I
LET us consider, first, a strange quality of the written word.
The spoken word is bad enough. Such things as misfortunes, blunders,
sins, and apprehensions become more serious when they have been
described even in conversation. A woman who secretly fears cancer
will fear it much more once she has mentioned her fear to another
person. The spoken word has somehow given reality to her fear. But the
written word is far more formidable than the spoken word. It is said
that the ignorant and the uncultured have a superstitious dread of
writing. The dread is not superstitious; it is based on a mysterious
and intimidating phenomenon which nearly anybody can test for himself.
The fact is that almost all people are afraid of writing--I mean true,
honest writing. Vast numbers of people hate and loathe it, as though
it were a high explosive that might suddenly go off and blow them to
pieces. (That is one reason why realistic novels never have a very
large sale.) But the difference between one man’s dread of writing
and another man’s dread of writing is merely a difference of degree,
not of kind. And if any among you asserts that he has no fear of the
written word, merely because it is written, let him try the following
experiment.
Take--O exceptional individual!--take some concealed and blameworthy
action or series of thoughts of your own. I do not mean necessarily
murder or embezzlement; not everybody has committed murder or
embezzlement, or even desires to do so; I mean some matter--any
matter--of which you are so ashamed, or about which you are so
nervous, that you have never mentioned it to a soul. All of us--even
you--have such matters hidden beneath waistcoat or corsage. Write down
that matter; put it in black and white. The chances are that you won’t;
the chances are that you will find some excuse for not writing it down.
You may say:
‘Ah! But suppose some one happened to see it!’
To which I would reply:
‘Write it and lock it up in your safe.’
To which you may rejoin:
‘Ah! But I might lose the key of the safe and some one might find it
and open the safe. Also I might die suddenly.’
To which I would retort:
‘If you are dead you needn’t mind discovery.’
To which you might respond:
‘How do you know that if I was dead I needn’t mind discovery?’
Well, I will yield you that point, and still prove to you that your
objection to the written word does not spring from the fear of
giving yourself away. The experiment shall be performed under strict
conditions.
Empty your house of all its inhabitants save yourself. Lock the
front-door and the back-door. Go upstairs to your own room. Lock the
door of your own room. Pile furniture before the door, so that you
cannot possibly be surprised. Light a fire. Place the writing-table
near the fire. Arrange it so that at the slightest alarm of discovery
you can with a single movement thrust your writing into the fire. Then
begin to write down that of which you are ashamed. You are absolutely
safe. Nevertheless you will hesitate to write. And you will not have
got very far in your narration before you find yourself writing down
something that is not quite so unpleasant as the truth, or before you
find yourself omitting some detail which ought not to be omitted. You
will have great difficulty in forcing yourself to be utterly frank on
paper. You may fail in being utterly frank; you probably will so fail;
most people do. When you have finished and hold the document in your
hand, you will start guiltily if the newly moved furniture creaks in
front of the door. You will read through the document with discomfort
and constraint. And you will stick it in the fire and watch it burn
with a very clear feeling of relief.
Why all these strange sensations? You could not have been caught in the
act. Moreover, there was nothing on the paper of which you were not
fully aware, and which you had not fully realised. Nobody can write
down that which he does not know and realise. Quite possibly the whole
matter had been thoroughly familiar to you, a commonplace of your
brain, for weeks, months, years. Quite possibly you had recalled every
detail of it hundreds of times, and it had never caused you any grave
inconvenience. But, instantly it is written down it becomes acutely,
intolerably disturbing--so much so that you cannot rest until the
written word is destroyed. You are precisely the same man as you were
before beginning to write; naught is altered; you have committed no
new crime. But you have a new shame. I repeat, why? The only immediate
answer is that the honest written word possesses a mysterious and
intimidating power. This power has to do with the sense of sight. You
see something. You do not see your action or your thoughts as it might
be on the cinema screen--happily!--but you do see _something_ in
regard to the matter.