have broken down, when the "temperament" has, therefore, become
unfettered and lawless, that decadence in art is born. The sincerity of
the artist, his chief virtue, is gone--the sincerity which commands him
to create only under the pressure of an artistic necessity, which tells
him, in other words, to produce nothing which is not genuine. Without
sincerity, severity and patience, nothing great in art can be created.
And it is precisely in these virtues that the decadent is lacking. A
love of beauty is his only credential as an artist, but, undisciplined,
it degenerates very soon into a love of mere effect. An effect of
beauty at all costs, whether it be the true beauty or not! That becomes
his object. Without a root in any soil, he aspires to the condition of
the water lily, and, in due time, becomes a full-blown æsthete. Is it
because he is incapable of becoming anything else? Has he in despair
grown "artistic" simply because he is not an artist? Is Decadence the
most subtle disguise of impotence? And are decadents those who, if they
had submitted to an artistic discipline of sincerity, would never have
written at all? Of some of them this is true, but of others it is not;
and in that lies the tragedy of Decadence. Wilde himself was, perhaps,
a decadent by misadventure; for on occasion he could rise above
decadence into sincerity. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" proves that. He
was the victim of a bad æsthetic morality, to which, it is true, he
had a predisposition. And if this is true of him, it is true, also,
of his followers. A baleful artistic ethic still rules, demoralizing
the young artist at the moment when he should be disciplining himself;
and turning, perhaps, some one with the potentiality of greatness into
a minor artist. By neglecting the harder virtues, the decadents have
made minor art inevitable and great art almost impossible.
The old tradition of artistic discipline must be regained, then, or a
new and even more severe tradition inaugurated. A text-book of morality
for artists is now overdue. When it has been written, and the new
discipline has been hailed and submitted to by the artists, who can say
if greatness may not again be possible?
30
_Decadence Again_
How is the dissolution of the tradition of artistic discipline to
be explained? To what cause is it to be traced? Perhaps to the more
general dissolution of tradition which has taken place in modern
times. When theological dogmas and moral values are thrown into the
melting-pot, and the discipline of centuries is dissolved into anarchy,
it is natural that artistic traditions should perish along with them.
Decadence follows free-thought: it appears at the time when the old
values lie deliquescent and the new values have not yet risen, the
dry land has not yet appeared. But this does not happen always: the
old traditions of morality, theology, politics and industry are
overthrown, the beginnings of a new tradition appear tentatively,
everything fixed has vanished, the wildest hopes and the most chilling
despair are the common possession of one and the same generation--but,
throughout, the artistic tradition is held securely and confidently,
it remains the one thing fixed in a world of dissolution. Then an art
arises greater even than that of the eras of tradition. The pathos of
the dying and the inexpressible hope of the newly born find expression
side by side; all chains are broken, and the world appears suddenly to
be immeasurable. Is this what happened at the Renaissance?
31
_Wilde_
The refined degeneracy of Oscar Wilde might be explained on the
assumption that he was at once over--and under--civilized: he had
acquired all the exquisite and superfluous without the necessary
virtues. These "exquisite" virtues are unfortunately dangerous to all
but those who have become masters of the essential ones; they are
qualities of the body more than of the mind; they are developments
and embellishments of the shell of man. In acquiring them, Wilde
ministered to his body merely, and, as a consequence, it became more
and more powerful and subtle--far more powerful and subtle than his
mind. Eventually this body--senses, passions and appetite--actually
became the intellectual principle in him, of which his mind was merely
a drugged and stupefied slave!
32
_Wilde and the Sensualists_
The so-called Paganism of our time, the movement towards sensualism
of the followers of Wilde, is not an attempt, however absurd, to
supersede Christianity; nor is it even in essence anti-Christian. At
the most it is a reaction--not a step beyond current religion into a
new world of the spirit, but a changing from one foot to the other, a
reliance on the senses for a little, so that the over-laboured soul
may rest. And there is still much of Christianity in this modern
Paganism. Its devotees are too deeply corrupted to be capable either of
pure sensuousness or of pure spirituality. They speak of Christ like
voluptuaries, and of Eros like penitents. But it is impossible now to
become a Pagan: one must remember Ibsen's Julian and take warning. Two
thousand years of "bad conscience," of Christian self-probing, with its
deepening of the soul, cannot be disavowed, forgotten, unlived. For
Paganism a simpler spirit, mind and sensuousness are required than we
can reproduce. We cannot feel, we cannot think, above all, we cannot
feel without thinking of our feelings, as the Pagans did. Our modern
desire to take out our soul and look at it separates us from the naïve
classic sensuousness.
What, then, does modern sensualism mean? What satisfaction does it
bring to those, by no means few in number, its "followers"? A respite,
an escapade, a holiday from Christianity, from the inevitable. For
Christianity is assumed by them to be the inevitable, and it fills
them with the loathing which is evoked by the enforced contemplation
of things tyrannical and permanent. To escape from it they plunge
madly into sensuality as into a sea of redemption. But the disgust
which drives them there will eventually drive them forth again--into
asceticism and the denial of the senses. Christianity will then
appear stronger than ever, having been purged of its "uncleanness."
Yes, the sensualists of our time are the best unconscious friends
of Christianity, its "saviours," who have taken its sins upon their
shoulders.
There still remain the few who do not assume Christianity to be
inevitable, who desire, no matter how hopeless the fight may seem, to
surmount it, and who see that men have played too long the game of
reaction. "To cure the senses by the soul and the soul by the senses"
seems to them a creed for invalids. And, therefore, that against
which, above all, they guard, is a mere relapse into sensualism. Not
by fleeing from Christianity do they hope to reach their goal; but
by understanding it, perhaps by "seeing through" it, certainly by
benefiting in so far as they can by it, and, finally, emancipating
themselves from it. They know that the soil no longer exists out
of which grew the flower of Paganism, and that they must pass
through Christianity if they would reach a new sensuality and a new
spirituality. But their motto is, Spirituality first, and, after that,
only as much sensuality as our spirituality can govern! They hold that
as men become more spiritual they may safely become more sensual; but
that, to the man without spirit, sensuality and asceticism are alike
an indulgence and a curse. That the spirit should rule--such is their
desire; but it must rule as a constitutional governor, not as an
arbitrary tyrant. For the senses, too, as Heine said, have their rights.
33
_Arnold Going Down the Hill_
One section of the realist school--that represented by Bennett and
John Galsworthy--may be described as a reaction from asceticism.
Men had become tired of experiencing Life only in its selected and
costly "sensations," and sought an escape from "sensations," sought
the ordinary. But another section of the school--George Moore, for
example--was merely a bad translation of æstheticism. Equally tired of
the exquisite, already having sampled all that luxury in "sensation"
could provide, the artists now sought _new "sensations"_--and nothing
else--in the squalid. It was the _rôle_ of the æsthetes to go downhill
gracefully, but when they turned realists they ceased even to do that.
They went downhill _sans_ art. Yet, in doing so, did they not rob
æstheticism of its seductiveness? And should we not, therefore, feel
grateful to them? Alas, no; for to the taste of this age, grace and
art have little fascination: it is the heavy, unlovely and sordid that
seduces. To disfigure æstheticism was to popularize it. And now the
very man in the street is--artistically speaking--corrupted: a calamity
second in importance only to the corruption of the artists and thinkers.
34
_Pater and the Æsthetes_
How much of Walter Pater's exclusiveness and reclusiveness was a
revulsion from the ugliness of his time--an ugliness which he was
not strong enough to contemplate, far less to fight--it is hard to
say. Perhaps his phase of the Decadence may be defined as largely a
reaction against industrialism, just as that of Wilde may be defined
as largely a reaction against Christianity: but, in the former case as
in the latter, that against which the reaction was made was assumed
to be permanent. Indeed, by escaping from industrialism instead of
fighting it, Pater and his followers made its persistence only a
little more secure. It is true, there are excuses enough to palliate
their weakness: the delicateness of their own nerves and senses,
making them peculiarly liable to suffering, the ugliness and apparent
invulnerability of industrialism, the beauty and repose of the world of
art wherein they might take refuge and be happy. Art as forgetfulness,
art as Lethe, the seduction of that cry was strong! But to yield to it
was none the less unforgivable: it was an act traitorous not only to
society but to art itself. For what was the confession underlying it?
That the society of today and of tomorrow is, and _must be,_ barren;
that no great art can hereafter be produced; that there is nothing left
but to enjoy what has been accomplished! Against that presumption, not
the Philistines but the great artists will cry as the last word of
Nihilism.
Pater's creed marks, therefore, a degradation of the conception of art.
Art as something exclusive, fragile and a little odd, the occupation
of a few æsthetic eccentrics--this is the most pitiable caricature! To
make themselves understood by one another, this little clique invented
a jargon of their own; in this jargon Pater's books are written, and
not only his, but those of his followers to this day. It is a style
lacking, above all, in good taste; it very easily drops into absurdity;
indeed, it is always on the verge of absurdity. It has no masculinity,
no hardness; and it is meant to be read by people a little insincerely
"æsthetic," who are conscious that they are open to ridicule, and who
are accordingly indulgent to the ridiculous; the Fabians of art. To
admire Pater's style, it is necessary first to put oneself into the
proper attitude.
35
_Creator and Æsthete_
The true creators and the mere æsthetes agree in this, that they are
not realists. Neither of them copies existence in its external details:
wherein do they differ? In that the creators write of certain realities
behind life, and the æsthetes--of the words standing for these
realities.
36
_Hypocrisy of Words_
The æsthetes, and Pater and Wilde in particular, made a cult of the
use of decorative words. They demanded, not that a word should be
_true,_ nor even that it should be true and pretty at the same time,
but simply that it should be pretty. It cannot be denied that writers
here and there before them had been guilty of using a fine word where
a common one was most honest; but this had been generally regarded as
a forgiveable, "artistic" weakness. Wilde and his followers, however,
chose "exquisite" words systematically, in conformity to an artistic
dogma, and held that literature consisted in doing nothing else. And
that was dangerous; for truth was thereby banished from the realm of
diction and a hypocrisy of words arose. In short, language no longer
grasped at realities, and literature ceased to express any thing at
all, except a writer's taste in words.
37
_The Average Man_
In this welter of dissolving values, the intellectuals of our time find
themselves struggling, and liable at any moment to be engulfed. A few
of them, however, have snatched at something which, in the prevailing
deliquescence, appears to be solid--the average man. Encamped upon him,
they have won back sanity and happiness. But their act is nevertheless
simply a reaction; here the real problem has not yet been faced! What
is it that makes the average man more sane and happy than the modern
man? The possession of dogmas, says G. K. Chesterton; let us therefore
have dogmas! But, alas, for them he goes back and not forward. And not
only back, but back to the very dogmas against which modern thought,
and Decadence with it, are a reaction, nay, the _inevitable_ reaction.
What! has Mr. Chesterton, then, postponed the solution of the problem?
And on the heels of his remedy does there tread the old disease over
again? Perhaps it is so. The acceptance of the old dogmas will be
followed by a new reaction from them, a new disintegration of values
therefore, and a new Decadence. The hands of the clock can be put back,
it is true; but they will eventually reach the time when the hour shall
strike _again_ for the solution of the modern problem.
And that is the criticism which modern men must pass upon Mr.
Chesterton; that he interposed in the course of their malady to bring
relief with a remedy which was not a remedy. The modern problem should
have been worked out to a new solution, to its own solution. Instead
of going back to the old dogmas, we should have strained on towards the
new. And if, in this generation, the new dogmas are still out of sight,
if we have meantime to live our lives without peace or stability, does
it matter so very much? To do so is, perhaps, our allotted task. And as
sacrifices to the future we justify our very fruitlessness, our very
modernity!
II
ORIGINAL SIN
38
_Original Sin_
Original Sin and the Future are essentially irreconcilable conceptions.
The believer in the future looks upon humanity as plastic: the good
and the bad in man are not fixed quantities, always, in every age,
past and future, to be found in the same proportions: an "elevation of
the type man" is, therefore, possible. But the believer in Original
Sin regards mankind as that in which--the less said about the good,
the better--there is, at any rate, a fixed substratum of the bad.
And _that_ can never be lessened, never weakened, never conquered.
Therefore, man has to fight constantly to escape the menace of an
ever-present defeat. A battle in which victory is impossible; a contest
in which man has to climb continually in order not to fall lower;
existence as the tread mill: that is what is meant by Original Sin.
And as such it is the great enemy of the Future, the believers in which
hold that there is not this metaphysical drag. But it is more. At
all things aspiring it sets the tongue in the cheek, gladly provides
a caricature for them, and becomes their Sancho Panza. To the great
man it says, through the mouths of its chosen apostles, the average
men, "What matter how high you climb! This load which you carry even
as we will bring you back to us at last. And the higher you climb the
greater will be your fall. Humanity cannot rise above its own level."
And therefore, humility, equality, radicalism, comradeship in sin--the
ideas of Christianity!
39
_Again_
Distrust of the future springs from the same root as distrust of great
men. It derives from the belief in the average man, which derives from
the belief in Original Sin. The egalitarian sentiment strives always
to become unconditional. It claims not only that all men are equal,
but that the men who live now are no more than the equals of those who
lived one, or five, thousand years ago, and no less than the equals
of those who will live in another one, or five, thousand years. And
it desires that this should be so: its jealousy embraces not only the
living, but the dead and the unborn.
40
_Again_
Society is a conspiracy, said Emerson, against the great man. And to
blast him utterly in the centre of his being, it invented Original Sin.
Is Original Sin, then, a theological dogma or a political device?
41
_Equality_
Is equality, in truth, a generous dogma? Does it express, as every one
assumes, the solidarity of men in their higher attributes? It is time
to question this, and to ask if inequality be not the more noble and
generous belief. For, surely, it is in their nobler qualities that men
are most unequal. It was not in his genius that Shakespeare was only
the equal, for instance, of his commentators; it was in the groundwork
of his nature, in those feelings and desires without which he would not
have been a man at all, in the things which made him human, but which
did not make him Shakespeare: in a word, in that which is for us of no
significance. Equality in the common part of man's nature, equality
in sin, equality before God--it is the same thing--that is the only
equality which can be admitted. And if its admission is insisted upon
by apologists for Christianity, that is because to the common part of
man's nature they give so much importance, because they are believers
in Original Sin. In their equality there is accordingly more malice
than generosity. The belief that no one is other than themselves, the
will that no one shall be other than themselves--there is nothing
generous in that belief and that will. For man, according to them, is
guilty from the womb. And what, then, is equality but the infinitely
consoling consciousness of tainted creatures that every one on this
earth is tainted?
The believer in Original Sin will, of course, deny this, and say that
in his philosophy men are equals also in their higher _rôle_ as "sons
of God." But is this so? Is salvation, like sin, common to all men?
Is it not, on the contrary, something _conferred_ as the reward of
a belief and a choice--a belief and a choice which an Atheist, for
instance, simply cannot embrace? So that here, touching the highest
part of men, their soul, there is introduced, by Christianity itself, a
distinction, an inequality--the distinction, the inequality between the
"saved" and the "lost." Men are equal inasmuch as they are all damned,
but they are not equal inasmuch as they are not all redeemed.
Gazing at man, however, no longer through the eyes of the serpent,
shall we not be bound to find, if we look _high_ enough, distinction,
superiority, inferiority, valuation? The dogma of equality is itself
a device to evade valuation. For valuation is difficult, and demands
generosity for its exercise. To recognize that one is greater than
you, and cheerfully to acknowledge it; to see that another is less
than you, and to treat the inferiority as a trifling thing, that is
difficult, that requires generosity. But one who believes in inequality
will always be looking for greatness in others; his eye, habituated
to the contemplation of lofty things, will become subtle in the
detection of concealed nobility; while to the ignoble he will give only
a glance--and is it not good, where one may not help, to pass on the
other side? The egalitarians will cry that it is ungenerous to believe
that some men are vile; but it is a strange generosity which would
persuade us with them that all men are vile. Let us be frank. To those
who believe in the future, inequality is a holy thing; their pledge
that greatness shall not disappear from the earth; the rainbow assuring
them that Man shall not go down beneath the vast tide of mankind. All
great men are to them at once forerunners and sacrifices; the imperfect
forms which the Future has shattered in trying to incarnate itself; the
sublime ruins of _future_ greatness.
42
_If Men Were Equal_
If men had been equal at the beginning, they would never have risen
above the savage. For in absolute equality even the concept of
greatness could not have come into being. Inequality is the source of
all advancement.
43
_The Fall of Man_
In very early times men must have had a deep sense of the tragicality
of existence: life was then so full of pain; death, as a rule, so
sudden and unforeseen, and the world generally so beset with terrors.
The few who were fortunate enough to escape violent death had yet to
toil incessantly to retain a footing on this unkind star. Life would,
accordingly, appear to them in the most sombre tones and colours. And
it was to explain this human misfortune, and not sin at all, that the
whole fable of Adam and Eve and the Fall was invented. The doctrine
of Original Sin was simply an interpretation which was afterwards
read into the story, an interpretation, perhaps, as arbitrary as the
orthodox interpretation of the Song of Songs.
How would the fable arise? Well, a primitive poet one day in a fit
of melancholy made the whole thing up. Out of his misery his desires
created for him an imaginary state, its opposite, the Garden of Eden.
But this state being created, the problem arose, How did Man fall from
it? And the Tree was brought in. But to the naïve, untheological poet,
this tree had nothing to do with metaphysics or with sin, the child of
metaphysics. It was simply a magical tree, and if Man ate of the fruit
of it, something terrible would happen to him. The Fall of Man was a
_mystery_ to the poet, which he did not rationalize or theologize.
Well, Man succumbed to curiosity, and pain and misfortune befell the
human race. But we must not assume in the modern manner that with the
eating of the fruit early man associated any idea of guilt. Rather the
contrary; he regarded the act simply as unfortunate, just as at the
present day we regard as unfortunate the foolish princess in some fairy
tale. So the Fall was not to him a crime, branding all mankind with a
metaphysical stigma.
That conception came much later, when the conscience had become deeper,
more subtle and more neurotic; when individualism had been introduced
into morality. And at that time, too, the ideal of the Redeemer became
vitiated. Early man, if he did envisage a Redeemer, envisaged him as
one who would set him back in the Garden of Eden again, in the literal,
terrestrial Garden of Eden, be it understood: theology had not yet
been etherealized. And this Redeemer would redeem _all_ men: the
distinction of the individual came afterwards. It was not until later,
too, that this ideal was "interpreted," and, as a concession to the
conscience, salvation was made a conditional thing: the reward of those
who were successful in a competition in credulity, in which the first
prize went to the most simple, most stupid. The "guilt" now implicated
in the Fall was not purged away from all men by the Redeemer, but
only from such as would "accept" it. And, lastly, with the passing of
Jesus, the redemption was still further de-actualized. It was found
that acceptance of the Redeemer did _not_ reinstate Man in an earthly
Garden: paradise was, therefore, drawn on the invisible wires of
theology into the inaccessible heavens. Salvation lay at the other side
of the grave, and there it was safe from assault.
Nevertheless, what our primitive poet meant by the Fall and the
Redemption was probably something entirely different. The Fall to him
was the fall into misfortune, not into sin: the Redemption to him was
the redemption from misfortune, not from sin. And his Redeemer would
be, therefore--whom? Perhaps it is impossible for us to imagine the
nature of such a being.
This is not an interpretation, but an attempted explanation of the
story of the Fall.
44
_Interpretations_
How inexhaustible is myth! In the story of the Fall is a meaning for
every age and every creed. The interpretation called Original Sin is
only one of a thousand, and not the greatest of them. Let us dip our
bucket into the well.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil--that was the tree of
morality! And morality was then the original sin? And through _it_ Man
lost his innocence? The antithesis of morality and innocence is as old
as the world. And if we are to capture innocence again, if the world is
to become æsthetically acceptable to us, we must dispense more and more
with morality and limit its domain. This, one desperate glance into the
depths of the myth tells us. Instinct is upheld in it against isolated
reason and exterior law. Detached, "abstract" Reason brought sin into
the world, but Instinct, which is fundamentally Love, Creation, Will to
Power, is forever innocent, beyond good and evil. It was when Reason,
no longer the sagacity of Instinct, no longer the eyes of Love, became
its opponent and oppressor, that morality arose and Man fell.