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diff --git a/8125.txt b/8125.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5d1f3f5 --- /dev/null +++ b/8125.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5782 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Impressions And Comments, by Havelock Ellis + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Impressions And Comments + +Author: Havelock Ellis + + +Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8125] +This file was first posted on June 16, 2003 +Last Updated: May 20, 2013 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS *** + + + + +Produced by S.R. Ellison, Eric Eldred and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + + +IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS + +By Havelock Ellis + + + + +PREFACE + +For many years I have been accustomed to make notes on random leaves of +the things in Life and Thought which have chanced to strike my attention. +Such records of personal reaction to the outer and inner world have been +helpful to my work, and so had their uses. + +But as one grows older the possibilities of these uses become more +limited. One realises in the Autumn that leaves no longer have a vital +function to perform; there is no longer any need why they should cling to +the tree. So let them be scattered to the winds! + +It is inevitable that such Leaves cannot be judged in the same way as +though they constituted a Book. They are much more like loose pages from a +Journal. Thus they tend to be more personal, more idiosyncratic, than in a +book it would be lawful for a writer to be. Often, also, they show blanks +which the intelligence of the reader must fill in. At the best they merely +present the aspect of the moment, the flash of a single facet of life, +only to be held in the brain provided one also holds therein many other +facets, for the fair presentation of the great crystal of life. So it +comes about that much is here demanded of the Reader, so much that I feel +it rather my duty to warn him away than to hold out any fallacious lures. + +The fact has especially to be reckoned with that such Impressions and +Comments, stated absolutely and without consideration for divergent +Impressions and Comments, may seem, as a friend who has read some of them +points out, to lack explicit reasonableness. I trust they are not lacking +in implicit reasonableness. They spring, even when they seem to contradict +one another, from a central vision, and from a central faith too deeply +rooted to care to hasten unduly towards the most obvious goal. From that +central core these Impressions and Comments are concerned with many +things, with the miracles of Nature, with the Charms and Absurdities of +the Human Worm, that Golden Wire wherefrom hang all the joys and the +mysteries of Art. I am only troubled because I know how very feebly these +things are imaged here. For I have only the medium of words to work in, +only words, words that are flung about in the street and often in the mud, +only words with which to mould all my images of the Beauty and Gaiety of +the World. + +Such as they are, these random leaves are here scattered to the winds. It +may be that as they flutter to the earth one or another may be caught by +the hand of the idle passer-by, and even seem worthy of contemplation. For +no two leaves are alike even when they fall from the same tree. + +HAVELOCK ELLIS. + + + + +IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS + + +_July 24, 1912_.--I looked out from my room about ten o'clock at night. +Almost below the open window a young woman was clinging to the flat wall +for support, with occasional floundering movements towards the attainment +of a firmer balance. In the dim light she seemed decently dressed in +black; her handkerchief was in her hand; she had evidently been sick. + +Every few moments some one passed by. It was quite clear that she was +helpless and distressed. No one turned a glance towards her--except a +policeman. He gazed at her searchingly as he passed, but without stopping +or speaking; she was drunk, no doubt, but not too obtrusively incapable; +he mercifully decided that she was of no immediate professional concern to +him. She soon made a more violent effort to gain muscular control of +herself, but merely staggered round her own escaping centre of gravity and +sank gently on to the pavement in a sitting posture. + +Every few moments people continued to pass within a few inches of +her--men, women, couples. Unlike the priest and the Levite in the parable, +they never turned away, but pursued their straight course with callous +rectitude. Not one seemed so much as to see her. In a minute or two, +stimulated perhaps by some sense of the impropriety of her position, she +rose to her feet again, without much difficulty, and returned to cling to +the wall. + +A few minutes later I saw a decently-dressed young woman, evidently of the +working class, walk quietly, but without an instant's hesitation, straight +up to the figure against the wall. (It was what, in Moscow, the first +passer-by would have done.) I could hear her speaking gently and kindly, +though of what she said I could only catch, "Where do you live?" No +answers were audible, and perhaps none were given. But the sweet Samaritan +continued speaking gently. At last I heard her say, "Come round the +corner," and with only the gentle pressure of a hand on the other's arm +she guided her round the corner near which they stood, away from the +careless stream of passengers, to recover at leisure. I saw no more. + +Our modern civilisation, it is well known, long since transformed +"chivalry"; it was once an offer of help to distressed women; it is now +exclusively reserved for women who are not distressed and clearly able to +help themselves. We have to realise that it can scarcely even be said that +our growing urban life, however it fosters what has been called +"urbanity," has any equally fostering influence on instinctive mutual +helpfulness as an element of that urbanity. We do not even see the +helpless people who go to the wall or to the pavement. This is true of men +and women alike. But when instinctive helpfulness is manifested it seems +most likely to reveal itself in a woman. That is why I would like to give +to women all possible opportunities--rights and privileges alike--for +social service. + + +_July 27_.--A gentle rain was falling, and on this my first day in Paris +since the unveiling of the Verlaine monument in the Luxembourg Gardens, +immediately after I left Paris last year, I thought there could be no +better moment to visit the spot so peculiarly fit to be dedicated to the +poet who loved such spots--a "coin exquis" where the rain may fall +peacefully among the trees, on his image as once on his heart, and the +tender mists enfold him from the harsh world. + +I scarcely think the sculptor quite happily inspired in his conception of +the face of the charming old man I knew of old in his haunts of the +Boulevard Saint-Michel. It is too strong a face, too disdainful, with too +much character. Verlaine was sympathetic, simple, childlike, humble; when +he put on an air of pride it was with a deliberate yet delightful pose, a +child's pose. There is an air of almost military rigidity about the pride +of this bust; I do not find Verlaine in that trait. + +Verlaine's strength was not that of character; it was that of Nature. I +could imagine that the Silenus, whom we see with his satellites near by, +might be regarded in its expression, indeed in the whole conception of the +group--with its helpless languor and yet its divine dominance--as the +monument of that divine and helpless poet whom I still recall so well, as +with lame leg and stick he would drift genially along the Boulevard a few +yards away. + + +_July 31._--At the hotel in Dijon, the flourishing capital of Burgundy, I +was amused to note how curiously my room differed from what I once +regarded as the type of the French room in the hotels I used to frequent. +There is still a Teutonic touch in the Burgundian; he is meticulously +thorough. I had six electric lights in different positions, a telephone, +hot and cold water laid on into a huge basin, a foot-bath, and, finally, a +wastepaper-basket. For the rest, a severely simple room, no ornaments, +nothing to remind one of the brace of glass pistols and all the other ugly +and useless things which filled my room at the ancient hotel in Rouen +where I stayed two years ago. And the "lavabo," as it is here called, a +spacious room with an ostentatiously noisy rush of water which may be +heard afar and awakens one at night. The sanitary and mechanical age we +are now entering makes up for the mercy it grants to our sense of smell by +the ferocity with which it assails our sense of hearing. As usual, what we +call "Progress" is the exchange of one Nuisance for another Nuisance. + + +_August 5._--It is an idea of mine that a country with a genius for +architecture is only able to show that genius supremely in one style, not +in all styles. The Catalans have a supreme genius for architecture, but +they have only achieved a single style. The English have attempted all +styles of architecture, but it was only in Perpendicular that we attained +a really free and beautiful native style in our domestic buildings and +what one might call our domestic churches. Strassburg Cathedral is +thoroughly German and acceptable as such, but Cologne Cathedral is an +exotic, and all the energy and the money of Germany through a thousand +years can never make it anything but cold, mechanical, and artificial. +When I was in Burgundy I felt that the Burgundians had a genius for +Romanesque, and that their Gothic is for the most part feeble and insipid. +Now, how about the Normans? One cannot say their Romanesque is not fine, +in the presence of William the Conqueror's Abbaye aux Hommes, here at +Caen. But I should be inclined to ask (without absolutely affirming) +whether the finest Norman Romanesque can be coupled with the finest +Burgundian Romanesque. The Norman genius was, I think, really for Gothic, +and not for what we in England call "Norman" because it happened to come +to us through Normandy. Without going to Rouen it is enough to look at +many a church here. The Normans had a peculiar plastic power over stone +which Gothic alone could give free scope to. Stone became so malleable in +their hands that they seem as if working in wood. Probably it really was +the case that their familiarity with wood-carving influenced their work in +architecture. And they possessed so fine a taste that while they seem to +be freely abandoning themselves to their wildest fantasies, the outcome is +rarely extravagant (Flaubert in his _Tentation_ is a great Norman +architect), and at the best attains a ravishing beauty of flowing and +interwoven lines. At its worst, as in St. Sauveur, which is a monstrosity +like the Siamese twins, a church with two naves and no aisles, the general +result still has its interest, even apart from the exquisite beauty of the +details. It is here in Gothic, and not in Romanesque, that the Normans +attained full scope. We miss the superb repose, the majestic strength, of +the Romanesque of Burgundy and the south-west of France. There is +something daring and strange and adventurous in Norman Romanesque. It was +by no accident, I think, that the ogive, in which lay the secret of +Gothic, appeared first in Norman Romanesque. + + +_August 8._--I have sometimes thought when in Spain that in ancient +university towns the women tend to be notably beautiful or attractive, and +I have imagined that this might be due to the continuous influence of +student blood through many centuries in refining the population, the +finest specimens of the young students proving irresistible to the women +of the people, and so raising the level of the population by sexual +selection. At Salamanca I was impressed by the unusual charm of the women, +and even at Palencia to some extent noticed it, though Palencia ceased to +be the great university of Spain nearly eight centuries ago. At Fecamp I +have been struck by the occasional occurrence of an unusual type of +feminine beauty, not, it seems to me, peculiarly Norman, with dark, +ardent, spiritual eyes, and a kind of proud hierarchical bearing. I have +wondered how far the abbots and monks of this great and ancient abbey of +Benedictines were occupied--in the intervals of more supra-mundane +avocations--in perfecting, not only the ancient recipe of their liqueur, +but also the physical type of the feminine population among which they +laboured. The type I have in mind sometimes rather recalls the face of +Baudelaire, who, by his mother's family from which he chiefly inherited, +the Dufays, belonged, it is held probable, to Normandy. + + +_August 9._--Typical women of Normandy often have a certain highly-bred +air. They are slender when young, sometimes inclined to be tall, and the +face--of course beautiful in complexion, for they dwell near the sea--is +not seldom refined and distinguished. See the proud, sensitive nostrils of +that young woman sweeping the pavement with her broom in front of the +house this morning; one can tell she is of the same race as Charlotte +Corday. And I have certainly never found anywhere in France women who seem +to me so naturally charming and so sympathetic as the women who dwell in +all this north-western district from Paris to the sea. They are often, as +one might expect, a little English-like (it might be in Suffolk on the +other side of the Channel, and Beauvais, I recall, has something of the +air of old Ipswich), but with a vivacity of movement, and at the same time +an aristocratic precision and subtlety one fails to find in the English. +When a pretty English girl of the people opens her mouth the charm is +often gone. On the contrary, I have often noticed in Normandy that a +seemingly commonplace unattractive girl only becomes charming when she +does open her mouth, to reveal her softness of speech, the +delicately-inflexed and expressive tones, while her face lights up in +harmony with her speech. Now--to say nothing of the women of the south, +whose hard faces and harsh voices are often so distressing--in Dijon, +whence I came to Normandy this time, the women are often sweet, even +angelic of aspect, looking proper material for nuns and saints, but, to me +at all events, not personally so sympathetic as the Norman women, who are +no doubt quite as good but never express the fact with the same air of +slightly Teutonic insipidity. The men of Normandy I regard as of finer +type than the Burgundian men, and this time it is the men who express +goodness more than the women. The Burgundian men, with their big +moustaches turned up resolutely at the points and their wickedly-sparkling +eyes, have evidently set before themselves the task of incorporating a +protest against the attitude of their women. But the Norman men, who allow +their golden moustaches to droop, are a fine frank type of manhood at the +best, pleasantly honest and unspoilt. I know, indeed, how skilful, how +wily, how noble even, in their aristocratic indifference to detail, these +Normans can be in extracting money from the stranger (have I not lunched +simply at the Hostel Guillaume-le-Conquerant in the village of Dives for +the same sum on which I have lived sumptuously for three days at the Hotel +Victoria in the heart of Seville?), but the manner of their activity in +this matter scarcely seems to me to be happily caught by those Parisians +who delight to caricature, as mere dull, avaricious plebeians, "Ces bons +Normands." Their ancient chronicler said a thousand years ago of the +Normans that their unbounded avarice was balanced by their equally +unbounded extravagance. That, perhaps, is a clue to the magnificent +achievements of the Normans, in the spiritual world even more than in the +material world. + + +_August_ 10.--On leaving France by the boat from Dieppe I selected a seat +close to which, shortly afterwards, three English people--two young women +and a man--came to occupy deck-chairs already placed for them by a sailor +and surrounded by their bags and wraps. Immediately one of the women began +angrily asking her companions why her bag had not been placed the right +side up; _she_ would not have her things treated like that, etc. Her +companions were gentle and conciliatory,--though I noticed they left her +alone during most of the passage,--and the man had with attentive +forethought made all arrangements for his companions' comfort. But, +somehow, I looked in wonder at her discontented face and heard with +surprise her peevish voice. She was just an ordinary stolid nourishing +young Englishwoman. But I had been in France, and though I had been +travelling for a whole fortnight I had seen nothing like this. She lay +back and began reading a novel, which she speedily exchanged for a basin. +I fear I felt a certain satisfaction at the spectacle. It is good for the +English barbarian to be chastised with scorpions. + +How pleasant at Newhaven to find myself near another woman, a young +Frenchwoman, with the firm, disciplined, tender face, the +sweetly-modulated voice, the air of fine training, the dignified +self-respect which also involves respect for others. I realised in a flash +the profound contrast to that fellow-countrywoman of mine who had +fascinated my attention on board the boat. + +But one imagines a French philosopher, a new Taine, let us suppose, +setting out from Dieppe for the "land of Suffragettes" to write another +_Notes sur l'Angleterre_. How finely he would build a great generalisation +on narrow premises! How acutely he would point out the dependence of the +English "gentleman's" good qualities or the ill-conditioned qualities of +his women-folk! + + +_August 15._--I enter an empty suburban railway carriage and take up a +common-looking little periodical lying on the seat beside me. It is a +penny weekly I had never heard of before, written for feminine readers and +evidently enjoying an immense circulation. I turn over the pages. One +might possibly suppose that at the present moment the feminine world is +greatly excited, or at all events mildly interested, by the suffrage +movement. But there is not a word in this paper from beginning to end with +the faintest reference to the suffrage, nor is there anything bearing on +any single great social movement of the day in which, it may seem to us, +women are taking a part. Nor, again, is there anything to be found +touching on ideas, not even on religion. There are, on the other hand, +evidently three great interests dominating the thoughts of the readers of +this paper: Clothes, Cookery, Courtship. How to make an old hat look new, +how to make sweetmeats, how to behave when a man makes advances to +you--these are the problems in which the readers of this journal are +profoundly interested, and one can scarcely gather that they are +interested in anything else. Very instructive is the long series of +questions, problems posed by anxious correspondents for the editor to +answer. One finds such a problem as this: Suppose you like a man, and +suppose you think he likes you, and suppose he never says so--what ought +you to do? The answers, fully accepting the serious nature of the +problems, are kindly and sensible enough, almost maternal, admirably +adapted to the calibre and outlook of the readers in this little world. +But what a little world! So narrow, so palaeolithically ancient, so +pathetically simple, so good, so sweet, so humble, so essentially and +profoundly feminine! It is difficult not to drop a tear on the thin, +common, badly-printed pages. + +And then, in the very different journal I have with me, I read the +enthusiastic declaration of an ardent masculine feminist--a man of the +study--that the executive power of the world is to-day being transferred +to women; they alone possess "psychic vision," they alone are interested +in the great questions which men ignore--and I realise what those great +questions are: Clothes, Cookery, Courtship. + + +_August 23._--I stood on the platform at Paddington station as the +Plymouth Express slowly glided out. Leaning out of a third-class +compartment stood the figure that attracted my attention. His head was +bare and so revealed his harmoniously wavy and carefully-tended grey hair. +The expression of his shaven and disciplined face was sympathetic and +kindly, evidently attuned to expected emotions of sorrowful farewell, yet +composed, clearly not himself overwhelmed by those emotions. His right arm +and open hand were held above his head, in an attitude that had in it a +not too ostentatious hint of benediction. When he judged that the gracious +vision was no longer visible to the sorrowing friends left behind he +discreetly withdrew into the carriage. There was a feminine touch about +this figure; there was also a touch of the professional actor. But on the +whole it was absolutely, without the shadow of a doubt, the complete +Anglican Clergyman. + + +_September_ 2.--Nearly every day just now I have to enter a certain shop +where I am served by a young woman. She is married, a mother, at the same +time a businesslike young woman who is proud of her businesslike +qualities. But she is also pleasant to look upon in her healthy young +maternity, her frank open face, her direct speech, her simple natural +manner and instinctive friendliness. From her whole body radiates the +healthy happiness of her gracious personality. A businesslike person, +certainly, and I receive nothing beyond my due money's worth. But I always +carry away something that no money can buy, and that is even more +nourishing than the eggs and butter and cream she sells. + +How few, it seems to me, yet realise the vast importance in civilisation +of the quality of the people one is necessarily brought into contact with! +Consider the vast number of people in our present communities who are +harsh, ugly, ineradically discourteous, selfish, or insolent--the people +whose lives are spent in diminishing the joy of the community in which not +so much Providence as the absence of providence has placed them, in +impeding that community's natural activity, in diminishing its total +output of vital force. Lazy and impertinent clerks, stuck-up shop +assistants, inconsiderate employers, brutal employees, unendurable +servants, and no less unendurable mistresses--what place will be left for +them as civilisation advances? + +We have assumed, in the past, that these things and the likes of these are +modifiable by nurture, and that where they cannot be cured they must be +endured. But with the realisation that breeding can be, and eventually +must be, controlled by social opinion, a new horizon has opened to +civilisation, a new light has come into the world, the glimpse of a new +Heaven is revealed. + +Animals living in nature are everywhere beautiful; it is only among men +that ugliness flourishes. Savages, nearly everywhere, are gracious and +harmonious; it is only among the civilised that harshness and discord are +permitted to prevail. Henry Ellis, in the narrative of his experiences in +Hudson's Bay in the eighteenth century, tells how a party of Eskimo--a +people peculiarly tender to their children--came to the English +settlement, told heart-brokenly of hardship and famine so severe that one +of the children had been eaten. The English only laughed and the indignant +Eskimo went on their way. What savages anywhere in the world would have +laughed? I recall seeing, years ago, a man enter a railway carriage, fling +aside the rug a traveller had deposited to retain a corner seat and +obstinately hold that seat. Would such a man be permitted to live among +savages? If the eugenic ideals that are now floating before men's eyes +never lead us to any Heaven at all, but merely discourage among us the +generation of human creatures below the level of decent savagery, they +will serve their turn. + + +_September_ 7.--The music of Cesar Franck always brings before me a man +who is seeking peace with himself and consolation with God, at a height, +above the crowd, in isolation, as it were in the uppermost turret of a +church tower. It recalls the memory of the unforgettable evening when +Denyn played on the carillon at Malines, and from the canal side I looked +up at the little red casement high in the huge Cathedral tower where the +great player seemed to be breathing out his soul, in solitude, among the +stars. Always when I hear the music of Franck--a Fleming, also, it may +well be by no accident--I seem to be in contact with a sensitive and +solitary spirit, absorbed in self-communion, weaving the web of its own +Heaven and achieving the fulfilment of its own rapture. + +In this symphonic poem, "Les Djinns," the attitude more tenderly revealed +in the "Variations Symphoniques," and, above all, the sonata in A Major, +is dramatically represented. The solitary dreamer in his tower is +surrounded and assailed by evil spirits, we hear the beating of their +great wings as they troop past, but the dreamer is strong and undismayed, +and in the end he is left in peace, alone. + + +_September 10_.--It was an overture by Elgar, and the full solemn sonorous +music had drawn to its properly majestic close. Beside me sat an artist +friend who is a lover of music, and regularly attends these Promenade +Concerts. He removed the cigarette from his lips and chuckled softly to +himself for some moments. Then he replaced the cigarette and joined in the +tempestuous and prolonged applause. I looked at him inquiringly. "It is a +sort of variation of the theme," he said, "that he sometimes calls the +Cosmic Angels Working Together or the Soul of Man Striving with the Divine +Essence." I glanced at the programme again. The title was "Cockaigne." + + +_September_ 17.--It has often seemed to me that the bearing of musical +conductors is significant for the study of national characteristics, and +especially for the difference between the English and the Continental +neuro-psychic systems. One always feels inhibition and suppression (such +as a Freudian has found characteristic of the English) in the movements of +the English conductor, some psychic element holding the nervous play in +check, and producing a stiff wooden embarrassed rigidity or an +ostentatiously languid and careless indifference. At the extreme remove +from this is Birnbaum, that gigantic and feverishly active spider, whose +bent body seems to crouch over the whole orchestra, his magically +elongated arms to stretch out so far that his wand touches the big drum. +But even the quietest of these foreign conductors, Nikisch, for example, +gives no impression of psychic inhibition, but rather of that refined and +deliberate economy of means which marks the accomplished artist. Among +English conductors one may regard Wood (_lucus a non lucendo!_) as an +exception. Most of the rest--I speak of those of the old school, since +those of the new school can sometimes be volatile and feverish +enough--seem to be saying all the time: "I am in an awkward and +embarrassing position, though I shall muddle through successfully. The +fact is I am rather out of my element here. I am really a Gentleman." + + +_October_ 2.--Whenever I come down to Cornwall I realise the curious +contradiction which lies in this region as at once a Land of Granite and a +Land of Mist. On the one hand archaic rocks, primitive, mighty, +unchanging, deep-rooted in the bases of the world. On the other hand, +iridescent vapour, for ever changing, one moment covering the land with +radiant colour, another enveloping it in a pall of gloom. + +I can also see two contradictory types of people among the inhabitants of +this land. On the one hand, a people of massive and solid build, a +slow-moving people of firm, primitive nature, that for all their calm +stolidity may give out a fiery ring if struck, and will fearlessly follow +the lure of Adventure or of Right. On the other hand, a race of soft and +flexible build, of shifting and elusive mind, alert to speak and slow to +act, of rainbow temperament, fascinating and uncertain. Other types there +may be, but certainly these two, whatever their racial origin, Children of +the Granite and Children of the Mist. _October_ 3.--It has often +interested me to observe how a nation of ancient civilisation differs from +a nation of new civilisation by what may be called the ennoblement of its +lower classes. Among new peoples the lower classes--whatever fine +qualities they may possess--are still barbarians, if not savages. Plebeian +is written all over them, in their vulgar roughly-moulded faces, in their +awkward movements, in their manners, in their servility or in their +insolence. But among the peoples of age-long culture, that culture has had +time to enter the blood of even the lowest social classes, so that the +very beggars may sometimes be fine gentlemen. The features become firmly +or delicately moulded, the movements graceful, the manners as gracious; +there is an instinctive courtesy and ease, as of equal to equal, even when +addressing a social superior. One has only to think of the contrast +between Poland and Russia, between Spain and Germany. + +I am frequently reminded of that difference here in Cornwall. Anywhere in +Cornwall you may see a carter, a miner, a fisherman, a bricklayer, who +with the high distinction of his finely cast face, the mingling in his +manner of easy nonchalance and old-world courtesy, seems only to need a +visit to the tailor to add dignity to a Pall Mall club. No doubt England +is not a new country, and the English lower social classes have become in +a definite degree more aristocratic than those of Russia or even Germany. +But the forefathers of the Cornish were civilised when we English were a +horde of savages. One may still find humble families with ancient surnames +living in the same spot as lived, we find, if we consult the Heralds' +Visitations, armigerous families of the same name in the sixteenth +century, already ancient, and perhaps bearing, it is curious to note, the +same Christian names as the family which has forgotten them bears to-day. + +So it is that in that innate ennoblement which implies no superiority +either of the intellect or of the heart, but merely a greater refinement +of the nervous tissue, the Cornish have displayed, from the earliest +period we can discern, a slight superiority over us English. Drake, a man +of this district if not a Cornish-man, when sailing on his daring +buccaneering adventures, dined and supped to the music of violins, a +refinement which even his Pole-hunting successors of our own day scarcely +achieved. Raleigh, partly a Cornishman, still retains popular fame as the +man who flung his rich cloak in the mud for the Queen to step on. To-day a +poet of Cornish race when introduced in public to Sarah Bernhardt, the +goddess of his youthful adoration, at once kissed her hand and declared to +her that that was the moment he had all his life been looking for. But we +English are not descended from the men who wrote the _Mabinogian_; our +hearts and souls are expressed in _Beowulf_ and _Havelok_, and more +remotely in the _Chanson de Roland_. We could not imitate the Cornish if +we would; and sometimes, perhaps, we would not if we could. + + +_October_ 4.--I lay with a book on the rocks, overlooking a familiar +scene, the great expanse of the sands at low tide. In the far distance +near the river was a dim feminine figure in a long coat, accompanied by +three dogs. Half an hour later, when I glanced up from my book, I chanced +to notice that the slender feminine figure was marching down to the sea, +leaving a little pile of garments on the middle of the sands, just now +completely deserted. The slender figure leisurely and joyously disported +itself in the water. Then at length it returned to the little pile, +negligently guarded by the dogs, there was a faint radiance of flesh, a +white towel flashed swiftly to and fro for a few moments. Then with +amazing celerity the figure had resumed its original appearance, and, +decorously proceeding shorewards, disappeared among the sand dunes on the +way to its unknown home. + +In an age when savagery has passed and civilisation has not arrived, it is +only by stealth, at rare moments, that the human form may emerge from the +prison house of its garments, it is only from afar that the radiance of +its beauty--if beauty is still left to it--may faintly flash before us. + +Among pseudo-Christian barbarians, as Heine described them, the Olympian +deities still wander homelessly, scarce emerging from beneath obscure +disguises, and half ashamed of their own divinity. + + +_October_ 5.--I made again to-day an observation concerning a curious +habit of birds and small mammals which I first made many years ago and +have frequently confirmed. If when I am walking along near banks and +hedges, absorbed in my own thoughts, and chance suddenly to stand still, +any wild creature in covert near the spot will at once scuttle hastily and +noisily away: the creature which had awaited the approaching tramp in +quiet confidence that the moment of danger would soon be overpast if only +he kept quiet and concealed, is overcome by so sudden a panic of terror at +the arrest of movement in his neighbourhood that he betrays his own +presence in the impulse to escape. The silence which one might imagine to +be reassuring to the nervous animal is precisely the cause of his terror. +It is a useful adaptation to the ways of the great enemy Man, whether it +is an adaptation resulting from individual experience or acquired by +natural selection. From the stand-point of wild animality it is the +Silence of Man that is ominous. + + +_October_ 11.--When I come, as now, from Cornwall to West Suffolk, I feel +that I have left behind a magic land of sea and sky and exquisite +atmosphere. But I have entered a land of humanity, and a land whose +humanity--it may be in part from ancestral reasons--I find peculiarly +congenial. Humanity is not the chief part of the charm of Cornwall, though +sometimes it may seem the very efflorescence of the land. It often seems +almost a parasite there. It cannot mould the barren and stubborn soil to +any ideal human shapes, or develop upon it any rich harmonious human life, +such as I inhale always, with immense satisfaction, in this reposeful and +beautifully wrought land of Suffolk. + +On this evening of my arrival in the charming old town by the quiet river, +how delicious--with remembrance still fresh of the square heavy little +granite boxes in which the Cornish live--to find once more these ancient, +half-timbered houses reminiscent of the Norman houses, but lighter and +more various, wrought with an art at once so admirable and so homely, with +such delicate detail, the lovely little old windows with the soft light +shining through to reveal their pattern. + +The musically voiced bells sound the hour from the great church, rich in +beauty and tradition, and we walk across the market-place, this side the +castle hill--the hill which held for six hundred years the precious +jewelled crucifix, with the splinter of the "True Cross" in its secret +recess, a careless English queen once lost from her neck--towards our +quiet inn, a real museum of interesting things fittingly housed, for +supper of Suffolk ham and country ale, and then to bed, before the long +walk of the morrow. + + +_October_ 14.--The Raphaels and the Peruginos are now ranged side by side +along a great wall of the National Gallery. I am able more clearly than +ever to realise how much more the early master appeals to me than his +greater pupil. I well remember how, as a boy of fifteen, in the old +National Gallery, I would linger long before Raphael's "St. Catherine." +There was no picture in the whole gallery that appealed to my youthful +brain as that picture appealed, with its seductive blend of feminine grace +and heavenly aspiration. But a little later the glory of Rubens suddenly +broke on my vision. I could never look again with the same eyes on +Raphael. By an intellectual effort I can appreciate the gracious plenitude +of his accomplishment, his copious facility, his immense variety, the +beauty of his draughtsmanship, and the felicity of his decorative design. +But all this self-conscious skill, this ingenious affectation, this +ostentatious muscularity, this immense superficiality--I feel always now a +spiritual vacuity behind it which leaves me cold and critical. Every +famous achievement of Raphael's, when I come upon it for the first time, +repels me with a fresh shock of disillusionment. I am unpleasantly +reminded of Andrea del Sarto and even of lesser men; I see the frescoes of +Vasari in the distance. It is all the work of a divinely gifted youth who +swiftly ran to waste, carrying with him all the art of his day and land to +the same fatal abyss. + +But the art of Perugino is still solid and beautiful, immutably serene. It +radiates peace and strength. I neither criticise nor admire; my attitude +is much more nearly that of worship, not of Perugino's images, but of a +far-away ineffable mystery, which he in his time humbly sought to make a +little more symbolically visible to men than any that came before him. For +here we are in the presence of a great tradition which a long series of +artists have in succession wrought, each adding a little that expressed +the noblest insight of his own soul at its highest and best moments, and +the newest acquirement of his technical skill. Raphael broke up painting, +as later on Beethoven broke up music. Not that that blow destroyed the +possibility of rare and wonderful developments in special directions. But +painting and music alike lost for ever the radiant beauty of their prime +and its unconscious serenity. + +In a certain sense, if one thinks, it is the ripeness of Raphael's +perfection which falls short of Perfection. In all Perfection that +satisfies we demand the possibility of a Beyond which enfolds a further +Perfection. It is not the fully blown rose which entrances us, but rather +that which in its half-blown loveliness suggests a Perfection which no +full-blown rose ever reached. In that the rose is the symbol of all +vitally beautiful things. Raphael is the full-blown rose; the only Beyond +is Dissolution and the straggling of faded petals. + + +_October_ 17.--"War, that simple-looking word which lightly comes tripping +from the lips of unthinking men, and even women." So writes a famous +war-correspondent, a man in the midst of war and telling of war as it +really is. Now hear a woman war-correspondent, writing about this same +war: "I was so proud to see the first gun fired on Wednesday. ... I liked +to hear the shells swishing. ... To women keen on this war it seems almost +too good to be true." That is not an extract from one of the poignant +satires of Janson. This woman, who writes of war as a girl might write of +her first long frock, is an actual woman, a war-correspondent, with a +special permit to be at the front. We are told, moreover, that she is, at +the same time, actively nursing the wounded in the hospital. + +To those psychologists who like large generalisations, how this figure +must appeal as a type of the ancient conventional conception of what women +are supposed to be--Incarnate Devils, Angels of Mercy, blended together. + + +_October_ 18.--Stanley Hall has lately pointed out how much we have lost +by eliminating the Devil from our theology. He is the inseparable +Companion of God, and when faith in the Devil grows dim God fades away. +Not only has the Devil been the Guardian of innocent pleasure, of the +theatre, of dancing, of sports, Hall observes, but he preserved the +virility of God. "Ought not we to rehabilitate and reinstall the Devil?" + +There is much psychological truth in this contention, even for those who +are not concerned, with Stanley Hall, for the maintenance of orthodox +Christian theology. By eliminating one of the Great Persons from our +theology we not only emasculate, we dissolve it. We cannot with impunity +pick and choose what we will dispense with and what we will preserve in +our traditional myths. Let us take another sacred myth, as it may well +have been, "Jack and the Bean Stalk." Suppose that our refined civilised +impulses lead us to reject Jack, the reckless, mischievous, and +irresponsible youth, who, after a brief but discreditable career on earth, +climbed up into the clouds and fraudulently deprived the Great Giant in +the sky of his most precious possessions. But if the revolted moral sense +rejects Jack, is it likely that even the Great Giant himself will much +longer retain our faith? + +In any case it must still be said that mere grandeur, creativeness, the +apotheosis of virtue and benevolence, fail to constitute an adequate +theological symbol for the complex human animal. Man needs to deify not +only his moments of moral subjection and rectitude, but his moments of +orgy and revolt. He has attained the height of civilisation, not along the +one line only, but along both lines, and we cannot even be sure that the +virtue line is the most important. Even the Puritan Milton ("a true poet +and of the Devil's party without knowing it," as Blake said) made Satan +the real hero of his theological epic, while the austere Carducci +addressed a famous ode to Satan as the creator of human civilisation. And +if you suspect that European culture may be only an eccentric aberration, +then let us wander to the other side of the world, and we find, for +instance, that the great Hawaiian goddess Kapo had a double life--now an +angel of grace and beauty, now a demon of darkness and lust. Every +profound vision of the world must recognise these two equally essential +aspects of Nature and of Man; every vital religion must embody both +aspects in superb and ennobling symbols. A religion can no more afford to +degrade its Devil than to degrade its God. + +That is the error Christianity fell into at last. There can be no doubt +that the Christian Devil had grown quite impossible, and his disappearance +was imperative. Neither Milton nor Carducci could keep him alive. His +palmy days were in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, +before the Renaissance had grown powerful enough to influence European +life. Even during those palmy days he exercised a power that for the most +part was not virile, but crushing and inhuman. It has been set forth in +Dr. Paul Carus's _History of the Devil_. In the light of such a history as +that I doubt much whether even Professor Stanley Hall himself would lift a +finger to bring the Devil back among us again. + + +_October_ 22.--Gaby Deslys is just now a great attraction at the Palace +Theatre. One is amused to note how this very Parisian person and her very +Parisian performance are with infinite care adapted to English needs, and +attuned to this comfortably respectable, not to say stolidly luxurious, +house. We are shown a bedroom with a bed in it, and a little dressing-room +by the side. Her task is to undress and go to bed. It is the sort of scene +that may be seen anywhere in any music-hall all over Europe. But in the +capital city of British propriety, and in a music-hall patronised by +Royalty, this delicate task is surrounded and safeguarded by infinite +precautions. One seems to detect that the scene has been rehearsed before +a committee of ambiguously mixed composition. One sees the care with which +they determined the precise moment at which the electric light should be +switched off in the dressing-room; one realises their firm decision that +the lady must, after all, go to bed fully clothed. One is conscious +throughout of a careful anxiety that every avenue to "suggestiveness" +shall be just hinted and at once decently veiled. There is something +unpleasant, painful, degrading in this ingenious mingling of prurience and +prudery. The spectators, if they think of it at all, must realise that +throughout the whole trivial performance their emotions are being basely +played upon, and yet that they are being treated with an insulting +precaution which would be more in place in a lunatic asylum than in a +gathering of presumably responsible men and women. In the end one is made +to feel how far more purifying and ennobling than this is the spectacle of +absolute nakedness, even on the stage, yes, even on the stage. + +And my thoughts go back to the day, less than two years ago, when for the +first time this was clearly brought home to me by a performance--like this +and yet so unlike--in a very different place, the simple, bare, almost +sordid Teatro Gayarre. Most of the turns were of the same ordinary sort +that might be seen in many another music-hall of the long Calle Marques +del Duero. But at the end came on a performer who was, I soon found, of +altogether another order. The famous Bianca Stella, as the programme +announced, shortly to start on her South American tour, was appearing for +a limited number of nights. I had never heard of Bianca Stella. She might, +to look at, be Austrian, and one could imagine, from some of her methods, +that she was a pupil of Isadora Duncan. She was certainly a highly trained +and accomplished artist; though peculiarly fitted for her part by Nature, +still an artist, not a child of Nature. + +Of fine and high type, tall and rather slim, attractive in face, almost +faultless in proportion and detail, playing her difficult part with +unfailing dignity and grace, Bianca Stella might in general type be a +Bohemian out of Stratz's _Schoenheit des weiblichen Koerpers_, or even an +aristocratic young Englishwoman. She comes on fully dressed, like Gaby +Deslys, but with no such luxurious environment, and slowly disrobes, +dancing all the while, one delicate garment at a time, until only a gauzy +chemise is left and she flings herself on the bed. Then she rises, fastens +on a black mantle which floats behind concealing nothing, at the same +moment removing her chemise. There is now no concealment left save by a +little close-fitting triangular shield of spangled silver, as large as the +palm of her hand, fastened round her waist by an almost invisible cord, +and she dances again with her beautiful, dignified air. Once more, this +time in the afternoon, I went to see Bianca Stella dance. Now there was a +dark curtain as a background. She came on with a piece of simple white +drapery wound round her body; as she dances she unfolds it, holds it +behind her as she dances, finally flings it away, dancing with her +fleckless and delicately proportioned body before the dark curtain. +Throughout the dances her dignity and grace, untouched by voluptuous +appeal and yet always human, remained unfailing. Other dancers who came on +before her, clothed dancers, had been petulantly wanton to their hearts' +desire. Bianca Stella seemed to belong to another world. As she danced, +when I noted the spectators, I could see here and there a gleam in the +eyes of coarse faces, though there was no slightest movement or gesture or +look of the dancer to evoke it. For these men Bianca Stella had danced in +vain, for--it remains symbolically true--only the pure in heart can see +God. To see Bianca Stella truly was to realise that it is not desire but a +sacred awe which nakedness inspires, an intoxication of the spirit rather +than of the senses, no flame of lust but rather a purifying and exalting +fire. To feel otherwise has merely been the unhappy privilege of men +intoxicated by the stifling and unwholesome air of modern artificiality. +To the natural man, always and everywhere, even to-day, nakedness has in +it a power of divine terror, which ancient men throughout the world +crystallised into beautiful rites, so that when a woman unveiled herself +it seemed to them that thunderstorms were silenced, and that noxious +animals were killed, and that vegetation flourished, and that all the +powers of evil were put to flight. That was their feeling, and, absurd as +it may seem to us, a right and natural instinct lay beneath it. Some day, +perhaps, a new moral reformer, a great apostle of purity, will appear +among us, having his scourge in his hand, and enter our theatres and +music-halls to purge them. Since I have seen Bianca Stella I know +something of what he will do. It is not nakedness that he will cast out. +It will more likely be clothes. + +So it is that when I contemplate Gaby Deslys or her sort, it is of Bianca +Stella that I think. + + +_November_ 1.--"The way to spiritual life," wrote George Meredith in one +of his recently published letters, "lies in the complete unfolding of the +creature, not in the nipping of his passions. ... To the flourishing of +the spirit, then, through the healthy exercise of the senses!" + +Yes, all that is very good, I heartily subscribe. And yet, and yet, there +lingers a certain hesitation; one vaguely feels that, as a complete +statement of the matter, it hardly satisfies all the demands of to-day. +George Meredith belonged to the early Victorian period which had encased +its head in a huge bonnet and girdled its loins with a stiff crinoline. +His function was to react vitally to that state of things, and he +performed his function magnificently, evoking, of course, from the _Ordeal +of Richard Feverel_ onwards, a doubtless salutary amount of scandal and +amazement. The time demanded that its preachers should take their text +from the spiritually excessive Blake: "Damn braces, bless relaxes." On +that text, throughout his life, Meredith heroically and eloquently +preached. + +But nowadays that seems a long time ago. The great preacher of to-day +cannot react against the attraction to braces, for it no longer exists. We +are all quite ready to "damn braces." The moralist, therefore, may now +legitimately hold the balance fair and firm, without giving it a little +pressure in one direction for wholesome ends of admonition. + +When we so look at the matter we have to realise that, biologically and +morally alike, healthy restraint is needed for "the flourishing of the +spirit" quite as much as healthy exercise; that bracing as well as +relaxing is part of the soul's hygiene; that the directive force of a fine +asceticism, exerted towards positive and not towards negative ends, is an +essential part of life itself. + +You might say that a fountain that leaps largely and exquisitely up +towards the sky only needs freedom and space. But no, it also needs +compression and force, a mighty restrained energy at its roots, of which +it is the gay and capricious flower. That, you may say, is not really a +vital thing. But take a real flower, the same mechanism is still at work. +The flexible convolvulus that must cling to any support from which to +expand its delicate bells needs not only freedom to expand but much more +the marvellous energy that was wound up and confined, like a spring, in +the seed. It will find its own freedom, but it will not find its own +force. + +Therefore let us hold the moral balance fair and firm. The utmost freedom, +the utmost restraint, we need them both. They are two aspects of the same +thing. We cannot have freedom in any triumphant degree unless we have +restraint. The main point is, that we should not fossilise either our +freedoms or our restraints. Every individual needs--harmoniously with the +needs of other individuals--the freedoms and restraints his own nature +demands. Every age needs new freedoms and new restraints. In the making of +New Freedoms and New Restraints lies the rhythm of Life. + + +_November_ 11.--The psychology of the crowd is interesting, even when it +is an educated and well-fed crowd. I take up the newspaper and see the +announcement of a "momentous" declaration by the Premier at a Lord Mayor's +banquet at the Guildhall. I have the curiosity to read, and I find it to +be that the "victors are not to be robbed of the fruits which have cost +them so dear." This declaration was followed by "loud and prolonged +cheers," as evidently the speaker, being a sagacious lawyer, knew it would +be when he chose to put his declaration into this cynical shape, as an +appeal to mob feeling, rather than in the form of a statement concerning +the rights of the case, whatever the rights may be. Yet not one of those +rapturous applauders would for a moment have tolerated that doctrine if it +had been proposed to apply it to his own possessions. As a mob they +applaud what as individuals they would disclaim with such moral energy as +they might be capable of. The spectacle of the big robber is always +impressive, and the most respectable of mobs is carried away by it. "Who +was ever a pirate for millions?" as Raleigh protested to Bacon. + +If we imagine the "victors" in this case to have been on a rather smaller +scale the enthusiasm of the Guildhall mob would have been considerably +damped. Let us imagine they were a band of burglars who had broken in the +night before and carried off the materials for the forthcoming banquet, +leaving one of the band behind dead and two wounded. When the guests +seated at the bare board heard the emphatic declaration that the victors +are not to be robbed of "the fruits which have cost them so dear," would +they have raised quite such "loud and prolonged cheers"? + + +_November_ 12.--The Divine Ironist who surely rules the world seldom +leaves Himself without witness. On Lord Mayor's Day this witness appeared +in the form of an ignorant ruffian. Within a few yards of the Mansion +House, within a few hours of that "momentous declaration" which followed +the turtle soup, in Liverpool Street--a street crowded not with ruffians +but with business people and bankers' clerks, all the people who carry on +the daily routine of civilisation--a man of the people smashed a +jeweller's window and flung the jewelry into the street, shouting "Help +yourselves." And they helped themselves. In a brief terrific scramble +several hundred pounds' worth of jewelry was seized. Two men only of this +respectable crowd brought what they had secured into the shop; the rest +decamped with the booty. They had scarcely had time to read the "momentous +declaration." But they agreed with it. They were not to be "robbed of the +fruits which had cost them so dear." + +Clearly, again, the Premier had rightly gauged the moral capacities of the +mob. We sometimes think that the fundamental instincts of the crowd are, +after all, sound; leave them to themselves and they will do the right +thing. But, on the other hand, those who despise and contemn the mob will +always have a sadly large amount of evidence to support their case, even +in the most "respectable" centres of civilisation. + + +_November_ 20.--The Archbishop of Canterbury, I understand, has publicly +expressed his approval of the application of the lash to those persons who +are engaged in the so-called "White Slave Traffic." There is always a +certain sociological interest in the public utterances of an Archbishop of +Canterbury. He is a great State official who automatically registers the +level of the public opinion of the respectable classes. The futility for +deterrence or reform of the lash or other physical torture as applied to +adults has long been a commonplace of historical criminology, and Collas, +the standard historian of flagellation, pointing out that the lash can at +best only breed the virtues of slavery, declares that "the history of +flagellation is that of a moral bankruptcy." Moreover, criminals who are +engaged in low-grade commercial affairs, with the large lure that makes +them worth while, can usually arrange that the lash should fall on a +subordinate's shoulders. It has been ascertained that the "capitalised +value" of the average prostitute is nearly four times as great as that of +the average respectable working-girl; how many lashes will alter that? But +the sadistic impulse, in all its various degrees, is independent of facts. +Of late it appears to have been rising. Now it has reached that percentage +of the respectable population which automatically puts the archiepiscopal +apparatus in motion. For an Archbishop of Canterbury has a public function +to perform (has not Sydney Smith described a "foolometer"?) altogether +independent of such reasonable and human functions as he may privately +perform. + +Is this love of torture, by the way, possibly one of the fruits of Empire? +We see it in the Roman Empire, too, and how vigorously it was applied to +Christians and other criminals. _Christianos ad leones!_ But it was a +disastrously unsuccessful policy--or we should not have an Archbishop of +Canterbury with us now. + +No disrespect for Archbishops of Canterbury is involved in this +recognition of their public function, and I have no wish to be (as Laud +wrote of one of my ancestors) "a very troublesome man" to archbishops. +They act automatically for the measurement of society, merely in the same +sense as an individual is automatically acting for the measurement of +himself when he states how profoundly he admires Mendelssohn or R. L. +Stevenson. He thereby registers the particular degree of his own spiritual +state. And when an Archbishop of Canterbury, with all that sensitiveness +to the atmosphere which his supreme office involves, publicly Professes an +Opinion, he is necessarily registering a particular degree in the +Spiritual State of Society. It is an important function which was never +vouchsafed to his Master. + +One wonders how many centuries it is since an Archbishop of Canterbury was +known to express any public opinion on non-ecclesiastical affairs which +was not that of the great majority of Respectable People. Of course in +ecclesiastical matters, and in political matters which are ecclesiastical, +he is professionally bound, and Beckett and Sudbury and Laud--though one +was a victim to the hostility of a King, another to the hostility of the +lower class, and the third to the middle class--were all faithful to the +death to their profession and their class, as an Archbishop is bound to be +even when his profession and his class are in a minority; I speak of the +things to which he is not so bound. I have no doubt that at some recent +period an Archbishop has archiepiscopally blessed the Temperance Movement. +He is opposed to drunkenness, because we all are, even Licensed +Victuallers, and because drunkenness is fast dying out. But imagine an +Archbishop of Canterbury preaching Temperance in the eighteenth century +when nearly every one was liable to be drunk! He would have been mistaken +for a Methodist. I must confess it would be to me a great satisfaction to +find an Archbishop of Canterbury earnestly pleading in the House of Lords +in favour of gambling, or the unrestricted opening of public-houses on +Sunday, or some relaxation in the prosecution of pornographic literature. +Not by any means that I should agree with his point of view. But the +spectacle offered of a morally courageous and intellectually independent +Archbishop of Canterbury would be so stimulating, the presence of a Live +Person at the head of the Church instead of a glorified Penny-in-the-Slot +Machine would be so far-reaching in its results, that all questions of +agreement and disagreement would sink into insignificance. + + +_December_ 5.--I think we under-estimate our ancestors' regard for ease. +Whenever I have occasion to go to my "Jacobean" chest of drawers (chests +of this type are said really to belong to the end of the seventeenth +century) the softness and ease with which the drawers run always gives me +a slight thrill of pleasure. They run on grooves along the side of each +drawer, so that they can never catch, and when one examines them one finds +that grease, now black with age, had been applied to the grooves. (In +chests which have passed through the dealers' hands it is not usually easy +to find traces of this grease.) The chests of modified "Jacobean" +type--belonging, one may suppose, to the early eighteenth century--still +show these grooves for the drawers to run on. And then, as the eighteenth +century advances, they are no longer found. But that by no means meant +that the eighteenth-century craftsman had resolved to be content with such +articles of furniture as millions of our patient contemporaries tug and +push and more or less mildly curse at. No, the eighteenth-century +craftsman said to himself: I have gone beyond those "Jacobean" fellows; I +can make drawers so accurately, so exquisitely fitted, that they no longer +need grooves, and move as well as though they had them. And he was +justified. A beautiful eighteenth-century chest of drawers really is +almost as easy to manipulate as my "Jacobean" chest. One realises that the +device of grooves, ingenious and successful as it was, rested on an +imperfection; it was evidently an effort to overcome the crude and heavy +work of earlier imperfect craftsmen. + +There is evolution in the vital progress of furniture as in all other +vital progress. The Jacobean chest with its oak substance and its panels +and its great depth is apparently massive; this is an inherited ancestral +trait due to the fact that it developed out of the earlier coffers that +really were massive; in reality it is rather light. The later modified +Jacobean chest shows only an attenuated appearance of massiveness, and the +loss is real, for there are no fresh compensating qualities. But the +developed eighteenth-century walnut chest is the unmistakable expression +of a new feeling in civilisation, a new feeling of delicacy and +refinement, a lovely superficiality such as civilisation demands, alike in +furniture and in social intercourse. There is not even the appearance of +massiveness now; the panels have gone and the depth has been notably +reduced. The final goal of development was reached, and nothing was left +to the nineteenth century but degeneration. + +An interesting evolution in details is instructive to note. In the +Jacobean chest, while the drooping loops of the handles are small and +simple, the keyholes are elaborately adorned with beautiful brass +scroll-work, the hereditary vestige of mediaeval days when the chest was a +coffer, and the key, insistently demanded for security, was far more +important than handles, which then indeed had no existence. In the +unsatisfactory transitional stage of the later Jacobean chest the keyhole +is less beautifully adorned, but the handles remain of similar type. Here, +again, the eighteenth-century craftsman shows the fine artist he was. He +instinctively felt that the handles must be developed, for not only were +they more functionally important than the lock had become, but in +dispensing with the grooves for the drawers to run on he had made +necessary a somewhat firmer grip. So he made his handles more solid and +fastened them in with beautifully-cut fingers of brass. Then he realised +that the keyhole with all its fine possibilities must be sacrificed +because it clashed with his handles and produced a distracting confusion. +He contented himself with a simple narrow rim of brass for his keyholes, +and the effect is perfectly right. + +Furniture is the natural expression of the civilisation producing it. I +sometimes think that there is even an intimate relation between the +furniture of an epoch and its other art forms, even its literary style. +The people who delighted in Cowley used these Jacobean chests, and in his +style there is precisely the same blending of the seemingly massive and +the really light, a blending perhaps more incongruous in poetry than in +furniture. And the eighteenth-century chests were made for people who had +been penetrated by the spirit of the _Spectator_; their craftsmen put into +furniture precisely that exquisite superficiality, that social amenity, +that fine conventionism which Addison and Steele put into their essays. I +find it hard not to believe that delicate feminine hands once stored away +the _Spectator_ in these drawers, and sometimes think I have seen those +hands on the canvases of Gainsborough and Romney. + + +_December_ 7.--One is perhaps too easily disquieted by the incompetence +and disaster of our typically modern things. Rotten aeroplanes for fools +to ride to destruction, motorcars for drunkards and imbeciles to use as +the ancient war-chariots were used, telephones and a thousand other +devices which are always out of order--our civilisation after all is not +made up of these. I take up _Le Rire_ and I gaze at its coloured pictures +again and again. One realises that these are the things that people will +turn to when they think of the twentieth century. Our aeroplanes and our +motor-cars and our telephones will no doubt be carefully displayed in a +neglected cellar of their museums. But here are things they will cherish +and admire, and as one gazes at them one grows more at peace with one's +own time. + +It is easy to detect the influence of Rowlandson and of Hiroshige and the +other Japanese designers in the methods of these French artists of to-day, +and there could be no better influences. Rowlandson's _Dr. Syntax_ was the +delight of my childhood, and is equally a solace to-day when I am better +able to understand what that great artist accomplished; Hiroshige's daring +and lovely visions of some remote Japanese fairyland are always consoling +to take out and gaze at when one is weary or depressed or disgusted. There +could be no better influences. + +But while it is not difficult to detect such influences in _Le Hire's_ +best artists at their best moments,--not so very often attained,--they are +yet always themselves and true to their own spirit and vision, or they +would have no message to deliver. These pictures have their supreme value +because, whether or not they are a true picture of French life, they are a +true presentation of the essential French spirit, so recklessly gay and so +daringly poignant, so happily exquisite in its methods, and so +relentlessly direct in its moral. For some people, who take what they are +able to receive, the French spirit seems trivial and superficial, merely +wanton and gay, chiefly characterised by that Lubricity which worried the +pedagogic Matthew Arnold. The French spirit is more specifically +distinguished by its profundity and its seriousness. Without profundity +and seriousness, indeed, gaiety and wantonness have no significance. If +the Seven Sins had not been Deadly, the Christian Church could never have +clothed them in garments of tragic dignity. Unless you cut deep into life, +wantonness and gaiety lose their savour and are not fit for the ends of +art. The French spirit is not only embodied in Rabelais and Montaigne and +Moliere--if these are your superficial men!--but also in Pascal. Was there +so great a gulf between Pascal and Daumier? And I find not only the spirit +of Pascal in some of these pictures in _Le Rire_, but sometimes even his +very phrases used as the titles of them. + + +_December_ 9.--The Australians, it appears, have been much worried over +Chidley. Here was a man who would not fit into their conventional moulds. +He was stern, resolute, inflexible, convinced that he carried a Gospel +which Australia and the world at large needed. It was a Gospel so +eccentrically related to the accepted scheme of things that only he +himself could accept it in its entirety. His method of preaching this +gospel, moreover, was as eccentric as the gospel itself. It seemed to him +that men need to live closer to Nature, that a simpler diet is necessary +to salvation, and less clothing, and greater sexual continence. He +approved his gospel by being a model of physical muscular fitness. As I +have sometimes seen a Rifian from the hills, with bare magnificent limbs, +striding down from the heights carolling a song, to enter the +bastardly-civilised city of Tangier, so, it would seem, Chidley descended +on to the city of Sydney. Having written a book in which to contain the +pith of his message, he proceeded to clothe himself in a sort of scanty +bathing dress, to lecture the public in the most fashionable streets of +the city, and to sell his book to those who might desire it. + +Three centuries ago a man of the same type as Chidley, the eminent Quaker, +Solomon Eccles, who had his gospel too, would now and then come to +Westminster Hall, "very civilly tied about the privities to avoid scandal" +(as Pepys, a great stickler for propriety, noted with satisfaction), to +call to repentance the wicked generation of Charles II.'s day. But the +people of that day were not altogether without wisdom. They let the +strenuous Quaker alone. He was doubtless the better, and they were none +the worse. + +Nowadays, it seems, we need more than a loincloth to protect our +hyperaesthetic eyes from the Splendour of Nature. The Australians, +afflicted by our modern nervous fussiness, could not leave Chidley alone. +The police moved him on, worried him as well as they could, invented +reasons for locking him up now and then, and finally, by what seemed a +masterstroke, they persuaded the doctors to shut him up in the Asylum. +That, however, proved to be too much for Australian popular opinion. The +voice of the people began to be heard in the press; there were long +debates in Parliament; the Premier sent to the Asylum to inquire on what +grounds Chidley had been placed there, and the doctors, who really had no +evil intent in the matter, though their mental equilibrium had been +momentarily disturbed by this unique Chidley, honourably opened the Asylum +doors, and Chidley has returned to preach the Gospel in George Street +until new reasons can be puzzled out for harassing him, neurotic, without +doubt, but now hall-marked sane. + +Like the Athenians of old, the Australians are not averse to hearing some +new thing, and they have bought Chidley's book by the thousand. But the +Athenians, notwithstanding their love of novelty, offered the cup of +hemlock to Socrates. Chidley, if not exactly the Australian Socrates, +clearly resembles his disciples, those great Cynics who in the Greek +market-places were wont to preach and to practise a philosophy of stern +simplicity, often akin to his own. The Athenians killed Socrates, but they +produced a Plato to idealise and even to immortalise him. The Australians +have drawn the line at killing Chidley. So he still awaits his Plato. + + +_December_ 15.--Like a Gargantuan _casserole_ outside, but modelled on a +kettle inside, the Albert Hall, more or less filled with people, is often +to me a delightful spectacle. It is so at this Sunday afternoon concert, +when the lights are blended, and the bottom of the kettle is thickspread +with humanity, and sprinkled with splashes of dusky crimson or purple on +women's hats, while the sides are more slightly spread with the same +humanity up to the galleries. The spectacle so fascinates me sometimes +that I cannot listen to the music. At such moments the Albert Hall faintly +recalls a miniature Spanish bull-ring. It is a far-off resemblance, even +farther than the resemblance of St. Paul's Cathedral, with its enclosed +dome and its worrying detail, to the simple and superb strength of the +Pantheon, which lives in memory through the years as a great consoling +Presence, but it often comes to me and brings with it an inspiring sense +of dignity and colour and light before which the actual spectacle grows +dim. + + +_January_ 3, 1913.--I chanced to walk along the village street behind two +little girls of the people, evidently sisters, with ribbons round their +uncovered heads, filleting the hair which fell in careless ringlets on +their backs. It was hair of the bright flaxen sort, which the poets have +conventionally called "golden," the hair one sees so often on the angels +of the Italian primitive painters--though not so often on living Italians. +It is the hair which always seems to me more beautiful than any other, and +I felt as if I wanted to follow these plain commonplace children as the +rats followed the Pied Piper. + +The vision brought to my mind the fact I have so often had occasion to +realise, that aesthetic attraction has nothing to do with erotic +attraction, however at their origins, it may have been, the two +attractions were identical or sprang from the same source, and though they +have constantly reacted on, and sometimes deflected, each other. +Aesthetically this hair fascinates me; it is an exhilarating delight +whenever I meet it. But I have never felt any personal attraction in +association with this hair, or any great personal interest in the people +it belonged to. + +What one aesthetically craves is the outcome of one set of influences, due +to one's special vision, one's traditions, one's training and environment, +influences that are no doubt mainly objective and impersonal, operative on +most of one's fellows. But what one personally craves is the outcome of +another set of influences, due to one's peculiar and instinctive organic +constitution; it is based on one's individual instinctive needs and may +not be precisely the same for any two persons. + +The Aestheticians are not here indeed altogether in harmony. But it would +seem that, while the aesthetic and the sexual must frequently and +legitimately overlap, they are definitely separate, that it is possible to +distinguish the aesthetically-from the sexually-attractive in different +persons and even in different features of the same person, that while it +is frequently natural and right to love a "beautiful" woman, to love a +woman because she is beautiful is as unreasonable as to fall in love with +a beautiful statue. The aesthetically-attractive and the +sexually-attractive tend to be held apart. They are two different +"substances," as the mediaeval metaphysician would have said. From the +standpoint of clear thinking, and also of social well-being, the confusion +of them is, in theological language, damnable. In so far as Beauty is a +personal lust it is unfit for wholesome social ends. Only in so far as it +is lifted above personal desire is it fitted to become a social +inspiration. + + +_January_ 10.--Yesterday I waited for a friend at a London Underground +railway station. She was delayed, and I stood for a quarter of an hour at +the bottom of a flight of steps, watching the continuous stream of +descending passengers, mostly women, and generally young. Some among the +less young were swollen, heavy, and awkward; most were slack, drooping, +limp, bony, or bent; a few were lithe and lissom; one or two had the +emotional vivacity and muscular tone of abounding vitality. Not one +plainly indicated that, stripped of her clothing, she would have +transformed those Underground steps into the Golden Stairway of Heaven. + +"The average civilised woman sags." That is the conclusion lately reached +by Dickinson and Truslow after the examination of a very large number of +American women, and it is a conclusion which applies without doubt far +beyond the limits of the United States. Her breasts droop down, these +investigators assert, her buttocks sweep low, her abdomen protrudes. While +these defects are general, the modern woman has cultivated two extreme and +opposite defects of physical carriage which Dickinson and Truslow +picturesquely describe as the Kangaroo Type and the Gorilla Type. In the +kangaroo type of civilised woman the upper part of the trunk is carried +too much in front of the line of gravity, and the lower part too much +behind that line. In the gorilla type of woman, on the contrary, the upper +part of the body is carried too much behind the line of gravity, and the +lower part too much in front. So far Dickinson and Truslow. + +If this were a purely aesthetic matter, though it would still have its +importance, it would only intrude to a slight degree into the moral and +social sphere. We should simply have to recognise that these defects of +the modern woman must be a frequent cause of depression to her more +intimate friends, and that that may have its consequences. + +There is more in it than that. All such defects of tone and posture (as +indeed Dickinson and Truslow realise) have their inevitable reaction on +the nervous system: they produce a constant wearing stress, a perpetual +liability to pain. The women who have fallen into these habits are +inadequate to life, and their inadequacy is felt in all that they are and +in all that they attempt to do. Each of them is a stone flung into the +social pool to disperse around it an ever-widening circle of disturbance +and irritation. + +It may be argued that one has seen women--working women especially--whose +breasts were firm bowls of beauty, whose buttocks were exquisitely curved, +whose bellies would have satisfied the inspired author of _The Song of +Songs_, and yet the women who owned such physical graces have not +conspicuously possessed the finer spiritual graces. But we do not enhance +one half of human perfection by belittling the other half. And we rarely +conceive of any high perfection on one side without some approach to it on +the other. Even Jesus--though the whole of his story demands that his +visage should be more marred than any man's--is always pictured as +beautiful. And do you suppose that the slave girl Blandina would have gone +into the arena at Lyons to present her white body as the immortal symbol +of the love of Jesus if her breasts had drooped down, and her buttocks +swept low, and her abdomen protruded? The human heart is more subtly +constructed. Those romantic Christian hagiologists saw to that. And--to +come nearer to the point--could her fine tension of soul have been built +up on a body as dissolute and weak as a candle in the sun? + +We need to-day a great revival of the sense of responsibility, not only in +the soul but in the body. We want a new sort of _esprit de corps_. We need +it especially for women, for women, under modern conditions, even less +than men, have no use for sagging bodies or sagging souls. It is only by +the sanction of nakedness that this can be achieved. "Take this hint from +the dancer," a distinguished American dancer has said, "the fewer clothes +the better; woman is clumsy because she is overweighted with clothes." +With whatever terror we may view any general claim to the right of +nakedness, the mere liability to nakedness, the mere freedom to be naked, +at once introduces a new motive into life. It becomes a moralising force +of the most strenuous urgency. Clothes can no more be put before us as a +substitute for the person. The dressmaker can no longer arrogate the +functions of a Creator. The way is opened for the appearance in +civilisation of a real human race. + + +_January_ 11.--There seem to be two extreme and opposed styles of writing: +the liquid style that flows, and the bronze or marmoreal style that is +moulded or carved. Thus there is in English the style of Jeremy Taylor and +Newman and Ruskin, and there is the style of Bacon and Landor and Pater, +the lyrically-impetuous men and the artistically-deliberate men. + +One may even say that a whole language may fall into one or the other of +these two groups, according to the temper of the people which created it. +There is the Greek tongue, for instance, and there is the Latin tongue. +Greek is the embodiment of the fluent speech that runs or soars, the +speech of a people which could not help giving winged feet to its god of +art. Latin is the embodiment of the weighty and concentrated speech which +is hammered and pressed and polished into the shape of its perfection, as +the ethically-minded Romans believed that the soul also should be wrought. +Virgil said that he licked his poems into shape as a she-bear licks her +cubs, and Horace, the other supreme literary artist of Rome, compared the +writing of poems to working in bronze. No Greek could have said these +things. Whether Plato or Aristophanes or even Thucydides, the Greek's feet +touched the earth, touched it lovingly, though it might only be with the +pressure of a toe, but there were always wings to his feet, he was always +the embodiment of all that he symbolised in Hermes. The speech of the +Greek flies, but the speech of the Roman sinks. The Roman's word in art, +as in life, was still _gravitas_, and he contrived to infuse a shade of +contempt into the word _levis_. With the inspired Greek we rise, with the +inspired Roman we sink. With the Greek poet, it may be any poet of the +Anthology, I am uplifted, I am touched by the breath of rapture. But if it +is a Latin poet--Lucretius or Catullus, the quintessential Latin poets--I +am hit by something pungent and poignant (they are really the same word, +one notes, and that a Latin word) which pierces the flesh and sinks into +the heart. + +One resents the narrow and defective intelligence of the spirit embodied +in Latin, its indifference to Nature, its refusal to hallow the freedom +and beauty and gaiety of things, its ever-recurring foretaste of +Christianity. But one must not refuse to recognise the superb and eternal +morality of that spirit, whether in language or in life. It consecrates +struggle, the conquest of brute matter, the perpetual and patient effort +after perfection. So Rome is an everlasting challenge to the soul of Man, +and the very stones of its city the mightiest of inspirations. + + +_January_ 13.--An American physician, we are told, paid a visit to the +famous dog-kennels on the Vanderbilt estate. He was surprised at the +intelligence and gentleness of the animals. "Have you no vicious animals +at all?" he asked. And the keeper in surprise answered him: "Do you +suppose we would be so foolish as to permit vicious animals to breed?" + +Human beings ought surely to be worth more to us than dogs. Yet here in +England-and I do not know in what "civilised" country any different order +prevails--we gather together all our physical and moral defectives, we +bring them into our Workhouses to have babies, under the superintendence +of Boards of Guardians, and every one knows that these babies are born in +the image of their parents, and will perpetuate the same cycle of misery. +Yet, so far as I know, not one of these "Guardians" ever so much as +attempts to make clear to those hapless mothers why and how they should +avoid having other children. And no one proposes to shut up as dangerous +lunatics these precious Guardians of Private Misery and Public Incapacity! + +We look down with lofty moral superiority on our ancestors in these +islands who were accustomed to eat their fellow-creatures. We do not eat +them. We only torture them. That is what we call Progress. At all events +we are laying up a bountiful supply of moral superiority for our own +descendants. It is not probable that they will be able to read in their +newspaper (if newspaper they will still possess) as we can in ours: "At an +inquest at Dudley yesterday on a woman who was fatally scalded whilst in a +fit, it was stated that she had been an epileptic for years, and that her +seven children had all been epileptics, and all had died when young." + + +_January_ 14.--There are few things that make one so doubtful about the +civilising power of England as our indifference to the smoke problem in +London. If we were Neapolitan ragamuffins, who could lie in the sun with +bare limbs, sucking oranges, there would be nothing to say; under such +conditions indolence might be pardonable, almost justified. But we English +are feverishly active, we run over the whole world, and we utilise all +this energy to build up the biggest and busiest city in the world. Yet we +have never created an atmosphere for our great city. Mist is beautiful, +with its power of radiant transformation, and London could never, under +any circumstances, and need never, be absolutely without mist; it is part +of the physical genius of our land, and even perhaps of the spiritual +genius of our people. But the black fogs of London are mist soaked with +preventable coal smoke; their evils have been recognised from the first. +Evelyn protested against this "hellish and dismal cloud of sea-coal," and +Charles II. desired Evelyn to prepare a Bill on this nuisance to put +before Parliament. But there the matter rested. For three centuries we +have been in the position of the Russian gentleman who could not prevent +his dilapidated roof from letting in the rain; for, as he pointed out, in +wet weather it was quite impossible to effect any repairs, and in dry +weather there was really nothing to complain of. In the meanwhile this +"cloud of sea-coal" has continued to produce not only actual death and +injury in particular cases, but a general diminution of human vitality and +the wholesale destruction of plant life. It eats away our most beautiful +public buildings; it covers everything and everybody with soot; it is +responsible, directly and indirectly, for a financial loss so vast and +manifold as to be incalculable. + +Yesterday Lord Curzon delivered an address at the Mansion House on the +Beautiful London of the Future. He dwelt eloquently on its noble buildings +and its long embankments, and its wide streets and its finely placed +statues. But of the smoke which nullifies and destroys all these things, +not a word! Yet, as he was speaking, outside the Mansion House the people +of London were almost feeling their way about, scarce knowing where they +were, timidly crawling across motor-infested roads with their hearts in +their mouths, all the time permanently ingraining their lungs with black +filth. An able man, Lord Curzon, skilful to gauge the British Idealist, +ever so absorbed in his own dream of comfort or of cash that he is even +blind to the world he lives in, "pinnacled dim in the intense inane" in +another sense than the poet intended. + +If we were mediaeval monks, who spent our time chanting the rhyme of +Bernard of Morlaix, there might seem to be a reason in our madness. To +make a Hell of earth is doubtless a useful method of rendering more joyous +the transition to Heaven, and less overwhelming the transition to +Purgatory. Yet the mediaeval monks burnt no coal and were careful to live +in beautiful sites and fine air. The prospect of Purgatory made them +epicures in the fine things of Earth. Now we, apparently, care not a snap +for any Hereafter. It is therefore a curious psychological problem why we +should have chosen to take up our cross in this peculiarly repulsive +shape. Apparently our traditions are too strong for us, we cannot dispense +with Hell; if robbed of it in the future we must have it Here and Now. + + +_January_ 15.--When English days are dark and dreary, and the rain falls, +and cold winds blow, then it is that memory brings back the full joy of +ancient beauty and sunshine. (How could Dante have written "Nessun maggior +dolore"! But he had to write of Hell, and Hell were no longer Hell if the +lovely memory of Earth still cheered its inmates.) Especially I love to +think of that two days' brief journey-the most delightful journey there +can be in the world, it sometimes seems--which separates me from Spain. I +think of it as it is in early Spring, in the April month, when Browning +longed to be in England and most people long to be out of it. I think of +the swift passage across the Channel, of the ever-new impression of the +light-toned greenery of France and the subtle difference of the beautiful +trees, of Paris, of the Quai d'Orsay early next morning, of the mediaeval +cities that flash into view on their ancient hills, of the vast stretch of +beautiful and varied French land, of Limoges, the last outpost of the +Northern French, whom it is sad to leave even when one is bound for Spain, +of Rocamadour (and I think of that fantastic old-world shrine, with the +legendary blade of Roland's Durandel still struck into its walls, and of +the long delicious day on the solitary brooding height over the exquisite +ravine), the night at Toulouse at the Hotel Bayard, and the sour bread +that marks the Puritanic Southern French, the keen winds and the dreary +rain that comes from Provence,--delicious to leave behind. Then +Carcassonne and the momentary vision of its turrets, the embodiment of +one's dream of the past; lunch at Narbonne with the unfailing cold +asparagus of the south, Perpignan, where now at last one is haunted by the +fragrance of a city that once was Spanish. Then creeping along by the +broken coast, and the rocky creeks up to the outermost edge of the +Pyrenees, leaving to the north the ancient path which Pompey and Caesar +climbed, and feeling the winds that descend mysteriously from its gorges: + + Le vent qui vient a travers la montagne + Me rendra fou. + +Lo, at once a new Heaven and a new Earth and a new People. A sky that is +ever soft and radiant; a land on which strange and fragrant plants +flourish, and lakes of crimson poppies glimmer afar; men and women into +whose veins seems to have passed something of the lazy sunshine of their +sky, something of the rich colour of their earth. Then at last the great +city of Barcelona, where work and play are mingled as nowhere else so +harmoniously in the whole European world; and, beyond, the sacred height +of Montserrat; and, beyond that, all the magic of Spain at my feet. + + +_January_ 19.--"For three days I have observed two large pictures in solid +frames hanging on the wall before me, supported by a cord fastened +horizontally behind the frames; these pictures have only one point of +support, so that they are sensitive to the slightest movement. The wall +goes from east to west, or the other way about, it makes no difference. +Now, every morning when I wake, I find these works of art a little askew, +the left corner inclined down and the right up!" I came upon that passage +in _Sylva Sylvarum_, the first book of Strindberg's I ever read, and it +pleased me so much that I believe I read no further. + +I am reminded of it now when Strindberg's fame has grown so great in +England. + +It really seems to me that that fantastic image is an excellent symbol of +Strindberg himself. For his picture of the world fails to swing +concordantly with the world. He has lagged behind in the cosmic rhythm, he +has fallen out of the dance of the stars. So that the whole universe is to +him an exquisitely keen jar of the nerves, and he hangs awry. That may +well make him an extraordinarily interesting person, and, indeed, perhaps +he is thereby an index of the world's vital movement, registering it by +not moving with it. We have to read Strindberg, but to read him _a +rebours_. + +So I experience some amusement when I see to-day the solemn statement in +an American journal which claims--I do not say with no reason--to be +portentously clever and superior, that Strindberg is destined to become in +America the voice of the masculine reaction in favour of "the corrective +influence of a matter-of-fact attitude towards woman." One wonders by what +strange fatality Strindberg-the most fantastic genius that ever lived--can +appeal to an American as "matter-of-fact." And one wonders why Americans, +anyway, should go to this distinguished Swede for such a "corrective," +when in their own country, to mention but a single name, they have a +writer like Robert Herrick, whose novels are surely so admirably subtle +and profound an analysis of the position of womanhood in America, and +quite reasonably sane. But it is still true, as Jesus sighed two thousand +years ago, that a prophet is no prophet in his own country. + + +_January_ 29.--For supper, we are told, Milton used often to eat a few +olives. That statement has frequently recurred to my mind. I never grow +weary of the significance of little things. What do the so-called great +things of life count for in the end, the fashion of a man's showing-off +for the benefit of his fellows? It is the little things that give its +savour or its bitterness to life, the little things that direct the +currents of activity, the little things that alone really reveal the +intimate depths of personality. _De minimis non curat lex_. But against +that dictum of human law one may place the Elder Pliny's maxim concerning +natural law: _Nusquam magis quam in minimis tota est Natura_. For in the +sphere of Nature's Laws it is only the minimal things that are worth +caring about, the least things in the world, mere specks on the Walls of +Life, as it seems to you. But one sets one's eyes to them, and, behold, +they are chinks that look out into Infinity. + +Milton is one of the "great" things in English life and literature, and +his admirers dwell on his great achievements. These achievements often +leave me a little cold, intellectually acquiescent, nothing more. But when +I hear of these olives which the blind old scholar-poet was wont to eat +for supper I am at once brought nearer to him. I intuitively divine what +they meant to him. + +Olives are not the most obvious food for an English Puritan of the +seventeenth century, though olive-oil is said to have been used here even +in the fourteenth century. Milton might more naturally, one supposes, like +his arch-Puritanic foe, Prynne, have "refocillated" his brain with ale and +bread, and indeed he was still too English, and perhaps too wise, to +disdain either. + +But Milton had lived in Italy. There the most brilliant and happy days of +his life had been spent. All the rest of his real and inner life was but +an echo of the music he had heard in Italy. For Milton was only on one +side of his nature the austere Latin secretary of Cromwell and the +ferocious opponent of Salmasius. He was also the champion of the tardy +English Renaissance, the grave and beautiful youth whose every fibre +thrilled to the magic of Italy. For two rich months he had lived in +Florence, then the most attractive of Italian cities, with Gaddi, Dati, +Coltellini, and the rest for his friends. He had visited Galileo, then +just grown blind, as he was himself destined to be. His inner sight always +preserved the old visions he had garnered + + At evening from the top of Fesole, + Or in Valdarno. + +Now at last, in the company of sour and ignorant Puritans who counted him +one of themselves, while a new generation grew up which ignored him and +which he disdained, in this sulphurous atmosphere of London which sickened +and drove away his secretary Ellwood, Milton ate a handful of olives. And +all Italy came to him in those olives. + +"What! when the sun rises do you not see a round disc of fire, somewhat +like a guinea?" "Oh no, no, no!" said Blake, "I see an innumerable company +of the heavenly host." And these dull green exotic fruits which the blind +Milton ate bedwards were the heralds of dreams diviner than he freighted +with magnificent verse. + + +_February_ 3.--"Every well-written novel," I find Remy de Gourmont +stating, "seems immoral." A paradox? By no means; Gourmont, the finest of +living critics, is not a paradox-monger. He is referring to the +prosecution of _Madame Bovary_, a book which Taine said might profitably +be used in Sunday Schools; and he points out that Flaubert--and every +other profoundly original writer--by avoiding the commonplace phrase, the +familiar counter, by deliberately choosing each word, by moulding his +language to a personal rhythm, imparts such novelty to his descriptions +that the reader seems to himself to be assisting for the first time at a +scene which is yet exactly the same as those described in all novels. +Hence inevitable scandal. + +One may very well add that in this matter Life follows the same law as +Art. It is the common fate of all creative work (and "non merita nome di +Creatore se non Iddio ed il Poeta"). Whoso lives well, as whoso writes +well, cannot fail to convey an alarming impression of novelty, precisely +because he is in accurate personal adjustment to the facts of his own +time. So he is counted immoral and criminal, as Nietzsche delighted to +explain. Has not Nietzsche himself been counted, in his own playful +phrase, an "immoralist"? Yet the path of life that Nietzsche proposed to +follow was just the same ancient, old-fashioned, in the true sense trivial +path which all the world has trodden. Only his sensitive feet felt that +path so keenly, with such a new grip of the toes on the asperities of it, +that the mob cried: Why, this man cannot possibly be on our good old +well-worn comfortable highway; he must have set off on some new path, no +doubt a very bad and wicked path, where trespassers must be prosecuted. +And it was just the same venerable path that all humanity has travelled, +the path that Adam and Eve scuttled over, in hairy nakedness, through the +jungle of the Garden of Eden! + +That is one of the reasons--and there are many of them--why the social +ideal of Herbert Spencer, in which the adjustment of life is so perfect +that friction is impossible, can never be attained. Putting aside the +question of the desirability of such an ideal it is impossible to see how +it could be achieved, either along the line of working at Heredity, or +along the line of working at the Environment. Even the most keenly +intellectual people that ever existed, the most amorous of novelty, the +most supple-minded, could not permit Socrates to live, though all the time +Socrates was going their own way, his feet pressing the same path; they +still could not understand his prosaic way of looking intently where his +feet fell. It must always happen so, and it always means conflict. Even a +flower cannot burst into bloom without conflict, the balance of forces can +never be quite equal and opposite, there must be a breaking down +somewhere, there must always be conflict. We may regulate and harmonise +the conditions, we cannot abolish the conflict. For Conflict is implicit +in Life. + + +_February_ 5.--I note that Charles Dudley Warner (that splendid type of +American man as I recall him in old age, pacing up and down my room, +pondering out some serious problem of life), when half a century ago he +came over to London for the first time on a visit from Paris, was struck +by the contrast between the light luminosity of one city and the +prevailing gloomy dirt of the other. The contrast may not be so pronounced +to-day. Yet that same dirt--which has its beautiful side no doubt--remains +the note of London, brown dirt all over the streets, black dirt all over +the buildings, yellow dirt all over the sky, and those who live in it +become subdued to what they live in, "like the dyer's hand," even +literally. + +So the sight of the Cornish coast, the prospect of seeing it, the very +thought of its existence, has the exhilaration of a rapturous prayer. +There--sometimes, at all events--the earth is exquisitely clean, the +bright sea bubbles like champagne, and its mere mists are rainbow-hued +dreams; the sky has flung off its dingy robe and is naked, beautiful, +alive. Profoundly alien to me as I always feel this land of Cornwall to +be, it is much to feel there something of that elemental reality of which +men count God the symbol. Here the city-stained soul may become the +sacramental agent of a Divine Transubstantiation of the elements of earth, +of air, of water, of fire. + + +_February_ 8.--It was a fine and deep saying of Aristotle's that "the +greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor." That is the mark of +genius, for, said he, it implies an intuitive perception of the similarity +in dissimilars. + +All the great thinkers have been masters of metaphor, because all vivid +thinking must be in images, and the philosopher whose metaphors are +blurred or diluted is one whose thinking is blurred and diluted. Thus it +comes about that the thinkers who survive are the thinkers who wrote well +and are most nearly poets. Not that they need have attained to that which +we, individually or collectively, may be pleased to consider "Truth." But +they were alive; they had realised what they meant; they embodied their +thoughts in definite images which are a perpetual challenge to thought for +all who come after. One may agree or disagree with Schopenhauer or with +Nietzsche. But they were vitally and intensely alive; they transformed +their thought into wonderful imagery; or they sang it and they danced it; +and they are alive for ever. People talk of "the passing of Kant." It may +be. But who will talk of the passing of Plato or even of the passing of +Hobbes? No thinker has been so buffeted as Hobbes, and there is no school +to accept his central thesis. It is no matter. Hobbes flung aside all the +armour of tradition and met the giant problem that faced him with his own +sling and any stones out of the brook. It was enough to make him immortal. +His achievement has receded into the past. The _Leviathan_ is now an +ancient tapestry which generations of street urchins have thrown mud at; +and yet it remains radiantly beautiful. + +All great thinkers are great masters of metaphor because all thinking of +any kind must be by analogy. It may often be a misleading guide, but it +remains the only guide. To say that thinking is by metaphor is merely the +same thing as to say that the world is an infinite series of analogies +enclosed one within another in a succession of Chinese boxes. Even the +crowd recognises this. The story that Newton first saw the gravitation of +the earth in the fall of an apple in the orchard, which Voltaire has +transmitted to us from a fairly good source, has no first-hand authority. +But the crowd has always accepted it as a gospel truth, and by a sound +instinct. The Milky Way itself is pictured by its latest investigators as +a vague spiral scarcely to be distinguished from the ascending smoke of a +cigarette. + + +_February_ 10.--A French soprano, and it is the first time she has sung on +an English platform. She walks on slowly and stands statuesquely +motionless while the preliminary bars are being played. One notes her +elegant Parisian costume, clinging and very low-cut, every detail of her +appearance carefully thought out, constituting a harmony in itself, though +not perhaps a harmony with this negligent Sunday afternoon environment in +which the singer finds herself. Her voice is finely trained and under +complete control, she enters into the spirit of the operatic scene she +sings, dramatically, yet with restraint, with modulated movements, now of +her arms, now of her whole supple body. In her voice, as in her body, +there is always a reserve of energy, a dignified self-respect; there is +never any self-abandonment. She has sung first in French, now she comes on +in an Italian air, and afterwards is not too coyly reticent in taking an +encore which is in English, to a piano accompaniment, and when that is +over she hastens to bring the accompanist by the hand to her side before +the audience, and bows, sweetly and graciously, with a gesture of the +whole body, yet again with a certain reserve, not, as one may see some +great singers, symbolically clasping her arms round the public and kissing +it with humble gratitude. She is a complete success with her audience. + +Yet she is really, one divines, a fairly commonplace person. And she is +not beautiful. And even her voice has no marvellous original quality. She +has on her side a certain quality of nervous texture to mould +artistically, but that is not a personal possession but merely a quality +of her race. She has laboriously wrought this ductile nervous tissue to +her own ends. By force of long training, discipline, art, she has made +herself what she desired to be. She has become all that she had in her to +be. She has given to the world all that the world has any right to ask of +her. + +That is all. But this training and this discipline, the ability to be +oneself and to impart graciously to others the utmost that they have any +right to demand--is not that the whole Art of Living and the entire Code +of Morality? + + +_February_ 15.--"There is no Excellent Beauty that hath not some +Strangeness in the Proportion." That saying of Bacon's--one of the +profoundest of human utterances--is significant not only for all life but +for all art. In the sphere of literature, for instance, it makes +impossible the use of counters. + +The counter or the _cliche_--no doubt it is better known for what it is to +good French writers--is the word or the phrase which has lost the original +contour of its mintage and become a mere featureless coin, having still, +as it were, its metallic meaning but no longer its fresh beauty and +expressiveness. The young novelist whose hero "wends his way," and the +journalist for whom a party of fifteen persons may be "literally +decimated," are both adepts in the use of the counter. They use ancient +worn words, such as leap first into the mind, words which are too effaced +to be beautiful, and sometimes too effaced to be accurate. They are just +counters for careless writers to pass on to careless readers, and not +always reliable as counters. + +We are all of us using these counters; they are convenient for the +ordinary purposes of life, whenever the search for beauty and rarity and +expressiveness may seem uncalled for. Even the master of style uses them +unquestioned, so long as he uses them consciously, deliberately, of set +purpose, with a sense of their just value for his purpose. When they are +used, as sometimes happens, heedlessly and helplessly, by writers who are +dealing with beautiful and expressive things, they become jarring +vulgarisms which set the teeth on edge. Even a poet of real inspiration, +like Francis Thompson, may seek to carry, "hiddenly," as he would express +it, beneath the cloak of his rapture, all sorts of absurd archaisms, +awkwardly conventional inversions, hideous neologisms like false antiques, +all mere counters. A born writer with a personal instinct for expression, +like Arthur Symons, is not apt to resort to the use of counters, even when +he is seemingly careless; a carefully trained artist in the use of words, +like Stevenson, evidently rejects counters immediately; the man who is not +a writer, born or made, sometimes uses nothing but counters. + +A casual acquaintance once presented to me an epic he had written in +rhymed couplets, extending to many cantos. He was a man of bright and +vigorous mind, but no poet. So when he set himself to write verse it is +clear that he instinctively tested every word or phrase, and rejected +those that failed to sound smooth, familiar, "poetic," to his reminiscent +ear. The result is that the whole of his book is made up of counters, and +every epithet is studiously obvious. The hero is "dauntless," and his +"steed" is "noble," and the sky at night is a "spangled vault," and "spicy +perfumes load the balmy air." It is thirty years since that epic was +placed in my hands, and I have often since had occasion to think that it +might profitably be used by any teacher of English literature as a text +for an ever needed lesson on the counter. "There is no Excellent Beauty +that hath not some Strangeness in the Proportion." Or, as Aristotle had +said long before, there must be "a certain admixture of unfamiliarity," a +continual slight novelty. + +That is the Law of Beauty in Art because it is the Law of Morality in +Life. Our acts so easily become defaced and conventionalised, mere uniform +counters that have been used a thousand times before and rarely with any +special applicability--often, indeed, a flagrant inapplicability--to the +case in hand. The demand upon us in Life is to fling away counters, to +react vitally to the vital circumstances of the situation. All the +teachers of Excellent Beauty in the Moral Life bear witness to the truth +of Bacon's saying. Look at the Sermon on the Mount: no doubt about the +"Strangeness in the Proportion" there! Socrates and Jesus, unlike as they +were, so far as we are able to discern, were yet both marked by the same +horror of counters. Sooner than employ them they would die. And indeed, if +the Moral Life could be reduced to the simplicity of a slot-machine, it +would still be necessary to put real pennies in. + + +_February_ 23.--Some time ago a navvy working in Sussex came upon a round +object like a cocoa-nut which he flung carelessly out of the way. It would +soon have disappeared for ever. But by an almost miraculous chance a man +of science passed that way and secured the object, easily discernible as a +portion of a human skull. Now that, with all that appertains to it, the +fragment has been investigated, the Sussex navvy's unconscious find is +revealed as perhaps the most precious and interesting thing that has ever +been discovered in the earth, the earliest Charter in the History of Man. + +Whenever I read of the chance discovery of fossils or human remains, of +buried cities in Yucatan or Roman pavements beneath Gloucestershire +meadows, or beautiful statues fished out of the Tiber, or mediaeval +treasures dug from below old castles, it grows an ever greater wonder to +me that no one has yet proposed a systematic exploration of the whole +earth beneath our feet. Here is this earth, a marvellous onion, a series +of encapsuled worlds, each successive foliation preserving the intimate +secrets of its own irrecoverable life. And Man the Baby, neglecting the +wonderful Earth he crawls on, has cried for the barren Moon! All science +has begun with the stars, and Early Man seemed to himself merely the +by-play of a great cosmic process. God was first, and Man who had created +Him--out of less than dust--was nowhere. Even in mediaeval days we knew +much more about Heaven and Hell than about Earth. The Earth comes last +into man's view,--even after Heaven and Hell and Purgatory,--but it will +surely be a puzzle for our successors that after a million years, even in +our present little era, we had still not begun to scratch up +systematically the soil we stand on and could scarcely so much as uncover +Pompeii. For though the under-world is not all a buried Pompeii, it is a +vast treasure-house. One cannot so much as put a spade into the +garden-mould of one's cottage-garden without now and then finding ancient +coins and shards of strange pottery; and for all that you know, the clue +to some mystery that has puzzled mankind for ages may at this moment lie a +few inches below your feet. + +It would be the task of an International Exfodiation Commission to dig up +the whole earth systematically, leaving no inch of it untouched except on +definitely determined grounds, the depth explored in each region being +duly determined by experts. One might make a beginning with the banks of +the Nile where the task is comparatively easy, and Nature has packed such +fragile treasures in such antiseptic sand. Italy with its soil laden with +marvellous things could be investigated at the same time, with all the +shores of the Mediterranean. The work would take many centuries to +complete and would cost vast sums of money. But when the nations are no +longer engaged in the task of building warships which are obsolete a few +weeks after they are launched, if not before, how vast a sum of money will +be saved! The money which is wasted on the armies and navies of Europe +alone during a single century would furnish a very respectable credit for +the International Exfodiation Commission to begin work with. At the same +time the men now employed in laboriously learning the trade of war, which +they are seldom or never called upon to exercise, could be given something +useful to do. In the meanwhile Exfodiation must wait until what an old +English writer called "the essential oil of democracy" is poured over the +stormy waves of human society. You doubt whether that oil will calm the +waves? But if your essential oil of democracy fails to possess that +elementary property of oil it is hardly worth while to manufacture it. + +Once achieved, whenever or however it is achieved, the task will be +achieved for ever. It would be the greatest task man has ever attempted, +and the most inspiring. He would for the first time become fully conscious +of himself. He would know all that he once was, and all that he has ever +accomplished so far as its record survives. He would read clearly in the +earth for the first time the title-deeds that make him the owner of the +world. All that is involved is Exfodiation. + +I call this process Exfodiation, because if our descendants happen to be +at all like us they would much rather Exfodiate than Dig. As for us, we +dare not so much as call our bodily organs and functions by their +beautifully common names, and to Dig we are even more ashamed than to Beg. + + +_March_ 3.--Some one was telling me yesterday how lately in Wales he stood +in a wood by a little stream that ran swiftly over the stones, babbling +and chattering--the poets have wisely said--as children babble and +chatter. "It is certainly the stream," he said to himself; "no, it must be +children; no, it is the stream." And then a band of careless children, +whose voices had mingled with the brook's voice, emerged from amidst the +wood. + +Children are more than murmuring streams, and women are more than fragrant +flowers, and men are more than walking trees. But on one side they are all +part of the vision and music of Nature, not merely the creators of +pictures and melodies, but even yet more fundamentally themselves the +music and the vision. We cannot too often remember that not only is the +art of man an art that Nature makes, but that Man himself is Nature. +Accordingly as we cherish that faith, and seek to live by it, we vindicate +our right to the Earth, and preserve our sane and vital relations to the +Earth's life. The poets love to see human emotions in the procession of +cosmic phenomena. But we have also to see the force of the sun and the +dust of the earth in the dance of the blood through the veins of Man. + +Civilisation and Morals may seem to hold us apart from Nature. Yet the +world has, even literally, been set in our hearts. We are of the Stuff of +the Universe. In comparison with that fact Morals and Civilisation sink +into Nothingness. + + +_March_ 7.--So fine a critic of art as Remy de Gourmont finds it +difficult, to his own regret, to admire Shakespeare on the stage, at all +events in France in French translations. This is not, he says, what in +France is counted great dramatic art; there is no beginning and there is +no real end, except such as may be due to the slaughter of the characters; +throughout it is possible to interpolate scenes or to subtract scenes. He +is referring more especially to _Macbeth_. + +It cannot be denied that there is truth in this plaint. In France, from a +French standpoint,--or, for the matter of that, from a Greek +standpoint,--Shakespeare must always be a barbarian. It is the same +feeling--though not indeed in so great a degree--that one experiences when +one looks at the picturesque disorder and irregularity of English Gothic +churches from the standpoint of the severely ordered majesty of Chartres, +or even of Amiens, which yet has so much about it that recalls its +neighbourhood to England. From the right standpoint, however, English +Gothic architecture is full of charm, and even of art. In the same way I +cannot at all admit that Shakespeare is unsuited for the stage. One has +only to remember that it is the Romantic not the Classic stage. It is the +function of the Shakespearian drama, and of the whole school of which +Shakespeare is the supreme representative (I put aside Marlowe who died in +the making of a greater classic tradition), to evoke a variegated vision +of the tragi-comedy of life in its height and its depth, its freedom, and +its wide horizon. This drama has for the most part little to do with the +operation of the Fate which works itself out when a man's soul is in the +stern clutch of Necessity. We are far here from Euripides and from Ibsen. +Life is always a pageant here, a tragi-comedy, which may lean sometimes +more to comedy, and sometimes more to tragedy, but has in it always, even +in _Lear_, an atmosphere of enlarging and exhilarating gaiety. + +Shakespeare is for the stage. But what stage? We were cut off for ever +from the Shakesperian tradition in the very generation after Shakespeare +died, and have not acquired a sound new tradition even yet. The device of +substituting drapery for scenery and relying exclusively on the gorgeous +flow of words for decorative purposes fails to satisfy us, and we fall +back on the foolish trick of submerging Shakespeare in upholstery and +limelight. + +It seems to me that we may discern the beginning of a more rational +tradition in Granville Barker's staging of _Twelfth Night_ at the Savoy. +There is something here of the romantic suggestion and the easy freedom +which are of the essence of the Shakesperian drama. The creamy walls, +possibly an approximation to the courtyard-like theatre of the +Elizabethans, are a perfect background for the play of brilliant figures; +the light curtains furnish precisely the desired suggestion of scenery; +and when at last all the figures wander up the stairway in the background +as the Fool sings his inconsequent song, "With hey ho the wind and the +rain," the whole gracious dream melts away deliriously, as it seemed to +Prospero, and surely to Shakespeare himself, the dream of life in the end +melts away in the wind or the rain of the grave. + +Thus conceived, the Shakesperian drama has surely as good a right to exist +on the stage as the drama of Moliere. There cannot be the same perfection +of finish and detail, for this is only an experiment, and there is +inevitably a total difference of method. Yet, as thus presented, _Twelfth +Night_ lingers in my mind with _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_ as presented at +the Comedie Francaise, so presented that, by force of tradition wrought +with faultless art, a play becomes an embodied symphony, a visible +manifestation of gracious music. + + +_March_ 13.--I passed in the village street the exotic figure of a fat man +in a flat cap and a dark blue costume, with very wide baggy trousers down +to the ground. He was reading a newspaper as he walked with an easy +slouch. His fat shaven face was large and round and wrinkled, yet not +flabby. Altogether there was something irresistibly Chinese about him. +Strange that this curious figure should be the typical English sailor, the +legendary Hero of the British People, and the person on whose existence +that of the English nation is held to depend. + + +_March_ 16.--Two feminine idealists. I read of an English suffragette +trying to address a meeting and pelted with tomatoes by a crowd grown +weary of suffragette outrages. And shortly after I read of a young German +dancer in a small Paris theatre who in the course of her dance is for a +few moments absolutely naked, whereupon the Chief of Police sends for her +and draws up a charge of "outrage aux moeurs." To a journalist she +expresses her indignation at this insult to her art: "Let there be no +mistake; when I remove my chemise to come on the stage it is in order to +bare my soul." Not quite a wise thing to say to a journalist, but it is in +effect what the suffragette also says, and is rewarded with rotten +tomatoes as her sister with a _proces-verbal._ + +One sees the whole-hearted enthusiasm of both the suffragette and the +dancer. Unwise, no doubt, unable to discern the perspective of life, or to +measure the inevitable social reactions of their time. Yet idealists, even +martyrs, for Art or for Justice, exposed in the arena of the world, as the +Perpetuas and Blandinas of old were exposed out of love for Jesus, all +moved by the Spirit of Life, though, as the ages pass, the Excuses for +Life differ. Many Masks, but one Face and one Arena. + +For the Mob, huddled like sheep around this Arena of Life, and with no +vital instinct to play therein any part of their own, it is not for these +to cast contumely. Let them be well content that for a brief moment it is +theirs to gaze at the Spectacle of Divine Gaiety and then be thrust into +outer Darkness. + + +_March_ 17.--Yet, when one thinks of it, why should the mob in the +galleries not hiss, when they so please, the spectacle they were not made +to take part in? They are what they are born to be and what circumstances +have made them, the legitimate outcome of your Random Procreation, and +your Compulsory Education, your Regulations and By-laws, spread thick over +every inch of Land and Sea and Air. And if they still throw rotten +tomatoes and draw up charge sheets in police stations, why should they not +enjoy their brief moment of Living Action, and be Damned? + +We may even go a step further. It has to be remembered that the Actors of +Life, interesting as they are, exist for the audience, and not the +audience for the Actors. The Actors are the abnormal and exceptional +people, born out of due time, at variance with the environment; that is +why they are Actors. This vast inert mass of people, with no definite +individualities of their own, they are normal and healthy Humanity, born +to consume the Earth's fruits, even when these fruits happen to be dancers +and suffragettes. It is thus that harmony is established between Actors +and Spectators; neither could exist without the other. Both are needed in +any Cosmic Arena. + + +_March 18_.--I always recall with a certain surprise how many years ago a +fine critic who is also a fine writer told me he had no admiration for +Addison, and even seemed to feel a certain disdain. This attitude caused +me no resentment, for Addison makes no personal appeal to me, and I +experience no great interest in the things he writes about. I am content +to read a page of him in bed, and therewith peacefully fall asleep. + +Yet surely Addison, and still more Steele, the authors of the _Spectator_ +and the _Tatler_, represent the high-water mark of English Speech. The +mere rubbish left by the tide, if you like, for I am not asserting that +the position of Addison and of Steele is necessarily the sole result of +individual desert. They mark a special moment in the vital growth of +language, if only by revealing the Charm of Triviality, and they stood +among a crowd--Defoe, Temple, Swift, and the rest--who at various points +surpassed them. A magnificent growth had preceded them. The superb and +glowing weight of Bacon had become the tumultuous splendour of Milton, +which subsided into the unconscious purity of Bunyan, the delicate +simplicity of Cowley, and the muscular orderliness of Dryden. Every +necessary quality of prose had been separately conquered. An instrument +had been created that contained all the stops, and might be used not only +for the deepest things of life, but equally for the lightest. And then, +suddenly, the whole English world began to use words beautifully, and not +only so, but to spell, to punctuate, to use their capital letters with +corresponding beauty. So it was at the end of the seventeenth century and +during the first quarter of the eighteenth. Addison and Steele stand for +that epoch. + +Then the tide began to ebb. That fine equilibrium of all the elements of +speech could not be maintained indefinitely. Its poise and equability +began to grow trivial, its exalted familiarity to become mere vulgarity. +So violent reactions became necessary. Johnson and Johnsonese swept +heavily over the retreating tide and killed what natural grace and +vivacity might have been left in Goldsmith or in Graves. But even had +there been no Johnson the reaction was inevitable. Every great writer +began to be an isolated grandee who lost the art of familiarity, for he +had no one to be familiar with. Consider Gibbon, in his own domain +supreme, but the magnificent fall of his cadences, however fit for his +subject, was fit for no other; and look at Landor, the last great writer +of English, though even he never quite scoured off the lingering dross of +Johnsonese, and at the best has the air of a giant conversing with +pigmies. + +Then we come to the nineteenth century, where we find writing that is bad, +indifferent, good, rarely perfect save now and again for a brief moment, +as in Lamb, who incarnated again the old familiar touch on great things +and little things alike, and into that was only driven, likely enough, by +the scourge of madness. Then there was Pater, who was exquisite, even a +magician, yet scarcely great. And there was Stevenson,--prototype of a +vast band of accomplished writers of to-day,--the hollow image of a great +writer, a man who, having laboriously taught himself to write after the +best copybook models, found that he had nothing to say and duly said it at +length. It was a state of things highly pleasing to the mob. For they said +one to another: Look, here is a man who writes beautifully, evidently a +Great Writer; and there is nothing inside him but sawdust, just like you +and me. For the most part good writing in the nineteenth century was +self-conscious writing, which cannot be beautiful. Is a woman gazing into +her mirror beautiful? + +Our writers waver between vulgarity on the one hand, artificiality or +eccentricity on the other. It is an alternation of evils. The best writing +must always possess both Dignity and Familiarity, otherwise it can never +touch at once the high things and the low things of life, or appeal simply +to the complete human person. That is well illustrated by Cervantes, who +thereby becomes, for all his carelessness, one of the supremely great +writers. There, again, is Brantome, not a supremely great writer, or even +a writer who set out to be great. But he has in him the roots of great +style. He possesses in an incomparable degree this High Familiarity. His +voice is so exquisitely pitched that he can describe with equal simplicity +and charm the secrets of monarchs' hearts or the intimate peculiarities of +maids of honour. He knows that, as a fine critic has said, everything is +serious and at the same time frivolous. He makes us feel that the +ambitions of monarchs may be frivolous, and the intimate secrets of maids +of honour of serious interest. + +But where is our great writer to-day, and how can we apply this test to +him? If he deals frivolously with the King off he goes to prison, and if +he deals seriously with so much as a chambermaid's physical secrets off he +goes to prison again, only on a different pretext. And in either case we +all cry: Serve him right! + +It ought to be a satisfaction to us to feel that we could not well sink +lower. There is nothing left for us but to rise. The tide turns at low +water as well as at high. + + +_March_ 19.--"Behold a Republic," once eloquently exclaimed Mr. Bryan, now +Secretary of State of the United States, "solving the problem of +civilisation, hastening the coming of Universal Brotherhood, a Republic +which gives light and inspiration to those who sit in darkness ... a +Republic gradually but surely becoming the supreme moral factor in the +world's progress!" + +Behold a Republic, one is hereby at once impelled to continue, where +suspected evildoers are soaked in oil and roasted, where the rulings of +judges override the law, a Republic where the shadow of morality is +preferred to the substance, and a great man is driven out of the land +because he has failed to conform to that order of things, a Republic where +those who sit in darkness are permitted to finance crime. It would not be +difficult to continue Mr. Bryan's rhapsody in the same vein. + +Now one has no wish to allude to these things. Moreover, it is easy to set +forth definitely splendid achievements on the other side of the account, +restoring the statement to balance and sanity. It is the glare of +rhapsodical eulogy which instinctively and automatically evokes the +complementary colours and afterimages. For, as Keble rightly thought, it +is a dangerous exploit to + + wind ourselves too high + For sinful man beneath the sky. + +The spectacle of his hinder parts thus presented to the world may be quite +other than the winder intended. + + +_March_ 20.--The other day a cat climbed the switchboard at the electric +lighting works of Cardiff, became entangled in the wires, and plunged the +city into darkness, giving up his life in this supreme achievement. It is +not known that he was either a Syndicalist or a Suffragette. But his +adventure is significant for the Civilisation we are moving towards. + +All Civilisation depends on the Intelligence, Sympathy, and Mutual Trust +of the persons who wrought that Civilisation. It was not so in barbaric +days to anything like the same degree. Then a man's house was his castle. +He could shut himself up with his family and his retainers and be +independent of society, even laugh at its impotent rage. No man's house is +his castle now. He is at the mercy of every imbecile and every fanatic. +His whole life is regulated by delicate mechanisms which can be put out of +gear by a touch. There is nothing so fragile as civilisation, and no high +civilisation has long withstood the manifold risks it is exposed to. +Nowadays any naughty grown-up child can say to Society: Give me the +sugar-stick I want or I'll make your life intolerable. And for a brief +moment he makes it intolerable. + +Nature herself in her most exquisite moods has shared the same fate at the +hands of Civilised Man. If there is anything anywhere in the world that is +rare and wild and wonderful, singular in the perfection of its beauty, +Civilised Man sweeps it out of existence. It is the fate everywhere of +lyre-birds, of humming-birds, of birds of Paradise, marvellous things that +Man may destroy and can never create. They make poor parlour ornaments and +but ugly adornments for silly women. The world is the poorer and we none +the richer. The same fate is overtaking all the loveliest spots on the +earth. There are rare places which Primitive Man only approaches on +special occasions, with sacred awe, counting their beauty inviolable and +the animals living in them as gods. Such places have existed in the heart +of Africa unto to-day. Civilised man arrives, disperses the awe, shoots +the animals, if possible turns them into cash. Eventually he turns the +scenery into cash, covering it with dear hotels and cheap advertisements. +In Europe the process has long been systematised. Lake Leman was once a +spot which inspired poets with a new feeling for romantic landscape. What +Rousseau or Byron could find inspiration on that lake to-day? The Pacific +once hid in its wilderness a multitude of little islands upon which, as +the first voyagers and missionaries bore witness, Primitive Man, protected +by Nature from the larger world, had developed a rarely beautiful culture, +wild and fierce and voluptuous, and yet in the highest degree humane. +Civilised man arrived, armed with Alcohol and Syphilis and Trousers and +the Bible, and in a few years only a sordid and ridiculous shadow was left +of that uniquely wonderful life. People talk with horror of "Sabotage." +Naturally enough. Yet they do not see that they themselves are morally +supporting, and financially paying for, and even religiously praying for, +a gigantic system of world-wide "Sabotage" which for centuries has been +recklessly destroying things that are infinitely more lovely and +irreparable than any that Syndicalists may have injured. + +Nature has her revenge on Civilised Man, and when he in his turn comes to +produce exquisite things she in her turn crushes them. By chance, or with +a fine irony, she uses as her instruments the very beings whom he, in his +reckless fury of incompetent breeding, has himself procreated. And whether +he will ever circumvent her by learning to breed better is a question +which no one is yet born to answer. + + +_March 21_.--It is maintained by some that every great poet is a great +critic. I fail to see it. For the most part I suspect the poetry of the +great critic and the criticism of the great poet. There can be no more +instructive series of documents in this matter than the enthusiastic +records of admiration which P. H. Bailey collected from the first poets of +his time concerning his _Festus_. That work was no doubt a fine +achievement; when I was fifteen I read it from end to end with real +sympathy, and interest that was at least tepid. But to imagine that it was +a great poem, or that there was so much as a single line of great poetry +in all the six hundred pages of it! It needed a poet for that. + +If we consider poets as critics in the field of art generally, where their +aesthetic judgment might be less biassed, they show no better. Think of +the lovely little poem in which Tennyson eulogised the incongruous facade +of Milan Cathedral. And for any one who with Wordsworth's exquisite sonnet +on King's College Chapel in his mind has the misfortune to enter that long +tunnel, beplastered with false ornament, the disillusion is unforgettable. +Robert Browning presents a highly instructive example of the poet as +critic. He was interested in many artists in many fields of art, yet it +seems impossible for him to be interested in any who were not second-rate +or altogether inferior: Abt Vogler, Galuppi, Guercino, Andrea del Sarto, +and the rest. One might hesitate indeed to call Filippo Lippi inferior, +but the Evil Genius still stands by, and from Browning's hands Lippi +escapes a very poor creature. + +Baudelaire stands apart as a great poet who was an equally great critic, +as intuitive, as daring, as decisively and immediately right in aesthetic +judgment as an artistic creation. And even with Baudelaire as one's guide +one sometimes needs to walk by faith. In the baroque church of St. Loup in +Namur he admired so greatly--the church wherein he was in the end stricken +by paralysis--I have wandered and hesitated a little between the great +critic's insight into a strange beauty and the great artist's acceptance +of so frigidly artificial a model. + +Why indeed should one expect a great poet to be a great critic? The fine +critic must be sensitive, but he must also be clear-eyed, calm, judicial. +The poet must be swept by emotion, carried out of himself, strung to high +tension. How can he be sure to hold the critical balance even? He must +indeed be a critic, and an exquisite critic, in the embodiment of his own +dream, the technique of his own verse. But do not expect him to be a +critic outside his own work. Do not expect to find the bee an authority on +ant-hills or the ant a critic of honeycomb. + +March 22.--Hendrik Andersen sends from Rome the latest news of that +proposed World City he is working towards with so much sanguine ardour, +the City which is to be the internationally social Embodiment of the World +Conscience, though its site--Tervueren, Berne, the Hague, Paris, Frejus, +San Stefano, Rome, Lakewood--still remains undetermined. So far the City +is a fairy tale, but in that shape it has secured influential support and +been worked out in detail by some forty architects, engineers, sculptors, +and painters, under the direction of Hebrard. It covers some ten square +miles of ground. In its simple dignity, in its magnificent design, in its +unrivalled sanitation, it is unique. The International Centres represented +fall into three groups: Physical Culture, Science, Art. The Art centres +are closely connected with the Physical Culture Centres by gardens devoted +to floriculture, natural history, zoology, and botany. It is all very +well. + +So far I only know of one World City. But Rome was the creation of a +special and powerful race, endowed with great qualities, and with the +defects of those qualities, and, moreover, it was the World City of a +small world. Who are to be the creators of this new World City? If it is +not to be left in the hands of a few long-haired men and short-haired +women, it will need a solid basis of ordinary people, including no doubt +English, such as Mr. A., and Mrs. B., and Miss C. + +Now I know Mr. A., and Mrs. B., and Miss C., their admirable virtues, +their prim conventions, their little private weaknesses, their ingrained +prejudices, their mutual suspicion of one another. Little people may +fittingly rule a little village. But these little people would dominate +the huge Natatorium, the wonderful Bureau of Anthropological Records, and +the Temple of Religions. + +On the whole I would rather work towards the creation of Great People than +of World Centres. Before creating a World Conscience let us have bodies +and souls for its reception. I am not enthusiastic about a World +Conscience which will be enshrined in Mr. A., and Mrs. B., and Miss C. +Excellent people, I know, but--a World Conscience? + + +_Easter Sunday_.--What a strange fate it is that made England! A little +ledge of beautiful land in the ocean, to draw and to keep all the men in +Europe who had the sea in their hearts and the wind in their brains, +daring children of Nature, greedy enough and romantic enough to trust +their fortunes to waves and to gales. The most eccentric of peoples, all +the world says, and the most acquisitive, made to be pirates and made to +be poets, a people that have fastened their big teeth into every quarter +of the globe and flung their big hearts in song at the feet of Nature, and +even done both things at the same time. The man who wrote the most +magnificent sentence in the English language was a pirate and died on the +scaffold. + + +_March 26_.--I have lately been hearing Busoni play Chopin, and absorbing +an immense joy from the skill with which that master-player evokes all the +virile and complex power of Chopin, the power and the intellect which +Pachmann, however deliciously he catches the butterflies fluttering up +from the keys, for the most part misses. + +All the great artists, in whatever medium, take so rare a delight, now and +again, in interpreting some unutterable emotion, some ineffable vision, in +mere terms of technique. In Chopin, in Rodin, in Besnard, in +Rossetti,--indeed in any supreme artist,--again and again I have noted +this. Great simple souls for the most part, inarticulate except through an +endless power over the medium of their own art, they all love to take some +insignificant little lump of that medium, to work at that little lump, +with all their subtlest skill and power, in the production of what +seemingly may be some absolutely trivial object or detail, and yet, not by +what it obviously represents, but by the technique put into it, has become +a reality, a secret of the soul, and an embodiment of a vision never +before seen on earth. + +Many years ago I realised this over Rossetti's poem "Cloud Confines." It +is made out of a little lump of tawdry material which says nothing, is, +indeed, mere twaddle. Yet it is wrought with so marvellous a technique +that we seem to catch in it a far-away echo of voices that were heard when +the morning stars sang together, and it clings tremulously to the memory +for ever. + +Technique is the art of so dealing with matter--whether clay or pigment or +sounds or words--that it ceases to affect us in the same way as the stuff +it is wrought out of originally affects us, and becomes a Transparent +Symbol of a Spiritual Reality. Something that was always familiar and +commonplace is suddenly transformed into something that until that moment +eye had never seen or ear heard, and that yet seems the revelation of our +hearts' secret. + +It is an important point to remember. For one sometimes hears ignorant +persons speak of technique with a certain supercilious contempt, as though +it were a mere negligible and inferior element in an artist's equipment +and not the art itself, the mere virtuosity of an accomplished fiddler who +seems to say anything with his fiddle, and has never really said anything +in his whole life. To the artist technique is another matter. It is the +little secret by which he reveals his soul, by which he reveals the soul +of the world. Through technique the stuff of the artist's work becomes the +stuff of his own soul moulded into shapes that were never before known. In +that act Dust is transubstantiated into God. The Garment of the Infinite +is lifted, and the aching human heart is pressed for one brief moment +against the breast of the Ineffable Mystery. + + +_March 29_.--I notice that in his _Year's Journey through France and Spain +in 1795_, Thicknesse favourably contrasts the Frenchman, who only took +wine at meals, with the Englishman, who, "earning disease and misery at +his bottle, sits at it many hours after dinner and always after supper." +The French have largely retained their ancient sober habit (save for the +unhappy introduction of the afternoon "aperitif"), but the English have +shown a tendency to abandon their intemperance of excess in favour of an +opposed intemperance, and instead of drinking till they fall under the +table have sometimes developed a passion for not drinking at all. +Similarly in eating, the English of old were renowned for the enormous +quantities of roast beef they ate; the French, who have been famous +bread-makers for at least seven hundred years, ate much bread and only a +moderate amount of meat; that remains their practice to-day, and though +such skilful cooks of vegetables the French have never shown any tendency +to live on them. When I was last at Versailles the latest guide-book +mentioned a vegetarian restaurant; I sought it out, only to find that it +had already disappeared. But the English have developed a passion for +vegetarianism, here again reacting from one intemperance to the opposed +intemperance. Just in the same way we have a national passion for +bull-baiting and cock-fighting and pheasant-shooting and fox-hunting, and +a no less violent passion for anti-vivisection and the protection of +animals. + +This characteristic really goes very deep into our English temper. The +Englishman is termed eccentric, and eccentricity, in a precise and literal +sense, is fundamental in the English character. We preserve our balance, +in other words, by passing from one extreme to the opposite extreme, and +keep in touch with our centre of gravity by rolling heavily from one side +of it to the other side. + +Geoffrey Malaterra, who outlined the Norman character many centuries ago +with much psychological acuteness, insisted on the excessiveness of that +_gens effrenatissima_, the tendency to unite opposite impulses, the taste +for contradictory extremes. Now of all their conquests the Normans only +made one true and permanent Conquest, the Conquest of England. And as +Freeman has pointed out, surely with true insight, the reason of the +profound conquest of England by the Normans simply lay in the fact that +the spirit of the Norman was already implanted in the English soil, +scattered broadcast by a long series of extravagant Northmen who had +daringly driven their prows into every attractive inlet. So on the +spiritual side the Norman had really in England little conquest to make. +The genius of Canute, one of the greatest of English kings and a Northman, +had paved the road for William the Conqueror. It was open to William +Blake, surely an indubitable Englishman, to establish the English national +motto: "The Road of Excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom." Certainly it is +a motto that can only be borne triumphantly on the standard of a very +well-tempered nation. On that road it is so easy to miss Wisdom and only +encounter Dissolution. Doubtless, on the whole, the Greeks knew better. + +Now see how Illusion enters into the world, and men are moved by what +Jules de Gaultier calls Bovarism, the desire to be other than they are. +Here is this profound, blind, unconscious impulse, lying at the heart of +the race for thousands of years, and not to be torn out. And the children +of the race, when the hidden impulse stirring within drives them to +extremes, invent beautiful reasons for these extremes: patriotic reasons, +biological reasons, aesthetic reasons, moral reasons, humanitarian +reasons, hygienic reasons--there is no end to them. + + +_April 1._--When the boisterous winds of March are at last touched with a +new softness and become strangely exhilarating, when one sees the dry +hedges everywhere springing into points of delicate green and white +blossoms shining in the bare trees, then, for those who live in England +and know that summer is still far away, the impulse of migration arises +within. It has always seemed remarkable to me that Chaucer, at the outset +of the _Canterbury Tales_, definitely and clearly assumes that the reason +for pilgrimage is not primarily religious but biological, an impulse due +to the first manifestation of spring: + + Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, + And palmers for to seken straunge strondes. + +And what a delightful fiction (a manifestation of Vaihinger's omnipotent +"als ob") to transform this inner impulse into a sacred objective duty! + +Perhaps if we were duly sensitive to the Inner Voice responding to natural +conditions, we might detect a migratory impulse for every month in the +year. For every month there is surely some fitting land and sky, some +fragrance that satisfies the sense or some vision that satisfies the soul. + +In January certainly--if I confined my migrations to Europe--I would be in +the gardens of Malaga, for at that season it is that we of the North most +crave to lunch beneath the orange trees and to feel the delicious echo of +the sun in the air of midnight. In February I would go to Barcelona, where +the cooler air may be delightful, though when is it not delightful in +Barcelona, even if martial law prevails? For March there is doubtless +Sicily. For April there is no spot like Seville, when Spring arrives in a +dazzling intoxicating flash. In May one should be in Paris to meet the +spring again, softly insinuating itself into the heart under the delicious +northern sky. In June and July we may be anywhere, in cities or in +forests. August I prefer to spend in London, for then only is London +leisurely, brilliant, almost exotic; and only then can one really see +London. During September I would be wandering over Suffolk, to inhale its +air and to revel in its villages, or else anywhere in Normandy where the +crowd are not. I have never known where I would be in October, to escape +the first deathly chill of winter; but at all events there is +Aix-les-Bains, beautifully cloistered within its hills and still enlivened +by fantastic visions from the whole European world. In November there is +the Cornish coast, then often most exquisite, with soft nights, magical +skies, and bays star-illuminated with fishers' lights, fire-flies of the +sea. And before November is over I would be in Rome to end the year, not +Rome the new-fangled capital of an upstart kingdom, but that Rome, if we +may still detect it, which is the greatest and most inspiring city in the +world. + + +_April 4._--An advocate of Anti-vivisection brings an action for libel +against an advocate of Vivisection. It matters little which will win. (The +action was brought on All Fools' Day.) The interesting point is that each +represents a great--or, if you prefer, a little--truth. But if each +recognised the other's truth he would be paralysed in proclaiming his own +truth. There would be general stagnation. The world is carried on by +ensuring that those who carry it on shall be blinded in one or the other +eye. We may call it the method of one-sided blinkers. + +It is an excellent device of the Ironist. + + +_April 8._--As very slowly, by rare sudden glimpses, one obtains an +insight into the lives of people, one is constantly impressed by the large +amount of their moral activity which is hidden from view. No doubt there +are people who are all of a piece and all on the surface, people who are +all that they seem and nothing beyond what they seem. Yet I am sometimes +tempted to think that most people circle round the world as the moon +circles round it, always carefully displaying one side only to the human +spectators' view, and concealing unknown secrets on their hidden +hemispheres. + +The side that is displayed is, in the moral sphere, generally called +"respectable," and the side that is hidden "vicious." What men show they +call their "virtues." But if one looks at the matter broadly and +naturally, may it not be that the vices themselves are after all nothing +but disreputable virtues? It is not only schoolboys and servant-girls who +spend a considerable part of their time in doing things which are +flagrantly and absurdly contradictory of that artificially modelled +propriety which in public they exhibit. It is just the same, one finds by +chance revelations, among merchant princes and leaders of learned +professions. For it is not merely the degenerate and the unfit who cannot +confine all their activities within the limits prescribed by the +conventional morality which surrounds them, but often the ablest and most +energetic men, the sweetest and gentlest women. Moreover, it would often +seem that on this unseen side of their lives they may be even more heroic, +more inspired, more ideal, more vitally stimulated, than they are on that +side with which they confront the world. + +Suppose people were morally inverted, turned upside down, with their vices +above water, and their respectable virtues submerged, suppose that they +were, so to say, turned morally inside out. And suppose that vice became +respectable and the respectabilities vicious, that men and women exercised +their vices openly and indulged their virtues in secret, would the world +be any the worse? Would there be a difference in the real nature of people +if they changed the fashion of wearing the natural hairy fur of their +coats inside instead of outside? + +And if there is a difference, what is that difference? + + +_April 10._--I am a little surprised sometimes to find how commonly people +suppose that when one is unable to accept their opinions one is therefore +necessarily hostile to them. Thus a few years ago, I recall, Professor +Freud wrote how much pleasure it would give him if he could overcome my +hostility to his doctrines. But, as I hastened to reply, I have no +hostility to his doctrines, though they may not at every point be +acceptable to my own mental constitution. If I see a man pursuing a +dangerous mountain track I am not hostile in being unable to follow far on +the same track. On the contrary, I may call attention to that pioneer's +adventure, may admire his courage and skill, even applaud the results of +his efforts, or at all events the great ideal that animated him. In all +this I am not with him, but I am not hostile. + +Why indeed should one ever be hostile? What a vain thing is this +hostility! A dagger that pierces the hand of him that holds it. They who +take up the sword shall perish by the sword was the lesson Jesus taught +and himself never learnt it. Ferociously, recklessly, that supreme master +of denunciation took up the sword of his piercing speech against the +"Scribes" and the "Pharisees" of the "generation of vipers," until he made +their very names a by-word and a reproach. And yet the Church of Jesus has +been the greatest generator of Scribes and Pharisees the world has ever +known, and they have even proved the very bulwark of it to this day. Look, +again, at Luther. There was the Catholic Church dying by inches, gently, +even exquisitely. And here came that gigantic peasant, with his too +exuberant energy, battered the dying Church into acute sensibility, kicked +it into emotion, galvanised it into life, prolonged its existence for a +thousand years. The man who sought to exterminate the Church proved to be +the greatest benefactor the Church had ever known. + +The end men attain is rarely the end they desired. Some go out like Saul, +the son of Kish, who sought his father's asses and found a kingdom, and +some sally forth to seek kingdoms and find merely asses. In the one case +and in the other they are led by a hand that they knew not to a goal that +was not so much their own as that of their enemies. + +So it is that we live for ever on hostility. Our friends may be the +undoing of us; in the end it is our enemies who save us. The views we hate +become ridiculous because they adopt them. Their very thoroughness leads +to an overwhelming reaction on whose waves we ride to victory. Even their +skill calls out our greater skill and our finer achievement. At their +best, at their worst, alike they help us. They are the very life-blood in +our veins. + +It is a strange world in which, as Paulhan says (and I chance to alight on +his concordant words even as I write this note), "things are not employed +according to their essence, but, as a rule, for ends which are directly +opposed to that essence." We are more unsuccessful than we know. And if we +could all realise more keenly that we are fighting not so much in our own +cause as in the cause of our enemies, how greatly it would make for the +Visible Harmony of the World. + + +_April 12._--All literary art lies in the arrangement of life. The +literature most adequate to the needs of life is that most capable of +transforming the facts of life into expressive and beautiful words. French +literary art has always had that power. English literary art had it once +and has lost it now. When I read, for instance, Goncourt's _Journal_--one +of the few permanently interesting memoirs the nineteenth century has left +us--my heart sinks at the comparison of its adequacy to life with the +inadequacy of all contemporary English literature which seeks to grapple +with life. It is all pathetically mirrored in the typical English comic +paper, _Punch_, this inability to go below the surface of life, or even to +touch life at all, save in narrowly prescribed regions. But Goncourt is +always able to say what there is to say, simply and vividly; whatever +aspect of life presents itself, of that he is able to speak. I can +understand, surprising as at first it may be, how Verlaine, who seems at +every point so remote from Goncourt, yet counted him as the first +prose-writer of his time; Verlaine had penetrated to the _simplicite +cachee_ (to use Poincare's phrase) behind the seemingly tortured +expressions of Goncourt's art. Goncourt makes us feel that whatever is fit +to occur in the world is fit to be spoken of by him who knows how to speak +of it. If we wish to face the manifold interest of the world, in its +poignancy and its beauty, as well as in its triviality, there is no other +way. + +English literary art was strong and brave and expressive for several +centuries, even, one may say, on the whole, up to the end of the +eighteenth century, though I suppose that Dr. Johnson had helped to crush +the life out of it. When Queen Victoria came to the throne the finishing +stroke seems to have been dealt at it. One might fancy that the whole +literary world had become conscious of the youthful and innocent monarch's +eye on every book issued from the press, and that every writer feared he +might write a word to bring a blush on her virginal countenance. When +young Queen Elizabeth came to the throne, they seem to have felt, it was +another matter. There was a monarch who feared nothing and nobody, who +once spat at a courtier whose costume misliked her, who as a girl had +experienced no resentment when the Lord High Admiral, who was courting +her, sent a messenger to "ax hir whether hir great buttocks were grown any +less or no," a monarch who was not afraid of any word in the English +language, and loved the most expressive words best. Under such a monarch, +the Victorian writers felt they would no longer have modestly refrained +from becoming Shakespeares. + +But the excuses for feebleness are apt to be more ingenious than +convincing. There is no connection between coarseness and art. Goncourt +was a refined aristocrat who associated with the most highly civilised men +and women of his day, and possessed the rarest secrets of aesthetic +beauty. Indeed we may say that it is precisely the consciousness of +coarseness which leads to a cowardly flight from the brave expression of +life. Most of these excuses are impotent. Most impotent of all is the +excuse that their books reach the Nursery and the Young Ladies' School. Do +they suppose by any chance that their books grapple with the real life of +Nurseries and Young Ladies' Schools? If they grappled with that they might +grapple with anything. It is a subterfuge, a sham, and with fatty +degeneration eating away the muscular fibre of their hearts, they snatch +at it. + +The road is long, and a high discipline is needed, and a great courage, if +our English literature is to regain its old power and exert once more its +proper influence in the world. + + +_April_ 16.--I have often noticed--and I find that others also have +noticed--that when an artist in design, whether line or colour or clay, +takes up a pen and writes, he generally writes well, sometimes even +superbly well. Again and again it has happened that a man who has spent +his life with a brush in his hand has beaten the best penmen at their own +weapon. + +Leonardo, who was indeed great in everything, is among the few great +writers of Italian prose. Blake was first and above all an artist in +design, but at the best he had so magnificent a mastery of words that +besides it all but the rare best of his work in design looks thin and +artificial. Rossetti was drawing and painting all his life, and yet, as +has now become clear, it is only in language, verse and prose alike, that +he is a supreme master. Fromentin was a painter for his contemporaries, +yet his paintings are now quite uninteresting, while the few books he +wrote belong to great literature, to linger over with perpetual delight. +Poetry seemed to play but a small part in the life of Michelangelo, yet +his sonnets stand to-day by the side of his drawings and his marbles. +Rodin has all his life been passionately immersed in plastic art; he has +never written and seldom talks; yet whenever his more intimate disciples, +a Judith Cladel or a Paul Gsell, have set down the things he utters, they +are found to be among the most vital, fascinating, and profound sayings in +the world. Even a bad artist with the brush may be on the road to become a +good artist with the pen. Euripides was not only a soldier, he had tried +to be a painter before he became a supreme tragic dramatist, and, to come +down to modern times, Hazlitt and Thackeray, both fine artists with the +pen, had first been poor artists with the brush. It is hard, indeed, to +think of any artist in design who has been a bad writer. The painter may +never write, he may never feel an impulse to write, but when he writes, it +would almost seem without an effort, he writes well. The list of good +artists and bad artists who have been masters of words, from Vasari and +earlier onwards, is long. One sets down at random the names of Reynolds, +Northcote, Delacroix, Woolner, Carriere, Leighton, Gauguin, Beardsley, Du +Maurier, Besnard, to which doubtless it might be easy to add a host of +others. And then, for contrast, think of that other art, which yet seems +to be so much nearer to words; think of musicians! + +The clue seems to be, not only in the nature of the arts of design, but +also in the nature of writing. For, unlike all the arts, writing is not +necessarily an art at all. It is just anything. It fails to carry +inevitably within it the discipline of art. And if the writer is not an +artist, if the discipline of art has left no acquired skill in his muscles +and no instinctive habit in his nerves, he may never so much as discover +that he is not an artist. The facility of writing is its fate. + +Gourmont has well said that whatever is deeply thought is well written. +And one might add that whatever is deeply observed is well said. The +artist in design is by the very nature of his work compelled to observe +deeply, precisely, beautifully. He is never able to revolve in a vacuum, +or flounder in a morass, or run after a mirage. When there is nothing +there he is still. He is held by his art to Nature. So, when he takes up +his pen, by training, by acquired instinct, he still follows with the new +instrument, deeply, precisely, beautifully, the same mystery of Nature. + +It was by a somewhat similar transference of skilled experience that the +great writers of Spain, who in so many cases were first soldiers and men +of the sword, when they took up the pen, wrote, carelessly it may seem, +but so poignantly, so vividly, so fundamentally well. + + +_April_ 22.--There is a certain type of mind which constitutionally +ignores and overlooks little things, and habitually moves among large +generalisations. Of such minds we may well find a type in Bacon, who so +often gave James I. occasion to remark jocularly in the Council Chamber of +his Lord Chancellor, _De minimis non curat lex_. + +There is another type of mind which is constitutionally sensitive to the +infinite significance of minimal things. Of such, very typical in our day +are Freud and the Freudians grouped around him. There is nothing so small +that for Freud it is not packed with endless meaning. Every slightest +twitch of the muscles, every fleeting fancy of the brain, is unconsciously +designed to reveal the deepest impulse of the soul. Every detail of the +wildest dream of the night is merely a hieroglyph which may be +interpreted. Every symptom of disease is a symbol of the heart's desire. +In every seeming meaningless lapse of his tongue or his memory a man is +unconsciously revealing his most guarded and shameful secret. It is the +daring and fantastic attempt, astonishing in the unexpected amount of its +success, to work out this Philosophy of the Unconscious which makes the +work of the Freudians so fascinating. + +They have their defects, both these methods, the far-sighted and the +near-sighted. Bacon fell into the ditch, and Freud is obsessed by the +vision of a world only seen through the delicate anastomosis of the nerves +of sex. Yet also they both have their rightness, they both help us to +realise the Divine Mystery of the Soul, towards which no telescope can +carry us too far, and no microscope too near. + + +_April_ 23.--I see to-day that Justice Darling--perhaps going a little out +of his way--informed the jury in the course of a summing-up that he "could +not read a chapter of Rabelais without being bored to death." The +assumption in this _obiter dictum_ seemed to be that Rabelais is an +obscene writer. And the implication seemed to be that to a healthily +virtuous and superior mind like the Judge's the obscene is merely +wearisome. + +I note the remark by no means as a foolish eccentricity, but because it is +really typical. I seem to remember that, as a boy, I met with a very +similar assumption, though scarcely a similar implication, in Macaulay's +_Essays_, which at that time I very carefully read. I thereupon purchased +Rabelais in order to investigate for myself, and thus made the discovery +that Rabelais is a great philosopher, a discovery which Macaulay had +scarcely prepared me for, so that I imagined it to be original, until a +few years later I chanced to light upon the observations of Coleridge +concerning Rabelais' wonderful philosophic genius and his refined and +exalted morality, and I realised for the first time--with an unforgettable +thrill of joy--that I was not alone. + +It seems clearly to be true that on the appearance in literature of the +obscene,--I use the word in a colourless and technical sense to indicate +the usually unseen or obverse side of life, the side behind the scenes, +the _postscenia vitae_ of Lucretius, and not implying anything necessarily +objectionable,--it at once for most readers covers the whole field of +vision. The reader may like it or dislike, but his reaction, especially if +he is English, seems to be so intense that it absorbs his whole psychic +activity. (I say "especially if he is English," because, though this +tendency seems universal, it is strongly emphasised in the Anglo-Saxon +mind. Gaby Deslys has remarked that she has sometimes felt embarrassed on +the London stage by finding that an attempt to arouse mere amusement has +been received with intense seriousness: "When I appear _en pantalons_ the +whole audience seems to hold its breath!") Henceforth the book is either +to be cherished secretly and silently, or else to be spoken of loudly with +protest and vituperation. And this reaction is by no means limited to +ignorant and unintelligent readers; it affects ordinary people, it affects +highly intelligent and super-refined people, it may even affect eminent +literary personages. The book may be by a great philosopher and contain +his deepest philosophy, but let an obscene word appear in it, and that +word will draw every reader's attention. Thus Shakespeare used to be +considered an obscene writer, in need of expurgation, and may be so +considered still, though his obscene passages even to our prudish modern +ears are so few that they could surely be collected on a single page. Thus +also it is that even the Bible, the God-inspired book of Christendom, has +been judicially declared to be obscene. It may have been a reasonable +decision, for judicial decision ought, no doubt, to reflect popular +opinion; a judge must be judicial, whether or not he is just. + +One wonders how far this is merely due to defective education and +therefore modifiable, and how far it is based on an eradicable tendency of +the human mind. Of course the forms of obscenity vary in every age, they +are varying every day. Much which for the old Roman was obscene is not so +for us; much which for us is obscene would have made a Roman smile at our +simplicity. But even savages sometimes have obscene words not fit to utter +in good aboriginal society, and a very strict code of propriety which to +violate would be obscene. Rabelais in his immortal work wore a fantastic +and extravagant robe, undoubtedly of very obscene texture, and it +concealed from stupid eyes, as he doubtless desired that it should, one of +the greatest and wisest spirits that ever lived. It would be pleasant to +think that in the presence of such men who in their gay and daring and +profound way present life in its wholeness and find it sweet, it may some +day be the instinct of the ordinary person to enjoy the vision reverently, +if not on his knees, thanking his God for the privilege vouchsafed to him. +But one has no sort of confidence that it will be so. + + +_April_ 27.--Every garden tended by love is a new revelation, and to see +it for the first time gives one a new thrill of joy, above all at this +moment of the year when flowers are still young and virginal, yet already +profuse and beautiful. It is the moment, doubtless, when Linnaeus, +according to the legend, saw a gorse-covered English common for the first +time and fell on his knees to thank God for the sight. (I say "legend," +for I find on consulting Fries that the story must be a praiseworthy +English invention, since it was in August that Linnaeus visited England.) + +Linnaeus, it may be said, was a naturalist. But it is not merely the +naturalist who experiences this emotion; it is common to the larger part +of humanity. Savages deck their bodies with flowers just as craftsmen and +poets weave them into their work; the cottager cultivates his little +garden, and the town artisan cherishes his flower-pots. However alien +one's field of interest may be, flowers still make their appeal. I recall +the revealing thrill of joy with which, on a certain day, a quite ordinary +day nearly forty years ago, my eye caught the flash of the red roses amid +the greenery of my verandah in the Australian bush. And this bowl of +wall-flowers before me now--these old-fashioned, homely, shapeless, +intimately fascinating flowers, with their faint ancient fragrance, their +antique faded beauty, their symbolisation of the delicate and contented +beauty of old age--seem to me fit for the altar of whatever might be my +dearest god. + +Why should flowers possess this emotional force? It is a force which is +largely independent of association and quite abstracted from direct vital +use. Flowers are purely impersonal, they subserve neither of the great +primary ends of life. They concern us even less than the sunset. And yet +we are irresistibly impelled to "consider the lilies." + +Surely it is as symbols, manifoldly complex symbols, that flowers appeal +to us so deeply. They are, after all, the organs of sex, and for some +creatures they are also the sources of food. So that if we only look at +life largely enough flowers are in the main stream of vital necessity. +They are useless to man, but man cannot cut himself off from the common +trunk of life. He is related to the insects and even in the end to the +trees. So that it may not be so surprising that while flowers are vitally +useless to man they are yet the very loveliest symbols to him of all the +things that are vitally useful. There is nothing so vitally intimate to +himself that man has not seen it, and rightly seen it, symbolically +embodied in flowers. Study the folk-nomenclature of plants in any country, +or glance through Aigremont's _Volkserotik und Pflanzenwelt_. And the +symbolisation is not the less fascinating because it is so obscure, so +elusive, usually so unconscious, developed by sudden happy inspirations of +peasant genius, and because I am altogether ignorant why the morbid and +nameless tones of these curved and wrinkled wall-flowers delight me as +they once delighted my mother, and so, it may be, backwards, through +ancient generations who dwelt in parsonages whence their gaze caught the +flowers which the seventeenth-century herbalist said in his _Paradisus +Terrestris_ are "often found growing on the old walls of Churches." + + +_May_ 8.--It is curious how there seems to be an instinctive disgust in +Man for his own nearest ancestors and relations. If only Darwin could +conscientiously have traced Man back to the Elephant or the Lion or the +Antelope, how much ridicule and prejudice would have been spared to the +doctrine of Evolution! "Monkey" and "Worm" have been the bywords of +reproach among the more supercilious of human beings, whether schoolboys +or theologians. And it was precisely through the Anthropoid Apes, and more +remotely the Annelids, that Darwin sought to trace the ancestry of Man. +The Annelids have been rejected, but the Arachnids have taken their place. + +Really the proud and the haughty have no luck in this world. They can +scarcely perform their most elementary natural necessities with dignity, +and they have had the misfortune to teach their flesh to creep before +spiders and scorpions whom, it may be, they have to recognise as their own +forefathers. Well for them that their high place is reserved in another +world, and that Milton recognised "obdurate pride" as the chief mark of +Satan. + + +_May_ 9.--The words of Keats concerning the ocean's "priestlike task of +pure ablution" often come to my mind in this deserted Cornish bay. For it +is on such a margin between sea and land over which the tide rolls from +afar that alone--save in some degree on remote Australian hills---I have +ever found the Earth still virginal and unstained by Man. Everywhere else +we realise that the Earth has felt the embrace of Man, and been beautified +thereby, it may be, or polluted. But here, as the tide recedes, all is +ever new and fresh. Nature is untouched, and we see the gleam of her, +smell the scent of her, hear the voice of her, as she was before ever life +appeared on the Earth, or Venus had risen from the sea. This moment, for +all that I perceive, the first Adam may not have been born or the caravel +of the Columbus who discovered this new world never yet ground into the +fresh-laid sand. + +So when I come unto these yellow sands I come to kiss a pure and new-born +Earth. + + +_May_ 12.--The name of Philip Thicknesse, at one time Governor of +Landguard Fort, is not unknown to posterity. The echo of his bitter +quarrel with his son by his second wife, Baron Audley, has come down to +us. He wrote also the first biography of Gainsborough, whom he claimed to +have discovered. Moreover (herein stealing a march on Wilhelm von +Humboldt) he was the first to set on record a detailed enthusiastic +description of Montserrat from the modern standpoint. It was this last +achievement which led me to him. + +Philip Thicknesse, I find, is well worth study for his own sake. He is the +accomplished representative of a certain type of Englishman, a type, +indeed, once regarded by the world at large outside England as that of the +essential Englishman. The men of this type have, in fact, a passion for +exploring the physical world, they are often found outside England, and +for some strange reason they seem more themselves, more quintessentially +English, when they are out of England. They are gentlemen and they are +patriots. But they have a natural aptitude for disgust and indignation, +and they cannot fail to find ample exercise for that aptitude in the +affairs of their own country. So in a moment of passion they shake the +dust of England off their feet to rush abroad, where, also, +however,--though they are far too intelligent to be inappreciative of what +they find,--they meet even more to arouse their disgust and indignation, +and in the end they usually come back to England. + +So it was with Philip Thicknesse. A lawsuit, with final appeal to the +House of Lords, definitely deprived him of all hope of a large sum of +money he considered himself entitled to. He at once resolved to abandon +his own impossible country and settle in Spain. Accompanied by his wife +and his two young daughters, he set out from Calais with his carriage, his +horse, his man-servant, and his monkey. A discursive, disorderly, +delightful book is the record of his journey through France into +Catalonia, of his visit to Montserrat, which takes up the larger part of +it, of the abandonment of his proposed settlement in Spain, and of his +safe return with his whole retinue to Calais. + +Thicknesse was an intelligent man and may be considered a good writer, +for, however careless and disorderly, he is often vivid and usually +amusing. He was of course something of a dilettante and antiquarian. He +had a sound sense for natural beauty. He was an enthusiastic friend as +well as a venomous enemy. He was infinitely tender to animals. His +insolence could be unmeasured, and as he had no defect of courage it was +just as likely to be bestowed on his superiors as on his subordinates. +When I read him I am reminded of the advice given in my early (1847) copy +of Murray's _Guide to France_: "Our countrymen have a reputation for +pugnacity in France; let them therefore be especially cautious not to make +use of their fists." Note Thicknesse's adventure with the dish of spinach. +It was on the return journey. He had seen that spinach before it came to +table. He gives several reasons why he objected to it, and they are +excellent reasons. But notwithstanding his injunction the spinach was +served, and thereupon the irate Englishman took up the dish and, +dexterously reversing it, spinach and all, made therewith a hat for the +serving-maid's head. From the ensuing hubbub and the _aubergiste's_ wrath +Thicknesse was delivered by the advent of a French gentleman who +chivalrously declared (we are told) that he himself would have acted +similarly. But one realises the picture of the typical Englishman which +Thicknesse left behind him. It is to his influence and that of our +fellow-countrymen who resembled him that we must attribute the evolution +of the type of Englishman, arrogant, fantastic, original, who stalks +through Continental traditions, down even till to-day, for we find him in +Mr. Thomas Tobyson of Tottenwood in Henri de Regnier's _La Double +Maitresse_. For the most part the manners and customs of this type of man +are only known to us by hearsay which we may refuse to credit. But about +Thicknesse there is no manner of doubt; he has written himself down; he is +the veridic and positive embodiment of the type. That is his supreme +distinction. + +The type is scarcely that of the essential Englishman, yet it is one type, +and a notably interesting type, really racy of the soil. Borrow--less of a +fine gentleman than Thicknesse, but more of a genius--belonged to the +type. Landor, a man cast in a much grander mould, was yet of the same +sort, and the story which tells how he threw his Italian cook out of the +window, and then exclaimed with sudden compunction, "Good God! I forgot +the violets," is altogether in the spirit of Thicknesse. Trelawney was a +man of this kind, and so was Sir Richard Burton. In later years the men of +this type have tended, not so much to smooth their angularities as to +attenuate and subtilise them, and we have Samuel Butler and Goldwin Smith, +but in a rougher and more downright form there was much of the same temper +in William Stead. They are an uncomfortable race of men, but in many ways +admirable; we should be proud rather than ashamed of them. Their +unreasonableness, their inconsiderateness, their irritability, their +singular gleams of insight, their exuberant energy of righteous +vituperation, the curious irregularities of their minds,--however +personally alien one may happen to find such qualities,--can never fail to +interest and delight. + + +_May 13_.--When Aristotle declared that it is part of probability that the +improbable should sometimes happen he invented a formula that is apt for +the largest uses. Thus it is a part of justice that injustice should +sometimes be done, or, as Gourmont puts it, Injustice is one of the forms +of Justice. There lies a great truth which most of the civilised nations +of the world have forgotten. + +On Candide's arrival in Portsmouth Harbour he found that an English +admiral had just been solemnly shot, in the sight of the whole fleet, for +having failed to kill as many Frenchmen as with better judgment he might +have killed. "Dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un +amiral pour encourager les autres." I suppose that Voltaire was alluding +to the trial by court martial of Admiral Byng, which took place in +Portsmouth Harbour in 1757, while he was writing _Candide_. + +To encourage the others! England has been regarded as a model of political +methods, and that is the method of justice by which, throughout the whole +period of her vital development, she has ensured the purity and the +efficiency of her political and social growth. Byng was shot in order +that, some eighteen months later, Nelson might be brought into life. It +was a triumphantly successful method. If our modern progress has carried +us beyond that method it is only because progress means change rather than +betterment. + +Only think how swiftly and efficiently we might purify and ennoble our +social structure if we had developed, instead of abandoning, this method. +Think, for instance, of the infinite loss of energy, of health, of lives, +the endless degradation of physical and spiritual beauty produced in +London alone by the mere failure to prevent a few million chimneys from +belching soot on the great city and choking all the activities of the +vastest focus of activity in the world. Find the official whose +inefficiency is responsible for this neglect, improvise a court to try +him, and with all the deliberate solemnity and pageantry you can devise +put him to death in the presence of all officialdom. And then picture the +marvellous efficiency of his successor! In a few years' time where would +you find one smut of soot in London? Or, again, think of our complicated +factory legislation and the terrible evils which still abound in our +factories. Find a sufficiently high-placed official who is responsible for +them, and practise the Byng method with him. Under his successor's rule, +we may be sure, we should no longer recognise our death-rates, our +disease-rates, and our accident rates, and the beautiful excuses which +fill our factory inspectors' reports would no longer be needed. There is +no body of officials, from the highest to the lowest, among whom the +exercise of this ancient privilege would not conduce to the highest ends +of justice and the furtherance of human welfare. People talk about the +degradation of politics. They fail to see that it is inevitable when +politics becomes a mere game. There was no degradation of politics when +the Advisers of the Crown were liable to be executed. For it is Death, +wisely directed towards noble ends, which gives Dignity to Life. + +One may be quite sure that every fat and comfortable citizen (himself +probably an official of some sort) on whom this argument may be pressed +will take it as a joke in bad taste: "Horrible! disgusting!" Yet that same +citizen, stirring the contents of his morning newspaper into his muddy +brain as he stirs his sugar in his coffee, will complacently absorb all +the news of the day, so many hundred thousand men killed, wounded, or +diseased in the course of the Balkan campaigns, so much ugly and hopeless +misery all over the earth, and all avoidable, all caused, in the last +analysis, by the incompetence, obstinacy, blindness, or greed of some +highly placed official whose death at an earlier stage would have made for +the salvation of the world. + +And if any one still feels any doubt regarding the efficacy of this +method, it is enough to point to our English kings. Every king of England +has at the back of his mind a vision of a flashing axe on a frosty January +morning nearly four centuries ago. It has proved highly salutary in +preserving them within the narrow path of Duty. Before Charles I. English +monarchs were an almost perpetual source of trouble to their people; they +have scarcely ever given more than a moment's trouble since. And justice +has herein been achieved by an injustice which has even worked out in +Charles's favour. It has conferred upon him a prestige he could never have +conferred upon himself. For of all our English monarchs since the Conquest +he alone has become a martyr and a saint, so far as Protestantism can +canonise anybody, and of all our dead kings he alone evokes to-day a +living loyalty. Such a result is surely well worth a Decollation. + +We have abandoned the method of our forefathers. And see the ignoble and +feeble method we have put in its place. We cowardly promote our +inefficient persons to the House of Lords, or similar obscure heights. We +shelve them, or swathe them, or drop them. Sometimes, indeed, we apply a +simulacrum of the ancient method of punishment, especially if the offence +is sexual, but even there we have forgotten the correct method of its +application, for in such cases the delinquent is usually an effective +rather than an ineffective person, and when he has purged his fault we +continue to punish him in petty and underhand ways, mostly degrading to +those on whom they are inflicted and always degrading to those who inflict +them. We have found no substitute for the sharper way of our ancestors, +which was not only more effective socially, but even more pleasant for the +victim. For if it was a cause of temporary triumph to his enemies, it was +a source of everlasting exultation to his friends. + + +_May_ 14.--I was gazing at some tulips, the supreme image in our clime of +gaiety in Nature, their globes of petals opening into chalices and painted +with spires of scarlet and orange wondrously mingled with a careless +freedom that never goes astray, brilliant cups of delight serenely poised +on the firm shoulders of their stalks, incarnate images of flame under the +species of Eternity. + +And by some natural transition my thoughts turned to the incident a +scholarly member of Parliament chanced to mention to me yesterday, of his +old student days in Paris, when early one evening he chanced to meet a +joyous band of students, one of whom triumphantly bore a naked girl on his +shoulders. In those days the public smiled or shrugged its shoulders: +"Youth will be youth." To-day, in the Americanised Latin Quarter, the +incident would merely serve to evoke the activities of the police. + +Shall we, therefore, rail against the police, or the vulgar ideals of the +mob whose minions they are? Rather let us look below the surface and +admire the patient and infinite strategy of Nature. She is the same for +ever and for ever, and can afford to be as patient as she is infinite, +while she winds the springs of the mighty engine which always recoils on +those who attempt to censor the staging of her Comedy or dim the radiance +of the Earthly Spectacle. + +And such is her subtlety that she even uses Man, her plaything, to +accomplish her ends. Nothing can be more superbly natural than the tulip, +and it was through the Brain of Man that Nature created the tulip. + + +_May_ 16.--It is an error to suppose that Solitude leads away from +Humanity. On the contrary it is Nature who brings us near to Man, her +spoilt and darling child. The enemies of their fellows are bred, not in +deserts, but in cities, where human creatures fester together in heaps. +The lovers of their fellows come out of solitude, like those hermits of +the Thebaid, who fled far from cities, who crucified the flesh, who seemed +to hang to the world by no more than a thread, and yet were infinite in +their compassion, and thought no sacrifice too great for a Human Being. + +Here as I lie on the towans by a cloud of daisies among the waving and +glistening grass, while the sea recedes along the stretching sands, and +the cloudless sky throbs with the song of larks, and no human thing is in +sight, it is, after all, of Humanity that I am most conscious. I realise +that there is no human function so exalted or so rare, none so simple or +so humble, that it has not its symbol in Nature; that if all the Beauty of +Nature is in Man, yet all the Beauty of Man is in Nature. So it is that +the shuttlecock of Beauty is ever kept in living movement. + +It is known to many that we need Solitude to find ourselves. Perhaps it is +not so well known that we need Solitude to find our fellows. Even the +Saviour is described as reaching Mankind through the Wilderness. + + +_May_ 20.--Miss Lind-Af-Hageby has just published an enthusiastic though +discriminating book on her distinguished fellow-countryman, August +Strindberg, the first to appear in English. Miss Lind-Af-Hageby is known +as the most brilliant, charming, and passionate opponent of the +vivisection of animals. Strindberg is known as perhaps the most ferocious +and skilful vivisector of the human soul. The literary idol of the +arch-antivivisector of animals is the arch-vivisector of men. It must not +be supposed, moreover, that Miss Lind-Af-Hageby overlooks this aspect of +Strindberg, which would hardly be possible in any case; she emphasises it, +though, it may be by a warning instinct rather than by deliberate +intention, she carefully avoids calling Strindberg a "vivisector," using +instead the less appropriate term "dissector." "He dissected the human +heart," she says, "laid bare its meanness, its uncleanliness; made men and +women turn on each other with sudden understanding and loathing, and +walked away smiling at the evil he had wrought." + +I have often noted with interest that a passionate hatred of pain +inflicted on animals is apt to be accompanied by a comparative +indifference to pain inflicted on human beings, and sometimes a certain +complaisance, even pleasure, in such pain. But it is rare to find the +association so clearly presented. Pain is woven into the structure of +life. It cannot be dispensed with in the vital action and reaction unless +we dispense with life itself. We must all accept it somewhere if we would +live at all; and in order that all may live we must not all accept it at +the same point. Vivisection--as experiments on animals are picturesquely +termed--is based on a passionate effort to combat human pain, +anti-vivisection on a passionate effort to combat animal pain. In each +case one set of psychic fibres has to be drawn tense, and another set +relaxed. Only they do not happen to be the same fibres. We see the dynamic +mechanism of the soul's force. + +How exquisitely the world is balanced! It is easy to understand how the +idea has arisen among so many various peoples, that the scheme of things +could only be accounted for by the assumption of a Conscious Creator, who +wrought it as a work of art out of nothing, _spectator ab extra_. It was a +brilliant idea, for only such a Creator, and by no means the totality of +the creation he so artistically wrought, could ever achieve with complete +serenity the Enjoyment of Life. + + +_May_ 23.--I seem to see some significance in the popularity of _The +Yellow Jacket_, the play at the Duke of York's Theatre "in the Chinese +manner," and even more genuinely in the Chinese manner than its producers +openly profess. This significance lies in the fact that the Chinese manner +of performing plays, like the Chinese manner of making pots, is the +ideally perfect manner. + +The people who feel as I feel take no interest in the modern English +theatre and seldom have any wish to go near it. It combines the maximum of +material reality with the maximum of spiritual unreality, an evil mixture +but inevitable, for on the stage the one involves the other. Nothing can +be more stodgy, more wearisome, more unprofitable, more away from all the +finer ends of dramatic art. But I have always believed that the exponents +of this theatrical method must in the end be the instruments of their own +undoing, give them but rope enough. That is what seems to be happening. A +reaction has been gradually prepared by Poel, Gordon Craig, Reinhardt, +Barker; we have had a purified Shakespeare on the stage and a moderately +reasonable Euripides. Now this _Yellow Jacket_, in which realism is openly +flouted and a drama is played on the same principles as children play in +the nursery, attracts crowds. They think they are being amused; they +really come to a sermon. They are being taught the value of their own +imaginations, the useful function of accepted conventions, and the proper +meaning of illusion on the stage. + +Material realism on the stage is not only dull, it is deadly; the drama +dies at its touch. The limitations of reality on the stage are absurdly +narrow; the great central facts of life become impossible of presentation. +Nothing is left to the spectator; he is inert, a cypher, a senseless +block. + +All great drama owes its vitality to the fact that its spectator is not a +mere passive block, but the living inspiration of the whole play. He is +indeed himself the very stage on which the drama is enacted. He is more, +he is the creator of the play. Here are a group of apparently ordinary +persons, undoubtedly actors, furnished with beautiful garments and little +more, a few routine stage properties, and, above all, certain formal +conventions, without which, as we see in Euripides and all great +dramatists, there can be no high tragedy. Out of these mere nothings and +the suggestions they offer, the Spectator, like God, creates a new world +and finds it very good. It is his vision, his imagination, the latent +possibilities of his soul that are in play all the time. + +Every great dramatic stage the world has seen, in Greece, in Spain, in +Elizabethan England, in France, has been ordered on these lines. The great +dramatist is not a juggler trying to impose an artifice on his public as a +reality; he sets himself in the spectator's heart. Shakespeare was well +aware of this principle of the drama; Prospero is the Ideal Spectator of +the Theatre. + + +_May_ 31.--It often impresses me with wonder that in Nature or in Art +exquisite beauty is apt to appear other than it is. Jules de Gaultier +seeks to apply to human life a principle of Bovarism by which we always +naturally seek to appear other than we are, as Madame Bovary sought, as +sought all Flaubert's personages, and indeed, less consciously on their +creator's part, Gaultier claims, the great figures in all fiction. But +sometimes I ask myself whether there is not in Nature herself a touch of +Madame Bovary. + +There is, however, this difference in the Bovarism of Nature's most +exquisite moments. They seem other than they are not by seeming more than +they are but by seeming less. It is by the attenuation of the medium, by +an approach to obscurity, by an approximation to the faintness of a dream, +that Beauty is manifested. I recall the Greek head of a girl once shown at +the Burlington Fine Arts Club,--over which Rodin, who chanced to see it +there, grew rapturous,--and it seemed to be without substance or weight +and almost transparent. "Las Meninas" scarcely seems to me a painting made +out of solid pigments laid on to a material canvas, but rather a magically +evoked vision that at any moment may tremble and pass out of sight. And +when I awoke in the dawn a while ago, and saw a vase of tulips on the +background of the drawn curtain over a window before me, the scene was so +interpenetrated by the soft and diffused light that it seemed altogether +purged of matter and nothing but mere Loveliness remained. There are +flowers the horticulturist delights to develop which no longer look like +living and complex organisms, but only gay fragments of crinkled +tissue-paper cut at random by the swift hand of a happy artist. James +Hinton would be swept by emotion as he listened to some passage in Mozart. +"And yet," he would say, "there is nothing in it." Blake said much the +same of the drawings of Duerer. Even the Universe is perhaps built on the +same plan. "In all probability matter is composed mainly of holes," said +Sir J.J. Thomson a few years ago; and almost at the same moment Poincare +was declaring that "there is no such thing as matter, there is only holes +in the ether." The World is made out of Nothing, and all Supernal Beauty +would seem to be an approach to the Divine Mystery of Nothingness. "Clay +is fashioned, and thereby the pot is made; but it is its hollowness that +makes it useful," said the first and greatest of the Mystics. "By cutting +out doors and windows the room is formed; it is the space which makes the +room's use. So that when things are useful it is that in them which is +Nothing which makes them useful." Use is the symbol of Beauty, and it is +through the doors and the windows of Beautiful Things that their Beauty +emerges.--Man himself, "the Beauty of the World," emerges on the world +through the door of a Beautiful Thing. + + +_June_ 5.--"A French gentleman, well acquainted with the constitution of +his country, told me above eight years since that France increased so +rapidly in peace that they must necessarily have a war every twelve or +fourteen years to carry off the refuse of the people." So Thicknesse wrote +in 1776, and he seems to have accepted the statement as unimpeachable. +Indeed, he lived long enough to see the beginning of the deadliest wars in +which France ever engaged. The French were then the most military people +in Europe. Now they are the leaders in the great modern civilising +movement of Anti-Militarism. To what predominant influence are we to +attribute that movement? To Christianity? Most certainly not. To +Humanitarianism? There is not the slightest reason to believe it. The +ultimate and fundamental ground on which the most civilised nations of +to-day are becoming Anti-militant, and why France is at the head of them, +is--there can be no reasonable doubt--the Decline in the Birth-rate. Men +are no longer cheap enough to be used as food for cannon. If their rulers +fail to realise that, it will be the worse for those rulers. The people of +the nations are growing resolved that they will no longer be treated as +"Refuse." The real refuse, they are beginning to believe, already ripe for +destruction, are those Obscurantists who set their backs to Civilisation +and Humanity, and clamour for a return of that ill-fated recklessness in +procreation from which the world suffered so long, the ancient motto, +"Increase and multiply,"--never meant for use in our modern world,--still +clinging so firmly to the dry walls of their ancient skulls that nothing +will ever scrape it off. The best that can be said for them is that they +know not what they talk of. + +It is really a very good excuse and may serve to save them from the bloody +fate they are so eager to send others to. They are entitled to contend +that it holds good even of the wisest. For who knows what he talks about +when he talks of even the simplest things in the world, the sky or the +sunshine or the water? + + +_June_ 15.--Am I indeed so unreasonable to care so much whether the sun +shines? The very world, to our human eyes, seems to care. It only bursts +into life, it only bursts even into the semblance of life, when the sun +shines. All this anti-cyclonic day the sky has been cloudless, and for +three hours on the sea the wavelets have been breaking into sudden flashes +and spires of silver flower-like flames, while on the reflecting waters +afar it has seemed as though a myriad argent swallows were escorting me to +the coasts of France. + +In the evening, in Paris, the glory of the day has still left a long +delicious echo in the air and on the sky. I wander along the quays, and by +a sudden inspiration go to seek out the philosophic hermit of the Rue des +Saints Peres, but even he is not at home to-night, so up and down the +silent quays I wander, aimlessly and joyously, to inhale the fragrance of +Paris and the loveliness of the night, before I leave in the morning for +Spain. + + +_June_ 19.--As I entered Santa Maria del Mar this morning by the north +door, and glanced along the walls under the particular illumination of the +moment (for in these Spanish churches of subdued light the varying +surprises of illumination are endless), there flashed on me a new swift +realisation of an old familiar fact. How mediaeval it is! Those grey walls +and the ancient sacred objects disposed on them with a strange irregular +harmony, they seem to be as mediaeval hands left them yesterday. And +indeed every aspect of this church--which to me has always been romantic +and beautiful--can scarcely have undergone any substantial change. Even +the worshippers must have changed but little, for this is the church of +the workers, and the Spanish woman's workaday costume bears little mark of +any specific century. If Cervantes were to return to this +district--perhaps to this district alone--of the city he loved it is hard +to see what he would note afresh, save the results of natural decay and +the shifting of the social centre of gravity. + +Whenever I enter an old Spanish church, in the south or in the north, +still intact in its material details, in the observance of its traditions, +in its antique grandiosity or loveliness, nearly always there is a latent +fear at my heart. Who knows how long these things will be left on the +earth? Even if they escape the dangers due to the ignorance or +carelessness of their own guardians, no one knows what swift destruction +may not at any moment overtake them. + +In the leading article of the Barcelonese _Diluvio_ to-day I read: + + The unity which marked the Middle Ages is broken into an infinite + variety of opinions and beliefs. + + Everywhere else, however, except in our country, there has been + formed a gradation, a rhythm, of ideas, passing from the highest to + the deepest notes of the scale. There are radicals in politics, in + religion, in philosophy; there are also reactionaries in all these + fields; but it is the intermediate notes, conciliatory, more or less + eclectic, which constitute the nucleus on which every society must + depend. In Spain this central nucleus has no existence. Here in all + orders of thought there are only the two extremes: _all or + nothing_. + +And the article concludes by saying that this state of things is so +threatening to the nation that some pessimists are already standing, watch +in hand, to count the moments of Spain's existence. + +This tendency of the Spanish spirit, which there can be little doubt +about, may not threaten the existence of Spain, but it threatens the +existence of the last great fortress of mediaeval splendour and beauty and +romance. France, the chosen land of Saintliness and Catholicism, has been +swept clear of mediaevalism. England, even though it is the chosen land of +Compromise, has in the sphere of religion witnessed destructive +revolutions and counter-revolutions. What can save the Church in Spain +from perishing by that sword of Intolerance which it has itself forged? + + +_June_ 20.--In a side-chapel there is a large and tall Virgin, with +seemingly closed eyes, a serene and gracious personage. Before this image +of the Virgin Mother kneels a young girl, devoutly no doubt, though with a +certain careless familiarity, with her dark hair down, and on her head the +little transparent piece of lace which the Spanish woman, even the +smallest Spanish girl-child, unlike the free-spirited Frenchwoman, never +fails to adjust as she enters a church. + +I have no sympathy with those who look on the Bible as an outworn book and +the Church as an institution whose symbols are empty of meaning. It is a +good thing that, somewhere amid our social order or disorder, the Mother +whose child has no father save God should be regarded as an object of +worship. It would be as well to maintain the symbol of that worship until +we have really incorporated it into our hearts and are prepared in our +daily life to worship the Mother whose child has no known father save God. +It is not the final stage in family evolution, certainly, but a step in +the right direction. So let us be thankful to the Bible for stating it so +divinely and keeping it before our eyes in such splendid imagery. + +The official guardians of the Bible have always felt it to be a dangerous +book, to be concealed, as the Jews concealed their sacred things in the +ark. When after many centuries they could no longer maintain the policy of +concealing it in a foreign tongue which few could understand, a brilliant +idea occurred to them. They flung the Bible in the vulgar tongue in +millions of copies at the heads of the masses. And they dared them to +understand it! This audacity has been justified by the results. A sublime +faith in Human Imbecility has seldom led those who cherish it astray. + +No wonder they feel so holy a horror of Eugenics! + + +_June_ 22.--I can see, across the narrow side-street, that a room nearly +opposite the windows of my room at the hotel is occupied by tailors, +possibly a family of them--two men, two women, two girls. They seem to be +always at work, from about eight in the morning until late in the evening; +even Sunday seems to make only a little difference, for to-day is Sunday, +and they have been at work until half-past seven. They sit, always in the +same places, round a table, near the large French windows which are +constantly kept open. At the earliest sign of dusk the electric light +suspended over the table shines out. They rarely glance through the +window, though certainly there is little to see, and I am not sure that +they go away for meals; I sometimes see them munching a roll, and the +Catalan water-pot is always at hand to drink from. If it were not that I +know how the Catalan can live by night as well as by day, I should say +that this little group can know nothing whatever of the vast and +variegated Barcelonese world in whose heart they live, that it is nothing +to them that all last night Barcelona was celebrating St. John's Eve (now +becoming a movable festival in the cities) with bonfires and illuminations +and festivities of every kind, or that at the very same moment in this +same city the soldiery were shooting down the people who never cease to +protest against the war in Morocco. They are mostly good-looking, neatly +dressed, cheerful, animated; they talk and gesticulate; they even play, +the men and the girls battering each other for a few moments with any +harmless weapons that come to hand. They are always at work, yet it is +clear that they have not adopted the heresy that man was made for work. + +I am reminded of another workroom I once overlooked in a London suburb +where three men tailors worked from very early till late. But that was a +very different spectacle. They were careworn, sordid, carelessly +half-dressed creatures, and they worked with ferocity, without speaking, +with the monotonous routine of machines at high pressure. They were tragic +in the fury of their absorption in their work. They might have been the +Fates spinning the destinies of the world. + +A marvellous thing how pliant the human animal is to work! Certainly it is +no Gospel of Work that the world needs. It has ever been the great concern +of the lawgivers of mankind, not to ordain work, but, as we see so +interestingly in the Mosaic Codes, to enjoin holidays from work. + + +_June_ 23.--At a little station on the Catalonian-Pyrenean line near Vich +a rather thin, worn-looking young woman alighted from the second-class +carriage next to mine, and was greeted by a stout matronly woman and a +plump young girl with beaming face. These two were clearly mother and +daughter, and I suppose that the careworn new-comer from the city, though +it was less obviously so, was an elder daughter. The two women greeted +each other with scarcely a word, but they stood close together for a few +moments, and slight but visible waves of emotion ran sympathetically down +their bodies. Then the elder woman tenderly placed her arm beneath the +other's, and they walked slowly away, while the radiant girl, on the other +side of the new-comer, lovingly gave a straightening little tug to the +back of her jacket, as though it needed it. + +One sets out for a new expedition into the world always with a concealed +unexpressed hope that one will see something new. But in our little +European world one never sees anything new. There is merely a little +difference in the emotions, a little finer or a little coarser, a little +more open or a little more restrained, a little more or a little less +charm in the expression of them. But they are everywhere just the same +human emotions manifested in substantially the same ways. + +It is not indeed always quite the same outside Europe. It is not the same +in Morocco. I always remember how I never grew tired of watching the Moors +in even the smallest operation of their daily life. For it always seemed +that their actions, their commonest actions, were set to a rhythm which to +a European was new and strange. Therefore it was infinitely fascinating. + +_June_ 24.--St. John's Eve was celebrated here in Ripoll on the correct, +or, as the Catalans call it, the classical, date last night. The little +market-place was full of animation. (The church, I may note, stands in the +middle of the Plaza, and the market is held in the primitive way all round +the church, the market-women's stalls clinging close to its walls.) Here +for hours, and no doubt long after I had gone to bed, the grave, sweet +Catalan girls were dancing with their young men, in couples or in circles, +and later I was awakened by the singing of Catalan songs which reminded me +a little of Cornish carols. The Catalan girls, up in these Pyrenean +heights, are perhaps more often seriously beautiful than in Barcelona, +though here, too, they are well endowed with the substantial, homely, +good-humoured Catalan graces. But here they do their hair straight and low +on the brows on each side and fasten it in knots near the nape of the +neck, so they have an air of distinction which sometimes recalls the +Florentine women of Ghirlandajo's or Botticelli's portraits. The solar +festival of St. John's Eve is perhaps the most ancient in our European +world, but even in this remote corner of it the dances seem to have lost +all recognised connection with the bonfires, which in Barcelona are mostly +left to the children. This dancing is just human, popular dancing to the +accompaniment, sad to tell, of a mechanical piano. Yet even as such it is +attractive, and I lingered around it. For I am English, very English, and +I spend much of my time in London, where dancing in the street is treated +by the police as "disorderly conduct." For only the day before I left a +London magistrate admonished a man and woman placed in the dock before him +for this heinous offence of dancing in the street, which gave so much +pleasure to my Catalan youths and maidens all last night: "This is not a +country in which people can afford to be jovial. You must cultivate a +spirit of melancholy if you want to be safe. Go away and be as sad as you +can." + + +_June_ 25.--Up here on the solitary mountain side, with Ripoll and its +swirling, roaring river and many bridges below me, I realise better the +admirable position of this ancient monastery city, so admirable that even +to-day Ripoll is a flourishing little town. The river has here formed a +flat, though further on it enters a narrow gorge, and the mountains open +out into an amphitheatre. It is, one sees, on a large and magnificent +scale, precisely the site which always commended itself to the monks of +old, and not least to the Benedictines when they chose the country for +their houses instead of the town, and here, indeed, they were at the +outset far away from any great centre of human habitation. Founded, +according to the Chronicles, in the ninth century by Wilfred the Shaggy, +the first independent Count of Barcelona, one suspects that the selection +of the spot was less, an original inspiration of the Shaggy Count's than +put into his head by astute monks, who have modestly refrained from +mentioning their own part in the transaction. In any case they flourished, +and a century later, when Montserrat had been devastated by the Moors, it +was restored and repeopled by monks from Ripoll. In their own house they +were greatly active. There is the huge monastery of which so much still +remains, not a beautiful erection, scarcely even interesting for the most +part, massive, orderly, excessively bare, but with two features which will +ever make it notable; its Romanesque cloisters with the highly variegated +capitals, and the sculptured western portal. This is regarded as one of +the earliest works of sculpture in Spain, and certainly it has some very +primitive, one may even say Iberian, traits, for the large _toro_-like +animals recall Iberian sculpture. Yet it is a great work, largely and +systematically planned, full of imaginative variety; at innumerable points +it anticipates what the later more accomplished Gothic sculptors were to +achieve, and I suspect, indeed, that much of its apparent lack of +executive skill is due to wearing away of the rather soft stone the +sculptors used. In the capitals of the cloisters--certainly much later--a +peculiarly hard stone has been chosen, and, notwithstanding, the precision +and expressive vigour of these artists is clearly shown. But the great +portal, a stupendous work of art, as we still dimly perceive it to be, +wrought nearly a thousand years ago in this sheltered nook of the +Pyrenees, lingers in the memory. Also, like so many other things in the +far Past, its crumbling outlines scatter much ancient dust over what we +vainly call Modern Progress. + + +_June_ 26.--Every supposed improvement in methods of travelling seems to +me to sacrifice more than it gains; it gains speed, but it sacrifices +nearly everything else, even comfort. Yet, I fear, there is a certain +unreality in one's lamentations over the decay of the ancient methods; one +is still borne on the stream. I have long wanted to cross the Pyrenees, +and certainly I should prefer to cross them leisurely, as Thicknesse would +have done (had he not preferred to elude them by the easier and beaten +road), in one's own carriage. But, failing that, surely I ought to have +walked, or, at least, to have travelled by the diligence. Yet I cannot +escape the contagious disease of Modernity, and I choose to be whirled +through the most delicious and restful scenery in the world, at the most +perfect moment of the year, in three hours (including the interval for +lunch) in a motor 'bus, while any stray passengers on the road, as by +common accord, plant themselves on the further side of the nearest big +tree until our fearsome engine of modernity has safely passed. It is an +adventure I scarcely feel proud of. + +Yet even this hurried whirl has not been too swift to leave memories which +will linger long and exquisitely, among far other scenes, even with a +sense of abiding peace. How often shall I recall the exhilaration of this +clear, soft air of the mountains, touched towards the summits by the icy +breath of the snow, these glimpses of swift streams and sudden cascades, +the scent of the pine forests, the intense flame of full-flowered broom, +and perhaps more than all, the trees, as large as almond trees, of richly +blossomed wild roses now fully out, white roses and pink roses, which +abound along these winding roads among the mountains. Where else can there +be such wild rose trees? + + +_June_ 27.--It is, I suppose, more than twenty years since I stopped at +Perpignan for the night, on the eve of first entering Spain, and pushed +open in the twilight the little door of the Cathedral, and knew with +sudden deep satisfaction the beauty and originality of Catalonian +architecture. The city of Perpignan has emerged into vigorous modern life +since then, but the Cathedral remains the same and still calls me with the +same voice. It seems but yesterday that I entered it. And there, at the +same spot, in the second northern bay, the same little lamp is still +twinkling, each faint throb seemingly the last, as in memory it has +twinkled for twenty years. + + +_June_ 28.--Nowhere, it is said, are the offices of the Church more +magnificently presented than in Barcelona. However this may be, I nowhere +feel so much as in Spain that whatever may happen to Christianity it is +essential that the ancient traditions of the Mass should be preserved, and +the churches of Catholicism continue to be the arena of such Sacred Operas +as the Mass, their supreme and classic type. + +I do not assert that it need necessarily be maintained as a Religious +Office. There are serious objections to the attempt at divine officiation +by those who have no conviction of their own Divine Office. There are +surely sufficient persons, even in pessimistic and agnostic Spain, to +carry on the Mass in sincerity for a long time to come. When sincerity +failed, I would hold that the Mass as an act of religion had come to an +end. + +It would remain as Art. As Art, as the embodied summary of a great ancient +tradition, a supreme moment in the spiritual history of the world, the +Mass would retain its vitality as surely as Dante's _Divine Comedy_ +retains its vitality, even though the stage of that Comedy has no more +reality for most modern readers than the stage of Punch and Judy. So it is +here. The Play of the Mass has been wrought through centuries out of the +finest intuitions, the loftiest aspirations, of a long succession of the +most sensitively spiritual men of their time. Its external shell of +superstition may fall away. But when that happens the play will gain +rather than lose. It will become clearly visible as the Divine Drama it +is, the embodied presentation of the Soul's Great Adventure, the symbolic +Initiation of the Individual into the Spiritual Life of the World. + +It is not only for the perpetuation of the traditions of the recognised +Sacred Offices that Churches such as the Spanish churches continue to +constitute the ideal stage. Secular drama arises out of sacred drama, and +at its most superb moments (as we see, earlier than Christianity, in the +_Bacchae_, the final achievement of the mature art of Euripides) it still +remains infused with the old sacred spirit and even the old sacred forms, +for which the Church remains the only fitting background. It might +possibly be so for _Parsifal_. Of all operas since _Parsifal_ that I have +seen, the _Ariane et Barbe Bleue_ of Dukas and Maeterlinck seems to me the +most beautiful, the most exalted in conception, the most finely symbolic, +and surely of all modern operas it is that in which the ideas and the +words, the music, the stage pictures, are wrought with finest artistry +into one harmonious whole. It seems to me that the emotions aroused by +such an Opera as _Ariane_ could only be fittingly +expressed--unecclesiastical as Blue Beard's character may appear--in the +frame of one of these old Catalonian churches. The unique possibilities of +the church for dramatic art constitute one of the reasons why I shudder at +the thought that these wonderful and fascinating buildings may some day be +swept of their beauty and even torn down. + + +_June_ 29.--I have always felt a certain antipathy--unreasonable, no +doubt--to Brittany, and never experienced any impulse to enter it. Now +that I have done so the chances of my route have placed my entry at +Nantes, where the contact of neighbouring provinces may well have modified +the Breton characteristics. Yet they seem to me quite pronounced, and +scarcely affected even by the vigorous and mercantile activity of this +large city. A large and busy city, and yet I feel that I am among a people +who are, ineradically, provincial peasants, men and women of a temper +impervious to civilisation. Here too are those symbols of peasantry, the +white caps of endless shape and fashion which seem to exert such an +attraction on the sentimental English mind. Yet they are not by any means +beautiful. And what terrible faces they enfold--battered, shapeless, +featureless faces that may have been tossed among granite rocks but seem +never to have been moulded by human intercourse. The young girls are often +rather pretty, sometimes coquettish, with occasionally a touch of careless +abandonment which reminds one of England rather than of France. But the +old women--one can scarcely believe that these tragic, narrow-eyed, +narrow-spirited old women are next neighbours to the handsome, jovial old +women of Normandy. And the old men, to an extent that surely is seldom +found, are the exact counterparts of the old women, with just the same +passive, battered, pathetic figures. (I recall the remark of an English +friend who has lived much in Brittany, that these people look as though +they were still living under the Ancient Regime.) I know I shall never +forget the congregation that I saw gathered together in the Cathedral at +High Mass this Sunday morning, largely made up of these poor old decayed +abortions of humanity, all moved by the most intense and absorbed +devotion. + +There is something gay and open about this Cathedral. The whole ritual is +clear to view; there is a lavish display of scarlet in the choir +upholstery; the music is singularly swift and cheerful; the whole tone of +the place is bright and joyous. One cannot but realise how perfectly such +a worship is adapted to such worshippers. Surely an accomplished +ecclesiastical art and insight have been at work here. We seem to see a +people scarcely made for this world, and sunk in ruts of sorrow, below the +level of humanity, where no hope is visible but the sky. And here is their +sky! How can it be but that they should embrace the vision with a fervour +surely unparalleled in Christendom outside Russia. + + +_July_ 4.--Feeble little scraps of reproduction of the Bayeux Tapestry +have been familiar to me since I was a child. Yet until to-day I entered +the room opposite the Cathedral where it has lately been simply but +fittingly housed, I never imagined, and no one had ever told me, how +splendid a work of art it is. Nothing could be more unpretentious, more +domestic in a sense, with almost the air of our grandmothers' samplers, +than this long strip of embroidered canvas, still so fresh in its colours +that it might have been finished, if indeed it is finished, yesterday. It +is technically crude, childishly conventionalised, wrought with an +enforced economy of means. Yet how superbly direct and bold in the +presentation of the narrative, in the realism of the essential details, in +all this marshalling of ships and horses and men, in this tragic +multiplication of death on the battlefield. One feels behind it the fine +and free energy of a creative spirit. It is one of our great European +masterpieces of art, a glory alike for Normans and for English. It is +among the things that once known must live in one's mind to recur to +memory with a thrill of exhilaration. There is in it the spirit of another +great Norman work of art, the _Chanson de Roland_; there is even in it the +spirit of Homer, or the spirit of Flaubert, "the French Homer," as +Gourmont has called him, who lived and worked so few miles away from this +city of Bayeux. + + +_July_ 9.--Now that I have again crossed Normandy, this time from the +south-west, I see the old puzzle of the architectural quality of the +Norman from a new aspect. Certainly the Normans seem to have had a native +impulse to make large, strong, bold buildings. But the aesthetic qualities +of these buildings seem sometimes to me a little doubtful. Surely +Coutances must lie in a thoroughly Norman district; it possesses three +great churches, of which St. Nicolas pleases me most; the Cathedral, even +in its strength and originality, makes no strong appeal to me. I find more +that is attractive in Bayeux Cathedral, which is a stage nearer to the +Seine. And I have asked myself this time whether the architectural +phenomena of Normandy may not be explained precisely by this presence of +the Seine, running right through the middle of it, and of its capital +city, Rouen, which is also its great architectural centre. What is +architecturally of the first quality in Normandy and the neighbouring +provinces seems to me now to lie on the Seine, or within some fifty miles +of its banks. That would include Bayeux and Chartres to the south, as well +as Amiens and Beauvais to the north. So I ask myself whether what we see +in this region may not be the result of the great highway passing through +it. Have we not here, perhaps, action and reaction between the massive +constructional spirit of Normandy and the exquisite inventive aesthetic +spirit of the Ile de France? + + +_July_ 12.--Certainly June, at all events as I have known it this year, is +the ideal month for rambling through Europe. Here along the Norman coast, +indeed, at Avranches and Fecamp, one encounters a damp cloudiness to +remind one that England is almost within sight. Yet during a month in +Spain and in France, in the Pyrenees and in Normandy, it has never been +too hot or too cold, during the whole time I have scarcely so much as seen +rain. Everywhere my journey has been an endless procession of summer +pageantry, of greenery that is always fresh, of flowers that have just +reached their hour of brilliant expansion. "To travel is to die +continually"; and I have had occasion to realise the truth of the saying +during the past few weeks. But I shall not soon forget the joy of this +wild profusion of flowers scattered all along my path, for two thousand +miles--the roses and lilies, the broom and the poppies. + + +_July_ 18.--When one considers that Irony which seems so prevailing a note +of human affairs, if we choose to regard human affairs from the +theological standpoint, it is interesting to remember that the most +pronounced intellectual characteristic of Jesus, whom the instinct of the +populace recognised as the Incarnation of God, was, in the wider sense, a +ferocious Irony. God is Love, said St. John. The popular mind seems to +have had an obscure conviction that God is Irony. And it is in his own +image, let us remember, that Man creates God. + + +_July_ 29.--In his essay on "The Comparative Anatomy of Angels," Fechner, +the father of experimental psychology, argued that angels can have no +legs. For if we go far down in the animal scale we find that centipedes +have God knows how many legs; then come butterflies and beetles with six, +and then mammals with four; then come birds, which resemble angels by +their free movement through space, and man, who by his own account is half +an angel, with only two legs; in the final step to the angelic state of +spherical perfection the remaining pair of legs must finally disappear. +(Indeed, Origen is said to have believed that the Resurrection body would +be spherical.) + +One is reminded of Fechner's playful satire by the spectacle of those +poets who ape angelic modes of progression. The poet who desires to +achieve the music of the spheres may impart to his movement the planetary +impulse if he can suggest to our ears the illusion of the swift rush of +rustling wings, but he must never forget that in reality he still +possesses legs, and that these legs have to be accounted for, and reckoned +in the constitution of metre. Every poet must still move with feet, feet +that must be exquisitely sensitive to the earth's touch, impeccably +skilful to encounter every obstacle on the way with the joyous flashing of +his feet. The most splendidly angelic inspirations will not suffice to +compensate the poet for feet that draggle in the mud, or stumble +higgledy-piggledy among stony words, which his toes should have kissed +into jewels. + +We find this well illustrated in a quite genuine poet whose biography has +just been published. In some poems of Francis Thompson we see that the +poet seeks to fling himself into a planetary course, forgetting, and +hoping to hypnotise his readers into forgetting, that the poet has feet. +He thereby takes his place in the group which Matthew Arnold termed that +of Ineffectual Angels. Arnold, it is true, a pedagogue rather than a +critic, invented this name for Shelley, whom it scarcely fits. For +Shelley, whose feet almost keep pace with his wings, more nearly belongs +to the Effectual Angels. + + +_August_ 3.--In our modern life an immense stress is placed on the value +of Morality. Very little stress is placed on the value of Immorality. I do +not, of course, use the words "Morality" and "Immorality" in any +question-begging way as synonymous of "goodness" and of "badness," but, +technically, as names for two different sorts of socially-determined +impulses. Morality covers those impulses, of a more communal character, +which conform to the standards of action openly accepted at a given time +and place; Immorality stands for those impulses, of a more individual +character, which fail so to conform. Morality is, more concisely, the +_mores_ of the moment; Immorality is the _mores_ of some other moment, it +may be a better, it may be a worse moment. Every nonconformist action is +immoral, but whether it is thereby good, bad, or indifferent remains +another question. Jesus was immoral; so also was Barabbas. + +The more one knows of the real lives of people the more one perceives how +large a part of them is lived in the sphere of Immorality and how vitally +important that part is. It is not the part shown to the world, the +mechanism of its activities remains hidden. Yet those activities are so +intimate and so potent that in a large proportion of cases it is in their +sphere that we must seek the true motive force of the man or woman, who +may be a most excellent person, one who lays, indeed, emphatically and +honestly, the greatest stress on the value of the impulses of Morality. +"The passions are the winds which fill the sails of the vessel," said the +hermit to Zadig, and Spinoza had already said the same thing in other +words. The passions are by their nature Immoralities. To Morality is left +the impulses which guide the rudder, of little value when no winds blow. + +Thus to emphasise the value of Immorality is not to diminish the value of +Morality. They are both alike necessary. ("Everything is dangerous here +below, and everything is necessary.") There should be no call on us to +place the stress on one side at the expense of the other side. When +Carducci, with thoughts directed on the intellectual history of humanity, +wrote his hymn to Satan, it was as the symbol of the revolutionary power +of reason that he sang the triumph of Satan over Jehovah. But no such +triumph of Immorality over Morality can be foreseen or desired. When we +place ourselves at the high biological standpoint we see the vital +necessity of each. It is necessary to place the stress on both. + +If we ask ourselves why at the present moment the sphere of Morality seems +to have acquired, not in actual life, but in popular esteem, an undue +prominence over the sphere of Immorality, we may see various tendencies at +work, and perhaps not uninfluentially the decay of Christianity. For +Religion has always been the foe of Morality, and has always had a sneer +for "mere Morality." Religion stands for the Individual as Morality stands +for Society. Religion is the champion of Grace; it pours contempt on +"Law," the stronghold of Morality, even annuls it. The Pauline and +pseudo-Pauline Epistles are inexhaustible on this theme. The Catholic +Church with its Absolution and its Indulgences could always override +Morality, and Protestantism, for all its hatred of Absolution and of +Indulgences, by the aid of Faith and of Grace easily maintained exactly +the same conquest over Morality. So the decay of Christianity is the fall +of the Sublime Guardian of Immorality. + +One may well ask oneself whether it is not a pressing need of our time to +see to it that these two great and seemingly opposed impulses are +maintained in harmonious balance, by their vital tension to further those +Higher Ends of Life to which Morality and Immorality alike must be held in +due subjection. + + +_August 18_.--How marvellous is the Humility of Man! I find it illustrated +in nothing so much as in his treatment of his Idols and Gods. With a +charming irony the so-called "Second Isaiah" described how the craftsman +deals with mere ordinary wood or stone which he puts to the basest +purposes; "and the residue thereof he maketh a God." One wonders whether +Isaiah ever realised that he himself was the fellow of that craftsman. He +also had moulded his Jehovah out of the residue of his own ordinary +emotions and ideas. But that application of his own irony probably never +occurred to Isaiah, and if it had he was too wise a prophet to mention it. + +Man makes his God and places Him, with nothing to rest on, in a Chaos, and +imposes on Him the task of introducing life and order, everything indeed, +out of His own Divine Brains. To the savage theologian and his more +civilised successors that seems an intelligent theory of the Universe. +They fail to see that they have merely removed an inevitable difficulty a +stage further back. (And we can understand the reply of the irritable +old-world theologian to one who asked what God was doing before the +creation: "He was making rods for the backs of fools.") For the Evolution +of a Creator is no easier a problem than the Evolution of a Cosmos. + +The theologians, with their ineradicable anthropomorphic conceptions, have +never been able to see how stupendous an anachronism they committed +(without even taking the trouble to analyse Time) when they placed God +prior to His Created Universe in the void and formless Nebula. Such a God +would not have been worth the mist He was made of. + +It is only when we place God at the End, not at the Beginning, that the +Universe falls into order. God is an Unutterable Sigh in the Human Heart, +said the old German mystic. And therewith said the last word. + + +_August 21_.--Is not a certain aloofness essential to our vision of the +Heaven of Art? + +As I write I glance up from time to time at the open door of a +schoolhouse, and am aware of a dim harmony of soft, rich, deep colour and +atmosphere framed by the doorway and momentarily falling into a balanced +composition, purified of details by obscurity, the semblance of a +Velasquez. Doors and windows and gateways vouchsafe to us perpetually the +vision of a beauty apparently remote from the sphere of our sorrow, and +the impression of a room as we gaze into it from without through the +window is more beautiful than when we move within it. Every picture, the +creation of the artist's eye and hand, is a vision seen through a window. + +It is the delight of mirrors that they give something of the same +impression as I receive from the schoolhouse doorway. In music-halls, and +restaurants, and other places where large mirrors hang on the walls, we +may constantly be entranced by the lovely and shifting pictures of the +commonplace things which they chance to frame. In the atmosphere of +mirrors there always seems to be a depth and tone which eludes us in the +actual direct vision. Mirrors cut off sections of the commonplace real +world, and hold them aloof from us in a sphere of beauty. From the days of +the Greeks and Etruscans to the days of Henri de Regnier a peculiar +suggestion of aesthetic loveliness has thus always adhered to the mirror. +The most miraculous of pictures created by man, "Las Meninas," resembles +nothing so much as the vision momentarily floated on a mirror. In this +world we see "as in a glass darkly," said St. Paul, and he might have +added that in so seeing we see more and more beautifully than we can ever +hope to see "face to face." + +There is sometimes even more deliciously the same kind of lovely +attraction in the reflection of lakes and canals, and languid rivers and +the pools of fountains. Here reality is mirrored so faintly and +tremulously, so brokenly, so as it seems evanescently, that the simplest +things may be purged and refined into suggestions of exquisite beauty. +Again and again some scene of scarcely more than commonplace charm--seen +from some bridge at Thetford, or by some canal at Delft, some pond in +Moscow--imprints itself on the memory for ever, because one chances to see +it under the accident of fit circumstance reflected in the water. + +Still more mysterious, still more elusive, still more remote are the +glorious visions of the external world which we may catch in a polished +copper bowl, as in crystals and jewels and the human eye. Well might Boehme +among the polished pots of his kitchen receive intimation of the secret +light of the Universe. + +In a certain sense there is more in the tremulously faint and far +reflection of a thing than there is in the thing itself. The dog who +preferred the reflection of his bone in the water to the bone itself, +though from a practical point of view he made a lamentable mistake, was +aesthetically justified. No "orb," as Tennyson said, is a "perfect star" +while we walk therein. Aloofness is essential to the Beatific Vision. If +we entered its portals Heaven would no longer be Heaven. + + +_August_ 23.--I never grow weary of the endless charm of English parish +churches. The more one sees of them the more one realises what fresh, +delightful surprises they hold. Nothing else in England betrays so well +the curious individuality, the fascinating tendency to incipient +eccentricity, which marks the English genius. Certainly there are few +English churches one can place beside some of the more noble and +exquisitely beautiful French churches, such a church, for instance, as +that of Caudebec on the Seine. But one will nowhere find such a series of +variously delightful churches springing out of concretely diversified +minds. + +Here at Maldon I enter the parish church in the centre of the town, and +find that the tower, which appears outside, so far as one is able to view +it, of the normal four-sided shape, is really triangular; and when in the +nave one faces west, this peculiarity imparts an adventurous sense of +novelty to the church, a delicious and mysterious surprise one could not +anticipate, nor even realise, until one had seen. + +Individuality is as common in the world as ever it was, and as precious. +But its accepted manifestations become ever rarer. What architect to-day +would venture to design a triangular-towered church, and what Committee +would accept it? No doubt they would all find excellent reasons against +such a tower. But those reasons existed five hundred years ago. Yet the +men of Maldon built this tower, and it has set for ever the seal of unique +charm upon their church. + +The heel of Modern Man is struck down very firmly on Individuality, and +not in human life only, but also in Nature. Hahn in his summary survey of +the North American fauna and flora comes to the conclusion that their +aspect is becoming ever tamer and more commonplace, because all the +animals and plants that are rare or bizarre or beautiful are being +sedulously destroyed by Man's devastating hand. There is nothing we have +to fight for more strenuously than Individuality. Unless, indeed, since +Man cannot inhabit the earth for ever, the growing dulness of the world +may not be a beneficent adaptation to the final extinction, and the last +man die content, thankful to leave so dreary and monotonous a scene. + + +_August_ 24.--A month ago I was wandering through the superb spiritual +fortress overlying a primeval pagan sanctuary, which was dreamed twelve +centuries ago in the brain of a Bishop of neighbouring Avranches, and +slowly realised by the monastic aspiration, energy, and skill of many +generations to dominate the Bay of St. Michel even now after all the monks +have passed away. And to-day I have been wandering in a very different +scene around the scanty and charming remains of the Abbey of Beeleigh, +along peaceful walks by lovely streams in this most delightful corner of +Essex, which the Premonstratensian Canons once captured, in witness of the +triumph of religion over the world and the right of the religious to enjoy +the best that the world can give. + +The Premonstratensian Canons who followed the mild Augustinian rule +differed from the Benedictines, and it was not in their genius to seize +great rocks and convert them into fortresses. Their attitude was humane, +their rule not excessively ascetic; they allowed men and women to exercise +the religious life side by side in neighbouring houses; they lived in the +country but they were in familiar touch with the world. The White Canons +ruled Maldon, but they lived at Beeleigh. They appear to have been +admirable priests; the official Visitor (for they were free from Episcopal +control) could on one occasion find nothing amiss save that the Canons +wore more luxuriant hair than befitted those who bear the chastening sign +of the tonsure, and their abbots seem to have been exceptionally wise and +prudent. This sweet pastoral scenery, these slow streams with luxuriant +banks and pleasant, sheltered walks, were altogether to their taste. Here +were their fish-ponds and their mills. Here were all the luxuries of +Epicurean austerity. Even in the matter of comfort compare the cramped +dungeons, made for defence, in which the would-be lords of the world +dwelt, with the spacious democratic palaces, or the finely spaced rural +villas, with no need to think of defence, in which men led the religious +life. Compare this abbey even with Castle Hedingham a few miles away, once +the home of the great De Veres, by no means so gloomy as such castles are +wont to be, and I doubt if you would prefer it to live in; as a matter of +fact it has been little used for centuries, while Beeleigh is still a +home. Here in these rich and peaceful gardens, Abbot Epicurus of +Beeleigh--who held in his hands, at convenient arm's length, the +prosperous town of Maldon--could discourse at leisure to his girl +disciples--had there been a house of canonesses here--of the lusts and +passions that dominate the world, repletion, extravagance, disorders, +disease, warfare, and death. In reality Abbot Epicurus had captured all +the best things the world can hold and established them at Beeleigh, +leaving only the dregs. And at the same time, by a supreme master-stroke +of ironic skill, he persuaded those stupid dregs that in spurning them he +had renounced the World! + + +_August_ 27.--Here in the north-west of Suffolk and on into Norfolk there +is a fascinating blank in the map. Much of it was in ancient days fenland, +with, long before the dawn of history, at least one spot which was a great +civilising centre of England, and even maybe of Europe, from the abundance +and the quality of the flints here skilfully worked into implements. Now +it is simply undulating stretches of heathland, at this season freshly +breaking into flower, with many pine trees, and the most invigorating air +one can desire. Not a house sometimes for miles, not a soul maybe in sight +all day long, not (as we know of old by sad experience and are provided +accordingly) a single wayside inn within reach. Only innumerable rabbits +who help to dig out the worked flints one may easily find--broken, +imperfect, for the most part no doubt discarded--and rare solitary herons, +silent and motionless, with long legs and great bills, and unfamiliar +flowers, and gorgeous butterflies. Here, on a bank of heather and thyme, +we spread our simple and delicious meal. + +Do not ask the way to this ancient centre of civilisation, even by its +modern and misleading name, even at the nearest cottage. They cannot tell +you, and have not so much as heard of it. Yet it may be that those +cottagers themselves are of the race of the men who were here once the +pioneers of human civilisation, for until lately the people of this +isolated region were said to be of different physical type and even of +different dress from other people. So it is, as they said of old, that the +glory of the world passes away. + + +_August_ 29.--Whenever, as to-day, I pass through Bury St. Edmunds or +Stowmarket or Sudbury and the neighbourhood, I experience a curious racial +home-feeling. I never saw any of these towns or took much interest in them +till I had reached middle age. Yet whenever I enter this area I realise +that its inhabitants are nearer to me in blood, and doubtless in nervous +and psychic tissue, than the people of any other area. It is true that one +may feel no special affinity to the members of one's own family group +individually. But collectively the affinity cannot fail to be impressive. +I am convinced that if a man were to associate with a group of one hundred +women (I limit the sex merely because it is in relation to the opposite +sex that a man's instinctive and unreasoned sympathies and antipathies are +most definite), this group consisting of fifty women who belonged to his +own ancestral district, and therefore his own blood, and fifty outside +that district, his sympathies would more frequently be evoked by the +members of the first group than the second, however indistinguishably they +were mingled. That harmonises with the fact that homogamy, as it is +called, predominates over heterogamy, that like is attractive to like. +Therefore, after all, the feeling I have acquired concerning this part of +Suffolk may be in part a matter of instinct. + + +_September_ 3.--Why is it that notwithstanding my profound admiration for +Beethoven, and the delight he frequently gives me, I yet feel so +disquieted by that master and so restively hostile to his prevailing +temper? I always seem to have a vague feeling that he is a Satan among +musicians, a fallen angel in the darkness who is perpetually seeking to +fight his way back to happiness, and to enter on the impossible task of +taking the Kingdom of Heaven by violence. + +Consider the exceedingly popular Fifth Symphony. It seems to me to +represent the strenuous efforts of a man who is struggling virtuously with +adversity. It is morality rather than art (I would not say the same of the +Seventh Symphony, or of the Ninth), and the morality of a proud, +self-assertive, rather ill-bred person. I always think of Beethoven as the +man who, walking with Goethe at Weimar and meeting the Ducal Court party, +turned up his coat collar and elbowed his way through the courtiers, who +were all attention to him, while Goethe, scarcely noticed, stood aside +bowing, doubtless with an ironic smile at his heart. The Fifth Symphony is +a musical rendering of that episode. We feel all through it that +self-assertive, self-righteous little man, vigorously thrusting himself +through difficulties to the goal of success, and finely advertising his +progress over obstacles by that ever-restless drum which is the backbone +of the whole symphony. No wonder the Fifth Symphony appeals so much to our +virtuous and pushful middle-class audiences. They seem to feel in it the +glorification of "a nation of shopkeepers" who are the happy possessors of +a "Nonconformist Conscience." + +It is another appeal which is made by Bach and Mozart and Schubert. They +also may be moved by suffering and sorrow. But they are never in vain +rebellion against the Universe. Their sorrow is itself at one with the +Universe, and therefore at one with its joy. Such sorrow gives wings to +the soul, it elevates and enlarges us; we are not jarred and crushed by +violent attacks on a Fortress of Joy which to such attacks must ever be an +unscaleable glacis. The Kingdom of Heaven is not taken by violence, and I +feel that in the world of music many a smaller man is nearer to the +Kingdom of Heaven than this prodigious and lamentable Titan. + + +_September_ 9.--As I sit basking in the sunshine on this familiar little +rocky peninsula in the centre of the bay, still almost surrounded by the +falling tide, I note a youth and a girl crossing the sands below me, where +the gulls calmly rest, to the edge of dry beach. Then she sits down and he +stands or bends tenderly over her. This continues for some time, but the +operation thus deliberately carried out, it ultimately becomes clear, is +simply that of removing her shoes and stockings. At last it is +accomplished, he raises her, swiftly harmonises his costume to hers, and +forthwith conducts her through some shallow water to an island of sand. +The deeper passage to my peninsula still remains to be forded, and the +feat requires some circumspection. In less than half an hour it will be +easy to walk across dry-shod, and time is evidently no object. But so +prosaic a proceeding is disdained by Paul and Virginia. He wades carefully +forward within reach of the rocks, flings boots, white stockings, and +other cumbersome belongings on to the lowest ledge of rock, returns to the +island, and lifts her up, supporting her body with one arm as she clasps +his neck, while with the other he slowly and anxiously feels his way with +his stout stick among the big seaweed-grown stones in the surf. I see them +clearly now, a serious bespectacled youth of some twenty--one years and a +golden--haired girl, some two or three years younger, in a clinging white +dress. The young St. Christopher at last deposits his sacred burden at the +foot of the peninsula, which they climb, to sit down on the rocks, and in +the same deliberate, happy, self-absorbed spirit complete their toilet and +depart. + +I know not what relation of tender intimacy unites them, but when they +have gone their faces remain in my memory. I seem to see them thirty years +hence, that honest, faithful, straightforward face of the youth, +transformed into the rigid image of an eminently-worthy and +wholly-undistinguished citizen, and the radiant, meaningless girl a stout +and careful Mrs. Grundy with a band of children around her. Yet the memory +of to-day will still perhaps be enshrined in their hearts. + + +_September_ 12.--"I study you as I study the Bible," said a wise and +religious old doctor to a patient who had proved a complex and difficult +case. His study was of much benefit to her and probably to himself. + +It is precisely in this spirit that the psychoanalysts, taught by the +genius of Freud, study their patients, devoting an hour a day for weeks or +months or more to the gospel before them, seeking to purge themselves of +all prepossessions, to lie open to the Divine mystery they are +approaching, as the mystic lies open to his Divine mystery, to wait +patiently as every page of the physical and spiritual history is turned +over, to penetrate slowly to the most remote and intimate secrets of +personality, even those that the surface shows no indication of, that have +never been uttered or known--until at last the Illumination comes and the +Meaning is clear. + +How few among the general run of us, medical or lay, have yet learnt to +deal thus reverently with Human Beings! Here are these things, Men, Women, +and Children, infinitely fascinating and curious in every curve and +function of their bodies and souls, with the world set in the heart of +each of them, indeed whole Immortalities and Cosmoses, of which one may +sometimes catch glimpses, with amazement if not indeed with amusement, and +such a holy awe as Dostoeffsky felt when in moments of revelation he saw +by some sudden gleam into the hearts of the criminals around him in +Siberia--and what do we do with them? Tie up their souls in official red +tape and render their bodies anaemic with clothes, distort them in +factories or slay them on battlefields. The doctor is herein the New +Mystic at whose feet all must patiently learn the Revelation of Humanity. +When there is not quite so much Mankind in the world, and what remains is +of better quality, we may perhaps begin to see that a new task lies before +Religion, and that all the patient study which men devoted to the +Revelation that seemed to them held in the Text of the Bible is but a +feeble symbol of the Revelation held in the Text of Men and Women, of whom +all the Bibles that ever were merely contain the excretions. It is indeed +exactly on that account that we cannot study Bibles too devoutly. + +So before each New Person let us ejaculate internally that profound and +memorable saying: "I study you as I study the Bible." + + +_September_ 18.--The approach to the comprehension of any original +personality, in art or in philosophy, is slow but full of fascination. +One's first impulse, I have usually found, is one of tedious indifference, +followed by rejection, probably accompanied with repugnance. In this +sphere the door which opens at a touch may only lead into a hovel. The +portal to a glorious temple may be through a dark and dreary narthex, to +be traversed painfully, it may be on one's knees, a passage only +illuminated in its last stages by exhilarating bursts of light as the door +ahead momentarily swings open. + +When Jules de Gaultier sent me on publication his first book _Le +Bovarysme_, I glanced through it with but a faint interest and threw it +aside. (I had done the same some years before, perhaps as stupidly, who +knows? with the _Matiere et Memoire_ of the rival philosopher who has +since become so magnificently prosperous in the world.) The awkward and +ill-chosen title offended me, as it offends me still, and Gaultier had +then scarcely attained the full personal charm of his grave, subdued, and +reticent style. But another book arrived from the same author, and yet +another, and I began to feel the attraction of this new thinker and to +grasp slowly his daring and elusive conception of the world. Here, one +remarks, is where the stupid people who are slow of understanding have +their compensation in the end. For whereas the brilliant person sees so +much light at his first effort that he is apt to be content with it, the +other is never content, but is always groping after more, perhaps to come +nearer to the Great Light at last. + +For Gaultier the world is a spectacle. We always conceive ourselves other +than we are (that is the famous "Bovarism"), we can never know the world +as it is. The divine creative principle is Error. All the great dramatists +and novelists have unconsciously realised this in the sphere of +literature; Flaubert consciously and supremely realised it. In life also +the same principle holds. Life is a perpetual risk and danger, the +perpetual toss of a die which can never be calculated, a perpetual +challenge to high adventure. But it is only in Art that the solution of +Life's problems can be found. Life is always immoral and unjust. It is Art +alone which, rising above the categories of Morality, justifies the pains +and griefs of Life by demonstrating their representative character and +emphasising their spectacular value, thus redeeming the Pain of Life by +Beauty. + +It is along this path that Jules de Gaultier would lead by the hand those +tender and courageous souls who care to follow him. + + +_September_ 19.--Imbecility is the Enemy, and there are two tragic shapes +of Imbecility which one meets so often, and finds so disheartening, +perhaps not indeed hopeless, not beyond the power even of Training, to say +nothing of Breeding, to better. + +There is that form of Imbecility which shows itself in the inability to +see any person or any thing save in a halo of the debased effluvium which +the imbecile creature himself exudes, and in the firm conviction--that is +where the Imbecility comes in--that the halo pertains not to himself but +to the object he gazes at. Law, necessary as it is, powerfully aids these +manifestations, and the Policeman is the accepted representative of this +form of Imbecility. It is a sad form, not only because it is so common, +and so powerfully supported, but because it effectually destroys the +finest blossoms of human aspiration on the pathway to any more beautiful +life. It is the guardian against us of the Gate of Paradise. If the +inspired genius who wrote the delightful book of _Genesis_ were among us +to-day, instead of two cherubim with flaming swords, he would probably +have placed at the door of his Eden two policemen with truncheons. Nothing +can be lovelier, more true to the spiritual fact, than the account in the +Gospel of the angel Gabriel's visit to the Virgin Mary; it represents the +experience of innumerable women in all ages, and on that account it has +received sanctification for ever. It was an incident described by a saint +who was also a poet. But imagine that incident described by a policeman, +and one shudders. So long as the policeman's special form of Imbecility +triumphs in the world, there will be no Paradise Regained. + +But there is another shape in which Imbecility is revealed, scarcely less +fatal though it is of the reverse kind. It is the Imbecility of those +young things who, themselves radiating innocence and fragrance, +instinctively cast a garment of their own making round every object that +attracts them, however foul, and never see it for what it is, until too +late, and then, with their illusion, their own innocence and fragrance +have also gone. For this kind of Imbecility erects a fortress for the Evil +in the world it could by a glance strike dead. + +In the one case, as in the other, it is Intelligence which is at fault, +the enlightened brain, the calm and discerning eye that can see things for +what they are, neither debasing nor exalting them. The clear-sighted eye +in front of the enlightened brain--there can be no Imbecility then. Only +the Diseases of the Soul which Reason can never cure. + +From these two shapes of Imbecility one would like to see a delivering +Saviour arise. + + +_September_ 24.--The act of bathing in the sea, rightly considered, is a +sacred act, and is so recognised in many parts of the world. It should not +be made as commonplace as a mere hygienic tubbing, nor be carried out by a +crowd of clothed persons in muddy water. No profane unfriendly eye should +be near, the sun must be bright, the air soft, the green transparent sea +should ripple smoothly over the rocks, as I see it below me now, welling +rhythmically into rock-basins and plashing out with a charge of bubbling +air and a delicious murmur of satisfied physiological relief. Enter the +sea in such a manner, on such a day, and the well-tempered water greets +the flesh so lovingly that it opens like a flower with no contraction of +hostile resistance. The discomforting sensation of the salt in the +nostrils becomes a delightful and invigorating fragrance as it blends with +the exhilaration of this experience. So to bathe is more than to bathe. It +is a rite of which the physical delight is a symbol of the spiritual +significance of an act of Communion with Nature, to be stored up with +one's best experiences of Fine Living. + + +_September_ 27.--It is a soft, wet Cornish day, and as I sit in the +garden, sheltered from the rain, there floats back to memory a day, two +months ago at Ripoll, when I wandered in the wonderful and beautiful +cloisters, where every capital is an individual object of fascinating +study, still fresh after so many centuries, and not a footstep ever +disturbed my peace. + +Nothing so well evidences the fine utility of monasticism as the invention +of the cloister. In a sense it was the centre of monastic life, so that +monastery and cloister are almost synonymous terms. No peasant-born monk +of the West, in the carol of his cloister, had occasion to envy the King +of Granada his Court of the Lions. Fresh air, the possibility of movement, +sunshine in winter and shade in summer, the vision of flowers, the +haunting beauty of the well in the centre, and the exhilarating spring of +the arches all around, the _armaria_ of books at hand, and silence--such +things as these are for every man who thinks and writes the essentials of +intellectual living. And every cloister offered them. Literature has smelt +unpleasantly of the lamp since cloisters were no longer built, and men +born for the cloister, the Rousseaus and the Wordsworths and the +Nietzsches, wandered homelessly among the hills, while to-day we seek any +feeble substitute for the cloister wherein to work at leisure in the free +air of Nature, and hear the song of the birds and the plash of the rain at +one's feet. + + +_September_ 30.--When I pass through the little Cornish valley there is +one tree on which my eye always dwells. It is of no greater size than many +other trees in the valley, nor even, it may be to a casual glance, of any +marked peculiarity; one might say, indeed, that in this alien environment, +so far from its home on the other side of the world, it manifests a +certain unfamiliar shyness, or a well-bred condescension to the +conventions of the English floral world. Yet, such as it is, that tree +calls up endless pictures from the recesses of memory, of the beautiful +sun-suffused land where the Eucalyptus in all its wonderful varieties, +vast and insolent and solemn and fantastic, is lord of the floral land, +and the Mimosa, with the bewitching loveliness that aches for ever at +one's heart, is the lady of the land. + +So I walk along the Cornish valley in a dream, and once more kangaroos +bound in slow, great curves down the hills, and gay parrakeets squabble on +the ground, and the soft grey apple-gums slumber in the distance, and the +fragrance of the wattles is wafted in the air. + + +_October_ 2.--If this Cornish day were always and everywhere October, then +October would never be a month to breed melancholy in the heart, and I +could enter into the rapture of De Regnier over this season of the year. +It would, indeed, be pleasant to think of October as a month when, as +to-day, the faint northeasterly wind is mysteriously languorous, and the +sun burns hot even through misty clouds, and the dim sea has all the soft +plash of summer, and from the throats of birds comes now and again a +liquid and idle note which, they themselves seem to feel, has no function +but the delight of mere languid contentment, and the fuchsia tree casts a +pool of crimson blossoms on the ground while yet retaining amid its deep +metallic greenery a rich burden of exotic bells, to last maybe to +Christmas. If this is indeed October as Nature made October, then we might +always approach Winter in the same mood as, if we are wise, we shall +always approach Death. + + +_October_ 6.--The Russian philosopher Schestoff points out that while we +have to be reticent regarding the weaknesses of ordinary men, we can +approach the great with open eyes and need never fear to give their +qualities the right names. "How simply and quietly the Gospel reports that +in one night the Apostle Peter denied his Master thrice! And yet that has +not hindered mankind from building him a magnificent temple in Rome, where +untold millions have reverently kissed the feet of his statue, and even +to-day his representative is counted infallible." + +It is a pregnant observation that we might well bear in mind when we +concern ourselves with the nature and significance of genius. I know +little about St. Peter's claim to genius. But at least he is here an +admirable symbol. That is how genius is made, and, it is interesting to +note, how the popular mind realises that genius is made; for the creators +of the Gospels, who have clearly omitted or softened so much, have yet +emphatically set forth the bald record of the abject moral failure in the +moment of decisive trial of the inappropriately named Rock on which Christ +built His Church. And Peter's reputation and authority remain supreme to +this day. + +James Hinton was wont to dwell on the weakness of genius, as of a point of +least resistance in human nature, an opening through which the force of +Nature might enter the human world. "Where there is nothing there is God," +and it may be that this weakness is no accident but an essential fact in +the very structure of genius. Weakness may be as necessary to the man of +genius as it is unnecessary to the normal man. + +Our biographers of genius are usually futile enough on all grounds, even +in the record of the simplest biological data, as in my own work I have +had sad occasion to experience. But at no point are they so futile as in +toning down, glozing over, or altogether ignoring all those immoralities, +weaknesses, defects, and failures which perhaps are the very Hallmark of +Genius. They all want their Peters to look like real rocks. And on such +rocks no churches are built. + + +_October_ 13.--I wish that people would be a little more cautious in the +use of the word "Perfection." Or else that they would take the trouble to +find out what they mean by it. One grows tired of endless chatter +concerning the march of Progress towards Perfection, and of the assumption +underlying it that Perfection--as usually defined--is a quality which any +one need desire in anything. + +If Perfection is that which is most beautiful and desirable to us, then it +is something of which an essential part is Imperfection. + +That is clearly so in relation to physical beauty. A person who is without +demonstrable defect of beauty--some exaggeration of proportion, some +visible flaw--leaves us cold and indifferent. The flaw or the defect may +need to be of some special kind or quality to touch us individually, but +still it is needed. The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw. As I +write my eye falls on a plate of tomatoes. The tense and smoothly curved +red fruits with their wayward green stalks lie at random on a blue dish of +ancient pattern. They are beautiful. Yet each fruit has conspicuously on +it a fleck of reflected light. Looked at in itself, each fleck is ugly, a +greyish patch which effaces the colour it rests on. Yet the brilliant +beauty of these fruits is largely dependent on those flecks of light. So +it is with some little mole on the body of a beautiful woman, or a +mutinous irregularity in the curve of her mouth, or some freak in the +distribution of her hair. + +There are some people willing to admit that Perfection is a useless +conception in relation to physical beauty, and yet unwilling to believe +that it is equally useless in the moral sphere. Yet in the moral world +also Imperfection is essential to beauty and desire. What we are pleased +to consider Perfection of character is perhaps easier to attain than +Perfection of body. But, not on that account alone, it is equally +unattractive. The woman who seems a combination of unalloyed virtues is as +inadequate as the woman who is a combination of smooth physical +perfections. In the moral world, indeed, the desired Imperfection needs to +be dynamic and shifting rather than static and fixed, because virtues are +contradictory. Modesty and Courage, for instance, do not sort well +together at the same moment. Men have rhapsodied much on the modesty of +woman, but a woman who was always modest would be as insipid as a woman +who was always courageous would be repellent. An incalculable and dynamic +combination of Shyness and Daring is at the core of a woman's fascination. +And the same relationship binds the more masculine combination of Justice +and Generosity. + +Why should we pretend any more that the world is on the road to +Perfection? Or that we want it to be? The world is in perpetual +oscillation. Let us be thankful for every inspiring revelation of a New +Imperfection. + + +_October_ 23.--There has been much discussion over Flaubert's views of the +artist's attitude towards his own work--how far the artist stands outside +his own work, and how far he is himself the stuff of his work--and I see +that Mr. Newbolt has been grappling again with that same problem. Yet +surely it is hardly a problem. Flaubert, we are told, contradicted himself +in those volumes of _Correspondance_ which have seemed to some (indeed +what has Flaubert written that has not seemed to some?) the most +fascinating and profoundly interesting part of his work. The artist must +be impersonal, he insisted, and yet St. Anthony is Flaubert, and he +himself said, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi." He contradicted himself. Well, +what then? "Do I contradict myself?" he might have asked with Whitman. +"Very well, then, I contradict myself." The greatest of literary artists, +we may rest assured, had the clearest vision of the haven for which he was +sailing. But he was bound for a port which few mariners have ever come +near, and he knew that the wind was ever in his teeth. It was only by +taking a course that was a constant series of zigzags, it was only by +perpetually tacking, that he could ever hope to come into harbour. He was +not, therefore, the less acutely aware of his precise course. He was +merely adopting the most strictly scientific method of navigation. The +fluctuating judgments which Flaubert seems to pronounce on the aim of the +artist all represent sound approximations to a complete truth which no +formula will hold. No sailor on this sea ever sailed more triumphantly +into port. That seems to settle the matter. + + +_October_ 24.--At the crowded concert this evening I found a seat at the +back of the orchestra, and when a singer came on to sing the "Agnus Dei" +of Bach's Mass in B Minor I had the full view of her back, her dress, cut +broad and low, fully showing her shoulder-blades. I thus saw that, though +the movements of her arms were slight, yet as she sang the long drawn-out +sighs, rising and falling, of the "Miserere," the subdued loveliness of +the music was accompanied by an unceasing play of the deltoid and +trapezius muscles. It was a perpetual dance of all the visible muscles, in +swelling and sinking curves, opening out and closing in, rising and +falling and swaying, a beautifully expressive rhythm in embodiment of the +melody. + +One sees how it was that the Greeks, for whom the whole body was an +ever-open book, could so train their vision to its vivid music (has not +Taine indeed said something to this effect in his travel notes in Southern +Italy?) that when they came to carve reliefs for their Parthenon, even to +represent the body in seeming repose, they instinctively knew how to show +it sensitive, alive, as in truth it is, redeemed from grossness by the +exquisite delicacy of its mechanism at every point. People think that the +so-called _danse du ventre_ is an unnatural distortion, and in its +customary exaggerations so it is. But it is merely the high-trained and +undue emphasis of beautiful natural expression. Rightly considered, the +whole body is a dance. It is for ever in instinctive harmonious movement, +at every point exalted to unstained beauty, because at every moment it is +the outcome of vital expression that springs from its core and is related +to the meaning of the whole. In our blind folly we have hidden the body. +We have denied its purity. We have ignored its vital significance. We pay +the bitter penalty. And I detect a new meaning in the wail of that +"Miserere." + + +_October_ 29.--I am interested to hear that the latest theorists of +harmony in music are abandoning the notion that they must guide practice, +or that music is good or bad according as it follows, or fails to follow, +theoretical laws. One recalls how Beethoven in his lifetime was condemned +by the theorists, and how almost apologetically he himself referred at the +end to his own deliberate breaking of the rules. But now, it appears, the +musical theorists are beginning to realise that theory must be based on +practice and not practice on theory. The artist takes precedence of the +theorist, who learns his theories from observation of the artist, and when +in his turn he teaches, the artist is apt to prove dangerous. "In matters +of art," says Lenormand in his recent book on harmony, "it is dangerous to +learn to do as others do." + +Now this interests me because it is in this spirit that I have always +contemplated the art of writing. This must be our attitude before the +so-called rules of grammar and syntax. Certainly one cannot be too +familiar with the rules, they cannot even be wisely broken unless they are +known, and we cannot be too familiar with the practice of those who have +gone before us. But the logic of thought takes precedence of the rules of +grammar, and syntax must ever be moulded afresh on the sensibility of the +individual writer. Only in so far as a man writes in this temper--the +resolute temper, as Thoreau said, of a man who is grasping an axe or a +sword--can he achieve the daring and the skill by which writing lives. To +be clear, to be exact, to be expressive, and so to be beautiful--that is +the writer's proper aim. The rules are good so far--but only so far--as +they help him to sail on the voyage towards his desired haven. Let him +sail warily, and if he miscalculates let him suffer shipwreck. + +That is the really inviolable law of all the arts. How long will it be +before we understand that it is also the law of morality, the greatest art +of all, the Art of Living? + + +_November_ 5.--Surely an uncomfortable feeling must overcome many +excellent people when they realise--if that ever happens--the contrast +between their view of the world and that which prevailed in the ages most +apt for great achievement and abounding vitality. In the moral world of +to-day such didactic energy as men possess is concentrated into one long +litany of Thou Shalt Not. + +May it be because the Tradesman has inherited the earth and stocked +Morality on his shelves? That he stocks no line of moral goods to which +the yard-measure cannot be applied? The Saints as well as the Sinners must +go empty away in a social state whose lordship has fallen to Hogarth's +Good Apprentice. + +But that is not how Life is. In the moral world--so far as it is a world +of great achievement--the tape-measure is out of place. It is only the +Immeasurable that counts. And Life is not only Immeasurable but +magnificently inconsistent, even incomprehensible, to those who have not +the clue to its Divine Maze. + +Think of the thirteenth century, the fourteenth, the fifteenth, the +sixteenth, and all that they achieved for humanity, and consider in what +surviving recesses of them you would find a place for the Moralists of the +Counter, who in their eagerness to open up new markets would cut the cloth +of the moral life not merely for themselves--that would matter to +nobody--but for mankind at large. There would have been no room for them +in the monasteries where, on first thought, we might be inclined to hide +them, notwithstanding the exaggerated love of rule which marked the +monastic mind, for that rule was itself based on a magnificent +extravagance, heroic even when it was not natural. There would have been +still less room for them in the churches, where the priests themselves +joined in the revels of the Feast of Fools, and the builders delighted to +honour God by carving on their temples, inside and outside, the images of +wildest licence, as we may still see here and there to-day. And as for the +ages of Humanism and the Renaissance, our moralists would have been +submerged in laughter. Look even at Boccaccio, a very grave scholar, and +see how in his stories of human life he serenely wove all that men thought +belonged to Heaven and all that they thought belonged to Hell into a +single variegated and harmonious picture. + +Since then a strange blindness has struck men in the world we were born +into. There has been a Goethe, no doubt, a Wilhelm von Humboldt, a +Whitman. Men have scarcely noted them. Perhaps the responsibility in part +lies at the door of Protestantism. Unamuno remarks that Catholicism knew +little of that anxious preoccupation with sin, so destructive of heroic +greatness, which has gnawed at the vitals of the Protestantism which we +have inherited, if only in the form of a barren Freethought spreading its +influence far beyond Protestant lands. + +Is this a clue to our Intellectual Anaemia and Spiritual Starvation? + + +_November_ 8.--In a letter of St. Bernard--the ardent theologian, the +relentless fanatic, the austere critic of the world and the flesh--to his +friend Rainald, the Abbot of Foigny, I come with surprised delight on a +quotation from "your favourite"--and it almost seems as though the Saint +had narrowly escaped writing "our favourite"--"your favourite Ovid." So +the Abbot of Foigny, amid the vexations and tribulations he felt so +bitterly, was wont to pore in his cell over the pages of Ovid. + +The pages of Ovid, as one glances across them, are like a gay southern +meadow in June, variegated and brilliant, sweet and pensive and rather +luxuriant, and here and there even a little rank. Yet they are swept by +the air and the light and the rain of Nature, and so their seduction never +grew stale. During sixteen centuries, while the world was spiritually +revolutionised again and yet again, the influence of Ovid never failed; it +entered even the unlikeliest places. Homer might be an obscure forgotten +bard and Virgil become a fantastic magician, but Ovid, lifted beyond the +measure of his genius, was for ever a gracious and exalted Influence, yet +human enough to be beloved and with the pathos of exile clinging to his +memory, filling the dreams of fainting monks at the feet of the Virgin, +arousing the veneration of the Humanists, even inspiring the superb and +exuberant poets of the English Renaissance, Marlowe and Shakespeare and +Milton. + +It has sometimes seemed to me that if it were given to the ghosts of the +Great Dead to follow with sensitive eyes the life after life of their fame +on earth, there would be none, not even the greatest--to whom indeed the +vision could often bring only bitterness,--to find more reasonable ground +for prolonged bliss than Ovid. + + +_November_ 13.--I find myself unable to share that Pessimism in the face +of the world which seems not uncommon to-day. I suspect that the Pessimist +is often merely an impecunious bankrupt Optimist. He had imagined, in +other words, that the eminently respectable March of Progress was bearing +him onwards to the social goal of a glorified Sunday School. Horrible +doubts have seized him. Henceforth, to his eyes, the Universe is shrouded +in Black. + +His mistake has doubtless been to emphasise unduly the notion of Progress, +to imagine that any cosmic advance, if such there be, could ever be made +actual to our human eyes. There was a failure to realise that the +everlasting process of Evolution which had obsessed men's minds is +counterbalanced by an equally everlasting process of Involution. There is +no Gain in the world: so be it: but neither is there any Loss. There is +never any failure to this infinite freshness of life, and the ancient +novelty is for ever renewed. + +We realise the world better if we imagine it, not as a Progress to Prim +Perfection, but as the sustained upleaping of a Fountain, the pillar of a +Glorious Flame. For, after all, we cannot go beyond the ancient image of +Heraclitus, the "Ever-living Flame, kindled in due measure and in the like +measure extinguished." That translucent and mysterious Flame shines +undyingly before our eyes, never for two moments the same, and always +miraculously incalculable, an ever-flowing stream of fire. The world is +moving, men tell us, to this, to that, to the other. Do not believe them! +Men have never known what the world is moving to. Who foresaw--to say +nothing of older and vaster events--the Crucifixion? What Greek or Roman +in his most fantastic moments prefigured our thirteenth century? What +Christian foresaw the Renaissance? Who ever really expected the French +Revolution? We cannot be too bold, for we are ever at the incipient point +of some new manifestation far more overwhelming than all our dreams. No +one can foresee the next aspect of the Fountain of Life. And all the time +the Pillar of that Flame is burning at exactly the same height it has +always been burning at! + +The World is everlasting Novelty, everlasting Monotony. It is just which +aspect you prefer. You will always be right. + + +_November_ 14.--"Life is a great bundle of little things." It is very many +years since I read that saying of Oliver Wendell Holmes, but there is no +saying I oftener have occasion to repeat to myself. There is the whole +universe to dream over, and one's life is spent in the perpetual doing of +an infinite series of little things. It is a hard task, if one loses the +sense of the significance of little things, the little loose variegated +threads which are yet the stuff of which our picture of the universe is +woven. + +I admire the wisdom of our ancestors who seem to have spent so much of +their time in weaving beautiful tapestries to hang on the walls of their +rooms, even though, it seems, they were not always careful that there +should be no rats behind the arras. So to live was to have always before +one the visible symbol of life, where every little variegated tag has a +meaning that goes to the heart of the universe. For each of these +insignificant little things of life stretches far beyond itself--like a +certain Impromptu of Schubert's, which begins as though it might be a +cradle song in a nursery and ends like the music of the starry sphere +which carries the world on its course. + + +_November_ 17.--It has long been a little puzzling to me that my feeling +in regard to the apple and the pear, and their respective symbolisms, is +utterly at variance with tradition and folklore. To the primitive mind the +apple was feminine and the symbol of all feminine things, while the pear +was masculine. To me it is rather the apple that is masculine, while the +pear is extravagantly and deliciously feminine. In its exquisitely +golden-toned skin, which yet is of such firm texture, in the melting +sweetness of its flesh, in its vaguely penetrating fragrance, in its +subtle and ravishing and various curves, even, if you will, in the +tantalising uncertainty as to the state of its heart, the pear is surely a +fruit perfectly endowed with the qualities which fit it to be regarded as +conventionally a feminine symbol. In the apple, on the other hand, I can +see all sorts of qualities which should better befit a masculine symbol. +But it was not so to the primitive mind. + +I see now how the apparent clash has come about. It appears that Albertus +Magnus in the thirteenth century, accepting the ancient and orthodox view +of his time, remarked that the pear is rightly considered masculine +because of the hardness of its wood, the coarseness of its leaves, and the +close texture of its fruit. Evidently our pear has been developed away +from the mediaeval pear, while the apple has remained comparatively +stable. The careful cultivation of the apple began at an early period in +history; an orchard in mediaeval days meant an apple orchard. (One recalls +that, in the fourth century, the pear-tree the youthful St. Augustine +robbed was not in an orchard, and the fruit was "tempting neither for +colour nor taste," though, certainly, he says he had better at home.) The +apple for the men of those days was the sweetest and loveliest of the +larger fruits they knew; it naturally seemed to them the symbol of woman. +Here to-day are some pears of the primitive sort they sell in the Cornish +village street, small round fruits, dark green touched with brown in +colour, without fragrance, extremely hard, though as ripe as they ever +will be. This clearly is what Albertus Magnus meant by a pear, and one can +quite understand that he saw nothing femininely symbolic about it. As soon +as the modern pear began to be developed the popular mind at once seized +on its feminine analogies ("Cuisse-Madame," for instance, is the name of +one variety), and as a matter of fact all the modern associations of the +fruit are feminine. They seem first to be traceable about the sixteenth +century, and it was only then, I imagine, that the pear began to be +seriously cultivated. So the seeming conflict is harmonised. + +The human mind always reasons and analogises correctly from the data +before it. Only because the data have changed, only because the data were +imperfect, can the reasoning seem to be astray. There is really nothing so +primitive, even so animal, as reason. It may plausibly, however unsoundly, +be maintained that it is by his emotions, not by his reason, that man +differs most from the beasts. "My cat," says Unamuno, who takes this view +in his new book _Del sentimiento tragico de la vida_, "never laughs or +cries; he is always reasoning." + + +_November_ 22.--I note that a fine scholar remarks with a smile that the +direct simplicity of the Greeks hardly suits our modern taste for +obscurity. + +Yet there is obscurity and obscurity. There is, that is to say, the +obscurity that is an accidental result of depth and the obscurity that is +a fundamental result of confusion. Swinburne once had occasion to compare +the obscurity of Chapman with the obscurity of Browning. The difference +was, he said, that Chapman's obscurity was that of smoke and Browning's +that of lightning. One may surely add that smoke is often more beautiful +than lightning (Swinburne himself admitted Chapman's "flashes of high and +subtle beauty"), and that lightning is to our eyes by no means more +intelligible than smoke. If indeed one wished to risk such facile +generalisations, one might say that the difference between Chapman's +obscurity and Browning's is that the one is more often beautiful and the +other more often ugly. If one looks into the matter a little more closely, +it would seem that Chapman was a man whose splendid emotions were apt to +flare up so excessively and swiftly that their smoke was not all converted +into flame, while Browning was a man whose radically prim and conventional +ideas, heavily overladen with emotion, acquired the semblance of +profundity because they struggled into expression through the medium of a +congenital stutter--a stutter which was no doubt one of the great assets +of his fame. But neither Chapman's obscurity nor Browning's obscurity +seems to be intrinsically admirable. There was too much pedantry in both +of them and too little artistry. It is the function of genius to express +the Inexpressed, even to express what men have accounted the +Inexpressible. And so far as the function of genius is concerned, that man +merely cumbers the ground who fails to express. For we can all do that. +And whether we do it in modest privacy or in ten thousand published pages +is beside the point. + +Yet, on the other hand, a superlative clearness is not necessarily +admirable. To see truly, according to the fine saying of Renan, is to see +dimly. If art is expression, mere clarity is nothing. The extreme clarity +of an artist may be due not to his marvellous power of illuminating the +abysses of his soul, but merely to the fact that there are no abysses to +illuminate. It is at best but that core of Nothingness which needs to be +enclosed in order to make either Beauty or Depth. The maximum of Clarity +must be consistent with the maximum of Beauty. The impression we receive +on first entering the presence of any supreme work of art is obscurity. +But it is an obscurity like that of a Catalonian Cathedral which slowly +grows luminous as one gazes, until the solid structure beneath is +revealed. The veil of its Depth grows first transparent on the form of Art +before our eyes, and then the veil of its Beauty, and at last there is +only its Clarity. So it comes before us like the Eastern dancer who slowly +unwinds the shimmering veil that floats around her as she dances, and for +one flashing supreme moment of the dance bears no veil at all. But without +the veil there would be no dance. + +Be clear. Be clear. Be not too clear. + + +_November_ 23.--I see that Milton's attitude to the astronomy of his time, +a subject on which Dr. Orchard wrote an elaborate study many years ago, is +once more under discussion. + +There is perhaps some interest in comparing Milton's attitude in this +matter to that of his daring and brilliant contemporary, Cyrano de +Bergerac. In reading the Preface which Lebret wrote somewhere about 1656 +for his friend Cyrano's _Voyage dans la Lune_, written some years earlier, +I note the remark that most astronomers had then adopted the Copernican +system (without offence, as he is careful to add, to the memory of +Ptolemy) and Bergerac had introduced it into literature; it certainly +suited his genius and his purpose. As we know, Milton--who had once met +the blind Galileo and always venerated his memory--viewed Copernican +astronomy with evident sympathy, even in _Paradise Lost_ itself dismissing +the Ptolemaic cosmogony with contempt. Yet it is precisely on the basis of +that discredited cosmogony that the whole structure of _Paradise Lost_ is +built. Hence a source of worry to the modern critic who is disposed to +conclude that Milton chose the worse way in place of the better out of +timidity or deference to the crowd, though Milton's attitude towards +marriage and divorce might alone serve to shield him from any charge of +intellectual cowardice, and the conditions under which _Paradise Lost_ was +written could scarcely invite any appeal to the mob. This seems to me a +perverse attitude which entirely overlooks the essential point of the +case. Milton was an artist. + +If Milton, having abandoned his earlier Arthurian scheme, and chosen in +preference these antique Biblical protagonists, had therewith placed them +on the contemporary cosmogonic stage of the Renaissance he would have +perpetrated, as he must have felt, a hideous incongruity of geocentric and +heliocentric conceptions, and set himself a task which could only work out +absurdly. His stage was as necessary to his drama as Dante's complicated +stage was necessary to his drama. We must not here recall the ancient +observation about "pouring new wine into old bottles." That metaphor is +excellent when we are talking of morals, and it was in the sphere of +morals it was meant to apply. But in the sphere of literary art it is the +reverse of the truth, as the poets of Vers Libres have sometimes found to +their cost. It was probably a very old bottle into which Homer poured his +new wine, and it was certainly a skin of the oldest at hand which +Cervantes chose for his _Quixote_. + +In his attitude towards science Milton thus represents the artist's true +instinct. Science, mere concordance with the latest doctrine of the +moment, is nothing to the artist except in so far as it serves his ends. +It is just as likely to be a hindrance as a help, and Tennyson, however +true an artist, profited nothing by dragging into his verse a few scraps +of the latest astronomy. Art is in its sphere as supreme over fact as +Science in its sphere is supreme over fiction. The artist may play either +fast or loose with Science, and the finest artist will sometimes play +loose. + + +_November 24_.--The more one ponders over that attitude of comprehensive +acceptance towards life, on its spiritual and physical sides alike, which +marked the men of the Mediaeval and Renaissance Ages, the more one +realises that its temporary suppression was inevitable. The men of those +days were, one sees, themselves creating the instrument (what a marvellous +intellectual instrument Scholasticism forged!) which was to analyse and +destroy the civilisation they themselves lived in. Their fluid +civilisation held all the elements of life in active vital solution. They +left hard, definite, clear-cut crystals for us to deal with, separate, +immiscible, inharmonious substances. It was Progress, no doubt, as +Progress exists in our world. The men of those days were nearer to +Barbarism. They were also nearer to the Secret of Nature. Nowadays it is +only among men of genius--a Whitman, a Wagner, a Rodin, a Verlaine--that +the ancient secret has survived. Not indeed that it was universal even +among Renaissance men, not even when they were men of genius. If it is +true that, under the influence of Savonarola, Botticelli burnt his +drawings, he was false to the spirit of his age, touched by the spirit of +Progress before its time. Verlaine was nearer to the great secret when he +wrote _Sagesse_ and, at the same time, _Parallelement_. + +When Lady Lugard was travelling in the Pacific she met a young Polynesian +of high birth who gravely told her, when asked about his proposed career +in life, that he had not yet decided whether to enter the Church or to +join a Circus. He was still sufficiently near to the large and beautiful +life of his forefathers to feel instinctively that there is no +contradiction between an athletic body and an athletic soul, that we may +enter into communion with Nature along the one road or the other road. He +knew that the union of these two avocations--which to our narrow eyes seem +incompatible--was needed to fulfil his ideal of complete and wholesome +human activity. That young Polynesian chief had in him the secret to +regenerate a world which has only a self-complacent smile for his faith. + +It was evidently the great development of the geometrical, mathematical, +and allied sciences in the seventeenth century which completed the +submergence of the Mediaeval and Renaissance attitude towards morals. +There was no room for a biological conception of life in the seventeenth +century, unless it were among the maligned Jesuits. The morbid and +mathematical Pascal claimed to be an authority in morals. The Crystal had +superseded Life. + +So it came about that Logic was introduced as the guide of morals; Logic, +which the Greeks regarded as an exercise for schoolboys; Logic, which in +Flaubert's _Tentation_ is the leader of the chorus of the Seven Deadly +Sins! That surprising touch of Flaubert's seems, indeed, a fine example of +the profound and apparently incalculable insight of genius. Who would have +thought to find in the visions of St. Anthony a clue to the disease of our +modern morality? Yet when the fact is before us there is nothing plainer +than the fatal analytic action of logic on the moral life. It is only when +the white light of life is broken up that the wild extravagance of colour +appears. It is only when the harmonious balance of the moral life is +overturned that the Deadly Sins, which in their due co-ordination are +woven into the whole texture of life, become truly damnable. Life says for +ever: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself." And +to such Morality Logic is fatally subversive. There can be no large and +harmonious and natural Morality when Logic is made to stand where it ought +not. + +Sooner or later the whirligig of time brings its revenges. We return to +the former age, on another plane, purged of its tyranny and of its +cruelty, it may well be, and with all sorts of new imperfections to +console us for the old imperfections we are forced to abandon. + +One more turn of the Earthly Kaleidoscope. Who knows what it may bring? + + +_November_ 25.--In a novel by a distinguished writer, Madame +Delarue-Mardrus, I notice a casual reference to "the English love of +flowers." I am a little surprised to find this stated as a specifically +English characteristic. It seems more obvious to regard the love of +animals as peculiarly English, as it is regarded by the Freudian +physician, Maeder, who believes that the love of animals is the +lightning-rod along which the dangerously repressed emotions of the +English are conducted to earth through harmless channels. It is in Spain +that flowers seem to me more tenderly regarded by the people than +anywhere, the cherished companions of daily life, carefully cultivated on +every poorest balcony. Certainly in Paris one sees very conspicuously the +absence of the love of flowers; or, rather, one may say that for the +subtle and inventive children of the Ile de France the flower is +artificial, and what we call flowers are merely an insipid and subordinate +variety, "natural flowers," having their market in a remote and deserted +corner of the city, whereas in Barcelona the busiest and central part of +the city is the Rambla de las Flores. + +The factors involved may well be two, one climatic, one racial: a climate +favourable or unfavourable to horticulture and a popular feeling attracted +or repelled by Nature. Both these factors may work in the same direction +in the Parisian love of artificial flowers and the Catalan love of natural +flowers, while in the parched land of Andalusia one factor alone seems to +keep alive the adoration of flowers. Lucie Delarue-Mardrus belongs to +Normandy, and perhaps the Norman traditions have been a little modified by +the dominant influence of the neighbouring Ile de France. Along this mild +and luxuriant Atlantic seaboard of France, so favourable to flowers, from +the Pyrenees northwards, there seems to me no intrinsic defect in the love +of flowers, which are everywhere cultivated and familiarly regarded. I +have noted, for instance, how constantly the hydrangea plant appears. In +churches for weddings in profusion, in Bordeaux, for example, and in +rooms, on the tables, again and again I have noted the fine taste which +selected for special reverence the hydrangea--that Chinese flower whose +penetrating loveliness is miraculously made out of forms so simple and +colour so effaced. + + +_November_ 26.--Kraepelin, one of the wisest and most far-sighted +physicians of to-day where the interpretation of insanity is concerned, +believes that Civilisation is just now favouring Degeneration. He +attributes an especially evil influence on mental health to our modern +tendency to limit freedom: the piling-up of burdens of all sorts, within +and without, on the exercise of the will. + +This well accords with what I have noted concerning the necessity in any +age of creating New Freedoms and New Restraints. New Restraints by all +means, they are necessary and vital. But just as necessary, just as vital, +are the compensatory New Freedoms. + +We cannot count too precious in any age those who sweep away outworn +traditions, effete routines, the burden of unnecessary duties and +superfluous luxuries and useless moralities, too heavy to be borne. We +rebel against these rebels, even shudder at their sacrilegious daring. +But, after all, they are a part of life, an absolutely necessary part of +it. For life is a breaking-down as well as a building-up. Destruction as +well as construction goes to the Metabolism of Society. + + +_November_ 27.--It seems to me a weakness of the Peace Propaganda of our +time--though a weakness which represents an inevitable reaction from an +ancient superstition--that it tends to be under the dominance of Namby +Pamby. The people who crowd Peace Congresses to demonstrate against war +seem largely people who have little perception of the eternal function of +Pain in the world and no insight into the right uses of Death. + +Apart from the intolerable burden of armaments it imposes, and the +flagrant disregard of Justice it involves, the crushing objection to War, +from the standpoint of Humanity and Society, is not that it distributes +Pain and inflicts Death, but that it distributes and inflicts them on an +absurdly wholesale scale and on the wrong people. So that it is awry to +all the ends of reasonable civilisation. Occasionally, no doubt, it may +kill off the people who ought to be killed, but that is only by accident, +for by its very organisation it is more likely to kill the people who +ought not to be killed. Occasionally and incidentally, also, it may +promote Heroism, but its heroes merely exterminate each other for the +benefit of people who are not heroes. In the recent Balkan wars we see +that the combatant States all diligently and ferociously maimed each +other, very little to their own advantage and very much to the +aggrandisement of the one State within their borders which never fired a +gun and never lost a man. If Peace Societies possessed a little +intelligence they would surely issue a faithful history of this war for +free distribution among all the modern States of the world. That is what +War is. + +Explorers in Southern Nigeria, I see, have just reported the discovery of +remote Sacred Places consecrated to native worship. Here were found the +Lake of Life and the Pool of Death. Here, also, from time to time human +sacrifices are offered. This ritual the worthy explorers self-complacently +describe as "blood-thirsty." + +But how about us? The men of Southern Nigeria, seriously, deliberately, +with a more or less unconscious insight into the secrets of Nature, offer +up human sacrifices on their altars, and when some ignorant European +intrudes and calls them "blood-thirsty" we all meekly acquiesce. In Europe +we kill and maim people by the hundred thousand, not seriously and +deliberately for any sacred ends that make Life more precious to us or the +Mystery of Nature more intelligible, but out of sheer stupidity. We spend +the half, and sometimes more than the half, of our national incomes in +sharpening to the finest point our implements of bloodshed, not to the +accompaniment of any Bacchic Evoe, but incongruously mumbling the Sermon +on the Mount. We put our population into factories which squeeze the blood +out of their anaemic and diseased bodies, and we permit the most +extravagant variations in the infantile death-rate which the slightest +social readjustment would smooth out. We do all this consciously, in full +statistical knowledge to a decimal fraction. + +Therein is our blood-thirstiness, beside which that of the Southern +Nigerian savage is negligible, if not estimable, and this European +blood-thirstiness it is which threatens to lead to an extravagant reaction +to the opposite extreme, as it has already led to an ignoble reaction in +our ideals. + +For there can be no ideal conception of Life and no true conception of +Nature if we seek to shut out Death and Pain. It is the feeble shrinking +from Death and the flabby horror of Pain that mark the final stage of +decay in any civilisation. Our ancestors, too, offered up human sacrifices +on their altars, and none can say how much of their virility and how much +of the promise of the future they held in their grasp were bound up with +the fact. Different days bring different duties. And we cannot desire to +restore the centuries that are gone. But neither can we afford to dispense +with the radical verities of Life and Nature which they recognised. If we +do we are felling the tree up which we somehow hope to climb to the +clouds. + +It is essential to the human dignity of a truly civilised society that it +should hold in its hands not only the Key of Birth but the Key of Death. + + +_November_ 29.--The vast and complex machines to which our civilisation +devotes its best energy are no doubt worthy of all admiration. Yet when +one seeks to look broadly at human activity they only seem to be part of +the scaffolding and material. They are not the Life itself. + +To whatever sphere of human activity one turns one's attention to-day, one +is constantly met by the same depressing spectacle of pale, lean, nervous, +dyspeptic human creatures, restlessly engaged in building up marvellously +complex machines and elaborate social organisations, all of which, they +tell us, will make for the improvement of Life. But what do they suppose +"Life" to be? + +A giant's task demands a giant. When one watches this puny modern +civilised Man engaged on tasks which do so much credit to his imagination +and invention, one is reminded of the little boy who was employed to fill +a large modern vat. He nearly completed the task. One day he disappeared. +They found him at last with only his feet visible above the rim of the +vat. + + +_December_ 1.--I so frequently notice among Moral Reformers--for the most +part highly well-intentioned people--a frantic and unbridled desire to +eliminate from our social world any form of "Temptation." (One wonders how +far this attitude may have been fostered by that petition of the Lord's +Prayer, "Lead us not into Temptation," which, on the face of it, seems to +support Nietzsche's extravagant reaction against Christianity. Yet surely +the Church has misunderstood that petition. Jesus himself faced the +Tempter, and it is evident that he could not have so lacked insight into +the soul's secrets as to countenance the impossible notion of eliminating +Temptation from the world. It was the power to meet the Tempter and yet +not be led into Temptation--if this petition may be regarded as +authentic--that he desired his followers to possess; and therein he was on +the same side as Nietzsche.) No scheme is too extravagantly impossible to +invoke in this cause. No absurdity but we are asked to contemplate it with +a seriously long face if it is sanctified by the aim of eliminating some +temptation from the earth. Of any recognition of Temptation as the Divine +method of burning Up the moral chaff of the world, not a sign! + +The fact is that we cannot have too much Temptation in the world. Without +contact with Temptation Virtue is worthless, and even a meaningless term. +Temptation is an essential form of that Conflict which is of the essence +of Life. Without the fire of perpetual Temptation no human spirit can ever +be tempered and fortified. The zeal of the Moral Reformers who would sweep +away all Temptation and place every young creature from the outset in a +Temptation-free vacuum, even if it could be achieved (and the achievement +would not only annihilate the whole environment but eviscerate the human +heart of its vital passions) would merely result in the creation of a race +of useless weaklings. For Temptation is even more than a stimulus to +conflict. It is itself, in so far as it is related to Passion, the ferment +of Life. To face and reject Temptation may be to fortify life. To face and +accept Temptation may be to enrich life. He who can do neither is not fit +to live. + +He can indeed be sent to the Home for Defectives. That way lies perhaps +the solution of our Social Problem. The pessimist may cry out at the size +of the Homes that his fears portend. Yet, even at the worst, who will deny +that it is better, beyond comparison better, that even only a minority of +Mankind should be free--free to develop in the sun and free to climb to +the sky and free to be damned--than that the whole world should be made +one vast Home for Moral Imbeciles? + + +_December_ 4.--There is nothing amid the restlessness of the world that +one lingers over with such tender delight as Flowers and Gods. What can be +more beautiful than Flowers and Gods? + +Flowers are of all things most completely and profusely the obvious +efflorescence of loveliness in the whole physical world. Gods are of all +things the most marvellous efflorescence of the human psychic world. These +two Lovelinesses, the Loveliness of Sex and the Loveliness of Creation, +bring the whole universe to two polar points, which yet are in the closest +degree resemblant and allied. In China, the land of flowers, flowers are +nowhere, it is said, so devoutly cultivated as in the monasteries of +Buddha. For flowers are constant symbols of the Gods and instruments of +worship, and when the Gods take fitting shape it is a shape that recalls +to us a flower. Of all Gods made visible none is so divine as Buddha +(one's thoughts constantly return to the most delectable of museums, the +Musee Guimet), and the Buddha of finest imagery is like nothing so much as +a vast and serene flower, a great lotus that rises erect on the bosom of +Humanity's troubled lake. + +And perhaps it is because men and women are in function flowers and in +image gods that they are so fascinating, even enwrapped in the rags, +physical and metaphysical, which sometimes serve but to express more +genuinely the Flower-God beneath. + + +_December_ 11.--_Quid hoc ad aeternitatem?_ So, we are told, an ancient +holy man of the early Christian world was wont to question everything that +was brought before him. It is a question that we cannot too often ask +to-day. I assume that we understand "Eternity" in its essential Christian +sense (on which F. D. Maurice used to insist) as referring not to the +Future, but to the Everlasting Present, not to Time but to the Things that +Matter. + +There are not only far too many people in the world, there are far too +many things. Prodigality is indeed the note of Nature. And rightly so. But +Economy is the note of Man. Rightly also. For Nature has infinite lives to +play with. Man has only one life. + +Public Hygiene is nowadays much concerned with the edification of large +and effective Destructors of Refuse. It is well. They can scarcely be too +large or too effective. Large enough to deal with all the Dreadnoughts of +the world and most of its books. And so much else! Let us imitate the +Rich, if that seems well, in the quality of our possessions. But in their +number let us imitate the Poorest. So in our different human way we may +reach towards the Simplicity of Nature. + +And let us never grow weary of repeating afresh the stern challenge of +that old champion of the Higher Sabotage: _Quid hoc ad aeternitatem?_ + + +_December_ 15.--"There has always been the same amount of light in the +world," said Thoreau. One sometimes doubts it. Perhaps one fails to +recognise the "bushels" it is hidden under. One need not fear that it is +becoming less. One must not hope that it will become more. + +I wonder whether Mazzini, could he revisit the Italy which reveres his +memory, would really find more light there than of old? There was the +Italy that Stendhal loved, the Italy that produced Mazzini, who went out +into the world as its most inspired prophet and sought so earnestly to +regenerate it. And here is the duly regenerated Italy which has gone after +what it considers glory in Tripoli and systematically starved its own +children, and sent its inspired prophet Marinetti into the world, as it +once sent Mazzini. The un-regenerate Italy which produced Mazzini or the +regenerated Italy which produced Marinetti--which is it, I wonder, that +most tries our faith in Thoreau's creed, "There has always been the same +amount of light in the world"? + + +_December_ 28.--Levy-Bruhl, a penetrating and suggestive moralist, has +written a book, _Les Fonctiones mentales dans les societes inferieures_, +in which he seeks to distinguish between a primitive pre-logical +rationality, not subject to the law of contradiction, and a later logical +rationality, which refuses to admit contradictions. He points out how much +wider and more fruitful is the earlier attitude. + +There seems something in this distinction. But it may well be dangerous to +formulate it too precisely. No hard and clear-cut distinctions can here be +made. The logical method can scarcely supersede the pre-logical method, +for it covers less ground and is more exclusive, it can never be the +universal legatee of the pre-logical method. We are probably concerned +with two tendencies which may exist contemporaneously, and each have its +value. It may even be said that the pre-logical and the logical +temperaments represent two types of people, found everywhere even to-day. +Some observers, like Heymans in his thoughtful book on the psychology of +women, have noted how women seem often to combine contradictory impulses +on an organic basis, but they have not always observed that that gift may +be as inestimable as it is dangerous. + +In this connection it is interesting to recall that Harnack, the great +historian of Christian dogma, while asserting that Athanasius in combating +Arianism saved Christianity, yet asserts with equal emphasis that the +doctrine of Athanasius embodied a mass of contradictions which multiply as +we advance. He might have added that that was why it was vital. Life, even +in the plant, is a tension of opposing forces. Whatever is vital is +contradictory, and if of two views we wish to find out which is the +richest and the most fruitful we ought perhaps to ask ourselves which +embodies the most contradictions. + + +_December_ 31.--"The heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll, and all +their host shall fade away, as a leaf fadeth off the vine, and as a fading +leaf from the fig-tree." So the world seemed made to Isaiah, and that +light airy way of accepting it may linger in one's mind all the more +persistently because of its contrast with the heavy solemnity of the +Hebraic genius. So it is with all these men of creative genius, whatever +nation they belong to. Wherever Man flowers into Genius, wherever, that is +to say, he becomes most quintessentially Man, he can never take the world +seriously. He vaguely realises that it is merely his own handiwork, his +own creation out of chaos, and that he himself transcends it. So for the +physicist of genius the universe is made up of holes, and for the poet of +genius it is a dream, and even for the greatest of these solemn Hebraic +prophets it is merely a leaf, a fading leaf from the fig-tree. + + +_Qualis artifex pereo!_ It may well be the last exclamation of the last +Son of Man on the uninhabitable Earth. + + + +INDEX + +Addison +Aesthetics +Aigremont +Albert Hall, the +Albertus Magnus +Andersen, Hendrik +Angels and poets +Animals and Man +Anti-Militarism +Apple, symbolism of the +Architecture, Norman and Burgundian; + Spanish; + English +Aristotle +Arnold, Matthew +Art +Artists as writers +Augustine, St. +Australia + +Bacon +Bailey, P. H. +Barcelona +Barker, Granville +Bathing +Baudelaire +Bayeux tapestry + +Beauty, in women; and love; + the strangeness of proportion in; + in Nature and Man; + and Nothingness; + and imperfection; + in style +Beauvais +Beethoven +Bergerac, Cyrano de +Bernard, St. +Bianca Stella +Bible, the +Birnbaum +Birth-rate, decline in +Blake +Boccaccio +Body, significance of the +Boehme +Bovarism +Brantome +Bretons +Browning, R. +Bryan, W.J. +Buddha +Burgundy +Burton, Sir R. +Busoni +Byng, Admiral + +Caen +Canterbury, Archbishops of +Carducci +Carus, P. +Castle Hedingham +Catalans +Catullus +Chidley +Chivalry +Chopin +Christianity +Churches, English +City, the World +Civilisation +Clarity in style +Clergyman, the Anglican +_Cliche_, the +Cloister, the +Coleridge +Conductors, English musical, +Cornwall, +Counters, +Coutance, +Cowley, +Crowd, psychology of the, +Curzon, Lord, + +Dancing, +Dante, +Darling, Justice, +Daumier, +Death, +Delarue-Mardrus, Lucie, +Denyn, J., +Deslys, Gaby, +Devil, fate of the, +Dickinson, +Dijon, +Dives, +Drake, +Drama, +Dukas, + +Eccles, Solomon, +Elgar, +Elizabeth, Queen, +Ellis, Henry, +England, +English, women, + temperament, + sailor, + literature, + excessiveness, + type, + churches, + love of flowers, +Eskimo, +Eternity, +Eucalyptus, +Eugenics, +Euripides, +Evolution, +Exfodiation, + +Fecamp, +Fechner, +Feminism, +Flagellation, +Flaubert, +Flowers, +Fountains, +Franck, Cesar, +Freedom, +French spirit, +Freud, +Furniture, + +Gardens, +Gaultier, Jules de, +Genius, +Gibbon, +God, +Goethe, +Goncourt, +Gourmont, Remy de, +Greek language, + +Hahn, +Hair, +Hall, Stanley, +Harnack, +Heaven, +Hell, +Herrick, Robert, +Hinton, James, +Hobbes, +Hostility, the vanity of, +Humboldt, Wilhelm von, +Hydrangea, + +Imbecility, +Immorality, +Individuality, +Irony, +Isaiah, +Italy, + +Jacobean furniture, +Janson, G., +Jesus, +Johnson, + +Kapo, +Kraepelin, + +Lamb, C., +Landor, +Latin, +Lenormand, +Levy-Bruhl, +Life, +Lind-Af-Hageby, Miss, +Linnaeus, +Logic in morals, +London +Lucretius +Luther + +Macaulay +Maeterlinck +Malaterra, Geoffrey +Maldon +Malines +Man +Marinetti +Mass, the +Mazzini +Mediaevalism +Mendelssohn +Meredith, George +Metaphor +Michelangelo +Midsummer Eve +Milton +Mimosa +Mirrors +Mob, the +Moliere +Monks, as epicures +Montserrat +Mont St. Michel +Morality +Morocco +Music + +Nakedness +Nantes +Nature +Newbolt, H. +Nietzsche +Nigeria, religious rites of +Nikisch +Norman, genius + women + character + architecture +Normandy +Novels + +Obscene, the +Obscurity in style +October +Ogive, the +Olives +Ovid + +Pachmann +Pain +Palencia +Pantheon, the +Paris +Pascal +Pater +Paulhan +Peace Propaganda +Pear, symbolism of the +Perfection +Perpignan +Perugino +Peter, St. +Pliny, the Elder +Poets, as critics + as angels +Poincare, II. +Progress +Protestantism + +Rabelais +Raleigh, Sir W. +Raphael +Regnier, H. de +Religion +Restraint +Ripoll +_Rire, Le_ +Rocamadour +Rodin +Romanesque architecture +Roses, wild +Rossetti +Rouen +Rowlandson +Rubens + +Sabotage + the Higher +Sailor, the English +Salamanca +Schestoff +Schopenhauer +Sea, the +Shakespeare +Shelley +Smoke problem +Socrates +Solitude +Spain +Stead, W. T. +Steele +Stevenson, R. L. +Strassburg Cathedral +Stratz +Strindberg +Style +Suffolk +Suffragette, the +Sun, the +Swinburne +Symons, Arthur + +Technique +Temperance movement +Temptation, value of +Tennyson +Theatre, the +Thicknesse, Philip +Thompson, Francis +Thomson, Sir J. J. +Thoreau +Travelling +Truslow +Tulips + +Unamuno, M. de +United States + +Vaihinger +Vegetarianism +Velasquez +Verlaine +Vich +Vinci, Leonardo da +Virgin Mother, the +Vivisection +Voltaire + +Wallflowers +War +Warner, C. D. +Whitman, Walt +Women, and social service; + in university towns; + of Normandy; + of Burgundy; + of England; + of France; + psychology of; + and beauty; + as affected by civilisation; + beauty of; + and the pear +Wood, Sir Henry +Wordsworth +Work, the Gospel of + + +_Yellow Jacket, The_ + +THE END + +_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Impressions And Comments, by Havelock Ellis + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS *** + +***** This file should be named 8125.txt or 8125.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/1/2/8125/ + +Produced by S.R. Ellison, Eric Eldred and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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