of literary copyright in America, and the effect it has on the literary
relations of this country and America. I must agree with Mr. Pound that
the literary relations of our two countries are bad, and that much of
this estrangement, if not all of it, is due to remediable causes lying
at present on the American book of statutes. The actual facts of the
situation are simple. The copyright laws of America, unlike those of
any other civilised country, with the exception of ex-Tsarist Russia,
require as a condition of extending the protection of its copyright
to any work of foreign publication, that the latter shall be set up,
printed, and published in America within a period of thirty to sixty
days after its publication in the country of its origin. Failing such
practically simultaneous publication in America, not only is an American
publisher thereafter entitled to proceed immediately to publish the work
in question without the permission of the author, but the author and
his national publisher are not entitled to demand any royalties or fees
on the sale of the same. In other words, as far as the original author
and publisher are concerned, they are non-existent in America unless
they have made arrangements for the publication of their work in America
within one, or, at most, two months of its original publication in their
own country.
Not to exaggerate in describing such a procedure it can be exactly
characterised by no other phrase than looting under the form of law.
Every author and publisher in this country knows how difficult it is to
arrange for the simultaneous publication of works at home and in America.
The time-conditions of publication are seldom the same in both countries.
A book that is timely in this country may not be simultaneously timely in
America, and it would be very odd if it always were.
Again, a couple of months is a small period of time in which to arrange
to have an English work dispatched, accepted, set up, printed, and
published in America. Commercial difficulties of all kinds arise in
the course of the transaction, and every delay brings the day of the
accursed shears of the American Copyright Act nearer. Is an English
publisher to bargain with the advantage of time always on the side of
America, with the certain knowledge that, unless he comes to terms at
once, he will lose everything both for himself and his author? But either
that or indefinitely delaying publication in _this_ country is his only
possible course. The American Copyright Law is thus seen to be a modern
example of Morton’s fork. By requiring that the foreign author shall
publish his work in America within one or two months of its publication
at home, the law compels him to make a choice (in the majority of cases)
between forfeiting his copyright in America, and delaying, at his own
cost, the publication of his book in his own country. Upon either prong
he is impaled. If he elects for American publication he must forgo the
chance of the immediate market at home, and if he elects for immediate
publication at home he must forgo the protection of American copyright.
Such an ingenious device for Dick-Turpining European authors cannot have
been invented and enforced without some presumed moral justification.
America cannot be conceived as a willing party to the legislation of
literary piracy, and it was and is, no doubt, under some cover of
justification that the law was enacted and now runs. The defence for it,
I should suppose, is the presumed necessity for protecting the industry
of book-making in America on behalf of American authors, printers, and
publishers alike. Its defence, in short, is the same defence that is
set up for protection in commercial matters in this country, namely,
the desirability of excluding foreign competition, and of encouraging
home-industry. Against this defence, however, there is a great deal to
be said that ought to weigh with the American people, and that ought
to weigh in their calculations as well as in their taste and sense of
right. For, as to the latter, I take it that no American would undertake
to defend his Copyright Law on the principles either of good taste
or common justice. It cannot be in conformity with good taste for the
literary artists of America to procure protection for themselves by
penalising their European confrères, and it cannot be justice to rob
a European author of his copyrights, or to compel him to delay his
publication in Europe. These admissions I take for granted, and the only
defence left is the calculation that such a Copyright Act is good for the
American book-making interests.
If books were like other commodities, their sale, like the sale of other
commodities, would fall under the economic law of diminishing returns.
Thereunder, as their supply increased, the demand for books would tend
to decrease, as is the case with cotton, say, or wooden spoons. And upon
such an assumption there might be some reason for prohibiting the free
importation of printed books, since the imported articles would compete
in the home market for a relatively inelastic demand. But books, it is
obvious, are not a commodity in this sense of the word. They do not
_satisfy_ demand, but _stimulate_ it, and their sale, therefore, does not
fall under the economic law of diminishing returns, but under the very
contrary, that of increasing returns. Books, there is no doubt of it,
are the cause of books. New books do not take the place of old books;
nor do books really compete, as a general rule, with each other. On the
contrary, the more books there are, the more are demanded and the more
are produced. The free importation of books is not a means of contracting
the home-production of books; it is the very opposite, the most effective
means of stimulating home-production to its highest possible degree. If
I were an American author, resident in America, and concerned for the
prosperity of the American book-making profession, craft, and industry, I
should not be in the least disposed to thank the American Copyright Law
for the protection it professes to give me. The appetite for books, upon
which appetite I and my craft live, grows, I should say, by what it feeds
on. Addressing the Copyright Act as it now exists, I should say to it:
“In discouraging the free importation of foreign books, and in alienating
the good-will of foreign authors and publishers, you are robbing foreign
authors (that is true), but, much worse, you are depriving my public
of the stimulus necessary to its demand for my books. Since we authors
in America have a vital interest in increasing literary demand, and
the more books the more demand is created, our real protection lies in
freely importing books, and not in placing any impediment in their way.
Intending to help us, you—the Copyright Law—are really our enemy.” I
cannot see what reply the Copyright Law could make to this attack upon it
by its protégés, and I believe, moreover, that if they were to make it,
the Law would soon be amended.
RIGHT CRITICISM.—To abandon the aim of “finality” of judgment is to
let in the jungle into the cultivated world of art; it is to invite
Tom, Dick, and Harry to offer their opinions as of equal value with the
opinions of the cultivated. It is no escape from this conclusion to
inquire into the “mentality” of the critic and to attach importance to
his judgment as his mentality is or is not interesting. In appraising a
judgment I am not concerned with the mentality, interesting or otherwise,
of the judge who delivers it. My concern is not with him, but with
the work before us; nor is the remark to be made upon his verdict the
personal comment, “How interesting!” but the critical comment, “How
true!” or “How false!” Personal preferences turn the attention in the
nature of the case from the object criticised to the critic himself. The
method substitutes for the criticism of art the criticism of psychology.
In a word, it is not art criticism at all.
It may be said that if we dismiss personal preference as a criterion of
art judgment, there is either nothing left or only some “scientific”
standard which has no relevance to æsthetics. It is the common plea
of the idiosyncrats that, inconclusive as their opinions must be, and
anything but universally valid, no other method within the world of art
is possible. I dissent. A “final” judgment is as possible of a work of
art as of any other manifestation of the spirit of man; there is nothing
in the nature of things to prevent men arriving at a universally valid
(that is, universally accepted) judgment of a book, a picture, a sonata,
a statue or a building, any more than there is to prevent a legal judge
from arriving at a right judgment concerning any other human act; and,
what is more, such judgments of art are not only made daily, but in the
end they actually prevail and constitute in their totality the tradition
of art. The test is not scientific, but as little is it merely personal.
Its essential character is simply that it is right; right however arrived
at, and right whoever arrives at it. That the judge in question may or
may not have “studied” the history of the art-work he is judging is a
matter of indifference. Neither his learning nor his natural ignorance is
of any importance. That he is or is not notoriously this, that, or the
other, is likewise no concern. All that matters is that his judgment,
when delivered, should be “right.” But who is to settle this, it may be
asked? Who is to confirm a right judgment or to dispute a wrong one?
The answer is contained in the true interpretation of the misunderstood
saying, _De gustibus non est disputandum_. The proof of right taste
is that there is no real dispute about its judgment; its finality is
evidenced by the cessation of debate. The truth may be simply stated; a
judge—that is to say, a true judge—is he with whom everybody is compelled
to agree, not because he says it, but because it is so.
MAN’S SURVIVAL OF BODILY DEATH.—What the circulation of the _Quest_ is
I have no idea, but it should be ten times greater. Is there, however,
a sufficiently large class of cultured persons in England—in the
Empire—in the world? Assuming that the spread of culture can be reckoned
numerically as well as qualitatively, can we pride ourselves on the
extension of culture while the number of free intelligences is relatively
decreasing? But how does one know that this class is really on the
decrease? Only by the same means that we judge the number of the curious
lepidoptera in any area—by holding a light up in the dark and counting
the hosts attracted by it. In the case of the _Quest_ there is no doubt
whatever that a light is being held up in our darkness. Its articles are
upon the most exalted topics; they are, for the most part, luminously
written, and their purity of motive may be taken for granted. The _Quest_
is the literary Platonic Academy of our day. Yet it is seldom spoken of
in literary circles. We “good” are very apathetic, and it is lucky for
the devil that his disciples are unlike us in this respect. They see to
it that everything evil shall flourish like the bay-tree, while we allow
the bays of the intelligent to fade into the sere.
Mr. Mead contributes an article on a topic which has not yet been
exhausted, “Man’s Survival of Bodily Death.” Mr. Randall is not the
first to deny “immortality” while affirming an absolute morality, nor
even the first to attempt to explain religion without recourse to a
dogma of survival. The Sadducees did it before him; and the Confucians
managed somehow or other to combine ancestor-worship with a lively denial
of their continued existence. There is, moreover, an ethical value in
the denial which almost makes the denial of survival an act of moral
heroism. For if a man can pursue the highest moral aims without the
smallest hope of personal reward hereafter, and, still less, here, his
disinterestedness is obvious; he pursues virtue as the pupil is enjoined
in the _Bhagavad Gita_ to act, namely, without hope or fear of fruit.
I am not of the heroic breed myself, and, in any case, the problem is
one of fact as well as of moral discipline. It may be heroic to put the
telescope of truth to a deliberately blinded eye, but unless you suspect
yourself of being unable to master the fact, I see no indispensable
virtue in its wilful denial. At all risks to my morality I should prefer
to keep my weather-eye open for such evidences of survival as may loom up
behind the fog.
Premising that “no high religion can exist which is not based on faith
in survival,” Mr. Mead proceeds to examine the two forms of inquiry
which conceivably promise conclusions: the comparative study of the
mystic philosophers and their recorded religious experiences in all
ages, and the more material examination of the spiritualistic phenomena
of modern psychical research. For himself, Mr. Mead has chosen the
former method, and I am interested to observe his testimony, in a
rare personal statement, to the satisfaction, more or less, that is
possible from following this road. At the same time, though without any
experience in the second method, Mr. Mead is explicitly of the opinion
that it is one that should be employed by science with increasing
earnestness. The difficulties are tremendous, and as subtle as they
are considerable. Before survival can be scientifically demonstrated,
a host of working hypotheses must be invented and discredited, and
the utmost veracity will be necessary in the students. With such facts
before us as telepathy, dissociated personality, subconscious complexes,
autosuggestion and suggestion, the phenomena that superficially point to
survival may plainly be nothing of the kind. Survival, in short, must be
expected to be about the last rather than the first psychic fact to be
scientifically established. The student must, therefore, be exigent as
well as hopeful.
There is a third method from which we may hope to hear one day something
to our advantage—assuming that the certain knowledge of survival would be
to mankind’s advantage—the method of psycho-analysis. If psycho-analysis
of the first degree can make us acquainted with the subconscious, why
should not a psycho-analysis of the second degree make us acquainted
with the super-conscious; and as the language of the subconscious may
be sleeping dreams, the language of the super-conscious may be waking
visions. To return to Mr. Mead’s article, an interesting account is
contained in it of a recent census taken in America by Professor Leuba of
the creeds of more or less eminent men. The returns for the article of
faith in survival and immortality are curious, not to say surprising. Of
the eminent physicists canvassed, 40 per cent. confessed their belief in
man’s survival of bodily death. Thereafter the percentage falls through
the stages of historians 35 per cent., and sociologists 27 per cent., to
psychologists with the degraded percentage of 9. It is a strange reversal
of the procession that might have been anticipated, and it expresses,
perhaps, the condition of real culture in America. For that the
physicists should be the most hopeful class of scientists in America, and
the psychologists the most hopeless is an indication that the best brains
in America are still engaged in physical problems. The poor psychologists
are scarcely even hopeful of discovering anything.
BEARDSLEY AND ARTHUR SYMONS.—“Unbounded” admiration is precisely what I
cannot feel for Aubrey Beardsley’s work, even “within its own sphere.”
I ought to say, perhaps, “because of its sphere.” Pure æsthetic is a
matter for contemplation only, and we should be prepared upon occasion
to suspend every other kind of judgment. Or, would it not be true to
say that the purely æsthetic does itself suspend in the beholder every
other form of judgment or reaction—such as the moral, the intellectual,
and the practical? A great tragedy, for instance, is a kind of focus
of the whole nature of man; every faculty is engaged in it, and all
are lifted up and transfigured into the pure æsthetic of contemplation.
But one is not aware, in that case, of moral or other reservations;
one has not to apologise for the experience by pretending that the
“essentially repulsive and diabolic decadence” contained in the tragedy
is merely an expression of the age. Beardsley is only “something of a
genius” precisely because he failed to transfigure the moral and other
reactions of the spectator of his work. He did not occupy the _whole_
of one’s mind. All the while that one’s æsthetic sense was being led
captive by his art, several other of one’s senses were in rebellion.
His command (his genius, in short) was not “absolute,” but only a quite
limited monarchy. This is not to deny that he was an artist; it is to
deny only that he was one of the greatest of artists. Other artists owe
him a greater debt than the world at large. He was a great art-master,
but not a master of art. The doctrine of Mr. Arthur Symons is dangerous.
Juggling with the terms good and evil is always dangerous, since in a
prestidigital exhibition of them, one can so easily be made to look like
the other. _Demon est Deus inversus._ The paradoxical truth about the
matter, however, is that evil is good only so long as it is regarded as
evil. The moment it is thought of as good it is nothing but evil. Mr.
Arthur Symons has confused in his mind the problem of good and evil with
the quite alien problem of quantity of energy.
“Æ’S” “CANDLE OF VISION.”—“Æ’s” _Candle of Vision_ is not a book for
everybody, yet I wish that everybody might read it. Rarely and more
rarely does any artist or poet interest himself in the processes of his
mental and spiritual life, with the consequence, so often deplored by Mr.
Penty, that books on æsthetics, philosophy, and, above all, psychology,
are left to be written by men who have no immediate experience of what
they are writing of. “Æ’s” narrative, and criticism of his personal
experiences may be said to take the form of intimate confessions made
_pour encourager les autres_. For, happily for us, he is an artist who is
also a philosopher, a visionary who is also an “intellectual”; and, being
interested in both phases of his personality, he has had the impulse and
the courage to express both. What the ordinary mind—the mind corrupted
by false education—would say to “Æ’s” affirmations concerning his
psychological experiences, it would not be difficult to forecast. What
is not invention, it would be said, is moonshine, and what is neither is
a pose to be explained on some alienist hypothesis. Only readers who
can recall some experiences similar to those described by “Æ” will find
themselves able to accept the work for what it is—a statement of uncommon
fact; and only those who have developed their intuition to some degree
will be able to appreciate the spirit of truth in which the _Candle of
Vision_ is written. A review of such work is not to be undertaken by me,
but I have made a few notes on some passages.
* * * * *
Page 2. “_I could not so desire what was not my own, and what is our own
we cannot lose.... Desire is hidden identity._” This is a characteristic
doctrine of mysticism, and recurs invariably in all the confessions.
Such unanimity is an evidence of the truth of the doctrine, since it is
scarcely to be supposed that the mystics borrow from one another. But the
doctrine, nevertheless, is difficult for the mere mind to accept, for it
involves the belief that nothing happens to us that is not ourselves.
Character in that event is destiny—to quote a variant of “Æ’s” sentence;
and our lives are thus merely the dramatisation of our given psychology.
Without presuming to question the doctrine, I feel a reserve concerning
its absoluteness. Fate appears to me to be above destiny in the same
sense that the old lady conceived that there was One above that would
see that Providence did not go too far. To the extent that character
is destiny or, as “Æ” says, desire is hidden identity, a correct
psychological forecast would be at the same time a correct temporal
forecast. And while this may be true, in the abstract and under, so to
say, ideal conditions, I cannot yet agree that everything that happens to
the individual is within his character. The unforeseeable, the margin of
what we call Chance, allows for events that belong to Fate rather than to
Destiny.
* * * * *
Page 3. “Æ” says he “_was not conscious in boyhood (up to the age of
sixteen or seventeen) of any heaven lying about me._” “Childhood,” he
thinks, is no nearer the “eternally young” than age may be. Certainly
it appears to be so in the case of “Æ” himself, for the intimations of
immortality which Wordsworth (and the world in general) attributed to
children were only begun to be experienced by “Æ” after his sixteenth
or seventeenth year. From that time onwards, as this book testifies,
he has been growing younger in precisely those characteristics. There
is a good deal to be thought, if not said, on this subject. Children
are, I conceive, rather symbols of youth than youth itself; they are
unconsciously young. Age, on the other hand, has the power of converting
the symbol into the reality, and of being young and knowing it.
Unless ye become, _not_ little children, but _as_ little children,
ye shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven. At the same time it
is comparatively rare for the ordinary child, that “Æ” says he was,
to develop childlikeness in later life. Usually a return occurs to a
state unconsciously experienced in early youth. But there appear to be
strata of characteristics in every mind, and life is their successive
revelation. Without knowing anything of the facts, I surmise that “Æ’s”
heredity was mixed, and that the first layer or stratum to appear was
that of some possibly Lowland Scot ancestry. When that was worked
through, by the age of sixteen, another layer came to the surface,
whereupon “Æ” entered on another phase of “desire.”
* * * * *
Page 7. “_We may have a personal wisdom, but spiritual wisdom is not to
speak of as ours._” This illustrates another characteristic of the mystic
that while his experiences are personal, the wisdom revealed in them is
always attributed to “Him that taught me”—in other words, to something
not ourselves. An egoist mysticism is a contradiction in terms. Not only
no man is entitled to claim originality for a spiritual truth, but no
man can. The truth is no longer true when it has a name to it. “Truth
bears no man’s name” is an axiom of mysticism. The reason, I presume, is
that the very condition of the appreciation of a spiritual truth is the
absence of the sense of egoism. Such truths are simply not revealed to
the egoistic consciousness, and therefore cannot appear as the product of
human wisdom. Their character is that of a revelation from without rather
than that of a discovery from within, and the report of the matter is
thus objective rather than subjective.
* * * * *
Page 16. “_I could prophesy from the uprising of new moods in myself that
without search I should soon meet people of a certain character, and so
I met them.... I accepted what befell with resignation.... What we are
alone has power.... No destiny other than we make for ourselves._” I
have already expressed my doubts whether this is the whole truth. It is,
of course, the familiar doctrine of Karma; but I do not think it can be
interpreted quite literally. There is what is called the Love of God, as
well as the Justice of God, and I would venture to add, with Blake, the
Wrath of God. Judgment is something more than simple justice; it implies
the consent of the whole of the judging nature, and not of its sense
of justice only. Love enters into it, and so, perhaps, do many other
qualities not usually attributed to the Supreme Judge. In interpreting
such doctrines we must allow for the personal equation even of the
highest personality we can conceive.
* * * * *