mind analyzes you in a flash. If he is influenced by you, you may be
sure that it is by something in you that you had not intended to give
him. After the man has seen you, he has been moved by you; but how?
Consult your own remembrance. What incident of character impressed you
most when you were a child? Do you remember any act, any expression
or gesture or anecdote or speech, that had a lasting influence upon
you? Now I ask you this: Was it done for you? Were you the designed
beneficiary of it? Was it not rather the silent part of some one
else’s conduct, a thing you were perhaps not meant to see at all? And
this was no accident. This is the natural history of influence; it
passes unconsciously from life to life.
We must take the world as we find it. We must deal with human nature
according to the laws of human nature. Our politics are at present
so artificial that the average man thinks that the name “politics”
prevents the well established and familiar principles of human nature
from being operative. But he is wrong. Man has never yet succeeded in
inventing any system that could evade them or affect them in the least.
All the political organization of reform is already in existence, and
needs only strengthening and developing. It is all in use, and every
one understands its use and knows its headquarters and its agencies.
It is all individual character and courage, and with the growth of
character and courage it will become more defined and visible every
day.
IV
LITERATURE
There are feelings and views about life, there are conviction and
insight, which come from thinking at a high rate of speed, and vanish
when the machinery moves slowly and the blood ebbs. The world not only
accepts the intensity of the writer, but demands it. Nevertheless,
the world has an imperfect knowledge as to where this intensity comes
from, how it is produced, or what relation it bears to ugliness and
falsehood. “What a pleasure it must be to you,” said Rothschild to
Heine, “to be able to turn off those little songs!”
In our ordinary moods we regard the conclusions of the poets as both
true and untrue,--true to feeling, untrue to fact; true as intimations
of the next world or of some lost world; untrue here, because detached
from those portions of society that are perennially visible. Most men
have a duplicate philosophy which enables them to love the arts and
the wit of mankind, at the same time that they conveniently despise
them. Life is ugly and necessary; art is beautiful and impossible. “The
farther you go from the facts of life, the nearer you get to poetry.
The practical problem is to keep them in separate spheres, and to
enjoy both.” The hypothesis of a duplicity in the universe explains
everything, and staves off all claims and questionings.
Such are the convictions of the average cultivated man. His back is
broken, but he lives in the two halves comfortably enough. He has to be
protected at his weak spot, of course, and that spot is the present;
ten years from now, to-morrow, yesterday, the day of judgment, the
State of Pennsylvania,--all these you are welcome to. Every form of
idealism appeals to him, so long as it does not ask him to budge out of
his armchair. “Aha,” he says, “I understand this. It takes its place in
the realm of the Imagination.”
This man does not know, and has no means of knowing, that good books
are only written by men whose backs are not broken, and whose vital
energy circulates through their entire system in one sweep. They have
a unitary and not a duplicate philosophy. The present is their strong
point. The actualities of life are their passion. They lay a bold hand
upon everything within their reach, for they see it with new sight.
The glitter of the past makes us think of literature as embodied in
books; but to understand literature we must fix our minds on authors,
not on books. The men who write--what makes them write well or ill?
What are the conditions that breed poetry, or music, or architecture?
The current beliefs about art and letters are fatalistic. It is
supposed that poets and artists crop up now and then, and that nothing
can stop them; they need no aid, they conquer circumstances. I do not
believe it. We see no analogy to it in nature. Among the plants and the
fishes we see nothing but a wholesale and incredible destruction of
germs on all sides. It seems a miracle that any seed should fall upon
good ground, and be sheltered till it come to the flower. Why should
the percentage of germs that come to maturity be greater with genius
than it is with the eggs of the sturgeon? The enemies of each are
numerous. If it were not for the fecundity of nature, we should have
none of either of them. And how is it that the great man always happens
to be young at the very moment when some events are going forward that
ripen his powers; so that he grows up with his time, and does something
that is comprehensible to all time?
The answer is, that all eras are sown thick with the seeds of genius,
which for the most part die, but in a favoring age mature to greatness.
Must we resort to a theory of special creation to explain the great
talents of the world? And even this would not explain our own welcome
and our own comprehension of them when they come. If it were not for
the undeveloped powers, the seeds of genius, in ourselves, Plato and
Bach would be meaningless, and Christ would have died in vain.
It must be that thousands of good intellects perish annually. The men
do not die, but their powers wither, or rather never mature. Art, like
everything else, represents an escape, a survival. In any age that
lacks it, or is weak in it, we may look about for the enginery by which
it is crushed. In looking into a past age we are put to inference and
conjecture. We see the mark of fetters upon the Byzantine soul, and we
begin dredging the dark waters of history for a metaphysical cause. We
cannot walk into a Byzantine shop and watch the apprentice at work.
But in our own time we can see the whole process in action. We can
study our modern Inquisitions at leisure, and note every mark that is
made upon a soul that is passing through them.
It does not involve any indignity to the pretensions of literature if
we walk into that great bazaar, modern journalism, and see what is
going on there behind the counters. Here is a factory of popular art.
It is not the whole of letters; but it has an influence on the whole
of letters. The press fills the consciousness of the people. A modern
community breathes through its press. Journalism, to be sure, is a
region of letters, where all the factors for truth are at a special
and peculiar discount. Its attention is given to near and ugly things,
to mean quarrels, business interests, and special ends. Every country
shows up badly here. The hypocrisy of the press is the worst thing in
England. It is the worst exhibition of England’s worst fault. The press
of France gives you France at her weakest. The press of America gives
you America at her cheapest. Perhaps the study of journalism in any
country would illustrate the peculiar vices of that country; and it is
fair to remember this in examining our own press. But examine it we
must, for it is important.
The subject includes more than the daily newspapers. Those ephemeral
sheets that flutter from the table into the waste-paper basket, which
are something more than mere newspapers and less than magazines, and
the magazines themselves, which are more than budgets of gossip and
less than books, make up a perpetual rain of paper and ink. Thousands
of people are engaged in writing them, and millions in reading them.
This whole species of literature is typical of the age; let us see how
it is conducted.
A journal is a meeting-place between the forces of intellect and of
commerce. The men who become editors always bear some relation to the
intellectual interests of the country. They make money, but they make
it by understanding the minds of people who are not taking money, but
thought, from the exchanges that the editors set up. A magazine or a
newspaper is a shop. Each is an experiment and represents a new focus,
a new ratio between commerce and intellect. Even trade journals have
columns devoted to general information and jokes. The one thing a
journal must have in order to be a journal is circulation. It must be
carried into people’s houses, and this is brought about by an impulse
in the buyer. The buyer has many opinions and modes of thought that
he does not draw from the journal, and he is always ready to drop a
journal that offends him. An editor is thus constantly forced to choose
between affronting his public and placating his public. Now, whatever
arguments may be given for his taking one course or the other, it
remains clear that in so far as an editor is not publishing what he
himself thinks of interest for its own sake, he is encouraging in the
public something else besides intellect. He is subserving financial,
political, or religious bias, or, it may be, popular whim. He is, to
this extent at least, the custodian and protector of prejudice.
The thrift of an editor-owner, who is building up the circulation of
a paper, tends to keep him conservative. Repetition is safer than
innovation. An especially strong temptation is spread before the
American editor in the shape of an enormous reading public, made up
of people who have a common-school education, and who resemble each
other very closely in their traits of mind. There is money to be made
by any one who discerns a new way of reinforcing any prejudice of the
American people.
It has come about very naturally during the last thirty years, that
journalism has been developed in America as one of the branches in the
science of catering to the masses on a gigantic scale. The different
kinds of conservatism have been banked, consolidated, and, as it were,
marshalled under the banners of as many journals. Money and energy
have been expended in collecting these vast audiences, and sleepless
vigilance is needed to keep them together.
The great investments in the good will of millions are nursed by
editors who live by their talents, and who in another age would have
been intellectual men. The highest type of editor now extant in America
will as frankly regret his own obligation to cater to mediocrity, as
the business man will regret his obligation to pay blackmail, or as
the citizen will regret his obligation to vote for one of the parties.
“There is nothing else to do. I am dealing with the money of others.
There are not enough intelligent people to count.” He serves the times.
The influence thus exerted by the public (through the editor) upon the
writer tends to modify the writer and make him resemble the public. It
is a spiritual pressure exerted by the majority in favor of conformity.
This exists in all countries, but is peculiarly severe in countries and
ages where the majority is made up of individuals very similar to each
other. The tyranny of a uniform population always makes itself felt.
If any man doubt the hide-bound character of our journals to-day, let
him try this experiment. Let him write down what he thinks upon any
matter, write a story of any length, a poem, a prayer, a speech. Let
him assume, as he writes it, that it cannot be published, and let him
satisfy his individual taste in the subject, size, mood, and tenor of
the whole composition. Then let him begin his peregrinations to find in
which one of the ten thousand journals of America there is a place for
his ideas as they stand. We have more journals than any other country.
The whole field of ideas has been covered; every vehicle of opinion has
its policy, its methods, its precedents. A hundred will receive him if
he shaves this, pads that, cuts it in half; but not one of them will
trust him as he stands, “Good, but eccentric,” “Good, but too long,”
“Good, but new.”
Let us follow the steps of this withering influence. A young
illustrator does an etching that he likes. He is told to reduce it to
the conventional standard. This is easy, but what is happening in the
process? He blurs the fine edges of vision, not only on the plate,
but in his own mind. The real injury to intellect is not done in the
editorial sanctum. It is done in the mind of the writer who himself
attempts to cater to the prejudice of others. A man rewrites a scene
in a story to please a public. In order to do this he is obliged to
forget what his story was about. He is talking by rote; he is making
an imitation. Does this seem a small thing? Let any one do it once and
see where it leads him. The attitude of the whole human being towards
his whole life is changed by the experience. Do it twice, and you can
hardly shake off the practice. Write and publish six editorials for the
“Universalist,” and then sit down to write one not in the style of the
“Universalist.” You will find it, practically, an impossibility.
The notable lack in our literature is this: the prickles and
irregularities of personal feeling have been pumice-stoned away. It is
too smooth. There is an absence of individuality, of private opinion.
This is the same lack that curses our politics,--the absence of
private opinion.
The sacrifice in political life is honesty, in literary life is
intellect; but the closer you examine honesty and intellect the more
clearly they appear to be the same thing. Suppose that a judge, in
order to please a boss, awards Parson Jones’ cow to Deacon Brown;
does he boldly admit this even to himself? Never. He writes an able
opinion in which he befogs his intelligence, and convinces himself
that he has arrived at his award by logical steps. In like manner,
the revising editor who reads with the eyes of the farmer’s daughter
begins to lose his own. He is extinguishing some sparks of instructive
reality which would offend--and benefit--the farmer’s daughter; and he
is obliterating a part of his own mind with every stroke of his blue
pencil. He is devitalizing literature by erasing personality. He does
this in the money interests of a syndicate; but the debasing effect
upon character is the same as if it were done at the dictate of the
German Emperor. The harm done in either case is intellectual.
Take another example. A reporter writes up a public meeting, but colors
it with the creed of his journal. Can he do this acceptably without
abjuring his own senses? He is competing with men whose every energy is
bent on seeing the occasion as the newspaper wishes it seen. Consider
the immense difficulty of telling the truth on the witness stand, and
judge whether good reporting is easy. The newspaper trade, as now
conducted, is prostitution. It mows down the boys as they come from the
colleges. It defaces the very desire for truth, and leaves them without
a principle to set a clock by. They grow to disbelieve in the reality
of ideas. But these are our future literati, our poets and essayists,
our historians and publicists.
The experts who sit in the offices of the journals of the country
have so long used their minds as commercial instruments, that it
never occurs to them to publish or not publish anything, according to
their personal views. They do not know that every time they subserve
prejudice they are ruining intellect. If there were an editor who had
any suspicion of the way the world is put together, he would respect
talent as he respects honor. It would be impossible for him to make his
living by this traffic. If he knew what he was doing, he would prefer
penury.
These men, then, have not the least idea of the function they fulfil.
No more has the agent of the Insurance Company who corrupts a
legislature. The difference in degree between the two iniquities is
enormous, because one belongs to that region in the scale of morality
which is completely understood, and the other does not. We do not
excuse the insurance agent; we will not allow him to plead ignorance.
He commits a penal offence. We will not allow selfishness to trade upon
selfishness and steal from the public in this form. But what law can
protect the public interest in the higher faculties? What statute can
enforce artistic truth?
We actually forbid a man by statute to sell his vote, because a vote is
understood to be an opinion, a thing dependent on rational and moral
considerations. You cannot buy and sell it without turning it into
something else. The exercise of that infinitesimal fraction of public
power represented by one man’s vote is hedged about with penalties;
because the logic of practical government has forced us to see its
importance. But the harm done to a community by the sale of a vote
does not follow by virtue of the statute, but by virtue of a law of
influence of which the statute is the recognition. The same law governs
the sale of any opinion, whether it be conveyed in a book review or in
a political speech, in a picture of life and manners, a poem, a novel,
or an etching. There is no department of life in which you can lie
for private gain without doing harm. The grosser forms of it give us
the key to the subtler ones, and the jail becomes the symbol of that
condition into which the violation of truth will shut any mind.
So far as any man comes directly in contact with the agencies of
organized literature, let him remember that his mind is at stake.
They can change you, but you cannot change them, except by changing
the public they reflect. The faculties of man are as strong as steel
if properly used, but they are like the down on a peach if improperly
used. What shall a man take in exchange for his soul? No man has the
privilege upon this earth of being more than one person. In this matter
of expression, it is the last ten per cent of accuracy that saves or
sells you. Talent evaporates as easily as a delegate holds his tongue
or a lawyer smiles to a rich man; and the injury is irremediable. Let
a man not alter a line or cut a paragraph at the suggestion of an
editor. Those are the very words that are valuable. “Ah,” you say, “but
I need criticism.” Then go to a critic. Consult the man who is farthest
away from this influence, some one who cannot read the magazines, some
one who does not have to read them. Your public, when you get one,
will qualify the general public; but you must reach it as a whole man.
The writer’s course is easy compared to that of the reform politician,
because printing is cheap. He will get heard immediately. He covers
the whole of the United States while the other is canvassing a ward.
Literary self-assertion is as much needed as any of the virtue we pray
for in politics. A resonant and unvexed independence makes a man’s
words stir the fibres in other men; and it matters little whether you
label his words literature or politics.
The difficulty in any revolt against custom, the struggle a man
has in getting his mind free from the cobwebs of restraint, always
turns out to involve financial distress; and this holds true of the
writer’s attempt to override the senseless restrictions of the press.
The magazines pay handsomely, and pay at once. A writer must earn
his bread; a man must support his family. We accept this necessity
with such a hearty concurrence, and the necessity itself becomes so
sacred, that it seems to imply an answer to all ethical and artistic
questions. We almost think that nature will connive at malpractice
done in so good a cause as the support of a family. The subject must
be looked at more narrowly. The spur of poverty is popularly regarded
not only as an excuse for all bad work, but as a prerequisite to all
good work. There is a misconception in this wholesale appropriation of
a partial truth. The economic laws are valuable and suggestive, but
they are founded on the belief that a man will pursue his own business
interests exclusively. This is never entirely true even in trade, and
the doctrines of the economists become more and more misleading when
applied to fields of life where the money motive becomes incidental.
The law of supply and demand does not govern the production of sonnets.
Let us lay aside theory and observe the effects of want upon the artist
and his work. As a stimulus to the whole man, a prod to get him into
action and keep him active, the spur of poverty is a blessing. But if
it enter into the detail of his attention, while he is at work, it is
damnation.
A man at work is like a string that is vibrating. Touch it with a
feather and it is numb. A singer will sing flat if he sees a friend
in the audience. Even a trained and cold-blooded lawyer who is trying
a case, will not be at his best if he is watched by some one whom he
wants to impress.
The artist is the easiest of all men to upset. He is dealing with
subtle and fluid things,--memories, allusions, associations. It is all
gossamer and sunlight when he begins. It is to be gossamer and sunlight
when he is finished. But in the interim it is bricks and mortar, rubble
and white lead. And the writer--I do not say that he must be more free
from cares than the next man--but he must not let into the mint and
forge of his thought some immaterial and petty fact about himself,
for this will make him self-conscious. Consider how ingenuous, how
unexpected, how natural is good conversation. At one moment you have
nothing to say, at the next a vista of ideas has opened. They come
crowding in, and the telling of them reveals new vistas. It is the same
with the writer. In the process of writing the story is made. There is
really nothing to say or do in the world until you make your start, and
then the significance begins to steam out of the materials. And here,
in the act and heat of creation, to have the cold fear thrust in, “I
cannot use that phrase because the editor will think it too strong,” is
enough to chill the brain of Rabelais. Human nature cannot stand such
handling. Do this to a man and you break his spirit. He becomes tame,
calculating, and ingenious. His powers are frozen.
It is impossible not to see in contemporary journalism a
slaughter-house for mind. Here we have a great whale that browses on
the young and eats them by thousands. This is the seamy side of popular
education. The low level of the class at the dame’s school keeps the
bright boys back and makes dunces of them.
We have been dealing in all this matter with one of the deepest facts
of life, to wit, the influence that society at large has in cutting
down and narrowing the development of the individual. The newspaper
business displays the whole operation very vividly; but we may see the
same thing happening in the other walks of life. There arrives a time
in the career of most men when their powers become fixed. Men seem
to expand to definite shapes, like those Japanese cuttings that open
out into flowers and plants when you drop them into warm water. After
reaching his saturation point each man fills his niche in society and
changes little. He goes on doing whatever he was engaged upon at the
time he touched his limit.
We almost believe that every man has his predestinate size and shape,
and that some obscure law of growth arrests one man at thirty and
the next at forty years of age. This is partly true; but the law is
not obscure. It is not because the men stop growing that they repeat
themselves, but they stop growing because they repeat themselves. They
cease to experiment; they cease to search. The lawyer adopts routine
methods; the painter follows up his success with an imitation of his
success; the writer finds a recipe for style or plot. Every one saves
himself the trouble of re-examining the contents of his own mind.
He has the best possible reason for doing this. The public will not
pay for his experiments as well as it will for his routine work. But
the laws of nature are deaf to his reasons. Research is the price of
intellectual growth. If you face the problems of life freshly and
squarely each morning, you march. If you accept any solution as good
enough, you drop.