How delicate an organism, how alive with all life's dangers, is the
human character; and how persistently do we consider it as the thing
of all others most easily forced into any sort of position, most
safely handled in ignorance! Surely some of the misery, much of the
waste and deadlock of the world are due to our all being made of such
obscure, unguessed at material; to our not knowing it betimes, and
others not admitting it even late in the day. When, for instance,
shall we recognise that the bulk of our psychic life is unconscious or
semi-unconscious, the life of long-organised and automatic functions;
and that, while it is absurd to oppose to these the more recent,
unaccustomed and fluctuating activity called _reason_, this same
reason, this conscious portion of ourselves, may be usefully employed
in understanding those powers of nature (powers of chaos sometimes)
within us, and in providing that these should turn the wheel of life
in the right direction, even like those other powers of nature outside
us, which reason cannot repress or alter, but can understand and put
to profit. Instead of this, we are ushered into life thinking
ourselves thoroughly conscious throughout, conscious beings of a
definite and stereotyped pattern; and we are set to do things we do
not understand with mechanisms which we have never even been shown:
Told to be good, not knowing why, and still less guessing how!
Some folk will answer that life itself settles all that, with its
jostle and bustle. Doubtless. But in how wasteful, destructive,
unintelligent, and cruel a fashion! Should we be satisfied with this
kind of surgery, which cures an ache by random chopping off a limb;
with this elementary teaching, which saves our body from the fire by
burning our fingers? Surely not; we are worth more care on our own
part.
The recognition of this, and more especially of the manner in which we
may be damaged by dangers we have never thought of as dangers, our
souls undermined and made boggy by emotions not yet classified, brings
home to me again the general wholesomeness of art; and also the fact
that, wholesome as art is, in general, and, compared with the less
abstract activities of our nature, there are yet differences in art's
wholesomeness, there are categories of art which can do only good, and
others which may also do mischief.
Art, in so far as it moves our fancies and emotions, as it builds up
our preferences and repulsions, as it disintegrates or restores our
vitality, is merely another of the great forces of nature, and we
require to select among its activities as we select among the
activities of any other natural force.... When, I wonder, I wonder,
will the forces _within_ us be recognised as natural, in the same
sense as those _without_; and our souls as part of the universe,
prospering or suffering, according to which of its rhythms they
vibrate to: the larger rhythm, which is for ever increasing, and which
means happiness; the smaller, for ever slackening, which means
misery?