THE MORAL AIM IN FICTION.
The producers of modern fiction, who have acquiesced more or less
completely in the theory of art for art's sake, are not, perhaps, aware
that a large class of persons still exist who hold fiction to be
unjustifiable, save in so far as the author has it at heart not only
(or chiefly) to adorn the tale, but also (and first of all) to point
the moral. The novelist, in other words, should so mould the characters
and shape the plot of his imaginary drama as to vindicate the wisdom
and integrity of the Decalogue: if he fail to do this, or if he do the
opposite of this, he deserves not the countenance of virtuous and
God-fearing persons.
Doubtless it should be evident to every sane and impartial mind,
whether orthodox or agnostic, that an art which runs counter to the
designs of God toward the human race, or to the growth of the sentiment
of universal human brotherhood, must sooner or later topple down from
its fantastic and hollow foundation. "Hitch your wagon to a star," says
Emerson; "do not lie and steal: no god will help." And although, for
the sake of his own private interests of the moment, a man will
occasionally violate the moral law, yet, with mankind at large, the
necessity of vindicating the superior advantages of right over wrong is
acknowledged not only in the interests of civilized society, but
because we feel that, however hostile "goodness" may seem to be to my
or your personal and temporary aims, it still remains the only
wholesome and handsome choice for the race at large: and therefore do
we, as a race, refuse to tolerate--on no matter how plausible an
artistic plea--any view of human life which either professes
indifference to this universal sentiment, or perversely challenges it.
The true ground of dispute, then, does not lie here. The art which can
stoop to be "procuress to the lords of hell," is art no longer. But, on
the other hand, it would be difficult to point to any great work of
art, generally acknowledged to be such, which explicitly concerns
itself with the vindication of any specific moral doctrine. The story
in which the virtuous are rewarded for their virtue, and the evil
punished for their wickedness, fails, somehow, to enlist our full
sympathy; it falls flatly on the ear of the mind; it does not stimulate
thought. It does not satisfy; we fancy that something still remains to
be said, or, if this be all, then it was hardly worth saying. The real
record of life--its terror, its beauty, its pathos, its depth--seems to
have been missed. We may admit that the tale is in harmony with what we
have been taught ought to happen; but the lessons of our private
experience have not authenticated our moral formulas; we have seen the
evil exalted and the good brought low; and we inevitably desire that
our "fiction" shall tell us, not what ought to happen, but what, as a
matter of fact, does happen. To put this a little differently: we feel
that the God of the orthodox moralist is not the God of human nature.
He is nothing but the moralist himself in a highly sublimated state,
but betraying, in spite of that sublimation, a fatal savor of human
personality. The conviction that any man--George Washington, let us
say--is a morally unexceptionable man, does not in the least reconcile
us to the idea of God being an indefinitely exalted counterpart of
Washington. Such a God would be "most tolerable, and not to be
endured"; and the more exalted he was, the less endurable would he be.
In short, man instinctively refuses to regard the literal inculcation
of the Decalogue as the final word of God to the human race, and much
less to the individuals of that race; and when he finds a story-teller
proceeding upon the contrary assumption, he is apt to put that
story-teller down as either an ass or a humbug.
As for art--if the reader happen to be competent to form an opinion on
that phase of the matter--he will generally find that the art dwindles
in direct proportion as the moralized deity expatiates; in fact, that
they are incompatible. And he will also confess (if he have the courage
of his opinions) that, as between moralized deity and true art, his
choice is heartily and unreservedly for the latter.
I do not apprehend that the above remarks, fairly interpreted, will
encounter serious opposition from either party to the discussion; and
yet, so far as I am aware, neither party has as yet availed himself of
the light which the conclusion throws upon the nature of art itself. It
should be obvious, however, that upon a true definition of art the
whole argument must ultimately hinge: for we can neither deny that art
exists, nor affirm that it can exist inconsistently with a recognition
of a divinely beneficent purpose in creation. It must, therefore, in
some way be an expression or reflection of that purpose. But in what
does the purpose in question essentially consist?
Broadly speaking--for it would be impossible within the present limits
to attempt a full analysis of the subject--it may be considered as a
gradual and progressive Purification, not of this or that particular
individual in contradistinction to his fellows, but of human nature as
an entirety. The evil into which all men are born, and of which the
Decalogue, or conscience, makes us aware, is not an evil voluntarily
contracted on our part, but is inevitable to us as the creation of a
truly infinite love and wisdom. It is, in fact, our characteristic
nature as animals: and it is only because we are not only animal, but
also and above all human, that we are enabled to recognize it as evil
instead of good. We absolve the cat, the dog, the wolf, and the lion
from any moral responsibility for their deeds, because we feel them to
be deficient in conscience, which, is our own divinely bestowed gift
and privilege, and which has been defined as the spirit of God in the
created nature, seeking to become the creature's own spirit. Now, the
power to correct this evil does not abide in us as individuals, nor
will a literal adherence to the moral law avail to purify any mother's
son of us. Conscience always says "Do not,"--never "Do"; and obedience
to it neither can give us a personal claim on God's favor nor was it
intended to do so: its true function is to keep us innocent, so that we
may not individually obstruct the accomplishment of the divine ends
toward us as a race. Our nature not being the private possession of any
one of us, but the impersonal substratum of us all, it follows that it
cannot be redeemed piecemeal, but only as a whole; and, manifestly, the
only Being capable of effecting such redemption is not Peter, or Paul,
or George Washington, or any other atomic exponent of that nature, be
he who he may; but He alone whose infinitude is the complement of our
finiteness, and whose gradual descent into human nature (figured in
Scripture under the symbol of the Incarnation) is even now being
accomplished--as any one may perceive who reads aright the progressive
enlightenment of conscience and intellect which history, through many
vicissitudes, displays. We find, therefore, that art is, essentially,
the imaginative expression of a divine life in man. Art depends for its
worth and veracity, not upon its adherence to literal fact, but upon
its perception and portrayal of the underlying truth, of which fact is
but the phenomenal and imperfect shadow. And it can have nothing to do
with personal vice or virtue, in the way either of condemning the one
or vindicating the other; it can only treat them as elements in its
picture--as factors in human destiny. For the notion commonly
entertained that the practice of virtue gives us a claim upon the
Divine Exchequer (so to speak), and the habit of acting virtuously for
the sake of maintaining our credit in society, and ensuring our
prosperity in the next world,--in so thinking and acting we
misapprehend the true inwardness of the matter. To cultivate virtue
because its pays, no matter what the sort of coin in which payment is
looked for, is to be the victims of a lamentable delusion. For such
virtue makes each man jealous of his neighbor; whereas the aim of
Providence is to bring about the broadest human fellowship. A man's
physical body separates him from other men; and this fact disposes him
to the error that his nature is also a separate possession, and that he
can only be "good" by denying himself. But the only goodness that is
really good is a spontaneous and impersonal evolution, and this occurs,
not where self-denial has been practised, but only where a man feels
himself to be absolutely on the same level of desert or non-desert as
are the mass of his fellow-creatures. There is no use in obeying the
commandments, unless it be done, not to make one's self more deserving
than another of God's approbation, but out of love for goodness and
truth in themselves, apart from any personal considerations. The
difference between true religion and formal religion is that the first
leads us to abandon all personal claims to salvation, and to care only
for the salvation of humanity as a whole; whereas the latter stimulates
is to practise outward self-denial, in order that our real self may be
exalted. Such self-denial results not in humility, but in spiritual
pride.
In no other way than this, it seems to me, can art and morality be
brought into harmony. Art bears witness to the presence in us of
something purer and loftier than anything of which we can be
individually conscious. Its complete expression we call inspiration;
and he who is the subject of the inspiration can account no better than
any one else for the result which art accomplishes through him. The
perfect poem is found, not made; the mind which utters it did not
invent it. Art takes all nature and all knowledge for her province; but
she does not leave it as she found it; by the divine necessity that is
upon her, she breathes a soul into her materials, and organizes chaos
into form. But never, under any circumstances, does she deign to
minister to our selfish personal hope or greed. She shows us how to
love our neighbor, never ourselves. Shakspeare, Homer, Phidias,
Raphael, were no Pharisees--at least in so far as they were artists;
nor did any one ever find in their works any countenance for that
inhuman assumption--"I am holier than thou!" In the world's darkest
hours, art has sometimes stood as the sole witness of the nobler life
that was in eclipse. Civilizations arise and vanish; forms of religion
hold sway and are forgotten; learning and science advance and gather
strength; but true art was as great and as beautiful three thousand
years ago as it is to-day. We are prone to confound the man with the
artist, and to suppose that he is artistic by possession and
inheritance, instead of exclusively by dint of what he does. No artist
worthy the name ever dreams of putting himself into his work, but only
what is infinitely distinct from and other than himself. It is not the
poet who brings forth the poem, but the poem that begets the poet; it
makes him, educates him, creates in him the poetic faculty. Those whom
we call great men, the heroes of history, are but the organs of great
crises and opportunities: as Emerson has said, they are the most
indebted men. In themselves they are not great; there is no ratio
between their achievements and them. Our judgment is misled; we do not
discriminate between the divine purpose and the human instrument. When
we listen to Napoleon fretting his soul away at Elba, or to Carlyle
wrangling with his wife at Chelsea, we are shocked at the discrepancy
between the lofty public performance and the petty domestic
shortcoming. Yet we do wrong to blame them; the nature of which they
are examples is the same nature that is shared also by the publican and
the sinner.
Instead, therefore, of saying that art should be moral, we should
rather say that all true morality is art--that art is the test of
morality. To attempt to make this heavenly Pegasus draw the sordid
plough of our selfish moralistic prejudices is a grotesque subversion
of true order. Why should the novelist make believe that the wicked are
punished and the good are rewarded in this world? Does he not know, on
the contrary, that whatsoever is basest in our common life tends
irresistibly to the highest places, and that the selfish element in our
nature is on the side of public order? Evil is at present a more
efficient instrument of order (because an interested one) than good;
and the novelist who makes this appear will do a far greater and more
lasting benefit to humanity than he who follows the cut-and-dried
artificial programme of bestowing crowns on the saint and whips of
scorpions on the sinner.
As a matter of fact, I repeat, the best influences of the best
literature have never been didactic, and there is no reason to believe
they ever will be. The only semblance of didacticism which can enter
into literature is that which conveys such lessons as may be learned
from sea and sky, mountain and valley, wood and stream, bird and beast;
and from the broad human life of races, nations, and firesides; a
lesson that is not obvious and superficial, but so profoundly hidden in
the creative depths as to emerge only to an apprehension equally
profound. For the chatter and affectation of sense disturb and offend
that inward spiritual ear which, in the silent recesses of meditation,
hears the prophetic murmur of the vast ocean of human nature that flows
within us and around us all.