The business of the poet, as we have seen, is to give order and
coherence, and so freedom, to a body of experience. To do so through
words which act as its skeleton, as a structure by which the impulses
which make up the experience are adjusted to one another, and act
together. The means by which words do this are many and varied. To work
them out is a problem for psychology. A beginning has been indicated
above, but only a beginning. What little can be done shows already that
most critical dogmas of the past are either false or nonsense. A little
knowledge is not here a danger, but clears the air in a remarkable way.
Roughly and inadequately, even in the light of our present knowledge,
we can say that words work in the poem in two main fashions. As sensory
stimuli and as (in the _widest_ sense) symbols. We must refrain from
considering the sensory side of the poem, remarking only that it is
_not_ in the least independent of the other side, and that it has for
definite reasons prior importance in most poetry. We must confine
ourselves to the other function of words in the poem, or rather,
omitting much that is of secondary relevance, to one form of that
function, let me call it _pseudo-statement_.
It will be admitted--by those who distinguish between scientific
statement, where truth is ultimately a matter of verification as this
is understood in the laboratory, and emotive utterance, where ‘truth’
is primarily acceptability _by_ some attitude, and more remotely is the
acceptability _of_ this attitude itself--that it is _not_ the poet’s
business to make true statements. Yet poetry has constantly the air of
making statements, and important ones; which is one reason why some
mathematicians cannot read it. They find the alleged statements to be
_false_. It will be agreed that their approach to poetry and their
expectations from it are mistaken. But what exactly is the other,
the right, the poetic, approach and how does it differ from the
mathematical?
The poetic approach evidently limits the framework of possible
consequences into which the pseudo-statement is taken. For the
scientific approach this framework is unlimited. Any and every
consequence is relevant. If any of the consequences of a statement
conflicts with acknowledged fact then so much the worse for the
statement. Not so with the pseudo-statement when poetically approached.
The problem is--just how does the limitation work? The usual account is
in terms of a supposed universe of discourse, a world of make-believe,
of imagination, of recognised fictions common to the poet and his
readers. A pseudo-statement which fits into this system of assumptions
would be regarded as ‘poetically true’; one which does not, as
‘poetically false.’ This attempt to treat ‘poetic truth’ on the model
of general ‘coherence theories’ is very natural for certain schools of
logicians; but is inadequate, on the wrong lines from the outset. To
mention two objections out of many; there is no means of discovering
what the ‘universe of discourse’ is on any occasion, and the kind of
coherence which must hold within it, supposing it to be discoverable,
is not an affair of logical relations. Attempt to define the system of
propositions into which
“O Rose, thou art sick!”
must fit, and the logical relations which must hold between them if it
is to be ‘poetically true’; the absurdity of the theory becomes evident.
We must look further. In the poetic approach the relevant consequences
are not logical or to be arrived at by a partial relaxation of logic.
Except occasionally and by accident logic does not enter at all. They
are the consequences which arise through our emotional organisation.
The acceptance which a pseudo-statement receives is entirely governed
by its effects upon our feelings and attitudes. Logic only comes in,
if at all, in subordination, as a servant to our emotional response.
It is an unruly servant, however, as poets and readers are constantly
discovering. A pseudo-statement is ‘true’ if it suits and serves
some attitude or links together attitudes which on other grounds are
desirable. This kind of truth is so opposed to scientific ‘truth’ that
it is a pity to use so similar a word, but at present it is difficult
to avoid the malpractice.[7]
This brief analysis may be sufficient to indicate the fundamental
disparity and opposition between pseudo-statements as they occur in
poetry and statements as they occur in science. A pseudo-statement is
a form of words which is justified entirely by its effect in releasing
or organizing our impulses and attitudes (due regard being had for the
better or worse organizations of these _inter se_); a statement, on the
other hand, is justified by its truth, _i.e._ its correspondence, in a
highly technical sense, with the fact to which it points.
Statements true and false alike do of course constantly touch off
attitudes and action. Our daily practical existence is largely
guided by them. On the whole true statements are of more service to
us than false ones. None the less we do not and, at present, cannot
order our emotions and attitudes by true statements alone. Nor is
there any probability that we ever shall contrive to do so. This
is one of the great new dangers to which civilisation is exposed.
Countless pseudo-statements--about God, about the universe, about human
nature, the relations of mind to mind, about the soul, its rank and
destiny--pseudo-statements which are pivotal points in the organization
of the mind, vital to its well-being, have suddenly become, for
sincere, honest and informal minds, impossible to believe. For
centuries they have been believed; now they are gone, irrecoverably;
and the knowledge which has killed them is not of a kind upon which an
equally fine organization of the mind can be based.
This is the contemporary situation. The remedy, since there is no
prospect of our gaining adequate knowledge, and since indeed it
is fairly clear that genuine knowledge cannot serve us here and
can only increase our practical control of Nature, is to cut our
pseudo-statements free from belief, and yet retain them, in this
released state, as the main instruments by which we order our attitudes
to one another and to the world. Not so desperate a remedy as may
appear, for poetry conclusively shows that even the most important
among our attitudes can be aroused and maintained without any belief
entering in at all. Those of Tragedy, for example. We need no
beliefs, and indeed we must have none, if we are to read _King Lear_.
Pseudo-statements to which we attach no belief and statements proper
such as science provides cannot conflict. It is only when we introduce
illicit beliefs into poetry that danger arises. To do so is from this
point of view a profanation of poetry.
Yet an important branch of criticism which has attracted the best
talents from prehistoric times until to-day consists of the endeavour
to persuade men that the functions of science and poetry are identical,
or that the one is a ‘higher form’ of the other, or that they conflict
and we must choose between them.
The root of this persistent endeavour has still to be mentioned; it
is the same as that from which the Magical View of the world arose.
If we give to a pseudo-statement the kind of unqualified acceptance
which belongs by right only to certified scientific statements, if
we can contrive to do this, the impulses and attitudes with which we
respond to it gain a notable stability and vigour. Briefly, if we can
contrive to believe poetry, then the world _seems_, while we do so,
to be transfigured. It used to be comparatively easy to do this, and
the habit has become well established. With the extension of science
and the neutralization of nature it has become difficult as well
as dangerous. Yet it is still alluring; it has many analogies with
drug-taking. Hence the endeavours of the critics referred to. Various
subterfuges have been devised along the lines of regarding Poetic Truth
as figurative, symbolic; or as more immediate, as a truth of Intuition,
not of reason; or as a higher form of the same truth as reason yields.
Such attempts to use poetry as a denial or as a corrective of science
are very common. One point can be made against them all: they are
never worked out in detail. There is no equivalent to Mill’s _Logic_
expounding any such view. The language in which they are framed is
usually a blend of obsolete psychology and emotive exclamations.
The long-established and much-encouraged habit of giving to emotive
utterances--whether pseudo-statements simple, or looser and larger
wholes taken as saying something figuratively--the kind of assent which
we give to established facts, has for most people debilitated a wide
range of their responses. A few scientists, caught young and brought
up in the laboratory, are free from it; but then, as a rule, they pay
no _serious_ attention to poetry. For most men the recognition of
the neutrality of nature brings about--through this habit--a divorce
from poetry. They are so used to having their responses propped up by
beliefs, however vague, that when these shadowy supports are removed
they are no longer able to respond. Their attitudes to so many
things have been forced in the past, over-encouraged. And when the
world-picture ceases to assist there is a collapse. Over whole tracts
of natural emotional response we are to-day like a bed of dahlias whose
sticks have been removed. And this effect of the neutralisation of
nature is only in its beginnings. Consider the probable effects upon
love-poetry in the near future of the kind of enquiry into basic human
constitution exemplified by psycho-analysis.
A sense of desolation, of uncertainty, of futility, of the
groundlessness of aspirations, of the vanity of endeavour, and a
thirst for a life-giving water which seems suddenly to have failed,
are the signs in consciousness of this necessary reorganization of our
lives.[8] Our attitudes and impulses are being compelled to become
self-supporting; they are being driven back upon their biological
justification, made once again sufficient to themselves. And the only
impulses which seem strong enough to continue unflagging are commonly
so crude that, to more finely developed individuals, they hardly seem
worth having. Such people cannot live by warmth, food, fighting, drink,
and sex alone. Those who are least affected by the change are those
who are emotionally least removed from the animals. As we shall see at
the close of this essay, even a considerable poet may attempt to find
relief by a reversion to primitive mentality.
It is important to diagnose the disease correctly and to put the
blame in the right quarter. Usually it is some alleged ‘materialism’
of science which is denounced. This mistake is due partly to clumsy
thinking, but chiefly to relics of the Magical View. For even if the
Universe were ‘spiritual’ all through (whatever that assertion might
mean; all such assertions are probably nonsense), that would not make
it any more accordant to human attitudes. It is not what the universe
is made of but how it works, the law it follows, which makes knowledge
of it incapable of spurring on our emotional responses, and further the
nature of knowledge itself makes it inadequate. The contact with things
which we therein establish is too sketchy and indirect to help us. We
are beginning to know too much about the bond which unites the mind
to its object in knowledge for that old dream of a perfect knowledge
which would guarantee perfect life to retain its sanction. What was
thought to be pure knowledge, we see now to have been shot through with
hope and desire with fear and wonder, and these intrusive elements
indeed gave it all its power to support our lives. In knowledge, in
the ‘How?’ of events, we can find hints by which to take advantage of
circumstances in our favour and avoid mischances. But we cannot get
from it a _raison d’être_ or a justification of more than a relatively
lowly kind of life.
The justification, or the reverse, of any attitude lies, not in
the object, but in itself, in its serviceableness to the whole
personality. Upon its place in the whole system of attitudes, which is
the personality, all its worth depends. This is true equally for the
subtle, finely compounded attitudes of the civilised individual as for
the simpler attitudes of the child.
In brief, experience is its own justification; and this fact must be
faced, although sometimes--by a lover, for example--it may be very
difficult to accept. Once it is faced, it is apparent that all the
attitudes to other human beings and to the world in all its aspects,
which have been serviceable to humanity, remain as they were, as
valuable as ever. Hesitation felt in admitting this is a measure of
the strength of the evil habit we have described. But many of these
attitudes, valuable as ever, are, now that they are being set free,
more difficult to maintain, because we still hunger after a basis in
belief.