This argument, I confess, invariably delights and humiliates me: it is
so full of sympathy for all sorts and conditions of men, and so
appreciative of what is and what is not. It is so very human and
humane. There is in it a sort of quite gentle and dignified Prometheus
Vinctus attitude towards the Powers That Be; and Zeus, with his
thunderbolts and chains, looks very much like a brute by contrast.
But what is to be done? Zeus exists with his chains and thunderbolts,
and all the minor immortals, lying down, colossal, dim, like mountains
at night, at Schiller's golden tables, each with his fine attribute,
olive-tree, horse, lyre, sun and what not, by his side; also his own
particular scourge, plague, dragon, wild boar, or sea monster, ready
to administer to recalcitrant, insufficiently pious man. And the gods
have it their own way, call them what you will, children of Chaos or
children of Time, dynasty succeeding dynasty, but only for the same
old gifts and same old scourges to be handed on from one to the other.
In more prosaic terms, we cannot get loose of nature, the nature of
ourselves; we cannot get rid of the fact that certain courses, certain
habits, certain preferences are to our advantage, and certain others
to our detriment. And therefore, to return to art, and to the various
imaginative and emotional activities which I am obliged to label by
that very insufficient name, we cannot get rid of the fact that,
however much certain sorts of art are the natural expression of
certain recurring and common states of being; however much certain
preferences correspond to certain temperaments or conditions, we must
nevertheless put them aside as much as possible, and give our
attention to the opposite sorts of art and the opposite sorts of
preference, for the simple reason that the first make us less fit for
life and less happy in the long run, while the second make us more fit
and happier.
It is a question not of what we _are_, but of what _we shall be_.