view of the state than the State Socialists. The official Labour
Politician would be the first to say in theory that punishment must not
be a moral recompense, but merely a social regulation. And he would be
the first to say in practice that it is the poor and ignorant who must
be regulated. Doubtless it is one thing to be regulated and another to
be tortured. But when once the principle is admitted broadly, the
progress towards torture may proceed pretty briskly. In the
psychological sphere, it is already as bad as it has ever been. It may
come as a surprise to the humanitarian to learn it; but it is none the
less true, that a mother may undergo moral torture in the last degree,
when her children are taken from her by brute force. And that incident
has become so common in the policing of the poor nowadays as hardly to
call for notice. And that example is particularly relevant to the
present argument. Nobody could pretend that the affectionate mother of a
rather backward child _deserves_ to be punished by having all the
happiness taken out of her life. But anybody can pretend that the act is
needed for the happiness of the community. Nobody will say it was so
wicked of her to love her baby that she deserves to lose it. But it is
always easy to say that some remote social purpose will be served by
taking it away. Thus the elimination of punishment means the extension
of tyranny. Men would not do things so oppressive so long as they were
vindictive. It is only when punishment is purged of vengeance that it
can be as villainous as that.
For that matter, it would be easy to find examples much nearer than this
one to the torturing of the Roman slaves. There is a very close parallel
in the Third Degree, as applied by the police to the criminal class on
suspicion, especially in America; for the criminal class is a submerged
class like the slaves; and it is but an experiment on the nerves in one
way instead of another, like a preference for the rack rather than the
thumbscrew. But the point is that it is applied to the criminal type
without any proof that it is in this case criminal; and the thing is
justified not by the criminality of the individual but by the needs of
the State. The police would answer exactly as the pagans answered: “We
are not punishing the crime; we are protecting the community.”
This tyranny is spreading. And there is no hope for liberty or democracy
until we all demand again, with a tongue of thunder, the right to be
blamed. We shall never feel like free men until we assert again our
sacred claim to be punished. The denunciation of a man for what he chose
to do is itself the confession that he chose to do it; and it is beneath
his dignity to admit that he could have done nothing else. The only
alternative theory is that we can do nothing but what we do, and our
rulers can do anything whatever to restrain us. Compared with that, it
would be better that roaring mobs should rise all over England,
uproariously demanding to be hanged.
A Defence of Dramatic Unities
Injustice is done to the old classical rules of artistic criticism,
because we do not treat them as artistic criticism. We first turn them
into police regulations, and then complain of them for being so. But I
suspect, with the submission proper to ignorance, that the art canons of
Aristotle and others were much more generally artistic, in the sense of
atmospheric. We allow a romantic critic to be as dogmatic as Ruskin, and
still feel that he is not really being so despotic as Boileau. If a
modern, like Maeterlinck, says that all drama is in an open door at the
end of an empty passage, we do not take it literally, like a notice
requiring an extra exit in case of fire. But if an ancient, like Horace,
says that all drama demands a closed door, which shall hide Medea while
she murders her children, then we do receive it as something rigid and
formal, like the order to close the shutters on Zeppelin nights. Now how
far the classical critics took their rules absolutely I do not know. But
I am substantially sure that there is a true instinct at the back of
them, whatever exceptions be allowed at the edges. The unities of time
and place, that is the idea of keeping figures and events within the
frame of a few hours or a few yards, is naturally derided as a specially
artificial affront to the intellect. But I am sure it is especially
true suggestion to the imagination. It is exactly in the artistic
atmosphere, where rules and reasons are so hard to define, that this
unification would be most easy to defend. This limitation to a few
scenes and actors really has something in it that pleases the
imagination and not the reason. There are instances in which it may be
broken boldly; there are types of art to which it does not apply at all.
But wherever it can be satisfied, something not superficial but rather
subconscious is satisfied. Something re-visits us that is the strange
soul of single places; the shadow of haunting ghosts or of household
gods. Like all such things, it is indescribable when it is successful:
it is easier to describe the disregard of it as unsuccessful. Thus
Stevenson’s masterpiece, “The Master of Ballantrae,” always seems to me
to fall into two parts, the finer which revolves round Durisdeer and the
inferior which rambles through India and America. The slender and
sinister figure in black, standing on the shore or vanishing from the
shrubbery, does really seem to have come from the ends of the earth. In
the chapters of travel he only serves to show that, for a boy’s
adventure tale, a good villain makes a bad hero. And even about Hamlet I
am so heretical as to be almost classical; I doubt whether the exile in
England does not rather dwarf than dignify the prisoner of Denmark. I am
not sure that he got anything out of the pirates he could not have got
out of the players. And I am very sure indeed that this figure in black,
like the other, produces a true though intangible effect of tragedy
when, and because, we see him against the great grey background of the
house of his fathers. In a word, it is what Mr. J. B. Yeats, the poet’s
stimulating parent, calls in his excellent book of essays “the drama of
the home.” The drama is domestic, and is dramatic because it is
domestic.
We might say that superior literature is centripetal, while inferior
literature is centrifugal. But oddly enough, the same truth may be found
by studying inferior as well as superior literature. What is true of a
Shakespearian play is equally true of a shilling shocker. The shocker is
at its worst when it wanders and escapes through new scenes and new
characters. The shocker is at its best when it shocks by something
familiar; a figure or fact that is already known though not understood.
A good detective story also can keep the classic unities; or otherwise
play the game. I for one devour detective stories; I am delighted when
the dagger of the curate is found to be the final clue to the death of
the vicar. But there is a point of honour for the author; he may conceal
the curate’s crime, but he must not conceal the curate. I feel I am
cheated when the last chapter hints for the first time that the vicar
had a curate. I am annoyed when a curate, who is a total stranger to me,
is produced from a cupboard or a box in a style at once abrupt and
belated. I am annoyed most of all when the new curate is only the tool
of a terrible secret society ramifying from Moscow or Thibet. These
cosmopolitan complications are the dull and not the dramatic element in
the ingenious tales of Mr. Oppenheim or Mr. Le Queux. They entirely
spoil the fine domesticity of a good murder. It is unsportsmanlike to
call spies from the end of the earth, as it is to call spirits from the
vasty deep, in a story that does not imply them from the start. And this
because the supply is infinite; and the infinite, as Coventry Patmore
well said, is generally alien to art. Everybody knows that the universe
contains enough spies or enough spectres to kill the most healthy and
vigorous vicar. The drama of detection is in discovering how he can be
killed decently and economically, within the classic unities of time and
place.
In short, the good mystery story should narrow its circles like an eagle
about to swoop. The spiral should curve inwards and not outwards. And
this inward movement is in true poetic mysteries as well as mere police
mystifications. It will be assumed that I am joking if I say there is a
serious social meaning in this novel-reader’s notion of keeping a crime
in the family. It must seem mere nonsense to find a moral in this fancy,
about washing gory linen at home. It will naturally be asked whether I
have idealized the home merely as a good place for assassinations. I
have not; any more than I have idealized the Church as a thing in which
the curates can kill the vicars. Nevertheless the thing, like many
things, is symbolic though it is not serious. And the objection to it
implies a subtle misunderstanding, in many minds, of the whole case for
the home as I have sometimes had occasion to urge it. When we defend the
family we do not mean it is always a peaceful family; when we maintain
the thesis of marriage we do not mean that it is always a happy
marriage. We mean that it is the theatre of the spiritual drama, the
place where things happen, especially the things that matter. It is not
so much the place where a man kills his wife as the place where he can
take the equally sensational step of not killing his wife. There is
truth in the cynicism that calls marriage a trial; but even the cynic
will admit that a trial may end in an acquittal. And the reason that
the family has this central and crucial character is the same reason
that makes it in politics the only prop of liberty. The family is the
test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man
makes for himself and by himself. Other institutions must largely be
made for him by strangers, whether the institutions be despotic or
democratic. There is no other way of organizing mankind which can give
this power and dignity, not only to mankind but to men. If anybody likes
to put it so, we cannot really make all men democrats unless we make all
men despots. That is to say, the co-operation of the commonwealth will
be a mere automatic unanimity like that of insects, unless the citizen
has some province of purely voluntary action; unless he is so far not
only a citizen but a king. In the world of ethics this is called
liberty; in the world of economics it is called property, and in the
world of æsthetics, necessarily so much more dim and indefinable, it is
darkly adumbrated in the old dramatic unities of place or time. It must
indeed be a mistake in any case to treat such artistic rules as rigidly
as if they were moral rules. It was an error if they ever were so
treated; it may well be a question whether they were ever meant to be so
treated. But when critics have suggested that these classical canons
were a mere superficial varnish, it may safely be said that it is the
critics who are superficial. Modern artists would have been wiser if
they had developed sympathetically some of the Aristotelian æsthetics,
as mediæval philosophers developed sympathetically the Aristotelian
logic and ethics. For a more subtle study of the unities of time and
place, for example, as outlined for the Greek drama, might have led us
towards what is perhaps the last secret of all legend and literature.
It might have suggested why poets, pagan or not, returned perpetually to
the idea of happiness as a place for humanity as a person. It might
suggest why the world is always seeking for absolutes that are not
abstractions; why fairyland was always a land, and even the Superman was
almost a man.
The Boredom of Butterflies
There is one thing which critics perhaps tend to forget when they
complain that Mr. H. G. Wells no longer concerns himself with telling a
story. It is that nobody else could interest and excite us so much
without telling a story. It is possible to read one of his recent novels
almost without knowing the story at all. It is possible to dip into it
as into a book of essays, and pick up opinions here and there. But all
the essays are brilliant essays, and all the opinions are striking
opinions. It does not much matter who holds the opinions; it is possible
that the author does not hold them at all, and pretty certain that he
will not hold them long. But nobody else could make such splendid stuff
out of the very refuse of his rejected opinions. Seen from this side,
even what is called his failure must be recognized as a remarkable
success. The personal story may fade away, but it is something of an
achievement to be still interesting after becoming impersonal; like the
achievement of the Cheshire cat who could grin when he was no longer
there. Moreover, these impersonal and even irresponsible opinions of Mr.
Wells, though never conclusive, are always suggestive; each is a good
starting-point for thought, if only for the thought that refutes it. In
short, the critics of Mr. Wells rather exaggerate the danger of his
story running to speculation, as if it were merely running to seed.
Anyhow, they ought to remember that there are two meanings in running to
seed; and one of them is connected with seed-time.
I have, however, a particular reason for mentioning the matter here. I
confess there is more than one of Mr. Wells’s recent novels that I have
both read and not read. I am never quite sure that I have read all
Shakespeare or all Boswell’s Johnson; because I have so long had the
habit of opening them anywhere. So I have opened the works of Mr. Wells
anywhere, and had great fun out of the essays that would have seemed
only long parentheses in the story. But, on getting to rather closer
grips with the last of his stories, “The Secret Places of the Heart,” I
think I have caught a glimpse of a difficulty in this sort of narrative
which is something deeper than mere digression. In a story like
“Pickwick” or “Tristram Shandy” digression is never disappointment. But
in this case, differing as I do from the merely hostile critics, I
cannot dispel the atmosphere of disappointment. The story seems
inconclusive in a sense beyond anything merely inconsistent; and I fancy
I can guess why.
A pedantic logician may perhaps imagine that a thing can only be
inconclusive at the conclusion. But I will boldly claim the liberty in
language of saying that this sort of thing is inconclusive from the
start. It begins inconclusive, and in that sense begins dull. The hero
begins by telling the doctor about a mutable flux of flirtation, about
his own experiments as a philanderer, always flitting like a butterfly
from flower to flower. Now, it is highly probable that the diary of a
butterfly would be very dull, even if it were only the diary of a day.
His round need be no more really amusing than a postman’s, since he has
no serious spiritual interest in any of his places of call. Now, by
starting his hero as a philosopher and also philanderer, and taking
seriously his philosophy of philandering, the author as good as tells
us, to start with, that his hero will not have any serious adventures at
all. At the beginning of the story, he practically tells us that there
will be no story. The story of a fickle man is not a story at all;
because there is no strain or resistance in it. Somebody talked about
tales with a twist; and it is certain that all tales are tales with a
tug.
All the most subtle truths of literature are to be found in legend.
There is no better test of the truth of serious fiction than the simple
truths to be found in a fairy tale or an old ballad. Now, in the whole
of folk-lore there is no such thing as free love. There is such a thing
as false love. There is also another thing, which the old ballads always
talk of as true love. But the story always turns on the keeping of a
bond or the breaking of it; and this quite apart from orthodox morality
in the matter of the marriage bond. The love may be in the strict sense
sinful, but it is never anarchical. There was quite as little freedom
for Lancelot as for Arthur; quite as little mere philandering in the
philosophy of Tristram as in the philosophy of Galahad. It may have been
unlawful love, but it certainly was not lawless love. In the old ballads
there is the triumph of true love, as in “The Bailiff’s Daughter of
Islington”; or the tragedy of true love, as in “Helen of Kirkconnel
Lea”; or the tragedy of false love, as in the ballad of “Oh waly, waly
up the bank.” But there is neither triumph nor tragedy in the idea of
_avowedly_ transient love; and no literature will ever be made out of
it, except the very lightest literature of satire. And even the satire
must be a satire on fickleness, and therefore involve an indirect ideal
of fidelity. But you cannot make any enduring literature out of love
_conscious_ that it will not endure. Even if this mutability were
working as morality, it would still be unworkable as art.
The decadents used to say that things like the marriage vow might be
very convenient for commonplace public purposes, but had no place in the
world of beauty and imagination. The truth is exactly the other way. The
truth is that if marriage had not existed it would have been necessary
for artists to invent it. The truth is that if constancy had never been
needed as a social requirement, it would still have been created out of
cloud and air as a poetical requirement. If ever monogamy is abandoned
in practice, it will linger in legend and in literature. When society is
haunted by the butterfly flitting from flower to flower, poetry will
still be describing the desire of the moth for the star; and it will be
a fixed star. Literature must always revolve round loyalties; for a
rudimentary psychological reason, which is simply the nature of
narrative. You cannot tell a _story_ without the idea of pursuing a
purpose and sticking to a point. You cannot tell a story without the
idea of the Quest, the idea of the Vow; even if it be only the idea of
the Wager.
Perhaps the most modern equivalent to the man who makes a vow is the man
who makes a bet. But he must not hedge on a bet; still less must he
welsh, or do a bolt when he has made a bet. Even if the story ends with
his doing so, the dramatic emotion depends on our realizing the
dishonesty of his doing so. That is, the drama depends on the keeping or
breaking of a bond, if it be only a bet. A man wandering about a
race-course, making bets that nobody took seriously, would be merely a
bore. And so the hero wandering through a novel, making vows of love
that nobody took seriously, is merely a bore. The point here is not so
much that morally it cannot be a creditable story, but that artistically
it cannot be a story at all. Art is born when the temporary touches the
eternal; the shock of beauty is when the irresistible force hits the
immovable post.
Thus in the last novel of Mr. Wells, what is inconclusive in the second
part is largely due to what is convincing in the first part. By the time
that the hero meets his new heroine on Salisbury Plain, he has seriously
convinced us that there is nothing heroic about him, and that nothing
heroic will happen to him; at any rate in that department. He
disenchants the enchantment beforehand, and warns the reader against
even a momentary illusion. When once a man looks forward as well as
backward to disillusionment, no romance can be made of him.
Profligacy may be made romantic, precisely because it implies some
betrayal or breaking of a law. But polygamy is not in the least
romantic. Polygamy is dull to the point of respectability. When a man
looks forward to a number of wives as he does to a number of cigarettes,
you can no more make a book out of them than out of the bills from his
tobacconist. Anything having the character of a Turkish harem has also
something of the character of a Turkey carpet. It is not a portrait, or
even a picture, but a pattern. We may at the moment be looking at one
highly coloured and even flamboyant figure in the carpet; but we know
that on every side, in front as well as behind, the image is repeated
without purpose and without finality.
The Terror of a Toy
It would be too high and hopeful a compliment to say that the world is
becoming absolutely babyish. For its chief weak-mindedness is an
inability to appreciate the intelligence of babies. On every side we
hear whispers and warnings that would have appeared half-witted to the
Wise Men of Gotham. Only this Christmas I was told in a toy-shop that
not so many bows and arrows were being made for little boys; because
they were considered dangerous. It might in some circumstances be
dangerous to have a little bow. It is always dangerous to have a little
boy. But no other society, claiming to be sane, would have dreamed of
supposing that you could abolish all bows unless you could abolish all
boys. With the merits of the latter reform I will not deal here. There
is a great deal to be said for such a course; and perhaps we shall soon
have an opportunity of considering it. For the modern mind seems quite
incapable of distinguishing between the means and the end, between the
organ and the disease, between the use and the abuse; and would
doubtless break the boy along with the bow, as it empties out the baby
with the bath.
But let us, by way of a little study in this mournful state of things,
consider this case of the dangerous toy. Now the first and most
self-evident truth is that, of all the things a child sees and touches,
the most dangerous toy is about the least dangerous thing. There is
hardly a single domestic utensil that is not much more dangerous than a
little bow and arrows. He can burn himself in the fire, he can boil
himself in the bath, he can cut his throat with the carving-knife, he
can scald himself with the kettle, he can choke himself with anything
small enough, he can break his neck off anything high enough. He moves
all day long amid a murderous machinery, as capable of killing and
maiming as the wheels of the most frightful factory. He plays all day in
a house fitted up with engines of torture like the Spanish Inquisition.
And while he thus dances in the shadow of death, he is to be saved from
all the perils of possessing a piece of string, tied to a bent bough or
twig. When he is a little boy it generally takes him some time even to
learn how to hold the bow. When he does hold it, he is delighted if the
arrow flutters for a few yards like a feather or an autumn leaf. But
even if he grows a little older and more skilful, and has yet not
learned to despise arrows in favour of aeroplanes, the amount of damage
he could conceivably do with his little arrows would be about
one-hundredth part of the damage that he could always in any case have
done by simply picking up a stone in the garden.