masses _have_ direction. And it is no good trying to reason with them.
The mass does not act by reason. A mass is not even formed by reason.
The more intense or extended the _collective_ consciousness, the more
does the truly reasonable, individual consciousness sink into abeyance.
The herd instinct, for example, is of many sorts. It has two main
divisions, the fear-instinct, and the aggressive instinct. But the
vengeance instinct is not part of the herd instinct.
But consider the mode of communication of herd instinct. The
communication between the individuals in a herd is not through the
_mind_. It is not through anything said or known. It is sub-mental. It
is telepathic.
Why does a flock of birds rise suddenly from the treetops, all at once,
in one spring, and swirl round in one cloud towards the water? There was
no visible sign or communication given. It was a telepathic
communication. They sat and waited, and waited, and let the individual
mind merge into a kind of collective trance. Then click!--the unison was
complete, the knowledge or suggestion was one suggestion all through,
the action was one action.
This so-called telepathy is the clue to all herd instinct. It is not
instinct. It is a vertebral-telegraphy, like radio-telegraphy. It is a
complex interplay of vibrations from the big nerve-centres of the
vertebral system in all the individuals of the flock, till,
click!--there is a unanimity. They have one mind. And this
one-mindedness of the many-in-one will last while ever the peculiar
pitch of vertebral nerve-vibrations continues unbroken through them all.
As the vibration slacks off, the flock falls apart.
This vertebral telepathy is the true means of communication between
animals. It is perhaps most highly developed where the brain, the mental
consciousness, is smallest. Indeed the two forms of consciousness,
mental and vertebral, are mutually exclusive. The highest form of
vertebral telepathy seems to exist in the great sperm whales.
Communication between these herds of roving monsters is of marvellous
rapidity and perfection. They are lounging, feeding lazily,
individually, in mid-ocean, with no cohesion. Suddenly, a quick
thought-wave from the leader-bull, and as quick as answering thoughts
the cows and young bulls are ranged, the herd is taking its direction
with a precision little short of miraculous. Perhaps water acts as a
most perfect transmitter of vertebral telepathy.
This is the famous wisdom of the serpent, this vertebral consciousness
and telepathy. This is what makes the magic of a leader like
Napoleon--his powers of sending out intense vibrations, messages to his
men, without the exact intermediation of mental correspondence. It is
not brain-power. In fact, it is, in some ways, the very _reverse_ of
brain-power: it might be called the acme of stupidity. It is the
stupendous wits of brainless intelligence. A marvellous reversion to the
pre-mental form of consciousness.
This pre-mental form of consciousness seems most perfect in the great
whales: more even in them than in the flocks of migrating birds. After
the whales, the herds of wolves and deer and buffaloes. But it is most
_absolute_ in the cold fishes and serpents, reptiles. The fishes have no
other correspondence save this cold, vertebral vibration. And this is,
as it were, blind. The fish is absolutely stone-wall limited in its
consciousness, to itself. It knows none other. Stony, abstract, cold,
alone, the fish has still the power of radio-communication. It is a form
of telepathy, like a radium-effluence, vibrating fear principally. Fear
is the first of the actuating gods.
Then come the reptiles. They have sex, and dimly, darkly discern the
bulk of the answerer. They are drawn to contact. It is the new motive.
The fishes are never drawn to contact. Only food and fear. So in the
reptiles the second telepathic vibration, the sympathetic, is set up.
The primary consciousness is cold, the wisdom is isolated, cold,
moon-like, knowing none other: the self alone in knowledge, utterly
subtle. But then sex comes upon them, and the isolation is broken.
Another flow sets up. They must seek the answerer. It is love.
So, telepathy, communication in the vertebrates. Ants and bees too have
a one-conscious vibration. Even they have perfect ganglia-communication.
But it is enough to consider the vertebrates.
In the sperm whale, intense is the passion of amorous love, intense is
the cold exultance in power, isolate kingship. With the most intense
enveloping vibration of possessive and protective love, the great bull
encloses his herd into a oneness. And with the intensest vibration of
power he keeps it subdued in awe in fear. These are the two great
telepathic vibrations which rule all the vertebrates, man as well as
beast. Man, whether in a savage tribe or in a complex modern society, is
held in unison by these two great vibrations emitted unconsciously from
the leader, the leaders, the governing classes, the authorities. First,
the great influence of shadow of power, causing trust, fear and
obedience: second, the great influence of protective love, causing
productivity and the sense of safety. Those two powerful influences are
emitted by men like Gladstone or Abraham Lincoln, against their
knowledge, but none the less emitted. Only Gladstone and Lincoln justify
themselves in speech. And both insist on the single influence of love,
and denounce the influence of fear.
A mob occurs when men turn upon _all_ leadership. For true, living
activity the mental and the vertebral consciousness should be in
harmony. In Cæsar and Napoleon the vertebral influence of power
prevailed--and there was a break of balance, and a fall. In Lincoln and
President Wilson the vertebral influence of love got out of balance, and
there was a fall. There was no balance between the two modes of
influence: the mind ran on, as it were, without a brake, towards
absurdity. So it ran to absurdity in Napoleon.
Break the balance of the two great controlling influences, and you get,
not a simple preponderance of the one influence, but a third state, the
mob-state. This is the state when the society tribe or herd degenerates
into a mob. In man, the mind runs on with a sort of terrible automatism,
which has no true connection with the _vertebral_ consciousness. The
vertebral inter-communication gradually gathers force, apart from all
mental expression. Its vibration steadily increases till there comes a
sudden click! And then you have the strange phenomenon of revolution,
like the Russian and the French revolutions. It is a great disruptive
outburst. It is a great eruption against the classes in authority. And
it is, finally, a passionate, mindless vengeance taken by the
collective, vertebral psyche upon the authority of orthodox _mind_. In
the Russian revolution it was the _educated_ classes that were the enemy
really: the deepest inspiration the hatred of the conscious classes. But
revolution is not a mob-movement. Revolution has direction, and
leadership, however temporary. There is point to its destructive frenzy.
In the end, it is a question with us to-day whether the masses will
degenerate into mobs, or whether they will still keep a spark of
direction. All great mass uprisings are really acts of vengeance against
the dominant consciousness of the day. It is the dynamic, vertebral
consciousness in man bursting up and smashing through the fixed,
superimposed mental consciousness of mankind, which mental consciousness
has degenerated and become automatic.
The masses are always, strictly, non-mental. Their consciousness is
preponderantly vertebral. And from time to time, as some great life-idea
cools down and sets upon them like a cold crust of lava, the vertebral
powers will work below the crust, apart from the mental consciousness,
till they have come to such a heat of unison and unanimity, such a pitch
of vibration that men are reduced to a great, non-mental oneness as in
the hot-blooded whales, and then, like whales which suddenly charge upon
the ship which tortures them, so they burst upon the vessel of
civilisation. Or like whales that burst up through the ice that
suffocates them, so they will burst up through the fixed consciousness,
the congealed idea which they can now only blindly react against. At the
right moment, a certain cry, like a war-cry, a catchword, suddenly
sounds, and the movement begins.
The purest lesson our era has taught is that man, at his highest, is an
individual, single, isolate, alone, in direct soul-communication with
the unknown God, which prompts within him.
This lesson, however, puts us in danger of conceit, especially spiritual
conceit.
In his supreme being, man is alone, isolate, nakedly himself, in contact
only with the unknown God.
This is our way of expressing Nirvana.
But just as a tree is only perfect in blossom because it has groping
roots, so is man only perfected in his individual being by his groping,
pulsing unison with mankind. The unknown God is within, at the quick.
But this quick must send down roots into the great flesh of mankind.
In short, the “spirit” has got a lesson to learn: the lesson of its own
limitation. This is for the individual. And the infinite, which is Man
writ large, or Humanity, has a still bitterer lesson to learn. It is the
individual alone who can save humanity alive. But the greatest of great
individuals must have deep, throbbing roots down in the dark red soil of
the living flesh of humanity. Which is the bitter pill which Buddhists
and all advocates of pure _Spirit_ must swallow.
In short, man, even the greatest man, does not live only by his spirit
and his pure contact with the Godhead--for example, Nirvana. Blessed are
the pure in heart, Blessed are the poor in spirit. He is _forced_ to
live in vivid rapport with the mass of men. If he denies this, he cuts
his roots. He intermingles as the roots of a tree interpenetrate the
fat, rock-ribbed earth.
How? In this same vertebral correspondence. The mystic may stare at his
own navel and try to abstract himself for ever towards Nirvana: it is
half at least illusion. There is all the time a powerful, unconscious
interplay going on between the vertebral centres of consciousness in all
men, a deep, mindless current flashing and quivering through the family,
the community, the nation, the continent, and even the world. No man can
_really_ isolate himself. And this vertebral interplay is the root of
our living: must always be so.
And this vertebral interplay is subject to the laws of polarity, since
it is an intercommunion of active, polarised conscience-force. There is
a dual polarity, and a dual direction. There is the outward, or downward
pulse, in the great motion of sympathy or love, the love that goes out
to the weaker, to the poor, to the humble. The vast, prostrate mass now
becomes the positive pole of attraction: woman, the working-classes.
The whole of the great current of vertebral consciousness in mankind is
supposed, now, to run in this direction. But the whole movement is but a
polarised circuit. Insist on one direction overmuch, derange the
circuit, and you have a terrible débâcle. Which brings us to another
aspect of relativity: relativity in dynamic living.
When the flow is sympathetic, or love, then the weak, the woman, the
masses, assume the positivity. But the balance even is only kept by
stern _authority_, the unflinching obstinacy of the return-force, of
power.
When the flow is power, might, majesty, glory, then it is a culminating
flow towards one individual, through circles of aristocracy towards one
grand centre. Emperor, Pope, Tyrant, King: whatever may be. It is the
grand obeisance before a master.
In the balance of these two flows lies the secret of human stability. In
the absolute triumph of either flow lies the immediate surety of
collapse.
We have gone very far in the first direction. Democracy has _almost_
triumphed. The only real master left is the boss in industry. And he is
to be dethroned. Labour is to wear the absolute crown of the everyday
hat. Even the top hat is doomed. Labour shall be its own boss, and
possess its own means and ends. The serpent shall swallow itself in a
last gulp.
Mastership is based on possessions. To kill mastership you must have
communal ownership. Then have it, for this superiority based on
possession of money is worse than any of the pretensions of Labour or
Bolshevism, strictly. Let the serpent swallow itself. Then we can have a
new snake.
The moment Labour takes upon itself to be its own boss, the whole show
is up, the end has begun. While ever the existing boss succeeds in
hanging on to his money-capital, we get the present conditions of
nullity and nagging. We’re between the devil and a deep sea.
What Richard wanted was some sort of a new show: a new recognition of
the life-mystery, a departure from the dreariness of money-making,
money-having, and money-spending. It meant a new recognition of
difference, of highness and of lowness, of one man meet for service and
another man clean with glory, having majesty in himself, the innate
majesty of the purest _individual_, not the strongest instrument, like
Napoleon. Not the tuppenny trick-majesty of Kaisers. But the true
majesty of the single soul which has all its own weaknesses, but its
strength in spite of them, its own lovableness, as well as its might and
dread. The single soul that stands naked between the dark God and the
dark-blooded masses of men. “Now, Kangaroo,” said Richard, “is in a
false position. He wants to save property for the property owners, and
he wants to save Labour from itself and from the capitalist and the
politician and all. In fact, he wants to save everything as we have it,
and it can’t be done. You can’t eat your cake and have it, and I prefer
Willie Struthers. Bolshevism is at least not sentimental. It’s a last
step towards an end, a hopeless end. But better disaster than an
equivocal nothingness, like the present. Kangaroo wants to be God
Himself, and save everybody, which is just irritating, at last. Kangaroo
as God Himself, with a kind marsupial belly, is worse than Struthers’
absolute of the People. Though it’s a choice of evils, and I choose
neither. I choose the Lord Almighty.”
Having made up his mind so far, Richard came up to the big mass meeting
of Labour in the great Canberra Hall, in Sydney. The Labour leaders had
lost much ground. Labour was slipping into disorganization: the
property-owning Conservatives and Liberals were just beginning to
rejoice again. The reduction of the basic wage had been brought about, a
further reduction was announced. At the same time the Government was
aiming a strong blow at the Unions. It had pronounced the right of every
man to work as he himself chose, and the right of employers to agree
with non-union workers as to rate of wages. It had further announced its
determination to protect the non-union worker, by holding the union
responsible for any attacks on non-union men. The leaders of a union
were to be arrested and held responsible for attacks on non-workers. In
case of bloodshed and death, they were to be tried for manslaughter or
for murder. The first to be arrested should be the chief of the union
concerned. After him, his immediate subordinates.
Now the sword was drawn, and Labour was up in arms. Meetings were held
every day. A special meeting was announced at Canberra Hall, admission
by ticket. Somers had asked Jaz if he could get him a ticket, and Jaz
had succeeded. There were two meetings: one, a small gathering for
discussion, at half-past eight in the morning; the other, the mass
meeting, at seven at night.
Richard got up in the dark, to catch the six o’clock train to Sydney. It
was a dark, cloudy morning--night still--and a few frogs still were
rattling away in a hollow towards the sea, like a weird little factory
of machines whirring and trilling and screeching in the dark. At the
station some miners were filling their tin bottles at the water-tap:
pale and extinguished-looking men.
Dawn began to break over the sea, in a bluey-green rift between clouds.
There seemed to be rain. The journey was endless.
In Sydney it was raining, but Richard did not notice. He hurried to the
hall to the meeting. It lasted only half an hour, but it was
straightforward and sensible. When Richard heard the men among
themselves, he realised how _logical_ their position was, in pure
philosophy.
He came out with Jaz, whom he had not seen for a long time. Jaz looked
rather pale, and he was very silent, brooding.
“Your sympathy is with Labour, Jaz?”
“My sympathy is with various people, Mr Somers,” replied Jaz,
non-communicative.
It was no use talking to him: he was too much immersed.
The morning was very rainy, and Sydney, big city as it is, a real
metropolis in Pitt Street and George Street, seemed again like a
settlement in the wilderness, without any core. One of the great cities
of the world. But without a core: unless, perhaps, Canberra Hall were
its real centre. Everybody very friendly and nice. The friendliest
country in the world: in some ways, the gentlest. But without a core.
There was no heart in it all, it seemed hollow.
With mid-day came the sun and the clear sky: a wonderful clear sky and a
hot, hot sun. Richard bought sandwiches and a piece of apple turnover,
and went into the Palace Gardens to eat them, so that he need not sit in
a restaurant. He loathed the promiscuity and publicity of even the good
restaurants. The promiscuous feeding gave him a feeling of disgust. So
he walked down the beautiful slope to the water again, and sat on a seat
by himself, near a clump of strange palm-trees that made a weird noise
in the breeze. The water was blue and dancing: and again he felt as if
the harbour were wild, lost and undiscovered, as it was in Captain
Cook’s time. The city wasn’t real.
In front in the small blue bay lay two little war-ships, pale grey, with
the white flag having the Union Jack in one corner floating behind. And
one boat had the Australian flag, with the five stars on a red field.
They lay quite still, and seemed as lost as everything else, rusting
into the water. Nothing seemed to keep its positive reality, this
morning in the strong sun after the rain. The two ships were like bits
of palpable memory, that persisted, but were only memory images.
Two tiny birds, one brown, one with a sky-blue patch on his head, like a
dab of sky, fluttered and strutted, hoisting their long tails at an
absurd angle. They were real: the absurd, sharp, unafraid creatures.
They seemed to have no deep natural fear, as creatures in Europe have.
Again and again Somers had felt this in Australia: the creatures had no
sense of fear as in Europe. There was no animal fear in the air, as
there is so deeply in India. Only sometimes a grey metaphysical dread.
“Perhaps,” thought he to himself, “this is really the country where men
might live in a sort of harmless Eden, once they have settled the old
Adam in themselves.”
He wandered the hot streets, walked round the circular quay and saw the
women going to the ferries. So many women, _almost_ elegant. Yet their
elegance provincial, without pride, awful. So many _almost_ beautiful
women. When they were in repose, quite beautiful, with pure, wistful
faces, and some nobility of expression. Then, see them change
countenance, and it seemed almost always a grimace of ugliness. Hear
them speak, and it was startling, so ugly. Once in motion they were not
beautiful. Still, when their features were immobile, they were lovely.
Richard had noticed this in many cases. And they were like the birds,
quite without fear, impudent, perky, with a strange spasmodic
self-satisfaction. Almost every one of the younger women walked as if
she thought she was sexually trailing every man in the street after her.
And that was absurd, too, because the men seemed more often than not to
hurry away and leave a blank space between them and these women. But it
made no matter: like mad-women the females, in their quasi-elegance,
pranced with that prance of crazy triumph in their own sexual powers
which left little Richard flabbergasted.
Hot, big, free-and-easy streets of Sydney: without any sense of an
imposition of _control_. No control, everybody going his own ways with
alert harmlessness. On the pavement the foot-passengers walked in two
divided streams, keeping to the left, and by their unanimity made it
impossible for you to wander and look at the shops, if the shops
happened to be on your right. The stream of foot passengers flowed over
you.
And so it was: far more regulated than London, yet all with a curious
exhilaration of voluntariness that oppressed Richard like a madness. No
control, and no opposition to control. Policemen were cyphers, not
noticeable. Every man his own policeman. The terrible lift of the
_harmless_ crowd. The strange relief from all superimposed control. One
feels the police, for example, in London, and their civic majesty of
authority. But in Sydney no majesty of authority at all. Absolute
freedom from all that. Great freedom in the air. Yet, if you got into
the wrong stream on the pavement you felt they’d tread you down, almost
unseeing. You just _mustn’t_ get in the wrong stream--Liberty!
Yes--the strange unanimity of _harmlessness_ in the crowd had a half
paralysing effect on Richard. “Can it be?” he said to himself, as he
drifted in the strong sun-warmth of the world after rain, in the
afternoon of this strange, antipodal city. “Can it be that there is any
harm in these people at all?”
They were quick, and their manners were, in a free way, natural and
kindly. They might say Right-O, Right you are!--they did say it, even in
the most handsome and palatial banks and shipping offices. But they were
patient and unaffected in their response. That was the beauty of the
men: their absolute lack of affectation, their naive simplicity, which
was at the same time sensitive and gentle. The gentlest country in the
world. Really, a high pitch of breeding. Good-breeding at a very high
pitch, innate, and in its shirt sleeves.
A strange country. A wonderful country. Who knows what future it may
have? Can a great continent breed a people of this magic harmlessness
without becoming a sacrifice of some other, external power? The land
that invites parasites now--where parasites breed like nightmares--what
would happen if the power-lust came that way?
Richard bought himself a big, knobbly, green, soft-crusted apple, at a
Chinese shop, and a pretty mother-of-pearl spoon to eat it with. The
queer Chinese, with their gabbling-gobbling way of speaking--were they
parasites too? A strange, strange world. He took himself off to the
gardens to eat his custard apple--a pudding inside a knobbly green
skin--and to relax into the magic ease of the afternoon. The warm sun,
the big, blue harbour with its hidden bays, the palm trees, the ferry
steamers sliding flatly, the perky birds, the inevitable shabby-looking,
loafing sort of men strolling across the green slopes, past the red
poinsetta bush, under the big flame-tree, under the blue, blue
sky--Australian Sydney, with a magic like sleep, like sweet, soft
sleep--a vast, endless, sun-hot, afternoon sleep with the world a
mirage. He could taste it all in the soft, sweet, creamy custard apple.
A wonderful sweet place to drift in. But surely a place that will some
day wake terribly from this sleep.
Yet why should it? Why should it not drift marvellously for ever, with
its sun and its marsupials?
The meeting in the evening, none the less, was a wild one. And Richard
could not believe there was any _real_ vindictiveness. He couldn’t
believe that anybody _really_ hated anybody. There was a touch of
sardonic tolerance in it all. Oh, that sardonic tolerance! And at the
same time that overwhelming obstinacy and power of endurance. The
strange, Australian power of enduring--enduring suffering or opposition
or difficulty--just blank enduring. In the long run, just endure.
Richard sat next to Jaz. Jaz was very still, very still indeed, seated
with his hands in his lap.
“Will there be many diggers here?” Lovat asked.
“Oh, yes. There’s quite a crowd over there, with Jack.”