PREFACE

When writers are so different, it is queer that every age should have a

distinguishing spirit. Each writer is as different in "style" as in

look, and his words reveal him just as the body reveals the soul,

blazoning its past or its future without possibility of concealment.

Paint a face, no matter how delicately or how thick; the very paint--the

very choice of colours red or white--betrays the nature lurking beneath

it, and no amount of artifice or imitation in a writer can obscure the

secret of self. Artifice and imitation reveal the finikin or uncertain

soul as surely as deliberate bareness reveals a conscious austerity.

Except, perhaps, in mathematics, there seems no escape from this

revelation. I am told that even in the "exact sciences" there is no

escape; even in physics the exposition is a matter of imagination, of

personality, of "style."

Next to mathematics and the exact sciences, I suppose, Bluebooks and

leading articles are taken as representing truth in the most absolute

and impersonal manner. We appeal to Bluebooks as confidently as to

astronomers, assuming that their statements will be impersonally true,

just as the curve of a comet will be the same for the Opposition as for

the Government, for Anarchists as for Fabians. Yet what a difference may

be detected in Bluebooks on the selfsame subject, and what an exciting

hide-and-seek for souls we may there enjoy! Behind one we catch sight of

the cautiously official mind, obsequious to established power,

observant of accepted fictions, contemptuous of zeal, apprehensive of

trouble, solicitous for the path of least resistance. Behind another we

feel the stirring spirit that no promotion will subdue, pitiless to

abomination, untouched by smooth excuses, regardless of official

sensibilities, and untamed to comfortable routine, which, in his case,

will probably be short.

Or take the leading article: hardly any form of words would appear less

personal. It is the abstract product of what the editor wants, what the

proprietor wants, what the Party wants, and what the readers want, just

flavoured sometimes with the very smallest suspicion of what the writer

wants. And yet, in leaders upon the same subject and in the same paper,

what a difference, again! Peruse leaders for a week, and in the week

following, with as much certainty as if you saw the animals emerging

from the Ark, you will be able to say, "Here comes the laboured Ox, here

the Wild Ass prances, here trips the Antelope with fairy footfall, here

the Dromedary froths beneath his hump; there soars the Crested Screamer,

there bolts the circuitous Hare, there old Behemoth wallows in the ooze,

and there the swivel-eyed Chameleon clings along the fence."

If even the writers of Bluebooks and leading articles are thus as

distinguishable as the animals which Noah had no difficulty in sorting

into couples, such writers as poets, essayists, and novelists, who have

no limit imposed upon their distinction, are likely to be still more

distinct. Indeed, we find it so, for their work needs no signature,

since the "style"--their way of looking at things--reveals it. And yet,

though it is only the sum of all these separate personalities so

diverse and distinct, each age or generation possesses a certain

"style" of its own, unconsciously revealing a kind of general

personality. Everyone knows it is as unnecessary to date a book as a

church or a candlestick, since church and candlestick and book always

bear the date written on the face. The literature of the last three or

four generations, for instance, has been distinguished by Rebellion as a

"style." Rebellion has been the characteristic expression of its most

vital self.

It has been an age of rebels in letters as in life. Of course,

acquiescent writers have existed as well, just as in the Ark (to keep up

the illustration) vegetarians stood side by side with carnivors, and

hoofs were intermixed with claws. The great majority have, as usual,

supported traditional order, have eulogised the past or present, and

been, not only at ease in their generation, but enraptured at the vision

of its beneficent prosperity. Such were the writers and orators whom

their contemporaries hailed as the distinctive spokesmen of a happy and

glorious time, leaping and bounding with income and population. But, on

looking back, we see their contemporaries were entirely mistaken. The

people of vital power and prolonged, far-reaching influence--the

"dynamic" people--have been the rebels. Wordsworth (it may seem strange

to include that venerable figure among rebels, but so long as he was

more poetic than venerable he stood in perpetual rebellion against the

motives, pursuits, and satisfactions of his time)--Wordsworth till he

was forty-five, Byron all his short life, Newman, Carlyle, Dickens,

Matthew Arnold, Ruskin--among English writers those have proved

themselves the dynamic people. There are many others, and many later;

but we need recall only these few great names, far enough distant to be

clearly visible. It was they who moved the country, shaking its torpor

like successive earthquakes. Risen against the conceit of riches, and

the hypocrisies of Society, against unimpassioned and unimaginative

religion, against ignoble success and the complacent economics that

hewed mankind into statistics to fit their abstractions--one and all, in

spite of their variety or mutual hostility, they were rebels, and their

personality expressed itself in rebellion. That was the common

characteristic of their "style."

In other parts of Europe, from _Faust_, which opened the nineteenth

century, onward through _Les Miserables_ to _The Doll's House_ and

_Resurrection_, it was the same. As, in political action, Russia hardly

ceased to rebel, France freed herself three times, Ireland gave us the

line of rebels from Robert Emmet to Michael Davitt, and all rebellion

culminated in Garibaldi, so the most vital spirits in every literature

of Europe were rebels. Perhaps it is so in all the greatest periods of

word and deed. For examples, one could point rapidly to Euripides,

Dante, Rabelais, Milton, Swift, Rousseau--men who have few attributes in

common except greatness and rebellion. But, to limit ourselves to the

familiar period of the last three or four generations, the words,

thoughts, and actions most pregnant with dynamic energy have been marked

with one mark. Rebellion has been the expression of a century's

personality.

Of course, it is very lamentable. _Otium divos_--the rebel, like the

storm-swept sailor, cries to heaven for tranquillity. It is not the

hardened warrior, but only the elegant writer who, having never seen

bloodshed, clamours to shed blood. All rebels long for a peace in which

it would be possible to acquiesce, while they cultivated their minds and

their gardens, employing the shining hour upon industry and intellectual

pursuits. "I can say in the presence of God," cried Cromwell, in the

last of his speeches, "I can say in the presence of God, in comparison

with whom we are but poor creeping ants upon the earth,--I would have

been glad to have lived under my woodside, to have kept a flock of

sheep, rather than undertaken such a Government as this." Every rebel is

a Quietist at heart, seeking peace and ensuing it, willing to let the

stream of time glide past without his stir, dreading the onset of

indignation's claws, stopping his ears to the trumpet-call of action,

and always tempted to leave vengeance to Him who has promised to repay.

If reason alone were his guide, undisturbed by rage he would enjoy such

pleasure as he could clutch, or sit like a Fakir in blissful isolation,

contemplating the aspect of eternity under which the difference between

a mouse and a man becomes imperceptible. But the age has grown a skin

too sensitive for such happiness. "For myself," said Goethe, in a

passage I quote again later in this book, "For myself, I am happy

enough. Joy comes streaming in upon me from every side. Only, for

others, I am not happy." So it is that the Hound of another's Hell gives

us no rest, and we are pursued by Furies not our own.

In spite of the longing for tranquillity, then, we cannot confidently

hope that rebellion will be less the characteristic of the present

generation than of the past. It is true, we are told that, in this

country at all events, the necessity for active and political rebellion

is past. However much a man may detest the Government, he is now, in a

sense, governed with his own consent, since he is free to persuade his

fellow-citizens that the Government is detestable, and, as far as his

vote goes, to dismiss his paid servants in the Ministry and to appoint

others. Such securities for freedom are thought to have made active and

political rebellion obsolete. This appears to be proved even by the

increasingly rebellious movement among women, as unenfranchised people,

excluded from citizenship and governed without consent. For women are in

rebellion only because they possess none of those securities, and the

moment that the securities are ensured them, their rebellion ceases. It

has only arisen because they are compelled to pay for the upkeep of the

State (including the upkeep of the statesmen) and to obey laws which

interfere increasingly more and more with their daily life, while they

are allowed no voice in the expenditure or the legislation. Whence have

originated, not only tangible and obvious hardships, but those feelings

of degradation, as of beings excluded from privileges owing to some

inferiority supposed inherent--those feelings of subjection, impotence,

and degradation which, more even than actual hardships, kindle the

spirit to the white-hot point of rebellion.

This democratic rising against a masculine oligarchy ceases when the

cause is removed, and the cause is simple. Similarly, the revolts of

nationalism against Imperial power, though the motives are more

complicated, usually cease at the concession of self-government. But

even if these political and fairly simple motives to rebellion are

likely soon to become obsolete in our country and Empire, other and

vaguer rebellious forms, neither nationalist nor directly political,

appear to stand close in front of us, and no one is yet sure what line

of action they will follow. Their line of action is still obscure,

though both England and Europe have felt the touch of general or

sympathetic strikes, and of "sabotage," or wilful destruction of

property rather than life--the method advocated by Syndicalists and

Suffragettes to rouse the sleepy world from indifference to their

wrongs. In this collection of essays, contributed during the last year

or two, as occasion arose, to the _Nation_ and other periodicals, I have

included some descriptions of the causes likely to incite people to

rebellion of this kind. Such causes, I mean, as the inequality that

comes from poverty alone--the physical unfitness or lack of mental

opportunity that is due only to poverty. Those things make happiness

impossible, for they frustrate the active exercise of vital powers, and

give life no scope. During a generation or so, people have looked to the

Government to mitigate the oppression of poverty, but some different

appeal now seems probable. For many despair of the goodwill or the power

of the State, finding little in it but hurried politicians, inhuman

officials, and the "experts" who docket and label the poor for

"institutional treatment," with results shown in my example of a

workhouse school.

The troubling and persistent alarum of rebellion calls from many sides,

and as instances of its call I have introduced mention of various

rebels, whether against authority or custom. I have once or twice

ventured also into those twilit regions where the spirit itself stands

rebellious against its limits, and questions even the ultimate insane

triumph of flesh and circumstance, closing its short-lived interlude.

The rebellion may appear to be vain, but when we consider the primitive

elements of life from which our paragon of animals has ascended, the

mere attempt at rebellion is more astonishing than the greatest recorded

miracle, and since man has grown to think that he possesses a soul,

there is no knowing what he may come to.

I have added a few other scenes from old times and new, just for

variety, or just to remind ourselves that, in the midst of all chaos and

perturbation and rage, it is possible for the world to go upon its way,

preserving, in spite of all, its most excellent gift of sanity.