"'Tis we that, lost in stormy visions, keepWith phantoms an unprofitable strife,And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knifeInvulnerable nothings."
"'Tis we that, lost in stormy visions, keepWith phantoms an unprofitable strife,And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knifeInvulnerable nothings."
When we die, we awake into Reality—that Reality to which, from the beginning, Shelley was consecrated:
"I vowed that I would dedicate my powersTo thee and thine—have I not kept my vow?"
"I vowed that I would dedicate my powersTo thee and thine—have I not kept my vow?"
He calls it "intellectual Beauty"; he impersonates it as Asia, and sings it in verse that passes beyond sense into music:
"Life of Life! thy lips enkindleWith their love the breath between them;And thy smiles before they dwindleMake the cold air fire; then screen themIn those looks, where whoso gazesFaints, entangled in their mazes.Child of Light! thy limbs are burningThrough the vest which seems to hide them;As the radiant lines of morningThrough the clouds ere they divide them;And this atmosphere divinestShrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.Fair are others; none beholds thee,But thy voice sounds low and tenderLike the fairest, for it folds theeFrom the sight, that liquid splendour,And all feel, yet see thee never,As I feel now, lost for ever!Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movestIts dim shapes are clad with brightness,[183]And the souls of whom thou lovestWalk upon the winds with lightness,Till they fail, as I am failing,Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!"
"Life of Life! thy lips enkindleWith their love the breath between them;And thy smiles before they dwindleMake the cold air fire; then screen themIn those looks, where whoso gazesFaints, entangled in their mazes.
Child of Light! thy limbs are burningThrough the vest which seems to hide them;As the radiant lines of morningThrough the clouds ere they divide them;And this atmosphere divinestShrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.
Fair are others; none beholds thee,But thy voice sounds low and tenderLike the fairest, for it folds theeFrom the sight, that liquid splendour,And all feel, yet see thee never,As I feel now, lost for ever!
Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movestIts dim shapes are clad with brightness,[183]And the souls of whom thou lovestWalk upon the winds with lightness,Till they fail, as I am failing,Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!"
This we call poetry; and we call the Iliad poetry. But the likeness is superficial, and the difference profound. Was it Homer or Shelley that grasped Reality? This is not a question of literary excellence; it is a question of the sense of life. And—oddly enough—it is a question to which the intellect has no answer. The life in each of us takes hold of it and answers it empirically. The normal man is Homeric, though he is not aware of the fact. Especially is the American Homeric; naïf, spontaneous, at home with fact, implicitly denying the Beyond. Is he right? This whole continent, the prairies, the mountains and the coast, the trams and trolleys, the sky-scrapers, the factories, elevators, automobiles, shout to that question one long deafening Yes. But there is another country that speaks a different tongue. Before America was, India is.
In the house in which I am staying hangs an old coloured print, representing two couples, one young and lusty, the other decrepit, the woman carrying an hour-glass, the man leaning on a stick; and underneath, the following inscription:
"My father and mother that go so stuping to your grave,Pray tell me what good I may in this world expect to have?""My son, the good you can expect is all forlorn,Men doe not gather grapes from of a thorn."
"My father and mother that go so stuping to your grave,Pray tell me what good I may in this world expect to have?"
"My son, the good you can expect is all forlorn,Men doe not gather grapes from of a thorn."
This dialogue, I sometimes think, symbolises the attitude of the new world to the old, and the old to the new. Not seldom I feel among Americans as the Egyptian is said to have felt among the Greeks, that I am moving in a world of precocious and inexperienced children, bearing on my own shoulders the weight of the centuries. Yet it is not exactly that Americans strike one as young in spirit; rather they strike one as undeveloped. It is as though they had never faced life and asked themselves what it is; as though theywere so occupied in running that it has never occurred to them to inquire where they started and whither they are going. They seem to be always doing and never experiencing. A dimension of life, one would say, is lacking, and they live in a plane instead of in a solid. That missing dimension I shall call religion. Not that Americans do not, for aught I know, "believe" as much as or more than Europeans; but they appear neither to believe nor to disbelieve religiously. That, I admit, is true almost everywhere of the mass of the people. But even in Europe—and far more in India—there has always been, and still is, a minority who open windows to the stars; and through these windows, in passing, the plain man sometimes looks. The impression America makes on me is that the windows are blocked up. It has become incredible that this continent was colonised by the Pilgrim Fathers. That intense, narrow, unlovely but genuine spiritual life has been transformed into industrial energy; and this energy, in its new form, the churches, oddly enough, are endeavouring to recapture and use to drive their machines. Religion is becoming a department of practical business. The Churches—orthodox and unorthodox, old and new, Christian, Christian-Scientific, theosophic, higher-thinking—vie with one another in advertising goods which are all material benefits: "Follow me, and you will get rich," "Follow me, and you will get well," "Follow me, and you will be cheerful, prosperous,successful." Religion in America is nothing if not practical. It does not concern itself with a life beyond; it gives you here and now what you want. "Whatdoyou want? Money? Come along!—Success? This is the shop!—Health? Here you are! Better than patent medicines!" The only part of the Gospels one would suppose that interests the modern American is the miracles; for the miracles really diddosomething. As for the Sermon on the Mount—well, no Westerner ever took that seriously.
This conversion of religion into business is interesting enough. But even more striking is what looks like a conversion of business into religion. Business is so serious that it sometimes assumes the shrill tone of a revivalist propaganda. There has recently been brought to my attention a circular addressed to the agents of an insurance society, urging them to rally round the firm, with a special effort, in what I can only call a "mission-month." I quote—with apologies to the unknown author—part of this production:
The Call to Action."How about these beautiful spring days for hustling? Everything is on the move. New life and force is apparent everywhere. The man who can stand still when all creation is on the move is literally and hopelessly a dead one."These are ideal days for the insurance field-man.[187]Weather like this has a tremendously favourable effect on business. In the city and small town alike there is a genuine revival of business. The farmer, the merchant, the manufacturer, are beginning to work overtime. Spring is in the footstep of the ambitious man as well as in the onward march of nature. This is the day of growth, expansion, creation, and re-creation."Consciously or unconsciously every one responds to the glad call to new life and vigour. Men who are cold and selfish, who are literally frozen up the winter through, yield to the warm, invigorating, energising touch of spring."Gentlemen of the field force, now is the psychological moment to force your prospects to action as indicated by the dotted line. As in nature, some plants and trees are harder to force than others, so in the nature of human prospects, some are more difficult than others. Sunshine and rain will produce results in the field of life-underwriting."Will it not be possible for you during these five remaining days not only to increase the production from regular sources, but to go out into the highways and hedges and compel others to sign their applications, if for only a small amount?"Everything is now in full swing, and we are going to close up the month"IN A BLAZE OF GLORY."
The Call to Action.
"How about these beautiful spring days for hustling? Everything is on the move. New life and force is apparent everywhere. The man who can stand still when all creation is on the move is literally and hopelessly a dead one.
"These are ideal days for the insurance field-man.[187]Weather like this has a tremendously favourable effect on business. In the city and small town alike there is a genuine revival of business. The farmer, the merchant, the manufacturer, are beginning to work overtime. Spring is in the footstep of the ambitious man as well as in the onward march of nature. This is the day of growth, expansion, creation, and re-creation.
"Consciously or unconsciously every one responds to the glad call to new life and vigour. Men who are cold and selfish, who are literally frozen up the winter through, yield to the warm, invigorating, energising touch of spring.
"Gentlemen of the field force, now is the psychological moment to force your prospects to action as indicated by the dotted line. As in nature, some plants and trees are harder to force than others, so in the nature of human prospects, some are more difficult than others. Sunshine and rain will produce results in the field of life-underwriting.
"Will it not be possible for you during these five remaining days not only to increase the production from regular sources, but to go out into the highways and hedges and compel others to sign their applications, if for only a small amount?
"Everything is now in full swing, and we are going to close up the month
"IN A BLAZE OF GLORY."
Might not this almost as well have been an addressfrom the headquarters of the Salvation Army? And is not the following exactly parallel to a denunciation, from the mission-pulpit, of the unprofitable servant?
"A few days ago we heard of a general agent who has one of the largest and most prosperous territories in this country. He has been in the business for years, and yet that man, for some unknown reason, rather apologises for his vocation. He said he was a little ashamed of his calling. Such a condition is almost a crime, and I am sure that the men of the Eastern Department will say, that man ought to get out of the business."Instead of being ashamed of his calling, he should be mortally ashamed of his not calling."Are you happy in your work? If not, give it up and go into some business more to your liking."Why Is It?"So many times the question is asked, 'Why is it, and how is it, that Mr. So-and-so writes so much business? There is not a week but he procures new applications.' Gentlemen, there's but one answer to this question. There is a great gulf between the man who is in earnest and works persistently every day and the man who seems to be in earnest and makes believe he is working persistently every day."One of the most successful personal producers said[189]to the writer the other day: 'No wonder certain agents do not write more business. I couldn't accomplish very much either if I did not work longer hours than they do. Some insurance agents live like millionaires and keep bankers' hours. You cannot expect much business from efforts like that.' This man speaks from practical knowledge of the business. He has written$147,500in personal business in the last six weeks."It does seem rather strange, sometimes, that half of the men in the Eastern Department should be writing twice as much business as the other half. They are representing the same company; presenting the same propositions; are supposed to be talking to practically the same number of men; have the same rates, same guarantees, and the same twenty-four hours in each day, and yet are doing twice the business. In other words, making more money. What really makes this difference? I will tell you. They put heart into their work. There is an enthusiasm and earnestness about them that carries conviction. They are business through and through, and everybody knows it."Are you getting your share of applications? If some other agent is up early, wide-awake and alert, putting in from ten to fifteen hours per day, he is bound to do business, isn't he? This is a plain, every-day horse-sense business fact. No one has a patent on time or the[190]use of it. To work and to succeed is common property. It is your capital, and the use of it will determine your worth."
"A few days ago we heard of a general agent who has one of the largest and most prosperous territories in this country. He has been in the business for years, and yet that man, for some unknown reason, rather apologises for his vocation. He said he was a little ashamed of his calling. Such a condition is almost a crime, and I am sure that the men of the Eastern Department will say, that man ought to get out of the business.
"Instead of being ashamed of his calling, he should be mortally ashamed of his not calling.
"Are you happy in your work? If not, give it up and go into some business more to your liking."
Why Is It?
"So many times the question is asked, 'Why is it, and how is it, that Mr. So-and-so writes so much business? There is not a week but he procures new applications.' Gentlemen, there's but one answer to this question. There is a great gulf between the man who is in earnest and works persistently every day and the man who seems to be in earnest and makes believe he is working persistently every day.
"One of the most successful personal producers said[189]to the writer the other day: 'No wonder certain agents do not write more business. I couldn't accomplish very much either if I did not work longer hours than they do. Some insurance agents live like millionaires and keep bankers' hours. You cannot expect much business from efforts like that.' This man speaks from practical knowledge of the business. He has written
$147,500in personal business in the last six weeks.
"It does seem rather strange, sometimes, that half of the men in the Eastern Department should be writing twice as much business as the other half. They are representing the same company; presenting the same propositions; are supposed to be talking to practically the same number of men; have the same rates, same guarantees, and the same twenty-four hours in each day, and yet are doing twice the business. In other words, making more money. What really makes this difference? I will tell you. They put heart into their work. There is an enthusiasm and earnestness about them that carries conviction. They are business through and through, and everybody knows it.
"Are you getting your share of applications? If some other agent is up early, wide-awake and alert, putting in from ten to fifteen hours per day, he is bound to do business, isn't he? This is a plain, every-day horse-sense business fact. No one has a patent on time or the[190]use of it. To work and to succeed is common property. It is your capital, and the use of it will determine your worth."
I think, really, this is one of the most remarkable documents that could be produced in evidence of the character of American civilisation. There is all the push, initiative, and enterprise on which they justly pride themselves; there is also the reduction of all values to terms of business, the concentration of what, at other times, have been moral and religious forces upon the one aim of material progress. In such an atmosphere it is easy to see how those who care for spiritual values are led to protest that these are really material; to pack up their goods, so to speak, as if they were biscuits or pork, and palm them off in that guise on an unsuspecting public. In a world where every one is hustling, the Churches feel they must hustle too; when all the firms advertise, they must advertise too; when only one thing is valued, power, they must pretend they can offer power; they must go into business, because business is going into religion!
It is a curious spectacle! How long will it last? How real is it, even now? That withered couple, I half believe, hanging on the wall, descend at night and wander through the land, whispering to all the sleepers their disquieting warning; and all day long there hovers at the back of the minds of theseactive men a sense of discomfort which, if it became articulate, might express itself in the ancient words:
"My son, the good you can expect is all forlorn,Men doe not gather grapes from of a thorn."
"My son, the good you can expect is all forlorn,Men doe not gather grapes from of a thorn."
I am staying at a pleasant place in New Hampshire. The country is hilly and wooded, like a larger and wilder Surrey; and through it flows what, to an Englishman, seems a large river, the Connecticut. Charming villas are dotted about, well designed and secluded in pretty gardens. I mention this because, in my experience of America, it is unique. Almost everywhere the houses stare blankly at one another and at the public roads, ugly, unsheltered, and unashamed, as much as to say, "Every one is welcome to see what goes on here. We court publicity. See how we eat, drink, and sleep. Our private life is the property of the American people." It was not, however, to describe the country that I began this letter, but to elaborate a generalisation developed by my host and myself as a kind of self-protection against the gospel of "strenuousness."
We have divided men into Red-bloods and Mollycoddles. "A Red-blood man" is a phrase which explains itself, "Mollycoddle" is its opposite. We have adopted it from a famous speech of Mr. Roosevelt,and redeemed it—perverted it, if you will—to other uses. A few examples will make the notion clear. Shakespeare's Henry V. is a typical Red-blood; so was Bismarck; so was Palmerston; so is almost any business man. On the other hand, typical Mollycoddles were Socrates, Voltaire, and Shelley. The terms, you will observe, are comprehensive, and the types very broad. Generally speaking, men of action are Red-bloods. Not but what the Mollycoddle may act, and act efficiently. But, if so, he acts from principle, not from the instinct of action. The Red-blood, on the other hand, acts as the stone falls, and does indiscriminately anything that comes to hand. It is thus he that carries on the business of the world. He steps without reflection into the first place offered him and goes to work like a machine. The ideals and standards of his family, his class, his city, his country and his age, he swallows as naturally as he swallows food and drink. He is therefore always "in the swim"; and he is bound to "arrive," because he has set before himself the attainable. You will find him everywhere in all the prominent positions. In a military age he is a soldier, in a commercial age a business man. He hates his enemies, and he may love his friends; but he does not require friends to love. A wife and children he does require, for the instinct to propagate the race is as strong in him as all other instincts. His domestic life, however, is not always happy; for he can seldomunderstand his wife. This is part of his general incapacity to understand any point of view but his own. He is incapable of an idea and contemptuous of a principle. He is the Samson, the blind force, dearest to Nature of her children. He neither looks back nor looks ahead. He lives in present action. And when he can no longer act, he loses his reason for existence. The Red-blood is happiest if he dies in the prime of life; otherwise, he may easily end with suicide. For he has no inner life; and when the outer life fails, he can only fail with it. The instinct that animated him being dead, he dies too. Nature, who has blown through him, blows elsewhere. His stops are dumb; he is dead wood on the shore.
The Mollycoddle, on the other hand, is all inner life. He may indeed act, as I said, but he acts, so to speak, by accident; just as the Red-blood may reflect, but reflects by accident. The Mollycoddle in action is the Crank: it is he who accomplishes reforms; who abolished slavery, for example, and revolutionised prisons and lunatic asylums. Still, primarily, the Mollycoddle is a critic, not a man of action. He challenges all standards and all facts. If an institution is established, that is a reason why he will not accept it; if an idea is current, that is a reason why he should repudiate it. He questions everything, including life and the universe. And for that reason Nature hates him. On the Red-blood she heaps her favours; she giveshim a good digestion, a clear complexion, and sound nerves. But to the Mollycoddle she apportions dyspepsia and black bile. In the universe and in society the Mollycoddle is "out of it" as inevitably as the Red-blood is "in it." At school, he is a "smug" or a "swat," while the Red-blood is captain of the Eleven. At college, he is an "intellectual," while the Red-blood is in the "best set." In the world, he courts failure while the Red-blood achieves success. The Red-blood sees nothing; but the Mollycoddle sees through everything. The Red-blood joins societies; the Mollycoddle is a non-joiner. Individualist of individualists, he can only stand alone, while the Red-blood requires the support of a crowd. The Mollycoddle engenders ideas, and the Red-blood exploits them. The Mollycoddle discovers, and the Red-blood invents. The whole structure of civilisation rests on foundations laid by Mollycoddles; but all the building is done by Red-bloods. The Red-blood despises the Mollycoddle; but, in the long run, he does what the Mollycoddle tells him. The Mollycoddle also despises the Red-blood, but he cannot do without him. Each thinks he is master of the other, and, in a sense, each is right. In his lifetime the Mollycoddle may be the slave of the Red-blood; but after his death, he is his master, though the Red-blood know it not.
Nations, like men, may be classified roughly as Red-blood and Mollycoddle. To the latter class belongclearly the ancient Greeks, the Italians, the French, and probably the Russians; to the former the Romans, the Germans, and the English. But the Red-blood nationpar excellenceis the American; so that, in comparison with them, Europe as a whole might almost be called Mollycoddle. This characteristic of Americans is reflected in the predominant physical type,—the great jaw and chin, the huge teeth, and predatory mouth; in their speech, where beauty and distinction are sacrificed to force; in their need to live and feel and act in masses. To be born a Mollycoddle in America is to be born to a hard fate. You must either emigrate or succumb. This, at least, hitherto has been the alternative practised. Whether a Mollycoddle will ever be produced strong enough to breathe the American atmosphere and live, is a crucial question for the future. It is the question whether America will ever be civilised. For civilisation, you will have perceived, depends on a just balance of Red-bloods and Mollycoddles. Without the Red-blood there would be no life at all, no stuff, so to speak, for the Mollycoddle to work upon; without the Mollycoddle, the stuff would remain shapeless and chaotic. The Red-blood is the matter, the Mollycoddle the form; the Red-blood the dough, the Mollycoddle the yeast. On these two poles turns the orb of human society. And if, at this point, you choose to say that poles are points and have no dimensions, that strictly neither the Mollycoddle northe Red-blood exist, and that real men contain elements of both mixed in different proportions, I have no quarrel with you except such as one has with the man who states the obvious. I am satisfied to have distinguished the ideal extremes between which the Actual vibrates. The detailed application of the conception I must leave to more patient researchers.
One point more before I close. This Dichotomy, so far as I can see, applies only to man. Woman appears to be a kind of hybrid. Regarded as a creature of instinct, she resembles the Red-blood, and it is to him that she is first attracted. The hero of her youth is the athlete, the soldier, the successful man of business; and this predilection of hers accounts for much of human history, and in particular for the maintenance of the military spirit. On the other hand, as a creature capable of and craving sympathy, she has affinities with the Mollycoddle. This dual nature is the tragedy of her life. The Red-blood awakens her passion, but cannot satisfy it. He wins her by his virility, but cannot retain her by his perception. Hence the fact, noted by a cynic, that it is the Mollycoddle who cuckolds the Red-blood. For the woman, married to the Red-blood, discovers too late that she is to him only a trophy, a scalp. He hangs her up in the hall, and goes about his business. Then comes the Mollycoddle, divining all, possessing and offering all. And if the Red-blood is an American, and the Mollycoddlean European, then the situation is tense indeed. For the American Red-blood despises woman in his heart as profoundly as he respects her in outer observance. He despises her because of the Mollycoddle he divines in her. Therefore he never understands her; and that is why European Mollycoddles carry off American women before the very eyes of the exasperated Red-blood. "Am I not clean?" he cries. "Am I not healthy? Am I not athletic and efficient?" He is, but it does not help him, except with young girls. He may win the body; but he cannot win the soul. Can it be true then that most women would like two husbands, one Red-blood, the other Mollycoddle, one to be the father of their children, the other to be the companion of their souls? Women alone can answer; and, for the first time in history, they are beginning to be articulate.
The last two days and nights I spent in a railway train. We passed through some beautiful country; that, I believe, is the fact; but my feeling is that I have emerged from a nightmare. In my mind is a jumbled vision of huge wooden cows cut out in profile and offering from dry udders a fibrous milk; of tins of biscuits portrayed with a ghastly realism of perspective, and mendaciously screaming that I needed them—U-need-a biscuit; of gigantic quakers, multiplied as in an interminable series of mirrors and offering me a myriad meals of indigestible oats; of huge painted bulls in a kind of discontinuous frieze bellowing to the heavens a challenge to produce a better tobacco than theirs; of the head of a gentleman, with pink cheeks and a black moustache, recurring, like a decimal,ad infinitumon the top of a board, to inform me that his beauty is the product of his own toilet powder; of cod-fish without bones—"the kind you have always bought"; of bacon packed in glass jars; of whiz suspenders, sen-sen throat-ease, sure-fit hose, and the whole armyof patent medicines. By river, wood, and meadow, hamlet or city, mountain or plain, hovers and flits this obscene host; never to be escaped from, never to be forgotten, fixing, with inexorable determination, a fancy that might be tempted to roam to that one fundamental fact of life, the operation of the bowels.
Nor, of course, are these incubi, these ghostly emanations of the One God Trade, confined to the American continent. They haunt with equal pertinacity the lovelier landscapes of England; they line the route to Venice; they squat on the Alps and float on the Rhine; they are beginning to occupy the very air, and with the advent of the air-ship, will obliterate the moon and the stars, and scatter over every lonely moor and solitary mountain peak memorials of the stomach, of the liver and the lungs. Never, in effect, says modern business to the soul of man, never and nowhere shall you forget that you are nothing but a body; that you require to eat, to salivate, to digest, to evacuate; that you are liable to arthritis, blood-poisoning, catarrh, colitis, calvity, constipation, consumption, diarrhœa, diabetes, dysmenorrhœa, epilepsy, eczema, fatty degeneration, gout, goitre, gastritis, headache, hæmorrhage, hysteria, hypertrophy, idiocy, indigestion, jaundice, lockjaw, melancholia, neuralgia, ophthalmia, phthisis, quinsey, rheumatism, rickets, sciatica, syphilis, tonsilitis, tic doloureux, and so on to the end of the alphabet and back again to the beginning. Never and nowhereshall you forget that you are a trading animal, buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market. Never shall you forget that nothing matters—nothing in the whole universe—except the maintenance and extension of industry; that beauty, peace, harmony are not commercial values, and cannot be allowed for a moment to stand in the way of the advance of trade; that nothing, in short, matters except wealth, and that there is no wealth except money in the pocket. This—did it ever occur to you—is the real public education every country is giving, on every hoarding and sky-sign, to its citizens of every age, at every moment of their lives. And that being so, is it not a little ironical that children should be taught for half an hour in school to read a poem of Wordsworth or a play of Shakespeare, when for the rest of the twenty-four hours there is being photographed on their minds the ubiquitous literature of Owbridge and of Carter?
But of course advertisement cannot be interfered with! It is the life-blood of the nation. All traders, all politicians, all journalists say so. They sometimes add that it is really, to an unprejudiced spirit, beautiful and elevating. Thus only this morning I came across an article in a leading New York newspaper, which remarks that: "The individual advertisement is commonly in good taste, both in legend and in illustration. Many are positively beautiful; and, as a wit has truly said, the cereal advertisements in the magazines arefar more interesting than the serial stories." This latter statement I can easily believe; but when I read the former there flitted across my mind a picture of a lady lightly clad reclining asleep against an open window, a full moon rising in the distance over a lake, with the legend attached, "Cascarella—it works while you sleep."
The article from which I have quoted is interesting not only as illustrating the diversity of taste, but as indicating the high degree of development which has now been attained by what is at once the art and the science of advertisement. "The study of advertisement," it begins, "seems to have a perennial charm for the American public. Hardly a month passes but some magazine finds a new and inviting phase of this modern art to lay before its readers. The solid literature of advertisement is also growing rapidly.... The technique of the subject is almost as extensive as that of scientific agriculture. Whole volumes have been compiled on the art of writing advertisements. Commercial schools and colleges devote courses of study to the subject. Indeed the corner-stone of the curriculum of a well-known business college is an elective upon 'Window-dressing.'" That you may be under no misapprehension, I must add that this article appears in what is admittedly the most serious and respectable of the New York newspapers; and that it is not conceived in the spirit of irony or hyperbole. To theAmerican, advertisement is a serious, important, and elevating department of business, and those who make it their speciality endeavour to base their operations on a profound study of human nature. One of these gentlemen has expounded, in a book which has a wide circulation, the whole philosophy of his liberal profession. He calls the book "Imagination in Business";[4]and I remark incidentally that the use of the word "imagination," like that of "art," in this connection, shows where the inquirer ought to look for the manifestation, on this continent, of the æsthetic spirit. "The imaginative man," says the writer, "sends his thought through all the instincts, passions, and prejudices of men, he knows their desires and their regrets, he knows every human weakness and its sure decoy." It is this latter clause that is relevant to his theme. Poets in earlier ages wrote epics and dramas, they celebrated the strength and nobility of men; but the poet of the modern world "cleverly builds on the frailties of mankind." Of these the chief is "the inability to throw away an element of value, even though it cannot be utilised." On this great principle is constructed the whole art and science of advertisement. And my author proceeds to give a series of illustrations, "each of which is an actual fact, either in my experience, or of which I have been cognisant." Space and copyright forbid me to quote. I must refer the reader to theoriginal source. Nowhere else will be found so lucid an expression of the whole theory and practice of modern trade. That theory and practice is being taught in schools of commerce throughout the Union; and there are many, I suppose, who would like to see it taught in English universities. But, really, does anyone—does any man of business—think it a better education than Greek?
Footnotes:[4]Imagination in Business(Harper & Brothers).
Footnotes:
[4]Imagination in Business(Harper & Brothers).
[4]Imagination in Business(Harper & Brothers).
Scene, a club in a Canadian city; persons, a professor, a doctor, a business man, and a traveller (myself). Wine, cigars, anecdotes; and suddenly, popping up, like a Jack-in-the-box absurdly crowned with ivy, the intolerable subject of education. I do not remember how it began; but I know there came a point at which, before I knew where I was, I found myself being assailed on the subject of Oxford and Cambridge. Not, however, in the way you may anticipate. Those ancient seats of learning were not denounced as fossilised, effete, and corrupt. On the contrary, I was pressed, urged, implored almost with tears in the eye—to reform them? No! to let them alone!
"For heaven's sake, keep them as they are! You don't know what you've got, and what you might lose! We know! We've had to do without it! And we know that without it everything else is of no avail. We bluster and brag about education on this side of the Atlantic. But in our heart of hearts we know thatwe have missed the one thing needful, and that you, over in England, have got it."
"And that one thing?"
"Is Culture! Yes, in spite of Matthew Arnold, Culture, and Culture, and always Culture!"
"Meaning by Culture?"
"Meaning Aristotle instead of Agriculture, Homer instead of Hygiene, Shakespeare instead of the Stock Exchange, Bacon instead of Banking, Plato instead of Pædagogics! Meaning intellect before intelligence, thought before dexterity, discovery before invention! Meaning the only thing that is really practical, ideas; and the only thing that is really human, the Humanities!"
Rather apologetically, I began to explain. At Oxford, I said, no doubt the Humanities still hold the first place. But at Cambridge they have long been relegated to the second or the third. There we have schools of Natural Science, of Economics, of Engineering, of Agriculture. We have even a Training College in Pædagogics. Their faces fell, and they renewed their passionate appeal.
"Stop it," they cried. "For heaven's sake, stop it! In all those things we've got you skinned alive over here! If you want Agriculture go to Wisconsin! If you want Medicine, go to the Rockefeller Institute! If you want Engineering, go to Pittsburg! But preserve still for the English-speaking world what you alone can give! Preserve liberal culture! Preserve the Classics! Preserve Mathematics! Preserve theseed-ground of all practical inventions and appliances! Preserve the integrity of the human mind!"
Interesting, is it not? These gentlemen, no doubt, were not typical Canadians. But they were not the least intelligent men I have met on this continent. And when they had finally landed me in my sleeping-berth in the train, and I was left to my own reflections in that most uncomfortable of all situations, I began to consider how odd it was that in matters educational we are always endeavouring to reform the only part of our system that excites the admiration of foreigners.
I do not intend, however, to plunge into that controversy. The point that interests me is the view of my Canadian friends that in America there is no "culture." And, in the sense they gave to that term, I think they are right. Thereisno culture in America. There is instruction; there is research; there is technical and professional training; there is specialisation in science and industry; there is every possible application of life, to purposes and ends; but there is no life for its own sake. Let me illustrate. It is, I have read, a maxim of American business that "a man is damned who knows two things." "He is almost a dilettante," it was said of a student, "he reads Dante and Shakespeare"! "The perfect professor," said a College President, "should be willing to work hard eleven months in the year." These are straws, if you like, but they show the way the wind blows. Again, you will find,if you travel long in America, that you are suffering from a kind of atrophy. You will not, at first, realise what it means. But suddenly it will flash upon you that you are suffering from lack of conversation. You do not converse; you cannot; you can only talk. It is the rarest thing to meet a man who, when a subject is started, is willing or able to follow it out into its ramifications, to play with it, to embroider it with pathos or with wit, to penetrate to its roots, to trace its connexions and affinities. Question and answer, anecdote and jest are the staple of American conversation; and, above all, information. They have a hunger for positive facts. And you may hear them hour after hour rehearsing to one another their travels, their business transactions, their experiences in trains, in hotels, on steamers, till you begin to feel you have no alternatives before you but murder or suicide. An American, broadly speaking, never detaches himself from experience. His mind is embedded in it; it moves wedged in fact. His only escape is into humour; and even his humour is but a formula of exaggeration. It implies no imagination, no real envisaging of its object. It does not illuminate a subject, it extinguishes it, clamping upon every topic the same grotesque mould. That is why it does not really much amuse the English. For the English are accustomed to Shakespeare, and to the London cabby.
This may serve to indicate what I mean by lackof culture. I admit, of course, that neither are the English cultured. But they have culture among them. They do not, of course, value it; the Americans, for aught I know, value it more; but they produce it, and the Americans do not. I have visited many of their colleges and universities, and everywhere, except perhaps at Harvard—unless my impressions are very much at fault—I have found the same atmosphere. It is the atmosphere known as the "Yale spirit," and it is very like that of an English Public School. It is virile, athletic, gregarious, all-penetrating, all-embracing. It turns out the whole university to sing rhythmic songs and shout rhythmic cries at football matches. It praises action and sniffs at speculation. It exalts morals and depresses intellect. It suspects the solitary person, the dreamer, the loafer, the poet, the prig. This atmosphere, of course, exists in English universities. It is imported there from the Public Schools. But it is not all-pervading. Individuals and cliques escape. And it is those who escape that acquire culture. In America, no one escapes, or they are too few to count. I know Americans of culture, know and love them; but I feel them to be lost in the sea of philistinism. They cannot draw together, as in England, and leaven the lump. The lump is bigger, and they are fewer. All the more honour to them; and all the more loss to America.
Whether, from all this, any conclusion is to be drawn about the proper policy to be pursued at ouruniversities, is a question I will not here discuss. Culture, I think, is one of those precious things that are achieved by accident, and by accident may be destroyed. The things we do to maintain it might kill it; the things we do to kill it might preserve it. My Canadian friends may be quite wrong in their diagnosis of the causes that engender or destroy it. But they are right in their sense of its importance; and it will be an interesting result of imperial unity if we find, to our astonishment, that the Dominions beyond the seas rally round exactly those things in England which we expect them to declare effete. The Rhodes scholars go to Oxford, not to Birmingham or Liverpool. And it is Cambridge that peoples the universities of the Empire with professors.
I saw to-day some really remarkable landscapes by an American artist. So, at least, they seem to me. They have, at any rate, a quality of imagination which one does not expect to find in this country. "One does not expect"—why not? Why, in this respect, is America, as undoubtedly she is, so sterile? Artists must be born here as much as elsewhere. American civilisation, it is true, repels men of reflection and sensitiveness, just as it attracts men of action; so that, as far as immigration is concerned, there is probably a selection working against the artistic type. But, on the other hand, men of action often produce sons with a genius for the arts; and it is to be supposed that they do so as much in America as elsewhere. It must be the environment that is unfavourable. Artists and poets belong to the genus I have named "Mollycoddle"; and in America the Mollycoddle is hardly allowed to breathe. Nowhere on that continent, so far as I have been able to see, is there to be found a class or a clique of men, respected by others andrespecting themselves, who also respect not merely art but the artistic calling. Broadly, business is the only respectable pursuit; including under business Politics and Law, which in this country are only departments of business. Business holds the place in popular esteem that is held by arms in Germany, by letters in France, by Public Life in England. The man therefore whose bent is towards the arts meets no encouragement; he meets everywhere the reverse. His father, his uncles, his brothers, his cousins, all are in business. Business is the only virile pursuit for people of education and means, who cannot well become chauffeurs. There is, no doubt, the professorial career; but that, it is agreed, is adopted only by men of "no ambition." Americans believe in education, but they do not believe in educators. There is no money to be made in that profession, and the making of money is the test of character. The born poet or artist is thus handicapped to a point which may easily discourage him from running at all. At the best, he emigrates to Europe, and his achievement is credited to that continent. Or, remaining in America, he succumbs to the environment, puts aside his creative ambition, and enters business. It is not for nothing that Americans are the most active people in the world. They pay the penalty in an atrophy of the faculties of reflection and representation.
Things are different in Europe, and even in England.There, not only are artists and men of letters honoured when they are successful—they are, of course, honoured at that stage in America; but the pursuit of literature and art is one which a young man need not feel it discreditable to adopt. The contemporaries of a brilliant youth at Oxford or at Cambridge do not secretly despise him if he declines to enter business. The first-class man does not normally aspire to start life as a drummer. Public life and the Church offer honourable careers; and both of them have traditional affinities with literature. So has the Law, still in England a profession and not a trade. One may even be a don or a schoolmaster without serious discredit. Under these conditions a young man can escape from the stifling pressure of the business point of view. He can find societies like-minded with himself, equally indifferent to the ideal of success in business, equally inspired by intellectual or æsthetic ambitions. He can choose to be poor without feeling that he will therefore become despicable. The attitude of the business classes in England, no doubt, is much the same as that of the business classes in America. But in England there are other classes and other traditions, havens of refuge from the prevalent commercialism. In America the trade-wind blows broad, steady, universal over the length and breadth of the continent.
This, I believe, is one reason for the sterility of America in Art. But it is not the only one. Literatureand Art in Europe rest on a long tradition which has not only produced books and pictures, but has left its mark on the language, the manners, the ideas, the architecture, the physical features of the country. The books and the pictures can be transplanted, but the rest cannot. Thus, even though in every art the technical tradition has been interrupted, there remains in Europe what I will call the tradition of feeling; and it is this that is absent in America. Art in Europe is rooted; and there still persists into the present something of the spirit which fostered it in the past. Not only is Nature beautiful, she is humanised by the works of Man. Politics are mellowed by history, business tempered by culture. Classes are more segregated, types more distinct, ideals and aims more varied. The ghost of a spiritual life still hovers over the natural, shadowing it with the beat of solemn wings. There are finer overtones for a sensitive ear to catch; rainbow hues where the spray of life goes up. All this, it is true, is disappearing in Europe; but in America it has never existed. A sensitive European, travelling there, feels at once starved and flayed. Nothing nourishes, and everything hurts. There is natural beauty, but it has not been crowned and perfected by the hand of man. Whatever he has touched he has touched only to defile. There is one pursuit, commerce; one type, the business man; one ideal, that of increasing wealth. Monotony of talk, monotony of ideas, monotony of aim, monotonyof outlook on the world. America is industrialism pure and simple; Europe is industrialism superimposed on feudalism; and, for the arts, the difference is vital.
But the difference is disappearing. Not that America is becoming like Europe, but Europe is becoming like America. This is not a case of the imitation that is a form of flattery; it is a case of similar causes producing similar results. The disease—or shall we say, to use a neutral term—the diathesis of commercialism found in America an open field and swept through it like a fire. In Europe, its course was hampered by the structures of an earlier civilisation. But it is spreading none the less surely. And the question arises—In the future, when the European environment is as unfavourable to Art as the American, will there be, in the West, any Art at all? I do not know; no one knows; but there is this to remark. What I am calling commercialism is the infancy, not the maturity of a civilisation. The revolution in morals, in manners, and in political and social institutions which must accompany the revolution in industry, has hardly yet begun its course. It has gone further in Europe than in America; so that, oddly enough, Europe is at once behind and in front of this continent, overlaps it, so to speak, at both ends. But it has not gone very far even in Europe; and for generations, I conceive, political and social issues will draw away much of the creative talent that might have been available for Art. In the end, one may suppose,something like a stable order will arise; an order, that is, in which people will feel that their institutions correspond sufficiently with their inner life, and will be able to devote themselves with a free mind to reflecting their civilisation in Art.
But will their civilisation be of a kind to invite such reflection? It will be, if the present movement is not altogether abortive, a civilisation of security, equity, and peace; where there is no indigence, no war, and comparatively little disease. Such society, certainly, will not offer a field for much of the kind of Art that has been or is now being produced. The primitive folk-song, the epic of war, the novel or play inspired by social strife, will have passed irrecoverably away. And more than that, it is sometimes urged, there will be such a dearth of those tense moments which alone engender the artistic mood, that Art of any kind will have become impossible. If that were true, it would not, in my opinion, condemn the society. Art is important, but there are things more important; and among those things are justice and peace. I do not, however, accept the view that a peaceable and just society would necessarily also be one that is uninspired. That view seems to me to proceed from our incurable materialism. We think there is no conflict except with arms; no rivalry except for bread; no aspiration except for money and rank. It is my own belief that the removal of the causes of the material strife in whichmost men are now plunged would liberate the energies for spiritual conflict; that the passion to know, the passion to feel, the passion to love, would begin at last to take their proper place in human life; and would engender the forms of Art appropriate to their expression.
To return to America, what I am driving at is this. America may have an Art, and a great Art. But it will be after she has had her social revolution. Her Art has first to touch ground; and before it can do that, the ground must be fit for it to touch. It was not till the tenth century that the seed of Mediæval Art could be sown; it was not till the thirteenth that the flower bloomed. So now, our civilisation is not ripe for its own Art. What America imports from Europe is useless to her. It is torn from its roots; and it is idle to replant it; it will not grow. There must be a native growth, not so much of America, as of the modern era. That growth America, like Europe, must will. She has her prophet of it, Walt Whitman. In the coming centuries it is her work to make his vision real.
The preceding pages were written in the course of travel and convey the impressions and reflections of the moment. Whatever interest they may have depends upon this immediacy, and for that reason I have reprinted them substantially as they first appeared. Perhaps, however, some concluding reflections of a more considered nature may be of some interest to my readers. I do not advance them in a dogmatic spirit nor as final judgments, but as the first tentative results of my gropings into a large and complicated subject. I will ask the reader, therefore, be he Western or Oriental, to follow me in a spirit at once critical and sympathetic, challenging my suggestions as much as he will, but rather as a fellow-seeker than as an opponent bent upon refutation. For I am trying to comprehend rather than to judge, and to comprehend as impartially as is compatible with having an attitude of one's own at all.
Ever since Mr. Rudyard Kipling wrote a famous line it has become a commonplace of popular thought in England and America that there is an East and a West, and an impassable gulf between them. But Mr. Kipling was thinking of India, and India is not all theEast: he was thinking of England, and England is not all the West. As soon as one approaches the question more particularly it becomes a complicated matter to decide whether there is really an East and a West, and what either stands for. That there is a West, in a real sense, with a unity of its own, is, I think, true. But it must be limited in time to the last two centuries, and in space to the countries of Western Europe and the continent of America. So understood, the West forms, in all the most important respects, a homogeneous system. True, it is divided into different nations, speaking different languages, and pursuing different, and often conflicting, policies; and these distinctions are still so important, that they colour our fears and hopes and sympathies, and take form in the burden of armaments and the menace of war. Nevertheless, seen in the perspective of history, they are survivals, atrophying and disappearing. Behind and despite of them there is a common Western mind and a common Western organisation. Finance is cosmopolitan; industry is cosmopolitan; trade is cosmopolitan. There is one scientific method, and the results achieved by it are common. There is one system of industry, that known as Capitalism; and the problems arising from it and the solutions propounded appear alike in every nation. There is one political tendency, or fact, that of popular government. There are cognate aims and similar achievements in literature and art. Thereis, in brief, a Western movement, a Western problem, a Western mentality; and the particular happenings of particular nations are all parts of this one happening. Nor is this all. There is in the West a common religion. I do not refer to Christianity, for the religion I mean is held by hundreds and thousands who are not Christians, and indeed does not very readily find in Christianity an expression at once coherent and pure. It has not been formulated in a creed; but it is to be felt and heard in all the serious work and all the serious thought of the West. It is the religion of Good and Evil, of Time and the process in Time. If it tried to draw up a confession of faith perhaps it would produce, as its first attempt, something of this kind:—