The reign of love is passing, and the reign of power is coming again.
The day of popular democracy is nearly done. Already we are entering the
twilight, towards the night that is at hand.
Before the darkness comes, it is as well to take our directions.
It is time to enquire into the nature of power, so that we do not
crassly blunder into a new era: or fall down the gulf of anarchy, in the
dark, as we cross the borders.
We have a confused idea, that _will_ and power are somehow identical. We
think we can have a will-to-power.
A will-to-power seems to work out as bullying. And bullying is something
despicable and detestable.
Tyranny, too, which seems to us the apotheosis of power, is detestable.
It comes from our mistaken idea of power. It comes from the ancient
mistake, old as Moses, of confusing power with _will_. The _power_ of
God, and the _will_ of God, we have imagined identical. We need only
think for a moment, and we can see the vastness of difference between
the two.
The Jews, in Moses’ time, and again particularly in the time of the
Kings, came to look upon Jehovah as the apotheosis of arbitrary _will_.
This is the root of a very great deal of evil; an old, old root.
Will is no more than an attribute of the ego. It is, as it were, the
accelerator of the engine: or the instrument which increases the
pressure. A man may have a strong will, an iron will, as we say, and yet
be a stupid mechanical instrument, useful simply as an instrument,
without any _power_ at all.
An instrument, even an iron one, has no power. The power has to be put
into it. This is true of men with iron wills, just the same.
The Jews made the mistake of deifying Will, the ethical Will of God. The
Germans again made the mistake of deifying the egoistic Will of Man: the
will-to-power.
There is a certain inherent stupidity in apotheosised Will, and a
consequent inevitable inferiority in the devotees thereof. They all have
an inferiority complex.
Because power is not in the least like Will. Power comes to us, we know
not how, from beyond. Whereas our will is our own.
When a man prides himself on something that is just in himself, part of
his own ego, he falls into conceit, and conceit carries an inferiority
complex as its shadow.
If a man, or a race, or a nation is to be anything at all, he must have
the generosity to admit that his strength comes to him from beyond. It
is not his own, self-generated. It comes as electricity comes, out of
nowhere into somewhere.
It is no good trying to intellectualise about it. All attempts to argue
and intellectualise merely strangle the passages of the heart. We wish
to keep our hearts open. Therefore we brush aside argument and
intellectual haggling.
The intellect is one of the most curious instruments of the psyche. But,
like the will, it is only an instrument. And it works only under
pressure of the will.
By willing and by intellectualising we have done all we can, for the
time being. We only exhaust ourselves, and lose our lives--that is, our
livingness, our power to live--by any further straining of the will and
the intellect. It is time to take our hands off the throttle: knowing
well enough what we are about, and choosing our course of action with a
steady heart.
To take one’s hand off the throttle is not the same as to let go the
reins.
Man lives to live, and for no other reason. And life is not mere length
of days. Many people hang on, and hang on, into a corrupt old age, just
because they have _not_ lived, and therefore cannot let go.
We must live. And to live, life must be in us. It must come to us, the
power of life, and we must not try to get a strangle-hold upon it. From
beyond comes to us the life, the power to live, and we must wisely keep
our hearts open.
But the life will not come _unless_ we live. That is the whole point.
“To him that hath shall be given.” To him that hath life shall be given
life: on condition, of course, that he lives.
And again, life does not mean length of days. Poor old Queen Victoria
had length of days. But Emily Brontë had life. She died of it.
And again “living” doesn’t mean just doing certain things: running after
women, or digging a garden, or working an engine, or becoming a member
of Parliament. Just because, for Lord Byron, to sleep with a “crowned
head” was life itself, it doesn’t follow that it will be life for _me_
to sleep with a crowned head, or even a head uncrowned. Sleeping with
heads is no joke, anyhow. And living won’t even consist in jazzing or
motoring or going to Wembley, just because most folks do it. Living
consists in doing what you really, vitally want to do: what the _life_
in you wants to do, not what your ego imagines you want to do. And to
find out _how_ the life in you wants to be lived, and to live it, is
terribly difficult. Somebody has to give us a clue.
And this is the real _exercise_ of power.
That settles two points. First, power is life rushing in to us. Second,
the exercise of power is the setting of life in motion.
And this is very far from _Will_.
If you want a dictator, whether it is Lenin, or Mussolini, or Primo de
Rivera, ask, not whether he can set money in circulation, but if he can
set life in motion, by dictating to his people.
Now, although we hate to admit it, Lenin did set life a good deal in
motion, for the Russian proletariat. The Russian proletariat was like a
child that had been kept under too much. So it was dying to be free. It
was crazy to keep house for itself.
Now, like a child, it is keeping house for itself, without Papa or Mama
to interfere. And naturally it enjoys it. For the time it’s a game.
But for us, English or American or French or German people, it would not
be a game. We have more or less kept house for ourselves for a long
time, and it’s not very thrilling after years of it.
So a Lenin wouldn’t do us any good. He wouldn’t set any life going in us
at all.
The Gallic and Latin blood isn’t thrilled about keeping house, anyhow.
It wants Glory, or else Glory. Glory on horse-back, or Glory upset. If
there was any Glory to upset, either in France or Italy or Spain, then
communism might flourish. But since there isn’t even a spark of Glory to
blow out--Alfonso! Victor Emmanuel! Poincaré!--what’s the good of
blowing?
So they set up a little harmless Glory in baggy trousers--Papa
Mussolini--or a bit of fat, self-loving but amiable elder-brother Glory
in General de Rivera: and they call it power. And the democratic world
holds up its hands, and moans: “_Dictators! Tyranny!_” While the
conservative world cheers loudly, and cries: “_The Man! The Man! El
hombre! L’uomo! L’homme! Hooray!!!_”
Bunk!
We want life. And we want the power of life. We want to feel the power
of life in ourselves.
We’re sick of being soft, and amiable, and harmless. We’re sick to death
of even enjoying ourselves. We’re a bit ashamed of our own existence. Or
if we aren’t we ought to be.
But what then? Shall we exclaim, in a fat voice: “_Aha! Power! Glory!
Force! The Man!_”--and proceed to set up a harmless Mussolini, or a fat
Rivera? Well, let us, if we want to. Only it won’t make the slightest
difference to our real living. Except it’s probably a good thing to have
the press--the newspaper press--crushed under the up-to-date rubber heel
of a tyrannous but harmless dictator.
We won’t speak of poor old Hindenburg. Except, why didn’t they set up
his wooden statue with all the nails knocked into it, for a President?
For surely they drove _something_ in, with those nails!
We had a harmless dictator, in Mr. Lloyd George. Better go ahead with
the Houses of Representatives, than have another shot in that direction.
Power! How can there be power in politics, when politics is money?
Money is power, they say. Is it? Money is to power what margarine is to
butter: a nasty substitute.
No, power is something you’ve got to respect, even revere, before you
can have it. It isn’t bossing, or bullying, hiring a manservant or
Salvationising your social inferior, issuing loud orders and getting
your own way, doing your opponent down. That isn’t power.
Power is _pouvoir_: to be able to.
Might: the ability to make: to bring about that which may-be.
And where are we to get Power, or Might, or Glory, or Honour, or Wisdom?
Out of Lloyd George, or Lenin, or Mussolini, or Rivera, or anything else
political?
Bah! It has to be in the people, before it can come out in politics.
Do we _want_ Power, Might, Glory, Honour, and Wisdom?
If we do, we’d better start to get them, each man for himself.
But if we don’t, we’d better continue our lick-spittling course of being
as happy, as happy as Kings.
“The world is so full of a number of things
We ought all to be happy, as happy as Kings.”
Which Kings, might we ask? Better be careful!
Myself I want Power. But I don’t want to boss anybody.
I want Honour. But I don’t see any existing nation or government that
could give it me.