CHAPTER VIIIArt and MoralsCom, no more,This is meer moral babble, and directAgainst the canon laws of our foundation.—Comus.Fromthis excursus let us return to our proper task, the attempt to outline a morality which will change its values as circumstances alter, a morality free from occultism, absolutes and arbitrariness, a morality which will explain, as no morality has yet explained, the place and value of the arts in human affairs. What is good or valuable, we have said, is the exercise of impulses and the satisfaction of their appetencies. When we say that anything is good we mean that it satisfies, and by a good experience we mean one in which the impulses which make it are fulfilled and successful, adding as the necessary qualification that their exercise and satisfaction shall not interfere in any way with more important impulses. Importance we have seen to be a complicated matter, and which impulses are by an extensive inquiry into what actually happens. The problem of morality then, the problem of how we are to obtain the greatest possible value from life, becomes a problem of organisation, both in the individual life and in the adjustment of individual lives to one another, and is delivered from all non-psychological ideas, from absolute goods and immediate convictions, which incidentally help greatly to give unnecessary stiffness and fixity to obsolescent codes. Without system, needless to say, value vanishes, since in a state of chaos important and trivial impulses alike are frustrated.A minor problem may occur here to the reader. It concerns the choice between a ‘crowded hour’ and an age without a name, and the place of the time factor in valuation. There are many very valuable states which cannot last very long in the nature of the case, and some of these seem to have disabling consequences. But, to take merely the most interesting instance, if we knew more about the nervous constitution of genius we might discover that the instability from which so many people suffer who are at times best able to actualise the possibilities of life is merely a consequence of their plasticity; not in the least a price which they pay for such ‘high moments,’ but rather a result in systems of great delicacy of wear and tear at lower levels of adjustment. It is generally those who have the least refined views of value who most readily believe that highly valuable hours must be paid for afterwards. Their conception of a ‘hectic time’ as the summit of human possibilities explains the opinion. For those who find that the most valuable experiences are those which are also most fruitful of further valuable experiences no problem arises. To the query whether they prefer a long life to a joyous one, they will reply that they find very satisfactory a life which is both.The most valuable states of mind then are those which involve the widest and most comprehensive co-ordination of activities and the least curtailment, conflict, starvation and restriction. States of mind in general are valuable in the degree in which they tend to reduce waste and frustration. We must be careful in considering this formulation to remember how varied human activities are and avoid, for example, undue admiration for practical efficient persons whose emotional life is suppressed. But, thanks to the psycho-analysts, we are hardly likely at the moment to overlook the consequences of suppressions.It is plain that no one systematisation can claim a supreme position. Men are naturally different and in any society specialisation is inevitable. There are evidently a great number of good systematisations and what is good for one person will not be good for another. A sailor, a doctor, a mathematician and a poet can hardly have the same organisation throughout. With different conditions different values necessarily arise. Doubtless conditions may be, and too often are, such that no life of high value is possible. With a naturalistic morality the reasons for altering them and the way to do so both become clearer. But even with our present resources and command over nature, it is universally agreed that intelligence and goodwill could contrive that no man should be so situated as to be deprived of all the generally accessible values. The clearing away from moral questions of all ethical lumber and superstitious interpolations is a step long overdue in this undertaking. But until it has been carried further, so it is often thought, to be busied with such apparently ‘unpractical’ activities as art or criticism is to behave too much like a passenger on a short-handed ship. This is true enough doubtless of some who so busy themselves. But it is not true that criticism is a luxury trade. The rear-guard of society cannot be extricated until the vanguard has gone further. Goodwill and intelligence are still too little available. The critic, we have said, is as much concerned with the health of the mind as any doctor with the health of the body. To set up as a critic is to set up as a judge of values. What are the other qualifications required we shall see later. For the arts are inevitably and quite apart from any intentions of the artist an appraisal of existence. Matthew Arnold when he said that poetry is a criticism of life was saying something so obvious that it is constantly overlooked. The artist is concerned with the record and perpetuation of the experiences which seem to him most worth having. For reasons which we shall consider in Chapter XXII, he is also the man who is most likely to have experiences of value to record. He is the point at which the growth of the mind shows itself. His experiences those at least which give value to his work, represent conciliations of impulses which in most minds are still confused, intertrammelled and conflicting. His work is the ordering of what in most minds is disordered. That hisfailuresto bring order out of chaos are often more conspicuous than those of other men is due in part at least to his greater audacity; it is a penalty of ambition and a consequence of his greater plasticity. But when he succeeds, the value of what he has accomplished is found always in a more perfect organisation which makes more of the possibilities of response and activity available.What value is and which experiences are most valuable will never be understood so long as we think in terms of those large abstractions, the virtues and the vices. “You do invert the covenants of her trust,” said Comus, that disreputable advocate of Utilitarianism, to the Lady, that enemy of Nature. Instead of recognising that value lies in the ‘minute particulars’ of response and attitude, we have tried to find it in conformity to abstract prescriptions and general rules of conduct. The artist is an expert in the ‘minute particulars’ andquaartist pays little or no attention to generalisations which he finds in actual: practice are too crude to discriminate between what is valuable and the reverse. For this reason the moralist has always tended to distrust or to ignore him. Yet since the fine conduct of life springs only from fine ordering of responses far too subtle to be touched by any general ethical maxims, this neglect of art by the moralist has been tantamount to a disqualification. The basis of morality, as Shelley insisted, is laid not by preachers but by poets. Bad taste and crude responses are not mere flaws in an otherwise admirable person. They are actually a root evil from which other defects follow. No life can be excellent in which the elementary responses are disorganised and confused.
Com, no more,This is meer moral babble, and directAgainst the canon laws of our foundation.—Comus.
Com, no more,This is meer moral babble, and directAgainst the canon laws of our foundation.—Comus.
Com, no more,This is meer moral babble, and directAgainst the canon laws of our foundation.—Comus.
Fromthis excursus let us return to our proper task, the attempt to outline a morality which will change its values as circumstances alter, a morality free from occultism, absolutes and arbitrariness, a morality which will explain, as no morality has yet explained, the place and value of the arts in human affairs. What is good or valuable, we have said, is the exercise of impulses and the satisfaction of their appetencies. When we say that anything is good we mean that it satisfies, and by a good experience we mean one in which the impulses which make it are fulfilled and successful, adding as the necessary qualification that their exercise and satisfaction shall not interfere in any way with more important impulses. Importance we have seen to be a complicated matter, and which impulses are by an extensive inquiry into what actually happens. The problem of morality then, the problem of how we are to obtain the greatest possible value from life, becomes a problem of organisation, both in the individual life and in the adjustment of individual lives to one another, and is delivered from all non-psychological ideas, from absolute goods and immediate convictions, which incidentally help greatly to give unnecessary stiffness and fixity to obsolescent codes. Without system, needless to say, value vanishes, since in a state of chaos important and trivial impulses alike are frustrated.
A minor problem may occur here to the reader. It concerns the choice between a ‘crowded hour’ and an age without a name, and the place of the time factor in valuation. There are many very valuable states which cannot last very long in the nature of the case, and some of these seem to have disabling consequences. But, to take merely the most interesting instance, if we knew more about the nervous constitution of genius we might discover that the instability from which so many people suffer who are at times best able to actualise the possibilities of life is merely a consequence of their plasticity; not in the least a price which they pay for such ‘high moments,’ but rather a result in systems of great delicacy of wear and tear at lower levels of adjustment. It is generally those who have the least refined views of value who most readily believe that highly valuable hours must be paid for afterwards. Their conception of a ‘hectic time’ as the summit of human possibilities explains the opinion. For those who find that the most valuable experiences are those which are also most fruitful of further valuable experiences no problem arises. To the query whether they prefer a long life to a joyous one, they will reply that they find very satisfactory a life which is both.
The most valuable states of mind then are those which involve the widest and most comprehensive co-ordination of activities and the least curtailment, conflict, starvation and restriction. States of mind in general are valuable in the degree in which they tend to reduce waste and frustration. We must be careful in considering this formulation to remember how varied human activities are and avoid, for example, undue admiration for practical efficient persons whose emotional life is suppressed. But, thanks to the psycho-analysts, we are hardly likely at the moment to overlook the consequences of suppressions.
It is plain that no one systematisation can claim a supreme position. Men are naturally different and in any society specialisation is inevitable. There are evidently a great number of good systematisations and what is good for one person will not be good for another. A sailor, a doctor, a mathematician and a poet can hardly have the same organisation throughout. With different conditions different values necessarily arise. Doubtless conditions may be, and too often are, such that no life of high value is possible. With a naturalistic morality the reasons for altering them and the way to do so both become clearer. But even with our present resources and command over nature, it is universally agreed that intelligence and goodwill could contrive that no man should be so situated as to be deprived of all the generally accessible values. The clearing away from moral questions of all ethical lumber and superstitious interpolations is a step long overdue in this undertaking. But until it has been carried further, so it is often thought, to be busied with such apparently ‘unpractical’ activities as art or criticism is to behave too much like a passenger on a short-handed ship. This is true enough doubtless of some who so busy themselves. But it is not true that criticism is a luxury trade. The rear-guard of society cannot be extricated until the vanguard has gone further. Goodwill and intelligence are still too little available. The critic, we have said, is as much concerned with the health of the mind as any doctor with the health of the body. To set up as a critic is to set up as a judge of values. What are the other qualifications required we shall see later. For the arts are inevitably and quite apart from any intentions of the artist an appraisal of existence. Matthew Arnold when he said that poetry is a criticism of life was saying something so obvious that it is constantly overlooked. The artist is concerned with the record and perpetuation of the experiences which seem to him most worth having. For reasons which we shall consider in Chapter XXII, he is also the man who is most likely to have experiences of value to record. He is the point at which the growth of the mind shows itself. His experiences those at least which give value to his work, represent conciliations of impulses which in most minds are still confused, intertrammelled and conflicting. His work is the ordering of what in most minds is disordered. That hisfailuresto bring order out of chaos are often more conspicuous than those of other men is due in part at least to his greater audacity; it is a penalty of ambition and a consequence of his greater plasticity. But when he succeeds, the value of what he has accomplished is found always in a more perfect organisation which makes more of the possibilities of response and activity available.
What value is and which experiences are most valuable will never be understood so long as we think in terms of those large abstractions, the virtues and the vices. “You do invert the covenants of her trust,” said Comus, that disreputable advocate of Utilitarianism, to the Lady, that enemy of Nature. Instead of recognising that value lies in the ‘minute particulars’ of response and attitude, we have tried to find it in conformity to abstract prescriptions and general rules of conduct. The artist is an expert in the ‘minute particulars’ andquaartist pays little or no attention to generalisations which he finds in actual: practice are too crude to discriminate between what is valuable and the reverse. For this reason the moralist has always tended to distrust or to ignore him. Yet since the fine conduct of life springs only from fine ordering of responses far too subtle to be touched by any general ethical maxims, this neglect of art by the moralist has been tantamount to a disqualification. The basis of morality, as Shelley insisted, is laid not by preachers but by poets. Bad taste and crude responses are not mere flaws in an otherwise admirable person. They are actually a root evil from which other defects follow. No life can be excellent in which the elementary responses are disorganised and confused.