insight into the lives of people, one is constantly impressed by the large
amount of their moral activity which is hidden from view. No doubt there
are people who are all of a piece and all on the surface, people who are
all that they seem and nothing beyond what they seem. Yet I am sometimes
tempted to think that most people circle round the world as the moon
circles round it, always carefully displaying one side only to the human
spectators' view, and concealing unknown secrets on their hidden
hemispheres.
The side that is displayed is, in the moral sphere, generally called
"respectable," and the side that is hidden "vicious." What men show they
call their "virtues." But if one looks at the matter broadly and
naturally, may it not be that the vices themselves are after all nothing
but disreputable virtues? It is not only schoolboys and servant-girls who
spend a considerable part of their time in doing things which are
flagrantly and absurdly contradictory of that artificially modelled
propriety which in public they exhibit. It is just the same, one finds by
chance revelations, among merchant princes and leaders of learned
professions. For it is not merely the degenerate and the unfit who cannot
confine all their activities within the limits prescribed by the
conventional morality which surrounds them, but often the ablest and most
energetic men, the sweetest and gentlest women. Moreover, it would often
seem that on this unseen side of their lives they may be even more heroic,
more inspired, more ideal, more vitally stimulated, than they are on that
side with which they confront the world.
Suppose people were morally inverted, turned upside down, with their vices
above water, and their respectable virtues submerged, suppose that they
were, so to say, turned morally inside out. And suppose that vice became
respectable and the respectabilities vicious, that men and women exercised
their vices openly and indulged their virtues in secret, would the world
be any the worse? Would there be a difference in the real nature of people
if they changed the fashion of wearing the natural hairy fur of their
coats inside instead of outside?
And if there is a difference, what is that difference?
_April 10._--I am a little surprised sometimes to find how commonly people
suppose that when one is unable to accept their opinions one is therefore
necessarily hostile to them. Thus a few years ago, I recall, Professor
Freud wrote how much pleasure it would give him if he could overcome my
hostility to his doctrines. But, as I hastened to reply, I have no
hostility to his doctrines, though they may not at every point be
acceptable to my own mental constitution. If I see a man pursuing a
dangerous mountain track I am not hostile in being unable to follow far on
the same track. On the contrary, I may call attention to that pioneer's
adventure, may admire his courage and skill, even applaud the results of
his efforts, or at all events the great ideal that animated him. In all
this I am not with him, but I am not hostile.
Why indeed should one ever be hostile? What a vain thing is this
hostility! A dagger that pierces the hand of him that holds it. They who
take up the sword shall perish by the sword was the lesson Jesus taught
and himself never learnt it. Ferociously, recklessly, that supreme master
of denunciation took up the sword of his piercing speech against the
"Scribes" and the "Pharisees" of the "generation of vipers," until he made
their very names a by-word and a reproach. And yet the Church of Jesus has
been the greatest generator of Scribes and Pharisees the world has ever
known, and they have even proved the very bulwark of it to this day. Look,
again, at Luther. There was the Catholic Church dying by inches, gently,
even exquisitely. And here came that gigantic peasant, with his too
exuberant energy, battered the dying Church into acute sensibility, kicked
it into emotion, galvanised it into life, prolonged its existence for a
thousand years. The man who sought to exterminate the Church proved to be
the greatest benefactor the Church had ever known.
The end men attain is rarely the end they desired. Some go out like Saul,
the son of Kish, who sought his father's asses and found a kingdom, and
some sally forth to seek kingdoms and find merely asses. In the one case
and in the other they are led by a hand that they knew not to a goal that
was not so much their own as that of their enemies.
So it is that we live for ever on hostility. Our friends may be the
undoing of us; in the end it is our enemies who save us. The views we hate
become ridiculous because they adopt them. Their very thoroughness leads
to an overwhelming reaction on whose waves we ride to victory. Even their
skill calls out our greater skill and our finer achievement. At their
best, at their worst, alike they help us. They are the very life-blood in
our veins.
It is a strange world in which, as Paulhan says (and I chance to alight on
his concordant words even as I write this note), "things are not employed
according to their essence, but, as a rule, for ends which are directly
opposed to that essence." We are more unsuccessful than we know. And if we
could all realise more keenly that we are fighting not so much in our own
cause as in the cause of our enemies, how greatly it would make for the
Visible Harmony of the World.
_April 12._--All literary art lies in the arrangement of life. The
literature most adequate to the needs of life is that most capable of
transforming the facts of life into expressive and beautiful words. French
literary art has always had that power. English literary art had it once
and has lost it now. When I read, for instance, Goncourt's _Journal_--one
of the few permanently interesting memoirs the nineteenth century has left
us--my heart sinks at the comparison of its adequacy to life with the
inadequacy of all contemporary English literature which seeks to grapple
with life. It is all pathetically mirrored in the typical English comic
paper, _Punch_, this inability to go below the surface of life, or even to
touch life at all, save in narrowly prescribed regions. But Goncourt is
always able to say what there is to say, simply and vividly; whatever
aspect of life presents itself, of that he is able to speak. I can
understand, surprising as at first it may be, how Verlaine, who seems at
every point so remote from Goncourt, yet counted him as the first
prose-writer of his time; Verlaine had penetrated to the _simplicité
cachée_ (to use Poincaré's phrase) behind the seemingly tortured
expressions of Goncourt's art. Goncourt makes us feel that whatever is fit
to occur in the world is fit to be spoken of by him who knows how to speak
of it. If we wish to face the manifold interest of the world, in its
poignancy and its beauty, as well as in its triviality, there is no other
way.
English literary art was strong and brave and expressive for several
centuries, even, one may say, on the whole, up to the end of the
eighteenth century, though I suppose that Dr. Johnson had helped to crush
the life out of it. When Queen Victoria came to the throne the finishing
stroke seems to have been dealt at it. One might fancy that the whole
literary world had become conscious of the youthful and innocent monarch's
eye on every book issued from the press, and that every writer feared he
might write a word to bring a blush on her virginal countenance. When
young Queen Elizabeth came to the throne, they seem to have felt, it was
another matter. There was a monarch who feared nothing and nobody, who
once spat at a courtier whose costume misliked her, who as a girl had
experienced no resentment when the Lord High Admiral, who was courting
her, sent a messenger to "ax hir whether hir great buttocks were grown any
less or no," a monarch who was not afraid of any word in the English
language, and loved the most expressive words best. Under such a monarch,
the Victorian writers felt they would no longer have modestly refrained
from becoming Shakespeares.
But the excuses for feebleness are apt to be more ingenious than
convincing. There is no connection between coarseness and art. Goncourt
was a refined aristocrat who associated with the most highly civilised men
and women of his day, and possessed the rarest secrets of aesthetic
beauty. Indeed we may say that it is precisely the consciousness of
coarseness which leads to a cowardly flight from the brave expression of
life. Most of these excuses are impotent. Most impotent of all is the
excuse that their books reach the Nursery and the Young Ladies' School. Do
they suppose by any chance that their books grapple with the real life of
Nurseries and Young Ladies' Schools? If they grappled with that they might
grapple with anything. It is a subterfuge, a sham, and with fatty
degeneration eating away the muscular fibre of their hearts, they snatch
at it.
The road is long, and a high discipline is needed, and a great courage, if
our English literature is to regain its old power and exert once more its
proper influence in the world.
_April_ 16.--I have often noticed--and I find that others also have
noticed--that when an artist in design, whether line or colour or clay,
takes up a pen and writes, he generally writes well, sometimes even
superbly well. Again and again it has happened that a man who has spent
his life with a brush in his hand has beaten the best penmen at their own
weapon.
Leonardo, who was indeed great in everything, is among the few great
writers of Italian prose. Blake was first and above all an artist in
design, but at the best he had so magnificent a mastery of words that
besides it all but the rare best of his work in design looks thin and
artificial. Rossetti was drawing and painting all his life, and yet, as
has now become clear, it is only in language, verse and prose alike, that
he is a supreme master. Fromentin was a painter for his contemporaries,
yet his paintings are now quite uninteresting, while the few books he
wrote belong to great literature, to linger over with perpetual delight.
Poetry seemed to play but a small part in the life of Michelangelo, yet
his sonnets stand to-day by the side of his drawings and his marbles.
Rodin has all his life been passionately immersed in plastic art; he has
never written and seldom talks; yet whenever his more intimate disciples,
a Judith Cladel or a Paul Gsell, have set down the things he utters, they
are found to be among the most vital, fascinating, and profound sayings in
the world. Even a bad artist with the brush may be on the road to become a
good artist with the pen. Euripides was not only a soldier, he had tried
to be a painter before he became a supreme tragic dramatist, and, to come
down to modern times, Hazlitt and Thackeray, both fine artists with the
pen, had first been poor artists with the brush. It is hard, indeed, to
think of any artist in design who has been a bad writer. The painter may
never write, he may never feel an impulse to write, but when he writes, it
would almost seem without an effort, he writes well. The list of good
artists and bad artists who have been masters of words, from Vasari and
earlier onwards, is long. One sets down at random the names of Reynolds,
Northcote, Delacroix, Woolner, Carrière, Leighton, Gauguin, Beardsley, Du
Maurier, Besnard, to which doubtless it might be easy to add a host of
others. And then, for contrast, think of that other art, which yet seems
to be so much nearer to words; think of musicians!
The clue seems to be, not only in the nature of the arts of design, but
also in the nature of writing. For, unlike all the arts, writing is not
necessarily an art at all. It is just anything. It fails to carry
inevitably within it the discipline of art. And if the writer is not an
artist, if the discipline of art has left no acquired skill in his muscles
and no instinctive habit in his nerves, he may never so much as discover
that he is not an artist. The facility of writing is its fate.
Gourmont has well said that whatever is deeply thought is well written.
And one might add that whatever is deeply observed is well said. The
artist in design is by the very nature of his work compelled to observe
deeply, precisely, beautifully. He is never able to revolve in a vacuum,
or flounder in a morass, or run after a mirage. When there is nothing
there he is still. He is held by his art to Nature. So, when he takes up
his pen, by training, by acquired instinct, he still follows with the new
instrument, deeply, precisely, beautifully, the same mystery of Nature.
It was by a somewhat similar transference of skilled experience that the
great writers of Spain, who in so many cases were first soldiers and men
of the sword, when they took up the pen, wrote, carelessly it may seem,
but so poignantly, so vividly, so fundamentally well.
_April_ 22.--There is a certain type of mind which constitutionally
ignores and overlooks little things, and habitually moves among large
generalisations. Of such minds we may well find a type in Bacon, who so
often gave James I. occasion to remark jocularly in the Council Chamber of
his Lord Chancellor, _De minimis non curât lex_.
There is another type of mind which is constitutionally sensitive to the
infinite significance of minimal things. Of such, very typical in our day
are Freud and the Freudians grouped around him. There is nothing so small
that for Freud it is not packed with endless meaning. Every slightest
twitch of the muscles, every fleeting fancy of the brain, is unconsciously
designed to reveal the deepest impulse of the soul. Every detail of the
wildest dream of the night is merely a hieroglyph which may be
interpreted. Every symptom of disease is a symbol of the heart's desire.
In every seeming meaningless lapse of his tongue or his memory a man is
unconsciously revealing his most guarded and shameful secret. It is the
daring and fantastic attempt, astonishing in the unexpected amount of its
success, to work out this Philosophy of the Unconscious which makes the
work of the Freudians so fascinating.
They have their defects, both these methods, the far-sighted and the
near-sighted. Bacon fell into the ditch, and Freud is obsessed by the
vision of a world only seen through the delicate anastomosis of the nerves
of sex. Yet also they both have their rightness, they both help us to
realise the Divine Mystery of the Soul, towards which no telescope can
carry us too far, and no microscope too near.
_April_ 23.--I see to-day that Justice Darling--perhaps going a little out
of his way--informed the jury in the course of a summing-up that he "could
not read a chapter of Rabelais without being bored to death." The
assumption in this _obiter dictum_ seemed to be that Rabelais is an
obscene writer. And the implication seemed to be that to a healthily
virtuous and superior mind like the Judge's the obscene is merely
wearisome.
I note the remark by no means as a foolish eccentricity, but because it is
really typical. I seem to remember that, as a boy, I met with a very
similar assumption, though scarcely a similar implication, in Macaulay's
_Essays_, which at that time I very carefully read. I thereupon purchased
Rabelais in order to investigate for myself, and thus made the discovery
that Rabelais is a great philosopher, a discovery which Macaulay had
scarcely prepared me for, so that I imagined it to be original, until a
few years later I chanced to light upon the observations of Coleridge
concerning Rabelais' wonderful philosophic genius and his refined and
exalted morality, and I realised for the first time--with an unforgettable
thrill of joy--that I was not alone.
It seems clearly to be true that on the appearance in literature of the
obscene,--I use the word in a colourless and technical sense to indicate
the usually unseen or obverse side of life, the side behind the scenes,
the _postscenia vitae_ of Lucretius, and not implying anything necessarily
objectionable,--it at once for most readers covers the whole field of
vision. The reader may like it or dislike, but his reaction, especially if
he is English, seems to be so intense that it absorbs his whole psychic
activity. (I say "especially if he is English," because, though this
tendency seems universal, it is strongly emphasised in the Anglo-Saxon
mind. Gaby Deslys has remarked that she has sometimes felt embarrassed on
the London stage by finding that an attempt to arouse mere amusement has
been received with intense seriousness: "When I appear _en pantalons_ the
whole audience seems to hold its breath!") Henceforth the book is either
to be cherished secretly and silently, or else to be spoken of loudly with
protest and vituperation. And this reaction is by no means limited to
ignorant and unintelligent readers; it affects ordinary people, it affects
highly intelligent and super-refined people, it may even affect eminent
literary personages. The book may be by a great philosopher and contain
his deepest philosophy, but let an obscene word appear in it, and that
word will draw every reader's attention. Thus Shakespeare used to be
considered an obscene writer, in need of expurgation, and may be so
considered still, though his obscene passages even to our prudish modern
ears are so few that they could surely be collected on a single page. Thus
also it is that even the Bible, the God-inspired book of Christendom, has
been judicially declared to be obscene. It may have been a reasonable
decision, for judicial decision ought, no doubt, to reflect popular
opinion; a judge must be judicial, whether or not he is just.
One wonders how far this is merely due to defective education and
therefore modifiable, and how far it is based on an eradicable tendency of
the human mind. Of course the forms of obscenity vary in every age, they
are varying every day. Much which for the old Roman was obscene is not so
for us; much which for us is obscene would have made a Roman smile at our
simplicity. But even savages sometimes have obscene words not fit to utter
in good aboriginal society, and a very strict code of propriety which to
violate would be obscene. Rabelais in his immortal work wore a fantastic
and extravagant robe, undoubtedly of very obscene texture, and it
concealed from stupid eyes, as he doubtless desired that it should, one of
the greatest and wisest spirits that ever lived. It would be pleasant to
think that in the presence of such men who in their gay and daring and
profound way present life in its wholeness and find it sweet, it may some
day be the instinct of the ordinary person to enjoy the vision reverently,
if not on his knees, thanking his God for the privilege vouchsafed to him.
But one has no sort of confidence that it will be so.
_April_ 27.--Every garden tended by love is a new revelation, and to see
it for the first time gives one a new thrill of joy, above all at this
moment of the year when flowers are still young and virginal, yet already
profuse and beautiful. It is the moment, doubtless, when Linnaeus,
according to the legend, saw a gorse-covered English common for the first
time and fell on his knees to thank God for the sight. (I say "legend,"
for I find on consulting Fries that the story must be a praiseworthy
English invention, since it was in August that Linnaeus visited England.)
Linnaeus, it may be said, was a naturalist. But it is not merely the
naturalist who experiences this emotion; it is common to the larger part
of humanity. Savages deck their bodies with flowers just as craftsmen and
poets weave them into their work; the cottager cultivates his little
garden, and the town artisan cherishes his flower-pots. However alien
one's field of interest may be, flowers still make their appeal. I recall
the revealing thrill of joy with which, on a certain day, a quite ordinary
day nearly forty years ago, my eye caught the flash of the red roses amid
the greenery of my verandah in the Australian bush. And this bowl of
wall-flowers before me now--these old-fashioned, homely, shapeless,
intimately fascinating flowers, with their faint ancient fragrance, their
antique faded beauty, their symbolisation of the delicate and contented
beauty of old age--seem to me fit for the altar of whatever might be my
dearest god.
Why should flowers possess this emotional force? It is a force which is
largely independent of association and quite abstracted from direct vital
use. Flowers are purely impersonal, they subserve neither of the great
primary ends of life. They concern us even less than the sunset. And yet
we are irresistibly impelled to "consider the lilies."
Surely it is as symbols, manifoldly complex symbols, that flowers appeal
to us so deeply. They are, after all, the organs of sex, and for some
creatures they are also the sources of food. So that if we only look at
life largely enough flowers are in the main stream of vital necessity.
They are useless to man, but man cannot cut himself off from the common
trunk of life. He is related to the insects and even in the end to the
trees. So that it may not be so surprising that while flowers are vitally
useless to man they are yet the very loveliest symbols to him of all the
things that are vitally useful. There is nothing so vitally intimate to
himself that man has not seen it, and rightly seen it, symbolically
embodied in flowers. Study the folk-nomenclature of plants in any country,
or glance through Aigremont's _Volkserotik und Pflanzenwelt_. And the
symbolisation is not the less fascinating because it is so obscure, so
elusive, usually so unconscious, developed by sudden happy inspirations of
peasant genius, and because I am altogether ignorant why the morbid and
nameless tones of these curved and wrinkled wall-flowers delight me as
they once delighted my mother, and so, it may be, backwards, through
ancient generations who dwelt in parsonages whence their gaze caught the
flowers which the seventeenth-century herbalist said in his _Paradisus
Terrestris_ are "often found growing on the old walls of Churches."
_May_ 8.--It is curious how there seems to be an instinctive disgust in
Man for his own nearest ancestors and relations. If only Darwin could
conscientiously have traced Man back to the Elephant or the Lion or the
Antelope, how much ridicule and prejudice would have been spared to the
doctrine of Evolution! "Monkey" and "Worm" have been the bywords of
reproach among the more supercilious of human beings, whether schoolboys
or theologians. And it was precisely through the Anthropoid Apes, and more
remotely the Annelids, that Darwin sought to trace the ancestry of Man.
The Annelids have been rejected, but the Arachnids have taken their place.
Really the proud and the haughty have no luck in this world. They can
scarcely perform their most elementary natural necessities with dignity,
and they have had the misfortune to teach their flesh to creep before
spiders and scorpions whom, it may be, they have to recognise as their own
forefathers. Well for them that their high place is reserved in another
world, and that Milton recognised "obdurate pride" as the chief mark of
Satan.
_May_ 9.--The words of Keats concerning the ocean's "priestlike task of
pure ablution" often come to my mind in this deserted Cornish bay. For it
is on such a margin between sea and land over which the tide rolls from
afar that alone--save in some degree on remote Australian hills---I have
ever found the Earth still virginal and unstained by Man. Everywhere else
we realise that the Earth has felt the embrace of Man, and been beautified
thereby, it may be, or polluted. But here, as the tide recedes, all is
ever new and fresh. Nature is untouched, and we see the gleam of her,
smell the scent of her, hear the voice of her, as she was before ever life
appeared on the Earth, or Venus had risen from the sea. This moment, for
all that I perceive, the first Adam may not have been born or the caravel
of the Columbus who discovered this new world never yet ground into the
fresh-laid sand.
So when I come unto these yellow sands I come to kiss a pure and new-born
Earth.