When critics
disagree
the artist is in accord with himself.
Oscar Wilde - Poetry
At her word the frost lays its silver finger on the burning mouth of
June, and the winged lions creep out from the hollows of the Lydian
hills. The dryads peer from the thicket as she passes by, and the brown
fauns smile strangely at her when she comes near them. She has
hawk-faced gods that worship her, and the centaurs gallop at her side.
In literature mere egotism is delightful.
If we live for aims we blunt our emotions. If we live for aims we live
for one minute, for one day, for one year, instead of for every minute,
every day, every year. The moods of one's life are life's beauties. To
yield to all one's moods is to really live.
Many a young man starts in life with a natural gift for exaggeration
which, if nurtured in congenial and sympathetic surroundings, or by the
imitations of the best models, might grow into something really great
and wonderful. But, as a rule, he comes to nothing. He either falls into
careless habits of accuracy or takes to frequenting the society of the
aged and the well-informed. Both things are equally fatal to his
imagination.
The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts,
for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.
As for believing things, I can believe anything provided that it is
quite incredible.
'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.
London is full of women who trust their husbands. One can always
recognise them, they look so thoroughly unhappy.
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.
The English public always feels perfectly at its ease when a mediocrity
is talking to it.
Men always fall into the absurdity of endeavouring to develop the mind,
to push it violently forward in this direction or in that. The mind
should be receptive, a harp waiting to catch the winds, a pool ready to
be ruffled, not a bustling busybody for ever trotting about on the
pavement looking for a new bun shop.
There is nothing more beautiful than to forget, except, perhaps, to be
forgotten.
All bad art comes from returning to life and nature, and elevating them
into ideals. Life and nature may sometimes be used as part of art's
rough material, but before they are of any real service to art they must
be translated into artistic conventions. The moment art surrenders its
imaginative medium it surrenders everything. As a method realism is a
complete failure, and the two things that every artist should avoid are
modernity of form and modernity of subject-matter.
Men may have women's minds just as women may have the minds of men.
London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce
the serious people or whether the serious people produce the fogs I
don't know.
How marriage ruins a man! It's as demoralising as cigarettes, and far
more expensive.
He must be quite respectable. One has never heard his name before in the
whole course of one's life, which speaks volumes for a man nowadays.
Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it
to its purpose.
As long as a thing is useful or necessary to us or affects us in any
way, either for pain or pleasure, or appeals strongly to our sympathies
or is a vital part of the environment in which we live, it is outside
the proper sphere of art.
I couldn't have a scene in this bonnet: it is far too fragile. A harsh
word would ruin it.
Music creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant and fills
one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one's tears.
Nothing is so fatal to personality as deliberation.
I adore London dinner parties. The clever people never listen and the
stupid people never talk.
Learned conversation is either the affection of the ignorant or the
profession of the mentally unemployed.
The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there,
there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see
the pictures--which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not
been able to see the people--which was worse.
All art is quite useless.
Beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins.
Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration and destroys the harmony
of any face. The moment one sits down to think one becomes all nose or
all forehead or something horrid.
The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception
absolutely necessary for both parties.
Secrecy seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious
or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides
it.
Conceit is one of the greatest of the virtues, yet how few people
recognise it as a thing to aim at and to strive after. In conceit many a
man and woman has found salvation, yet the average person goes on
all-fours grovelling after modesty.
It is difficult not to be unjust to what one loves.
Humanity will always love Rousseau for having confessed his sins not to
a friend but to the world.
Just as those who do not love Plato more than truth cannot pass beyond
the threshold of the Academe, so those who do not love beauty more than
truth never know the inmost shrine of art.
There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction: the
sort of fatality that seems to dog, through history, the faltering steps
of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows.
To be born, or at any rate bred, in a handbag, whether it had handles or
not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of
family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French
Revolution.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
There must be a new Hedonism that shall recreate life and save it from
that harsh, uncomely Puritanism that is having, in our own day, its
curious revival. It must have its service of the intellect, certainly,
yet it must never accept any theory or system that will involve the
sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, is to
be experience itself and not the fruits of experience, bitter or sweet
as they may be. Of the aestheticism that deadens the senses, as of the
vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it is to know nothing. But it is to
teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is
itself but a moment.
Art never expresses anything but itself. It has an independent life,
just as thought has, and develops purely on its own lines. It is not
necessarily realistic in an age of realism nor spiritual in an age of
faith. So far from being the creation of its time it is usually in
direct opposition to it, and the only history that it preserves for us
is the history of its own progress.
People who mean well always do badly. They are like the ladies who wear
clothes that don't fit them in order to show their piety. Good
intentions are invariably ungrammatical.
Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the
improbable.
When art is more varied nature will, no doubt, be more varied also.
If a man is sufficiently imaginative to produce evidence in support of a
lie he might just as well speak the truth at once.
The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact;
the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of
fiction.
Nature is no great mother who has home us. She is our own creation. It
is in our brain that she quickens to life. Things are because we see
them, and what we see and how we see it depends on the arts that have
influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing.
One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.
The proper school to learn art in is not life but art.
I won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice,
or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too
much.
I wouldn't marry a man with a future before him for anything under the
sun.
I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly, but
I don't see any chance of it just at present.
Modern memoirs are generally written by people who have entirely lost
their memories and have never done anything worth recording.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to
time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Women are like minors, they live upon their expectations.
Twisted minds are as natural to some people as twisted bodies.
It is the very passions about whose origin we deceive ourselves that
tyrannise most strongly over us. Our weakest motives are those of whose
nature we are conscious. It often happens that when we think we are
experimenting on others we are really experimenting on ourselves.
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing it is always from the
noblest motives.
I thought I had no heart. I find I have, and a heart doesn't suit me.
Somehow it doesn't go with modern dress. It makes one look old, and it
spoils one's career at critical moments.
I don't play accurately--anyone can play accurately--but I play with
wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned sentiment is my
forte. I keep science for life.
I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a
lifetime.
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching--that is
really what our enthusiasm for education has come to.
Nature hates mind.
From the point of view of form the type of all the arts is the art of
the musician. From the point of view of feeling the actor's craft is the
type.
Where we differ from each other is purely in accidentals--in dress,
manner, tone of voice, religious opinions, personal appearance, tricks
of habit, and the like.
The more we study art the less we care for Nature. What art really
reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her
extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition. . . . It is
fortunate for us, however, that nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we
should have had no art at all. Art is our spirited protest, our gallant
attempt to teach Nature her proper place. As for the infinite variety of
nature, that is a pure myth. It is not to be found in Nature herself. It
resides in the imagination or fancy or cultivated blindness of the man
who looks at her.
Facts are not merely finding a footing-place in history but they are
usurping the domain of fancy and have invaded the kingdom of romance.
Their chilling touch is over everything. They are vulgarising mankind.
Ordinary people wait till life discloses to them its secrets, but to the
few, to the elect, the mysteries of life are revealed before the veil is
drawn away. Sometimes this is the effect of art, and chiefly of the art
of literature which deals immediately with the passions and the
intellect. But now and then a complex personality takes the place and
assumes the office of art, is, indeed, in its way a real work of art,
Life having its elaborate masterpieces just as poetry has, or sculpture,
or painting.
Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it
just as they die of any other disease.
A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite
and it leaves one unsatisfied.
The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He
is the very basis of civilised society.
It is quite a mistake to believe, as many people do, that the mind shows
itself in the face. Vice may sometimes write itself in lines and changes
of contour, but that is all. Our faces are really masks given to us to
conceal our minds with.
What on earth should we men do going about with purity and innocence? A
carefully thought-out buttonhole is much more effective.
The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the
caprice lasts a little longer.
People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so,
but at least it is not so superficial as thought is.
It is the spectator and not life that art really mirrors.
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the
trade name of the firm--that is all.
In every sphere of life form is the beginning of things. The rhythmic,
harmonious gestures of dancing convey, Plato tells us, both rhythm and
harmony into the mind. Forms are the food of faith, cried Newman, in one
of those great moments of sincerity that make us admire and know the
man. He was right, though he may not have known how terribly right he
was. The creeds are believed not because they are rational but because
they are repeated. Yes; form is everything. It is the secret of life.
Find expression for a sorrow and it will become dear to you. Find
expression for a joy and you intensify its ecstasy. Do you wish to love?
Use love's litany and the words will create the yearning from which the
world fancies that they spring. Have you a grief that corrodes your
heart? Learn its utterance from Prince Hamlet and Queen Constance and
you will find that mere expression is a mode of consolation and that
form, which is the birth of passion, is also the death of pain. And so,
to return to the sphere of art, it is form that creates not merely the
critical temperament but also the aesthetic instinct that reveals to one
all things under the condition of beauty. Start with the worship of form
and there is no secret in art that will not be revealed to you.
It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.
Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common-sense, and
discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are
one's mistakes.
Lady Henry Wotton was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if
they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was
usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned,
she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque but only
succeeded in being untidy.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
With an evening coat and a white tie anybody, even a stockbroker, can
gain a reputation for being civilised.
There is nothing so interesting as telling a good man or woman how bad
one has been. It is intellectually fascinating. One of the greatest
pleasures of having been wicked is that one has so much to say to the
good.
Laws are made in order that people in authority may not remember them,
just as marriages are made in order that the divorce court may not play
about idly.
To get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies.
Never marry a woman with straw-coloured hair. They are so sentimental.
The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all
afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think
that we are generous because we credit our neighbours with the
possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. We
praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good
qualities in the high-wayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets.
I have the greatest contempt for optimism.
Art begins with abstract decoration, with purely imaginative and
pleasureable work dealing with what is unreal and non-existent. This is
the first stage. Then life becomes fascinated with this new wonder, and
asks to be admitted into the charmed circle. Art takes life as part of
her rough material, recreates it and refashions it in fresh form; is
absolutely indifferent to facts; invents, imagines, dreams, and keeps
between herself and reality the impenetrable barrier of beautiful style,
of decorative or ideal treatment. The third stage is when Life gets the
upper hand and drives Art out into the wilderness. This is the true
decadence, and it is from this that we are now suffering.
Good intentions have been the ruin of the world. The only people who
have achieved anything have been those who have had no intentions at
all.
I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere
with what charming people do.
You know I am not a champion of marriage. The real drawback to
marriage is that it makes one unselfish, and unselfish people are
colourless--they lack individuality. Still there are certain
temperaments that marriage makes more complex. They retain their
egotism, and add to it many other egos. They are forced to have more
than one life. They become more highly organised, and to be highly
organised is, I should fancy, the object of man's existence. Besides,
every experience is of value, and whatever one may say against marriage
it is certainly an experience.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
I never talk during music--at least not during good music. If anyone
hears bad music it is one's duty to drown it in conversation.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
Faith is the most plural thing I know. We are all supposed to believe in
the same thing in different ways. It is like eating out of the same dish
with different coloured spoons.
Experience is of no ethical value. It is merely the name men give to
their mistakes. Moralists have, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of
warning, have claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation
of character, have praised it as something that teaches us what to
follow and shows us what to avoid. But there is no motive power in
experience. It is as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All
that it really demonstrates is that our future will be the same as our
past and that the sin we have done once, and with loathing, we shall do
many times, and with joy.
Sensations are the details that build up the stories of our lives.
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an
unpardonable mannerism of style.
She looks like an 'edition de luxe' of a wicked French novel meant
specially for the English market.
I never knew what terror was before; I know it now. It is as if a hand
of ice were laid upon one's heart. It is as if one's heart were beating
itself to death in some empty hollow.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not
admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one
admires it intensely.
No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be
proved.
One knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country
gentleman galloping along after a fox--the unspeakable in pursuit of the
uneatable.
People seldom tell the truths that are worth telling. We ought to choose
our truths as carefully as we choose our lies and to select our virtues
with as much thought as we bestow upon the selection of our enemies.
Soul and body, body and soul--how mysterious they are! There is
animalism in the soul, and the body has its moments of spirituality. The
senses can refine and the intellect can degrade. Who can say where the
fleshly impulse ceases or the psychical impulse begins? How shallow are
the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! And yet how
difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools! Is the
soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or is the body really in the
soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit from matter is
a mystery, and the unison of spirit with matter is a mystery also.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the
cultivated. For these there is hope.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well
written or badly written-that is all.
Marriage is a sort of forcing house. It brings strange sins to fruit,
and sometimes strange renunciations.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist,
but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect
medium.
A sense of duty is like some horrible disease. It destroys the tissues
of the mind, as certain complaints destroy the tissues of the body. The
catechism has a great deal to answer for.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without
being charming. This is a fault.
Few people have sufficient strength to resist the preposterous claims of
orthodoxy.
She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes.
That is always a sign of despair in a woman.
A virtue is like a city set upon a hill--it cannot be hid. We can
conceal our vices if we care to--for a time at least--but a virtue will
out.
Can't make out how you stand London society. The thing has gone to the
dogs: a lot of damned nobodies talking about nothing.
You don't know what an existence they lead down there. It is pure,
unadulterated country life. They get up early because they have so much
to do, and go to bed early because they have so little to think about.
Nothing is so fatal to a personality as the keeping of promises, unless
it be telling the truth.
Who cares whether Mr Ruskin's views on Turner are sound or not? What
does it matter? That mighty and majestic prose of his, so fervid and so
fiery coloured in its noble eloquence, so rich in its elaborate
symphonic music, so sure and certain, at its best, in subtle choice of
word and epithet, is, at least, as great a work of art as any of those
wonderful sunsets that bleach or rot on their corrupted canvases in
England's gallery--greater, indeed, one is apt to think at times, not
merely because its equal beauty is more enduring but on account of the
fuller variety of its appeal--soul speaking to soul in those long,
cadenced lines, not through form and colour alone, though through these,
indeed, completely and without loss, but with intellectual and emotional
utterance, with lofty passion and with loftier thought, with imaginative
insight and with poetic aim--greater, I always think, even as literature
is the greater art.
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far
the best ending for one.
Mrs Cheveley is one of those very modern women of our time who find a
new scandal as becoming as a new bonnet, and air them both in the Park
every afternoon at 5. 30. I am sure she adores scandals, and that the
sorrow of her life at present is that she can't manage to have enough of
them.
The world divides actions into three classes: good actions, bad actions
that you may do, and bad actions that you may not do. If you stick to
the good actions you are respected by the good. If you stick to the bad
actions that you may do you are respected by the bad. But if you perform
the bad actions that no one may do then the good and the bad set upon
you and you are lost indeed.
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their
good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.
The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To me the word 'natural' means all that is middle class, all that is of
the essence of Jingoism, all that is colourless and without form and
void. It might be a beautiful word, but it is the most debased coin in
the currency of language.
I pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably
never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment's
solitude.
It is only when we have learned to love forgetfulness that we have
learned the art of living.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
The world taken 'en masse' is a monster, crammed with prejudices, packed
with prepossessions, cankered with what it calls virtues, a Puritan, a
prig. And the art of life is the art of defiance. To defy--that is what
we ought to live for, instead of living, as we do, to acquiesce.
Some resemblance the creative work of the critic will have to the work
that has stirred him to creation, but it will be such resemblance as
exists, not between nature and the mirror that the painter of landscape
or figure may be supposed to hold up to her, but between nature and the
work of the decorative artist. Just as on the flowerless carpets of
Persia tulip and rose blossom indeed, and are lovely to look on, though
they are not reproduced in visible shape or line; just as the pearl and
purple of the sea shell is echoed in the church of St Mark at Venice;
just as the vaulted ceiling of the wondrous chapel at Ravenna is made
gorgeous by the gold and green and sapphire of the peacock's tail,
though the birds of Juno fly not across it; so the critic reproduces the
work that he criticises in a mode that is never imitative, and part of
whose charm may really consist in the rejection of resemblance, and
shows us in this way not merely the meaning but also the mystery of
beauty, and by transforming each art into literature solves once for all
the problem of art's unity.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new,
complex, and vital.
Nothing is more painful to me than to come across virtue in a person in
whom I have never suspected its existence. It is like finding a needle
in a bundle of hay. It pricks you. If we have virtue we should warn
people of it.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material
his impression of beautiful things.
Hopper is one of nature's gentlemen--the worst type of gentleman I
know.
If one intends to be good one must take it up as a profession. It is
quite the most engrossing one in the world.
I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can
talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Childhood is one long career of innocent eavesdropping, of hearing what
one ought not to hear.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.
The only things worth saying are those that we forget, just as the only
things worth doing are those that the world is surprised at.
Maturity is one long career of saying what one ought not to say. That is
the art of conversation.
Virtue is generally merely a form of deficiency, just as vice is an
assertion of intellect.
People teach in order to conceal their ignorance, as people smile in
order to conceal their tears.
To be unnatural is often to be great. To be natural is generally to be
stupid.
To lie finely is an art, to tell the truth is to act according to
nature.
People who talk sense are like people who break stones in the road: they
cover one with dust and splinters.
Jesus 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. 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.
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.
An echo is often more beautiful than the voice it repeats.
* * * * *
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.
