There are as many
perfections
as there are imperfect men.
Oscar Wilde - Aphorisms, the Soul of Man
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 Vendee 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. Caesar, says Mommsen, was the complete and perfect man. But how
tragically insecure was Caesar! Wherever there is a man who exercises
authority, there is a man who resists authority. Caesar 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 aesthetic 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 aesthetic 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.
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 Vendee 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. Caesar, says Mommsen, was the complete and perfect man. But how
tragically insecure was Caesar! Wherever there is a man who exercises
authority, there is a man who resists authority. Caesar 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 aesthetic 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 aesthetic 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.
