criticism of four hundred years later. Instead
+criticism keeps artificially alive the derived reality
+of the work, submerging in it what intrinsic unreality
+it may have had. ‘The true metaphysical
+poet is conscious of no such dualism: his thought is
+in its very process poetical.’ Poetry is reason.
+‘Leibnitz has defined an intelligent author as one
+who includes the most of reality in the least possible
+compass.’ And further ... ‘the poet is in a very
+real sense the product of his age—witness especially
+Dante’ (‘age’ meaning ‘the most of reality in the
+least possible compass’). These two statements comment
+sufficiently on themselves. What recommendation
+has Mr. Read for the modern poet? He looks
+‘to the modern physicists, whose work would seem
+to provide a whole system of thought and imagery
+ready for fertilization in the mind of the poet.’ This
+again, is its own best comment on itself.</p>
+
+
+<h4>2</h4>
+
+<p>Mr. Lewis is merely a pamphleteer of anarchism,
+T. S. Eliot is a serious moralist, bent on professing
+rather than on attacking. We therefore look to Mr.
+Lewis for explanatory rhetoric and to Mr. Eliot for
+explanatory ritual: in many respects his modest behaviour
+is more illuminating than all Mr. Lewis’s
+language. After years of hard and brilliant service as
+a poetical yogi Mr. Eliot suddenly discovered that he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>had all the time been acting on behalf of the universe
+of man, of human nature, instead of in behalf of the
+universe of reason, of natural nature. So he replaced
+religiousness by priggishness; he went from a popular,
+mystical cult to an exclusive Thomist club;
+from large, symbolical (ironic) outer circle abstractions
+to small specific (concrete) inner circle abstractions.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of attacking the time-mob, like Mr. Lewis,
+he withdrew himself from it and left it to carry
+on the orthodox, unanimous flux so obnoxious to
+Mr. Lewis, yet so necessary to both Mr. Lewis’ and
+Mr. Eliot’s anarchism: the basis of anarchistic
+individuality is not authentically individualistic,
+but snobbish. Mr. Lewis’s incentives to anarchism
+are political—‘for the sake of the ride’; Mr. Eliot’s
+are moral, that is, self-protective—the ride was for
+the sake of running away. He ran away from the
+collective-real to the individual-real (the <i>Criterion</i>
+furnishes us with a progressive record of Mr. Eliot’s
+movements). Like Mr. Lewis he opposed aristocratic
+orthodoxy (anarchism) to democratic orthodoxy
+(co-operation); he deserted the collective
+dogma of periods for the collective dogma of individuals.
+‘For those of us who are higher than the
+mob, and lower than the man of inspiration, there
+is always <i>doubt</i>; and in doubt we are living parasitically
+(which is better than not living at all) on the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span>minds of the men of genius of the past who have
+believed something’ (from the <i>Enemy</i>, January,
+1927). Mr. Lewis advocates grandiloquently but
+vaguely aristocratic orthodoxy in general; Mr.
+Eliot is dryly and specifically in pursuit of <i>the</i> or at
+least <i>an</i> aristocratic orthodoxy. The difference is
+that between irritated rightness and alarmed priggishness.
+Mr. Lewis is merely led astray by his
+extravagant though praiseworthy fury with democratic
+orthodoxy; his worshipful enthusiasm for the
+classical man of quiet is not dogma but pique against
+the modern romantic man of action (time-flux,
+space-motion). Mr. Eliot upholds the man of quiet
+from dogma. He is a minority-representative, as
+the man of the time-flux is a majority-representative.
+Mr. Eliot’s position demonstrates clearly
+the relation of the individual-real to the collective-real:
+it is a priggish, self-protective minority-attitude
+to the same material which is the substance of the
+dogma of the collective-real. But he objects to ‘mentalism’
+not only, I should say, because it generally
+means mob-mentalism, but equally because it may
+mean unreal, unorthodox individuality; his anarchism
+is timidity fallen between two stools. Mr.
+Lewis, however, objects to mentalism, I feel, chiefly
+because it generally means demogogic mob-mentalism.
+‘By this proposed transfer from the beautiful
+<i>objective, material</i>, world of common sense, over to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span>the “organic” world of chronological mentalism,
+you lose not only the clearness of outline, the static
+beauty, of the things you commonly apprehend;
+you lose also the clearness of outline of your own
+individuality which apprehends them.’ I do not
+think Mr. Eliot would have been capable of saying
+‘your own individuality’; I do not indeed believe
+that Mr. Lewis is naturally an individual-realist,
+but that he has been unfortunately stung into a
+pose.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_12_12" href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span></p>
+
+<p>Aristocratic (as opposed to democratic) orthodoxy
+is not, as I have already indicated, a pose with Mr.
+Eliot. I said he had <i>an</i> orthodoxy. It would be
+helpful to an understanding of the problem to discover
+what the nature of an aristocratic orthodoxy
+may be. In Mr. Eliot’s case, this is all too obviously:
+a humble, up-to-date respect for the best, internationally
+sifted great names. A practical-minded
+Toryism, which says, in gently criticizing Mr.
+Anthony M. Ludovici’s more journalistic Toryism
+(The <i>Monthly Criterion</i>, July, 1927): ‘Mr. Ludovici
+is engaged in forming what might be called a myth
+or idea for the Tory Party. Such a myth or idea has
+much to commend it; and I sympathize with so
+many of his views that I may declare at once what
+seems to me the great weakness of his construction:
+he isolates politics from economics, and he isolates
+it from religion.’ What Mr. Eliot’s attitude to
+economics is it is difficult to determine; I should
+say from various evidences that economics to
+him did not mean a human problem but an
+academic tradition worthy of study. Mr. Eliot has,
+from time to time, spoken more specifically on
+religion. In the review from which I have just
+quoted, Mr. Eliot further says: ‘Toryism is essentially
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span>Anglican; Roman Catholicism, which in our
+time draws its greatest support from America, is
+more in harmony with Republicanism. The problem
+of Toryism should be rather to make the Church
+of Laud survive in an age of universal suffrage....’
+Further, he ardently seconds Mr. Ludovici in
+his recommendation that the Conservative Party
+should encourage <i>thought</i>, ‘the activity of men of
+thought who are not and who do not desire to be
+parliamentarians.’ In such quiet language does Mr.
+Eliot phrase his gospel of timid, aristocratic mentalism—a
+kind of politico-literary extract of Anglo-Catholicism,
+if we may judge by signs. His demands
+are familiar to every properly brought-up British
+schoolboy: that the Church must have more power,
+that the Kingship must be strengthened, and that
+Aristotle must be studied, supplemented by an
+Anglican reading of St. Thomas if the lad is to enter
+literature. Yes, literature. I had nearly forgotten
+that Mr. Eliot began his Progress as a Poet. But
+Mr. Eliot, finding himself higher than the mob
+and lower than the man of inspiration, is modest;
+he does not ask to be considered, or consider himself,
+as a poet. Unless we are deceived by his modesty,
+he would be content to be Bishop or to be Professor
+Saintsbury.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span></p>
+
+
+<h4>3</h4>
+
+<p>Mr. Roger Fry in <i>Transformations</i> concerns himself
+with the distinction between pure and impure
+art—‘a distinction which Mr. Richards has the good
+fortune to be able to ignore.’ Mr. Richards, we
+learn from his <i>Principles of Literary Criticism</i> (published
+in 1925, the first text-book of psychologico-literary
+criticism) is interested in value rather than
+in purity. Criticism is to him a minute and comprehensive
+gradation of what T. E. Hulme called the
+world of religious and ethical values; purity, a
+social rather than æsthetic attribute; a moral term,
+by which a work is described as a public act of its
+author. To Mr. Fry a work is not conduct, it is a
+thing; its purity as a thing depends on its dissociation
+from authorship. It is impossible not to
+prefer Mr. Fry’s criterion to Mr. Richards’; the
+former is plainly trying to discover the laws of goodness
+in works, the latter, the laws of goodness in
+humanity. The works we have with us; humanity,
+the idea of species, must be philosophically evoked.</p>
+
+<p>But what is the nature of the work as thing?
+According to Mr. Fry its nature would seem to be
+reality. It is created by a sharp separation of the
+author’s personality from the material with which
+he works, so that his work, when complete, is to be
+classified with nature, the world of mathematical
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span>reality, rather than with man, to whom reality is
+a sentimental objectification of his subjectivity. I
+should say that Mr. Fry’s criticism made possible a
+clearer sense of a work’s <i>self</i> than Mr. Richards’,
+but that it created a misunderstanding of the
+nature of this self by identifying purity with reality.
+In Mr. Fry’s criticism the homologue of a work
+would be a thing. But what is a thing and how is it
+pure? Pure means being whole, single in element,
+nothing but self, thoroughly new and fresh. Impure
+means being more and less than whole, complex
+in element, not possessing thoroughly new and
+fresh selfhood. The ‘things’ of what is called reality
+are mere interpretative morsels, tainted with pedigree.
+To me the thingishness in a work depends on
+no real homologue; the work is a thing of its own
+kind, without homologue. The material with which
+an author works is not reality but what he is able
+to disentangle from reality: in other words I think
+the identity is rather of purity and unreality. An
+author must first of all have a sure apprehension of
+what is self in him, what is new, fresh, not history,
+synthesis, reality. In every person there is the possibility
+of a small, pure, new, unreal portion which
+is, without reference to personality in the popular,
+social sense, self. I use ‘self’ in no romantic connotation,
+but only because it is the most vivid word
+I can find for this particular purefaction. When
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span>this self has been <i>isolated</i> from all that is impression
+and impurity of contact in an individual, then a
+‘thing,’ a work, occurs, it is discharged from the
+individual, it is self; not <i>his</i> self, but self. If it is not
+discharged, it is immediately reabsorbed in that
+composite accident of reality by which he is known
+to others as a person. Thus many people without
+creative ability—the ability to discharge self—must
+feel for one passing moment that isolated purity
+in themselves which might, if they were able to
+sustain it a little longer, turn into ‘things.’ In those
+who can from time to time discharge self, the power
+is not constant: if it were, ‘creation’ would cease—creation
+is intermittent recurrence and repossession
+of this power—and there would be death, bright
+death.</p>
+
+<p>The power, then, is not synthetic, is not to compose
+things, but to isolate them; it is an analytic power.
+Mr. Fry describes the reaction to works of art as a
+reaction to a relation. This could only refer to
+works which were compositions, attempts to create,
+by a synthetic, material (non-personal) action of the
+senses, real things; for relation can only result from
+synthesis. A work-thing of this kind is a pattern of
+reality, an arrangement of elements; and pattern
+is accident. The author of a synthetic work can
+choose the elements of which it is to be composed,
+but they work themselves out: the so-called necessity
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span>of reality is really <i>accident</i>. The reaction therefore
+to the kind of work Mr. Fry speaks of, a ‘real’
+work, is a reaction to accident: the critic, himself
+presumably a pattern of reality, experiences a shock
+from meeting another pattern which is commandingly
+different and hypnotizes him into a rearrangement
+of the elements of which he is composed—‘the
+esthetic emotion’ is here a sensual recombination
+of personality. For this reason I consider such
+esthetic emotion false and escapist. The experience,
+on the other hand, of a critic confronted with an
+‘unreal’ work, would, I believe, be this: if it were a
+thing of pure, isolated self, he could not perceive
+it except with what was pure, isolated self in him.
+He would be forced for the moment to discard what
+was real in him; he might, by means of the thing,
+succeed in discharging self: the operation of the
+thing on him would have an analytic effect separating
+in him the pure from the impure, protecting
+him for the moment from the ‘esthetic emotion’
+with which in fact he generally reacts to everything.
+When Mr. Fry says ‘In literature there is no immediate
+sensual pleasure,’ he is really commenting on the
+analytic, unreal quality of the word as opposed to
+the synthetic (sense-combining), real quality of the
+instrumentalities of the material arts. Word-works
+in which there is an immediate sensual pleasure are
+ones which have been artified, realized. Words in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span>their pure use, which I assume to be their poetic
+use, are denials rather than affirmations of reality.
+The word <i>hat</i>, say, does not create a real hat: it
+isolates some element in the real hat which is not
+hat, which is unreal, the hat’s self.</p>
+
+<p>But my description of this unreality would at
+first seem to correspond with the unreal world of
+poetry described by A. C. Bradley. Mr. Fry quotes
+Dr. Bradley: ‘For its (poetry’s) nature is not to be a
+part, nor yet a copy, of the real world (as we commonly
+understand that phrase), but to be a world
+by itself, independent, complete, autonomous.’ The
+key-word in this definition is <i>world</i>: Dr. Bradley is
+not writing about unreal self but about romantic
+humanity. Poetry represents to him the world of
+fancy; and by fancy he means ethical, realistic
+fancy—the real world of man as opposed to the
+real world of mathematical nature. Nor is this a
+true opposition: it is impossible to overlook the
+significance of the term <i>world</i>—we have here all
+over again the ambitious, analogical Soul-World
+of Herr Spengler.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fry is at pains to point out the alien, psychological,
+literary element in various plastic works, in
+determining what is ‘pure’ art. The very term
+‘art’ forces him to confine his definition to the
+purely real. So that he can do no more than make
+a sharp distinction between the art of the real world
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span>and the art of the unreal (psychological, literary)
+world. We are to conclude that in its way the art
+of the unreal world (literature) is pure: what is
+impure is a mixing of these two worlds. Mr. Fry is
+only annoyed by literary art, not by artistic literature.</p>
+
+<p>But the unreal, literary, psychologically organized
+self-world is the collective-real: its existence depends
+on a belief in reality, though in reality as a myth.
+Nor is the self of Mr. Fry’s real world any less
+‘psychological’: but merely a more anarchistic,
+individualistic associate of reality, reality hence as
+reason rather than myth, or, as Mr. Lewis might
+put it, as God Himself rather than religion. And so
+the issue between realism and idealism is no more
+than a quarrel over methods of affirming reality:
+rationalistic instinct as against emotionalistic intellect,
+short-way-round as against long-way-round,
+anarchistic as against communistic psychology.
+Realism is the method of artistic art, idealism, of
+literary art. Art is the use of self to make syntheses—things
+<i>like</i> ‘real’ things: all controversy about art-methods
+narrows itself down to a disagreement over
+what real things are <i>like</i>.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_13_13" href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>&#x2060;</p>
+
+<p>The controversy, that is, is not over principles
+but over style; and style is, ultimately, not so much
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span>the manner of a work as the manner in which it is
+talked about. The end of most criticism is not to
+determine what a work must be but to fix the
+language of criticism; and it follows that most works
+are therefore without the quality of self: they are
+made merely to fit the language of criticism popular
+at the time or that happens to have made an
+impression on the author.</p>
+
+<p>Criticism has to do with what is already done,
+with what has already happened: it is a cataloguing
+of reality, and reality is the past. A work
+that invites criticism is an exercise in history,
+whether its author has the man-history point of
+view or the nature-history point of view; it is the
+creation of old stuff. Most works are old stuff,
+differing only in style; in how they innovate old
+stuff; in their critical language: they agree in principle,
+that only old stuff is possible—reality, synthesis,
+pattern, recombination.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Read blames Mr. George Moore for using the
+word ‘objective’ to describe what he means by ‘pure
+poetry’—‘objective,’ Mr. Read complains, is a
+psychological term. It is not one of the what Mr.
+Read calls ‘universal terms.’ A universal term
+should convey ‘an inner conviction of necessity.’
+What Mr. Read is really complaining of is the unsystematic
+use of a psychological term. Criticism
+should use the same language about art as it does
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span>about reality; it should unite philosophy and art in
+Reason. Reason is personal, direct, conscious traffic
+in reality. It is enlightened magic (‘an inner conviction
+of necessity’). Primitive man, being more
+instinctively aware of reality, did not need to have
+his magic (his art) enlightened. The primitive
+artist was a seer, the civilized artist is a visionary:
+to Mr. Read reason is the ability to have correct
+visions of reality. It is interesting to find that
+Mr. Lewis uses the same language of criticism. The
+artist is to him a wide-awake dreamer; ‘Don
+Quixote, or the Widow Wadman, is as <i>real</i>, to put it
+no higher than that, as most people ostensibly alive
+and walking the earth to-day’; ‘For me art is
+the civilized <i>substitute</i> for magic.’ To both Mr.
+Read and Mr. Lewis purity means that magical
+intelligence, that inspired (rather than primitive,
+stupid ‘objective’) literalness which may be philosophically
+defined as the individual-real. Both,
+moreover, object to art that is magical in the primitive
+sense as to an anachronism; it is fabricated
+sensationism, it is the collective-real, it is ideological
+rather than natural symbolism.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_14_14" href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> They are
+interested in getting man into proper focus in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span>reality, and in his usefulness as an instrument of
+measurement: they are interested, that is, in psychology,
+in the language of criticism, the mathematics
+of synthesis.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Richards, too, is primarily interested in
+the language of criticism. He condemns Beauty-and-Truth
+terminology—the criticism that treats
+civilized art as unintelligent magic, in fact. He
+not only recognizes Reason as man’s participation
+in the patterns of reality; he insists on Reason
+as social duty; criticism is to him morality. The
+mathematics of synthesis by which reality may
+be accurately apprehended are to be developed
+by turning the human world into a world of values:
+making conduct (communication, relation) achieve
+significant pattern. Conduct is then the training of
+the community as a whole in traffic in reality, with
+the artist as band-master—‘the arts are the supreme
+form of communicative activity.’ Value (the graded
+necessity of reality) is to be discovered by a ‘systematization
+of impulses.’ We have here that intelligent,
+superior, adult instinct which Mr. Lewis believes
+should supply the civilized substitute for magic—the
+instinct equally of the collective-real, with only
+a difference of degree in sophistication, manners.
+Instinct in the collective-real is always either unconsciously
+or consciously flamboyant, grossly poetic;
+in the individual-real always consciously reserved,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span>meticulously poetic (art, Mr. Richards says, deals
+with ‘minute particulars’). But it is always the same
+instinct, the nostalgic desire to reconstitute an
+illusory whole that has no integrity but the integrity
+of accident.</p>
+
+<p>Respect for this accidental quality of reality
+(necessity) may be expressed either by the enthusiasm
+of what Mr. Lewis calls the Revolutionary
+Simpleton, who is always religiously anticipating
+accident, or by what I should like to call Mr.
+Richards’ Moral Simpleton, who observes a reverent
+plasticity in the development (accidental rearrangement)
+of custom. And I should like to add Mr.
+Lewis’s own hero, the Individualistic Simpleton,
+who is to be forced ‘to remain absolutely alone for
+several hours every day.’ Why? To become unreal?
+No, to become more real, to be made into ‘much
+better people.’ But if they were much better people
+already (if a kind of criticism of reality prevailed
+which satisfied Mr. Lewis), then Mr. Lewis, however
+free he might permit himself to be, would
+certainly not worry them with individualism.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_15_15" href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> He
+wants them free now only as a protest, an act of
+spiteful superiority against the collective-real. The
+individual-real is not concerned with self but with
+exposing the stupidity, the hypocrisy of the fanatic
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span>mob. Instead of freeing the self to self, it frees it
+to Reason, to prove merely that intelligent civilized
+individuals can be in closer touch with reality than
+a stupid civilized mob: that they can know more,
+conform more perfectly to customs of more perfect
+taste, control what is unreal self in them more
+systematically, respond more respectfully, regularly
+(classical-poetically) to the stimuli of accidental
+reality. That they can behave, that is, by finding a
+civilized substitute for magic, like a perfect primitive
+mob of philosophy-fed art students.</p>
+
+
+<h4>4</h4>
+
+<p>Mr. Richards quotes Dr. Bradley’s definition of
+poetry as an illustration of the sort of criticism to
+which he is opposed. In principle, however, I do
+not think they are opposed. Dr. Bradley’s ‘world
+by itself’ is fundamentally allied with Mr. Richards’
+world of values: the difference is that Dr. Bradley’s
+world—not ‘a copy of the real world,’ not bound
+up with human affairs—gets its revelations of reality
+through the imagination, that is, dreaming, while
+Mr. Richards’ world gets its revelations of reality
+through waking. Both worlds are trying to prove
+how real they are, the one lying down, the other standing
+up. They are the same world in different attitudes,
+the æsthetic attitude and the moral attitude.
+The protagonist of the first says, ‘I cannot do two
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span>things at once—apprehend reality and make money
+or eat my supper at the same time, I must set aside
+a part of the day sacred to reality, in which I
+do nothing else, sleep over it, as it were.’ The
+protagonist of the second says: ‘Pshaw, affected
+sensitiveness. I can sharpen knives, shave, cook,
+travel, marry, go to church and apprehend reality
+at the same time: in fact, whatever I do is all the
+better done for this, and I apprehend reality all the
+better for what I do.’ Whether a person apprehends
+reality from the moral or from the æsthetic point
+of view is all a matter of energy: what seems easy
+to one person may seem difficult to another, and <i>vice
+versa</i>. Thus, to Mr. Richards, the moral theory
+of art ‘has the most great minds behind it,’ ‘the
+most prominent of these great minds being Plato,
+Aristotle, Horace, Dante, Spenser, Milton, the
+Eighteenth Century, Coleridge, Shelley, Matthew
+Arnold and Pater.’ Which leads us to believe that
+as a ‘moral’ critic Mr. Richards is something of an
+æsthetician.</p>
+
+
+<h4>5</h4>
+
+<p>Modern criticism has supplemented itself with psychology,
+or rather with its literary version, psycho-analysis.
+If criticism is primarily interested in the
+language in which reality is discussed, then it must
+have a partner to deal with the rough physical side
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span>of reality—a field worker in reality. Criticism confines
+itself to taste; psycho-analysis to substantiating
+taste with practical data.</p>
+
+<p>‘We are our bodies,’ Mr. Richards says: that is,
+we should try to be our bodies, to exist psycho-analytically,
+to provide criticism with data. The
+view that we are our bodies, Mr. Richards says,
+should not be described as Materialism—‘it might
+equally well be called <i>Idealism</i>.’ All criticism, he
+means to say, is an appreciation of reality; criticisms
+differ in method, never in principle. With the
+help of psycho-analysis we pay reality the compliment
+of saying ‘we are our bodies’; and reality, with
+the help of criticism, returns the compliment, permitting
+us to say ‘our bodies are us.’</p>
+
+<p>As bodies we are acted upon by reality; this is
+the psycho-analytic half of the trick. The action of
+reality on us produces effects which reveal the
+nature of this reality which acts on us; a description
+of this nature is the critical half of the trick. It is
+not suggested that as bodies we may act on reality,
+for this would reveal the fact that bodies were not
+like reality a solid lump, but separate and independently
+acting; it would indicate a break-up of
+reality, open up the problem of the unreal, and
+O! What a mess we should be in then. Let us have
+order while we can.</p>
+
+<p>‘To know anything,’ Mr. Richards says, ‘is to be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span>influenced by it.’ This makes things still more
+simple and comfortable: we do not have to worry
+about anything which is not <i>here</i>, which does not
+affect us, which is not reality. We are what we
+know, and what we know is also what we know.
+The echo of matter in mind proves that there is
+matter, and also that mind is matter. The mind
+need have no fear of becoming lost in itself so long
+as it continues to know, to be affected. It need not
+be afraid to produce art so long as art remains a
+knowing of reality; knowing of reality is reality: as
+echo of sound is also sound. Mr. Read quotes sympathetically
+Professor Sonnenschein’s learned expression
+of this echo-theory as applied to poetry:
+‘Rhythm is that property of a sequence of events in
+time which produces on the mind of the observer
+the impression of proportion between the duration
+of several events or groups of events of which the
+sequence is composed.’ ‘A good artist,’ Mr. Read
+says, ‘is firstly a good critic.’ He predisposes his
+mind materially to apprehend reality, to receive
+echoes: ‘The work of art emerges within a radiation
+of critical perceptions.’</p>
+
+<p>If every one began systematically treating himself
+as mind, we should all quickly become separate
+individuals and know ourselves, and the symbols we
+used would not be echoes of reality but themselves,
+and then indeed we should be in deep water. To
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span>prevent this possibility psycho-analysis is called on
+to supplement ‘the narrowness of criticism’ (Mr.
+Read’s phrase). Criticism is presumably narrow because
+it deals with forms, while psycho-analysis can
+roll up its sleeves, poke around in the stuff from
+which the symbol is derived, and ‘help us test its
+social validity’ (Mr. Read)—‘social’ meaning pro-matter,
+anti-mind: mind can only be pro-matter
+when it is collective mind.</p>
+
+<p>Psycho-analysis divides people into two types—introverted
+and extraverted. Introversion represents
+error in man, a straying away from reality
+into self, a going of the mind into mind. Both
+psycho-analysis and criticism agree that this process
+cannot, or rather <i>should not</i> produce art. Both processes,
+<i>or their possibility</i>, exist in each individual
+(psycho-analysis is forced to admit that introversion
+always exists; extraversion exists if the individual is
+‘successful’). They may, it is held, be combined in
+<i>phantasy</i>, and phantasy produces ‘living reality,’ art.
+But what is this phantasy but the whole introversive
+world of man behaving extraversively—the collective-real?
+Unless it is introversion actually transformed
+in the individual into extraversion, individual
+mind into matter of ‘more than individual
+use’ (as Mr. Read defines creative phantasies)—the
+individual real? The opposition between collective-real
+and individual-real disappears in the general
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span>agreement between all parties that, by no matter
+what method, introversion must be extraverted.
+Likewise the opposition between romanticism and
+classicism: romanticism is acceptable if it has an
+extraverted, classical touch; classicism is not necessarily
+damaged by an introverted, romantic touch,
+so long as it does not lose complete hold of extraversion.</p>
+
+<p>Extraversion, it is clear, is intelligent body-being.
+What introversion is it seems difficult to say, since
+it is always defined by defamatory comparison with
+extraversion. ‘Jung,’ Mr. Read says, ‘further differentiates
+<i>active</i> and <i>passive</i> phantasy—the latter a
+morbid state which we do not need to stop to
+consider here.’ Complete introversion is presumably
+not intelligent mind-being, but a pathological
+condition. Individual mind-being is not intelligent,
+pathological, because it does not make for unanimity.
+And both psycho-analysis and criticism want
+some unanimous, collective mind in contemporary
+man like the collective mind in primitive man,
+with the distinction—made in consideration of
+the grown-up, individualized character of modern
+man—that this must be an intelligent collective
+mind, inspired with Reason, a refined version of
+brutish objectivity. ‘We need some unanimity,’ Mr.
+Read says, ‘to focus the vague desires that exist in
+the collective mind.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span></p>
+
+<p>But what is the collective mind? A herd of deer
+clinging together may be said to have unanimity,
+but it can scarcely be said to have a mind: it has
+unanimity because to the extent to which it clings
+together it <i>is</i> brutish, natural reality. And the same
+is true of primitive man up to the point where
+individual works of art occur; at this point the hold
+on reality has been lost, unanimity can only be
+maintained by force, and by the force of a few
+masterful but pathological, introversive, mind-being
+individuals. Collective mind is a contradiction in
+terms: what is meant is intelligent (self-enslaving)
+collective matter.</p>
+
+<p>And here psycho-analysis is more consistent than
+criticism because it is frankly interested in extraversion
+rather than in extraversive works: it would
+not seriously worry psycho-analysis if works and
+their authors were discontinued: it would still have
+Case B, in which Mr. X and Miss Y.... Criticism,
+on the other hand, cannot get along without
+famous works by famous authors, which are, moreover,
+a continual source of discord since they are
+all introversive in origin and cannot be allowed to
+take their place in literature until they have been
+rigorously extraversified.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span></p>
+
+
+<h4>6</h4>
+
+<p>Psychoanalytic criticism makes the emotion with
+which a work is experienced merely a more complicated,
+appreciative kind of sensation. In sensation
+the cause of sensation, a real object (experience),
+attacks the individual; he is helpless <i>not</i> to respond,
+he can only classify his response according to
+whether he does or does not enjoy it. Every sensory
+experience is a destruction of his originality. The
+work of art presented to him on this response-basis
+is a deliberately aggressive real object intended to
+usurp his originality in a more constructive way
+than ordinary sensation. Even the freedom of
+classifying sensation according to its enjoyableness
+is denied him: a forced classification is contained
+in the object-work, representing not a principle of
+personal preference, but of social preference,
+expressing the criticism, or Reason, of the time.
+The ordinary object has generally only an immediate,
+disorganized sensory effect; the object-work
+reaches back into the whole past of the individual,
+re-adapting it to itself by means of memory. All
+image-making involved in so-called appreciative,
+reactive experience is a perversion of originality, of
+the independent power of acting upon initiative,
+to the derived power of acting upon incentive:
+the critical bias, first interpreting works as object-works,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span>then inspiring works to be object-works
+means ‘imitation’.</p>
+
+<p>So little does pure, original action seem possible
+or desirable that we have no word for an impulse
+contrary in its nature to the nature of reaction, for
+dissociative rather than associative conduct—disaction.
+To the psycho-analyst all activity is interpretable
+only as reaction to sensation; to the professional
+critic (Mr. Richards, for example) all
+critical conduct is imaginary re-activity: we have
+the individual’s originality not momentarily
+eclipsed, but actually engaged in destroying itself,
+enriching sensation with the complicated depth of
+personality.</p>
+
+<p>Art so conceived thus becomes a skilful thwarting
+of originality. The immediate shock to the consciousness
+which a work brings, which might be
+expected to encourage an independence in the
+consciousness, a dissociation from reality (influences)
+and a development of its differences from
+reality, is utilized to possess the consciousness for
+reality, to force it to organize itself according to
+its resemblances (responses) to the particular object-work
+by which it is attacked. Art is an exaggeration
+of the hostile operation of reality on
+the individual consciousness, an exaggeration proportioned
+to overcome the originality which offers a
+casual, disorganized resistance to ordinary objects.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span>Between object and object there is a complete
+hypnotic interaction by which reality is maintained
+and which exists only partially between man and
+object because man is possessed of originality.
+The object-work is therefore an object especially
+designed to correct this originality in man by
+ensnaring him in a more than ordinarily intense
+field of hypnotic action.</p>
+
+<p>A poem, then, in the critical scheme, is only a
+work in the sense that it achieves a value equal to
+an exceptionally ‘good’ experience; it is an especially
+high-class object, one that makes use of all
+man’s powers for reconstructing reality: a model
+object, as the poet is supposed to be a model man.
+But man’s powers for reconstructing reality are
+really a misuse of his powers for constructing
+himself out of the wreckage which is reality. The
+only true entity possible to man is an analytic
+entity: the synthetic entities of art are all parodies
+of self. An original poem is only seemingly synthetic;
+the words of which it is made are both the
+instrument of the analysis and the substance of the
+pure self of the poem which emerges from the
+analysis. Every poem of this kind is an instance of
+fulfilled originality, a model, to the reader, of constructive
+dissociation: an incentive not to response
+but to initiative. Poetry is properly an art of
+individualization as opposed to the other arts,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span>which are arts of communication. To compare a
+poem with a picture or with a piece of music
+or sculpture, is to treat analytic entities and synthetic
+entities as if they were objects of similar
+reality. Synthetic entities are imitative, communicative,
+provocative of association: their keynote
+is organized social sanity. Analytic entities are
+original, dissociative, and provocative of dissociation:
+their keynote is organized personal insanity.
+This is why, in hurried scientific fear, the shamen
+of psycho-analysis and criticism explain as pure
+introversion only obviously morbid conditions,
+making out art to be, wherever possible, redeemed
+introversion. If criticism of this sort persists there
+is no doubt that art will in time produce only
+synthetic entities: that is, poetry will disappear.
+Indeed it may be the prevalence of such criticism
+that is responsible for the present situation of
+poetry; why, in Mr. Read’s words, there is ‘no
+adequate literary equivalent in England for the
+impressive organization and intellectual content of
+the modern movement in painting.’ For poems as
+synthetic entities must obviously always run a very
+poor second to pictures.</p>
+
+
+<h4>7</h4>
+
+<p>As to the problem of rhythm and the point
+of view I have been applying. Rhythm in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span>decorative poetic sense in which it is generally used
+is, I believe, a strictly prose property. Prose is an
+inclusive medium, its merit depends on its fullness.
+The more rich in illustration, detail, rhythmic intricacies
+it is, the better prose it is, the more effective
+as an instrument of synthesis. It is poetry, on the
+other hand, which is properly harsh, bare, matter-of-fact.
+Punctuation, the notation of rhythm, is
+essentially a prose development, a means of managing
+the intricate language-flow. Prose is the
+social, civilized instrument of communication. The
+restraints put on it are like the complicated conventions
+that govern an apparently free-and-easy
+but actually rigidly prescribed drawing-room atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>The purpose of poetry is to destroy all that prose
+formally represents. It is an exclusive medium, and
+its merit depends on the economy with which it can
+remove the social rhythmic clutter of communicative
+language. The savage <i>tom-tom</i> is poetry of a
+brutally specialized kind used to eliminate everything
+in the listeners but the purpose with which
+it has been argumentatively overloaded. Non-purposive
+poetry has all the eliminating force of
+the <i>tom-tom</i> without the grotesque effects of special
+pleading. A suppression of all associative obligations
+that might hinder analysis takes place in
+the poet: by this narrowness he is free as by the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span>synthetic broadness of prose the prose-writer is
+bound. And it is this narrowness that is the only
+rhythm proper to poetry. Metre is an attempt to
+soften the economy and narrowness requisite in
+poetry; and it is likely to cause, and in the main has
+caused, only a more fancy, mannered prose than
+prose; to misrepresent the nature of restraint and
+limitation in poetry. The end of poetry is to leave
+everything as pure and bare as possible after its
+operation. It is therefore important that its tools
+of destruction should be as frugal, economical
+as possible. When the destruction or analysis is
+accomplished they shall have to account for their
+necessity; they are the survivors, the result as
+well as the means of the elimination. They are the
+pure residue, and the meaning if there is any; and
+they vary in each poem only according to the
+amount of destruction they have done and the
+clutter with which they began. The greater the
+clutter attacked and the smaller, the purer, the
+residue to which it is reduced (the more destructive
+the tools), the better the poem.</p>
+
+<p>Rhythm in poetry is therefore a deadly hammer,
+hammer away in which each word demonstrates
+its necessity and in which each word is accented.
+In prose there is accenting, then a long period of
+relaxation, the harshness of the important words is
+absorbed in the unimportant words: it is rhythmic.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span>Prose is skilful manipulation of the whole standing
+vocabulary, and a great deal of poetry merely
+competes with prose in vocabularistic manipulation.
+Poetry is a selection of a few words from this
+inert mass, which justify, quicken themselves, in its
+destruction. The abruptness of poetry, commonly
+softened into prosaic musicalness, is due to the
+implied omission at every point of rhythmic prose
+language. Poetry is narrow (like the poem on the
+page), broken, quick; prose is broad, rhythmic,
+slow. Poetry is personal, prosaic. Prose is social,
+dressed out in verbal amenities, poetic.</p>
+
+
+<h4>8</h4>
+
+<p>As to the application of the kind of point of view
+that I have outlined to an individual’s relations
+with his fellows and, beyond that, to the relations of
+a poem with reality. As to fellows: the unsocial,
+ascetic concentration of self on self, the analytic
+intensification of personality to a state of unreality,
+makes personality a pure, not diffuse, a restrained
+and completely private activity. Where personality
+was of this nature, all synthetic, public, real life
+would be impersonal and formal—it would have
+manners for the sake of communicative ease, not
+for the sake of concealing or discovering, or suppressing
+or standardizing personality. Real life, I mean,
+as an abstract, general life would be happier so than
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span>as a concrete synthesis of personalities. It would not
+be a source of physical nourishment for personality.
+The unreal person would not feed on or be absorbed
+in the pattern; he would sharpen and try his
+asceticism in it. A view of this kind, making
+society an artificial pattern based on accident
+instead of a ‘real’ pattern based on necessity, is the
+only possible clue to the reconciliation of freedom
+and formality. To attempt to discover and form
+personality in the social pattern is to make social
+life dull, vulgar and aggressive, and life with self,
+dull, morbid and trivial. To treat social life as an
+impersonal pattern is to give it the theatrical vitality
+of humour and to make life with self strong and
+serious. The social problem is for each individual
+how to reach the proper degree of humorous formality
+in his communicative language, his clothes,
+his home; not how to acquire a vicarious personal
+life which has no content but a gross synthetic
+personality-desire. Social life (life with others) as
+opposed to personal life (life with self) should be
+as dancing opposed to walking—formal meaningless
+gesture as opposed to eccentric significant character.
+Certain strictly social arts such as music would
+become immediately tolerable and desirable if
+treated as arts of gesture rather than of character.</p>
+
+<p>Now as to poems and reality. A poem is an
+advanced degree of self, as reality is an advanced
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span>degree of social life. The poem dances the dance
+of reality, but with such perfect artificiality that
+the dance, from very perfection, cancels itself and
+leaves, as far as reality is concerned, Nothing.
+But as far as the poem is concerned, Nothing is
+a dancer walking the ruins; character, by the
+ascetic nature of its energy, surviving gesture.
+This asceticism is the creative formality of the
+poem. Its critical formality is its original deadly
+participation in the dance. Where we find no
+critical formality the poem represents diffusion
+of self in the literary, synthetic self of reality;
+wantonness of gesture; sentimental corruption of
+character; tedious extension of reality beyond decent
+limits of sociality; instead of the dance, an
+orgy of improprieties. Where we find only critical
+formality, there is the same moral laxity, but concealed
+under a squeamish disciplinary veneer; the
+difference between ‘romantic’ and ‘classical,’
+merely.</p>
+
+
+<h4>9</h4>
+
+<p>Mr. Lewis’s ambitious offensive against wrongness
+makes a nice point of conclusion, as it made a nice
+starting-point, for this exercise. Most of Mr. Lewis’s
+confusions are due to his attempt to correlate his
+political system with his taste. His political system is
+consistent with itself; we agree with it unreservedly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span>or we agree with it not at all. His taste is inconsistent
+with itself wherever it has been made to conform
+with his political system: it becomes a nagging, expedient
+right, lacking the proper indifference of
+taste and the proper consistency of a political
+attitude. It is therefore obviously futile to treat with
+Mr. Lewis on matters of taste; while, on the other
+hand, it may be helpful to consider certain clear
+features of his political system.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) To the popularist progress is socially continuous;
+culture is the large-scale, accumulative
+participation of everyman in progress; conduct is
+behaviourism, perfect social automatism. To the
+individualist progress is political rather than social—aristocratically
+hereditary through that bluest
+blood, Reason; culture is eclectic, conduct is anarchistic,
+the perfection of the individualism of the
+few who are in this system responsible for the social
+conformity of the rest. They differ in their opinion
+of the size of a potent political group: the former
+believes that the entire social group may form the
+political group, the latter that the political group
+is an independent minority representative of the
+social group. But both support the idea of a progressive
+tradition; to the one it is mystical and
+collective, to the other rationally and personally
+maintained. And to both the idea of a non-social
+self outside the tradition and without reference to a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span>cultural line of succession (a self, rather, ‘beginning
+again and again and again’) would be equally
+foreign and repulsive. Mr. Lewis’s concrete, ‘stable’
+person is only an upper-class version of the hysterical,
+hypnotic, mass social self—more realistic,
+steady, decorous, common-sensible. The suppression
+of individual will by mass-will of which Mr.
+Lewis complains refers only to checks on political
+opportunism: what he is really interested in is
+power not individuality. He appreciates the fact
+that sociality means loss of personal consciousness.
+His solution is that the few strong individuals who
+object to loss of consciousness should benefit by an
+anarchistic dispensation that leaves them their
+consciousness intact in order that they may politically
+administer sociality to the unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) Mr. Lewis’s individualistic compromises come
+from his unwillingness to face the dualistic character
+of the individual—his real, social effect, his unreal,
+more-than-anarchistic self-subtraction from the
+social group for purposes of identity. For various
+reasons Mr. Lewis has not been able to shake himself
+free of the academic, philosophical force of the
+language that he uses; the problem is in any case
+too fine for his rough argumentative methods. He
+would have first to overcome his prejudice against
+dualistic concepts arising from their shady association
+with romantic ventures in philosophy, a task of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span>patience not in harmony with his temperament. In
+any case, his political sense is too strong, too orthodox,
+to permit of his admitting that the identity of
+the individual may be established outside the social
+group. We may find the clue to his dogmatism in
+this respect in the accent of philosophical awe with
+which he pronounces ‘reality.’ Reality’s the thing;
+the individual is only (in a few individuals specializing
+in individualism) an honourable second. Even
+unreality may not be a thing by itself: it is (and this
+seems to be Mr. Lewis’s general conclusion) the
+queer slant at which reality is seen. To say that
+reality is unreal, from Mr. Lewis’s viewpoint, is like
+saying that sugar is sweet: the queer slant is in
+reality, not in the individual, as the sweetness is in
+the sugar, not in the tongue. ‘Unreal’ is in this
+usage merely a more philosophic-sounding word
+than ‘pretty,’ ‘spiritual,’ ‘mysterious’ or ‘queer.’
+‘The reality,’ Mr. Lewis complains, ‘has definitely
+installed itself inside the contemporary mind’—it
+has become what I have called the fairy-tale of the
+collective-real. Mr. Lewis, that is, is more interested
+in the prestige of reality than in the general integrity
+of the individual mind. His implication being
+that if the contemporary mind had definitely
+installed itself in ‘the reality’ all would be well.
+We should have a social group psycho-physically
+imbedded in reality, the individual consciousness
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span>being in this case the fairy-tale—with a few independent
+individual consciousnesses wagging themselves
+wisely and anarchistically in political appreciation
+of the situation. Farther than this Mr.
+Lewis is unable to go. He contents himself with
+establishing the concreteness, the social security of
+the wiseacres. His brand of individualism depends
+on the social setting for authentication; he does not
+dare to separate the fact of individuality from the
+fact of sociality and reveal how they maintain themselves
+in one person through a contradiction, not
+through ‘reason.’ The contradiction is difficult to
+grasp, as is the dualism from which it proceeds, and
+difficult to persevere in clearly and equitably once
+it is grasped; demanding infinite precision and much
+active distress and conferring few brilliant occasions
+on those who do grasp it. And Mr. Lewis’s brand of
+individualism is more immediately ambitious, more
+impatient, more realistic. He does not trust himself
+to wait upon successes or brilliant occasions.
+He skilfully glozes over the fine distinctions, makes
+politic compromises with the reality sufficient to
+assure the more astute members of the social group
+of a few ready individualistic privileges, and sneers
+down with aristocratic scorn the political idealism
+of the mob. He is willing to go all the way back to
+wipe out the effects of historical romancing; he is
+unwilling to come all the way forward again and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span>risk doing the job thoroughly (the job, that is, of
+thinking through to the fine distinctions), as it might
+be now done. And so he remains, for all his intellectual
+swagger, a mere reactionary and anarchist.
+Another hero who, having fought just hard enough
+to permit him to celebrate a triumph, but not hard
+enough to force a conclusive battle, has claimed
+his laurels in Rome and retired to live upon them;
+the fine distinctions still untaken. ‘For the former
+generals, as soon as they believed their exploits had
+entitled them to the honour of triumphal distinctions,
+always abandoned the enemy. Insomuch that there
+were already in Rome three statues adorned with
+laurel; but still Tacfarinas was ravaging Africa....’</p>
+
+<p>(<i>c</i>) Mr. Lewis’s world of reality is what we see
+plus what we know: what we know is the queer
+slant in what we see, not the queer slant in us. Our
+knowledge is the poetic touch in reality. The world
+of reality for the collective-real is what we see, alone;
+the fact itself of reality is poetic. But the differences
+are fundamentally slight. Knowing is the individualistic
+comprehension of seeing; conscious,
+literal perception versus crude, mystical mass-sensation;
+private ownership of reality versus the
+vulgar, public, figurative participation in reality
+of the impoverished working-class mob—that is,
+anarchistic, personal seizure of reality made possible
+by the philosophical vagueness of the mob. (For
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span>example, Mr. Lewis could not argue his position
+either with success or impunity in Russia.) I repeat,
+then, that the differences between the collective-real
+and the individual-real are fundamentally
+slight. Both defer to the snobbism of reality: it is
+reality and not the individual that matters. And
+both are poetic, a sentimental fusion of two contradictory
+categories, a wilful blurring by the intelligence
+of the dualism upon which it is based.
+Both, for example, have difficulty in defining ‘the
+object,’ due to their unwillingness to admit this
+duality; so that the same fusion and blurring that
+takes place in the individual takes place in the
+object as well. The romantic inwardness of the one
+inflates its faults and delusions to a degree of
+obviousness that invites and facilitates attack. The
+common-sense outwardness of the other is more
+aggressive, but more discreet, hiding under its well-bred
+anarchism and upper-class self-deprecation an
+enormous greed of possession. The one is childishly
+content with a fairy-tale of possession; the other
+insists haughtily upon a true story. But for both the
+problem, whether as seeing or seeing and knowing,
+is essentially the same: to have or not to have.
+As for being, it is not a proper poetic, not a proper
+philosophical and therefore not a proper political
+question, and therefore out of order.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>d</i>) The evasion of both of these two systems of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span>the dualism that I have attempted to suggest without
+romantic prejudice is reflected in their respective
+treatment of time and space. Recognizing
+the antinomy of time and space, they dismiss the
+possibility of enforcing it practically as too frightening:
+if what is is made to be what is, then we
+have nothing but what is; we cannot fool ourselves;
+therefore evasion and philosophy. The antinomian
+pie is cut. Mr. Lewis’s side takes space; the
+other side takes time; and both sides now devote
+their energies to proving that each has the better
+piece. And certainly both have very good pieces.
+In space occurs a disintegration that may prove
+space, through its particulars; in time, an assemblage
+of particulars that need not however develop
+particularity, but merely prove time, through the
+standardizing of its particulars. Good pieces. But
+only pieces. Space suffering from excessive definiteness;
+time from excessive indefiniteness. Each trying
+to pretend it is the whole pie, but each remaining
+just a self-infatuated piece. Space-synthesis, time-synthesis—philosophical
+impostures with different
+political methods, one conservative, old-fashioned,
+the other revolutionary, modernist. Time a sort
+of negative space, space a sort of positive time.
+Space-ist philosophy belied by its individualism,
+time-ist philosophy by its generalism. To the time-men
+the wholeness, the reality, is administered by a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span>democratic Self; a Self not sufficiently self-ish,
+nothing-ish, unreal, small, instantly conceived, to
+be real in a time-scheme; therefore mystical,
+poetic. To the space-men, the wholeness, the
+reality, is administrated by an anarchistic, aristocratic
+God; a God too personal, too concretely
+particular, too specially knowable, too real, in fact,
+to be real in a space-scheme; therefore rationalistic,
+poetic. The time-men re-inforce the democratic
+Self with Everybody. The space-men re-inforce
+God with Art, which is a few superior minds
+capable of animating the material world ‘with some
+degree of mental existence.’ For by itself—and this
+is Mr. Lewis’s astounding conclusion—the material
+world is unreal. And we, too, are unreal—we should
+regard ourselves, he thinks, as surface creatures.
+But his conclusion is less astounding if we understand
+it as the debater’s final shock that clinches the
+argument: the material world is unreal and we too
+are unreal <i>if</i> we do not believe in reality. If we
+believe in reality ‘God becomes the supreme symbol
+of our separation and of our limited transcendence.’
+God is the queer slant which through faith (the
+proper geometric point of view) may be conceived
+as ultimately (that is, in the absolute sense)
+straight. And faith is reason. In the time-scheme
+the democratic Self is the queer slant; it is a
+sceptical, an ultimate queer slant. And scepticism
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span>is romanticism: vague, insincere, sweeping transcendence
+of the material world. Mr. Lewis, then,
+is not, as it at first seemed, against transcendence,
+but only against temporal transcendence. He does
+not object to evasion and philosophy, but rather
+wishes them to be more zealous, individualistic,
+spatial; more evasive and philosophical; to be Art.
+The temporal what-may-be comes too carelessly
+close to the what-is. Art, backed up by God, begs
+the question more efficiently; anarchistic but timid
+instead of socialistic but bold. It now only remains
+to be decided whether Mr. Lewis’s stand-by is Art
+or God; and since God was a late-comer in his
+scheme we can decide in favour of Art—and Mr.
+Lewis.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>e</i>) But Art. Art is artists. And what is artists?
+Artists is a few superior minds. Artist is short for
+artists. Mr. Lewis is not short for artists but long
+for himself. As between artists and himself, Mr.
+Lewis decides in favour of himself; it is therefore
+still easier for us to decide in favour of Mr. Lewis.
+Against artists. What is artists? For example, Mr.
+E. M. Forster is artists, as is to be seen in his book
+<i>Aspects of the Novel</i>. The novel is a ‘spongy tract.’
+It is ‘bounded by two chains of mountains ...
+Poetry and History....’ The novel tells a story.
+The characters are either flat or round. The
+‘element of surprise’ ... is of great importance in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span>a plot. Then Fantasy. (Here compare Mr. Lewis’s
+treatment of <i>Ulysses</i> with Mr. Forster’s and you
+will understand perhaps why Mr. Lewis is not
+artists.) Then prophecy: ‘In Dostoevsky the characters
+and situations always stand for more than
+themselves; infinity attends them; though they
+remain individuals they expand to embrace it and
+summon it to embrace them; one can apply to them
+the saying of St. Catherine of Sienna, that God is
+in the soul and the soul is in God as the sea is in the
+fish and the fish is in the sea.’ D. H. Lawrence is
+‘the only prophetic novelist writing to-day ... the
+only living novelist in whom the song predominates,
+who has the rapt bardic quality, and whom it is idle
+to criticize.’ (Compare Mr. Lewis’s criticism of
+Lawrence with Mr. Forster’s, and you will understand
+further why Mr. Lewis is not artists.) Then
+Pattern and Rhythm. <i>Thais</i> is the shape of an hour-glass.
+<i>Roman Pictures</i>, by Percy Lubbock, is shaped
+like a grand chain. Also Henry James. But a
+pattern must not be too rigid. If it is, ‘beauty has
+arrived, but in too tyrannous a guise.’ For ‘the
+novel is not capable of as much artistic development
+as the drama: its humanity or the grossness
+of its material hinder it.... Still, this is not the end
+of our quest. We will not give up the hope of beauty
+yet. Cannot it be introduced into fiction by some
+other method than pattern? Let us edge rather
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span>nervously towards the idea of “rhythm.”’ We then
+learn that ‘rhythm is sometimes quite easy.’ And
+so to bed and pleasant dreams about the development
+of the novel mixed up with the development
+of humanity (‘the interminable tape-worm,’ as
+Mr. Forster had called it earlier in the day when
+it was ‘wriggling on the forceps’). No, Mr. Lewis
+is not artists. He is not an aristocrat, but a distracted
+and disaffected rough-neck. He has no more
+real connection with aspects of the novel than
+Nietzsche with any of the numerous ‘æsthetic
+revivals’ of his time. Like Nietzsche his politics
+and philosophy are æsthetic only in the sense that
+they are personal. His few ‘superior minds’ are
+himself. If he had made this clear in the very
+beginning he would have saved himself and those
+who have been good enough to follow him a great
+deal of unnecessary distraction. Politeness, God,
+reality—these are all Mr. Lewis in kid gloves
+embracing himself. His rightness consists in his
+embracing himself, his wrongness in his wearing
+kid gloves. For anarchism is not enough. It is
+obviously not enough for Mr. Lewis. The kid gloves
+which enabled him to rush into society confused
+the dualism on which selfhood certainly depends.
+When he takes them off (as it is probable he will in
+time, for he does not seem happy in them) and
+shakes himself by the bare hand, his enthusiasm over
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>his own unreal individuality will have a bare-handed
+social concomitant more like Bolshevism
+than anarchism. Or rather, Mr. Lewis will find
+that not even Bolshevism is enough. What is
+enough? Nothing is enough. And until Mr. Lewis
+finds this out he will go on celebrating more and
+more ferociously his ferocious pangs of hunger,
+seconded by dozens of famished æsthetic revivalists.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="HOW_CAME_IT_ABOUT">
+    HOW CAME IT ABOUT?
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>How came it about that Mrs. Paradise the
+dressmaker is here to dress me, and Mr. Babcock
+the bootmaker to boot me and a whole science of
+service to serve me, and that I am precisely here to
+be served? Do not speak to me of economics: that
+is merely a question of how we arrange matters between
+us. And do not speak to me of genesis: I am
+discussing the question of Mrs. Paradise and Mr.
+Babcock and myself and the others as immediate
+causes of one another, I am not discussing creation.
+Personally, I do not believe in creation. Creation is
+stealing one thing to turn it into another. What I
+<i>am</i> discussing is existence, uncorrupted by art—how
+came it about, and so forth. Do not speak to me of
+love: Mrs. Paradise and Mr. Babcock and myself
+and all the others do not like each other, in fact, we
+dislike each other because each of us is most certainly
+the cause of the other. I am the reason for
+Mrs. Paradise’s making frocks and Mrs. Paradise is
+the reason for my wearing frocks. If it were not for
+each other we should be occupied only with ourselves;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span>we should not exist. How then came we to
+exist? I ask this question. Mrs. Paradise asks this
+question. I am Mrs. Paradise’s answer. Mrs. Paradise
+is my answer. As for Mr. Babcock, he has hair
+on his nose and I never look at him. As for all the
+others, I must put up a notice asking them to ring
+the bell gently.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>There is a woman in this city who loathes me.
+There are people everywhere who loathe me. I
+could name them; if they were in a book I could
+turn to the exact page. People who loathe me do so
+for one of two reasons: because I have frightened
+them because I have loathed them (that is, made
+my death-face at them, which I shall not describe
+as it might in this way lose some of its virtue) or because
+they are interested in me and there seems no
+practical way of (or excuse for) satisfying their
+interest. As to love, that is another matter—it has
+nothing to do with either interest or fear. Love is
+simply a matter of history, beginning like cancer
+from small incidents. There is nothing further to
+be said about it.</p>
+
+<p>But as to loathing: I feel an intense intimacy with
+those who have this loathing interest in me. Further
+than this, I know what they mean, I sympathize
+with them, I understand them. There should be a
+name (as poetic as love) for this relationship between
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span>loather and loathed; it is of the closest and
+more full of passion than incest.</p>
+
+<p>To continue about this woman. What is to her
+irritation is to me myself. She has therefore a very
+direct sense of me, as I have a very direct sense of
+her, from being a kind of focus of her nervous system.
+There is no sentiment, no irony between us,
+nothing but feeling: it is an utterly serious relationship.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">For if one eat my meat, though it be known</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">The meat was mine, the excrement is his own.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>I forget in what context these words were used by
+Donne—but they express very accurately how
+organic I feel this relationship to be. The tie between
+us is as positive as the tie between twins is
+negative. I think of her often. She is a painter—not
+a very good painter. I understand this too: it is
+difficult to explain, but quite clear to myself that
+one of the reasons I am attached to her is that she is
+not a good painter. Also her clothes, which do not
+fit her well: this again makes me even more attached
+to her. If she knew this she would be
+exasperated against me all the more, and I should
+like it; not because I want to annoy her but because
+this would make our relationship still more
+intense. It would be terrible to me if we ever
+became friends; like a divorce.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="HUNGRY_TO_HEAR">
+    HUNGRY TO HEAR
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Hungry to hear (like Jew-faces, kind but anticipating
+pain) they sit, their ears raw. The conversation
+remains genteel, of motor cars: her brother
+bought a car, he was having a six months’ vacation
+from an Indian post, he should have known better
+than to buy an American car, the value depreciates
+so, and <i>she</i> (his sister) should not have lent it to <i>her</i>
+(her friend) even though it wasn’t her fault that the
+car only did fifteen miles to the gallon after she
+returned it. A clear situation like this, in which life
+is easy to understand, is cruel to them. It leaves no
+scratches in the mind around which opinions, sympathies,
+silly repetitions can fester and breed dreams
+and other remote infections—too remote always to
+give serious pain. They long to be fumbled, to
+have confusion and uncertainty make a confused
+and uncertain end of them. There they sit, having
+pins-and-needles of obscurity which they mistake
+for sensation. They open their newspapers: ‘I
+suppose it is foolish to spend all this time reading
+newspapers? They are lying and dishonest and devoted
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span>to keeping a certain portion of the population
+in ignorance and intellectual slavery? Or is it foolish
+to take it so seriously? I shall go on reading them
+out of sophistication?...’ Oh, go to hell.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="IN_A_CAFE">
+    IN A CAFÉ
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>This is the second time I have seen that girl
+here. What makes me suspicious is that her manner
+has not changed. From her ears I should say she is
+Polish. If this is so, is it not dangerous to drink
+coffee here? Does anyone else think of this, I wonder?
+Yet why should I be suspicious? And why
+should her manner not remain unchanged? She has
+probably been cold, unhappy, unsuccessful or simply
+not alive ever since I saw her last. Quite honestly
+I wish her success. The man who is making
+sketches from pictures in the Art Magazine may find
+her little Polish ears not repulsive. For good luck I
+turn away and do not look at her again. I, who am
+neither sluttish nor genteel, like this place because
+it has brown curtains of a shade I do not like.
+Everything, even my position, which is not against
+the wall, is unsatisfactory and pleasing: the men
+coming too hurriedly, the women too comfortably
+from the lavatories, which are in an unnecessarily
+prominent position—all this is disgusting; it puts
+me in a sordid good-humour. This attitude I find to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span>be the only way in which I can defy my own intelligence.
+Otherwise I should become barbaric and be
+a modern artist and intelligently mind everything,
+or I should become civilized and be a Christian
+Scientist and intelligently mind nothing. Plainly
+the only problem is to avoid that love of lost identity
+which drives so many clever people to hold
+difficult points of view—by <i>difficult</i> I mean big,
+hungry, religious points of view which absorb their
+personality. I for one am resolved to mind or not
+mind only to the degree where my point of view
+is no larger than myself. I can thus have a great
+number of points of view, like fingers, and which
+I can treat as I treat the fingers of my hand, to
+hold my cup, to tap the table for me and fold
+themselves away when I do not wish to think. If
+I fold them away now, then I am sitting here all
+this time (without ordering a second cup) because
+other people go on sitting here, not because I am
+thinking. It is all indeed, I admit, rather horrible.
+But if I remain a person instead of becoming a
+point of view, I have no contact with horror. If I
+become a point of view, I become a force and am
+brought into direct contact with horror, another
+force. As well set one plague of cats loose upon
+another and expect peace of it. As a force I have
+power, as a person virtue. All forces eventually
+commit suicide with their power, while virtue in a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span>person merely gives him a small though constant
+pain from being continuously touched, looked at,
+mentally handled; a pain by which he learns to
+recognize himself. Poems, being more like persons,
+probably only squirm every time they are read and
+wrap themselves round more tightly. Pictures and
+pieces of music, being more like forces, are soon
+worn out by the power that holds them together.
+To me pictures and music are always like stories
+told backwards: or like this I read in the newspaper:
+‘Up to the last she retained all her faculties
+and was able to sign cheques.’</p>
+
+<p>It is surely time for me to go and yet I do not
+in the least feel like going. I have been through certain
+intimacies and small talk with everything here,
+when I go out I shall have to begin all over again in
+the street, in addition to wondering how many
+people are being run over behind me; when I get
+home I shall turn on the light and say to myself how
+glad I am it is winter, with no moths to kill. And I
+shall look behind the curtain where my clothes hang
+and think that I have done this ever since the
+homicidal red-haired boy confided his fear to me
+and I was sorry for him and went to his room and
+did it for him. And my first look round will be a
+Wuthering-Heights look; after that I shall settle
+down to work and forget about myself.</p>
+
+<p>I am well aware that we form, all together, one
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span>monster. But I refuse to giggle and I refuse to be
+frightened and I refuse to be fierce. Nor will I feed
+or be fed on. I will simply think of other things. I
+will go now. Let them stare. I am well though
+eccentrically dressed.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="FRAGMENT_OF_AN_UNFINISHED_NOVEL">
+    FRAGMENT OF AN UNFINISHED NOVEL
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>What could I do but treat my secret as if it did
+not exist, that is, as my mother did hers until she
+confided it to me? which was not confiding, but a
+necessary explanation of the curious gift or curse
+(you will decide which for yourself before many
+pages) that I had from her (the flesh only knows
+how) when she put me into this world fifty-four
+years ago in a carved bed made of an old sea-chest
+that she had of her father (together with many
+other things) who was a Dutch Jew of a family that
+had fled from Spain and made its fortune as merchants
+and traders and in African mines and which
+disinherited him when he ran away to sea from
+school and saw things in China which neither white
+man nor Jew might see without death, but which
+long afterwards recalled him when he was in
+America and too proud to accept the portion denied
+him in his youth, which my mother never forgave
+him but continually during her lifetime besought
+me to apply for in my own person, which was
+pleasing and persuasive.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span></p>
+
+<p>My mother, I say, broke her secret to no one, excepting
+me, and this was not breaking it, since I
+had the same secret, and I broke my secret to no
+one, which was either wise or foolish (I can’t say
+which) but not wicked, for had I wished it was a
+thing that could go against no one but myself (as
+you shall see). How my mother had it, she did not
+know, although she was of the opinion that she
+caught it from a travelling bookseller who secretly
+sold romances to the pupils of the French convent
+in New Orleans where her father kept her—over
+the garden wall. It could not be the books, she
+said, for they were as innocent as the Bible, with
+no more rapes and indeed fewer mysteries. The
+contamination, if it was such, must have been from
+his eyes, if at all, which were long-lasting ones, she
+remembering them many days after each visit and
+for a long time seeing through them, as it were.
+She knew nothing about him but that he was
+Mexican, of a poor breed but of such charm (he
+dressed in the Mexican manner) that she would
+have run away with him had not her strange
+possession come over her at about this time and
+changed the whole course of her life.</p>
+
+<p>‘Perhaps,’ I suggested, when she told me this, ‘he
+used a charm against you. It is known there are
+certain herbs to be found in Mexico which may be
+used to cunning ends.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘That may indeed be so,’ my mother said, ‘for I
+remember he once gave me a fine gold chain to
+wear on which was suspended an image of a pale
+blue stone, and I could never make out what it
+represented, as it was all twisted and seemed a different
+thing each time I looked at it, now like a
+snake, now like a clenched hand or like a troll’s
+face.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Surely,’ I cried, ‘it was this charm that brought
+the thing upon us.’ For I thought, if it was a charm
+that brought this thing on my mother, it might be a
+charm that would take this thing from me; and for
+this reason I have ever been one easily affected by
+superstitions of all kinds and ready to put my faith
+in what is but circus farce to others, a weakness that
+has been as great a source of misfortune to me as
+my possession.</p>
+
+<p>‘It might indeed have been so,’ replied my
+mother, ‘but I cannot be sure. At about the same
+time Sister Mathilde began praying for me, as if
+God had sent her against this journeyman for my
+sake. She prayed in my room and soon she slept in
+my bed the better to protect me, and I began
+strongly to dislike it for she sweated powerfully and
+loved me more tenderly than is good for girlish
+sleep. Wherever I was between these two I shall
+never know. If one was of God and the other of the
+Devil, then there is a third power which exists to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span>save the human soul from both, I hesitate to say
+with what intentions or effects. For as I was one
+morning sitting on my pot and enjoying innocent
+conversation with myself, suddenly I looked up,
+feeling myself not alone. Think how my modesty
+fainted to behold the room full of people all looking
+intently (and kindly) at me. I covered my face
+with my hands. I dared not rise.</p>
+
+<p>‘“Never mind, child,” said a shrill voice at my ear
+that sounded like an aunt’s, “it will soon be happily
+over.”</p>
+
+<p>‘“Happily over!” I tried to shriek but could not,
+trying to rise and button myself.</p>
+
+<p>‘“Leave your dress alone, chicken, you could not
+look better,” said another voice at my nose, a third
+cousin’s by its sound. Nor could I have—I caught
+a glimpse of myself in a mirror just then, and I was
+a bride! This is how I found myself married to Mr.
+Pink, whose calling was jobs for which no name
+could be found, and could ask no questions for
+shame, since the last I knew of myself was on a
+chamber-pot, but only pretend to be possessed, as
+seemed reasonable in the principal party of the
+event, of full knowledge of what was going on about
+me.’</p>
+
+<p>This martyr’s discretion in my mother has ever
+been a noble example to me in my own endurance
+of that cruel idiosyncrasy which she, to her everlasting
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span>grief, passed on to me. ‘Never lose self-possession,’
+she continually besought me, ‘or contradict
+circumstances, which cannot lie and which
+know you better than yourself.’ Dearest Mother!
+Shall I blame her for that inheritance she gave me
+against her heart and will and by which I had the
+blessing of her eternal (so long as she lived) solicitude?
+Not to mention (petty recompense and enjoyment)
+the liberty she gave me beyond all reasonable
+expectation I could have had of remorseful indulgence
+from her, which included the privacy of her
+papers which I could not read since she wrote always
+in bed and upon brown paper, from sombreness of
+spirit, and the treasures her father gave her out of
+spite to her mother, for bearing him a black child
+by perfidy of blood or whoring, it exasperated him
+not to know which, and of which, though all were
+mine from childhood, I loved and attached to me
+but one shabby trifle, a totem six inches long that
+did me for a doll while I remained a child and for
+a child when I became a woman and dared not
+breed, confide, form honourable attachments or
+soften my heart save to that which, being wooden,
+could not soften its heart to me.</p>
+
+<p>My mother, as I said, having once grasped her
+unspeakable peril, resolved to protect herself with
+the means at hand, that is, to remain Mrs. Pink, if
+she could, until she found herself something else.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span>And to further her security in this she formed a
+second painful resolve, never while she could help
+it to leave her bed, thinking that she might thus
+restrain her visitations or at least govern the place
+in which they seized her. Alas! restrain them she
+could not, and alas! a bed (as she learned too late)
+was more ungovernable than a chamber-pot, for in
+this bed she got me, in a cruel lapse when Mr. Pink
+her husband was in the Argentine collecting the
+names of common tropical plants for the Secretary
+of State known in private life as a gifted maker of
+South American tales, and when she must undoubtedly
+have been visited by hundreds of Mr.
+Pink’s friends and relatives, Mr. Pink, who understood
+my mother’s infirmity and never blamed it
+except as such, insisting that it was his uncle the
+Chicago photographer who had nearly an artist’s
+appreciation of the human form, of which my
+mother being half Jew and perhaps a dash negro,
+was an exotic and irresistible example.</p>
+
+<p>This unavoidable slip, of which I was a living and
+growing reminder, never prejudiced Mr. Pink my
+mother’s husband against me, but on the contrary
+seemed to stimulate his curiosity in me. He was a
+thin man, but I think of a passionate imagination,
+and I wanted nothing. Nor was he quite certain
+that it was his uncle the Chicago photographer, but
+in the wistful hope that it might have been Prince
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span>Moredje, the famous Balkan adventurer whom he
+used to decorate official banquets of which he was
+responsible for the seating plan, he provided me
+with a riding master though we lived in an unimproved
+flat in the rear and bought me when I was
+quite young a green plumed hat from an auctioneer
+friend of his who specialized in theatrical costumes.
+Himself he dressed shabbily, as his profession required.
+I never knew him otherwise than in his
+black and white checked suit and red tie, and it was
+one of the sorrows of his life that he could not wear
+black, for he was a quiet man, since his greatest
+attraction to his clients was that he was not genteel,
+by which he seemed more efficient, mysterious,
+quaint and criminal. My mother required very
+little beyond bed shawls, of which she kept two, one
+for company and one for private, the company one
+being pure white, that she might be thought of by
+visitors as a pale object martyred to her bed and so
+not excite experiences; I have this very shawl to
+thank for myself, which she was wearing when her
+sense was suddenly transported in time and she
+found herself with me in her womb and could make
+no denial or protest, and her white shawl on her
+shoulders though in private, that is, alone with her
+husband Mr. Pink who had just let himself in at the
+door from the Argentine, whence he had come in
+all haste to embrace her, having been made anxious
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span>by certain reports which his friends and relatives
+maliciously wrote him of my mother. Her private
+shawl, a red cashmere, she consoled herself in; she
+only wore it when she felt safe. In this shawl too
+she consented to rise for her needs and melancholies.
+How often have I come upon her standing in her
+shirt at the window, only half of her decently
+covered, the rest of her naked and unhappy—a pair
+of pretty buttocks that she could scarcely trust as
+far as the door and ready to betray her at the least
+winking of her eye and plant her where she must
+acknowledge her position by that she sat in it with
+them. It was to our further mortification that our
+sad affliction only came over my mother and me
+when we were sitting, an attitude that by its ease
+soothes suspicion, and that we have never come
+to ourselves except in this attitude, which may
+try dignity painfully, as I have reason to know.
+‘To find one’s feet’—how well, alas, do <i>I</i> know the
+tragic significance of that phrase....</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="WILLIAM_AND_DAISY">
+    WILLIAM AND DAISY: FRAGMENT OF A FINISHED NOVEL
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>William and Daisy lived in Cemetery Street.
+They had no connection with each other except that
+they were not attracted by life or death; so they
+lived in Cemetery Street. William was pessimistic
+because he disliked life a little more than death,
+Daisy was optimistic because she disliked death a
+little more than life. William had two memories:
+one, that he had been familiar with harlots; two,
+that he had been familiar with famous writers.
+These two memories mixed and he could make nothing
+of them. Daisy had two memories: one, that
+she had once been a harlot; two, that she had in her
+time known several famous writers. These two
+memories mixed and she could make nothing of
+them. They could make nothing of their memories
+except that they both felt dignified and did not wish
+to end their days in a workhouse. So they lived in
+Cemetery Street.</p>
+
+<p>Every night Daisy went for a walk down Cemetery
+Street and said ‘What a lovely night,’ and passed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span>William on her walk and said ‘What a coincidence’;
+and every night William, too, said ‘What a lovely
+night’ and ‘What a coincidence.’ They began to
+know each other’s thoughts and were more bored
+with each other than ever.</p>
+
+<p>They had their shoes mended by the same shoemaker.
+Each knew the shoemaker had taken a girl
+to live with him behind the shop and then thrown
+her into the street when his wife had learned about
+it. Yet each continued to think him a nice man because
+they could not be bothered to think him a
+mean man. They became more and more absolute
+in their thoughts and habits until ...</p>
+
+<p>I do not know what happened to them, nor do
+they.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="AN_ANONYMOUS_BOOK">
+    AN ANONYMOUS BOOK
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3>§1</h3>
+
+<p>An anonymous book for children only was published
+by an anonymous publisher and anonymously
+praised in an anonymous journal. Moreover, it imitated
+variously the style of each of the known writers
+of the time, and this made the responsibility for its
+authorship all the more impossible to place. For
+none of the known writers could in the circumstances
+look guilty. But every one else did, so this
+made the responsibility for its authorship all the
+more difficult to place. The police had instructions
+to arrest all suspicious-looking persons. But as
+every one except the known writers was under suspicion
+the department of censorship gave orders
+that the known authors should be put in prison to
+separate them from the rest of the population and
+that every one else should be regarded as legally
+committed to freedom. ‘Did you write it?’ every one
+was questioned at every street corner. And as the
+answer was always ‘No’, the questioned person was
+always remanded as a suspect.</p>
+
+<p>The reasons why this book aroused the department
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span>of censorship were these. One—it imitated
+(or seemed to imitate) the style of all the known
+authors of the time and was therefore understood
+by the authorities to be a political (or moral) satire.
+Two—it had no title and was therefore feared by
+the authorities to be dealing under the cover of
+obscurity with dangerous subjects. Three—its publisher
+could not be traced and it was therefore
+believed by the authorities to have been printed
+uncommercially. Four—it had no author and was
+therefore suspected by the authorities of having
+been written by a dangerous person. Five (and
+last)—it advertised itself as a book for children,
+and was therefore concluded by the authorities
+to have been written with the concealed design of
+corrupting adults. As the mystery grew, the vigilance
+of the police grew, and the circulation of
+the book grew: for the only way that its authorship
+could be discovered was by increasing the
+number of people suspected, and this could only be
+done by increasing the number of readers. The
+authorities secretly hoped to arrive at the author
+by separating those who had read the book from
+those who had not read it, and singling out from
+among the latter him or her who pretended to know
+least about it.</p>
+
+<p>All the stories in the book were about people who
+did not like the world and who would have been
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span>glad to be somewhere else. Some were irreligious,
+some were ungrateful, some were scornful, some
+were openly rebellious, some were secretly rebellious,
+some were merely ironical, some were merely
+bored. Many were too good, many were too bad.
+All were disobedient, and all wanted to go away.
+Wanting to go away to somewhere else did not
+mean wanting to go away to somewhere else with
+the rest of the entire population of the world. It
+meant in all the stories wanting to go away alone.
+All the stories in the book were about people who
+wanted to go away to somewhere where they would
+be, no matter how many other people they found
+there, the only one. All the people in the book
+thought the world fit only for light, heat, moisture,
+electricity, plants, the lower animals, and perhaps
+for occasional parties, excursions, commemoration
+days, Sunday afternoons, exhibitions, spectacles,
+concerts, sight-seeing and conversation. But none
+of them thought it fit for higher creatures to live
+in permanently, because all who were in it, they
+said, were the only one, and were thus objects of
+hate, ridicule or mock-adoration for one another,
+being each by his mind freakish and uncommon
+but by his brain natural and common.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the philosophical import of this book.
+But its philosophical import was got only if the
+reader had a taste for, a passion for, a suspicion of,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span>an obsession with, or instructions to look for philosophical
+imports. Or if he shrank from stories. What
+was plain and comprehensible before all philosophical
+imports was just stories. The four upon
+which most suspicion was fixed were <i>The Flying
+Attic</i>, <i>The Man Who Told Lies To His Mother</i>, <i>The
+Woman Who Loved an Engine</i>, and <i>The Woman Who
+Was Bewitched By a Parallel</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible to say particularly which story
+was written in the style of which author. The effect
+of imitation that the book gave was rather a mixed
+one; that is, it was generally and throughout a
+witty, energetic, beautiful, simple, earnest, intricate,
+entertaining, ironic, stern, fantastic, eloquent, modest,
+outspoken, matter-of-fact and so-forth book,
+so that generally speaking it could not be read but
+as a conglomerate imitation of the noted literary
+manners of the time, of the well-known author who
+wrote so wittily, of the well-known author who
+wrote so energetically, of the well-known author
+who wrote so beautifully, of the well-known author
+who wrote so simply, of the well-known author who
+wrote so earnestly, of the well-known author who
+wrote so intricately, of the well-known author who
+wrote so entertainingly, of the well-known author
+who wrote so ironically, of the well-known author
+who wrote so sternly, of the well-known author who
+wrote so fantastically, of the well-known author who
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span>wrote so eloquently, of the well-known author who
+wrote so modestly, of the well-known author who
+wrote so outspokenly, of the well-known author who
+wrote so matter-of-factly, and of the well-known
+author who wrote and-so-forthly.</p>
+
+<p>It is not the object of this account, whose purpose
+is chiefly historical, to transcribe in detail all or even
+many of the stories of which the book was composed,
+or to analyse, criticize, praise or condemn the few
+that shall be reproduced (in whatever way seems
+most economical) here. It is rather intended to give
+an honest, accurate, elementary notion of the book
+from which the reader may form a scholarly opinion
+of its character that shall be in restrained harmony
+with his own. Several of the stories (those cited
+above, for example) will be elaborately summarized,
+according to the degree of eccentricity they possess
+in comparison with other stories which fall more
+naturally into a group-significance or classification.
+Some will appear only in a table of constructional
+correspondences; others as interesting or corroborative
+or contradictory points of reference: still others
+as problems of too fine difficulty for the moment, here
+put aside and marked out for the future specialist.</p>
+
+
+<h3>§2</h3>
+
+<p><i>The Flying Attic</i> is the first of the miscellaneously
+significant or dangerous stories. The central character
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span>is a cook who had never in her life been guest
+to anyone and who had never in her life ascended
+above the kitchen floor of any house. No description
+of the character’s appearance, age or parentage
+is given, so that the atmosphere of the story, intentionally
+or unintentionally, is one of allegory, or
+morality, or symbolism—as you like. This creature,
+the story tells us, conceived the fantastic ambition
+of living permanently in a guest attic, descending
+only at the new moon, and then to find herself each
+time in a different house, each time guest to a
+different host or hostess.</p>
+
+<p>The realization of this ambition is made technically
+possible by the dismissal of the cook for serving
+a custard made from a manufactured pink powder,
+instead of from original ingredients. No complaint
+seems to have been made against the excellence of
+taste or quality of the custard. Its very excellence
+in fact is what arouses suspicion. And so after coffee
+the cook is dismissed. The family chats, finally goes
+to bed. Then the cook steals out of the kitchen and
+up to the attic, at the moment unoccupied but in a
+state of preparation for a guest who is expected to
+arrive the following day. The cook draws the curtains,
+lights a candle, gets into bed. The beams are
+made of old ship’s timber; the sharp-ribbed roof
+suggests an inverted ship’s bottom. The candlelight,
+the drawn curtains, the architectural irregularities
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span>of the attic, the distorted, ship-like sense
+of motion faintly conveyed by the crazy contour
+of the attic in candlelight to the mind of the cook
+now floating in the unreality of the fulfilment
+of an impossible ambition—all these factors contribute
+to what must count—in the story at any
+rate—for a genuine disturbance of forces: the attic
+moves, the cook’s mind swoons with pleasure, day
+and night the curtains remain drawn (otherwise the
+problem of <i>locale</i> would seriously interfere with the
+narrative device), she passes her time in a passive
+delirium of satisfaction, and at the morning of new
+moon punctually descends. The first and last descents
+will be given in detail, the intervening ones
+only listed.</p>
+
+<p>First descent: as the breakfast bogy, in the costume
+of a German peasant—green jacket, flat,
+ribboned hat; into the house of a country lady,
+mother of three young children, recently widowed.
+Cook unlatches the attic door and walks slowly
+downstairs—a heavy male step. Cultured and terrified
+children’s voices are heard as the steps pass the
+night nursery: ‘Oh mother, the breakfast bogy—we
+are afraid to get up.’ ‘Nonsense, children,’ the
+mother calls back, ‘come down immediately.’ The
+steps continue, Cook enters the dining-room, sits
+down at the table in the chief chair as master of the
+house. The mother enters from the kitchen with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span>large porridge basin, sees Cook, screams. Children
+come running down. ‘The breakfast bogy, the
+breakfast bogy!’ they cry. ‘We told you so, Mother.’
+Cook says: ‘I am master here now. We will all have
+breakfast together and you will pay me every respect.
+After breakfast I shall go away and not return
+till luncheon. The same for tea and dinner.
+You must guess what I like to eat and after each
+meal thank me for the food. And you must kiss me
+good night. That is all.’ It is to be noted that whenever
+the central character of any of these tales gives
+an order, it is always obeyed without question, however
+wicked, unreasonable or fantastic it may be.
+Thus in <i>The Dishonest Scales</i> the grocer-woman not
+only cheats her customers in the weight of what
+they buy (though the scales whenever tested seem
+to record quite honestly), but after taking their
+money she says firmly ‘Now that is all,’ and
+sends them away unprotesting without their purchases.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast Cook retires to the attic and
+appears again at luncheon. All this happens in the
+most orderly manner imaginable. The widow even
+smiles prettily to Cook after luncheon and ‘hopes
+the gentleman finds all satisfactory.’ Cook here nods
+stiffly. There is no clue given as to what either Cook
+or the family do during the intervals between meals.
+Only one rather shocking mischance occurs: the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span>oldest of the children, a boy, spies upon the cook
+between tea and dinner and is snatched angrily
+into the attic. At dinner only two children appear,
+and Cook announces quietly: ‘Your oldest child
+attempted to spy upon me, so I turned him into an
+eiderdown to keep me warm.’ To which the widow
+replies ‘It serves him right,’ and goes on eating.
+After dinner Cook is kissed good night affectionately
+by the widow and her two remaining children,
+goes up to the attic, fastens the door, gets into bed
+and tucks herself round with her new eiderdown.</p>
+
+<p>Second descent: Cook comes down into a prison
+tower as a captive queen, murders her warder, takes
+upstairs with her her warder’s poodle, the pillow
+she stabbed him on, and his wife’s lace cap, saying:
+‘All this will contribute to the comfort of my
+old age.’</p>
+
+<p>Third descent: Cook comes down into a full-rigged
+ship about to sink in a storm off the Gold
+Coast, rescues the captain, a villainous but hearty
+old man, and carries him off to her attic with great
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>Fourth descent: Cook comes down into a great
+kitchen as a cook and carries the whole kitchen up
+with her in one armful.</p>
+
+<p>Fifth descent: Cook comes down into a library as
+a respectable young working man inquiring from the
+lady librarian for a book on how to mend leaking
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span>roofs. The lady librarian strongly resembling Cook
+in her youth, the young working man is smitten
+with a great fancy for her, marries her, takes her up
+to the attic, where she becomes cook to Cook.</p>
+
+<p>Sixth descent: Cook opens her attic door to walk
+out as herself for a breath of fresh air, steps upon
+nothing and begins to fall. While falling she looks
+up, sees her attic far above her, flying off at great
+speed toward the east, where it is growing dark.
+‘However will I get back to it?’ she thinks mournfully
+to herself. At this point there is a long passage
+describing intimately all of her anxieties in her fall,
+such as what will happen to her poodle, who will
+smooth out her eiderdown, what will her captain
+have for dinner all by himself, down to the last,
+which is, what shall she give them for a pudding
+to-night? She decides, since it is so late already (it is
+now quite dark in the east and her attic has completely
+disappeared) to give them a custard made
+from a manufactured pink powder, which will take
+only a moment to stir up and only fifteen minutes
+on the window-sill to cool. It would be impossible
+without exact quotation from the original (which is
+outside the modest scope of the present volume) to
+reproduce the delicate transition that takes place
+just here from one level of the episode to the next
+(from the higher to the lower, or the fantastic to the
+factual, I might say). Suffice it for our purposes
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span>that there occurs at this point a shock, the contact
+on the one hand of Cook’s feet with the ground, on
+the other of Cook’s right ear with church clock just
+striking seven. ‘And there will be a guest to-night,’
+she exclaims to herself, tasting and stirring, chopping
+and sprinkling. At last dinner is served, eaten,
+over. ‘Dear kind Cook,’ Mistress says to her before
+retiring, ‘aren’t you going upstairs to-night?’ ‘My
+goodness, is it so late?’ replies Cook. ‘I was just
+cooling myself a bit’—for Cook was standing on the
+kitchen doorstep gazing east. So she goes upstairs
+to her attic and fastens the door behind her. Upon
+which unsatisfactory note this story concludes, leaving
+the reader uneasy and somewhat cheated of that
+general resolution of himself in the story which it is
+his right to expect from every upright invention—an
+effect all the more disquieting in that it seemed
+everywhere in this work arrived at rather by art
+than by accident or inferiority of execution.</p>
+
+
+<h3>§3</h3>
+
+<p>It would be well at this point to uncover a little
+of the philosophical skeleton of this book for the
+benefit of the reader likely to become too absorbed
+in the narrative surface, so to speak. It would
+also be well to emphasize, on the other hand, the
+fact that the anonymous author was if anything
+over-precious in the technical brilliance of his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span>stories: he seemed to wish, by ringing from them a
+pure, glassy artificiality, that their perfection as
+stories should make them as trivial and false-true as
+stories, so that they held the moral more obediently.
+There is therefore little or no hint of moral in any
+of the stories, the sincerity of the narration in every
+particular being the best guarantee (according to
+the principles of his writing) of the presence of the
+skeletal sense beneath it. We might, for the purpose
+of analysis, call this obsession with fictitious fact an
+obsession statistical. And we might likewise call (for
+the same purpose) the style of the book the style of
+curiosity. The effect of this style on the reader is
+indeed an effect of curiosity—curiosity in the general
+usage of the word. That is, it makes the reader
+first inquisitive of the course and conclusion of the
+narrative, then suspicious of the philosophical import
+of the narrative, and finally resolved to track
+down angerly (as our Elizabethan might have said)
+the chief mystery of each narrative, namely the
+anonymity of the author: as indeed the police of his
+time were angered into doing (without success).
+The style of curiosity, itself, however, was of a
+different order of curiosity from this. If you will
+look out this word in any full contemporary dictionary
+you will find that while the current meaning is
+this precise <i>effect</i> of curiosity, the two first (and previous)
+meanings have a more particular application:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span></p>
+
+<p>(1) Scientific attentiveness; technical nicety;
+moral exactness; religious fastidiousness. Obsolete.</p>
+
+<p>(2) Honest or artistic workmanship; generous
+elaboration; charitable detail. Obsolete or archaic.</p>
+
+<p>And such, in fact, was the style of curiosity: so
+that the effect of curiosity on the reader had in it a
+touch of quaintness; which is the reason why, in fact,
+the anonymous author seemed to his critics, censors
+and readers to be imitating the style of all the well-known
+writers of the time and yet to be clearly not
+among them.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps I can best illustrate this obsession statistical
+and this style of curiosity (both in origination
+and effect) by a direct transcription. It is to be
+found (by those fortunate enough to lay hands upon
+the book itself) in the story (untitled) about the man
+who could not help stealing his friends’ matches
+though his father was a prosperous match-manufacturer,
+though he had a generous allowance from
+him and though he had no interest in the match
+business:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>‘He paid his fare exactly, having the scale of fares
+off by heart (more thoroughly than the conductor)
+and having always in his pocket such a variety of
+small coins as should make it unnecessary for him
+to be given change in his fares, purchases and contributions
+to charity. He sat on top, on the left, in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span>the fourth row from the front, by the rail, a habit
+so strong and methodical in him that he never
+thought (and was never obliged) to sit elsewhere.
+He made a minute comment to himself upon the
+flower stalls or stands along the route, concluding
+with the generalization that the predominating
+colour among the flowers sold by the lame or the
+ugly was mauve. He then went to sleep, timing
+himself to awake a minute before the arrival of the
+bus at the railway station. He rehearsed his itinerary,
+which was to miss his train at the first change
+and so at the second change and so to have to wait
+an hour there and two hours there and to examine
+more particularly during this time the generalization
+regarding lame or ugly flower-vendors. While
+asleep he followed his usual practice of descending
+from the state of personality to the state of thingality,
+and in this dreamy condition of passive matter he
+enjoyed the same security that an apple has up to
+the moment of its fall. And so upon waking he fell
+from the top of the bus—as if blown down by a
+strong wind—and broke his nose, one leg, two fingers,
+cut his left cheek beneath the eye and sustained
+an injury to his back that left him upon his recovery
+with a permanent thoughtful posture.’</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>From this short extract it will perhaps be clear
+how he teased his reader with sincerity and how his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span>statistical straightforwardness carved out patiently
+a mysterious block of significance which was not
+brought upon the platform of the story but which
+the reader found obstructing his exit, as it were,
+when the curtain had come down and he attempted
+to leave the theatre. It was this seemingly innocent
+obstructionism of course that aroused the authorities
+to such a violent pitch of antagonism to the book;
+and which remains to this day a challenge almost
+impudent (so it sometimes seems) to the endurance
+of all scholars, philosophers and simple lovers of
+knowledge. For often, at our greatest moments of
+ingenuity and science, indeed, we find ourselves
+suddenly uncertain of our premises and forced to
+begin once more at the beginning, yielding our own
+philosophical curiosity to the statistical curiosity of
+the author. It might therefore be wise, before we
+entangle ourselves further in scholarly ramifications
+of our own, to return to the document itself. In this
+sober intention I mean to present, in as unmeddlesome
+and economical a fashion as I am capable of,
+the conspicuous features of one of the most baffling
+(though to outward appearance one of the most
+unaffected) stories in the collection, <i>The Man Who
+Told Lies To His Mother</i>.</p>
+
+
+<h3>§4</h3>
+
+<p>He was an author. He wrote books one after the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span>other. It was impossible, we are told, to understand,
+say, the tenth book without reading all the preceding
+nine. And it was impossible to understand the
+tenth without the book that followed it. And whatever
+number the book was, there was always one
+following it, so that the author was continuously
+being understood by his readers. The chief character
+in each of the books was always the same.
+Half of him was the author himself, the other half of
+him was the only son of the author’s mother. He
+called the first half I, the second half He. I thought,
+wrote books, knew all about everything, did nothing.
+He knew nothing about anything but could do
+everything. I was wise, He was happy. I was careful
+to keep himself to himself so as not to have his
+wisdom spoiled by He or He’s fun spoiled by his
+wisdom. I kept himself in his study, He in the
+world. I did not permit He to share his study
+with him because this would have been like denying
+that there was a world outside of his study and,
+since he knew there was such a world, making a
+ghost of himself. I did not want to be a ghost and
+yet he wanted to remain in his study, so he supported
+He in the world on the books he wrote in his
+study. This kept up the world, it kept up He, it
+made I complete without his having to be complete,
+that is, to be both I and He. Moreover, though I
+supported He in the world, he made no attempt to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span>track him, curb him or even share occasionally in
+his activities. I was continually disciplining himself
+against such temptations: in order not to corrupt
+his wisdom by making it a criticism of He and in
+order not to corrupt the fullness of He’s pleasure by
+making it have anything to do with sense. The important
+thing for I, inasmuch as He existed and the
+world existed, was to keep them employed in each
+other, so that he could be truly, wisely, actually,
+employed in himself. I said: I am I, therefore I am
+true, I am not He, therefore he is false; but He is
+He, therefore He is false-true so long as I encourage
+him in falsehood. He could not, however, be false
+by himself—this would have eventually made him
+true. To be false he needed something to be false
+with, he needed the world, he needed other He’s.
+For a long time He and the world conducted each
+other toward themselves with the closest and strictest
+falsehood; so close and strict in fact that the
+world, this conglomeration of other He’s, became a
+single close, strict, false She. He and She went on
+loyally enjoying themselves in each other as He and
+the world had done, until this falsificatory attachment
+became so utter that it reproduced I in his
+study. It reproduced I, it reproduced He and She.
+It did all this without giving to her only son’s
+mother a grandchild.</p>
+
+<p>And so, the story goes on, the books went on. And
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span>so we the readers of the story (story-readers of the
+books described in the story) witness how I told lies
+to his mother without committing a single falsehood.
+For he sent his books to his mother in her province
+in place of letters, saying: This is a true account of
+the doings of your only son. And she read them
+lovingly as a true account of the doings of her only
+son, whom she always thought of as He, taking I to
+be merely the I authorial, which it was. And so I
+told lies to his mother and they were not lies but a
+true account of the doings of He.</p>
+
+<p>Now when the author of the story has trained his
+reader to understand the author in the story who
+was one-half of the chief character of his own stories,
+he begins without further explanation a long chronicle
+of the experiences of the other half of the chief
+character of his stories under the title of <i>Lies To His
+Mother</i>. We do not know whether these stories are
+supposed to have appeared in the author-in-the-story’s
+books as they appear here in the story: probably
+not, since there is in them no mention of I,
+and I, we must remember, was one-half of the chief
+character of these books. Or perhaps so, since it is
+not unlikely that everything relating to I in his
+books was meant to be supposed to have been described
+separately, as for example in the form of
+authorial interludes between the passages relating
+to He. At any rate, for our convenience it may be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span>best to retitle the stories (a few of which are here
+summarized) which the author introduces to us
+under the title of <i>Lies To His Mother</i>, as <i>What His
+Mother Believed Of He</i>. It might also be helpful for
+me to announce here that since further analysis
+seems hopeless I shall add nothing to these summarizations;
+except to say, perhaps, that they all
+confirm us in what we have already observed of
+the temper of the anonymous author of the book
+that we are studying: his statisticality, his curiosity
+and, we might now add, his falsificality.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) That He one day drank water in such a way
+as to be drunk of it, and in this condition found himself
+the hero of an Arabian Nights Entertainment,
+bathing, with the privilege of a jokester, in the
+women’s pool. And they would not let him come
+out for a whole day. They kept him in the water a
+whole day, a whole long day, during which they did
+many things to him, all of which are faithfully recorded
+in the original, of which two may with propriety
+be given here: that they would at intervals
+very slowly drain all the water from the pool and
+then as slowly let it fill up again; and that they fed
+him on nothing but fish, and would not give him
+drink, forcing him to water himself from the pool.
+He was allowed to leave the pool at sunset, on the
+promise that he would amuse them with tales for
+three days, which he promised. For three days
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span>then He amused them with tales, two of which may
+with propriety be outlined here: the first, of a man
+bewitched in such a manner that he would do on
+every occasion the opposite of what it was his will
+to do; the second, of a far-off city in which the
+people were silent and their clothes spoke, and of
+how a quarrel arose between two identical black
+lace frocks, as to which was which, and of how in
+anger they tore themselves off their wearers, and
+became confused in the broil that followed, so that
+their owners were also confused and uncertain, when
+the frocks were put on once more, whether their
+speech matched their silence.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) That He another day woke to find himself
+speaking a strange language, in which everything
+was known and clear—as if all difficulties of the intelligence
+were difficulties of language alone: in this
+language He had but to speak to discover, as, for
+instance, the word for <i>horse</i> here not only stood for
+horse but also made plain the quality of horseliness,
+what it was. He woke to find himself speaking
+this language, he was a boy, he was in a classroom,
+he had blue eyes (they were actually grey),
+his teacher was a remarkable woman in a pompadour
+and a large hat who was fond of him, fixing
+her gaze on his blue eyes when she entered the room
+and keeping it there until she left; who knew everything
+and recited it without pause, without sympathy,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span>without antagonism, so that whatever she
+said meant all and nothing—history, the uses of
+waste paper, the traditions of pawnbrokers, anything,
+everything. Then He woke up again to find
+himself no longer speaking the strange language but
+as dumb, in his ordinary language, with dumb
+memory of it. So when He spoke his ordinary language
+he found it all twisted of sense, which made
+him abandon it: he uttered only expressive sounds,
+which others disregarded as nonsensical, composed
+as they were of soft and shrill shrieks, whistlings,
+bellowings and blowings. So He went mad and in
+his madness began speaking his ordinary language
+again, all nonsensical, but conceived sane by others
+because it was the ordinary language. And so He
+was discharged from the madhouse raving and only
+by slow stages came to regard himself, since others
+did so, as sane. The theme of a language of complete
+intelligence, it is to be remarked, occurs in two other
+stories in the book—in one there is even an attempt,
+impossible to reproduce here, to give specimens of
+the language. To all appearances indeed it is the
+ordinary language in which he (the anonymous
+author) wrote, with perhaps an outlandish twist
+due merely to an increase of his usual severity—the
+authorities explained it by reading it as an imitation
+of the style of the most wilfully ingenuous author of
+the time. But it might very well have meant something
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span>to the author it could not mean to the reader,
+which is not at all improbable, since to myself, after
+long study and, I may say, an application it would
+be difficult to surpass, it meant only what it said—and
+this only with the greatest imaginative stretch
+possible to me in my liveliest moments of inquiry.
+The story, for the benefit of those few who may have
+access to the book, is, of course, <i>The Whisper</i>.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>c</i>) That He one day woke to find himself Professor
+in Time at the University of Colour: he was
+addressing a class of old, old men on the principle
+of greenishness. ‘For example,’ he said, ‘there are
+many modern artists who will not use green at all
+in their pictures: it is a foreign colour, an outside
+colour, an extra colour—the colour of conclusion.
+Therefore the colour of haughty youth, which is
+final, and of weird old age, which is beyond
+finality. The modern painter who banishes green
+does so from ambition: he means to show that he
+can give his pictures an effect of conclusion without
+making use of the wittiness of green. Primitive
+people make use of green with religious brutality
+to clinch any argument in colour. Flowers, on the
+other hand, never use green, nor the sky; unless
+unwholesome—an eccentric avoidance of a banal
+they-know-not-what. Earth-green is the symbol of
+time overcoming time. Green is a colour of sophisticated
+crudeness and of crude sophistication. A
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span>brute thing is in its heart of hearts green, and a
+casuistical mind is in its heart of hearts green. The
+grave mathematical most is green, and the silly
+poetical least is green. The new-born baby is
+green and the newly-dead person is green. And the
+extreme of tragedy is green, and the extreme of
+comedy is green.’</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the oldest of the old, old men got
+up and shrieked, smilingly through his three teeth,
+saying: ‘I spent my whole fortune in one night in
+music and food on a girl whose mother was a singer
+and whose father was a chef. “Trrup,” she said,
+snapping her fingers, “you are an old man, and I
+love a boy who blacks my boots.”’ ‘Trrup,’ he
+shrieked, smiling through his three teeth, ‘I am
+green, I am green, and this is my life’s story.’ And
+‘Trrup,’ shrieked all the old men, ‘we are green, we
+are green.’ Until He could not bear the noise and
+stopped his ears with his fingers, and closed his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>When He removed his fingers from his ears and
+opened his eyes, he was sitting by his own fireside,
+and his cat was on the hearth-rug and She was near
+him, knitting him a green jacket. ‘Trrup,’ said the
+cat’s eyes, ‘what a fool you are to dream such sense,’
+and ‘Trrup,’ said She, ‘what a dear silly you shall
+be napping in my green jacket.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I,’ said He to himself, ‘must tell this story to my
+mother, it will amuse her.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span></p>
+
+<p>And it was told, and it did, and she believed it
+of He, and everything else that was told of him,
+and put another lump of sugar in her tea, near
+the bottom of the cup, saying to herself: ‘Is it
+not so? Sometimes I like Mrs. History, and sometimes
+I do not. Sometimes I pity her, and sometimes
+I wish her worse trouble. And what does it
+matter, since she is all this, and I am all that, and
+each of us always, no matter what happens, a bit
+of herself? When I am angriest I am nearest to kindness,
+and when I am clearest in my head I am
+nearest to confusion. Is it not so? I am sure I never
+know what I am going to do next. For instance,
+there are those wicked loves who follow a certain
+red flag: I am sure I should forget myself and join
+them if it were a green one.’ For she, taking after
+her own son, was also a liar.</p>
+
+
+<h3>§5</h3>
+
+<p>The most curiously integrated of the groups of
+stories which may be classified as a single dramatic
+(or philosophical) unit of the book is the queen-group.
+Indeed it is possible to discuss this group as
+if it were but one story, the episodic variations
+seeming no more than caprices of style—the same
+story told in different degrees of earnestness and so
+in different personalities, as it were. The one fixed
+personality of the group is the Queen herself; the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span>others are all stylistic personalities. The Queen began
+as a photograph used by a newspaper at discreet
+intervals to represent the female bandit of the
+moment or the murder-victim or the fire-heroine
+or the missionary’s bride. By experience and variety
+she became a personality, and a fixed personality.
+It is quite remarkable in fact how under our very
+eyes this anonymous author should be able to transform
+a fiction into a fact: for the Queen is as true
+for always as the photograph is each time false.
+Indeed, the whole transformation is merely a
+matter of style. To illustrate: ‘As Maxine, the
+world’s sleeplessness champion, the photograph had
+great momentary importance but did not know it
+because it was part of a newspaper dynamic in
+which everything happened with equal fatalistic
+effect, everything was accident, in the moment
+succeeding accident it was always clear that nothing
+had happened. As photograph therefore the photograph
+saw all this; it was permanently unimportant
+but it knew this. And as it had a knowledge of its
+unimportance, it also had a knowledge of the
+importance of accident; and as the first knowledge
+made it insignificant so the second knowledge made it
+Queen. The Queen, the photograph without identity,
+this anonymous particularity, did in fact dwell in
+a world in which she was the only one and in which
+the world of many was only what she called “the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span>chaotic conversation of events.” So she resolved
+to put her queendom in order, not by interrupting
+the conversation, which would only have increased
+the chaos, but by having minutely recorded whatever
+“happened,” whatever “was.” Nothing then in
+her queendom contradicted anything else, neither
+the argument nor its answer, neither the burglar-proof
+lock nor the burglar against whom it was
+not proof: everything was so, everything was statistical,
+everything was falsification, everything was
+conversation, and she was an anonymous particularity
+conversing with herself about her own
+nothingness, so she was outside the chaotic conversation
+of events, she was Queen.’</p>
+
+<p>Her three chief statisticians (we learn) were
+publishers. They were all pleasant fellows, each
+with a touch of the universal in him, and came and
+went without suspicion everywhere in the queendom
+because of their peoplishness: they too, like
+all the rest, were statistical, so statistical indeed that
+they were statisticians. They went about preaching
+the gospel of the communal ownership of events.
+They said: ‘Primitive man believed in things as
+events. As civilized man it is your duty to believe
+in events as things.’ And the people did. And they
+permitted the statisticians (or publishers) to know
+what happened to them and what they did with
+what happened to them as faithfully as they reported
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span>their possessions each year in the great Common
+Book. In this queendom there was no loss and no
+mystery and no suffering, because everything was
+reported as conversation and nothing therefore
+thought about. All was automatic spontaneity, even
+their love for their Queen. As for the Queen, she
+would walk (we are told) through the dark rooms
+of her palace at night, having each room lit only
+upon her leaving it, until she reached her own small
+chamber, which remained unlit all night while the
+others shone; until morning, when in her own
+small chamber the curtains were drawn, the lamps
+lit, while in all the other rooms of the palace there
+was daylight. The meaning of this is plain: that in
+the anonymousness of the Queen lay her non-statistical,
+her non-falsificatory individuality. She is
+the author, the queendom is her book. She is
+darkness and mystery, the plain, banal though
+chaotic daylight is her unravelling. By making the
+unravelling more methodic and so more plainly
+banal she separates in people the statistical from the
+non-statistical part, the known from the anonymous.
+She shows herself to be a dualist of the most
+dangerous kind.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time the authorities from the internal
+evidence of the queen-stories suspected the anonymous
+author of being a woman. They said that it
+was not improbable that the book was the Bible of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span>an underground sect devoted to educating female
+children to be statistical queens. But this view had
+to be abandoned as unscholarly, even ungentlemanly,
+because in nothing that the Queen said or
+did was there any accent of disorder or ambition:
+she merely, with miraculous patience and tact,
+saw to it that records were kept of everything. The
+authorities eventually concluded that she was a
+Character of Fiction, and so stainless, and could
+not help them. For some time their suspicion was
+fixed on a character in one of the stories with whom
+the Queen fell in love. But as he was Minister of
+Pastimes to the Queen it was thought that it might
+prove generally disrespectful to State officials to
+pursue the matter further (as when, in the story
+<i>Understanding</i>, suspicion was fixed on the character
+who bribed the magistrates to convict him, the
+inquiry was stopped by the authorities—the detectives
+even put on the wrong scent—as too metaphysical
+and cynical).</p>
+
+<p>It must now be clear that the strain of my task
+is beginning to tell on me. I have become very
+nervous. In the beginning my emotions were all
+scholarly, my task was a pleasure, I had the manner
+of calmness with an antiquity. Toward the end fear
+has crept upon me. I must speak, and after that
+go on till I can go on no longer: till I am prevented.
+I say <i>prevented</i>. For I am haunted by the obsession
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span>that the authorities are still watching. They do not
+suspect the Queen. She was or is a fixed personality,
+so anonymous as to be irreproachably a
+Character of Fiction. The others vary in earnestness;
+in anonymity; they are, as I have suggested,
+personalities of style; they point to the probability
+that the author was not or is not a Character of
+Fiction. I dare go no further. I have become very
+nervous. I shall nevertheless attempt to continue
+my task until—I am prevented.</p>
+
+<p>One of the three publishers was a Jew. He was
+tall, his ears outstanding, his grin long, his voice
+loose in his mouth. He had been financial adviser
+to a charitable organization and had had much
+general statistical though humane experience. He
+was gross but kind and therefore in charge of all
+sentimental records: his grossness assured accuracy,
+his kindness, delicacy. He had the historical genius,
+and several specimens of his work are given—though
+with a touch of dryness in the author himself which
+makes it impossible to enjoy them as we might have
+were the book without an author. Indeed, they
+were not meant to be read at all, but merely written
+to satisfy the political instincts of the Queen, who
+never read them herself. I find it difficult to pass
+over them myself, for aside from their part in the
+book they are very interesting. There are several
+small extracts that might be used here with complete
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span>propriety and even in a scholarly way. And
+after all, the author wrote them down himself, did
+he not? But he was writing and not reading. But
+am I not writing and not reading? My position becomes
+more and more uncertain. I shall hurry on.</p>
+
+<p>I shall give one of the Queen’s monologues, to
+tide us over this difficult period. The monologue
+does not appear in the book itself: it would have
+been a piece of naturalism contrary to the theory
+on which the book was built. Therefore I give it
+here, as reading. No questions must be asked of
+me, for as a scholar I should feel obliged to answer
+them; and the passage would then become writing;
+and I should have produced a piece of naturalism.
+Here then is, shall I say, a variety: which is not
+the anonymous author’s writing but we might
+almost say his reading, and after that my writing
+but of his reading, which remains reading for all
+my writing. My conscience is in your hands: the
+burden of curiosity and falsification falls upon you.
+With you rest also the rights of anonymity, the
+reputation of style, the fortunes of publication, the
+future of philosophy and scholarship and the little
+children, for whom these contrive sense. Sense, I
+say, not satire.</p>
+
+<p>And now for the Queen’s monologue, which the
+anonymous author did not write and which for this
+very reason requires, as the reader’s part, sense, I
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span>say, not satire, even more immediately than what
+he did write. Furthermore, you will have to discover
+for yourself where it begins and where it
+ends: were I to mark it off it would become writing
+and so a piece of naturalism and so bely sense and
+give encouragement to satire. I mean: restraint,
+statistics, falsification, is more accurate than courage,
+reality, truth, and so truer. For the Queen’s
+monologue, since the anonymous author did not
+write it down, is true; had he not statistically,
+falsificatorily, restrained himself from writing it
+down it would have become a piece of naturalism
+and so a subject of satire. To tide us over a difficult
+period I set myself the difficult task of writing
+down the Queen’s monologue without turning it
+into writing, and so defying satire (if I succeed,
+which depends on you). The important thing is
+to defy satire. Satire is lying: falsity as opposed
+to truth and falsity as opposed to falsification. It
+is betwixt and between; against sense, which,
+whatever it is, is one thing or the other—generally
+the other, it being for practical purposes
+impossible for it to be perpetually one thing. By
+practical purposes I mean of course the question of
+boredom, as truth finding truth monotonous.
+Therefore things happen. Sense, I say, not satire.
+Imagine a woman has her heart broken and imagine
+a man breaking it, then her heart heals and he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span>ceases to be a villain, and then they meet again and
+her heart is whole and he is not a villain. Does she
+weep because her heart was once broken and does
+he blush because he once broke it? This would be
+satire. No, they both smile, and she gives him her
+heart to break again, and he breaks it. This is
+sense. Or they both smile and turn away from
+each other, and this, too, is sense, but sense too
+academic to survive the strain of academically enforcing
+itself. The One Thing must be saved from
+itself, it must not be allowed to overwork itself
+or go stale. That is why sense is one thing or the
+other and generally the other: falsification to relieve
+truth, broken hearts to protect whole hearts, weakness
+to spare strength. Fact is fancy and fancy is
+desire and desire is puff! puff! everything that
+satisfies it and which must be carefully recorded
+in spite of contradictions and lengthiness. Desire
+is the other things, in great number. And what is
+satisfaction? Not the other things, that satisfy, but
+the one thing, that cannot satisfy or be satisfied,
+and so, though but one thing, equal to desire, and so
+to all the other things. Fact is <i>it</i> not <i>me</i>; fact is fancy
+and fancy is desire and desire is the other things.
+Satisfaction is <i>me</i>, which <i>it</i> calls Queen. <i>It</i> is a lot of
+him’s, <i>it</i> is a queendom, <i>it</i> is desire speaking the
+language of satisfaction, <i>it</i> is a great looseness and
+restlessness of fact and confusion of eyesight and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span>costume, into which the Queen brings sense through
+order. And what is order? Order is observation.
+Her first publisher (or statistician) is a gross, kind
+Jew. Her second is a subtle, cruel Turk, who brutally
+forced events: he has the political genius. But
+the people do not mind, since the events happen
+anyhow: they shrug their shoulders good-naturedly
+and say ‘Old Hassan Bey smiling with Turkish
+teeth,’ and call on the first publisher to take notice
+how smilingly they wince back. Her third is a
+Christian, and he does nothing: he has the philosophical
+genius. His idleness and talkativeness exasperate
+the other two into efficiency. His favourite
+harangue is: ‘Let the people create their own order.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But how, their own order?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Let them think.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But if they think, they will all think differently,
+and not only differently—some will think more
+powerfully than others.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Exactly: those who think more powerfully than
+others will create order.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But this would not be real order, rather the
+disorder of a false order created by the most powerfully
+thinking individual or individuals of the
+moment. This would be anarchism, and anarchism
+is not enough.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have heard that said before, but how is the
+order created by the Queen not anarchism?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘The Queen does not create order, she observes
+methodically, she creates <i>her</i> order. That is why
+<i>it</i> is <i>her</i> queendom.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But is this not merely a refined form of anarchism?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, it is more than anarchism. The Queen is
+not the chief individual of her queendom; she is the
+<i>me</i> of the <i>it</i>; she is the one thing, her queendom is
+the other things; she is satisfaction, her queendom
+is desire, a lot of <i>him’s</i>. The more <i>me</i> she is, the
+more <i>it</i> it is, and the more anonymous she is, and
+the more she and her queendom are diplomatically
+indistinguishable. The domestic situation is
+of course another affair. But to carry the distinction
+beyond the boundaries of the book is to fall
+betwixt and between, into satire.’</p>
+
+
+<h3>§6</h3>
+
+<p>Therefore the time has come to close. I am discovered,
+or rather I have discovered myself, for the
+authorities lost interest in me when they saw that
+I would discover myself before I could be officially
+discovered, that I would in fact break through the
+pages and destroy the strongest evidence that might
+be held against me, that is, that ‘An anonymous
+book——’ etc. I understand now that what they
+desired to prevent was just what has happened.
+You must forgive me and believe that I was not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span>trying to deceive, but that I became confused. I
+over-distinguished and so fell into satire and so
+discovered myself and so could not go on, to maintain
+a satiric distinction between authorship and
+scholarship.</p>
+
+<p>And what of the woman who loved an engine?
+I cannot say. And the woman who was bewitched
+by a parallel? I cannot say. They come after the
+place where I left off.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_DAMNED_THING">
+    THE DAMNED THING
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3>§1</h3>
+
+<p>‘Sex’ is crude sex, resembling other crude
+appetites which similarly lose significance as soon
+as satisfied; and it is translated sex—sex surviving
+the satisfaction of the appetite. As the first it applies
+to the mechanics, as the second to the sentiment of
+sex.</p>
+
+<p>The child begins with crude sex alone. It innocently
+indulges itself in sensual pleasures. It
+loves kissing and to be kissed, stroking and to be
+stroked, fondly contemplating its excretions. The
+civilized society into which it is born magnifies the
+importance of these insignificant local sensations,
+gives them intellectual depth. It creates a handsome
+receptacle, love, to contain the humours of
+this unnaturally enlarged instinct.</p>
+
+<p>So much at any rate for the male child: parental
+care nurtures masturbation into love and marriage.
+Sex may stop short of love at lust. It may be anything
+it pleases, so long as it satisfies the standard
+measurements for social impressiveness.</p>
+
+<p>The female child has a different history. She
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span>shares a short period of sexual casualness with the
+male child, at the end of which she immediately
+becomes a candidate for the recipience of masculine
+love; while the sexual training of the male child is
+intensified at this point. This difference accounts
+for the so-called early maturity of the female child.
+For at the time when her male contemporary is only
+a first-year man she is already a graduate without
+benefit of education; and her proper mate is therefore
+a graduate.</p>
+
+<p>Although intelligent people are generally aware
+of the equivocal background of love and marriage,
+they nevertheless go on marrying for the relaxation
+and social ease that comes of doing what every one
+else is doing. Any other course would be socially
+unintelligible; and explanations are indecent.
+Imagine a man and a woman both undeformed
+by sex tradition and that an intimacy exists between
+them. The intelligent major part of their intimacy
+incorporates sex without sentimental enlargement:
+it is an effect rather than a cause. And it is eventually
+absorbed, it undergoes a diffusion, it is the
+use of an amenable physical consciousness for the
+benefit of mental consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>But traditionally sex would be the cause not
+the effect of such an intimacy. The conventional
+language of love could scarcely express it otherwise;
+the only diffusion recognized would be the verbal
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span>substitution of commendable emotions for gross
+passions. When the lover said ‘I love you’ it would
+be socially impossible for him to mean: ‘Our personalities
+have an intense and irresistible sympathy.
+I am so conscious of you and myself together that
+sometimes my sexual glands are stimulated by the
+very thought of you.’ It would be impossible for
+him not to mean: ‘My sexual glands, by the ingrowing
+enlargement of my sex instinct since childhood
+and its insidious, civilized traffic with every
+part of my mental and physical being, are unfortunately
+in a state of continual excitement. I
+have very good control of myself, but my awareness
+of your sexual physique and its radiations was
+so acute that I could not resist the temptation to
+desire to lie with you. Please do not think this
+ignoble of me, for I shall perform this act, if you
+permit it, with the greatest respect and tenderness
+and attempt to make up for the indignity it of course
+fundamentally will be to you (however pleasurable)
+by serving you in every possible way and by sexually
+flattering manifestations of your personality
+which are not strictly sexual.’</p>
+
+<p>The diffusion which modern society calls love is
+the colouring of sex with sentiments which have no
+connection with sex, sentiments which are not
+served by sex but serve sex, by making attractive
+to the finical civilized mind an instinct naturally
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span>repulsive to it. They are literary. Sex, in the
+imagery of Stendhal, is the naked branch which,
+when introduced into the salt mine, comes out
+covered with crystal formations: love is the imaginative
+crystallization of naked instinct. The naked
+instinct is the monstrous male instinct. The crystallization
+is an aphrodisiac for the female, in whom
+sex is comparatively casual: the sparkling branch
+creates in her an appetite for love equal to the
+male’s tremendous sexual offering, which she would
+otherwise shrink from accepting. By this stratagem
+the male himself does not seem to the female to
+be touching her; in love virginity remains spiritually
+undamaged. It is like the doll in a recent
+Oxford smoker. Whenever the doll was touched,
+the young person of the piece, who had a psychic
+connection with the doll, was affected, though untouched
+herself, so the nun conceals carnality from
+herself by washing herself in dollish instalments.
+Love is Masoch’s stately and marble-like Demon of
+Virginity (‘the deeply rooted fear of existence every
+creature feels’), a lewd and prudish Shepherdess.</p>
+
+<p>The only courses possible in sex then are love and
+marriage, misconduct and perversion. Misconduct
+is masculine brutality, the male’s refusal to dress up
+the overgrown branch; and feminine indelicacy,
+the female’s willingness to accept the overgrown
+branch in spite of its unromantic nakedness. Perversion
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span>varies in character. It may be mere animal-like
+sexual levity. Or the biological cynicism of the
+species. Or it may occur in the male when love and
+marriage or ordinary misconduct seem insufficient
+to his exaggerated sex instinct, which can only be
+satisfied by an instinct as exaggerated as his own.
+Or it may occur in the female as a feministic improvement
+on man-made sex, nevertheless imitating
+it in its mechanism from an irrepressible sexual
+nostalgia. Or it may occur, as also in the male,
+through deprivation of normal sex life—though
+more rarely than in the male, since her sex instinct
+is less demanding. Active Lesbianism is a form of
+sexual derangement resulting from the female’s mistaken
+effort to become sexually equivalent to the
+male: passive Lesbianism is a romantic substitution
+of the feminine branch for the masculine branch
+in the forced absence of the latter, the crystallization
+remaining the same.</p>
+
+<p>There is an intellectual side to masculine homosexuality
+that is never very strong in Lesbian alliances.
+Homosexuality in men indeed is more often
+intellectually induced than in women: it is ascetic,
+whereas women are not sexually fanatic enough for
+sexual asceticism. The disgust of homosexual men
+with civilized heterosexual love becomes a disgust
+with the crystalline aggressiveness of the female
+body. If a woman is attractive to a homosexually
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span>minded man it is because she seems what he calls
+‘pure and virginal’—aloof, that is, from her sexual
+uses. The disgust is really with the aggressive
+male sexuality which is responsible for the crystallization.
+Wherever there is great cynicism about
+sex, in Islam, say, or in France, homosexuality
+is connived at as an intellectual supplement to
+heterosexual life. The classical type of homosexuality
+was far less exclusive and severe than the
+modern type: it was sophistication rather than
+specialization.</p>
+
+<p>Whether or not homosexuality is found a satisfactory
+intellectual supplement, it is at any rate so
+that it is easier for male than for female mentality
+to escape from socialized sex. Woman has been too
+much under the necessity of self-preservation to lay
+down the weapons of feminine personality and risk
+the disarmed independence of sexual impersonality.
+She is the object, or prey, of male sexuality, and her
+strength lies in the pride and in the obstacles with
+which she conditions her capture. Much modern
+feminism is only a sentimental enlargement of this
+pride, only a shrewder insistence on her value as a
+prize. For the most part the feminist still has the
+mentality of the recipient in sex demanding compensation
+for the indignity of her position; feminism
+is an unnatural preoccupation in woman with her
+sexual self.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span></p>
+
+<p>Woman’s case is nearly hopeless, then. Man is
+just a little better off: his position affords him the
+relief, if he is intellectually capable of taking it, of
+sexual suicide.</p>
+
+
+<h3>§2</h3>
+
+<p>Often we spend hours disposing of some small
+thing not worth five minutes’ thought. We have had
+it a long time, it is occasionally useful, some one has
+given it to us, it would be a pity to throw it away,
+it has become quite a part of us, and so on. And
+yet it is in the way. Yielding to the tyranny of the
+trivial hanging-on thing is adaptation. Outwardly
+we seem to make the thing adapt itself to us. Actually
+we are adapting ourselves to the thing—a
+grotesque adaptation. Such a thing is sex, the small
+physical thing; such an adaptation is the ceremony
+with which it is decently installed in the opinion.</p>
+
+<p>With sex there seems to be nothing between
+masturbation (throwing the damned thing out) and
+romance (grotesque adaptation). Even the scientific
+attitude is romantic: the implied title of every
+learned book on sex is <i>De l’Amour</i>. The cases in
+such series as Havelock-Ellis’s books on sex belong
+to romance; they are the scientist’s storification of
+sex. After the reader has grown used to the laboratory
+manner of the scientist he continues to read
+from sentiment not science; and the author himself
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span>continues, like any romantic author, only from the
+growing morbid fascination of the subject—a
+tediously energetic mind unhinged by the baffling
+triviality of sex. Every psychologist of sex is a
+psychologist of sex because he suffers from a sex-fixation.
+He is the principal case of his work.</p>
+
+<p>Masturbation is reckoned disgraceful only because
+it debases sex to less than what it is; the
+damned thing is passionately shoved out of sight
+instead of granted pious functional importance in
+the household of the mind. There is much less
+disgust felt toward venereal disease than toward
+masturbation simply because the former is a large
+subject, the latter a small one. The campaign
+against masturbation in homes, boys’ schools and
+sex books is much more intense than the campaign
+against prostitution. Masturbation cannot be sentimentalized.
+Prostitution, ‘the oldest profession in
+the world,’ has an honoured ritual of obscenity and
+an equally honoured ritual of commerce.</p>
+
+<p>So great is the importance of accepted sex symbolism—the
+authorized poetry of sex—that any
+departure from it is classified as a perversion, as
+‘erotic’ symbolism. ‘Normal’ symbolism does not
+even go by its name: it is love. It is not recorded
+among the cases of erotic symbolism that so-and-so
+continually wrote of women’s lips, or so-and-so
+of women’s breasts. But several pages (fine print)
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span>must of course be devoted to a few notorious cases
+(French) of foot symbolism, and of course to the
+national case of China, a horrible example to the
+Western sexual mind of perverse symbolism. Lip-worship
+and breast-worship are normal because
+they are generalizations: the kiss has become so
+poetically diffuse in meaning that it does not represent
+the precise local excitement which is its actual
+sexual rôle, but a vague spiritual lippishness; the
+breasts, likewise, are officially not part of the sexual
+apparatus, but the semi-divine sensual equivalent
+of that heart-bosom-and-chest sentiment into which
+humanity has glorified mean sex-feeling.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">‘And up the rosy pathway to her heart</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">The uncapped pilgrim crept.’</div>
+      <div class="verse right">—<i>Byron.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Foot-worship is unnatural because it is local and
+particular; it connects sex with a physical triviality.
+It is nearly as disrespectful to romance as if the
+sexual parts themselves were worshipped.</p>
+
+<p>Sexual energy, if left alone, would adapt itself
+instead of forcing adaptation, be diffused instead of
+diffuse. The social mechanism for disposing of sex
+makes sex as large and complicated as itself, intensifies
+its masculinity. Its femininity reduces merely
+to an abstract, passive principle of motion in the
+great moving masculine machine; without separate
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span>social personality. The social self is the sexual
+self, and the sexual self is the male sexual self:
+the dramatic pleasure which woman feels in sex
+romance is masculine pleasure; in witnessing sexual
+embrace on the screen or on the stage she adopts the
+emotions of the male. Her innate sexual impersonality
+if not philosophized, would wreck the solemn
+masculine machine; it is therefore socially interpreted
+as mechanical receptiveness, metaphysical
+unconsciousness, social helpfulness. In self-defence
+woman becomes sentimentally attached to this rôle:
+the sexual machine so elaborately concentrated
+on her confers on her an indignity loaded with
+prerogatives. Slavish sex modesty is converted into
+sex vanity. Militant (feministic) woman can do no
+more than piously emphasize the negative, obstetrical
+instrumentality of female sex; pretending that
+motherhood is a rational social end instead of a
+bigoted natural idiosyncrasy.</p>
+
+<p>This grotesque of socialized sex comes of the
+stupid attempt of intelligent man to make nature
+intelligent. Society is the genteel human version of
+nature. It is based on the assumption that man
+is a product of the refined integration of nature by
+time and that it is therefore a superior, evolved
+nature. A constant forced transference thus takes
+place from the slums of nature into the respectable
+terraces and squares of society.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span></p>
+
+<p>But the very existence of society, of an improved
+nature, proves rather that man is a product of
+the refined disintegration of nature by time; that
+society is in fact a defensive alliance by conscious,
+contradictory nature against unconscious, consistent
+nature. And man stands in deformity between
+them, a creature part social, part natural; but also
+something else, himself. What is social is unreal.
+What is natural is unreal. What is himself is also
+unreal; but unreal intrinsically, not from deformity.</p>
+
+<p>Reproductive sentiment, for example, is an emotional
+screen to conceal how little we belong to
+nature. For were we to appreciate this little we
+should soon appreciate how little we belonged to
+society. Sex is even more separate from reproductive
+instincts in human beings than in animal beings.
+Society therefore strengthens the sympathetic connection
+between them, this last crucial bond with
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>But what is this sex that society has raised from a
+state of nature to a state of respectability among the
+intelligent passions? A myth in which people half
+believe to keep up appearances of which they are
+half ashamed. Only in the private consciousness is
+it not a fraud; and here, an eccentric mark of
+physical loneliness, a sort of memory of belonging;
+when actualized, a momentary extinction of consciousness,
+as it means momentary consciousness to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span>beasts that belong much to nature. As a public
+ceremony sex is constantly in need of artificial
+stimulation; its technique is scarcely more than the
+technique of costume. It persists through the illusion
+of numbers, which perform a gross sex-masque, a
+lascivious fancifying of nature.</p>
+
+<p>Sex is the tribal totem through which society
+sues Nature for protection and recognition, and
+through which Nature is ritually flattered. To the
+Church sex is the essence of flesh. Man is afraid to
+admit that he lives largely outside of nature, that
+his body is only a soul, a myth. Instead, he uses the
+myth to re-establish flesh; God is the authentication
+of the body.</p>
+
+<p>Sex is the chief religious mystery of man, his
+most theatrical exhibition of reality. Parents lie in
+wait for their children, to change their little sexual
+sillies into portentous symbols. Either they significantly
+do not ‘tell’ them but work their transformations
+by a dark force of silence and suggestion; or
+they significantly and poetically ‘tell’ them. Is the
+child expected not to see that what is perhaps pretty
+in flowers is rather ridiculous in people, who for the
+most part have other interests besides seed-making
+and seed-scattering? Or to treat as religious truth
+the crazy information that baby comes out of
+mother? Unprompted, it finds this just a third-rate
+curiosity. If it hears its mother shrieking in labour
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span>it will report without malice but without sentiment
+that mother squealed like a pig. Naturally without
+a sexual conscience, it is gradually bullied into
+superstitiousness, reverence or horror of sex. Shelley,
+on being read the passage about Geraldine’s breast
+in <i>Christabel</i>, saw a vision of a woman with eyes
+instead of nipples. The child’s sight is poetically
+twisted to see the nipples either so or as sacred knobs
+of coral. The only way a child can be initiated
+into socialized sex without deformity of his comic
+sense is through obscenity, the cynical and painful
+adult version of the child’s sexual insouciance.</p>
+
+<p>Psychology is the modern church of sex, provoking
+an obscene Tolstoyan piety. Havelock-Ellis
+says: ‘We must, as Bölsche declares, accustom ourselves
+to gaze on the naked human body exactly as
+we gaze at a beautiful flower’; and quotes the
+following account of a totem mystery from Ungewitter’s
+<i>Die Nacktheit</i>: ‘They made themselves as
+comfortable as possible, the men laying aside their
+coats, waistcoats, boots and socks; the women their
+blouses, skirts, shoes and stockings. Gradually, as
+the moral conception of nakedness developed in
+their minds, more and more clothing fell away,
+until the men wore nothing but bathing drawers
+and the women only their chemises. In this “costume”
+games were carried out in common, and a
+regular camp-life led. The ladies (some of whom
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span>were unmarried) would then lie in hammocks and
+we men on the grass, and the intercourse was
+delightful [sic]. We felt as members of one family,
+and behaved accordingly [sic].’ And Havelock-Ellis
+himself again: ‘The nose receives the breath
+of life; the vagina receives the water of life....
+The swelling breasts are such divinely gracious
+insignia of womanhood because of the potential
+child that hangs at them and sucks; the large curves
+at the hips are so voluptuous because of the potential
+child they clasp within them.’ The juvenile
+delinquent of the streets reacts to this no more
+obscenely by singing ‘Mother caught her titties in
+the mangle.’</p>
+
+<p>Lofty reverence of the female sexual organs conceals
+a fundamental disgust with them. Woman
+is the symbol to man of the uncleanness of bodily
+existence, of which he purifies himself by putting her
+to noble uses. She thus has for a him a double,
+contradictory significance; she is the subject of his
+bawdry and the subject of his romance. The sex totem
+is made in her image and embodies for him the conflict
+between suicide and immortality. Man himself
+is unreal. On woman he gets physical reality. She
+is his nature, the realistic enlargement of his own
+small sexual apparatus. She is the morphological
+supplement of his phallus. Through her he can
+refine, ritualize and vary his monotonous and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span>trivial appendage. She is the means by which he
+adapts himself to what he is unable to assimilate
+mentally, to the absurd physical remnant which
+pursues him in his pilgrimage to extinction and
+which he appeases by turning aside to reverence.
+Sex is a perfidious intellectual digression into
+physical reminiscences.</p>
+
+<p>How does woman play her part as the sacred
+animal of the sex totem? With ease, since she is
+quantitatively more sexual than man, more literally
+sexual; therefore more impersonally sexual. Sex
+in woman is unemotional, constitutionally well-blended—apart,
+that is, from the ritualistic education
+in love that she is subjected to by a masculine
+society. Sex in man is emotional; it is segregated;
+it is the last touch of nature in him that haunts and
+torments him and that he propitiates with pompous
+and evasive rites. Although, like man, woman is
+largely not of nature, what nature remains in her
+satisfies itself without pomp or pathos. That civilized
+woman is slower than man in arriving at sexual
+climaxes is due to the fact that her native sexual ease
+had been perverted by man’s tortuous psychology
+into a self-stupefying philosophical passivity.</p>
+
+<p>Woman, indeed, is so nearly complete in herself,
+except for the phallus, that it is difficult to see how
+it happened, if one sex must instrumentalize the
+other, that she rather than man became the auxiliary
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span>apparatus. Phallic worship in man is not pious
+but politic (unless he is homosexual, which is another
+matter); an institution for advertising the phallus
+to woman, hypnotizing her with it, protecting her
+from the knowledge that she holds the strategical
+sexual position. It is perhaps fair to say that as a
+consciousness man is woman’s equal. As a physical
+apparatus he is a clumsily devised gadget. From
+the point of view of their fertilizing powers there
+are millions and millions more men alive than
+necessary. With proper husbanding of sperm (an
+economy already practised with prize bulls and
+stallions) one man might conceivably maintain the
+world-population if a somewhat smaller figure than
+the present were agreed upon as more reasonable
+and if birth-control were somewhat relaxed. All
+propagandist display of physical and mental superiority
+on man’s part, all Rabelaisian gizzard and
+brain tickling, is an attempt to detract attention
+from his obviously incidental character as a physical
+apparatus.</p>
+
+<p>But it is unkind and even irrelevant to over-press
+the point. What is relevant is that we are in a state
+of semi-conscious transition between nature and
+nothing, and the more conscious we grow, the
+nearer we are to nothing. In this passage sex comes
+quietly along, obligingly diminishing itself except
+when man, in panic of annihilation, whips it up and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span>tries to ride himself back to nature upon it. But
+the passage continues, his hobby-horse is a phantom.</p>
+
+<p>Panic of annihilation, resistance to sexual diminution,
+is a social emotion. Resistance to sexual
+enlargement is a personal emotion, the fear of a
+more brutal kind of annihilation. Sex brings shock;
+to some rudimentary forms, simple death; to human
+beings, intricate death, death of self, death of death.
+Homosexuality is an oblique escape from the
+violence of this shock. Polygamy and polyandry
+distribute the frightening physical solidarity of
+monogamy. Monogamous couples are always
+hungry for company: to dilute sex. This hunger
+for dilution is one-half of parenthood; the other half
+is the regressive hunger for solidarity.</p>
+
+<p>This natural difference between creatures intellectually
+like is the real perversion. Man is a poetic
+animal; what is natural in him is pathological.
+Poetically he is unisexual; when he attempts to
+make the nature in him poetic he becomes bisexual
+or homosexual not poetic. It is impossible that
+through sex nature should approve of man or man
+of nature. The only way to prevent sex from being
+a greater source of discomfort than need be is to
+recognize it as an anomalous hanger-on in man’s
+journey away from nature and to make it reveal
+its presence by behaving naturally: bringing about
+a literal diffusion of physical nature in human
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span>nature instead of a monstrous hermaphroditism
+or a monstrous monomania.</p>
+
+
+<h3>§3</h3>
+
+<p>Sex as a petty eccentricity of the individual can
+be easily disposed of by the individual. As a social
+symptom it assumes large metaphysical proportions;
+it becomes a crux between matter and mind.
+It demands legal control, giving society an excuse
+for power; economic control (as a medium of
+exchange), giving society an excuse for motion;
+ceremonial control, giving society an excuse for
+language, manners, communication. That is, it
+gives society an excuse for society.</p>
+
+<p>Society keeps control of sex by so embroidering
+it with sentiment that the individual scarcely realizes
+that he is serving society instead of society him.
+Every one knows, in the abstract, for instance, that
+monogamy is an economic expression; yet individuals
+participating in monogamy would be horrified
+at the suggestion that they were confirming an
+economic expression. Marriage is not an economic
+expression, but a ‘sacrament.’ Havelock-Ellis says:
+‘Since marriage is not a mere contract, but a fact of
+conduct, and even a sacred fact, the free participation
+of both parties is needed to maintain it.’
+And not only is the economic significance of monogamous
+marriage concealed by an argument of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span>spiritual significance, but by a biological argument
+as well. Havelock-Ellis further says: ‘Monogamy,
+in the fundamental biological sense, represents the
+natural order into which the majority of sexual
+facts will always naturally fall, because it is the
+relationship which most adequately corresponds to
+all the physical and spiritual facts involved.’ (Compare
+Shelley’s argument that polygamy was a
+biological necessity because the noble horse was
+polygamous.)</p>
+
+<p>There develops, as a counterpart to public sex,
+not private sex but academic sex, sex the tradition
+rather than sex the practice. Sex shows itself
+proudly as an art. It <i>is</i> art. And as it is the male
+not the female who tends to express himself traditionally
+as <i>man</i>, art is male art. It is therefore
+foolish to point out that there have been very few
+great women artists: why should one look for women
+artists at all in male art? Art is to man the academic
+idea of woman, a private play with her in public.
+It is therefore foolish to point out that many artists,
+perhaps the best, are homosexual. They are not
+homosexual. Art is their wench.</p>
+
+<p>By man’s abstractness of mind is meant his
+personal anonymity; he is a public creature, only
+mathematically existent. By woman’s concreteness
+of mind is meant the individuality (man calls it
+‘reality’) he recognizes in her and which he attempts
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span>under cover of love, to steal. Woman wears clothes,
+man wears a social uniform. Woman is individual-power
+(brain); man is mass-power (brawn). Therefore
+man, though individually a negative force, is as
+a unit a positive force; defeating woman as a unit,
+since the fact that she is individually a positive force
+makes her collectively a negative force. Here is the
+secret of man’s power over woman and of a woman’s
+power over a man.</p>
+
+<p>The mysterious ‘reality’ of woman is responsible
+for her mysterious position. The only way to correct
+this position is for her to make a mystery of man,
+to flatter, cajole, bully him into individuality.
+Feminism’s great mistake is in concentrating on
+woman rather than on man. Concentration on
+woman can only increase the mysteriousness of her
+position.</p>
+
+<p>The antithesis between intellectual and intuitional
+faculties is really an antithesis between
+conventionality and unconventionality. Mrs. Willa
+Muir, is a short essay on <i>Woman</i>, says: ‘Unconscious
+life creates, for example, human beings: conscious
+life creates, for example, philosophy.’ Human
+beings are not created by woman’s intuition (Mrs.
+Muir should know this), but by the fertilization
+of the female ovum by the male sperm. What
+is meant is that philosophy springs from the conventional
+male mind; but that human beings spring
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span>from the unconventional female body; and that
+the female mind is therefore also unconventional.</p>
+
+<p>The male mind is conventional because the male
+body is a mere convention. The female body is
+unconventional because it is individualistic: man
+gets somewhat socially and vaguely just children,
+woman gets personally and precisely <i>a</i> child. The
+female mind is therefore unconventional because
+it is individualistic, that is, because woman is
+physically an individual to a degree to which man
+is not. Therefore man is intellectual, woman is
+intuitional: man is unconquerable monotony,
+woman conquerable variety. He has a formal,
+vacant simplicity, she has an informal, experimental
+complexity. Therefore, since he cannot be
+entrusted with creating human beings and she can,
+she must not be entrusted with creating philosophy,
+which is all he can be entrusted with. She is not
+good enough to be entrusted with creating philosophy
+because she is intuitional: she is too good
+to be entrusted with creating philosophy because
+she is unconventional.</p>
+
+<p>It is fair to generalize about man because he is a
+generalization, unfair to generalize about woman
+because she is not. Man is male, man is ‘the sex,’
+not woman; woman is temperamentally unisexual,
+a person; for this reason perhaps a mystery. Her
+sex play is literal, hard, matter-of-fact, truly theatrical;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span>the rest is unconventional, a mystery. With
+man, all is sex; he cannot easily grasp the dualism
+necessary to any real individual sense. His play is
+symbolical, realistic; it is ‘the reality,’ protracted by
+a tiresome, childish patience that never wears out.
+Woman, to save herself from boredom, is obliged to
+enliven the scene with a few gratuitous falsetto
+turns, which he interprets as co-operation. Even at
+his boldest man cannot get beyond a conventional
+anarchism. He cannot see that he is on a stage and
+therefore he cannot see that it is possible to get off;
+so that his performance is continuous. And he will
+perhaps never learn that anarchism is not enough.
+His fine phallus-proud works-of-art, his pretty
+masterpieces of literature, painting, sculpture and
+music, bear down upon woman’s maternal indulgence;
+she is full of admiration, kind but weary.
+When, she sighs, will man grow up, when will he
+become woman, when will she have companions
+instead of children?</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="LETTER_OF_ABDICATION">
+    LETTER OF ABDICATION
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>I have done all I could for you, but the only
+consequence is that you are the same as always. I
+had the alternative of ordering a general massacre,
+but I should then have had to go away anyhow. It
+is simpler to abdicate. It certainly makes no difference
+to the situation whether I leave you behind
+dead or alive. Therefore I will leave you behind
+alive, to afford myself the bitter satisfaction of telling
+you what I think of you. You will not listen any
+more than you would if you were dead, but I should
+not address you if you were dead. Therefore I will
+leave you behind alive, to afford myself the bitter
+satisfaction of telling you what I think of you.</p>
+
+<p>You are not gay. You are sticky instead of rubbery.
+You represent yourself with priggish sincerity
+instead of mimicking yourself with grotesque
+accuracy. Because you are photographs you think
+the photographs are originals. You think seeing is
+being.</p>
+
+<p>You do not know what you are. I will tell you,
+though it will not make the least difference to you,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span>since you do not know what you are. You are a
+conceit. You are what you are not. You are a very
+fine point of discrimination. But since you do not
+discriminate, since you are not gay, since you think
+what you are is what you are, therefore you are not:
+this indeed is why massacre was unnecessary. You
+are blind, from seeing; you cannot appreciate the
+identity of opposites. You are feeble, from a loutish
+strength of doing; so that you cannot surpass doing,
+let doing instead of yourselves do; so that you cannot
+repose. You are cowards, afraid to be more than
+perfect and more than formal; so that you are only
+what you are; you have the perfection of mediocrity,
+not the irregularity of perfection. You are
+superstitious; you will season the dish with salt, but
+you will not taste salt itself. You are ignorant; not
+only do you not know what you are; you do not
+know what you are not. You are lazy; you will do
+only one thing at a time; you will act; but you will
+not act and not act. You are criminal; what you do
+is all positive, wicked, damaging; you make no
+retractions, contradictions, proofs of innocence. You
+are without honour; over-sincere; hypocritical.</p>
+
+<p>I will tell you a story which is in my mind at the
+moment and may therefore have some bearing on
+the question. There was once a woman whose mind
+was as active as her body. And there was once a
+man who was constituted in the same way. And the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span>combination of them produced a child which was all
+mind and no body. And no one knew about it. She
+was, naturally, a woman. Her parents gave her no
+name but referred to her in a historical manner as
+‘The Deliverer.’ Whenever anything went wrong in
+any part of the world she put it right because she
+was all mind. But no one knew about it and so it
+made no difference. When they became quite hopeless
+her parents referred to her merely as ‘The
+Angel.’ In the end she was plain ‘she’ to them. At
+her death she became all body, and her parents,
+frenzied with disappointment, drove her out. And
+no one knew about it. Her parents gave her no
+name but referred to her in a historical manner as
+‘The Destroyer.’ Whenever anything went right in
+any part of the world she put it wrong again because
+she was all body. But no one knew about it and so
+it made no difference. When they became quite
+hopeless her parents referred to her merely as ‘The
+Beast.’ In the end she was plain ‘she’ to them. At
+her death she became all mind, and her parents,
+frenzied with disappointment, took her in again.
+And no one knew about it.</p>
+
+<p>This is the story which was in my mind and which
+may have some bearing on the question. The point
+of it is, I think, that we are all in an impossible position;
+which you handle by making less, myself more,
+impossible. For example, it is unlikely that the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span>story that I have just told you would ever have
+occurred to you. Or if it had, you would have
+broken down in the middle and called it the end.
+You stop half-way round the circle in order to spare
+yourself the humiliation of missing the true end,
+which is not perceptible in the ordinary way. Indeed
+if it is not perceived, it makes no difference, the
+circle goes round and round upon you. On the
+other hand, it makes no difference even if it is perceived,
+except the difference of perceiving it, which
+makes the position, as I have said, more rather than
+less impossible. So do as you like.</p>
+
+<p>But I shall abdicate if you do, and since you do, I
+abdicate. You are all asleep, because being awake
+means being dreamless, and you can only be awake
+by dreaming to be awake, by dreaming to be
+dreamless. You turn your back on your own non-existence
+and are therefore non-existent. When
+you love, you turn your back on what you love.
+When you sweep, you turn your back on the dirt.
+When you think, you turn your back on your mind.
+Well, keep looking the other way so that I can kick
+you where you deserve to be kicked. And you will
+not turn on me but flatter yourselves that you are
+having spasms of profundity.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, this is how it is, little wise-bottoms.
+There is Cleopatra, Rome, Napoleon and so forth
+on one side, and there is the future on the other side,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span>and there you are in the middle alive. There is that
+great churning, that continuous tossing up and
+making of a middle, that bright ferment of centrality;
+and it is you. My o my o my o, what a
+thing! But when it was Cleopatra, Rome, Napoleon
+or any of them of then, or when it will be who it will
+be, my o my o my o, what a thing. It was not,
+it will not be you. And what was you and what will
+you be? You was and you will be dead. And why?
+Because you are alive now. But come a little closer,
+darlings, that I may kick you a little harder. Listen:
+if you was dead and if you will be dead, each of you,
+then you must be dead now, each of you, you must
+be dead and alive. Now o now o now o, pumpkins,
+don’t cry. For just think: there is that great big
+live middle and it is nice and warm and it is you.
+But it may also be it. And what would become of you
+then out in the cold if you didn’t take yourselves in,
+if you weren’t also you, if you weren’t each of you
+dead as well as alive? And what difference does it
+make? None whatever, pets, except the difference
+of a difference that makes no difference.</p>
+
+<p>I will argue further against what I am arguing
+for. The you which is you is only you, and not only
+dead but invisible. And you can never be this you
+unless you see the you which is it and every one
+hard round the circle to the end, where you can no
+longer see, and are you alone. And the result, if
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span>you do this? You will be so alive that you will be
+deader than ever; you will have achieved the identity
+of opposites; you will have brought two counter-processes
+to rub noses, the you which you are
+not, which is you alone, and the you which you are,
+which is it, every one, not you—and much good may
+it do you, except to make you deader than ever.
+And the result, if you do not do this? You will save
+that much life from death, and much good may it
+do you—enough to wipe your nose on, when it runs
+with nervousness at the thought that you will have
+to die anyway.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, I once knew a woman who spent all her time
+washing her linen, in order to be always fresh and
+sweet smelling. But as she was always washing dirty
+linen and thus making the linen she wore dirtier
+than it might have been if she had washed less, she
+smelled of nothing but dirty linen. Any why? Because
+she was over-sincere and a hypocrite. She
+got stranded in the fact of clean linen instead of
+moving on to the effect of clean linen, which is the
+end of the circle. And you are all like that.</p>
+
+<p>And again. Believing it to be you alone and that
+you are only what you are, think what a small, mean,
+cosy, curly, pink and puny figure you cut when you
+set out to be it at a party of it’s, naked as in your
+own bath. Whereas, ladies and gentlemen, if you
+understood the identity of opposites, your nakedness
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span>would be an invisibility which you would
+have to dress large, from the point of view of
+visibility. And to this it-ish rather than you-ish
+exterior you would add an even larger and looser-fitting
+social skin, a house in most it-ish order, a
+most it-ish interior, in fact. But you do not understand.
+‘Boo-hoo!’ you cry. ‘What, hide our naked
+hearts, paralyse our heroic breasts, sit upon our
+grave bottoms, swallow back our great acts?’ ‘Hush-a-bye,’
+I reply, ‘there is enough going on for you
+forrard without your great acts: drinks free, if you
+will only drink, scenery on view, if you will only
+look, music keeping step for you if you will only
+supply the feet. Instead of spending money on what
+you can only get for nothing. Life, lads, is a charity
+feed the fun of which is in everybody pretending to
+be a swell and everybody treating everybody else like
+a swell and everybody knowing everybody is a fraud
+and no matter. No matter because of death, in which
+each may be rich and proud, and no fooling. And
+your great acts? When you are bursting with fraud
+and charity and can stand no more, sneak aft and
+do your great acts, like private retchings and acts
+of death. If they will not come on, repeat to a point
+of mechanical conviction some formula of dreary
+finality, such as, “The fathers of our girl friends are
+lecherous,” or “Philosophy is teetotal whisky.”’</p>
+
+<p>But you are all sluts, your efforts are not biggish,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[216]</span>and so your fine points are only untidy and trivial.
+If you would neatly calculate, you must calculate
+grossly the whole pattern of it, which is the making
+of the middle; you must conceive first tremendously,
+then accurately; you must grasp the general
+initiative which is it not you. From this, if your
+application be fine enough, the fine points will resolve
+themselves. But remember you are no fine
+small point yourself; you are more and less than
+one; you are the littlishness of biggishness; you are
+no fine small point but a fine small point of discrimination.
+My o my o my o, what a thing, poor
+beastie, to be but dainty when you would be statistical.
+The best of you are the worst of you: they
+over-discriminate, put their hand to their chin,
+stand upon taste, pick the highest and most delicately
+scorched plum, and then choke over the
+stone, dying the death of an æsthete. For what is a
+single plum, too fine for the eye and not fine enough
+for the throat?</p>
+
+<p>I might advise you to think; but you are over-eager,
+all for gain. And thought is just a power of
+potentiality; as you are of it; as death is of life;
+without gain. You would make potentiality where
+there is none, in order to have more thought than
+is possible; you would turn the future into a bank,
+as you now do the past, from greed of time.</p>
+
+<p>Or I might say: ‘Have shame.’ But you would
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span>only expose yourselves a little more outrageously
+and hang your heads a little lower. You would not
+understand that only truly abandoned boldness
+breeds truly abandoned decorum. Your interpretations
+are ignoble and indecent. You begin with
+contradictions instead of ending with them; efface
+them instead of developing them. As, for example,
+with sex: you seize upon it at the beginning, tease
+it, worry it, transform it, until you think you have
+ironed it out thoroughly, whereas you have only
+ironed yourselves out thoroughly. While if you had
+not seized upon it, you would have found it at the
+end of the circle, had you reached the end, an
+achieved confirmation of the impossibility that
+makes things possible.</p>
+
+<p>This is one of my favourite subjects; if I were not
+abdicating I might discuss it elaborately, for your
+good. Since I am abdicating, I will discuss it
+simply, for my own good; for it is one of my favourite
+subjects. The balance of interest in man, I
+should say, is with the making, with it, with life; in
+woman, with the breaking of the making into the
+you which is you alone, into death. Woman is at
+the end of the circle, she has only to rearrive at herself;
+man has first to learn that there is an end,
+before he can set out for it. And the learning he
+scorns as childish and the setting out as a deathbed
+rite. Woman he counts passive because she is at the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span>end, and inferior because, being there, she turns
+round and starts all over again, to rearrive at herself.
+He adores her when she remains passive, that
+is his inferior; and despises her when she becomes
+his equal, that is, his superior. Well, they are
+worthless, both orders, when they are no more than
+they are. And when they are more than they are
+they are of no use to anyone but themselves; which
+is right but sudden and perhaps too mean for
+these mean times. For myself, I might confess to
+you, now that we are parting, that my happiest
+hours have been spent in the brotherly embrace of a
+humbug, not from want of womanliness in me or
+humbuggery in him, but because I was queen and
+needed repose. Ah me ah me ah me, what is this
+all about?</p>
+
+<p>And such stickiness. How am I better than the
+rest of you? Because I have converted stickiness into
+elasticity and made myself free without wrenching
+myself free like a wayward pellet of paste. And
+what of so-and-so, your popular idol and my late
+consort? He was a strong man, powerfully sticky
+but not elastic; when he moved, he carried you
+along with him, he could not have moved otherwise,
+freely. And so he had great moments but not free
+moments. He was terribly alive but too terribly,
+never more than alive. He was merely monstrous,
+without the littlishness of biggishness. And what of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span>so-and-so, my sometime lover? He was indeed a
+darling but an insufferable fop, washing away the
+stickiness till there was nothing left of him. And
+many others were darlings, of a sticky gracefulness
+and rhythm. But send me no more candidates, their
+embraces are either too heavy or too feeble; and I
+am light, hollow with death, but strong, of a tough,
+lively, it-ish exterior.</p>
+
+<p>That is the trouble. You have no comprehension
+of appearance, what it is. Appearance is everything,
+what you are, what you are not. But your
+reach is sticky, not elastic; and so you get no further
+than reality, a pathetic proportion. Appearance
+is where the circle meets itself, where you live
+and do not live, where you are and are not dead.
+Appearance is everything, and nothing; bright and
+uppermost in a woman, to be sunk darkly inward;
+dumb, blind, darkly imbedded in a man, to be
+thrust brutally outward.</p>
+
+<p>No, I am not confused, my blinking intelligences,
+but understand too clearly, and that is the trouble.
+I am unnecessary to you and therefore abdicate.
+Nor do I deny that blinking is sufficient for your
+purposes, which are sincere rather than statistical.
+Or that it would be for mine, for that matter—if I
+had purposes instead of queenliness. Which is my
+weakness, if you like—the tiresomeness of insisting
+upon the necessity of what is not necessary. I admit
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span>all; I am not wise but insistent, I am an unpaid
+hack of accuracy. I was queen from tiresomeness,
+and I abdicate from tiresomeness. I am not enjoying
+myself.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps you would like to know a little of my
+history, before I retire finally. My mother imagined
+that she suffered from bad eyesight; and to make it
+worse she wore a stocking round her eyes whenever
+possible: at home, a white stocking; abroad, a
+black stocking; and occasionally, to depress circumstances
+completely, a grey sock of my father’s,
+fastened at the back of her head with a safety-pin.
+From which, our house was full of small oval rugs
+made by my mother out of the mates of the stockings
+which she wore round her eyes and which she
+was always losing. And these rugs made by my
+mother were not well made, because she imagined
+that she suffered from bad eyesight. From which
+my mother, whose character was all dreariness,
+acquired in my mind a hateful oddness. From
+which, I resolved to outdo her in oddness, so that I
+not only imagined that I suffered from good eyesight:
+I did actually suffer from it. And with this
+effect, that by the time I was of age I had no more
+than one rug, and this was very large and square,
+and it was well made, and not by me, though I
+suffered extremely from good eyesight. I lived far
+away from my mother, having no connection with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span>her except to insist that she live far away from me;
+and my rug was composed of many small squares;
+and the pattern of each square was different; and
+yet the whole harmonious because the stuff was
+provided by me—the finest silk and velvet rags that
+I could command from others, and which I sorted
+and returned to them to be made into squares, a
+square by each of them. And so each who made a
+square was my subject. And so I became Queen.
+Perhaps now you will understand me better. But I
+am determined to abdicate, however you dissuade
+me. Before I was in reach of your praise, and liked
+neither your praise nor lack of it. It would not improve
+my feelings to put myself in reach of your
+pity. It was not for this that I told you my story. I
+told you my story to make my abdication irrevocable.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, even now, it is painful to leave you. Not
+because I love you but because I am still untired;
+and after I leave you there will be no more to do. I
+shall indeed be more untired than ever. For while I
+was with you I worked hard (as you will not deny)
+and achieved a certain formal queenly tiredness
+from being unable to tire myself out no matter how
+hard I worked. But now concealment will be impossible:
+my insistence, that before I tried to
+make pleasant to myself (and to others) by trying
+to interest it in your affairs, will in the future
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span>be plainly horrible, as everything is horrible if
+sufficiently disinterested, that is, insistent. But the
+horror of my insistence will not be known to you,
+because I am abdicating. Nor am I to be dissuaded.
+The stroke that puts me in reach of your pity puts
+me out of reach of it as well.</p>
+
+<p>I have said more than enough to satisfy my contempt
+of you. But I once loved you; and I have
+not punished myself sufficiently for that. What do I
+mean when I say that I once loved you? That I
+knew that being alive for you and me meant being
+more than alive. But you were afraid to admit it,
+though I was willing to take all the responsibility
+upon myself. Then I tried pretending to be just
+alive, I became for a time a partisan of timidity, in
+order to show you that being just alive was just
+pretending to be just alive. But when, aside, I
+reached for your hand, to press it, you dishonourably
+misunderstood me, you put me in the loathsome
+position of flirting with you. Then I tried
+extorting from you everything by means of which
+you lived, to show you that when you did not live
+you still lived. But again you wilfully misunderstood
+me and over-exerted yourself to supply me
+with what you thought to be my needs and what
+you assumed to be yours; and stubbornly refused
+to not live; and were disappointed when I did not
+applaud your inexhaustibility. And then once more
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span>I tried. I loaded you with favours in order to show
+you that nothing made any difference; that the
+most as well as the least that you could endure by
+belonged to being just alive; that you were more
+than alive, dead. But you repulsed me with praise
+and gratitude; as you would now with pity and
+ingratitude if I permitted.</p>
+
+<p>Then I said: ‘I will leave them alone. I will content
+myself with being queen. Perhaps if I play my
+part conscientiously, at no time abandoning my
+royal manner, they will admit everything of their
+own accord, like a good, kind, though stupid, timid
+people.’ But my grandeur you interpreted meanly as
+the grandeur of being just alive, instead of grandly,
+as the showy meanness of being just alive. You
+watched me act and admired my performance, but
+credited me with sincerity rather than talent; you
+refused to act yourself, paralysed by the emotions of
+an audience. My challenge, my drastic insistence,
+made you if anything more timid than you already
+were. You were hypnotized with admiration, you
+were, from the vanity you took in watching me, less
+than just alive. The men behaved more disgracefully
+than the women because to be a woman requires
+a strong theatrical sense: requires of one who
+is more than man to be less than man. For this
+reason I took many lovers, to humble back as many
+as possible into activity. And this brought all of us to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span>where we were in the beginning. And so I abdicate,
+leaving you once more to your heroism. With it you
+were intolerable to me; without it you were not
+only intolerable to me, but you would have eventually
+become intolerable to yourselves, especially
+after I had left you.</p>
+
+<p>You know only how to be either heroes or cowards.
+But you do not know how to outwit yourselves
+by being neither, though seeming to be both.
+‘What,’ you say indignantly, ‘would you have us
+be nothing?’ Ah, my dear people, if you could you
+would all shortly become Queens.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps it is best that you cannot. For if you
+became Queens you would in time find it necessary
+to abdicate, as I have; and you would, like me, be
+left extremely unhappy, of having succeeded in
+yourselves but failed in others.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it is true that I concealed from you the colour
+of my eyes. But the distance at which I kept you
+from myself was precisely the distance between
+being just alive and being more than alive. I was
+giving you a lesson in space, not a rebuff. Since we
+are at the end of things, you may come close to me
+and look well into my eyes; but since you have not
+learned your lesson, you will still remain ignorant
+of their colour. Good-bye. I am going back to my
+mirror, where I came from.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <p class="fh2" id="FOOTNOTES">
+    FOOTNOTES
+  </p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1_1" href="#FNanchor_1_1" class="label">[1]</a> Mr. Lewis takes a fierce, acquisitive joy in being right: as
+if it were an honour to be right, and his unique honour. But
+many people, alas, are right, only with more quietness and less
+joy than Mr. Lewis. To be right (to see wrong) is properly a
+sad, not a joyous mental condition. To be right in Mr. Lewis’s
+manner is to become a self-appointed destroyer of wrong; and
+so to make oneself a candidate for destruction, in turn. To be
+right in his manner—so righteously right—is to be God; and
+so to chasten every one into wrong.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2_2" href="#FNanchor_2_2" class="label">[2]</a> The adultishness of the individual-real is an abhorrence
+(as Mr. Lewis shows it to be) of intellectualism (organized
+fear) in the up-to-date White mass, which to Mr. Lewis is
+sentimental Bolshevism, Bohemianism. But such an abhorrence
+of intellectualism in the up-to-date White mass, if one is
+not careful, becomes (as in Mr. Lewis) an adultish championship
+of intellectualism (organized bravado) in a privileged White few
+(as any <i>system</i> of individualism must mean by individualism the
+individualism of a few)—a sentimental Toryism, in fact, Academianism.
+And in what few? The few, of course, swept aside
+by the time-current; the few, indeed, who might be truly
+individual were they not organized into a system of individualism.
+Mr. Lewis’s Toryism would be perhaps apt if he were
+trying to be only politically, not philosophically right as well.
+But in the circumstances his satire is as irrelevant to his right,
+which is philosophical, as Swift’s would have been, had it been
+philosophical, to his right, which was political. The only
+satire relevant to a philosophical right is a satire like Blake’s:
+Blake’s faith showed the people who were wrong to be enemies,
+it was not a system organizing himself into an enemy.
+Mr. Lewis does not like Blake because he said that the roads of
+genius (right) were crooked: Mr. Lewis believes that the
+roads of right should be systematic, that the person who is
+right should be an enemy, a righteous, sentimental Tory
+rather than a sad though angry spirit.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_3_3" href="#FNanchor_3_3" class="label">[3]</a> The symbolism of the individual-real in its scientific
+aspects is best explained in C. K. Ogden’s and I. A. Richards’
+<i>The Meaning of Meaning</i>. In this confused mixture of philosophy,
+psychology, ethnology and literature it is just possible
+to distinguish between what is meant by ‘bad’ and ‘good’
+symbolism. To begin with, the assumption must be made for
+both varieties of symbolism that words mean nothing by themselves.
+Bad symbolism is apparently the use of words for
+collective propagandist purposes which distort the ‘referents’
+(original objects or events) of which the words are signs; good
+symbolism makes language not an instrument of purposes but
+of the ‘real’ objects or events for which it provides a sort of
+mathematic of signs. Words in this reformed grammar are
+thus not vulgar stage-players of images; they are certified
+scientific representatives of the natural objects, or constructions
+of objects called events, which man’s mind, like a dust-cloud,
+is assumed to obscure from himself. To Mr. Ogden
+and Mr. Richards language is ideally a neutral region of
+literalness between reality and its human perception. Signs
+(of which language is this precise mathematical grammar),
+being the closest the perceiving mind can come to reality,
+must for convenience be regarded as reality itself; the more
+faithfully they are defined as signs, the more literally they represent
+reality. There is no evidence anywhere in this book
+that perception is properly anything other than a slave of
+reality. Disobedient perception—language by itself—is an
+‘Enchanted Wood of Words.’ There is no hint that individual
+perception, instead of making a separate approximation of the
+general sign conveying the object, does in fact where originality
+is maintained experience a revulsion from the object or event
+concerned. No hint that the very genesis or <i>utterance</i> of a sign
+is an assertion of the independence of the mind against what
+the authors call the sign-situation. Or that the mind is a
+dust-cloud only when perceptively organized to define reality.
+Or that language is only an Enchanted Wood of Words when
+the dragon Reality is searched for in it. Or that words are
+literal man, not ‘main topics of discussion,’ not literal perception
+or the science of reality.</p>
+
+<p>The conclusion of this study, if one has patience to extract a
+conclusion from this science-proud collation of verbal niceties,
+is that man has no right to meaning: meaning is the property
+of reality, which is to be known scientifically only through
+symbols, which in turn are to be regulated as to interpretation
+by limitations on the use of symbols, called definitions. ‘But
+in most matters the possible treachery of words can only be
+controlled through definitions, and the greater the number of
+such alternative locutions available the less is the risk of discrepancy,
+provided that we do not suppose symbols to have
+“meaning” on their own account, and so people the world with
+fictitious entities.’</p>
+
+<p>But what, then, in this stabilizing of the scientific or symbolic
+use of words, is to happen to poetry, which is assumed as the
+deliberately unscientific use of words? Poetry, it appears,
+deals with evocative as opposed to symbolic speech. ‘In
+evocative speech the essential consideration is the character
+of the attitude aroused.’ The corollary to this proposition,
+which the authors imperfectly and insincerely develop, is that
+there is no true antithesis between evocative (partisan)
+speech and symbolic (logical) speech. We deduce that
+evocative speech is in fact not an independent speech of its
+own but a persuasive quality that may be added to symbolic
+speech: the ‘attitude aroused,’ that is, is an attitude toward
+<i>something</i>—evocative (poetic) speech is false <i>by itself</i> (in opposition
+to symbolic speech), it is scientifically admissible only
+where it shows close dependence on symbols meaningless
+in themselves but showing close, scientific dependence on
+reality.</p>
+
+<p>This deduction we find confirmed in a little book by Mr.
+I. A. Richards, <i>Science and Poetry</i>. ‘The essential peculiarity of
+poetry as of all the arts is that the full appropriate situation is
+not present.’ The fact that poetry is evocative rather then
+symbolic gives it a freedom from the hard-and-fast laws of
+reality that often enables it to convey a more faithful impression
+of the ‘real thing,’ by a sort of loyal lying, than would
+painfully truthful symbolic speech. Thus, by making symbolism
+the purpose of science rather than of art (as it is in the
+vulgar collective-real) Mr. Richards is able to allow poetry
+(always by scientific leave, of course) certain aristocratic
+latitudes of expression—a certain rhetorical <i>finesse</i>—that it
+lacks when it is erroneously used as symbolic (pseudo-scientific)
+speech. Poetry as symbolic speech is only figurative
+speech; it invents a fairy-story of reality. Poetry as evocative
+speech takes its clue from external (scientific) symbols of
+reality rather than from internal (imaginative) symbols of
+reality—it means, in Mr. Richards’ words, ‘The transference
+from the magical view of the world to the scientific.’</p>
+
+<p>In the magical view the ‘pseudo-statements’ of poetry were
+connected with belief. In the scientific view they are disconnected
+from belief; we are returned to the assumption scattered
+through the pages of <i>The Meaning of Meaning</i>, that man has no
+right to meaning. The poet armed with the scientific view
+accepts the ‘contemporary background’ as tentative meaning:
+so that ‘the essential consideration is the character of the attitude
+aroused.’ This attitude has literary licence according to
+the degree of scientific acceptance: the more complete the
+acceptance, the greater the ‘independence’ (meaninglessness)
+of the poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Poetry is according to such criticism, therefore, a socially
+beneficial affirmation of reality by means of a denial, or phantasization,
+of individual mind. In symbolic (magic) poetic
+speech reality itself is the principal of the fairy story; in evocative
+(scientific) poetic speech the principal of the fairy-story
+is the individual mind. In both cases the one belief from
+which the poetic mind must not disconnect itself is the belief
+in reality; which proves itself in either case to be only the most
+advanced ‘contemporary background’ appreciable.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_4_4" href="#FNanchor_4_4" class="label">[4]</a> Except here!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_5_5" href="#FNanchor_5_5" class="label">[5]</a> As instead of opposing a fine sexual indifference to the
+sexual impotence or sentimental feminism that he finds
+in modern life he flaunts a sentimental Spartan masculinity.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_6_6" href="#FNanchor_6_6" class="label">[6]</a> Deity to the collective-realist is reality as symbolic oneness;
+to the individual-realist, reality as rationalistic oneness.
+To the former therefore personality is an instrument for conceiving
+emotionally the mass character of this oneness; to the
+latter, an instrument for corroborating intellectually the
+individualistic character of this oneness. (Intellectual democracy
+as opposed to intellectual anarchy.) Mr. Lewis says:
+‘We have a god-like experience in that only’ (personality).
+The collective-realist would say: ‘We have a god-like experience
+in that only’ (personality). The only difference between
+these two expressions is political. ‘Evidences of a oneness seem
+everywhere apparent,’ Mr. Lewis says. ‘But we <i>need</i>, for practical
+purposes, the illusion of a plurality.’ The ‘practical
+purposes’ are, presumably, the necessity of protecting this
+democratic oneness from the democratic mass: ‘plurality’ here
+means the plurality of the few. It is comprehensible, then,
+that Catholic thought should, by its scholasticism, appeal to
+Mr. Lewis—the political wisdom of an institution that keeps
+a small body of well-paid intelligentsia to administer Godhood
+to the not so individualistic, the not so well-paid worshipping
+mass. And Mr. Lewis is here at one with his rather more
+scholastic colleague in individualism, Mr. Eliot, who with his
+French co-littérateurs phrases the conflict between symbolic
+oneness and rationalistic oneness, or symbolic personality and
+rationalistic personality, more elegantly as the conflict between
+intuition and intelligence (between the feeling whole
+and the thinking whole, in Mr. Lewis’s language). Individuality
+to the individualist is thus an intellectual fiction, as to
+the collective-realist it is the oneness which is the fiction
+(‘Human individuality is best regarded as a kind of artificial
+Godhood’—Mr. Lewis. And again: ‘We at least must <i>pretend</i>
+not to notice each other’s presence, God and ourselves to be
+alone.’)—the difference here being merely the difference
+between a sentimentalized Tory absolute and a sentimentalized
+Communist absolute.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_7_7" href="#FNanchor_7_7" class="label">[7]</a> Spenglerism is male religiosity and symbolism of the
+vulgar romantic as opposed to the refined classical kind.
+‘The Faustian soul looks for an immortality to follow the
+bodily end, a sort of marriage with endless space ... till
+at last nothing remains visible but the indwelling depth-and-height
+energy of this self-extension.’ The historical mind (the
+‘Faustian soul’) overcomes its perpetual temporariness by a
+perpetual give-and-take between itself and the Great Mother
+reality, whom it honours with its philosophical erections (what
+Herr Spengler calls third-dimensional extension) and from
+whom it receives sensations of infinity—the Great Mother’s
+gratitude for this masculine ‘conquest’ of herself. To the
+Spenglerist (the modernist) this infinity is vague, collective, metaphorical:
+‘somehow we are in nature’; somehow ‘the
+“I” overwhelms the “Thou.”’ The scientific world, the Great
+Mother, is dead; it is the fairy-tale brought to life in each
+fresh embrace of it by the historical world. To the individual-realist
+(the classicist) the masculine extension is actual and
+personal rather than metaphorical and collective: the fairy-tale
+individual mind acquires an immediate ahistorical liveliness
+from its intercourse with the Great Scientific Mother.
+Herr Spengler despises the classical ahistorical attitude to
+reality. But overstudiously; for it is rather more than less
+than modern; it is based on the minute of the moment, not
+on the age of the moment. Both the collective-realist and the
+individual-realist function by sexual phantasia; the only
+difference between them being that the latter claims to be
+able to have closer contact with the Great Mother than the
+former—one merely historically, through the experience of
+the time-group to which he belongs, the other scientifically,
+through <i>his</i> experience <i>now</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_8_8" href="#FNanchor_8_8" class="label">[8]</a> These positions might perhaps be more clearly illustrated
+in their respective attitudes to place. The collective-realist is
+poetically attached to the idea of the <i>there</i>; reality is romantic,
+far-away, collective—superior to the personal <i>here</i>; it is the
+eternally old fountain of eternal youthfulness. From this feeling
+comes the morbid fondness of Western man for other races,
+so severely condemned by Mr. Lewis. The individual-realist
+is poetically attached to the idea of the <i>here</i>; reality is
+classical, local, individual—superior to the collective <i>there</i>;
+it is the eternally old fountain of eternal adultishness. The
+first attitude ends in doctrinaire universalism, the second in
+doctrinaire provincialism: both the collective-realist and
+the individual-realist believe in the social significance of
+locality, differing only in their location of locality. Both, in
+fact, suffer from this obsession with social significance. Take,
+for example, niggerish jazz: its real strength and attraction is
+that it is movement free from significance; pure, ritualistic,
+barbaric social pleasure that can only be properly understood
+and enjoyed by those who understand and enjoy the civilized
+individuality of significance. To the romantic universalist
+niggerish jazz is a religious devotion of the sensations to
+eternal youthfulness. To the classical provincialist it is a
+depraved, democratic infantilism. Both emotionalize it, the
+one as elevation, the other as degradation: to one the jazz
+nigger is the angel-symbol, to the other the devil-symbol.
+While the only one able to intellectualize it properly is the
+jazz nigger himself—generally an individual, unreal, paleface
+Jew with a dusky make-up of social clownishness.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_9_9" href="#FNanchor_9_9" class="label">[9]</a> Or again, these positions might be illustrated in their
+respective attitudes to size. The collective-realist thinks of
+society as a big, symbolical unit, the individual-realist as a
+small, concrete unit. The unreal self does not think of size, or
+of society, as significant concepts at all. The collective-realist
+makes the individual emotionally as large as the many. The
+individual-realist makes the individual intellectually as large
+as himself—that is, of a standard realistic size. The unreal
+self gets rid of even the fractional reality of the self of the
+individual-realist: it is not the quantitative nothing derided by
+Mr. Lewis, but a sizeless invisibility from reality. Mr. Lewis
+disapproves of nothing; and he disapproves of Bradley’s
+Absolute because ‘he did not succeed in relieving it of a
+certain impressive scale and impending weight.’ What he
+seems to imply is an Absolute temperately placed between all
+and nothing—a sort of safely quantitative qualitative absolute;
+a short, certain, academic eternity as opposed to a vulgar,
+tentatively eternal eternity; a small, well-bred, provincial
+church in which to worship a congregationalist Absolute as
+opposed to a popular arena erected to a universalist (demogogic
+as opposed to pedagogic) Absolute.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_10_10" href="#FNanchor_10_10" class="label">[10]</a> We observe the same aristocratic bias in Mr. Lewis. The
+universal mind (the artist’s or seeing mind) is not lodged in a
+collective all but in a selected few for all: individual-real
+(cultured anarchism) opposed to collective-real (cultured
+democracy) and to individual-unreal (anarchism is not
+enough). The anarchistic, artistic, critical mind is not interested
+in individuality as individuality but as superior individuality,
+as reason: it is an expert in reality, it sees what is
+‘here.’ It is a poetic common-sense seeing (through its
+monocle) a vision ‘classical,’ ‘geometric,’ ‘severe’ (‘“Classical”
+is for me anything which is nobly defined and exact, as
+opposed to that which is fluid’—Mr. Lewis). It does not
+believe in lower-class doing but in upper-class thinking:
+<i>laissez-faire</i> anarchism. It is against violent sympathies and
+antipathies; it is provincial but informed. Reason is aloof,
+courteous prejudice (‘we should grow more and more polite’—Mr.
+Lewis); intelligent conventionality, haughty submission
+to reality. For example, Mr. Lewis’s objections to Bolshevism
+only apply to it where it is in action, not anarchistic; not to
+Bolshevism as a polite ‘vision’—that is, in so far as it is the
+gospel of an uncultured many rather than the dogma of a
+cultured few.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_11_11" href="#FNanchor_11_11" class="label">[11]</a> Again we perceive the same emphasis on superior as
+opposed to plain, ordinary individuality. The man of reason
+is an aristocrat of race-individuality; the race, of course, being
+a superior race—if it were not superior it would be unendowed
+with reason. But (and this is a point for which we
+must be grateful to Mr. Lewis) race-superiority (individuality)
+is administered for the whole race by only one class in the
+race; so that while ‘char-lady’ is lady by race, she is not lady
+by class (lady of reason). Char-ladies who confuse race with
+class and forget their place do so ‘to their undoing.’ Their
+undoing is apparently a muddy-watery, unladylike laughter
+that is not, of course, reason. What is reason? Mr. Lewis tells
+us: ‘Let us rather meet with the slightest smile all those things
+that so far we have received with delirious rapture.’ The
+change is not so much from laughing rapture to haughty
+smiling as from one we to another kind of we—a democratic
+we to an aristocratic we. Thus, the true we of the Machine
+Age is not, according to Mr. Lewis, the mob but the capitalistic,
+anarchistic individualists—the Mr. Ford’s. Mr. Ford
+admits, Mr. Lewis points out, that he could not live the life of
+one of his workmen. While in a ruthlessly democratic scheme
+(Bolshevism or Spenglerism) there is only a mob-life disguised
+as Culture. Spengler would be the ideal romantic mob-historian;
+Tacitus, possibly, the ideal classical, urbane
+polite, smiling, anarchistic, <i>laissez-faire</i>, perspectiveless,
+ahistorical, geometric individualist-historian. To the collective-realist
+the mob moves, to the individual-realist it is static
+(‘The Russian workman and peasant under the Bolshevik is
+the same as he was under the Tsar, though less free and minus
+the consolations of a religion’—Mr. Lewis). Mob-philosophy
+(mob-individualism, liberty, organized <i>laissez-faire</i>) is ‘against
+human reason, motiveless and hence mad’ (again Mr. Lewis).
+What is human reason? Mr. Lewis’s ‘young catholic student’
+tells us: ‘not that some bank-clerk on a holiday has discovered
+that trees have something to say for themselves.’ But
+when some bank-president, superman or Saint ‘traverses a
+wood with complete safety’—that is with proud, rational,
+individualistic submission, with sedate, conventional, geometric
+curiosity. Human reason is Authority, authority
+received and authority administered; and it is interesting that
+both Mr. Lewis and his young catholic student emphasize
+this sexual duality of reason. To Mr. Lewis reason is the
+quiet, conventional, slightly smiling she availing herself of her
+feminine privilege to remain seated, and also the conventional,
+brainy, impressive, standing-up he, viewing the general situation
+with brilliant restraint. The young catholic student
+outlines Baron von Hugel’s definition of authority: ‘By it,
+the force and light of the few are applied to the dull majority,
+the highest in a man to his own average.’ Baron von Hugel’s
+own words on this Church of Individualism (for the few),
+quoted by him, are: ‘The Church is thus, both ever and
+everywhere, progressive and conservative; both reverently
+free-lance and official; both, as it were, male and female,
+creative and reproductive....’</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_12_12" href="#FNanchor_12_12" class="label">[12]</a> Mr. Lewis’s predominant emotion is disgust and he is
+therefore snobbishly old-fashioned; Mr. Eliot’s is moral anxiety,
+and he is therefore snobbishly ‘advanced’—what seems old-fashioned
+or mediæval or Thomist in Mr. Eliot is really his
+greater (than the silly emotional orthodox mob’s) strictness in
+keeping up-to-date, in time with the universe of reason. He
+is at pains to discover the right side and to fight on it. Mr.
+Lewis is so disgusted with everything that he has abandoned
+all positive questions of right, and like a Swiss, retained nothing
+but his fighting conscience, a haughtiness of bearing in which
+alone he finds himself in sympathy with Mr. Eliot. In matters
+of faith they must certainly disagree. Mr. Eliot’s Toryism is
+modern, intellectual, in sober perspective. Mr. Lewis’s is
+petulantly old-fashioned, sentimental, ‘geometric’: the good,
+Swiss stern old days when everything happened anyhow,
+without historical significance or morality, are his fighting,
+anarchistic slogan against the presumptuous mob-consciousness
+of modern life. What Mr. Lewis fails to see is that if he
+devoted his energy to individualism (cultivating his own
+individuality) instead of anarchism (knocking the mob on the
+head with his individuality) the mob might develop a social
+regularity, an automatic geometricity that even he might
+share in without disturbance to his individuality; that it is the
+anarchism of a few that gives false historical significance to
+the days of man, not the co-operative unanimity of the many.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_13_13" href="#FNanchor_13_13" class="label">[13]</a> See, for example, in Mr. Lewis’s <i>Time and Western Man</i>, the
+chapter <i>The Object as King of the Physical World</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_14_14" href="#FNanchor_14_14" class="label">[14]</a> To Mr. Lewis, Science, popularized magic, rather than
+Reason, the artist’s personal magic. (Compare, similarly, New
+Testament pseudo-primitive communism, with properly modernized
+Old Testament individualism.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_15_15" href="#FNanchor_15_15" class="label">[15]</a> ‘I, of course, admit that the principle I advocate is not
+for everybody.’—Mr. Lewis.</p></div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="transnote">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_Notes">
+    Transcriber’s Notes
+  </h2>
+<p>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;">The book cover image that accompanies some ebook formats was made by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;">Inconsistent use of hyphens has been retained save as noted below.</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;">Footnotes have been moved to the end of the book.</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;">The following changes to the original text are noted:</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;"><a href="#Page_36">p. 36</a> added period following ‘And it is.’</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;"><a href="#Page_86">p. 86</a> changed single quotes to double quotes around “the constant and sacred harmony of life.”; added close single quote immediately after</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;"><a href="#Page_98">p. 98</a> retained spelling of ‘esthetic’</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;"><a href="#Page_109">p. 109</a> added close parenthesis in ‘(Mr. Read’s phrase).’</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;"><a href="#Page_109">p. 109</a> added hyphen to ‘the individual-real’</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;"><a href="#Page_128">p. 128</a> added hyphen to ‘re-inforce’ in ‘space-men re-inforce’</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;"><a href="#Page_155">p. 155</a> capitalized ‘To’ in ‘<i>The Man Who Told Lies To His Mother</i>’</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;"><a href="#Page_178">p. 178</a> uncapitalized ‘queendom’</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;"><a href="#Page_196">p. 196</a> changed ‘role’ to ‘rôle’</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;"><a href="#Page_199">p. 199</a> changed ‘Bölshe’ to ‘Bölsche’</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;"><a href="#Page_204">p. 204</a> added close quote following ‘maintain it.’</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;"><a href="#Page_209">p. 209</a> joined unhyphenated ‘sincerity’</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;"><a href="#Page_215">p. 215</a> changed single quotes to double quotes around “The fathers of our girl friends are lecherous,” and “Philosophy is teetotal whisky.”; added close single quote immediately after</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;"><a href="#Page_216">p. 216</a> changed ‘æsthlete’ to ‘æsthete’</span><br>
+  <span style="margin-left: 1.0em;"><a href="#Footnote_3_3">footnote 3</a> changed ‘considerations’ to ‘consideration’ in ‘the essential consideration is’</span><br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78380 ***</div>
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author	www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>	2026-04-07 01:58:50 -0700
committer	www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>	2026-04-07 01:58:50 -0700
commit	72e166eb9cb60711f9b28f56af5f7791a5daa3e2 (patch)
tree	03876a16994f0f91814e4d9ed929a85bebd03f8d /78380-h