THE SOUL OF MAN

The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of

Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from

that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present

condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact,

scarcely anyone at all escapes.

Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like

Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M, Renan;

a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to

keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand

'under the shelter of the wall,' as Plato puts it, and so to realise the

perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the

incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are

exceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and

exaggerated altruism--are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find

themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by

hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved

by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's

intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the

function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with

suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with

admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very

sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that

they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely

prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the

poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the

poor.

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The

proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that

poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really

prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners

were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of

the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood

by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in

England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most

good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really

studied the problem and know the life-educated men who live in the East

End--coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its

altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on

the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are

perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.

There is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private property in

order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution

of private property. It is both immoral and unfair.

Under Socialism all this will, of course, be altered. There will be no

people living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up unhealthy,

hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely

repulsive surroundings. The security of society will not depend, as it

does now, on the state of the weather. If a frost comes we shall not

have a hundred thousand men out of work, tramping about the streets in a

state of disgusting misery, or whining to their neighbours for alms, or

crowding round the doors of loathsome shelters to try and secure a hunch

of bread and a night's unclean lodging. Each member of the society will

share in the general prosperity and happiness of the society, and if a

frost comes no one will practically be anything the worse.

Upon the other hand, Socialism itself will be of value simply because it

will lead to Individualism.

Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by converting

private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for

competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a

thoroughly healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each

member of the community. It will, in fact, give Life it's proper basis

and its proper environment. But for the full development of Life to its

highest mode of perfection, something more is needed. What is needed is

Individualism. If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are

Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political

power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last

state of man will be worse than the first. At present, in consequence of

the existence of private property, a great many people are enabled to

develop a certain very limited amount of Individualism. They are either

under no necessity to work for their living, or are enabled to choose

the sphere of activity that is really congenial to them, and gives them

pleasure. These are the poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the

men of culture--in a word, the real men, the men who have realised

themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realisation. Upon

the other hand, there are a great many people who, having no private

property of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer

starvation, are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work

that is quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the

peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want. These are the poor,

and amongst them there is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or

civilisation, or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life.

From their collective force Humanity gains much in material prosperity.

But it is only the material result that it gains, and the man who is

poor is in himself absolutely of no importance. He is merely the

infinitesimal atom of a force that, so far from regarding him, crushes

him: indeed, prefers him crushed, as in that case he is far more

obedient.

Of course, it might be said that the Individualism generated under

conditions of private property is not always, or even as a rule, of a

fine or wonderful type, and that the poor, if they have not culture and

charm, have still many virtues. Both these statements would be quite

true. The possession of private property is very often extremely

demoralising, and that is, of course, one of the reasons why Socialism

wants to get rid of the institution. In fact, property is really a

nuisance. Some years ago people went about the country saying that

property has duties. They said it so often and so tediously that, at

last, the Church has begun to say it. One hears it now from every

pulpit. It is perfectly true. Property not merely has duties, but has so

many duties that its possession to any large extent is a bore. It

involves endless claims upon one, endless attention to business, endless

bother. If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its

duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid

of it. The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much to

be regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity.

Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never

grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and

rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a

ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental

dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the

sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives. Why should they be

grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table? They should

be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it. As for being

discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings

and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in

the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is

through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience

and through rebellion. Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty.

But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It

is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or

country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man

should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He

should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the

rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As for

begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than

to beg. No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and

rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him. He is

at any rate a healthy protest. As for the virtuous poor, one can pity

them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them; They have made

private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad

pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid. I can quite

understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit

of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those

conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But

it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made

hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.

However, the explanation is not really difficult to find. It is simply

this. Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such

a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really

conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other

people, and they often entirely disbelieve them. What is said by great

employers of labour against agitators is unquestionably true. Agitators

are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some

perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of

discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so

absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would

be no advance towards civilisation. Slavery was put down in America, not

in consequence of any action on the part of the slaves, or even any

express desire on their part that they should be free. It was put down

entirely through the grossly illegal conduct of certain agitators in

Boston and elsewhere, who were not slaves themselves, nor owners of

slaves, nor had anything to do with the question really. It was,

undoubtedly, the Abolitionists who set the torch alight, who began the

whole thing. And it is curious to note that from the slaves themselves

they received, not merely very little assistance, but hardly any

sympathy even; and when at the close of the war the slaves found

themselves free, found themselves indeed so absolutely free that they

were free to starve, many of them bitterly regretted the new state of

things. To the thinker, the most tragic fact in the whole of the French

Revolution is not that Marie Antoinette was killed for being a queen,

but that the starved peasant of the Vendée voluntarily went out to die

for the hideous cause of feudalism.

It is clear, then, that no Authoritarian Socialism will do. For while

under the present system a very large number of people can lead lives of

a certain amount of freedom and expression and happiness, under an

industrial-barrack system, or a system of economic tyranny, nobody would

be able to have any such freedom at all. It is to be regretted that a

portion of our community should be practically in slavery, but to

propose to solve the problem by enslaving the entire community is

childish. Every man must be left quite free to choose his own work. No

form of compulsion must be exercised over him. If there is, his work

will not be good for him, will riot be good in itself, and will not be

good for others. And by work I simply mean activity of any kind.

I hardly think that any Socialist, nowadays, would seriously propose

that an inspector should call every morning at each house to see that

each citizen rose up and did manual labour for eight hours. Humanity has

got beyond that stage, and reserves such a form of life for the people

whom, in a very arbitrary manner, it chooses to call criminals. But I

confess that many of the socialistic views that I have come across seem

to me to be tainted with ideas of authority, if not of actual

compulsion. Of course, authority and compulsion are out of the question.

All association must be quite voluntary. It is only in voluntary

associations that man is fine.

But it may be asked how Individualism, which is now more or less

dependent on the existence of private property for its development, will

benefit by the abolition of such private property. The answer is very

simple. It is true that, under existing conditions, a few men who have

had private means of their own, such as Byron, Shelley, Browning, Victor

Hugo, Baudelaire, and others, have been able to realise their

personality more or less completely. Not one of these men ever did a

single day's work for hire. They were relieved from poverty. They had an

immense advantage. The question is whether it would be for the good of

Individualism that such an advantage should be taken away. Let us

suppose that it is taken away. What happens then to Individualism? How

will it benefit?

It will benefit in this way, under the new conditions Individualism will

be far freer, far finer, and far more intensified than it is now. I am

not talking of the great imaginatively-realised Individualism of such

poets as I have mentioned, but of the great actual Individualism latent

and potential in mankind generally. For the recognition of private

property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing

a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray.

It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the

important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing

is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in

what man is. Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up

an Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the

community from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the

other part of the community from being individual by putting them on the

wrong road, and encumbering them. Indeed, so completely has man's

personality been absorbed by his possessions that the English law has

always treated offences against a man's property with far more severity

than offences against his person, and property is still the test of

complete citizenship. The industry necessary for the making of money is

also very demoralising. In a community like ours, where property confers

immense distinction, social position, honour, respect, titles, and other

pleasant things of the kind, man, being naturally ambitious, makes it

his aim to accumulate this property, and goes on wearily and tediously

accumulating it long after he has got far more than he wants, or can

use, or enjoy, or perhaps even know of. Man will kill himself by

overwork in order to secure property, and really, considering the

enormous advantages that property brings, one is hardly surprised. One's

regret is that society should be constructed on such a basis that man

has been forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop what is

wonderful, and fascinating, and delightful in him--in which, in fact, he

misses the true pleasure and joy of living. He is also, under existing

conditions, very insecure. An enormously wealthy merchant may be--often

is--at every moment of his life at the mercy of things that are not

under his control. If the wind blows an extra point or so, or the

weather suddenly changes, or some trivial thing happens, his ship may go

down, his speculations may go wrong, and he finds himself a poor man,

with his social position quite gone. Now, nothing should be able to harm

a man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a

man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a

matter of no importance.

With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true,

beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in

accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live

is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

It is a question whether we have ever seen the full expression of a

personality, except on the imaginative plane of art. In action, we never

have. Cæsar, says Mommsen, was the complete and perfect man. But how

tragically insecure was Cæsar! Wherever there is a man who exercises

authority, there is a man who resists authority. Cæsar was very perfect,

but his perfection travelled by too dangerous a road. Marcus Aurelius

was the perfect man, says Renan. Yes; the great emperor was a perfect

man. But how intolerable were the endless claims upon him! He staggered

under the burden of the empire. He was conscious how inadequate one man

was to bear the weight of that Titan and too vast orb. What I mean by a

perfect man is one who develops under perfect conditions; one who is not

wounded, or worried or maimed, or in danger. Most personalities have

been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in

friction. Byron's personality, for instance, was terribly wasted in its

battle with the stupidity, and hypocrisy, and Philistinism of the

English. Such battles do not always intensify strength: they often

exaggerate weakness. Byron was never able to give us what he might have

given us. Shelley escaped better. Like Byron, he got out of England as

soon as possible. But he was not so well known. If the English had had

any idea of what a great poet he really was, they would have fallen on

him with tooth and nail, and made his life as unbearable to him as they

possibly could. But he was not a remarkable figure in society, and

consequently he escaped, to a certain degree. Still, even in Shelley the

note of rebellion is sometimes too strong. The note of the perfect

personality is not rebellion, but peace.

It will be a marvellous thing--the true personality of man--when we see

it. It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows.

It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not

prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself

about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by

material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything,

and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it he.

It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like

itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet while

it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing

helps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be very

wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.

In its development it will be assisted by Christianity, if men desire

that; but if men do not desire that, it will develop none the less

surely. For it will not worry itself about the past, nor care whether

things happened or did not happen. Nor will it admit any laws but its

own laws; nor any authority but its own authority. Yet it will love

those who sought to intensity it, and speak often of them. And of these

Christ was one.

'Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over

the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written. And the

message of Christ to man was simply 'Be thyself.' That is the secret of

Christ.

When Jesus talks about the poor he simply means personalities, just as

when he talks about the rich he simply means people who have not

developed their personalities. Jesus moved in a community that allowed

the accumulation of private property just as ours does, and the gospel

that he preached was not that in such a community it is an advantage for

a man to live on scanty, unwholesome food, to wear ragged, unwholesome

clothes, to sleep in horrid, unwholesome dwellings, and a disadvantage

for a man to live under healthy, pleasant, and decent conditions. Such a

view would have been wrong there and then, and would, of course, be

still more wrong now and in England; for as man moves northward the

material necessities of life become of more vital importance, and our

society is infinitely more complex, and displays far greater extremes of

luxury and pauperism than any society of the antique world. What Jesus

meant, was this. He said to man, 'You have a wonderful personality.

Develop it. Be yourself. Don't imagine that your perfection lies in

accumulating or possessing external things. Your perfection is inside of

you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich.

Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the

treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that

may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that

external things will not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal

property. It involves sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual

wrong. Personal property hinders Individualism at every step. It is to

be noted that Jesus never says that impoverished people are necessarily

good, or wealthy people necessarily bad. That would not have been true.

Wealthy people are, as a class, better than impoverished people, more

moral, more intellectual, more well-behaved. There is only one class in

the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is

the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of

being poor. What Jesus does say is that man reaches his perfection, not

through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through

what he is. And so the wealthy young man who comes to Jesus is

represented as a thoroughly good citizen, who has broken none of the

laws of his state, none of the commandments of his religion. He is quite

respectable, in the ordinary sense of that extraordinary word. Jesus

says to him, 'You should give up private property. It hinders you from

realising your perfection. It is a drag upon you. It is a burden. Your

personality does not need it. It is within you, and not outside of you,

that you will find what you really are, and what you really want.' To

his own friends he says the same thing. He tells them to be themselves,

and not to be always worrying about other things. What do other things

matter? Man is complete in himself. When they go into the world, the

world will disagree with them. That is inevitable. The world hates

Individualism. But that is not to trouble them. They are to be calm and

self-centred. If a man takes their cloak, they are to give him their

coat, just to show that material things are of no importance. If people

abuse them, they are not to answer back. What does it signify? The

things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public

opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual

violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to

the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free.

His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at

peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other

people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing.

A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law,

and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be

bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against

society, and yet realise through that sin his true perfection.

There was a woman who was taken in adultery. We are not told the history

of her love, but that love must have been very great; for Jesus said

that her sins were forgiven her, not because she repented, but because

her love was so intense and wonderful. Later on, a short time before his

death, as he sat at a feast, the woman came in and poured costly

perfumes on his hair. His friends tried to interfere with her, and said

that it was an extravagance, and that the money that the perfume cost

should have been expended on charitable relief of people in want, or

something of that kind. Jesus did not accept that view. He pointed out

that the material needs of Man were great and very permanent, but that

the spiritual needs of Man were greater still, and that in one divine

moment, and by selecting its own mode of expression, a personality might

make itself perfect. The world worships the woman, even now, as a saint.

Yes; there are suggestive things in Individualism. Socialism annihilates

family life, for instance. With the abolition of private property,

marriage in its present form must disappear. This is part of the

programme. Individualism accepts this and makes it fine. It converts the

abolition of legal restraint into a form of freedom that will help the

full development of personality, and make the love of man and woman more

wonderful, more beautiful, and more ennobling. Jesus knew this. He

rejected the claims of family life, although they existed in his day and

community in a very marked form. 'Who is my mother? Who are my

brothers?' he said, when he was told that they wished to speak to him.

When one of his followers asked leave to go and bury his father, 'Let

the dead bury the dead,' was his terrible answer. He would allow no

claim whatsoever to be made on personality.

And so he who would lead a Christ-like like life is he who is perfectly

and absolutely himself. He may be a great poet, or a great man of

science; or a young student at a University, or one who watches sheep

upon a moor; or a maker of dramas, like Shakespeare, or a thinker about

God, like Spinoza; or a child who plays in a garden, or a fisherman who

throws his net into the sea. It does not matter what he is, as long as

he realises the perfection of the soul that is within him. All imitation

in morals and in life is wrong. Through the streets of Jerusalem at the

present day crawls one who is mad and carries a wooden cross on his

shoulders. He is a symbol of the lives that are marred by imitation.

Father Damien was Christ-like when he went out to live with the lepers,

because in such service he realised fully what was best in him. But he

was not more Christ-like than Wagner when he realised his soul in music;

or than Shelley, when he realised his soul in song. There is no one type

for man. There are as many perfections as there are imperfect men. And

while to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the

claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all.

Individualism, then, is what through Socialism we are to attain to. As a

natural result the State must give up all idea of government. It must

give it up because, as a wise man once said many centuries before

Christ, there is such a thing as leaving mankind alone; there is no such

thing as governing mankind. All modes of government are failures.

Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably

made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and

ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of

democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by

the people for the people. It has been found out. I must say that it was

high time, for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who

exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is

violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect, by

creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and

Individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount

of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully

demoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible

pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a

sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that

they are probably thinking other people's thoughts, living by other

people's standards, wearing practically what one may call other people's

second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment. 'He

who would be free,' says a fine thinker, 'must not conform.' And

authority, by bribing people to conform, produces a very gross kind of

over-fed barbarism amongst us.

With authority, punishment will pass away. This will be a great gain--a

gain, in fact, of incalculable value. As one reads history, not in the

expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the

original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by

the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that

the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised

by the habitual employment of punishment, than it is by the occurrence

of crime. It obviously follows that the more punishment is inflicted the

more crime is produced, and most modern legislation has clearly

recognised this, and has made it its task to diminish punishment as far

as it thinks it can. Wherever it has really diminished it, the results

have always been extremely good. The less punishment, the less crime.

When there is no punishment at all, crime will either cease to exist,

or, if it occurs, will be treated by physicians as a very distressing

form of dementia, to be cured by care and kindness. For what are called

criminals nowadays are not criminals at all. Starvation, and not sin, is

the parent of modern crime. That indeed is the reason why our criminals

are, as a class, so absolutely uninteresting from any psychological

point of view. They are not marvellous Macbeths and terrible Vautrins.

They are merely what ordinary, respectable, commonplace people would be

if they had not got enough to eat. When private property is abolished

there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to

exist. Of course, all crimes are not crimes against property, though

such are the crimes that the English law, valuing what a man has more

than what a man is, punishes with the harshest and most horrible

severity, if we except the crime of murder, and regard death as worse

than penal servitude, a point on which our criminals, I believe,

disagree. But though a crime may not be against property, it may spring

from the misery and rage and depression produced by our wrong system of

property-holding, and so, when that system is abolished, will disappear.

When each member of the community has sufficient for his wants, and is

not interfered with by his neighbour, it will not be an object of any

interest to him to interfere with anyone else. Jealousy, which is an

extraordinary source of crime in modern life, is an emotion closely

bound up with our conceptions of property, and under Socialism and

Individualism will die out. It is remarkable that in communistic tribes

jealousy is entirely unknown.

Now as the State is not to govern, it may be asked what the State is to

do. The State is to be a voluntary association that will organise

labour, and be the manufacturer and distributor of necessary

commodities. The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to

make what is beautiful. And as I have mentioned the word labour. I

cannot help saying that a great deal of nonsense is being written and

talked nowadays about the dignity of manual labour. There is nothing

necessarily dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is

absolutely degrading. It is mentally and morally injurious to man to do

anything in which he does not find pleasure, and many forms of labour

are quite pleasureless activities, and should be regarded as such. To

sweep a slushy crossing for eight hours on a day when the east wind is

blowing is a disgusting occupation. To sweep it with mental, moral, or

physical dignity seems to me to be impossible. To sweep it with joy

would be appalling. Man is made for something better than disturbing

dirt. All work of that kind should be done by a machine.

And I have no doubt that it will be so. Up to the present, man has been,

to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is something

tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his

work he began to starve. This, however, is, of course, the result of our

property system and our system of competition. One man owns a machine

which does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men are, in

consequence, thrown out of employment, and, having no work to do, become

hungry and take to thieving. The one man secures the produce of the

machine and keeps it, and has five hundred times as much as he should

have, and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more

than he really wants. Were that machine the property of all, everyone

would benefit by it. It would be an immense advantage to the community.

All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that

deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be

done by machinery. Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all

sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets,

and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or

distressing. At present machinery competes against man. Under proper

conditions machinery will serve man. There is no doubt at all that this

is the future of machinery, and just as trees grow while the country

gentleman is asleep, so while Humanity will be amusing itself, or

enjoying cultivated leisure--which, and not labour, is the aim of

man--or making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply

contemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will he

doing all the necessary and unpleasant work. The fact is, that

civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless

there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture

and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong,

insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the

machine, the future of the world depends. And when scientific men are no

longer called upon to go down to a depressing East End and distribute

bad cocoa and worse blankets to starving people, they will have

delightful leisure in which to devise wonderful and marvellous things

for their own joy and the joy of everyone else. There will be great

storages of force for every city, and for every house if required, and

this force man will convert into heat, light, or motion, according to

his needs. Is this Utopian? A map of the world that does not include

Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country

at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it

looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the

realisation of Utopias.

Now, I have said that the community by means of organisation of

machinery will supply the useful things, and that the beautiful things

will be made by the individual. This is not merely necessary, but it is

the only possible way by which we can get either the one or the other.

An individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with

reference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest,

and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him. Upon the

other hand, whenever a community or a powerful section of a community,

or a government of any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he

is to do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or

degenerates into a low and ignoble form of craft. A work of art is the

unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact

that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that

other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist

takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand,

he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman,

an honest or a dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be

considered as an artist. Art is the most intense mode of Individualism

that the world has known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real

mode of Individualism that the world has known. Crime, which, under

certain conditions, may seem to have created Individualism, must take

cognisance of other people and interfere with them. It belongs to the

sphere of action. But alone, without any reference to his neighbours,

without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and

if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at

all.

And it is to be noted that it is the fact that Art is this intense form

of Individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it an

authority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous, and as corrupting as

it is contemptible. It is not quite their fault. The public has always,

and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art

to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd

vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what

they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy

after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are

wearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular.

The public should try to make itself artistic. There is a very wide

difference. If a man of science were told that the results of his

experiments, and the conclusions that he arrived at, should be of such a

character that they would not upset the received popular notions on the

subject, or disturb popular prejudice, or hurt the sensibilities of

people who knew nothing about science; if a philosopher were told that

he had a perfect right to speculate in the highest spheres of thought,

provided that he arrived at the same conclusions as were held by those

who had never thought in any sphere at all--well, nowadays the man of

science and the philosopher would be considerably amused. Yet it is

really a very few years since both philosophy and science were subjected

to brutal popular control, to authority in fact--the authority of

either the general ignorance of the community, or the terror and greed

for power of an ecclesiastical or governmental class. Of course, we have

to a very great extent got rid of any attempt on the part of the

community, or the Church, or the Government, to interfere with the

individualism of speculative thought, but the attempt to interfere with

the individualism of imaginative art still lingers. In fact, it does

more than linger; it is aggressive, offensive, and brutalising.

In England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the

public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have

been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read

it, and consequently do not influence it. The public like to insult

poets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them,

they leave them alone. In the case of the novel and the drama, arts in

which the public do take an interest, the result of the exercise of

popular authority has been absolutely ridiculous. No country produces

such badly-written fiction, such tedious, common work in the novel form,

such silly, vulgar plays as England. It must necessarily be so. The

popular standard is of such a character that no artist can get to it. It

is at once too easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist. It is

too easy, because the requirements of the public as far as plot, style,

psychology, treatment of life, and treatment of literature are concerned

are within the reach of the very meanest capacity and the most

uncultivated mind. It is too difficult, because to meet such

requirements the artist would have to do violence to his temperament,

would have to write not for the artistic joy of writing, but for the

amusement of half-educated people, and so would have to suppress his

individualism, forget his culture, annihilate his style, and surrender

everything that is valuable in him. In the case of the drama, things are

a little better: the theatre-going public like the obvious, it is true,

but they do not like the tedious; and burlesque and farcical comedy, the

two most popular forms, are distinct forms of art. Delightful work may

be produced under burlesque and farcical conditions, and in work of this

kind the artist in England is allowed very great freedom. It is when one

comes to the higher forms of the drama that the result of popular

control is seen. The one thing that the public dislike is novelty. Any

attempt to extend the subject-matter of art is extremely distasteful to

the public; and yet the vitality and progress of art depend in a large

measure on the continual extension of subject-matter. The public dislike

novelty because they are afraid of it. It represents to them a mode of

Individualism, an assertion on the part of the artist that he selects

his own subject, and treats it as he chooses. The public are quite right

in their attitude. Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a

disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For

what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny

of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. In Art,

the public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not

because they appreciate it. They swallow their classics whole, and never

taste them. They endure them as the inevitable, and as they cannot mar

them, they mouth about them. Strangely enough, or not strangely,

according to one's own views, this acceptance of the classics does a

great deal of harm. The uncritical admiration of the Bible and

Shakespeare in England is an instance of what I mean. With regard to the

Bible, considerations of ecclesiastical authority enter into the matter,

so that I need not dwell upon the point.

But in the case of Shakespeare it is quite obvious that the public

really see neither the beauties nor the defects of his plays. If they

saw the beauties, they would not object to the development of the drama;

and if they saw the defects, they would not object to the development of

the drama either. The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a

country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the

classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the

free expression of Beauty in new forms. They are always asking a writer

why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not

paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of

them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist. A fresh

mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it

appears they get so angry and bewildered, that they always use two

stupid expressions--one is that the work of art is grossly

unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What

they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is

grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a

beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly

immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing

that is true. The former expression has reference to style; the latter

to subject-matter. But they probably use the words very vaguely, as an

ordinary mob will use ready-made paving-stones. There is not a single

real poet or prose-writer of this century, for instance, on whom the

British public have not solemnly conferred diplomas of immorality, and

these diplomas practically take the place, with us, of what in France,

is the formal recognition of an Academy of Letters, and fortunately make

the establishment of such an institution quite unnecessary in England.

Of course, the public are very reckless in their use of the word. That

they should have called Wordsworth an immoral poet, was only to be

expected. Wordsworth was a poet. But that they should have called

Charles Kingsley an immoral novelist is extraordinary. Kingsley's prose

was not of a very fine quality. Still, there is the word, and they use

it as best they can. An artist is, of course, not disturbed by it. The

true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is

absolutely himself. But I can fancy that if an artist produced a work of

art in England that immediately on its appearance was recognised by the

public, through their medium, which is the public press, as a work that

was quite intelligible and highly moral, he would begin to seriously

question whether in its creation he had really been himself at all, and

consequently whether the work was not quite unworthy of him, and either

of a thoroughly second-rate order, or of no artistic value whatsoever.

Perhaps, however, I have wronged the public in limiting them to such

words as 'immoral,' 'unintelligible,' 'exotic,' and 'unhealthy.' There

is one other word that they use. That word is 'morbid.' They do not use

it often. The meaning of the word is so simple that they are afraid of

using it. Still, they use it sometimes, and, now and then, one comes

across it in popular newspapers. It is, of course, a ridiculous word to

apply to a work of art. For what is morbidity but a mood of emotion or a

mode of thought that one cannot express? The public are all morbid,

because the public can never find expression for anything. The artist is

never morbid. He expresses everything. He stands outside his subject,

and through its medium produces incomparable and artistic effects. To

call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his

subject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he

wrote 'King Lear.'

On the whole, an artist in England gains something by being attacked.

His individuality is intensified. He becomes more completely himself. Of

course, the attacks are very gross, very impertinent, and very

contemptible. But then no artist expects grace from the vulgar mind, or

style from the suburban intellect. Vulgarity and stupidity are two very

vivid facts in modern life. One regrets them, naturally. But there they

are. They are subjects for study, like everything else. And it is only

fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always

apologise to one in private for what they have written against one in

public.

Within the last few years two other adjectives, it may be mentioned,

have been added to the very limited vocabulary of art-abuse that is at

the disposal of the public. One is the word 'unhealthy,' the other is

the word 'exotic.' The latter merely expresses the rage of the momentary

mushroom against the immortal, entrancing, and exquisitely lovely

orchid. It is a tribute, but a tribute of no importance. The word

'unhealthy,' however, admits of analysis. It is a rather interesting

word. In fact, it is so interesting that the people who use it do not

know what it means.

What does it mean? What is a healthy, or an unhealthy work of art? All

terms that one applies to a work of art, provided that one applies them

rationally, have reference to either its style or its subject, or to

both together. From the point of view of style, a healthy work of art is

one whose style recognises the beauty of the material it employs, be

that material one of words or of bronze, of colour or of ivory, and uses

that beauty as a factor in producing the æsthetic effect. From the point

of view of subject, a healthy work of art is one the choice of whose

subject is conditioned by the temperament of the artist, and comes

directly out of it. In fine, a healthy work of art is one that has both

perfection and personality. Of course, form and substance cannot be

separated in a work of art; they are always one. But for purposes of

analysis, and setting the wholeness of æsthetic impression aside for a

moment, we can intellectually so separate them. An unhealthy work of

art, on the other hand, is a work whose style is obvious, old-fashioned,

and common, and whose subject is deliberately chosen, not because the

artist has any pleasure in it, but because he thinks that the public

will pay him for it. In fact, the popular novel that the public calls

healthy is always a thoroughly unhealthy production; and what the public

call an unhealthy novel is always a beautiful and healthy work of art.

I need hardly say that I am not, for a single moment, complaining that

the public and the public press misuse these words. I do not see how,

with their lack of comprehension of what Art is, they could possibly use

them in the proper sense. I am merely pointing out the misuse; and as

for the origin of the misuse and the meaning that lies behind it all,

the explanation is very simple. It comes from the barbarous conception

of authority. It comes from the natural inability of a community

corrupted by authority to understand or appreciate Individualism. In a

word, it comes from that monstrous and ignorant thing that is called

Public Opinion, which, bad and well-meaning as it is when it tries to

control action, is infamous and of evil meaning when it tries to control

Thought or Art.

Indeed, there is much more to be said in favour of the physical force of

the public than there is in favour of the public's opinion. The former

may be fine. The latter must be foolish. It is often said that force is

no argument. That, however, entirely depends on what one wants to prove.

Many of the most important problems of the last few centuries, such as

the continuance of personal government in England, or of feudalism in

France, have been solved entirely by means of physical force. The very

violence of a revolution may make the public grand and splendid for a

moment. It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is

mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the

brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed

him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly

to be regretted, for both their sakes. Behind the barricade there may be

much that is noble and heroic. But what is there behind the

leading-article but prejudice, stupidity, cant, and twaddle? And when

these four are joined together they make a terrible force, and

constitute the new authority.

In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an

improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and

demoralising. Somebody--was it Burke?--called journalism the fourth

estate. That was true at the time, no doubt. But at the present moment

it really is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords

Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the

House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by

Journalism. In America the President reigns for four years, and

Journalism governs for ever and ever. Fortunately in America Journalism

has carried its authority to the grossest and most brutal extreme. As a

natural consequence it has begun to create a spirit of revolt. People

are amused by it, or disgusted by it, according to their temperaments.

But it is no longer the real force it was. It is not seriously treated.

In England, Journalism, not, except in a few well-known instances,

having been carried to such excesses of brutality, is still a great

factor, a really remarkable power. The tyranny that it proposes to

exercise over people's private lives seems to me to be quite

extraordinary. The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity

to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious

of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands. In

centuries before ours the public nailed the ears of journalists to the

pump. That was quite hideous. In this century journalists have nailed

their own ears to the keyhole. That is much worse. And what aggravates

the mischief is that the journalists who are most to blame are not the

amusing journalists who write for what are called Society papers. The

harm is done by the serious, thoughtful, earnest journalists, who

solemnly, as they are doing at present, will drag before the eyes of the

public some incident in the private life of a great statesman, of a man

who is a leader of political thought as he is a creator of political

force, and invite the public to discuss the incident, to exercise

authority in the matter, to give their views, and not merely to give

their views, but to carry them into action, to dictate to the man upon

all other points, to dictate to his party, to dictate to his country; in

fact, to make themselves ridiculous, offensive, and harmful. The private

lives of men and women should not be told to the public. The public have

nothing to do with them at all. In Prance they manage these things

better. There they do not allow the details of the trials that take

place in the divorce courts to be published for the amusement or

criticism of the public. All that the public are allowed to know is that

the divorce has taken place and was granted on petition of one or other

or both of the married parties concerned. In France, in fact, they limit

the journalist, and allow the artist almost perfect freedom. Here we

allow absolute freedom to the journalist, and entirely limit the artist.

English public opinion, that is to say, tries to constrain and impede

and warp the man who makes things that are beautiful in effect, and

compels the journalist to retail things that are ugly, or disgusting, or

revolting in fact, so that we have the most serious journalists in the

world, and the most indecent newspapers. It is no exaggeration to talk

of compulsion. There are possibly some journalists who take a real

pleasure in publishing horrible things, or who, being poor, look to

scandals as forming a sort of permanent basis for an income. But there

are other journalists, I feel certain, men of education and cultivation,

who really dislike publishing these things, who know that it is wrong to

do so, and only do it because the unhealthy conditions under which their

occupation is carried on oblige them to supply the public with what the

public wants, and to compete with other journalists in making that

supply as full and satisfying to the gross popular appetite as possible.

It is a very degrading position for any body of educated men to be

placed in, and I have no doubt that most of them feel it acutely.

However, let us leave what is really a very sordid side of the subject,

and return to the question of popular control in the matter of Art, by

which I mean Public Opinion dictating to the artist the form which he is

to use, the mode in which he is to use it, and the materials with which

he is to work. I have pointed out that the arts which have escaped best

in England are the arts in which the public have not been interested.

They are, however, interested in the drama, and as a certain advance has

been made in the drama within the last ten or fifteen years, it is

important to point out that this advance is entirely due to a few

individual artists refusing to accept the popular want of taste as their

standard, and refusing to regard Art as a mere matter of demand and

supply. With his marvellous and vivid personality, with a style that has

really a true colour-element in it, with his extraordinary power, not

over mere mimicry but over imaginative and intellectual creation, Mr

Irving, had his sole object been to give the public what they wanted,

could have produced the commonest plays in the commonest manner, and

made as much success and money as a man could possibly desire. But his

object was not that. His object was to realise his own perfection as an

artist, under certain conditions, and in certain forms of Art. At first

he appealed to the few; now he has educated the many. He has created in

the public both taste and temperament. The public appreciate his

artistic success immensely. I often wonder, however, whether the public

understand that that success is entirely due to the fact that he did not

accept their standard, but realised his own. With their standard the

Lyceum would have been a sort of second-rate booth, as some of the

popular theatres in London are at present. Whether they understand it or

not the fact however remains, that taste and temperament have, to a

certain extent, been created in the public, and that the public is

capable of developing these qualities. The problem then is, why do not

the public become more civilised? They have the capacity. What stops

them?

The thing that stops them, it must be said again, is their desire to

exercise authority over the artist and over works of art. To certain

theatres, such as the Lyceum and the Haymarket, the public seem to come

in a proper mood. In both of these theatres there have been individual

artists, who have succeeded in creating in their audiences--and every

theatre in London has its own audience--the temperament to which Art

appeals. And what is that temperament? It is the temperament of

receptivity. That is all.

If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority

over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot

receive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art is to

dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of

art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which

the master is to play. And the more completely he can suppress his own

silly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what

Art should be, or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and

appreciate the work of art in question. This is, of course, quite

obvious in the case of the vulgar theatre-going public of English men

and women. But it is equally true of what are called educated people.

For an educated person's ideas of Art are drawn naturally from what Art

has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has

never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure

it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends.

A temperament capable of receiving, through an imaginative medium, and

under imaginative conditions, new and beautiful impressions, is the only

temperament that can appreciate a work of art. And true as this is in

the case of the appreciation of sculpture and painting, it is still more

true of the appreciation of such arts as the drama. For a picture and a

statue are not at war with Time. They take no count of its succession.

In one moment their unity may be apprehended. In the case of literature

it is different. Time must be traversed before the unity of effect is

realised. And so, in the drama, there may occur in the first act of the

play something whose real artistic value may not be evident to the

spectator till the third or fourth act is reached. Is the silly fellow

to get angry and call out, and disturb the play, and annoy the artists?

No, the honest man is to sit quietly, and know the delightful emotions

of wonder, curiosity, and suspense. He is not to go to the play to lose

a vulgar temper. He is to go to the play to realise an artistic

temperament. He is to go to the play to gain an artistic temperament. He

is not the arbiter of the work of art. He is one who is admitted to

contemplate the work of art, and, if the work be fine, to forget in its

contemplation all, the egotism that mars him--the egotism of his

ignorance, or the egotism of his information. This point about the drama

is hardly, I think, sufficiently recognised. I can quite understand that

were 'Macbeth' produced for the first time before a modern London

audience, many of the people present would strongly and vigorously

object to the introduction of the witches in the first act, with their

grotesque phrases and their ridiculous words. But when the play is over

one realises that the laughter of the witches in 'Macbeth' is as

terrible as the laughter of madness in 'Lear,' more terrible than the

daughter of Iago in the tragedy of the Moor. No spectator of art needs a

more perfect mood of receptivity than the spectator of a play. The

moment he seeks to exercise authority he becomes the avowed enemy of Art

and of himself. Art does not mind. It is he who suffers.

With the novel it is the same thing. Popular authority and the

recognition of popular authority are fatal. Thackeray's 'Esmond' is a

beautiful work of art because he wrote it to please himself. In his

other novels, in 'Pendennis,' in 'Philip,' in 'Vanity Fair' even, at

times, he is too conscious of the public, and spoils his work by

appealing directly to the sympathies of the public, or by directly

mocking at them. A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public.

The public are to him non-existent. He has no poppied or honeyed cakes

through which to give the monster sleep or sustenance. He leaves that to

the popular novelist. One incomparable novelist we have now in England,

Mr George Meredith. There are better artists in France, but France has

no one whose view of life is so large, so varied, so imaginatively true.

There are tellers of stories in Russia who have a more vivid sense of

what pain in fiction may be. But to him belongs philosophy in fiction.

His people not merely live, but they live in thought. One can see them

from myriad points of view. They are suggestive. There is soul in them

and around them. They are interpretative and symbolic. And he who made

them, those wonderful quickly-moving figures, made them for his own

pleasure, and has never asked the public what they wanted, has never

cared to know what they wanted, has never allowed the public to dictate

to him or influence him in any way, but has gone on intensifying his own

personality, and producing his own individual work. At first none came

to him. That did not matter. Then the few came to him. That did not

change him. The many have come now. He is still the same. He's an

incomparable novelist.

With the decorative arts it is not different. The public clung with

really pathetic tenacity to what I believe were the direct traditions of

the Great Exhibition of international vulgarity, traditions that were so

appalling that the houses in which people lived were only fit for blind

people to live in. Beautiful things began to be made, beautiful colours

came from the dyer's hand, beautiful patterns from the artist's brain,

and the use of beautiful things and their value and importance were set

forth. The public were really very indignant. They lost their temper.

They said silly things. No one minded. No one was a whit the worse. No

one accepted the authority of public opinion. And now it is almost

impossible to enter any modern house without seeing some recognition of

good taste, some recognition of the value of lovely surroundings, some

sign of appreciation of beauty. In fact, people's houses are, as a rule,

quite charming nowadays. People have been to a very great extent

civilised. It is only fair to state, however, that the extraordinary

success of the revolution in house-decoration and furniture and the like

has not really been due to the majority of the public developing a very

fine taste in such matters. It has been chiefly due to the fact that the

craftsmen of things so appreciated the pleasure of making what was

beautiful, and woke to such a vivid consciousness of the hideousness and

vulgarity of what the public had previously wanted, that they simply

starved the public out. It would be quite impossible at the present

moment to furnish a room as rooms were furnished a few years ago,

without going for everything to an auction of second-hand furniture from

some third-rate lodging-house. The things are no longer made. However

they may object to it, people must nowadays have something charming in

their surroundings. Fortunately for them, their assumption of authority

in these art-matters came to entire grief.

It is evident, then, that all authority in such things is bad. People

sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist

to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of

government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.

Authority over him and his art is ridiculous. It has been stated that

under despotisms artists have produced lovely work. This is not quite

so. Artists have visited despots, not as subjects to be tyrannised over,

but as wandering wonder-makers, as fascinating vagrant personalities, to

be entertained and charmed and suffered to be at peace, and allowed to

create. There is this to be said in favour of the despot, that he, being

an individual, may have culture, while the mob, being a monster, has

none. One who is an Emperor and King may stoop down to pick up a brush

for a painter, but when the democracy stoops down it is merely to throw

mud. And yet the democracy have not so far to stoop as the emperor. In

fact, when they want to throw mud they have not to stoop at all. But

there is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all

authority is equally bad.

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannises

over the body. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul. There

is the despot who tyrannises over the soul and body alike. The first is

called the Prince. The second is called the Pope The third is called the

People. The Prince may be cultivated. Many Princes have been. Yet in the

Prince there is danger. One thinks of Dante at the bitter feast in

Verona, of Tasso in Ferrara's madman's cell. It is better for the artist

not to live with Princes. The Pope may be cultivated. Many Popes have

been; the bad Popes have been. The bad Popes loved Beauty, almost as

passionately, nay, with as much passion as the good Popes hated Thought.

To the wickedness of the Papacy humanity owes much. The goodness of the

Papacy owes a terrible debt to humanity. Yet, though the Vatican has

kept the rhetoric of its thunders, and lost the rod of its lightning, it

is better for the artist not to live with Popes. It was a Pope who said

of Cellini to a conclave of Cardinals that common laws and common

authority were not made for men such as he; but it was a Pope who thrust

Cellini into prison, and kept him there till he sickened with rage, and

created unreal visions for himself, and saw the gilded sun enter his

room, and grew so enamoured of it that he sought to escape, and crept

out from tower to tower, and falling through dizzy air at dawn, maimed

himself, and was by a vine-dresser covered with vine leaves, and carried

in a cart to one who, loving beautiful things, had care of him. There is

danger in Popes. And as for the People, what of them and their

authority? Perhaps of them and their authority one has spoken enough.

Their authority is a thing blind, deaf, hideous, grotesque, tragic,

amusing, serious, and obscene. It is impossible for the artist to live

with the People. All despots bribe. The people bribe and brutalise. Who

told them to exercise authority? They were made to live, to listen, and

to love. Someone has done them a great wrong. They have marred

themselves by imitation of their inferiors. They have taken the sceptre

of the Prince. How should they use it? They have taken the triple tiara

of the Pope. How should they carry its burden? They are as a clown whose

heart is broken. They are as a priest whose soul is not yet born. Let

all who love Beauty pity them. Though they themselves love not Beauty,

yet let them pity themselves. Who taught them the trick of tyranny?

There are many other things that one might point out. One might point

out how the Renaissance was great, because it sought to solve no social

problem, and busied itself not about such things, but suffered the

individual to develop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had

great and individual artists, and great and individual men. One might

point out how Louis XIV., by creating the modern state, destroyed the

individualism of the artist, and made things monstrous in their monotony

of repetition, and contemptible in their conformity to rule, and

destroyed throughout all France all those fine freedoms of expression

that had made tradition new in beauty, and new modes one with antique

form. But the past is of no importance. The present is of no importance.

It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man

should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The

future is what artists are.

It will, of course, be said that such a scheme as is set forth here is

quite unpractical, and goes against human nature. This is perfectly

true. It is unpractical, and it goes against human nature. This is why

it is worth carrying out, and that is why one proposes it. For what is a

practical scheme? A practical scheme is either a scheme that is already

in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under existing

conditions. But it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects

to; and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and

foolish. The conditions will be done away with, and human nature will

change. The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that

it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The

systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature,

and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV. was that

he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his

error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result. All the

results of the mistakes of governments are quite admirable.

It is to be noted also that Individualism does not come to man with any

sickly cant about duty, which merely means doing what other people want

because they want it; or any hideous cant about self-sacrifice, which is

merely a survival of savage mutilation. In fact, it does not come to man

with any claims upon him at all. It comes naturally and inevitably out

of man. It is the point to which all development tends. It is the

differentiation to which all organisms grow. It is the perfection that

is inherent in every mode of life, and towards which every mode of life

quickens. And so Individualism exercises no compulsion over man. On the

contrary, it says to man that he should suffer no compulsion to be

exercised over him. It does not try to force people to be good. It knows

that people are good when they are let alone. Man will develop

Individualism out of himself. Man is now so developing Individualism. To

ask whether Individualism is practical is like asking whether Evolution

is practical. Evolution is the law of life, and there is no evolution

except towards Individualism. Where this tendency is not expressed, it

is a case of artificially-arrested growth, or of disease, or of death.

Individualism will also be unselfish and unaffected. It has been pointed

out that one of the results of the extraordinary tyranny of authority is

that words are absolutely distorted from their proper and simple

meaning, and are used to express the obverse of their right

signification. What is true about Art is true about Life. A man is

called affected, nowadays, if he dresses as he likes to dress. But in

doing that he is acting in a perfectly natural manner. Affectation, in

such matters, consists in dressing according to the views of one's

neighbour, whose views, as they are the views of the majority, will

probably be extremely stupid. Or a man is called selfish if he lives in

the manner that seems to him most suitable for the full realisation of

his own personality; if, in fact, the primary aim of his life is

self-development. But this is the way in which everyone should live.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to

live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's

lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at

creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness

recognises infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it,

acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for oneself. A

man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly

selfish to require of one's neighbour that he should think in the same

way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will

probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to

require thought of any kind from him. A red rose is not selfish because

it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all

the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses. Under

Individualism people will be quite natural and absolutely unselfish, and

will know the meanings of the words, and realise them in their free,

beautiful lives. Nor will men be egotistic as they are now. For the

egotist is he who makes claims upon others, and the Individualist will

not desire to do that. It will not give him pleasure. When man has

realised Individualism, he will also realise sympathy and exercise it

freely and spontaneously. Up to the present man has hardly cultivated

sympathy at all. He has merely sympathy with pain, and sympathy with

pain is not the highest form of sympathy. All sympathy is fine, but

sympathy with suffering is the least fine mode. It is tainted with

egotism. It is apt to become morbid. There is in it a certain element of

terror for our own safety. We become afraid that we ourselves might be

as the leper or as the blind, and that no man would have care of us. It

is curiously limiting, too. One should sympathise with the entirety of

life, not with life's sores and maladies merely, but with life's joy and

beauty and energy and health and freedom. The wider sympathy is, of

course, the more difficult. It requires more unselfishness. Anybody can

sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine

nature--it requires, in fact, the nature of a true Individualist--to

sympathise with a friend's success.

In the modern stress of competition and struggle for place, such

sympathy is naturally rare, and is also very much stifled by the immoral

ideal of uniformity of type and conformity to rule which is so prevalent

everywhere, and is perhaps most obnoxious in England.

Sympathy with pain there will, of course, always be. It is one of the

first instincts of man. The animals which are individual, the higher

animals, that is to say, share it with us. But it must be remembered

that while sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of joy in the world,

sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain. It may

make man better able to endure evil, but the evil remains. Sympathy with

consumption does not cure consumption; that is what Science does. And

when Socialism has solved the problem of poverty, and Science solved the

problem of disease, the area of the sentimentalists will be lessened,

and the sympathy of man will be large, healthy, and spontaneous. Man

will have joy in the contemplation of the joyous life of others.

For it is through joy that the Individualism of the future will develop

itself. Christ made no attempt to reconstruct society, and consequently

the Individualism that he preached to man could be realised only through

pain or in solitude. The ideals that we owe to Christ are the ideals of

the man who abandons society entirely, or of the man who resists society

absolutely. But man is naturally social. Even the Thebaid became peopled

at last. And though the cenobite realises his personality, it is often

an impoverished personality that he so realises. Upon the other hand,

the terrible truth that pain is a mode through which man may realise

himself exercises a wonderful fascination over the world. Shallow

speakers and shallow thinkers in pulpits and on platforms often talk

about the world's worship of pleasure, and whine against it. But it is

rarely in the world's history that its ideal has been one of joy and

beauty. The worship of pain has far more often dominated the world.

Mediævalism, with its saints and martyrs, its love of self-torture, its

wild passion for wounding itself, its gashing with knives, and its

whipping with rods--Mediævalism is real Christianity, and the mediæval

Christ is the real Christ. When the Renaissance dawned upon the world,

and brought with it the new ideals of the beauty of life and the joy of

living, men could not understand Christ. Even Art shows us that. The

painters of the Renaissance drew Christ as a little boy playing with

another boy in a palace or a garden, or lying back in his mother's arms,

smiling at her, or at a flower, or at a bright bird; or as a noble,

stately figure moving nobly through the world; or as a wonderful figure

rising in a sort of ecstasy from death to life. Even when they drew him

crucified they drew him as a beautiful God on whom evil men had

inflicted suffering. But he did not preoccupy them much. What delighted

them was to paint the men and women whom they admired, and to show the

loveliness of this lovely earth. They painted many religious

pictures--in fact, they painted far too many, and the monotony of type

and motive is wearisome, and was bad for art. It was the result of the

authority of the public in art-matters, and is to be deplored. But their

soul was not in the subject Raphael was a great artist when he painted

his portrait of the Pope. When he painted his Madonnas and infant

Christs, he is not a great artist at all. Christ had no message for the

Renaissance, which was wonderful because it brought an ideal at variance

with his, and to find the presentation of the real Christ we must go to

mediæval art. There he is one maimed and marred; one who is not comely

to look on, because Beauty is a joy; one who is not in fair raiment,

because that may be a joy also: he is a beggar who has a marvellous

soul; he is a leper whose soul is divine; he needs neither property nor

health; he is a God realising his perfection through pain.

The evolution of man is slow. The injustice of men is great. It was

necessary that pain should be put forward as a mode of self-realisation.

Even now, in some places in the world, the message of Christ is

necessary. No one who lived in modern Russia could possibly realise his

perfection except by pain. A few Russian artists have realised

themselves in Art; in a fiction that is mediæval in character, hecauae

its dominant note is the realisation of men through suffering. But for

those who are not artists, and to whom there is no mode of life but the

actual life of fact, pain is the only door to perfection. A Russian who

lives happily under the present system of government in Russia must

either believe that man has no soul, or that, if he has, it is not worth

developing. A Nihilist who rejects all authority, because he knows

authority to be evil, and welcomes all pain, because through that he

realises his personality, is a real Christian. To him the Christian

ideal is a true thing.

And yet, Christ did not revolt against authority. He accepted the

imperial authority of the Roman Empire and paid tribute. He endured the

ecclesiastical authority of the Jewish Church, and would not repel its

violence by any violence of his own. He had, as I said before, no scheme

for the reconstruction of society. But the modern world has schemes. It

proposes to do away with poverty and the suffering that it entails. It

desires to get rid of pain, and the suffering that pain entails. It

trusts to Socialism and to Science as its methods. What it aims at is an

Individualism expressing itself through joy. This Individualism will be

larger, fuller, lovelier than any Individualism has ever been. Pain is

not the ultimate mode of perfection. It is merely provisional and a

protest. It has reference to wrong, unhealthy, unjust surroundings. When

the wrong, and the disease, and the injustice are removed, it will have

no further place. It will have done its work. It was a great work, but

it is almost over. Its sphere lessens every day.

Nor will man miss it. For what man has sought for is, indeed, neither

pain nor pleasure, but simply Life. Man has sought to live intensely,

fully, perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on

others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to

him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself. Pleasure

is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in

harmony with himself and his environment. The new Individualism, for

whose service Socialism, whether it wills it or not, is working, will be

perfect harmony. It will be what the Greeks sought for, but could not,

except in Thought, realise completely, because they had slaves, and fed

them; it will be what the Renaissance sought for, but could not realise

completely except in Art, because they had slaves, and starved them. It

will be complete, and through it each man will attain to his perfection.

The new Individualism is the new Hellenism.

_Reprinted from the 'Fortnightly Review,' by permission of Messrs

Chapman & Hall._