108
Realism
Novels which take for their subject-matter mere ordinary, pedestrian existence—and of this kind are three-fourths of present-day novels -are invariably dull in one of two ways. In the first instance, they are written by pettifogging talents to whom only the ordinary is of interest, by people, that is to say, who are incapable of writing a book that is not dull. In the other, they are written by men generally of considerable, sometimes of brilliant, ability, who, misled by a theory, concern themselves laboriously with a domain of life which they dislike and which even bores them. But if the writer is bored, how much more so must be the reader! In short, the realist theory produces bad books because it forces the writer to select subjects the only emotion towards which it is possible to feel is boredom. And great art may arise out of hate, grief, even despair, but never out of boredom.
109
Fate and Mr. Wells
Fate has dealt ironically with H. G. Wells. It has turned his volumes of fiction into prophecies, and his volumes of prophecies into fiction.
110
Mr. G. K. Chesterton
A man's philosophy may be uninteresting, although he writes about it in an interesting manner. Just as the many write dully about interesting things, so a few write interestingly about dull things. And Mr. Chesterton is one of these. Equality is a dull creed, Christianity is a dry bone, tradition is wisdom for ants and the Chinese. But Mr. Chesterton is a very interesting man. How is it possible for an interesting man to have an uninteresting philosophy? Is this simply the last paradox of a master of paradox?
Mr. Chesterton's most charming quality is a, capacity for being surprised. He writes paradoxically, because to him everything is a paradox—the most simple thing, the most uninteresting thing. And that is his weakness, as well as his strength. He has found the common things so wonderful that he has not searched for the uncommon things. The average man is to him such a miracle, that he will not admit the genius is a far greater miracle. The theories he finds established, Christianity, equality, democracy, traditionalism, interest him so much that he has not gone beyond them to inquire into other theories perhaps more interesting. And this, because he lacks intellectual curiosity, along with that which frequently accompanies it, subtlety of mind. For the intellectually curious man is precisely the man who isnotinterested in things, or, at any rate, is interested in them only for a little, and then passes on or burrows deeper to find something further. One dogma after another he studies and deserts, this faith—- less searcher, this philanderer, this philosopher; and that which leads him on is the hope that at last he will find something to interest him for an eternity. Perhaps it is this dissatisfaction of the mind which has always driven men to seek knowledge; perhaps, if all mankind had been like Mr. Chesterton, we should not have had even Christianity, equality, democracy and the other theories which he holds and adorns.
For Mr. Chesterton's impressions are all first impressions. Like his own deity, he sees everything for the first time always. And he lacks, therefore, the power, called vision, of seeingintothings: the outside of things is already sufficiently interesting to him. He possesses imagination, however, and kindly and grotesque fancies which he hangs on the ear of the most common clodhopper of a reality. In fantasy he reaches greatness. But his philosophy is not interesting. It is himself that is interesting.
111
Nietzsche
Nietzsche loved Man, but not men: in that love were comprehended his nobility and his cruelty. He demanded that men should become Man before they asked to be loved.
112
Strindberg
This writer, despite his genius, earnestness and courage, arouses in us a feeling of profound disappointment. Nor is the cause very far to seek. For along with earnestness and courage in a writer we instinctively look for nobility and joy: if the latter qualities are absent we feel that theraison d'êtreof the former is gone, and that earnestness and courage divorced from nobility and joy are aimless, wasted, almost inconceivable. And in Strindberg they are so divorced. A disappointed courage; an ignoble earnestness! These are his pre-eminent qualities. And with them he essayed tragedy—the form of art in which nobility and joy are most required! As a consequence, the problems which he treats are not only treated inadequately; the inadequacy, when we stop to reflect upon it, absolutely amazes us. His crises are simply rows. His women, when they are angry, are intellectual fishwives; and—more disgusting still—so are his men. All his characters, indeed, intellectual and talented as they are, move on an amazingly low spiritual plane. The worst in their nature comes to light at the touch of tragedy, and an air of sordidness surrounds all. Posterity will not tolerate this "low" tragedy, this tragedy without araison d'être,this drama of the dregs.
113
Dostoieffsky
Dostoieffsky depicted the subconscious as conscious; that was how he achieved his complex and great effects. For the subconscious is the sphere of all that is most primeval, mysterious and sublime in man; the very bed out of which springs the flower of tragedy. But did Dostoieffsky do well to lay bare that world previously so reverently hidden, and to bring the reader behind the scenes of tragedy? The artist will deny it—the artist who always demands as an ingredient in his highest effects mystery. For how can mystery be retained when the very realm of mystery, the subconscious, is surveyed and mapped? In Dostoieffsky's imperishable works the spirit of full tragedy is perhaps never evoked. What he provides in them, however, is such a criticism of tragedy as is nowhere else to be found. His genius was for criticism; the artist in him created these great figures in order that afterwards the psychologist might dissect them. And so well are they dissected, even down to the subconsciousness, that, to use a phrase of the critics, we know them better than the people we meet. Well, that is precisely what we object to—as lovers of art!
114
Again
Not only is Dostoieffsky himself a great psychologist; all his chief characters are great psychologists as well. Raskolnikoff, for instance, Porphyrius Petrovitch, Svidragaïloff, Prince Muishkin, walk through his pages as highly self-conscious figures, and as people who have one and all looked deeply into the shadowy world of human motives, and have generalized. The crises in Dostoieffsky's books are, therefore, of a peculiarly complex kind. It is not only the human passions and desires that meet one another in a conflict more or less spontaneous; the whole wealth of psychological observation and generalization of the conflicting character is thrown into their armoury, and with that, too, they do battle. The resulting effect is more large, rich and subtle than anything else in modern fiction, but also, if the truth must be told, more impure, in the artistic sense, more sophisticated. Sometimes, so inextricably are passion and "psychology" mingled, that the crises are more like the duels of psychologists than the conflicts of human souls. In the end, one turns with relief to the pure tragedy of the classical writers, the tragedy which is not brought about by people who act like amateur psychologists.
115
Tolerance of Artists
No matter what their conscious theories may be, all artists are unconsciously aristocratic, and even intolerant in their attitude to other men. They are more blind than most people to theraison d'êtreof the politician, the business man and the philosopher—these unaccountable beings who will not acknowledge the primacy of Creation and Beauty. But at last they magnanimously conclude that these exist to form their audience,notthe subject-matter of their art—that is the modern fallacy!
116
Climate
There are natures exquisitely sensitive to their human environment. This man depresses them, they feel the vitality ebbing out of them in his presence; that other brings exhilaration, at the touch of his mind their powers increase and become creative. It is a question of atmosphere. The first has a wintry, grey soul; the latter carries a sun—theirsun—in his bosom. And these artists require sunlight and soft air, before the flowers and fruit can hang from their boughs. Every artist of this type should go to Italy or France and live there; or, failing that, create for himself an Italy or France of friends. Others require the tempest with its lowering skies. But that is easier to seek; they can generally find it within themselves.
117
Sensibility
It may be wisdom for the man of action to smother his griefs, and follow resolutely his course. But with the artist it is different. He should not close his heart against sorrow, for sorrow is of use to him; his task is to transfigure it; thus he makes himself richer. Every conquest of suffering which is attained by isolating the pang makes the artist poorer; the part of him so isolated dies: he loses bit by bit his sensitiveness, and how much does his sensitiveness mean to him! The artist is more defenceless than other men, and he must be so. For his sensitiveness should be such that the faintest rose-leaf of emotion or thought cannot touch his heart without evoking in him infinite delight or pain; and, at the same time, he should be able to respond to the great tempests and terrible moods of life. Great strength, great love, great productiveness, these are required if he is to endure his sensitiveness; alas, for him, if he have them not! Then he must suffer and suffer, until he has cut off one by one the sources of his suffering, until he has mutilated and lamed what is most godlike in him, and has made himself ordinary at last—or a Schopenhauerian.
118
The Artist's Enemy
I waited once beside a lake, created surely to mirror Innocence, so pure it was. The passage of a butterfly over it or the breath of a rose-leaf's fall was enough to stir its surface, infinitely delicate and sensitive. Yet tempests did not affright it, for it laughed and danced beneath the whip of the fiercest storm. And it could bury, as in a bottomless tomb, the stones thrown at it by the most spiteful hands; to these, indeed, it responded with a Puck-like radiating smile that spread until it broke in soft laughter upon its marge. So strong and delicate it lay, and yet, it seemed, so defenceless. Yet what could harm it? Storm, shower, sunshine, and darkness alike but ministered to it, and even the missiles of its enemies were lost in its boundless security. It seemed invulnerable. I returned years later, and looked once, looked and fled. For the lake had grown old, blind and torpid, so that even the light lay dead in it. Then I noticed that on every side, almost invisible, there were innumerable black streams oozing—infection! The tragedy of the artist.
119
Uniformity
In the mien of children there is sometimes to be noted a natural nobility and pride; they walk with the unconscious grace of conquerors. But this grace and freedom soon disappear, and when the child has become man there is nothing left of them: his bearing is as undistinguished as his neighbour's. Nowhere, now, is nobility of presence and movement to be found, except among children, the chieftains of half-barbarous peoples, and some animals. The farther man departs from the animal the less dignified he becomes, and the more his appearance conforms to a common level: indeed, civilization seems, on one side, to be a labourious attempt to arrive at the undistinguished and indistinguishable. Is Man, then, the mediocre animal par excellence? Only, perhaps, under an egalitarian régime. Wherever a hierarchy exists in Europe there is more of nobility of demeanour than elsewhere. Equality and humility are the great fosterers of the mediocre: and not only, alas! of the mediocre in demeanour. Who can tell how many proud, graceful and gallant thoughts and emotions have been killed by shame—the shame which the egalitarians and the humble have heaped upon them? And how much Art, therefore, has lost? Certainly, in the minds of children there are many brave, generous and noble thoughts which are never permitted to come to maturity. Ye must become as little children——.
120
Immortality of the Artist
An artist one day forgot Death, so entirely had he become Life's, rapt in a world of living contemplation; and, established there, he created a form. That hour was immortal, and, therefore, the form was immortal. This is the "timelessness" of true art-work; they are fashioned "in eternity," as Blake said, and so speak to the eternal in Man.
121
The Descent of the Artist
At the beginning of his journey he climbed daringly, leaping from rock to rock, exuberant, tireless, until he reached what he thought was his highest peak. Then began his descent, and, lo, immediately great weariness fell upon him. A friend of his wondered, Is he going downhill because he is tired? Or is he tired because he is going downhill?
122
Apropos the Cynic
He wrote with an assumption of extreme heartlessness, and the public said, "How tender his heart must be when he hides it undersucha disguise!" But what he was hiding all the time was his lack of heart.
123
Artist and Philosopher
In all ages the philosophers havepardonedthe artists their lack of depth, on account of their divine love of the beautiful. In our time, however, this only reason for pardoning them has disappeared, and they are now entirely deserving of condemnation. For the realists abjure equally thought—interpretation, and beauty—selection. To be an eye, with a fountain pen attached to it; that is their aim, successfully attained, alas! A single eye and not a single thought: the definition of the realist.
124
An Evil
Art is at the present day far too easy for comprehension, far too obvious. Our immediate task should be to make itdifficult,and the concern of a dedicated few. Thus only shall we win back reverence for it. When it is reverenced, however, it will then be time to extend its sway; but not until then. Art must be approached with reverence, or not at all. A democratic familiarity with it—such as exists among the middle classes,notamong the working classes, in whom reverence is not yet dead—is an abomination.
125
Modern Art Themes
How sordid are the themes which modern art has chosen for itself! The loss of money or of position, poverty, social entanglements—the little accidents which a thinker laughs at! Are modern artists as bourgeois as this? A coterie of shop-keepers? Tragic art has no concern with the accidental: that is the sphere of comedy. Tragedy should move inevitably once it has begun to revolve; it is beyond fashion, universal, essential; Fate, not Circumstance, is its theme. The presence of the accidental in a tragedy is sufficient to condemn it. For it is the inevitable, the "Fate" in Tragedy, that makes of it a heroic andjoyfulthing. It cannot be improvised like Comedy. It demands in its creator a sense of the eternal, just as Comedy, on the other hand, demands an exquisite appreciation of temporal fashion. Tragedy is the greater art; Comedy, perhaps, the more difficult. Our modern tragedies, however, are mainly about accidents, and very mean accidents; they are improvised misfortunes and their effect is depressing.
126
The Illusionists
How shallow are most artists! How childish! How subject to illusion! This novelist at the end of his novels leaves his characters in a Utopia, from which all sorrow and trial have been banished, a condition absolutely unreal, contemptible and absurd. And all his readers admire without thinking, and call the author profound! He is not profound, but shallow and commonplace. Except for his gift of mimicry, which he calls Art, he is just an average man. And, moreover, he is tired: the "happy ending" is his exhaustion speaking through his art, his will to stagnation and surrender. Works of art should only end tragically, or enigmatically, as in "A Doll's House," or at the gateway of a new ideal, as in "An Enemy of the People."
127
Majorities and Art
When it is said that in modern society poetic tragedy is out of season and cannotsucceed,an assumption is made which on literary grounds can never be admitted. It is that majorities count in literature as in politics; that "Brand" was a failure and "A Doll's House" a success. But from another point of view, "Brand" was the success, "A Doll's House" the failure. And the whole "problem" drama a failure with it, and all the realistic schools, as well—a failure! This iscertainlyhow the future historian of literature will regard it. Our era with its depressing "masterpieces" will be called the barren era, because the grandexception,great art, has not bloomed in it, because even our critics have judged contemporary art by a criterion of success instead of the eternal spiritual criterion: their championship of "problem" art proves it! In the meantime, then, realism is considered "the thing," and people speak pityingly of poetic tragedy. Only those forms of art which can "survive" in the struggle for existence are counted good—so deeply, so unwisely have we drunk at the Darwinian spring!
128
The Decay of Man
The aim of Art was once to enrich existence by the creation of gods and demi-gods; it is now to duplicate existence by the portrayal of men. Art has become imitation, Realism has triumphed. And how much has materialism had to do with this! In an age lacking a vivid ideal of Man, men become interesting. The eyes of the artist, no longer having an ideal to feed upon, are turned towards the actual, and imitation succeeds creation. Every one busies himself in the study of men, and Art becomes half a science, the artists actually collecting their data, as if they were professors of psychology! Theories glorifying men are born, and the cult of the average man arises, which is nothing but the exaltation of men at the expense of Man. In due time all ideals perish, only an inspiration towards averageness remains, and equality is everywhere enthroned. Art has no longer a heaven to fly to, there to create loftier heavens. In despair, she descends to earth and the ordinary, and for her salvationmustfind the ordinary interesting, mustmakethe ordinary interesting. Realism arises when ideals of Man decay: it is the egalitarianism of Art.
129
A New Valuation
But why do ideals of Man decay—whydidthe ideal of Man decay? Because there were no longer examples to inspire the artists in the creation of their grand, superhuman figures. Suspicion, envy, equality—call it what you will—had become strong: the great man could no longer fight it and remain great. By the radicals the genius was regarded as an insult to the remainder of mankind. And how ordinary he was, this genius, compared with the grand figures of the time of the Renaissance; that time when men were weighed and valued, when elevation and inequality were acknowledged and acted upon, and Man became greater in stature, with Art his Will to Greatness! Well, we must weigh men again; we must deny equality; we must affirm aristocracy—in everything but commerce and production, where democracy is really a return to the aristocratic tradition. And, you artists, you must turn from men to Man, from Realism to Myth. And if you can find in your age no example to inspire you to the creation of a great ideal of Man, then become your own examples! Man must be born again, if you would enter into your heaven.
130
The Man and the Hour
A. Let people say about aristocracy what they will, it remains true that Man generally is equal to the event. Events are the true stepping-stones on which Man rises to higher things. B. Ah! you are not speaking of Man, but of men, of the many. The great man, however, does not require an event to call his greatness forth. He is his own event—and also that of others!
131
The Lover to the Artists
Love idealizes the object. If you would create an ideal Art, must you not, then, learn to love? And that you are Realists—does it not prove that you have not Love?
132
Origin of the Tragic
Here is yet another guess at the origin of the tragic:
A man is told of some calamity, altogether unexpected, the engulfing of a vessel by the sea, an avalanche which wipes out a town, or a fire in which a family of little ones perish, leaving the father and mother unharmed and disconsolate; and at once the very grandest feelings awaken within him, he finds himself enlarged spiritually, and life itself is enriched for him—the people in the vessel and in the town, the children and the parents of the children, are raised to a little more than human elevation by the favouritism of calamity. Next day he hears that the news was false, and immediately, along with the feeling of relief, he experiences an unmistakable disappointment and loss; for all those grand emotions and the contemplation of life in that greater aspect are snatched from him! Perhaps in primitive times, when the means of disseminating news were more untrustworthy than they are today, disappointments of this kind would occur very often; and one day some rude poet, having noted the elevation which calamity brings, would in luxurious imaginationinventa calamity, in order to experienceat willthis enlargement of the soul. But a tale of calamity, being invented, would inevitably please the poet's hearers, both for the feelings it aroused and the grand image of Man it represented. So much for the origin and persistence—not the meaning—of the tragic.
133
Tragedy and Comedy
Tragedy is the aristocratic form of art. In it the stature of Man is made larger. The great tragic figures are superhuman, unapproachable: we do not sorrow with them, but for them, with an impersonal pity and admiration. And that is because Man, and not men, is represented by them: idealization and myth are, therefore, proper to their delineation.
But Comedy is democratic. Its subject is men, the human-all-too-human, the unrepresentative: it belittles men in a jolly egalitarianism. This static fraternity, this acceptance of men as they are, is resented by the aristocratic natures, who would make Man nobler; but to the average men it is flattering, for it proclaims that the great are absurd even as they, it unites men in a brotherhood of absurdity. Thus, all comedy is an involuntary satire, all tragedy an involuntary idealization of men.
Tragedy is the supreme affirmation of Life, for it affirms Life even in its most painful aspects, struggle, suffering, death; so that we say, "Yes, this, too, is beautiful!"Thatwas theraison d'êtreof classical tragedy—and not Nihilism!
Well, in which of these forms, Tragedy or Comedy, may our hopes and visions of the Future best be expressed? Surely in that which idealizes Man and says Yea to suffering, Tragedy, the dynamic form of Art.
134
Super-Art
In the works of some artists everything is on a slightly superhuman scale. The figures they create fill us with astonishment; we cannot understand how such unparalleled creatures came into being. When we contemplate them, in the works of Michelangelo or of Nietzsche, there arise unvoluntarily in our souls sublime dreams of what Man may yet attain. Our thoughts travel into the immeasurable, the undiscovered, and the future becomes almost an intoxication to us.
In Nietzsche, especially, this attempt to make Art perform the impossible—thissuccessfulattempt to make Art perform the impossible—is to be noted in every book, almost in every word. For he strains language to the utmost it can endure; his words seem to be striving to escape from the bonds of language, seeking to transcend language. "It is my ambition," he says in "The Twilight of the Idols," "to say in ten sentences what every one else says in a whole book—what every one else doesnotsay in a whole book." In the same way, when in his first book he wrote about Tragedy, he raised it to an elevation greater than it had ever known before, except, perhaps, in the works of Æschylus; when, in his essay upon "Schopenhauer as Educator," he adumbrated his conception of the philosopher, philosophy seemed to become a task for the understandings of gods; and when, having criticized the prevailing morality, he set up another, it seemed to his generation an impossible code for human beings, a code cruel, over-noble. Finally, when he wrote of Man, it was to create the Superman. He touched nothing which he did not ennoble. And, consequently, in Art his chosen form was Myth; he held it beneath the nobility of great art to create anything less than demi-gods; religion and art were in him a unity.
In super-art, in these works of Leonardo and Michelangelo, of Æschylus and Nietzsche, Man is incited again and again to surpass himself, to become more than "human."
135
Love Poetry
Love poetry, so long as it glorifies Love, is supremely worthy of our reverence. Everything that idealizes and transfigures Love, making it more desirable and full even of transcendental meaning, is of unquestionable advantage to mankind; on the other hand, a crudely physiological statement, even though this may beformallytrue, serves neither Love nor Life. It is assuredly not the function of art to treat Love in this way. On the contrary, amatory poetry by its idealization allures to Love; this is true even of such of it as is tragic: we are prepared by it to experience gladly even the suffering of Love. The only poetry that is noxious is that which bewails the "vanity" of Love, and that in which a deliberate sterility is adumbrated. These are decadent.
136
Literature and Literature
Literature that is judged by literary standards merely is not of the highest rank. For the greatest works are themselves the standards by which literature is judged. How, then, are they to be valued? By a standard outside of literature, by their consonance with that which is theraison d'êtreof literature? In them a far greater problem than any literary problem faces us, the problem, Why does literature exist? What is the meaning of literature?
Through whole generations men forget this problem, and literature becomes to them a specialized form of activity to be pursued for its own sake, a part of Man's soul, thrown off and become static and separate, with a sterile life of its own. The more shallow theory and practice of literature then come into being; Realism and Art for Art's sake flourish. But the eternal question always returns again, Why does literature exist? What is its meaning? And, then, the possibility of another blossoming of literature is not far away.
137
The Old Poet
An old poet who had lived in the good days when poets weremakers—of moralities and gods, among other things—lately re-visited the earth, and after a study of the very excellent exercises in literature to be found in our libraries, delivered himself thus:—
"How has our power decayed! Into litterateurs have we declined who were creators. Perish all literature that is only literature! Poets live to create gods; to glorify gods should all their arts of adornment and idealization be used. But I see here adornment without the object worthy of adornment; beautification for the sake of beautification; Art for Art's sake. These artists are only half artists. They have surely made Art into a game."
The critics did not understand him, and,therefore,disagreed. The artists thought he was mad, besides knowing nothing of æsthetics. The moral fanatics acclaimed him vociferously, mistaking him for a popular preacher. Only a philosophico-artistic dilettante listened attentively, and said, a little patronizingly, "He is wrong, but he is more right than wrong."
138
The Old Gods
Perhaps there is too much made of anthropomorphism. Man's first gods were not "human" gods; they were stars, animals, plants and the like. It was not until he became an artist that he made gods after his own form: anthropomorphism is just an artistic convention! For gods are in theircontentsuperhuman. There has never been a man like Jehovah or Zeus or Odin. The essential thing in them is that they embody an ideal, a fiction, adumbrating somethingmorethan Man. Religion is poetry in the grand style, and, as poetry, must have its conventions.
139
The Old Poets
In primitive times the poet was far more both of an inventor and a liar than he is at present. For many centuries the lies of the poets have been innocent lies, a convention merely, and to be recognized as such before "æsthetic" enjoyment can begin. But the lies the old poets told were believed literally—as they were meant to be! Yes, the poet at the beginning was just a liar, a great liar. How else, if he had not deceived Man, could he have peopled the heavens with Man's deities? And as the father of whole families of gods, he has done more to decide the fate of Humanity than all the philosophers, heroes and martyrs. These are only his servants, who explain war or die for his fictions. And not merely error, as Nietzsche held, but lying has from the earliest times been the most potent factor of progress. But not all lying; only the lies told out of great love have been creative and life-giving. Art, imagination, prophecy, hallucination, ecstasy, vision—all these were united in the first poets, the true creators.
140
The Creator Redivivus
The only modern who has dared to be a poet through and through, that is, a liar in the noble and tragic sense, is the author of the Superman. In Nietzsche, again, after centuries of divine toying, the poet has appeared in his greatrôleof a creator of gods, a figure beside whom the "poet" seems like nothing more than the page boy of the Muse.
141
Literature as Praise
A. Would you erase from the book of literature all that is not idealization and myth, you neo-moderns? Would you deprive us of all the charming, serious, whimsical, and divinely frivolous works which are human-all-too-human? B. If we could—a thousand times no! We would only destroy what defames Life. All that praises Life, all that enchants to Life, we would cherish as things holy. Idealization, it is true, is the highest form of praise, because it arises out of Love; but there are other forms. Modern Realism, however, is a calumny against Life.Écrasez l'infâme!
142
The Poet Speaks
How unhappy must all those poor mortals be who are not poets! They feel and cannot express. They are dumb when their soul would utter its divinest thoughts. Cloddish and fragmentary, they are scarcely human, these poor mortals! For one must be a poet to be altogether human. Yes! in the ideal society of the future every one will be a poet, even the average man!
143
Myth
The worst evil of our time is this, that there is nothing greater than the current average existence to which man can look; Religion has dried up, Art has decayed from an idealization of life into a reflection of it. In short, Art has become a passive thing, where once it was the "great stimulus to Life." The idealization and enchantment which the moderns have so carefully eliminated from it was precisely itsraison d'être.And modern Art, which sets out to copy life, has forgotten Art altogether, its origin, its meaning and its end.
Against this aimless Realism, we must oppose idealization, and especially that which is its highest expression, Myth. And let no one say that it is impossible at this stage in Man's history to resuscitate Myth. The past has certainly lost its mystery for us, and it was in the past, at the source of Humanity, that the old poets set their sublime fictions. But the future is still ours, and there, at Man's goal, our myths must be planted. And thither, indeed, has set the great literature of the last hundred years. Faust, Mephistopheles, Brand, Peer Gynt, Zarathustra—there were no greater figures in the literature of the last century—were all myths, and all forecasts of the future. The soil out of which literature grows, then, has not yet been exhausted! If we but break away from Realism, if we make Art symbolic, if we bring about a marriage between Art and Religion, Art will rise again. That this is possible, we who have faith in the Futuremustbelieve.
144
Creative Love
To us who nourish hopes for the future of Man, the important distinction to be drawn in Love is not that between the sacred and the profane. We ask, rather, Is our Love creative or barren? That Love should bring happiness, or union, or fulfilment, seems to us not such a very great matter! The will to create something, out of oneself, not oneself, whether it be in bodies, or in Art or Philosophy—that is the thing for ever worthy of our reverence.
There is another Love; that whose end is enjoyment. It is the enemy of creative Love. It is the Love which, in various forms, is known as Liberalism, or Humanitarianism, or the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Sympathy is its central dogma; and it is never tired of exalting itself at the expense of the other Love, which it calls cruel, senseless and unholy. But the same blasphemy is here repeated that Socrates once was guilty of and afterwards so divinely atoned. For it is not creative Love, but sympathetic Love, that is unholy. This would spare the beloved the pangs of love, even if, in doing so, it had to sacrifice the fruits of love. It springs from disbelief in existence. Life is suffering, it cries, suffering must be alleviated, and, therefore, Life must be abated, weakened and lamed! And this love is barren. But creative Love does not bring enjoyment, but rapture and pain. It is the will to suffer gladly; it finds relief from the pains of existence, not in alleviation, but in creation. This Love is, indeed, a Siren—we would not mitigate the awfulness of that symbol—luring Man to peril, perhaps to shipwreck. Yet, by the holiest law of his being, he listens, he follows. And, if his ears have been sealed by reason heunsealsthem again, he listens with his very soul, yielding to that which is for him certainly danger, perhaps Death, knowing that, even in Death, he will be affirming Life in the highest. This Love, the earnest of future greatness, this terrible, unconditional and innocent thing, wecannot butreverence.
145
Where Man is Innocent
There is one region in Man where innocence and a good conscience still reign—in the unconscious. Love and the joy in Love are of the unconscious. The rapture which Love brings is neither, as Schopenhauer said, merely a device to ensure the propagation of mankind, nor the race rejoicing in and through the individual to its own perpetuation; but the joy of unconscious Man, still innocent as before the Fall, with a good conscience enjoying the anticipatory rapture of new life. The instincts believe in Life entirely without questioning; doubt and guilt are simply not present in their world: it is reflection that makes sinners of us all.
The thoughts that come to us in the season of Love—we do not need to search in metaphysical heavens for their source. They arise from the very well spring, the very central ego of Man, out of the unconscious, the innocent, the real. Poetry, in that which is incomprehensible and mystical in it, arises from this also. So there is hope still for Man, all ye who believe not in primal depravity! The real man iseven nowinnocent: Original Sin is only mind deep, conscience deep. The instincts still behave as if Life-defaming doctrineswere not: they have not yet begun to mourn at the Spring and exult at the Autumn. And in the ecstasies of creative Love, whether it be of persons or of things, they continue to celebrate, without misgiving, their jubilee.
146
A Criterion
To find out whether a thing is decadent or no, let us henceforth put this question, Does it spring from creative Love? Is the Will to suffering incarnate in it, or the will to alleviate suffering? How much must by this standard be condemned! Humanitarianism and its child, Reform, or the desire to alleviate others' pain; Æstheticism and its step-brother, Realism, or the wish to alleviate one's own: these spring from the same source—a dearth of Love. For creative Love would enjoin, not sympathy with suffering, but the will to transcend suffering; not reform, whose aim is happiness, but revolution, whose aim is growth; not Art for Art's sake, an escape from Life into a stationary æsthetic world, but the creation, out of Life, of ever new Art; not Realism or the need to find men interesting; but idealization, or the desire tomakemen interesting. John Galsworthy and Oscar Wilde alike are decadent for this reason, that they lack Love. The real difference between them is that the one is a Collectivist, and sympathizes with the people, and the other is an Individualist, and sympathizes with himself. But both degrade Love to the level of Hedonism; both rebel against the cruelty of Love, desiring a Love which will not hurt, and, therefore,mustbe barren.
But wherever peoples, faiths or arts decay, the decay of Love—this strong, energetic Love—has come first. The current frivolousness about intellectual matters, the philandering of the literary coquettes, springs simply from a lack of Love. For the great problems demand passion for their comprehension, and our intellectuals dislike passion. In politics and in religion it is the same: creative Love has everywhere disappeared to be replaced by barren Sympathy. But is it possible by preaching to increase Love? Can it be willed into power? Well, praise may call it forth.
147
Love at the Renaissance
How may a great creative age like the Renaissance be interpreted on the hypothesis of Love? Shall it yet be found that the mainspring of the Renaissance was a newly discovered love of Life and, therefore, of Man?
In the Middle Ages that part of Life, then called God, had become isolated and abstract, and was worshipped to the detriment of all other Life; while Man was neglected where he was not belittled. Thus, a strong current of Man's love was diverted away from Man altogether, and the earth became dark and sterile. How was the earth to recapture its love again, and drink back into itself its rapture and creativeness? By a marriage in which God and the Universe were made one flesh; by the incorporation of God into Life, and, therefore, into Man. Hence arose the Pantheism of the Renaissance. To love Life with a good conscience, to love Life unconditionally, it was necessary to call Life God. Out of this Love sprang not only the art but the science of the Renaissance. For Man once more became interested in himself, and, from himself, in Life; ultimately discoveries were made and more than one New World was brought to light.
Perhaps it is the defect of all theistic, objective theologies that they become, sooner or later, barren. Only by being translated into the subjective do they regain their creative power: Pantheism is the remedy for Theism. Yet to Theism we owe this, that it lent intensity and elevation to Love. The Love of the Pantheists of the Renaissance was not ordinary human Love; it united in a unique emotion the love that had formerly been given to Man along with that which had formerly been given to God. It loved Man as God should be loved—a dangerous thing. But out of this love of God in Man it created, nevertheless, something great, somewhat less than the one, somewhat more than the other—the demi-god. The Renaissance was the age of the demi-gods.
148
Sympathy
Sympathy is Love bereft of his bow and arrows—but still blind.
149
A Self-Evident Proposition
This is certain, that God is Love. How, else, could He have created the Universe?
150
"God is Love"
When Jesus said, "God is Love," He denned a religion of Becoming. Was it not necessarily so? For Love is not something which maychooseto create; itmustcreate, it is fundamentally the will and the power to create. And Eternal Love, or God, is, therefore, eternal creation, eternal change, eternal Becoming. Consequently, there is no ultimate goal, no Perfection, except that which is realized at every moment in the self-expression of Love. A vision? A nightmare? Well, it depends whether one is in favour of Life, or of Death; whether one lives, or is lived. And, therefore, whether religion is subjective, or objective? Whether God is within us, or outside us? For so long as God is within us, we must create. That should be our Becoming!
151
Love and Mr. Galsworthy
The art of Mr. Galsworthy is such an ambiguous thing—half impersonal portrayal, half personal plea, theArt pour l'Artof a social reformer—and the subjects he chooses are so controversial—the abuses of society—that it is hard to place him as an artist. When "The Dark Flower" appeared, however, we thought we had him. Here was a great subject to his hand, an artist's question at last, Love. Alas! even in writing about it, he could not altogether exclude the reformer. Well, that itself, perhaps, told us something! However that may be, we do get here Mr. Galsworthy's conception of Love. It is an inadequate conception, a realist's conception: Love, with the meaning left out. The ardours, the longing, the disappointment and anguish—all thesymptoms—of Love are given; but not a hint that Love has any significance beyond the emotions it brings: that which redeems Love, creation, is ignored altogether! Mr. Galsworthy has seen that Love is cruel, but he has not seen beyond the cruelty: it is the ultimate thing to him. Well, that is perhaps the most that could be expected of a humanitarian trying to comprehend Love! In this book are all the symptoms of Humanitarianism—pity for every one, reform of institutions, suffering always considered the sufficient reason for abolishing or palliating things: a creed thrice inadequate, thrice shallow, thrice blind. Love would find relief from suffering in creation. But one feels that Mr. Galsworthy would abolish Life if he could. Humanitarianism unconsciously seeks the annihilation of Life, for in Life suffering is integral.
152
Mr. Thomas Hardy
In Mr. Hardy's conception of Love, unlike Mr. Galsworthy's, the contingency of creation is never absent; but to him creation is not a justification of the pangs of Love. It is an intensification of them; it is Love's last and worst indignity. But even when Love does not bestow this ultimate insult of creation, it cannot resist the satisfaction of torturing its victims; it is wanton and irrelevant in its distribution of pain. Mr. Hardy's books are filled with the torments of Love. Was it not fitting that he should aim his main indictment of Life against it, seeing that it is the trick whereby the blunder of Life is perpetuated? And so Mr. Hardy is certainly a decadent; but he is a great decadent—one of those who by the power of their denial of Life seem to make Life more profound and tragic, and inspire the healthy artists to an even greater love and reverence for it.
He is great, however, not by his theories, but by his art. The contrast between the sordidness of his thought and the splendidness of his art fills us sometimes with amazement. He sets out in his books to prove that Life is a mean blunder; and, in spite of himself, the tragedy of this blunder becomes in his hands splendid and impressive, so that Life is enriched even while it is defamed. Art, which isnecessarilyidealization and glorification, triumphs in him over even his most deeply founded conscious ideas. In all his greater books, it refutes his pessimism and turns his curses into involuntary blessings. So divine is Art!
153
Mr. George Moore
In writing about Love, Mr. Moore falls into the same realistic error as Mr. Galsworthy: he writes about its manifestations without knowledge of that which gives them meaning and connection. Love to him is just certain sensations—and not only Love, but everything else. Art is a sensation; religion, a sensation; the soul, a sensation. Take out of his books sensation, and there will be little of account left. He knows the religious feeling, but not religion: he always confounds spirituality with refined sensualism. So he knows the sensation of Love, but not Love.
But Mr. Moore is learned in the senses: he knows them in everything but their purity. Yes, even sensuality is in his books corrupted. How true this is we realize when in "Evelyn Innes" he compares one of his characters to a faun. We are almost distressed at this, for we feel that the word is not only coarsened, but used with a wrong meaning altogether: we feel that Mr. Moore is incapable of understanding what a faun is! These sophisticated, scented and somewhat damaged voluptuaries of his, in whose conversation there is always an atmosphere of expensive feminine lingerie, and who "know" women so intimately; how perverted must be the taste which can compare them with the hardy, nimble, unconscious creatures of ancient Greece! But Mr. Moore is much nearer in temper to Oscar Wilde than to the realists. He is an æsthete essentially, and a realist only in the second place, and only because he is an æsthete. The province of selected exquisite beauty had been exhausted by Wilde and his school; so Mr. Moore turned to the squalid, the commonplace and the diseased in Life, there to find his "æsthetic emotion." This explains the curious effect at once of colour and of drabness in his books. He is a perverted Wilde; doubly a decadent.
154
Mr. Bernard Shaw
Both the strength and the weakness of Mr. Shaw spring from a defect—his lack of Love. Freedom from illusion is his strength. He possesses common sense minus common sentiment; that, and probably nothing more; and that gives to his thought an appearance of subtlety, though it is not really subtle. Thus, his common sense tells him that Love is essentially creation. He sees through the illusions which Love spins round its purpose, because he does not see these illusions at all. Love, indeed, is known to him in all but its illusions; but who knows Love that knows not Love's illusions? Still, it is to his honour that he has conceived Love as creation. His weakness consists in that his attitude to Love is purely intellectual. He lacks Love more than any other man of his time. In grappling with the great problems of existence, it is not Love but the very absence of Love that has been his most useful weapon; and so he has seen much, but grasped nothing, created nothing. And because he has never loved, he can never be called an artist. For how can one who has not loved idealize? And how can one who has not idealized be an artist? In Mr. Shaw, Nature has gone out of her way to create the very antithesis of the artist.
What Nietzsche said about Socrates is true of Mr. Shaw even in a higher degree; that his reason is stronger than his instincts, and has usurped the place of his instincts. Without Love, he yet affirms creation. What can be his reason for doing so? Why should he wish Life to persist if he does not love Life? Is it in order that people might still converse wittily, and the epigram might not die? Or so that exceptional men might experience forever the joy of intellectual conflict, the satisfaction found in the ruthless exposure of fallacy and weakness, and the proud feeling of mental power? We know that Mr. Shaw regards the brain as an end—the purpose of Life being to perfect a finer and finer brain—and we know, too, that to Mr. Shaw the highest joy the brain can experience is not that of knowing, but of fighting. Knowledge to him is a weapon with which to wage war. Does he desire Life to continue so that controversy might continue? Well, let us look, then, for some other reason for his praise of Love. He himself lacks Love:—Can it be that he praises it for the same reason for which the Christian praises what he is not but would fain be? And his love of Love is then something pathetic, founded on "unselfishness"? And himself, a Romantic?
155
Mr. H. G. Wells
How much has Mr. Wells's scientific training had to do with his conception of Love? As a student of biology, it was natural he should see Love as sex. In all his theories, indeed, there is more of the scientist than of the artist. Scientific certainly, is his simple acceptance of sex as a fact, and his unhesitating association of it with generation, and of both with Love. The innocence of the scientist and not of the artist is his, an innocence Darwinian, not Goethean. And so, although his purpose is fine—to restore in his books an innocent conception of sexual Love—in doing so, his biology always runs away with his art. For he would render sex significant by reading it into all creation, as the meaning of creation; thus making the instrument more than the agent, the very meaning of the agent! But this robs both creation and sex of their significance. The way to restore an innocent conception of sexual Love is by reading creation into it, by seeing it as part of the universal Becoming, by carrying it away on the great purifying stream of Becoming. In spite of his genius, and still more of his cleverness, Mr. Wells here began at the wrong end. But it is doubtful whether any one in this generation has sufficient artistic power and elevation to express in art this conception of Love. Within the limits of Realism, especially of "physiological Realism," it certainly cannot be expressed. Nothing less than the symbolic may serve for it.
156
The Idealism of Love
The writer who discovered that love idealizes the object might have pushed his discovery a little further; for it is no less true that love idealizes the subject. None knows better than the poets how to take advantage of this self-idealization: one has only to read their love poems to find out how much more is said about the poet's beautiful feelings than about the object which presumably evoked them. Heine, particularly, was a shameless offender in this way. A woman was to him simply an excuse for seeing himself in imagination in a romantic attitude. But even with the others who appear less obtrusive and more disinterested the implication is the same. How elevated and even divine we must be, they seem to say, when we can feel in this manner; and how happy, when we are privileged to love an object of such loveliness! Yes! love has such power that it idealizes everything—even the subject!
157
Love and Becoming
The great Heraclitus propounded the doctrine of Becoming. Everything changes, is built up and dissolved; "stability" is only a little sluggishness in the flux of things. Zeus, the great child, the divine artist, constructs and destroys at his pleasure and for his amusement: all the worlds are his playthings. This conception of the Universe is innocent and beautiful, an artist's conception; but it is at the same time terrifying. And that because all meaning is left out of it; for all things without meaning, no matter how beautiful they may be, are in the end terrifying.
Nietzsche, the modern counterpart of Heraclitus, re-affirmed this doctrine; but he coupled with it the idea of creative Love: that is his chief distinction. Certainly, those who do not comprehend Nietzsche's Love do not comprehend Nietzsche. It is the key to his religion of Becoming. Becoming without Love is meaningless; Love without Becoming is meaningless. But, united, each gives its meaning to the other, each redeems the other. But have things a meaning in themselves? Is it not Man that forever interprets and interprets? Very well. But is not a thing incomplete without its interpretation? Is not its interpretation a part of it?
158
Static Values
Stagnant waters become noisome after a while. And stagnant values? Certainly within these eternal pools not a few repulsive things have been born: in Perfection, Sin; in Justice, Guilt. It was when human judgments were apotheosized and became Eternal Justice that guilt was insinuated into the core of Life. A falsehood, a presumption! What man found necessary at one moment in his history for his preservation, that, forsooth, was a law governing the spheres, the everlasting edict of God Himself. And when Life did not operate in conformity with this law, it was Life that must needs be guilty—a very ingenious method of world-vilification! It was human vanity that created the eternal verities. And how much have we suffered from them! For the deification of Things meant the diabolization of Man, nay, of Life itself. The metaphysician who created Heaven created Hell at the self-same moment; but, ever since, it has been Hell that has given birth to the metaphysicians. BeingcondemnsBecoming, and pollutes all Life with sin. So in the pools of Being we can no longer cleanse ourselves, and our preference for a doctrine of Becoming may be at bottom a hygienic preference.
159
The God of Becoming
Love is the God of Becoming. All the other gods are static gods, changeless for yesterday, today and tomorrow. But Love belongs altogether to the future. It is the deity of those who would create a future.
160
Utopias
It is sympathy that has built the Utopias. On every one of them is written, "Conflict and suffering are bad." Utopia is nothing but a place where men are happy, like how many heavens, an ideal of exhaustion. The thing that is omitted from it is always Love, for Love would shatter all Utopias and leave them behind. In Nowhere Man no longer creates, but enjoys. But creation and pain go hand in hand; for what is creation? The dissolution of the outworn, the birth of the new; a continuous fury in which the throes of death and of life are mingled. And Love calls Man to that fate.
What we need is an ideal of energy. But that must needs be an ideal of Man, not of Society; for Man is the dynamic, Society the static. Utopia is a goal, but the Superman is a goal beyond a goal; for, once attained, he is naught but the arrow to shoot intohisfuture. To attain the Superman is to surpass the Superman. Only ideals of this kind are unassailable by Love.
161
"Primacy of Things"
If we aim at a state of society in which static values, as far as we can know them, are conformed with, we aim at a state in which the creative impulse will not only be needless, but harmful. For does not belief in absolute values necessarily imply belief in a Utopia? And therefore in something antagonistic to Love? The metaphor of static Perfection, lovely as it is, has perhaps ruled us too long, and it is time we superseded it by another. Or is it still, as it has always been, a crime to substitute one metaphor for another? Even if it is Love that drives us on?
Progress conceived as a discovery of the unknown instead of as a pursuit of Perfection—might not that take us a long way? Did Nietzsche, perhaps, create his Superman, and give him his hardness and lightness for no other purpose than to carry out that task? Perfection is something that we have yet to discover! In this conception of progress all Utopias are transcended, all goals renounced, yet a set of values, a morality, is retained. The morality might be judged by the criterion, Does it aid us in our quest? A future of discovery, of creation and change, not of enjoyment: what a task for energetic Love does that open out! The Superman is a goal, but what is the Superman's goal? The Superman is something that must be surpassed!
162
Perfection
When men write largely of Perfection, as if it were a concept every one could understand, we are entitled to ask what exactly they mean. Do they mean a sort of synthesis or hotchpotch of the virtues in which they believe? Does X believe in a Christian and Y in a Nietzschean perfection? As a rule, conceptions of Perfection are offshoots of the morality prevalent at any given time. And, for action, people's conception of Perfection is much more important than Perfection itself. Therefore, let us ceaselessly repeat, Perfection is something still to be discovered! As for the current conception, is conflict an ingredient in it, or rest? Is it an ideal of Life, or a thing impossible, self-contradictory, static, an eternal stick with which to chastise existence? The first question to be asked.
163
Goals
When people speak of the unthinkableness of eternal Becoming which has no goal in Being, what they express is their longing for rest. It is unendurable, they feel, that Life, creation, change, should travel on their way forever: at the very thought their minds become tired, and Being is conjured up. Hitherto, our goals have not been resting stages, but eternal termini. But a true goal should not be a cul-de-sac, but the peak from which to descry our next goal. And so on eternally? Well, why not? Finality was born when the mind became weary at the thought of eternal ascent and found refuge in that of eternal rest. We have not fully learned yet how to live: struggle is still with us an argument against Life. What we need is perhaps a few re-incarnations! When we have learned to live, however, we shall welcome struggle as a necessary part of Life, and Becoming will be as desirable to us as Being now. And not till then shall we befitfor immortality.
164
Love and Sympathy
Love and Hatred are not the true opposites, but Love and Sympathy. Love is creation, that is to say, strife: a battle between the inanimate not yet dead, and the living still unborn. And it is also, therefore, the hatred of the one for the other. True, this hatred may not be of individuals but of things; but does that make it any more harmless? It is naïve democratic prejudice to think that hatred of things is lesswickedthan hatred of individuals; the very opposite is the case! The former is a thousand times more dangerous and destructive than the latter, which, indeed, is little more than an idiosyncrasy. Hatred is contained in and is an aspect of Love; it is Love seen as destruction. Well, only Love has a right to Hatred, for only Love can create.
Sympathy, however, would maintain in existence what should be dead, and would bid what should be living remain forever unborn. For in death and in birth alike there is pain. Sympathy—that is, Sympathy with thenecessarysuffering of existence—is a far greater danger than Hatred.
165
The Humanitarians
Hatred only to things, not to men; Love only to men, not to things: the formula of the half-and-half.
166
Love and the Virtues
Love is the mother of all the harder virtues, and that because she requires them. For how without them could she suffer to create, and endure the pain of Becoming? Everything dynamic must become virtuous. The soft, hedonistic, and degenerate in morality, however, arise from Sympathy. Sympathy needs the comfortable virtues; it seeks the static, for movement is pain, and pain, of the devil—if Sympathy will admit a devil! Its virtues are all in bad training.
167
The Other Side
He ceaselessly groaned that he was weary of life and wished to be rid of it; but all the time it was life that wished to be rid of him.
168
Love and Danger
The fear that danger might perish—the immortal fear of Nietzsche—need cause us no anxiety, could we but believe that creative Love will continue to exist. For Love is the great source of danger, and of the heroic in action and thought. If military wars were to disappear from the earth, danger need not be diminished; it might become emancipated and voluntary: it might be raised from a common necessity to an individual task. Perhaps in the distant future nations will become more pacific, men more war-like; peace will be maintained among nationsin orderthat individuals may have a free arena in which to carry on their great contests—"without powder," as Nietzsche said. The battles, born of Love, of the Brands and Zarathustras, not those of the Napoleons: that is what creative Love would envisage! But this prophecy has not sufficient foundation as yet, alas, to be called even a conjecture!
169
Fellowship and Love
Fellowship is of two kinds: that which is inspired by Sympathy, and that which is an expression of Love. Men unite for the mere satisfaction which union brings, or for that which is found in the struggle for more remote things—an aspiration or a vision. This latter thing, impractical and paradoxical, which lends Man what nobility he has—it was Love that gave it to him. Fellowship is the sublime attempt to complete the figure of Man. My friend is he who possesses the qualities which I lack and most need: in that sense, he creates me. Fellowship should enrichallwho partake of it, make their highest qualities productive, and throw bridges over the chasms of their defects. But the association of men for mere enjoyment is not worthy the name of Friendship. Sympathy is its parent.
170
The Paradox
It is possible to live nobly without Happiness, but not without Love. Love, however, confers the highest happiness. Is it because Love is indifferent to Happiness that Happiness flutters around it, and caresses it with its wings?
171
Moral Indignation
We should altogether eschew moral censoriousness in our contemplation of Life, for it is merely destructive. To destroy that which we cannot re-create in a better form is a crime. Only Love should condemn, for only Love can create. To bring the good into existence, or prepare the way of those who can create the good—that should be our only form of condemnation. In what consists the passion of the moral fanatic? In respect for the law, that it should not be violated. So he would extirpate whatever does not conform, even though thus he should destroy all life, and have no power to create it anew. No wonder he is gloomy: the vulture is not a bird of cheerful mien.
172
Morality and Love
Into what a dilemma falls the poor lover of life who goes to make the choice of morality! He sees that both great types of morality, the humanitarian and the military, the Hedonistic and the Spartan, lead in the end to Nihilism, the one by liquefying, the other by hardening. The former becomes too sensitive to endure Life; the latter, too insensible to feel it. Yet they were to serve Life; but they soon forgot the purpose for which they were formed; they exalted themselves as something higher than Life; they become "absolute," and a stumbling-block to existence. And this was because they were not founded in the beginning upon the very principle of Life, which is Love, but upon accidentals. The conflict between Morality and Love has accordingly been a conflict between the forces of Death and of Life: for "works" without Love are dead. Morality should be but the discipline which Love imposes upon itself in order to create. It should crown all the virtues which oppose a gallant and affirmative countenance to suffering and change, such as heroism, fortitude, joy, temperance. This morality is the antithesis of the humanitarian morality sprung from Sympathy.
173
Paradise Regained
If Life is but an expression of creative Love, then a morality founded upon Love must be the only true morality. And, moreover, in it ethics and the instincts are reconciled; innocence is grasped.
174
Love and Knowledge
If in all Life there is change, creation, Becoming, and if in our lives we know these things only in the interpretation of them which we call Love, must not Love be a necessary part of our knowledge of Life? Observation, investigation and the weighing of results may tell us muchaboutLife, and show it to us in many aspects, but it does not give us immediate knowledge. Is it possible to know Life? If Life be the expression of Love——! Upon that "if" depends everything. For if it is justified, then we have within us the clue to the riddle of existence. Perhaps here we discern the faint struggling for birth of that undiscovered faculty of the mind of which men speak. The comprehension of Life through Love! The profoundest of intuitions? The maddest of dreams?
175
Proverb and Commentary
Love is blind, but it is with excess of light.
176
Bad Thoughts
She was as perfect as a drop of dew or a beam of light; a pure thought of God, delicate, spontaneous and finished. There was nothing misshapen in body or soul; Love did well to create such a being. But the others, the crooked, blind and defiled! Are these the bad thoughts of God? From whence do they come? Whither do they go? Conceived in darkness, born for destruction?
177
Love and Sympathy
We must not think of Love as a mere concept. For it is something more real than Life itself: the very Life of Life, the very soul of Becoming. It is a force both spiritual and physical, but transcending the distinction of spiritual and physical. We must not conceive Love as a thing akin to Sympathy. It is not humanitarian or even human; it is a force as unsullied by humanity as the mountain winds or the tides of the ocean. Nevertheless, it is within Man, just as it is within the stars and seas; a great creative, destructive, transforming and purifying force; beyond Good and Evil as the dew and the lightning are. This is the power that is known by Man in his moments of love. He is then free to create and enjoy, as if he were re-born, with a will new, joyful and innocent. But seldom does he attain this knowledge: his moments of exultation are brief. Yet Love has not on that account lost any of its potence. Man may decay and become corrupt; but Love remains unalterable, forever pure, incapable of corruption.
178
Multum in Parvo
You are but a drop in the ocean of Life. True: but it is in the oceanof Life!
179
Love and the Senses
When one loves, the distinction between soul and body is passed. In Love alone is the dream of Goethe, Heine, and the moderns realized: here the reconciliation of the spirit and the senses is celebrated in perfect innocence. For Love irradiates and makes fragrant the body in which it dwells, and raises it aloft to sit by its brother the soul.
180
Love and Innocence
Life takes us back to its bosom when we love. The heavens, the earth and the race of men no longer appear things external and hostile, against which we must arm ourselves. We return from exile in personality; our thought sweeps to the farthest horizons, and plunges into the deepest gulfs of existence, at home in all places. The "external" is no longer external: we contemplate it from the inside, we gaze through its eyes. For the very principle of Life, of which all living things are the expression, has been apprehended by us. Our personality has been emancipated. This feeling of universal comprehension is called Innocence.
181
Love and the Fall
Has the fable of the Fall still another interpretation for us? Was the Fall of Man the fall from Love? When the feeling of universal comprehension was lost, personality in the individualistic sense arose. And Sin was the child of this Individualism. To the first man bereft of Love, the earth assumed a terrible mien; nature glared at him with a million baleful eyes: he became an outcast in his home. No longer knowing the earth or other men, he experienced terror, hatred and despair. To protect himself against existence, he created Love's substitute, morality. And with morality arose sin, and perished innocence.
182
Love and its Object
Nietzsche's psychology was wrong when he spoke of Love as a narrowly egoistic thing isolating two people and making them indifferent to every one else. There is too much of the philosopher and too little of the psychologist in this observation. For mankind cannot be loved, Life cannot be loved, until One has been loved. Only lovers can generate such wealth of life that it overflows, enriching their friends, their enemies, all the world. To love one is to love all.
183
Freedom in Love
In true love there is a feeling of entire freedom. Is it because the lovers have by a divine chance found their true path, have become a pulse in the very heart of Life? If Love is the principle of Life, then in Love alone is perfect freedom. Ethics and instinct become one. This is the road that leads beyond good and evil: Man must learn to love.
184
Love and the Sensualists
On those who affirm Life as innocent and holy, there is an obligation laid. Their lives must be innocent: Life must be to them a sustained act of worship. How many of them have been lacking just here! Heine failed, in spite of his real nobility. Goethe, however, attained unity and sincerity; and Nietzsche was a figure of beautiful integrity and innocence. They were neither of them mere "writers." Nor must we be: there is upon us the compulsion to prove that a life of innocence is possible. And as a first step, we must separate ourselves from those who, before they have sought innocence, praise the senses. For they confuse and defile everything.