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| <title>On Doing the Right Thing</title> | <> | <title></title> |
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| <p class="cht" id="ch1"><i>Artemus Ward</i><a href="#fn_1" id="fn1"><sup>1</sup></a></p> | <> | <h1 title="Artemus Ward">Artemus Ward<a href="#fn1" id="ft1">[1]</a></h1> |
| <p class="dp-para"><span class="dp">C</span><small>HARLES</small> F<small>ARRAR</small> B<small>ROWNE</small>, known to the world as Artemus Ward, was born ninety years ago in Waterford, Maine. He died at an age when most of us are only beginning to mature—thirty-three. Little more can be told of him by way of formal biography. Mr. Don C. Seitz lately employed himself upon a labour of love by seeking out and publishing all that is known, probably, of the externalities of Ward’s life. Mr. Seitz has made the most of what was put before him, and in so doing he has done good service to the history of American letters; yet one closes his fine volume with a keen sense of how little he had to do with, a sense of the slightness and insignificance of his material. All Ward’s years were <i>Wander-jahre;</i> he had no schooling, he left a poor rural home at sixteen to work in neighbouring printing-offices; he tramped West and South as a compositor and reporter; he wrote a little, lectured a little, gathered up odds and ends of his writings and dumped them in a woeful mess upon the desk of Carleton, the publisher, to be brought out in two or three slender volumes; he went to New York, then to London, saw as much of collective human life in those centres as he had energy to contemplate; he wrote a few pages for the old <i>Vanity Fair</i> and for <i>Punch</i> gave a few lectures in Dodworth Hall on Broadway and Egyptian Hall on Piccadilly; and then he died. Little enough of the <i>pars magna fui</i> is to be found here for the encouragement of a biographer; Mr. Seitz, I repeat, is to be congratulated on his intrepidity. It is surely a remarkable thing that one whose experience was limited by the span of thirty-three years, whose literary output was correspondingly scanty, and whose predicable hold upon the future was as slight and hazardous as Mr. Seitz shows Ward’s to have been, should have managed to live nearly a century; and it is perhaps more remarkable that he should have done it in a civilization like ours, which is not over-careful with literary reputations and indeed does not concern itself deeply with spiritual achievement or spiritual activity of any kind.</p> | <> | <p class="noindent"><span class="raisedcap">C</span><span class="smallcaps">harles Farrar Browne</span>, known to the world as Artemus Ward, was born ninety years ago in Waterford, Maine. He died at an age when most of us are only beginning to mature—thirty-three. Little more can be told of him by way of formal biography. Mr. Don C. Seitz lately employed himself upon a labour of love by seeking out and publishing all that is known, probably, of the externalities of Ward’s life. Mr. Seitz has made the most of what was put before him, and in so doing he has done good service to the history of American letters; yet one closes his fine volume with a keen sense of how little he had to do with, a sense of the slightness and insignificance of his material. All Ward’s years were <i>Wanderjahre</i>; he had no schooling, he left a poor rural home at sixteen to work in neighbouring printing-offices; he tramped West and South as a compositor and reporter; he wrote a little, lectured a little, gathered up odds and ends of his writings and dumped them in a woeful mess upon the desk of Carleton, the publisher, to be brought out in two or three slender volumes; he went to New York, then to London, saw as much of collective human life in those centres as he had energy to contemplate; he wrote a few pages for the old <i>Vanity Fair</i> and for <i>Punch</i>, gave a few lectures in Dodworth Hall on Broadway and Egyptian Hall on Piccadilly; and then he died. Little enough of the <i>pars magna fui</i> is to be found here for the encouragement of a biographer; Mr. Seitz, I repeat, is to be congratulated on his intrepidity. It is surely a remarkable thing that one whose experience was limited by the span of thirty-three years, whose literary output was correspondingly scanty, and whose predicable hold upon the future was as slight and hazardous as Mr. Seitz shows Ward’s to have been, should have managed to live nearly a century; and it is perhaps more remarkable that he should have done it in a civilization like ours, which is not over-careful with literary reputations and indeed does not concern itself deeply with spiritual achievement or spiritual activity of any kind.</p> |
| <p>Yet that is what Artemus Ward has somehow managed to do, and Mr. Seitz is on hand with a bibliography of eighteen pages, closely printed in small type, to prove it. Some measure of proof, too, is probably to be found in the fact that a new issue of Ward’s complete works came out in London two years ago, and that an American firm has taken thought to publish this present volume. How, then, has Ward contrived to live so long? As a mere fun-maker, it is highly improbable that he could have done it. Ward is officially listed as the first of the great American humorists; Mr. Albert Payson Terhune even commemorates him as the man “who taught Americans to laugh.” This is great praise; and one gladly acknowledges that the humorists perform an immense public service and deserve the most handsome public recognition of its value. In the case of Ward, it is all to Mr. Terhune’s credit that he perceives this. Yet as one reads Ward’s own writings, one is reminded that time’s processes of sifting and shaking-down are inexorable, and one is led to wonder whether, after all, in the quality of sheer humorist, Artemus Ward can quite account for his own persistent longevity. In point of the power sheerly to provoke laughter, the power sheerly to amuse, distract and entertain, one doubts that Ward can be said so far to transcend his predecessors, Shillaber and Derby. In point of wit and homely wisdom, of the insight and shrewdness which give substance and momentum to fun-making, it would seem that Ward’s contemporary, Henry W. Shaw, perfectly stands comparison with him. The disparity, at all events, is by no means so obvious as to enable one to say surely that the law of the survival of the fittest must take its course in Ward’s favour. One is therefore led to suspect either that Ward’s longevity is due to some quality which he possessed apart from his quality as humorist, some quality which has not yet, perhaps, been singled out and remarked with sufficient definiteness, or else that it is due to the blind play of chance.</p> | <> | <p>Yet that is what Artemus Ward has somehow managed to do, and Mr. Seitz is on hand with a bibliography of eighteen pages, closely printed in small type, to prove it. Some measure of proof, too, is probably to be found in the fact that a new issue of Ward’s complete works came out in London two years ago, and that an American firm has taken thought to publish this present volume. How, then, has Ward contrived to live so long? As a mere funmaker, it is highly improbable that he could have done it. Ward is officially listed as the first of the great American humorists; Mr. Albert Payson Terhune even commemorates him as the man “who taught Americans to laugh.” This is great praise; and one gladly acknowledges that the humorists perform an immense public service and deserve the most handsome public recognition of its value. In the case of Ward, it is all to Mr. Terhune’s credit that he perceives this. Yet as one reads Ward’s own writings, one is reminded that time’s processes of sifting and shaking-down are inexorable, and one is led to wonder whether, after all, in the quality of sheer humorist, Artemus Ward can quite account for his own persistent longevity. In point of the power sheerly to provoke laughter, the power sheerly to amuse, distract and entertain, one doubts that Ward can be said so far to transcend his predecessors, Shillaber and Derby. In point of wit and homely wisdom, of the insight and shrewdness which give substance and momentum to fun-making, it would seem that Ward’s contemporary, Henry W. Shaw, perfectly stands comparison with him. The disparity, at all events, is by no means so obvious as to enable one to say surely that the law of the survival of the fittest must take its course in Ward’s favour. One is therefore led to suspect either that Ward’s longevity is due to some quality which he possessed apart from his quality as humorist, some quality which has not yet, perhaps, been singled out and remarked with sufficient definiteness, or else that it is due to the blind play of chance.</p> |
| <p>Let us look into this a little, for the sake of making clear the purpose for which this book is issued. I have already said that Ward has become a special property, and that he can never again be a popular property, at least until the coming of that millennial time when most of our present dreams of human perfectability are realized. I have no wish to discourage my publishers, but in fairness I have had to remind them that this delectable day seems still, for one reason or another, to be quite a long way off, and that meanwhile they should not put any very extravagant expectations upon the sale of this volume, but content themselves as best they may with the consciousness that they are serving a vital interest, really the ultimate interest, of the saving Remnant. Ward is the property of an order of persons—for order is the proper word, rather than class or group, since they are found quite unassociated in any formal way, living singly or nearly so, and more or less as aliens, in all classes of our society—an order which I have characterized by using the term <i>intelligence.</i> If I may substitute the German word <i>Intelligenz,</i> it will be seen at once that I have no idea of drawing any supercilious discrimination as between, say, the clever and the stupid, or the educated and the uneducated. <i>Intelligenz</i> is the power invariably, in Plato’s phrase, to see things as they are, to survey them and one’s own relations to them with objective disinterestedness, and to apply one’s consciousness to them simply and directly, letting it take its own way over them uncharted by prepossession, unchannelled by prejudice, and above all uncontrolled by routine and formula. Those who have this power are everywhere; everywhere they are not so much resisting as quietly eluding and disregarding all social pressure which tends to mechanize their processes of observation and thought. Rabelais’s first words are words of jovial address, under a ribald figure, to just this order of persons to which he knew he would forever belong, an order characterized by <i>Intelligenz;</i> and it is to just this order that Ward belongs.</p> | <> | <p>Let us look into this a little, for the sake of making clear the purpose for which this book is issued. I have already said that Ward has become a special property, and that he can never again be a popular property, at least until the coming of that millennial time when most of our present dreams of human perfectability are realized. I have no wish to discourage my publishers, but in fairness I have had to remind them that this delectable day seems still, for one reason or another, to be quite a long way off, and that meanwhile they should not put any very extravagant expectations upon the sale of this volume, but content themselves as best they may with the consciousness that they are serving a vital interest, really the ultimate interest, of the saving Remnant. Ward is the property of an order of persons—for order is the proper word, rather than class or group, since they are found quite unassociated in any formal way, living singly or nearly so, and more or less as aliens, in all classes of our society—an order which I have characterized by using the term <i>intelligence</i>. If I may substitute the German word <i>Intelligenz</i>, it will be seen at once that I have no idea of drawing any supercilious discrimination as between, say, the clever and the stupid, or the educated and the uneducated. <i>Intelligenz</i> is the power invariably, in Plato’s phrase, to see things as they are, to survey them and one’s own relations to them with objective disinterestedness, and to apply one’s consciousness to them simply and directly, letting it take its own way over them uncharted by prepossession, unchannelled by prejudice, and above all uncontrolled by routine and formula. Those who have this power are everywhere; everywhere they are not so much resisting as quietly eluding and disregarding all social pressure which tends to mechanize their processes of observation and thought. Rabelais’s first words are words of jovial address, under a ribald figure, to just this order of persons to which he knew he would forever belong, an order characterized by <i>Intelligenz</i>; and it is to just this order that Ward belongs.</p> |
| <p>The critical function which spirits like Ward perform upon this unorganized and alien order of humanity is twofold; it is not only clearing and illuminating, but it is also strengthening, reassuring, even healing and consoling. They have not only the ability but the <i>temper</i> which marks the true critic of the first order; for, as we all know, the failure which deforms and weakens so much of the able second-rate critic’s work is a failure in temper. Take, for example, by way of a comparative study in social criticism, Rabelais’s description of the behaviour of Diogenes at the outbreak of the Corinthian War, and put beside it any piece of anti-militarist literature that you may choose; put beside it the very best that M. Rolland or Mr. Norman Angell or even Count Tolstoy himself can do. How different the effect upon the spirit! Or again, consider in the following pages the pictures which Ward draws of the village of Baldwinsville under stress of the Civil War. Not one item is missing of all that afflicted the person of <i>Intelligent</i> in every community at some time in the last ten years. Ward puts his finger as firmly as Mr. Bertrand Russell and Mr. H. L. Mencken have put theirs, upon all the meanness, low-mindedness, greed, viciousness, bloodthirstiness, and homicidal mania that were rife among us—and upon their exciting causes as well—but the person of <i>Intelligent</i> turns to him, and instead of being further depressed, as Mr. Russell and Mr. Mencken depress him, instead of being further overpowered by a sense that the burdens put upon the spirit of man are greater than it can bear, he is lifted out of his temporary despondency and enervation by a sight of the long stretch of victorious humanity that so immeasurably transcends all these matters of the moment. Such is the calming and persuasive influence of the true critical temper, that one immediately perceives Ward to be regarding all the untowardness of Baldwinsville <i>sub specie œternitatis,</i> and one gratefully submits to his guidance towards a like view of one’s own circumstances.</p> | <> | <p>The critical function which spirits like Ward perform upon this unorganized and alien order of humanity is twofold; it is not only clearing and illuminating, but it is also strengthening, reassuring, even healing and consoling. They have not only the ability but the <i>temper</i> which marks the true critic of the first order; for, as we all know, the failure which deforms and weakens so much of the able second-rate critic’s work is a failure in temper. Take, for example, by way of a comparative study in social criticism, Rabelais’s description of the behaviour of Diogenes at the outbreak of the Corinthian War, and put beside it any piece of anti-militarist literature that you may choose; put beside it the very best that M. Rolland or Mr. Norman Angell or even Count Tolstoy himself can do. How different the effect upon the spirit! Or again, consider in the following pages the pictures which Ward draws of the village of Baldwinsville under stress of the Civil War. Not one item is missing of all that afflicted the person of <i>Intelligenz</i> in every community at some time in the last ten years. Ward puts his finger as firmly as Mr. Bertrand Russell and Mr. H. L. Mencken have put theirs, upon all the meanness, low-mindedness, greed, viciousness, bloodthirstiness, and homicidal mania that were rife among us—and upon their exciting causes as well—but the person of <i>Intelligenz</i> turns to him, and instead of being further depressed, as Mr. Russell and Mr. Mencken depress him, instead of being further overpowered by a sense that the burdens put upon the spirit of man are greater than it can bear, he is lifted out of his temporary despondency and enervation by a sight of the long stretch of victorious humanity that so immeasurably transcends all these matters of the moment. Such is the calming and persuasive influence of the true critical temper, that one immediately perceives Ward to be regarding all the untowardness of Baldwinsville <i>sub specie œternitatis</i>, and one gratefully submits to his guidance towards a like view of one’s own circumstances.</p> |
| <p>The essential humanity of Abraham Lincoln, may be largely determined in one’s own mind, I think, by the fact that he made just this use of Artemus Ward. Mr. Seitz tells us how, in the darkest days of the Civil War, Lincoln read the draft of his Emancipation Proclamation at a special meeting of his Cabinet, and, to the immense scandal and disgust of his associates, prefaced it by reading several pages from Ward. The incident is worth attention for the further establishment of the distinction drawn among men by the quality of <i>Intelligent.</i> Seward, Chase, Stanton, Blair, had ability, they had education; but they had not the free, disinterested play of consciousness upon their environment, they did not instinctively tend to see things as they are, they thought largely by routine and formula, they were pedantic, <i>unintelligent</i>—that is precisely the word that Goethe, the greatest of critics, would have applied to them at once. Upon them then, naturally, Lincoln’s performance made the impression of mere impudent levity; and thus one is directly led to see great force in Ward’s sly suggestion that Lincoln should fill up his Cabinet with showmen! Alas! how often the civilized spirit is moved to wish that the direction of public affairs might be taken out of the hands of those who in their modesty are fond of calling themselves “practical” men, and given over to the artists, to those who at least have some theoretical conception of a satisfying technique of living, even though actually they may have gone no great way in the mastery of its practice.</p> | <> | <p>The essential humanity of Abraham Lincoln, may be largely determined in one’s own mind, I think, by the fact that he made just this use of Artemus Ward. Mr. Seitz tells us how, in the darkest days of the Civil War, Lincoln read the draft of his Emancipation Proclamation at a special meeting of his Cabinet, and, to the immense scandal and disgust of his associates, prefaced it by reading several pages from Ward. The incident is worth attention for the further establishment of the distinction drawn among men by the quality of <i>Intelligenz</i>. Seward, Chase, Stanton, Blair, had ability, they had education; but they had not the free, disinterested play of consciousness upon their environment, they did not instinctively tend to see things as they are, they thought largely by routine and formula, they were pedantic, <i>unintelligent</i>—that is precisely the word that Goethe, the greatest of critics, would have applied to them at once. Upon them then, naturally, Lincoln’s performance made the impression of mere impudent levity; and thus one is directly led to see great force in Ward’s sly suggestion that Lincoln should fill up his Cabinet with showmen! Alas! how often the civilized spirit is moved to wish that the direction of public affairs might be taken out of the hands of those who in their modesty are fond of calling themselves “practical” men, and given over to the artists, to those who at least have some theoretical conception of a satisfying technique of living, even though actually they may have gone no great way in the mastery of its practice.</p> |
| <p>Ward said of writers like himself that “they have always done the most toward helping virtue on its pilgrimage, and the truth has found more aid from them than from all the grave polemists and solid writers that have ever spoken or written.... They have helped the truth along <i>without encumbering it with themselves.”</i> I venture to italicize these remarkable words. How many good causes there are, to be sure, that seem hopelessly condemned and nullified by the personality of those who profess them! One can think of any number of reforms, both social and political, that one might willingly accept if only one need not accept their advocates too. Bigotry, arrogance, intolerance, self-assurance, never ran higher over public affairs than in Ward’s day, yet he succeeded in putting upon all public questions the precise critical estimate that one puts upon them now in the perspective of fifty years; its correspondence with the verdict of history is extraordinarily complete. It would be nothing remarkable if one should arrive now at a correct critical estimate of the Negro question, for example, or of the policy of abolition, or of the character and qualities of public men of the day, or of the stock phrases, the catchwords and claptrap that happened for the time being to be the stock-in-trade of demagoguery; but it is highly remarkable that a contemporary should have had a correct critical estimate of them, and that he should have given to it an expression so strong and so consistent, and yet so little <i>encumbered with himself</i> as to be wholly acceptable.</p> | <> | <p>Ward said of writers like himself that “they have always done the most toward helping virtue on its pilgrimage, and the truth has found more aid from them than from all the grave polemists and solid writers that have ever spoken or written. . . . They have helped the truth along <i>without encumbering it with themselves</i>.” I venture to italicize these remarkable words. How many good causes there are, to be sure, that seem hopelessly condemned and nullified by the personality of those who profess them! One can think of any number of reforms, both social and political, that one might willingly accept if only one need not accept their advocates too. Bigotry, arrogance, intolerance, self-assurance, never ran higher over public affairs than in Ward’s day, yet he succeeded in putting upon all public questions the precise critical estimate that one puts upon them now in the perspective of fifty years; its correspondence with the verdict of history is extraordinarily complete. It would be nothing remarkable if one should arrive now at a correct critical estimate of the Negro question, for example, or of the policy of abolition, or of the character and qualities of public men of the day, or of the stock phrases, the catchwords and claptrap that happened for the time being to be the stock-in-trade of demagoguery; but it is highly remarkable that a contemporary should have had a correct critical estimate of them, and that he should have given to it an expression so strong and so consistent, and yet so little <i>encumbered with himself</i> as to be wholly acceptable.</p> |
| <p>Really, there are very few of the characteristic and distinctive qualities of American life that Ward’s critical power left untouched. I read somewhere lately—I think in one of Professor Stuart P. Sherman’s deliverances, though I am not quite sure—that Americans are just now very much in the mood of self-examination, and that their serious reading of novelists like Mr. Sinclair Lewis or Mr. Sherwood Anderson, and of essayists like Mr. Ludwig Lewisohn or Mr. Mencken, is proof that they are in that mood. I have great doubts of all this; yet if it be true, I can but the more strongly urge them to reexamine the work of a first-rate critic, who fifty years ago drew a picture of our civilization that in all essential aspects is still accurate. Ward represents the ideal of this civilization as falling in with one only of the several instincts that urge men onward in the quest of perfection, the instinct of expansion. The claim of expansion is abundantly satisfied by Ward’s America; the civilization about him is cordial to the instinct of expansion, fosters it, and makes little of the obligation to scrupulousness or delicacy in its exercise. Ward takes due pride in relating himself properly to the predominance of this instinct; he says that by strict attention to business he has “amarsed a handsum Pittance,” and that when he has enough to permit him to be pious in good style, like his wealthy neighbours, he intends to join the Baldwinsville church. There is an ideal of civilized life for you, a conception of the progressive humanization of man in society! For the claim of instincts other than the instinct of expansion, Ward’s America does nothing. It does nothing for the claim of intellect and knowledge (aside from purely instrumental knowledge) nothing for the claim of beauty and poetry, the claim of morals and religion, the claim of social life and manners.</p> | <> | <p>Really, there are very few of the characteristic and distinctive qualities of American life that Ward’s critical power left untouched. I read somewhere lately—I think in one of Professor Stuart P. Sherman’s deliverances, though I am not quite sure—that Americans are just now very much in the mood of self-examination, and that their serious reading of novelists like Mr. Sinclair Lewis or Mr. Sherwood Anderson, and of essayists like Mr. Ludwig Lewisohn or Mr. Mencken, is proof that they are in that mood. I have great doubts of all this; yet if it be true, I can but the more strongly urge them to reëxamine the work of a first-rate critic, who fifty years ago drew a picture of our civilization that in all essential aspects is still accurate. Ward represents the ideal of this civilization as falling in with one only of the several instincts that urge men onward in the quest of perfection, the instinct of expansion. The claim of expansion is abundantly satisfied by Ward’s America; the civilization about him is cordial to the instinct of expansion, fosters it, and makes little of the obligation to scrupulousness or delicacy in its exercise. Ward takes due pride in relating himself properly to the predominance of this instinct; he says that by strict attention to business he has “amarsed a handsum Pittance,” and that when he has enough to permit him to be pious in good style, like his wealthy neighbours, he intends to join the Baldwinsville church. There is an ideal of civilized life for you, a conception of the progressive humanization of man in society! For the claim of instincts other than the instinct of expansion, Ward’s America does nothing. It does nothing for the claim of intellect and knowledge (aside from purely instrumental knowledge) nothing for the claim of beauty and poetry, the claim of morals and religion, the claim of social life and manners.</p> |
| <p>Our modern school of social critics might therefore conceivably get profit out of studying Ward’s view of American life, to see how regularly he represents it, as they do, as manifesting an extremely low type of beauty, a factitious type of morals, a grotesque and repulsive type of religion, a profoundly imperfect type of social life and manners. Baldwinsville is overspread with all the hideousness, the appalling tedium and enervation, that afflict the sensitive soul of Mr. Sinclair Lewis. The young showman’s courtship of Betsy Jane Peasley exhausts its resources of romance and poetry; its <i>beau ideal</i> of domesticity is completely fulfilled in their subsequent life together—a life fruitful indeed in certain wholesome satisfactions, but by no means such as a “well-formed mind would be disposed to relish.” On the side of intellect and knowledge, Baldwinsville supports the editor of the <i>Bugle</i> as contentedly as New York supports Mr. Ochs and Mr. Munsey, and to quite as good purpose; it listens to the schoolmaster’s views on public questions as uncritically as New York listens to Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler’s, and to quite as good purpose. Baldwinsville’s dominant type of morals is as straitly legalistic, formal, and superficial as our own; its dominant type of religion is easily recognizable as the hard, dogged, unintelligent fanaticism with which Zenith confronted Mr. Sinclair Lewis. We easily recognize the “dissidence of Dissent and the protestantism of the Protestant religion,” which now inspires the Anti-Saloon League, and which informs and animates the gentle ministrations of the Ku-Klux Klan.</p> | <> | <p>Our modern school of social critics might therefore conceivably get profit out of studying Ward’s view of American life, to see how regularly he represents it, as they do, as manifesting an extremely low type of beauty, a factitious type of morals, a grotesque and repulsive type of religion, a profoundly imperfect type of social life and manners. Baldwinsville is over-spread with all the hideousness, the appalling tedium and enervation, that afflict the sensitive soul of Mr. Sinclair Lewis. The young showman’s courtship of Betsy Jane Peasley exhausts its resources of romance and poetry; its <i>beau ideal</i> of domesticity is completely fulfilled in their subsequent life together—a life fruitful indeed in certain wholesome satisfactions, but by no means such as a “well-formed mind would be disposed to relish.” On the side of intellect and knowledge, Baldwinsville supports the editor of the <i>Bugle</i> as contentedly as New York supports Mr. Ochs and Mr. Munsey, and to quite as good purpose; it listens to the schoolmaster’s views on public questions as uncritically as New York listens to Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler’s, and to quite as good purpose. Baldwinsville’s dominant type of morals is as straitly legalistic, formal, and superficial as our own; its dominant type of religion is easily recognizable as the hard, dogged, unintelligent fanaticism with which Zenith confronted Mr. Sinclair Lewis. We easily recognize the “dissidence of Dissent and the protestantism of the Protestant religion,” which now inspires the Anti-Saloon League, and which informs and animates the gentle ministrations of the Ku-Klux Klan.</p> |
| <> | <blockquote> | |
| <p class="indentsa">D<small>EAR</small> B<small>ETSY</small>: I write you this from Boston, “the Modern Atkins” as it is denomyunated, altho I skurcely know what those air.</p> | <p><span class="smallcaps">Dear Betsy</span>: I write you this from Boston, “the Modern Atkins” as it is denomyunated, altho I skurcely know what those air.</p> | |
| </blockquote> | ||
| <p>Nothing but that. Yet somehow when that little piece of exquisite raillery sinks in, it at once begins to put one into just the frame of mind and temper to meet properly the gentle, self-contained provincialism at which it was directed. Let the reader experiment for himself. Let him first recall the fearfully hard sledding he had on his way through, say, Mr. Barrett Wendell’s <i>History of American Literature,</i> or the recent volume of Mrs. Fields’s reminiscences; let him remember the groan of distress that now and then escaped him while reading Mr. Howells’s really excellent novel, <i>The Rise of Silas Lapham.</i> Then with this sentence in mind, let him try reading any one of the three books again, and see how differently it will impress him.</p> | <> | <p>Nothing but that. Yet somehow when that little piece of exquisite raillery sinks in, it at once begins to put one into just the frame of mind and temper to meet properly the gentle, self-contained provincialism at which it was directed. Let the reader experiment for himself. Let him first recall the fearfully hard sledding he had on his way through, say, Mr. Barrett Wendell’s <i>History of American Literature</i>, or the recent volume of Mrs. Fields’s reminiscences; let him remember the groan of distress that now and then escaped him while reading Mr. Howells’s really excellent novel, <i>The Rise of Silas Lapham</i>. Then with this sentence in mind, let him try reading any one of the three books again, and see how differently it will impress him.</p> |
| <p>After the same fashion one may make quite good headway with Mr. Villard’s biography of John Brown if one’s spirit is cleared and steadied by Ward’s inimitable critique of “Ossawatomie Brown, or, the Hero of Harper’s Ferry.” Amidst the squalor of our popular plays and popular literature, one preserves a decent equanimity by perusing Ward’s reviews of East Side theatricals and of Forrest’s “Othello,” and his parodies of the cheap and lurid romances of his day. Our popular magazines take on a less repellant aspect when one remembers how, after three drinks of New England rum, Ward “knockt a small boy down, pickt his pocket of a New York <i>Ledger,</i> and wildly commenced readin’ Sylvanus Kobb’s last Tail.” No better criticism of our ludicrous and distressing perversion of the religious instinct can be found than in his account of his visit to the Shakers, the Free Lovers, and the Spiritualists. Never was the depth and quality of routine patriotism more accurately measured than by this, from the account of his visit to Richmond after the surrender:</p> | <> | <p>After the same fashion one may make quite good headway with Mr. Villard’s biography of John Brown if one’s spirit is cleared and steadied by Ward’s inimitable critique of “Ossawatomie Brown, or, the Hero of Harper’s Ferry.” Amidst the squalor of our popular plays and popular literature, one preserves a decent equanimity by perusing Ward’s reviews of East Side theatricals and of Forrest’s “Othello,” and his parodies of the cheap and lurid romances of his day. Our popular magazines take on a less repellant aspect when one remembers how, after three drinks of New England rum, Ward “knockt a small boy down, pickt his pocket of a New York <i>Ledger</i>, and wildly commenced readin’ Sylvanus Kobb’s last Tail.” No better criticism of our ludicrous and distressing perversion of the religious instinct can be found than in his account of his visit to the Shakers, the Free Lovers, and the Spiritualists. Never was the depth and quality of routine patriotism more accurately measured than by this, from the account of his visit to Richmond after the surrender:</p> |
| <> | <blockquote> | |
| <p class="indentsa">I met a man today—I am not at liberty to tell his name, but he is an old and inflooential citizen of Richmond, and sez he, “Why! we’ve bin fightin agin the Old Flag! Lor bless me, how sing’lar!” He then borrer’d five dollars of me and bust into a flood of tears.</p> | <p>I met a man today—I am not at liberty to tell his name, but he is an old and inflooential citizen of Richmond, and sez he, “Why! we’ve bin fightin agin the Old Flag! Lor bless me, how sing’lar!” He then borrer’d five dollars of me and bust into a flood of tears.</p> | |
| </blockquote> | ||
| <> | <blockquote> | |
| <p class="indentsa">You know, Betsy, that when I first commenced my career as a moral exhibitor with a six-legged cat and a Bass drum, I was only a simple peasant child—skurce 15 summers had flow’d over my yoothful hed. But I had sum mind of my own. My father understood this. “Go,” he said, “Go, my son, and hog the public!” (he ment “knock ‘em,” but the old man was alius a little given to slang). He put his withered han’ tremblingly onto my hed, and went sadly into the house. I thought I saw tears tricklin’ down his venerable chin, but it might hav’ been tobacker jooce. He chaw’d.</p> | <p>You know, Betsy, that when I first commenced my career as a moral exhibitor with a six-legged cat and a Bass drum, I was only a simple peasant child—skurce 15 summers had flow’d over my yoothful hed. But I had sum mind of my own. My father understood this. “Go,” he said, “Go, my son, and hog the public!” (he ment “knock ’em,” but the old man was alius a little given to slang). He put his withered han’ tremblingly onto my hed, and went sadly into the house. I thought I saw tears tricklin’ down his venerable chin, but it might hav’ been tobacker jooce. He chaw’d.</p> | |
| </blockquote> | ||
| <p>But I must end these illustrations, which I have been tempted perhaps unduly to multiply and enlarge upon because their author has never yet, as far as I am aware, been brought to the attention of modern readers in the one capacity wherein he appears to me to maintain an open communication with the future—the capacity 22 of critic. In conclusion I cannot forbear remarking the spring, the abounding vitality and gusto, that pervade Ward’s work, and pointing out that here too he is with Rabelais and Cervantes. The true critic is aware, with George Sand, that for life to be fruitful, life must be felt as a <i>joy;</i> that it is by the bond of <i>joy,</i> not of happiness or pleasure, not of duty or responsibility, that the called and chosen spirits are kept together in this world. There was little enough of joy going in the society that surrounded Ward; the sky over his head was of iron and brass; and there is even perhaps less joy current in American society now. But the true critic has his resources of joy within himself, and the motion of his joy is self-sprung. There may be ever so little hope of the human race, but that is the moralist’s affair, not the critic’s. The true critic takes no account of optimism or pessimism; they are both quite outside his purview; his affair is one only of joyful appraisal, assessment, and representation.</p> | <> | <p>But I must end these illustrations, which I have been tempted perhaps unduly to multiply and enlarge upon because their author has never yet, as far as I am aware, been brought to the attention of modern readers in the one capacity wherein he appears to me to maintain an open communication with the future—the capacity of critic. In conclusion I cannot forbear remarking the spring, the abounding vitality and gusto, that pervade Ward’s work, and pointing out that here too he is with Rabelais and Cervantes. The true critic is aware, with George Sand, that for life to be fruitful, life must be felt as a <i>joy</i>; that it is by the bond of <i>joy</i>, not of happiness or pleasure, not of duty or responsibility, that the called and chosen spirits are kept together in this world. There was little enough of joy going in the society that surrounded Ward; the sky over his head was of iron and brass; and there is even perhaps less joy current in American society now. But the true critic has his resources of joy within himself, and the motion of his joy is self-sprung. There may be ever so little hope of the human race, but that is the moralist’s affair, not the critic’s. The true critic takes no account of optimism or pessimism; they are both quite outside his purview; his affair is one only of joyful appraisal, assessment, and representation.</p> |
| <p>Epitaphs are notably exuberant, but the simple line carved upon Ward’s tombstone presents with a most felicitous precision and completeness, I think, the final word upon him. “His name will live as a sweet and unfading recollection.” Yes, just that is his fate, and there is none other so desirable. <i>Mansueti possidebunt terram,</i> said the Psalmist, the <i>amiable</i> shall possess the earth; and so, in the long run, they do. Insight and wisdom, shrewdness and penetration—for a critic these are great gifts, indispensable gifts, and the public has regard for their exercise, it gives gratitude for the benefits that they confer; but they are not enough of themselves to invest a critic’s name with the quality of a sweet and unfading recollection. To do this they must communicate themselves through the medium of a <i>temper,</i> a prepossessing and persuasive amiability. Wordsworth showed himself a great critic when he said of his own poems that “they will cooperate with the benign tendencies in human nature and society, and will in their degree be efficacious in making men wiser, better, and happier”; and it is just because of their unvarying cooperation with the benign tendencies in human nature and society that Ward’s writings have made him in the deepest sense a possession, a cherished and ennobling possession, of those who know him.</p> | <> | <p>Epitaphs are notably exuberant, but the simple line carved upon Ward’s tombstone presents with a most felicitous precision and completeness, I think, the final word upon him. “His name will live as a sweet and unfading recollection.” Yes, just that is his fate, and there is none other so desirable. <i>Mansueti possidebunt terram</i>, said the Psalmist, the <i>amiable</i> shall possess the earth; and so, in the long run, they do. Insight and wisdom, shrewdness and penetration—for a critic these are great gifts, indispensable gifts, and the public has regard for their exercise, it gives gratitude for the benefits that they confer; but they are not enough of themselves to invest a critic’s name with the quality of a sweet and unfading recollection. To do this they must communicate themselves through the medium of a <i>temper</i>, a prepossessing and persuasive amiability. Wordsworth showed himself a great critic when he said of his own poems that “they will coöperate with the benign tendencies in human nature and society, and will in their degree be efficacious in making men wiser, better, and happier”; and it is just because of their unvarying coöperation with the benign tendencies in human nature and society that Ward’s writings have made him in the deepest sense a possession, a cherished and ennobling possession, of those who know him.</p> |
| <hr /> | ||
| <p class="fn-para"><a href="#fn1" id="fn_1"><sup>1</sup></a> This essay was printed as the introduction to a volume of Selected Works of Artemus Ward, published in 1924 by A. and C. Boni.</p> | <> | <p><a href="#ft1" id="fn1">[1]</a> This essay was printed as the introduction to a volume of <i>Selected Works of Artemus Ward</i>, published in 1924 by A. and C. Boni.</p> |
| <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> | <> | <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> |
| <title>On Doing the Right Thing</title> | <> | <title></title> |
| <link href="../Misc/page-template.xpgt" rel="stylesheet" type="application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" /> | +- | |
| <p class="cht" id="ch2"><i>The Decline of Conversation</i></p> | <> | <h1>The Decline of Conversation</h1> |
| <p class="cen"><b>I</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">I</h2> |
| <p class="dp-para"><span class="dp"><b><i>T</i></b></span><small>HE</small> more one thinks of it, the more one finds in Goethe’s remark that the test of civilization is conversation. The common method of rating the civilization of peoples by what they have got and what they have done is really a poor one; for some peoples who have got much and done a great deal strike one at once as less civilized than others who have got little and done little. Prussia, for example, was relatively a poor State a century ago, while fifteen years ago it was rich and active; yet one would hardly say that the later Prussia was as civilized a country as the Prussia of Frederick’s time. Somewhat the same might be said of Tudor England and modern England. The civilization of a country consists in the quality of life that is lived there, and this quality shows plainest in the things that people choose to talk about when they talk together, and in the way they choose to talk about them.</p> | <> | <p class="noindent"><span class="raisedcap">T</span><span class="smallcaps">he</span> more one thinks of it, the more one finds in Goethe’s remark that the test of civilization is conversation. The common method of rating the civilization of peoples by what they have got and what they have done is really a poor one; for some peoples who have got much and done a great deal strike one at once as less civilized than others who have got little and done little. Prussia, for example, was relatively a poor State a century ago, while fifteen years ago it was rich and active; yet one would hardly say that the later Prussia was as civilized a country as the Prussia of Frederick’s time. Somewhat the same might be said of Tudor England and modern England. The civilization of a country consists in the quality of life that is lived there, and this quality shows plainest in the things that people choose to talk about when they talk together, and in the way they choose to talk about them.</p> |
| <p>It can be taken for granted, I suppose, that man has certain fundamental instincts which must find some kind of collective expression in the society in which he lives. The first and fundamental one is the instinct of expansion, the instinct for continuous improvement in material well-being and economic security. Then there is the instinct of intellect and knowledge, the instinct of religion and morals, of beauty and poetry, of social life and manners. Man has always been more or less consciously working towards a state of society which should give collective expression to these instincts. If society does not give expression to them, he is dissatisfied and finds life irksome, because every unused or unanswered instinct becomes a source of uneasiness and keeps on nagging and festering within him until he does something about it. Moreover, human society, to be permanently satisfactory, must not only express all these instincts, but must express them all in due balance, proportion, and harmony. If too much stress be laid on any one, the harmony is interrupted, uneasiness and dissatisfaction arise, and, if the interruption persists, disintegration sets in. The fall of nations, the decay and disappearance of whole civilizations, can be finally interpreted in terms of the satisfaction of these instincts. Looking at the life of existing nations, one can put one’s finger on those instincts which are being collectively overdone at the expense of the others. In one nation the instinct of expansion and the instinct of intellect and knowledge are relatively over-developed; in another, the instinct of beauty; in another, the instinct of manners; and so on. The term <i>symphonic,</i> which is so often sentimentally applied to the ideal life of society, is really descriptive; for the tendency of mankind from the beginning has been towards a functional blending and harmony among these instincts, precisely like that among the choirs of an orchestra. It would seem, then, that the quality of life in any society means the degree of development attained by this tendency. The more of these instincts that are satisfied, and the more delicate the harmony of their interplay, the higher and richer is the quality of life in that society; and it is the lower and poorer according as it satisfies fewer of these instincts and permits disharmony in their interplay.</p> | <> | <p>It can be taken for granted, I suppose, that man has certain fundamental instincts which must find some kind of collective expression in the society in which he lives. The first and fundamental one is the instinct of expansion, the instinct for continuous improvement in material well-being and economic security. Then there is the instinct of intellect and knowledge, the instinct of religion and morals, of beauty and poetry, of social life and manners. Man has always been more or less consciously working towards a state of society which should give collective expression to these instincts. If society does not give expression to them, he is dissatisfied and finds life irksome, because every unused or unanswered instinct becomes a source of uneasiness and keeps on nagging and festering within him until he does something about it. Moreover, human society, to be permanently satisfactory, must not only express all these instincts, but must express them all in due balance, proportion, and harmony. If too much stress be laid on any one, the harmony is interrupted, uneasiness and dissatisfaction arise, and, if the interruption persists, disintegration sets in. The fall of nations, the decay and disappearance of whole civilizations, can be finally interpreted in terms of the satisfaction of these instincts. Looking at the life of existing nations, one can put one’s finger on those instincts which are being collectively overdone at the expense of the others. In one nation the instinct of expansion and the instinct of intellect and knowledge are relatively over-developed; in another, the instinct of beauty; in another, the instinct of manners; and so on. The term <i>symphonic</i>, which is so often sentimentally applied to the ideal life of society, is really descriptive; for the tendency of mankind from the beginning has been towards a functional blending and harmony among these instincts, precisely like that among the choirs of an orchestra. It would seem, then, that the quality of life in any society means the degree of development attained by this tendency. The more of these instincts that are satisfied, and the more delicate the harmony of their interplay, the higher and richer is the quality of life in that society; and it is the lower and poorer according as it satisfies fewer of these instincts and permits disharmony in their interplay.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>II</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">II</h2> |
| <p class="indents">Speaking as Bishop Pontoppidan did about the owls in Iceland, the most significant thing that I have noticed about conversation in America is that there is so little of it, and as time goes on there seems less and less of it in my hearing. I miss even so much of the free play of ideas as I used to encounter years ago. It would seem that my countrymen no longer have the ideas and imagination they formerly had, or that they care less for them, or that for some reason they are diffident about them and do not like to bring them out. At all events the exercise of ideas and imagination has become unfashionable. When I first remarked this phenomenon I thought it might be an illusion of advancing age, since I have come to years when the past takes on an unnaturally attractive colour. But as time went on the fact became unmistakable and I began to take notice accordingly.</p> | <> | <p>Speaking as Bishop Pontoppidan did about the owls in Iceland, the most significant thing that I have noticed about conversation in America is that there is so little of it, and as time goes on there seems less and less of it in my hearing. I miss even so much of the free play of ideas as I used to encounter years ago. It would seem that my countrymen no longer have the ideas and imagination they formerly had, or that they care less for them, or that for some reason they are diffident about them and do not like to bring them out. At all events the exercise of ideas and imagination has become unfashionable. When I first remarked this phenomenon I thought it might be an illusion of advancing age, since I have come to years when the past takes on an unnaturally attractive colour. But as time went on the fact became unmistakable and I began to take notice accordingly.</p> |
| <p>Day after day strengthens the compulsion to accept Mr. Finkman as a type. This might be thought a delicate matter to press, but after all, Mr. Finkman is no creation of one’s fancy, but on the contrary he is a solid and respectable reality, a social phenomenon of the first importance, and he accordingly deserves attention both by the positive side of his preferences and addictions and by the negative side of his distastes. I am farthest in the world from believing that anything should be “done about” Mr. Finkman, or that he should be studied with an ulterior view either to his disparagement or his uplift. I am unequivocally for his right to an unlimited exercise of his likes and dislikes, and his right to get as many people to share them as he can. All I suggest is that the influence of his tastes and distastes upon American civilization should be understood. The moment one looks at the chart of this civilization one sees the line set by Mr. Finkman, and this line is so distinct that one cannot but take it as one’s principal lead. If one wishes to get a measure of American civilization, one not only must sooner or later take the measure of Mr. Fink-man’s predilections, but will save time and trouble by taking it at the outset.</p> | <> | <p>Day after day strengthens the compulsion to accept Mr. Finkman as a type. This might be thought a delicate matter to press, but after all, Mr. Finkman is no creation of one’s fancy, but on the contrary he is a solid and respectable reality, a social phenomenon of the first importance, and he accordingly deserves attention both by the positive side of his preferences and addictions and by the negative side of his distastes. I am farthest in the world from believing that anything should be “done about” Mr. Finkman, or that he should be studied with an ulterior view either to his disparagement or his uplift. I am unequivocally for his right to an unlimited exercise of his likes and dislikes, and his right to get as many people to share them as he can. All I suggest is that the influence of his tastes and distastes upon American civilization should be understood. The moment one looks at the chart of this civilization one sees the line set by Mr. Finkman, and this line is so distinct that one cannot but take it as one’s principal lead. If one wishes to get a measure of American civilization, one not only must sooner or later take the measure of Mr. Finkman’s predilections, but will save time and trouble by taking it at the outset.</p> |
| <p>“She’s right about that,” my friend went on. “Here’s a <i>precis</i> of the kind of thing I hear evening after evening. We go in to dinner talking personalities, no matter what subject is up. The theatre—we talk about the leading lady’s gowns and mannerisms, and her little ways with her first husband. Books—we hash over all the author’s rotten press-agentry, from the make of his pajamas to the way he does his hair. Music—we tell one another what a dear love of a conductor Kaskowhisky is, and how superior in all respects to von Bugghaus, whose back isn’t half so limber. Damned quacks actually, you know, both of them! Good Lord! man, can you wonder that this country killed Mahler and put Karl Muck in jail?</p> | <> | <p>“She’s right about that,” my friend went on. “Here’s a <i>précis</i> of the kind of thing I hear evening after evening. We go in to dinner talking personalities, no matter what subject is up. The theatre—we talk about the leading lady’s gowns and mannerisms, and her little ways with her first husband. Books—we hash over all the author’s rotten press-agentry, from the make of his pajamas to the way he does his hair. Music—we tell one another what a dear love of a conductor Kaskowhisky is, and how superior in all respects to von Bugghaus, whose back isn’t half so limber. Damned quacks actually, you know, both of them! Good Lord! man, can you wonder that this country killed Mahler and put Karl Muck in jail?</p> |
| <p><i>“Guests, in unison, acciaccato</i>—‘Uh-huh.’</p> | <> | <p>“<i>Guests, in unison, acciaccato</i>—‘Uh-huh.’</p> |
| <p><i>“Guests, fastoso</i>—‘Uh-huh.’ ”</p> | <> | <p>“<i>Guests, fastoso</i>—‘Uh-huh.’”</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>III</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">III</h2> |
| <p class="indents">It is a mark of maturity to differentiate easily and naturally between personal or social opposition and intellectual opposition. Everyone has noticed how readily children transfer their dislike of an opinion to the person who holds it, and how quick they are to take umbrage at a person who speaks in an unfamiliar mode or even with an unfamiliar accent. When the infant-minded Pantagruel met with the Limosin who spoke to him in a Latinized macaronic jargon, he listened awhile and then said, “What devilish language is this?—by the Lord, I think thou art some kind of heretic.” Mr. Finkman’s excessive simplification of life has made anything like the free play of ideas utterly incomprehensible to him. He never deals with ideas, except such limited and practical ones as may help get him something, and he cannot imagine anyone ever choosing, even on occasion, to do differently. When he “talks it business,” the value of ideas, ideals, opinions, sentiments, is purely quantitative; putting any other value on them is a waste of time. Under all circumstances, then, he tends to assume that other people measure the value of their ideas and opinions as he does his, and that they employ them accordingly; and hence, like my friend’s banker, when some one tries to lead up into a general intellectual sparring for mere points, he thinks he is a dangerous fellow with an ax to grind.</p> | <> | <p>It is a mark of maturity to differentiate easily and naturally between personal or social opposition and intellectual opposition. Everyone has noticed how readily children transfer their dislike of an opinion to the person who holds it, and how quick they are to take umbrage at a person who speaks in an unfamiliar mode or even with an unfamiliar accent. When the infant-minded Pantagruel met with the Limosin who spoke to him in a Latinized macaronic jargon, he listened awhile and then said, “What devilish language is this?—by the Lord, I think thou art some kind of heretic.” Mr. Finkman’s excessive simplification of life has made anything like the free play of ideas utterly incomprehensible to him. He never deals with ideas, except such limited and practical ones as may help get him something, and he cannot imagine anyone ever choosing, even on occasion, to do differently. When he “talks it business,” the value of ideas, ideals, opinions, sentiments, is purely quantitative; putting any other value on them is a waste of time. Under all circumstances, then, he tends to assume that other people measure the value of their ideas and opinions as he does his, and that they employ them accordingly; and hence, like my friend’s banker, when some one tries to lead up into a general intellectual sparring for mere points, he thinks he is a dangerous fellow with an ax to grind.</p> |
| <p>This kind of thing gives the impression of maturity, and, as far as my experience goes, it is as common in Europe as it is uncommon here. There has been much comment lately upon the attraction that Europe exerts upon certain American types. I am led to wonder if it be not perchance the attraction of maturity. Children may be delightful, may be interesting, may be ever so full of promise, and one may be as fond of them as possible—and yet when one has them for warp and filling, one must get a bit bored with them now and then, in spite of oneself. I have had little to do with children, so I speak under correction; but I should imagine that one would become bored with their intense simplification of life, their tendency to drive the whole current of life noisily through one channel, their vehement reduction of all values to that o£ quantity, their inability to take any but a personal view of anything. But just these are the qualities of American civilization as indicated by the test of conversation. They inhere in Mr. Finkman and are disseminated by his influence to the practical exclusion of any other. I can imagine, then, that one might in time come to be tired of them and to wish oneself in surroundings where man is accepted as a creature of “a large discourse, looking before and after,” where life is admittedly more complex and its current distributed in more channels—in other words, where maturity prevails.</p> | <> | <p>This kind of thing gives the impression of maturity, and, as far as my experience goes, it is as common in Europe as it is uncommon here. There has been much comment lately upon the attraction that Europe exerts upon certain American types. I am led to wonder if it be not perchance the attraction of maturity. Children may be delightful, may be interesting, may be ever so full of promise, and one may be as fond of them as possible—and yet when one has them for warp and filling, one must get a bit bored with them now and then, in spite of oneself. I have had little to do with children, so I speak under correction; but I should imagine that one would become bored with their intense simplification of life, their tendency to drive the whole current of life noisily through one channel, their vehement reduction of all values to that of quantity, their inability to take any but a personal view of anything. But just these are the qualities of American civilization as indicated by the test of conversation. They inhere in Mr. Finkman and are disseminated by his influence to the practical exclusion of any other. I can imagine, then, that one might in time come to be tired of them and to wish oneself in surroundings where man is accepted as a creature of “a large discourse, looking before and after,” where life is admittedly more complex and its current distributed in more channels—in other words, where maturity prevails.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>IV</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">IV</h2> |
| <p class="indents">An observer passing through America with his mind deliberately closed to any impressions except those he received from conversation could make as interesting a conjectural reconstruction of our civilization as the palaeontologists with an armful of bones make of a dinosaur. He would postulate a civilization which expresses the instinct of expansion to a degree far beyond anything ever seen in the world, but which does not express the instinct of intellect and knowledge, except as regards instrumental knowledge, and is characterized by an extremely defective sense of beauty, a defective sense of religion and morals, a defectiveghters who range from sense of social life and manners. Its institutions reflect faithfully this condition of excess and defect. A very brief conversation with Mr. Finkman would enable one to predicate almost precisely what kind of schooling he considered an adequate preparation for life, what kind of literature he thought good enough for one to read, plays for one to see, architecture to surround oneself with, music to listen to, painting and sculpture to contemplate. It would be plain that Mr. Finkman had succeeded in living an exhilarating life from day to day without the aid of any power but concentration—without reflection, without ideas, without ideals, and without any but the most special emotions—that he thought extremely well of himself for his success, and was disposed to be jealous of the peculiar type of institutional life which had enabled it or conduced to it. The observer, therefore, would postulate a civilization marked by an extraordinary and inquisitional intolerance of the individual and a corresponding insistence upon conformity to pattern. For in general, it is reflection, ideas, ideals, and emotions that set off the individual, and with these Mr. Finkman has had nothing to do; he has got on without them to what he considers success, and hence he sees no need of them, distrusts them, and thinks there must be a screw loose with the individual who shows signs of them.</p> | <> | <p>An observer passing through America with his mind deliberately closed to any impressions except those he received from conversation could make as interesting a conjectural reconstruction of our civilization as the palæontologists with an armful of bones make of a dinosaur. He would postulate a civilization which expresses the instinct of expansion to a degree far beyond anything ever seen in the world, but which does not express the instinct of intellect and knowledge, except as regards instrumental knowledge, and is characterized by an extremely defective sense of beauty, a defective sense of religion and morals, a defective sense of social life and manners. Its institutions reflect faithfully this condition of excess and defect. A very brief conversation with Mr. Finkman would enable one to predicate almost precisely what kind of schooling he considered an adequate preparation for life, what kind of literature he thought good enough for one to read, plays for one to see, architecture to surround oneself with, music to listen to, painting and sculpture to contemplate. It would be plain that Mr. Finkman had succeeded in living an exhilarating life from day to day without the aid of any power but concentration—without reflection, without ideas, without ideals, and without any but the most special emotions—that he thought extremely well of himself for his success, and was disposed to be jealous of the peculiar type of institutional life which had enabled it or conduced to it. The observer, therefore, would postulate a civilization marked by an extraordinary and inquisitional intolerance of the individual and a corresponding insistence upon conformity to pattern. For in general, it is reflection, ideas, ideals, and emotions that set off the individual, and with these Mr. Finkman has had nothing to do; he has got on without them to what he considers success, and hence he sees no need of them, distrusts them, and thinks there must be a screw loose with the individual who shows signs of them.</p> |
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| <title>On Doing the Right Thing</title> | <> | <title></title> |
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| <p class="cht" id="ch3"><i>On Making Low People Interesting</i></p> | <> | <h1>On Making Low People Interesting</h1> |
| <p class="cen"><b>I</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">I</h2> |
| <p class="dp-para"><span class="dp"><b><i>H</i></b></span><small>AVING</small> lived of late in a part of Europe where there is very little doing in the way of English, I went for many months without reading a word in my own tongue. By working in a different set of sequences so long, my mind got a bit away from the familiar ones; it rather slacked off on the English-reading habit, as I suppose any mind that has any flexibility is bound to do. But not thinking about this, I was not conscious of the change while it was going on, and when at the end of a long period I fell heir to a dozen cast-off English novels, I was surprised to find that I approached them a good deal like a stranger. On this account, I suppose, certain features of them seemed more odd and unusual than they would have seemed if I had not so completely broken with the English-reading habit, and broken also so largely with the life which they represented.</p> | <> | <p class="noindent"><span class="raisedcap">H</span><span class="smallcaps">aving</span> lived of late in a part of Europe where there is very little doing in the way of English, I went for many months without reading a word in my own tongue. By working in a different set of sequences so long, my mind got a bit away from the familiar ones; it rather slacked off on the English-reading habit, as I suppose any mind that has any flexibility is bound to do. But not thinking about this, I was not conscious of the change while it was going on, and when at the end of a long period I fell heir to a dozen cast-off English novels, I was surprised to find that I approached them a good deal like a stranger. On this account, I suppose, certain features of them seemed more odd and unusual than they would have seemed if I had not so completely broken with the English-reading habit, and broken also so largely with the life which they represented.</p> |
| <p>The only interest that I could discover in these stories, therefore, was in virtue of various literary devices, some legitimate, ingenious, and workman-like, and others rather ramshackle. There was not a vestige of character-portrayal that was anywhere near above par; no vestige of the art that creates a character interesting in itself, irrespective of plot and dramatic action, powerfully stimulating the reader’s fancy and imagination, like the forty Flemish types in Old Breughel’s sketch-book—just faces, studies in feature and expression, nothing more—but what faces! Still, as I said, I had been long away from my native life and letters, and did not feel sure of my judgment; so I rummaged around for something to true up by, and finally emerged with a copy of the <i>Pickwick Papers.</i></p> | <> | <p>The only interest that I could discover in these stories, therefore, was in virtue of various literary devices, some legitimate, ingenious, and workman-like, and others rather ramshackle. There was not a vestige of character-portrayal that was anywhere near above par; no vestige of the art that creates a character interesting in itself, irrespective of plot and dramatic action, powerfully stimulating the reader’s fancy and imagination, like the forty Flemish types in Old Breughel’s sketch-book—just faces, studies in feature and expression, nothing more—but what faces! Still, as I said, I had been long away from my native life and letters, and did not feel sure of my judgment; so I rummaged around for something to true up by, and finally emerged with a copy of the <i>Pickwick Papers</i>.</p> |
| <p>The <i>Pickwick Papers,</i> however, are rather a special kind of literary product. The preface tells us that they are not meant to be the conventional type of novel, but a loosely organized aggregation of individual characters run together on a weak thread of commonplace adventure. So, as well as I could without having the book at hand, I revived my recollections of Dickens’s next story, which is in all respects quite the regular thing. <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> has a formal plot, well worked out in plenty of dramatic action, for whatever these devices amount to; other authors have done as well with both, and some better. There, again, it is character, mostly of the very lowest, that gives this book its hold upon the reader’s fancy and imagination. Mantalini, Gride, Crummies and his barnstormers, the Kenwigses, Squeers, Noggs, Lillyvick—surely the rarest assortment of utter riff-raff, of sheer human sculch, that was ever raked together between two covers, but <i>interesting</i> beyond expression. The plot of <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> might be what it liked, the dramatic action might go this way or that way, and no one would give a penny for the difference. So long as these people are what they are, who cares what they do? Let them stand out and mark time, if they choose, like the characters in <i>Pickwick,</i> for all the odds it would make. Imagine some go-getting publisher telling Charles Dickens that to “sustain the human interest,” and really to “put the book over with a bang,” he ought to get Kate Nickleby in the family way by Sir Mulberry Hawk, and fork in all the biological details of the episode that the law allows!</p> | <> | <p>The <i>Pickwick Papers</i>, however, are rather a special kind of literary product. The preface tells us that they are not meant to be the conventional type of novel, but a loosely organized aggregation of individual characters run together on a weak thread of commonplace adventure. So, as well as I could without having the book at hand, I revived my recollections of Dickens’s next story, which is in all respects quite the regular thing. <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> has a formal plot, well worked out in plenty of dramatic action, for whatever these devices amount to; other authors have done as well with both, and some better. There, again, it is character, mostly of the very lowest, that gives this book its hold upon the reader’s fancy and imagination. Mantalini, Gride, Crummies and his barnstormers, the Kenwigses, Squeers, Noggs, Lillyvick—surely the rarest assortment of utter riff-raff, of sheer human sculch, that was ever raked together between two covers, but <i>interesting</i> beyond expression. The plot of <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> might be what it liked, the dramatic action might go this way or that way, and no one would give a penny for the difference. So long as these people are what they are, who cares what they do? Let them stand out and mark time, if they choose, like the characters in <i>Pickwick</i>, for all the odds it would make. Imagine some go-getting publisher telling Charles Dickens that to “sustain the human interest,” and really to “put the book over with a bang,” he ought to get Kate Nickleby in the family way by Sir Mulberry Hawk, and fork in all the biological details of the episode that the law allows!</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>II</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">II</h2> |
| <p class="indents">But Dickens is Dickens, and one may not expect the average run of authorship to match him, and certainly one would not wish it to imitate him. One might reasonably expect it to emulate him, however, if indeed character-portrayal be any longer regarded as part of authorship’s job. The samples I had been assaying did not show traces of any such effort, so I resolved to look farther into the matter. When I came back into the English-speaking world, therefore, I began to persecute my whole literary acquaintance for points on the status of character-portrayal. Was it by way of becoming a lost art, and if so, why? There seemed to be a complete consensus of opinion that it was. Cultivated amateurs and those whose connection with literature is professional told me that character in current English fiction was becoming standardized into a very few types, and that even those few were vague and vapid. As for my second question, I got various answers which I think may be susceptible of synthesis.</p> | <> | <p>But Dickens is Dickens, and one may not expect the average run of authorship to match him, and certainly one would not wish it to imitate him. One might reasonably expect it to emulate him, however, if indeed character-portrayal be any longer regarded as part of authorship’s job. The samples I had been assaying did not show traces of any such effort, so I resolved to look farther into the matter. When I came back into the English-speaking world, therefore, I began to persecute my whole literary acquaintance for points on the status of character-portrayal. Was it by way of becoming a lost art, and if so, why? There seemed to be a complete consensus of opinion that it was. Cultivated amateurs and those whose connection with literature is professional told me that character in current English fiction was becoming standardized into a very few types, and that even those few were vague and vapid. As for my second question, I got various answers which I think may be susceptible of synthesis.</p> |
| <p>For instance, one of the novels in my exhibit propounded a curious prairie-dog’s, nest of unwholesome mortals, whose whole existence seemed to be made up of pigging together in joyous squalor through three hundred solid pages. This was the total impression conveyed by the story, and it was most unpleasantly dull. Not a character in the book had the slightest pretension to interest—one listlessly wished they would all go off together down a steep place into the sea and get drowned, like their lineal forefathers of Gadara. A very good story can be made of the antecedents and consequences of any mode or form of concubinage, from marriage up and down, but the actual technique of concubinage itself is not diversified enough to permit a writer to do anything with it worth speaking of. It is too undifferentiated, except for subjective conditions which are not reproducible upon a reader. Except for these conditions, which are potent enough but quite unreproducible upon a third person, living with one woman is almost precisely like living with another—even the standard jokes and cartoons on the subject show that; and if it be so in life, which brings into play all the small interest-provoking accidents of social contact and entourage, the general effect of which also is quite unreproducible, how much more so in literature!</p> | <> | <p>For instance, one of the novels in my exhibit propounded a curious prairie-dog’s nest of unwholesome mortals, whose whole existence seemed to be made up of pigging together in joyous squalor through three hundred solid pages. This was the total impression conveyed by the story, and it was most unpleasantly dull. Not a character in the book had the slightest pretension to interest—one listlessly wished they would all go off together down a steep place into the sea and get drowned, like their lineal forefathers of Gadara. A very good story can be made of the antecedents and consequences of any mode or form of concubinage, from marriage up and down, but the actual technique of concubinage itself is not diversified enough to permit a writer to do anything with it worth speaking of. It is too undifferentiated, except for subjective conditions which are not reproducible upon a reader. Except for these conditions, which are potent enough but quite unreproducible upon a third person, living with one woman is almost precisely like living with another—even the standard jokes and cartoons on the subject show that; and if it be so in life, which brings into play all the small interest-provoking accidents of social contact and entourage, the general effect of which also is quite unreproducible, how much more so in literature!</p> |
| <p>To make the case clearer, let us introduce a couple of parallels from one, by the way, who is the unquestioned master in the art of showing “what goes on in a person’s mind”—from Tourgueniev. <i>First Love,</i> to begin with, is a story of low people; only one person in it, the narrator, is anything but a very poor affair. The heroine, Zinaida, is a flapper of seventeen or so. Here you have the real thing in flappers and the real thing in trollops. <i>Qua</i> flapper and <i>qua</i> trollop, Zinaida makes the candidates put forward by our contemporary literature look like Confederate money. The bare story is squalid and repulsive; a journalistic report of it would be unreadable. But as Tourgueniev unfolds it, the great goddess Lubricity gets not a single grain of incense. Not one detail is propounded for the satisfaction of prurience. The people, dreadful as they are, and the drama, weighted as it is with all that is unnatural and shocking in Zinaida and her paramour, are more than interesting; they are profoundly moving, they release a flow of sympathy that effaces all other emotions, and one lays down the book with a sense of being really humanized and bettered by having read it. Let the reader get it in Mrs. Garnett’s excellent translation, and experiment for himself. Then let him go even farther, and try <i>Torrents of Spring.</i> This is a story of the antecedents and consequences of adultery plus seduction, brought about under inconceivably loathsome circumstances. The three principal characters are detestably low. The foremost among them, Maria Nikolaevna, in my judgment the most interesting woman in the whole range of fiction—what would one not give to see her and talk with her for an hour?—is the world’s prize slut, if ever there were one. But the author has not the slightest preoccupation with her sluttishness, and hence he communicates none to the reader, and the great goddess Aselgeia goes begging again.</p> | <> | <p>To make the case clearer, let us introduce a couple of parallels from one, by the way, who is the unquestioned master in the art of showing “what goes on in a person’s mind”—from Tourgueniev. <i>First Love</i>, to begin with, is a story of low people; only one person in it, the narrator, is anything but a very poor affair. The heroine, Zinaïda, is a flapper of seventeen or so. Here you have the real thing in flappers and the real thing in trollops. <i>Qua</i> flapper and <i>qua</i> trollop, Zinaïda makes the candidates put forward by our contemporary literature look like Confederate money. The bare story is squalid and repulsive; a journalistic report of it would be unreadable. But as Tourgueniev unfolds it, the great goddess Lubricity gets not a single grain of incense. Not one detail is propounded for the satisfaction of prurience. The people, dreadful as they are, and the drama, weighted as it is with all that is unnatural and shocking in Zinaïda and her paramour, are more than interesting; they are profoundly moving, they release a flow of sympathy that effaces all other emotions, and one lays down the book with a sense of being really humanized and bettered by having read it. Let the reader get it in Mrs. Garnett’s excellent translation, and experiment for himself. Then let him go even farther, and try <i>Torrents of Spring</i>. This is a story of the antecedents and consequences of adultery plus seduction, brought about under inconceivably loathsome circumstances. The three principal characters are detestably low. The foremost among them, Maria Nikolaevna, in my judgment the most interesting woman in the whole range of fiction—what would one not give to see her and talk with her for an hour?—is the world’s prize slut, if ever there were one. But the author has not the slightest preoccupation with her sluttishness, and hence he communicates none to the reader, and the great goddess Aselgeia goes begging again.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>III</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">III</h2> |
| <p class="indents">Some of my literary acquaintances whom I have questioned tell me that authors write too fast. Eager to satisfy the market, they do not take time to portray character. I doubt the force of this. Dickens wrote furiously against time all his life. Haste drove him into some pretty indifferent grammar sometimes, and often loosened his constructions. But it never switched him off from a straight drive at the essential features of character. If he sketched an individual in seven strokes, you “get” that individual—you get him all. Those seven are the essential strokes, and you can fill in the rest for yourself without any trouble. In this power of instant penetration to the essential he is like Old Breughel. Haste should not interfere with this power in the modern artist, if he has it. It might make him a little slovenly in his technical expression of the essentials after he has caught them, but it should not impair his ability to catch them. It seems to me, therefore, that this explanation will not wash.</p> | <> | <p>Some of my literary acquaintances whom I have questioned tell me that authors write too fast. Eager to satisfy the market, they do not take time to portray character. I doubt the force of this. Dickens wrote furiously against time all his life. Haste drove him into some pretty indifferent grammar sometimes, and often loosened his constructions. But it never switched him off from a straight drive at the essential features of character. If he sketched an individual in seven strokes, you “get” that individual—you get him all. Those seven are the essential strokes, and you can fill in the rest for yourself without any trouble. In this power of instant penetration to the essential he is like Old Breughel. Haste should not interfere with this power in the modern artist, if he has it. It might make him a little slovenly in his technical expression of the essentials after he has caught them, but it should not impair his ability to catch them. It seems to me, therefore, that this explanation will not wash.</p> |
| <p>My notion is that the author is not altogether at fault. It takes more than the man to make an artist; it takes the combination of the man and the moment, the man and the <i>milieu.</i> An artist must have models, and for him to have them, the civilization around him must produce them. Old Breughel sketched marvellously interesting faces, but the faces were there for him to sketch; the civilization of Brussels produced them, as it still does—you can see a hundred an hour there, any day. British literature, up to a half-century ago, has been peculiarly rich in interesting character—well, British life was peculiarly rich in it. By all accounts, the London of 1827 was swarming with models for Dickens.</p> | <> | <p>My notion is that the author is not altogether at fault. It takes more than the man to make an artist; it takes the combination of the man and the moment, the man and the <i>milieu</i>. An artist must have models, and for him to have them, the civilization around him must produce them. Old Breughel sketched marvellously interesting faces, but the faces were there for him to sketch; the civilization of Brussels produced them, as it still does—you can see a hundred an hour there, any day. British literature, up to a half-century ago, has been peculiarly rich in interesting character—well, British life was peculiarly rich in it. By all accounts, the London of 1827 was swarming with models for Dickens.</p> |
| <p>Moreover, the freemasonry of <i>was uns alle bändigt, das Gemeine</i> affects the reading public, as well as the artist, in an unfavorable way. No one can make much out of Dickens without some knowledge of the economic and social life of his day. The appreciation of his power of character-portrayal is largely a matter of the interest bred by general information and general culture. When I saw the play “Potash and Perlmutter” some years ago, I seemed to be the only person in the house who was not a Jew. I saw it twice more, and remarked the same phenomenon. I wondered how its power of character-portrayal, much better felt in the stories than in the play, of course, affected the average of the <i>Goyim;</i> whether their general level of culture was high enough to enable them disinterestedly to appraise it for what it was worth. Several times, at a period when I was in a position to do so, I have experimented with promising young sprigs of the hire learning who had “specialized in English literature,” <i>Gott soil hüten,</i> by noting what signs they showed of sparking up over great examples of character-portrayal. I never got my investment back. If I got a net of three cents on the dollar I was as elated as if I had found it in the street. Since those days, when I have seen my countrymen pausing before portraits done by the old Flemish masters, I have wondered what impression was made upon them by the faces themselves, as indices of character.</p> | <> | <p>Moreover, the freemasonry of <i>was uns alle bändigt, das Gemeine</i> affects the reading public, as well as the artist, in an unfavorable way. No one can make much out of Dickens without some knowledge of the economic and social life of his day. The appreciation of his power of character-portrayal is largely a matter of the interest bred by general information and general culture. When I saw the play “Potash and Perlmutter” some years ago, I seemed to be the only person in the house who was not a Jew. I saw it twice more, and remarked the same phenomenon. I wondered how its power of character-portrayal, much better felt in the stories than in the play, of course, affected the average of the <i>Goyim</i>; whether their general level of culture was high enough to enable them disinterestedly to appraise it for what it was worth. Several times, at a period when I was in a position to do so, I have experimented with promising young sprigs of the hire learning who had “specialized in English literature,” <i>Gott soll hüten</i>, by noting what signs they showed of sparking up over great examples of character-portrayal. I never got my investment back. If I got a net of three cents on the dollar I was as elated as if I had found it in the street. Since those days, when I have seen my countrymen pausing before portraits done by the old Flemish masters, I have wondered what impression was made upon them by the faces themselves, as indices of character.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>IV</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">IV</h2> |
| <p class="indents">I, therefore, suggest, with all possible delicacy, that hopes of “the great American novel” are extravagant. This art requires great subjects; and the life about us does not provide them. It requires a very special order of correspondence between the artist and his environment; and the life about us does not promote this or even permit it. Our civilization, rich and varied as it may be, is not <i>interesting;</i> its general level falls too far below the standard set by the collective experience of mankind. If one points with pride to our endless multiplication of the mechanics of existence, and our incessant unintelligent preoccupation with them, the artist replies that with all this he can do nothing. What he demands is great and interesting character, character that powerfully stirs the fancy and imagination, and a civilization in which such interests are dominant cannot supply it.</p> | <> | <p>I, therefore, suggest, with all possible delicacy, that hopes of “the great American novel” are extravagant. This art requires great subjects; and the life about us does not provide them. It requires a very special order of correspondence between the artist and his environment; and the life about us does not promote this or even permit it. Our civilization, rich and varied as it may be, is not <i>interesting</i>; its general level falls too far below the standard set by the collective experience of mankind. If one points with pride to our endless multiplication of the mechanics of existence, and our incessant unintelligent preoccupation with them, the artist replies that with all this he can do nothing. What he demands is great and interesting character, character that powerfully stirs the fancy and imagination, and a civilization in which such interests are dominant cannot supply it.</p> |
| <p>Today’s newspapers carry an item from one of our mid-Western towns, saying that in a raid on some swindling charlatan the police discovered hundreds of letters from people who were burdened with intolerable tedium, which they declared they would do anything in the world to escape “if only he would advise them how.” Yet these people had an available apparatus of comfort and of enjoyment surpassing anything ever seen in the world. No doubt they had movies handy, and money enough to patronize them, since the submerged tenth does not write to frauds. Probably many of them had Ford cars, and radio sets yielding jazz to dance by; probably they were better dressed and fed, and more comfortably housed, than people of a station corresponding to theirs have ever been! But all this did not make for an interesting life; and they knew so little what such a life consisted in, and the terms on which it was to be had, that they turned to this wretched fellow’s nostrum, whatever it was, in pathetic and ignorant hope. Their case is common; everyone knows that it is, let him pretend as he chooses. Everyone is aware that the failure of our civilization is precisely this failure in <i>interest,</i> for which nothing can make up. Our collective life is not “lived from a great depth of being,” but from the surface; and the mark of the collective life is on the individual.</p> | <> | <p>Today’s newspapers carry an item from one of our mid-Western towns, saying that in a raid on some swindling charlatan the police discovered hundreds of letters from people who were burdened with intolerable tedium, which they declared they would do anything in the world to escape “if only he would advise them how.” Yet these people had an available apparatus of comfort and of enjoyment surpassing anything ever seen in the world. No doubt they had movies handy, and money enough to patronize them, since the submerged tenth does not write to frauds. Probably many of them had Ford cars, and radio sets yielding jazz to dance by; probably they were better dressed and fed, and more comfortably housed, than people of a station corresponding to theirs have ever been! But all this did not make for an interesting life; and they knew so little what such a life consisted in, and the terms on which it was to be had, that they turned to this wretched fellow’s nostrum, whatever it was, in pathetic and ignorant hope. Their case is common; everyone knows that it is, let him pretend as he chooses. Everyone is aware that the failure of our civilization is precisely this failure in <i>interest</i>, for which nothing can make up. Our collective life is not “lived from a great depth of being,” but from the surface; and the mark of the collective life is on the individual.</p> |
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| <title>On Doing the Right Thing</title> | <> | <title></title> |
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| <p class="cht" id="ch4"><i>A Cultural Forecast</i></p> | <> | <h1>A Cultural Forecast</h1> |
| <p class="cen"><b>I</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">I</h2> |
| <p class="dp-para"><span class="dp"><b><i>W</i></b></span><small>E ARE</small> becoming more or less familiar with the assumption that our immediate cultural prospects are not good. It is the motive of most of the “literature of revaluation,” or, as Mr. H. L. Mencken prefers to call it, the <i>Katzen-jammer</i> literature of the period. As far as the fact is concerned, we may face it frankly. There seems no doubt that it will be a long time before the humane life, as the ages have understood the term, will prevail among us—before our collective life and its institutions will reflect any considerable spiritual activity. Our present collective life, in its ideals and aspirations as well as in its actual practice, is admittedly conducted upon a very low spiritual level. One has only to imagine Plato or Virgil, Dante or Rabelais, contemplating it—souls preeminent in the knowledge and practice of the humane life—and one has no trouble in arriving at the verdict that would be passed upon it by the best reason and spirit of mankind. Moreover, there are no discernible tendencies showing promise of a better state of things, at least within a period short enough to give the question more than an academic interest for our day. Those of our grandchildren, if any, who shall feel within them any vague promptings towards the humane life will be unlikely to find the general current setting that way much more strongly than it does at present.</p> | <> | <p class="noindent"><span class="raisedcap">W</span><span class="smallcaps">e are</span> becoming more or less familiar with the assumption that our immediate cultural prospects are not good. It is the motive of most of the “literature of revaluation,” or, as Mr. H. L. Mencken prefers to call it, the <i>Katzenjammer</i> literature of the period. As far as the fact is concerned, we may face it frankly. There seems no doubt that it will be a long time before the humane life, as the ages have understood the term, will prevail among us—before our collective life and its institutions will reflect any considerable spiritual activity. Our present collective life, in its ideals and aspirations as well as in its actual practice, is admittedly conducted upon a very low spiritual level. One has only to imagine Plato or Virgil, Dante or Rabelais, contemplating it—souls preeminent in the knowledge and practice of the humane life—and one has no trouble in arriving at the verdict that would be passed upon it by the best reason and spirit of mankind. Moreover, there are no discernible tendencies showing promise of a better state of things, at least within a period short enough to give the question more than an academic interest for our day. Those of our grandchildren, if any, who shall feel within them any vague promptings towards the humane life will be unlikely to find the general current setting that way much more strongly than it does at present.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>II</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">II</h2> |
| <p class="indents">For the humane life does exist among us, and as far as one person’s observation goes, it reaches a higher individual development all round among us than in any other society I know of. The reason why our cultural prospects are so poor is not, as is sometimes very superficially said, that there is no culture here. On the contrary, the best culture that I have ever seen, judged by its fruits—culture taking shape in lucidity of mind, intellectual curiosity and hospitality, largeness of temper, objectivity, the finest sense of social life, of manners, of beauty—was in the United States. The aggregate of it is much less, relatively, than elsewhere; but scanty, frail, and unproductive as it is, I have never seen better.</p> | <> | <p>For the humane life does exist among us, and as far as one person’s observation goes, it reaches a higher individual development all round among us than in any other society I know of. The reason why our cultural prospects are so poor is not, as is sometimes very superficially said, that there is no culture here. On the contrary, the best culture that I have ever seen, judged by its fruits—culture taking shape in lucidity of mind, intellectual curiosity and hospitality, largeness of temper, objectivity, the finest sense of social life, of manners, of beauty—was in the United States. The aggregate of it is much less, relatively than elsewhere; but scanty, frail, and unproductive as it is, I have never seen better.</p> |
| <p>The Church in the Middle Ages could, and did, exercise this power of perversion. It never has had half enough credit for the cultural effect of what it did, even though, for reasons of its own, it did not do all it might have done. The royal courts could exercise the same power, and many of them did, like that of Francis I, for example, and some of the Bavarian kings. Sometimes they cooperated with the Church, thus directing two powerful forces towards the same end. The Church and the court were in a position, not only to organize spiritual activity of various kinds, but also to give it a prestige that made effective headway against the natural taste for the bathos. With these assistances and recommendations, culture got over its initial obstacles, and later could make its own way, relying upon its own power of attraction. The Belgians were always a musical people after their own fashion, and a very good and interesting fashion, but the Elector of Bavaria, Max-Emmanuel, when Governor of the Netherlands, organized music as a function of the civil service, thus giving it a prestige whereby the Belgians were brought “to relish the sublime” in that art, as they still do, and would probably for some time continue to do, even if the royal patronage of music were withdrawn. It is not generally understood, I think, that a very extensive organization of spiritual activity once took place on our continent, in the Mormon polity under Brigham Young; and though it remained in force so short a time, traces of its effect are still plainly to be seen.</p> | <> | <p>The Church in the Middle Ages could, and did, exercise this power of perversion. It never has had half enough credit for the cultural effect of what it did, even though, for reasons of its own, it did not do all it might have done. The royal courts could exercise the same power, and many of them did, like that of Francis I, for example, and some of the Bavarian kings. Sometimes they coöperated with the Church, thus directing two powerful forces towards the same end. The Church and the court were in a position, not only to organize spiritual activity of various kinds, but also to give it a prestige that made effective headway against the natural taste for the bathos. With these assistances and recommendations, culture got over its initial obstacles, and later could make its own way, relying upon its own power of attraction. The Belgians were always a musical people after their own fashion, and a very good and interesting fashion, but the Elector of Bavaria, Max-Emmanuel, when Governor of the Netherlands, organized music as a function of the civil service, thus giving it a prestige whereby the Belgians were brought “to relish the sublime” in that art, as they still do, and would probably for some time continue to do, even if the royal patronage of music were withdrawn. It is not generally understood, I think, that a very extensive organization of spiritual activity once took place on our continent, in the Mormon polity under Brigham Young; and though it remained in force so short a time, traces of its effect are still plainly to be seen.</p> |
| <p>In this general critical insensitiveness, Americans remind one of those large worms of the species called Eunice, I think, which will begin to eat their own bodies if they discover them lying in range of their mouth. Americans have no Philistine objection to a good thing; on the contrary, they often accept it. But they accept it without exercising any critical faculty upon it; without really knowing that it is good, or knowing what makes it so. Their estimate is purely personal. Until this is understood it seems anomalous, for example, that a work like that of Professor Adams should be a bestseller, as for some time it was. But they will also accept a bad thing with equal interest and with the same critical insensitiveness, especially if it bears some kind of specious recommendation. At the Opera-Comique, not long ago, I sat beside a very civil and pleasant stranger who turned out to be an American, through all that I could endure of the very worst performance of “Hoffmann” I ever heard in my life. After the first act my neighbour praised it with immense enthusiasm, which embarrassed me into silence. Finally, however, being obliged to say something, I said that, having heard the same opera so lately at Brussels, I supposed I was rather spoiled. “Ah, Brussels!” he said. “Well, now, that’s interesting. I overheard somebody saying that same thing out in the street, just as I was coming in. But I didn’t pay much attention to it, you know, because I sort of took for granted that the best performances must be here in Paris.”</p> | <> | <p>In this general critical insensitiveness, Americans remind one of those large worms of the species called Eunice, I think, which will begin to eat their own bodies if they discover them lying in range of their mouth. Americans have no Philistine objection to a good thing; on the contrary, they often accept it. But they accept it without exercising any critical faculty upon it; without really knowing that it is good, or knowing what makes it so. Their estimate is purely personal. Until this is understood it seems anomalous, for example, that a work like that of Professor Adams should be a bestseller, as for some time it was. But they will also accept a bad thing with equal interest and with the same critical insensitiveness, especially if it bears some kind of specious recommendation. At the Opéra-Comique, not long ago, I sat beside a very civil and pleasant stranger who turned out to be an American, through all that I could endure of the very worst performance of “Hoffmann” I ever heard in my life. After the first act my neighbour praised it with immense enthusiasm, which embarrassed me into silence. Finally, however, being obliged to say something, I said that, having heard the same opera so lately at Brussels, I supposed I was rather spoiled. “Ah, Brussels!” he said. “Well, now, that’s interesting. I overheard somebody saying that same thing out in the street, just as I was coming in. But I didn’t pay much attention to it, you know, because I sort of took for granted that the best performances must be here in Paris.”</p> |
| <p>It would be unfair to press this illustration too far, because very few Americans nowadays, especially if they live in New York, have a chance to hear even a tolerable performance of “Hoffmann.” But without any unfairness, the reader will have no trouble in getting the implication. A visiting European would have been likely to know that the performance we heard was bad; he would have known why it was bad; and the fact of its being given at the Opera-Comique in Paris would have had no weight with him whatever. The great majority of Americans (without prejudice to the gentleman who sat beside me) are quite devoid of this critical faculty. What they encounter under some special set of altogether unrelated circumstances they are predisposed to accept and applaud, quite unaware that there is a strict impersonal standard set for such matters, and that, according to this standard, the thing they are accepting may be rated very low indeed. This uncritical attitude appears in every department of spiritual activity, and indulgence in it is unchecked by any organized influence of any kind.</p> | <> | <p>It would be unfair to press this illustration too far, because very few Americans nowadays, especially if they live in New York, have a chance to hear even a tolerable performance of “Hoffmann.” But without any unfairness, the reader will have no trouble in getting the implication. A visiting European would have been likely to know that the performance we heard was bad; he would have known why it was bad; and the fact of its being given at the Opéra-Comique in Paris would have had no weight with him whatever. The great majority of Americans (without prejudice to the gentleman who sat beside me) are quite devoid of this critical faculty. What they encounter under some special set of altogether unrelated circumstances they are predisposed to accept and applaud, quite unaware that there is a strict impersonal standard set for such matters, and that, according to this standard, the thing they are accepting may be rated very low indeed. This uncritical attitude appears in every department of spiritual activity, and indulgence in it is unchecked by any organized influence of any kind.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>III</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">III</h2> |
| <p class="indents">This is the condition that really determines the forecast which criticism is obliged to make for culture in America. The situation, viewed <i>in limine,</i> is clearly quite hopeless; and criticism makes this forecast, I repeat, without blame, and, as I shall show presently, without despair or depression. What is the use of recommending the satisfactions of spiritual activity to people who are already quite satisfied amid the inconceivable multiplicity of mechanical accessories and organized promotions of spiritual inactivity? Tell them, as our prophets and reformers do, that the natural taste for the bathos is educable and improvable, and that they ought to do something about it in order to attain the highest degree of happiness possible to humanity, and they reply, “You may be right, but we are not interested. We are doing quite well as we are. Spiritual activity is hard work; nobody else is doing it, and we are getting on comfortably without any work. We have plenty of distractions to take up our time, plenty of good company, everybody is going our way and nobody going yours.” What can one answer? Nothing, simply—there is no answer.</p> | <> | <p>This is the condition that really determines the forecast which criticism is obliged to make for culture in America. The situation, viewed <i>in limine</i>, is clearly quite hopeless; and criticism makes this forecast, I repeat, without blame, and, as I shall show presently, without despair or depression. What is the use of recommending the satisfactions of spiritual activity to people who are already quite satisfied amid the inconceivable multiplicity of mechanical accessories and organized promotions of spiritual inactivity? Tell them, as our prophets and reformers do, that the natural taste for the bathos is educable and improvable, and that they ought to do something about it in order to attain the highest degree of happiness possible to humanity, and they reply, “You may be right, but we are not interested. We are doing quite well as we are. Spiritual activity is hard work; nobody else is doing it, and we are getting on comfortably without any work. We have plenty of distractions to take up our time, plenty of good company, everybody is going our way and nobody going yours.” What can one answer? Nothing, simply—there is no answer.</p> |
| <p>Probably everyone who is more or less occupied in the works and ways of culture runs across an occasional spirit, usually young and ardent, who desires the fruits of culture and welcomes the discipline that brings them forth. Sanguine persons argue from this phenomenon that matters look brighter, bidding us think of what the grandparents of these young people, and the society that surrounded them, were like. Criticism, however, measures the strength of the opposite pull on these young people of the present day, discriminates carefully between real and apparent culture, as between leaves and fruit; it looks attentively into the matter of motive directed towards either, and it is obliged to regard this sign of promise as misleading. Superficially it is perhaps impressive, but actually it has little significance. I get letters from many such young spirits, and as so many come to an inconspicuous person like myself, I sometimes wonder how many come to persons whose relations with culture are in a sense official. I have two such letters this morning—what is one to say? The worst of it is that my correspondents mostly tell me they are not poor and that they have no responsibilities which would prevent their doing measurably what they like. Apparently they have enough in their favour; it is the imponderabilia that are against them. There is no trouble about telling them what to do, but one is all the time oppressed by the consciousness of delivering a counsel of perfection. How can one say to these correspondents, “Well, but the farther you progress in culture, the farther out of the current of affairs you put yourself, the more you are deprived of the precious sense of cooperation with your fellows; and this is a rather hard and forlorn prospect for a young person to face”? The author of the <i>Imitation</i> said with great acuteness that “the fewer there be who follow the way to heaven, the harder that way is to find”—and, he might have added, the harder to follow. It is not to be wondered at that these youthful spirits so often abandon themselves to a sterile discontent, and to a final weary acceptance of such slender compromise as the iron force of the civilization about them may yield.</p> | <> | <p>Probably everyone who is more or less occupied in the works and ways of culture runs across an occasional spirit, usually young and ardent, who desires the fruits of culture and welcomes the discipline that brings them forth. Sanguine persons argue from this phenomenon that matters look brighter, bidding us think of what the grandparents of these young people, and the society that surrounded them, were like. Criticism, however, measures the strength of the opposite pull on these young people of the present day, discriminates carefully between real and apparent culture, as between leaves and fruit; it looks attentively into the matter of motive directed towards either, and it is obliged to regard this sign of promise as misleading. Superficially it is perhaps impressive, but actually it has little significance. I get letters from many such young spirits, and as so many come to an inconspicuous person like myself, I sometimes wonder how many come to persons whose relations with culture are in a sense official. I have two such letters this morning—what is one to say? The worst of it is that my correspondents mostly tell me they are not poor and that they have no responsibilities which would prevent their doing measurably what they like. Apparently they have enough in their favour; it is the imponderabilia that are against them. There is no trouble about telling them what to do, but one is all the time oppressed by the consciousness of delivering a counsel of perfection. How can one say to these correspondents, “Well, but the farther you progress in culture, the farther out of the current of affairs you put yourself, the more you are deprived of the precious sense of coöperation with your fellows; and this is a rather hard and forlorn prospect for a young person to face”? The author of the <i>Imitation</i> said with great acuteness that “the fewer there be who follow the way to heaven, the harder that way is to find”—and, he might have added, the harder to follow. It is not to be wondered at that these youthful spirits so often abandon themselves to a sterile discontent, and to a final weary acceptance of such slender compromise as the iron force of the civilization about them may yield.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>IV</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">IV</h2> |
| <p class="indents">Criticism however, as I said, observes these untoward facts, observes even these lamentable sacrifices, without depression or despair. It is aware that culture and the humane life have one invincible ally on their side—the self-preserving instinct in humanity. This ally takes its time about asserting itself, but assert itself finally and effectively it always does. Ignorance, vulgarity, a barbaric and superficial spirit, may, and from all appearances will, predominate unquestioned for years in America, for ages if you like; no one can set a term on it. But a term there is, nevertheless, and when it is reached, men will come back to the quest of the humane life because they cannot do without it any longer. That is what has always happened, and it will happen again. Probably no one in that day will be able to tell just what has moved them; the general currents of life will simply reverse themselves and set in the opposite direction, and no one will be able to assign any better reason for it than that humanity could not any longer put up with their running the way they were. Perhaps by that time the political entity which we now know as the United States will have disappeared; one sees no reason to attach any peculiar permanence to it over any of the other political entities that have come and gone. Criticism, indeed, attaches very little importance to the bare question of the future of culture in the United States—<i>sub specie œternitatis,</i> what is the United States? Criticism knows well enough what the future of culture will be, and it may tentatively observe that the prospects in one place or another, for a few generations or a few centuries perhaps, seem to show this-or-that probable degree of correspondence with that future; but it interests itself no further. Virgil and Marcus Aurelius had no nationalist conception of culture; anxiety about Roman culture was the last thing to enter their minds. Socrates and his friends did not inflate themselves with notions of the humane life as an Athenian property; they turned over all that kind of bombast to the politicians and publicists of the period, and threw in some rare humour for good measure, to keep it company. Their course is the one which criticism suggests as sincerely practical for Americans of the present time. Contemplating the future of culture in no set terms of nationality or race or time, they recognized the self-preserving instinct of mankind as on its side, and did not worry about it any further. On the contrary, they approached their own age with the understanding, equanimity, humour, and tolerance that culture indicates; and instead of expecting their civilization to give them more than it possibly could give them, instead of continually fretting at their fellow citizens, blaming, browbeating or expostulating with them for their derogations from the humane life, they bent their energies, as far as circumstances allowed, towards making some kind of progress in the humane life themselves.</p> | <> | <p>Criticism however, as I said, observes these untoward facts, observes even these lamentable sacrifices, without depression or despair. It is aware that culture and the humane life have one invincible ally on their side—the self-preserving instinct in humanity. This ally takes its time about asserting itself, but assert itself finally and effectively it always does. Ignorance, vulgarity, a barbaric and superficial spirit, may, and from all appearances will, predominate unquestioned for years in America, for ages if you like; no one can set a term on it. But a term there is, nevertheless, and when it is reached, men will come back to the quest of the humane life because they cannot do without it any longer. That is what has always happened, and it will happen again. Probably no one in that day will be able to tell just what has moved them; the general currents of life will simply reverse themselves and set in the opposite direction, and no one will be able to assign any better reason for it than that humanity could not any longer put up with their running the way they were. Perhaps by that time the political entity which we now know as the United States will have disappeared; one sees no reason to attach any peculiar permanence to it over any of the other political entities that have come and gone. Criticism, indeed, attaches very little importance to the bare question of the future of culture in the United States—<i>sub specie œternitatis</i>, what is the United States? Criticism knows well enough what the future of culture will be, and it may tentatively observe that the prospects in one place or another, for a few generations or a few centuries perhaps, seem to show this-or-that probable degree of correspondence with that future; but it interests itself no further. Virgil and Marcus Aurelius had no nationalist conception of culture; anxiety about Roman culture was the last thing to enter their minds. Socrates and his friends did not inflate themselves with notions of the humane life as an Athenian property; they turned over all that kind of bombast to the politicians and publicists of the period, and threw in some rare humour for good measure, to keep it company. Their course is the one which criticism suggests as sincerely practical for Americans of the present time. Contemplating the future of culture in no set terms of nationality or race or time, they recognized the self-preserving instinct of mankind as on its side, and did not worry about it any further. On the contrary, they approached their own age with the understanding, equanimity, humour, and tolerance that culture indicates; and instead of expecting their civilization to give them more than it possibly could give them, instead of continually fretting at their fellow citizens, blaming, browbeating or expostulating with them for their derogations from the humane life, they bent their energies, as far as circumstances allowed, towards making some kind of progress in the humane life themselves.</p> |
| <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> | <> | <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> |
| <title>On Doing the Right Thing</title> | <> | <title></title> |
| <link href="../Misc/page-template.xpgt" rel="stylesheet" type="application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" /> | +- | |
| <p class="cht" id="ch5"><i>Towards a New Qualitys Product</i></p> | <> | <h1>Towards a New Quality-Product</h1> |
| <p class="cen"><b>I</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">I</h2> |
| <p class="dp-para"><span class="dp"><b><i>T</i></b></span><small>HERE</small> are conventions, as well as tricks, in all trades. Every department of social activity being governed chiefly by convention, it is not surprising that the most powerful and far-reaching conventions are the least talked about. We know them, and obey them, but do not speak of them. In Gascony, probably, people do not talk much about gasconades, nor did the citizens of Gath have much to say about Philistinism. Thus the fundamental conventions that govern our American educational system are never discussed. Criticism and discussion are as a rule confined to matters of method; some of the superficial conventions are sometimes brought under fire; but the fundamental conventions are always left alone.</p> | <> | <p class="noindent"><span class="raisedcap">T</span><span class="smallcaps">here</span> are conventions, as well as tricks, in all trades. Every department of social activity being governed chiefly by convention, it is not surprising that the most powerful and far-reaching conventions are the least talked about. We know them, and obey them, but do not speak of them. In Gascony, probably, people do not talk much about gasconades, nor did the citizens of Gath have much to say about Philistinism. Thus the fundamental conventions that govern our American educational system are never discussed. Criticism and discussion are as a rule confined to matters of method; some of the superficial conventions are sometimes brought under fire; but the fundamental conventions are always left alone.</p> |
| <p>An instructional institution is not at all necessarily educational; whether it be actually so or not depends upon a variety of circumstances which are not usually reckoned with either in the professional or in the popular scale of speech. An instructed pupil is by no means necessarily an educated pupil, not even <i>in limine;</i> he is merely a person who has been exposed to instruction, with nothing implied about the effect of the exposure, which even from an instructional, let alone an educational, view point, may quite well be no more than the effect of exposing a duck’s back to rain. Whatever education accrues to him depends upon collateral circumstances and conditions. Therefore in speaking of instruction as equivalent to education, or <i>vice versa,</i> we misuse language. To avoid pedantry I shall keep on misusing it, for the purposes of this essay, except where the misuse would be ambiguous and perhaps misleading.</p> | <> | <p>An instructional institution is not at all necessarily educational; whether it be actually so or not depends upon a variety of circumstances which are not usually reckoned with either in the professional or in the popular scale of speech. An instructed pupil is by no means necessarily an educated pupil, not even <i>in limine</i>; he is merely a person who has been exposed to instruction, with nothing implied about the effect of the exposure, which even from an instructional, let alone an educational, viewpoint, may quite well be no more than the effect of exposing a duck’s back to rain. Whatever education accrues to him depends upon collateral circumstances and conditions. Therefore in speaking of instruction as equivalent to education, or <i>vice versa</i>, we misuse language. To avoid pedantry I shall keep on misusing it, for the purposes of this essay, except where the misuse would be ambiguous and perhaps misleading.</p> |
| <p>In earlier days this distinction was clearer. Ernest Renan long ago drew it with a firm hand, when he spoke of the United States as having set up “a considerable popular instruction without any serious higher education”—probably the most complete and competent criticism of our system that has ever been made, for all other general criticisms that I know of, and most of the special criticisms as well, are finally reducible to it. In the bad old times of the three R’s and the deestrick school, the verb <i>to learn</i> had a transitive use, and in that use it was quite regularly pronounced <i>Varn.</i> I am old enough to remember this, and hence old enough to mark the disappearance of the transitive form <i>to Varn,</i> in favour of the active verb <i>to teach.</i> There seems to be a coincidence here, and a rather interesting one, because, as everyone knows who has tried it, you cannot teach a person anything—unless perchance he know it already—but you can l’arn him something. L’arnin’ did not in those days, moreover, mean learning, as understood by us of the enlightened present; it did not mean the rather equivocal windfalls that drop in your path of passage from grade to grade of a course of instruction. Not even in its compound form <i>book-Vaminy</i> did it mean precisely that. It meant something that somebody had l’arned you. I am not praising those old times, nor do I wish them back; I merely remark that a retrospect upon them discerns traces of this particular, and by no means useless or fantastic, discrimination.</p> | <> | <p>In earlier days this distinction was clearer. Ernest Renan long ago drew it with a firm hand, when he spoke of the United States as having set up “a considerable popular instruction without any serious higher education”—probably the most complete and competent criticism of our system that has ever been made, for all other general criticisms that I know of, and most of the special criticisms as well, are finally reducible to it. In the bad old times of the three R’s and the deestrick school, the verb <i>to learn</i> had a transitive use, and in that use it was quite regularly pronounced <i>l’arn</i>. I am old enough to remember this, and hence old enough to mark the disappearance of the transitive form <i>to l’arn</i>, in favour of the active verb <i>to teach</i>. There seems to be a coincidence here, and a rather interesting one, because, as everyone knows who has tried it, you cannot teach a person anything—unless perchance he know it already—but you can l’arn him something. L’arnin’ did not in those days, moreover, mean learning, as understood by us of the enlightened present; it did not mean the rather equivocal windfalls that drop in your path of passage from grade to grade of a course of instruction. Not even in its compound form <i>book-l’arnin’</i> did it mean precisely that. It meant something that somebody had l’arned you. I am not praising those old times, nor do I wish them back; I merely remark that a retrospect upon them discerns traces of this particular, and by no means useless or fantastic, discrimination.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>II</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">II</h2> |
| <p class="indents">It is probably the convergence of these two fundamental conventions upon the practical conduct of education that causes this uncertainty. Such uncertainty would at all events be the natural consequence of this convergence. Mr. Henry Ford is in no uncertainty about the kind of thing he wishes and intends to produce, or about the public demand for it; and he can give you a clear idea of the distinguishing points and qualities that his product will show when it comes out. This parallel cannot, of course, be pressed too far, because Mr. Ford is dealing with inanimate material, and our educational system is not. It may be usefully employed, however, to show the essential differences established by pure convention between production in Mr. Ford’s case and in the case of our educational system.</p> | <> | <p>It is probably the convergence of these two fundamental conventions upon the practical conduct of education that causes this uncertainty. Such uncertainty would at all events be the natural consequence of this convergence. Mr. Henry Ford is in no uncertainty about the kind of thing he wishes and intends to produce, or about the public demand for it; and he can give you a clear idea of the distinguishing points and qualities that his product will show when it comes out. This parallel cannot, of course, be pressed too far, because Mr. Ford is dealing with inanimate material, and our educational system is not. It may be usefully employed, however, to show the essential differences established by pure convention between production in Mr. Ford’s case and in the case of our educational system.</p> |
| <p>Suppose there were a convention among the purchasing public which made them assume that aviation and motoring meant the same thing; one can easily imagine some of its reactions upon Mr. Ford in his capacity of manufacturer and salesman. When he met with his associates in the trade, for example, he would have to talk more or less in terms of aviation, and cudgel his brains for ways to keep these conventional trade-terms in some kind of farfetched correspondence with the actualities of motoring. <i>Absurd!</i> some one will say. Quite so; but not an iota more absurd than the reactions set up by the inveterate conventional confusion of republicanism with democracy, or of education with instruction. To prove it, listen to any campaign speech or to any commencement address; or read a copy of the <i>Congressional Record,</i> or the proceedings of some gathering of pedagogues. If Mr. Henry Ford indulged in such inconsequent verbal antics before a group of his colleagues in the automobile industry, they would instantly adjourn as one man and apply for a commission <i>de lunatico inquirendo;</i> and they would be quite right.</p> | <> | <p>Suppose there were a convention among the purchasing public which made them assume that aviation and motoring meant the same thing; one can easily imagine some of its reactions upon Mr. Ford in his capacity of manufacturer and salesman. When he met with his associates in the trade, for example, he would have to talk more or less in terms of aviation, and cudgel his brains for ways to keep these conventional trade-terms in some kind of far-fetched correspondence with the actualities of motoring. <i>Absurd!</i> some one will say. Quite so; but not an iota more absurd than the reactions set up by the inveterate conventional confusion of republicanism with democracy, or of education with instruction. To prove it, listen to any campaign speech or to any commencement address; or read a copy of the <i>Congressional Record</i>, or the proceedings of some gathering of pedagogues. If Mr. Henry Ford indulged in such inconsequent verbal antics before a group of his colleagues in the automobile industry, they would instantly adjourn as one man and apply for a commission <i>de lunatico inquirendo</i>; and they would be quite right.</p> |
| <p>Here we have a pretty fair parallel, again, to the plight of our educational system. Everybody ought to go to school; everybody ought to go to college. The worth and respectability of an educational institution is popularly measured by the size of its “plant” and the number of its students. A big school is a great school. Every institution, therefore, has to have students; it has to have regard to their numbers only, not their quality—anything that will make an additional name on the register will do, for social convention has decreed the assumption that everybody possesses school-ability. By due obeisance to this set of conventions and its corollaries, our institutions grew mightily until they reached their present proportions and then-present scale of expense.</p> | <> | <p>Here we have a pretty fair parallel, again, to the plight of our educational system. Everybody ought to go to school; everybody ought to go to college. The worth and respectability of an educational institution is popularly measured by the size of its “plant” and the number of its students. A big school is a great school. Every institution, therefore, has to have students; it has to have regard to their numbers only, not their quality—anything that will make an additional name on the register will do, for social convention has decreed the assumption that everybody possesses school-ability. By due obeisance to this set of conventions and its corollaries, our institutions grew mightily until they reached their present proportions and their present scale of expense.</p> |
| <p>Those who regard my parallel between our educational system and Mr. Ford’s enterprise as extravagant and far-fetched, might give me the benefit of a glance at the number and nature of the subjects taught in one representative secondary school, college, and university—I shall not suggest a choice, he may take his pick—and an estimate of the amount of brain-fag that an average mentality would suffer in “getting through” the minimum requirements laid down to cover a judicious selection from the bewildering list. I think he would cheerfully-exonerate me. Consider one item only, the “courses in English.” Some time ago, in table talk with one of the most highly cultivated men in America, we tried to make a rough estimate of the number of “courses in English” that are offered annually by our colleges and universities. It came to something like twenty thousand, to my great amazement; and from my own observation and experience, which circumstances have made a little larger than the average, perhaps, I should say that these courses are the last refuge of the incompetent and the idle, though this is by no means the same as saying that no others ever take them. Forty years ago, I believe, a course in English was practically unknown among us; in the college I attended, back in the times of ignorance, such a thing was never dreamed of. Yet my fellow students managed somehow to write and speak pretty good English. On the other hand, I never yet had the pleasure of meeting a modern university graduate who had “specialized in English,” who could either write English or speak English even tolerably. If my readers have had better luck, I congratulate them; I hope they have. Last year there fell under my hand a garland of literary windflowers culled from students by instructors, not in a primary school, not in a high school, not in a college, but in an American university, huge, prosperous, and flourishing. I do not know that the writers were “specializing in English”; but there they were, university students, and if one had not got one’s eye-teeth cut, one might say they were therefore presumably literate, presumably intelligent. The following specimens bear testimony on these points:</p> | <> | <p>Those who regard my parallel between our educational system and Mr. Ford’s enterprise as extravagant and far-fetched, might give me the benefit of a glance at the number and nature of the subjects taught in one representative secondary school, college, and university—I shall not suggest a choice, he may take his pick—and an estimate of the amount of brain-fag that an average mentality would suffer in “getting through” the minimum requirements laid down to cover a judicious selection from the bewildering list. I think he would cheerfully exonerate me. Consider one item only, the “courses in English.” Some time ago, in table talk with one of the most highly cultivated men in America, we tried to make a rough estimate of the number of “courses in English” that are offered annually by our colleges and universities. It came to something like twenty thousand, to my great amazement; and from my own observation and experience, which circumstances have made a little larger than the average, perhaps, I should say that these courses are the last refuge of the incompetent and the idle, though this is by no means the same as saying that no others ever take them. Forty years ago, I believe, a course in English was practically unknown among us; in the college I attended, back in the times of ignorance, such a thing was never dreamed of. Yet my fellow students managed somehow to write and speak pretty good English. On the other hand, I never yet had the pleasure of meeting a modern university graduate who had “specialized in English,” who could either write English or speak English even tolerably. If my readers have had better luck, I congratulate them; I hope they have. Last year there fell under my hand a garland of literary windflowers culled from students by instructors, not in a primary school, not in a high school, not in a college, but in an American university, huge, prosperous, and flourishing. I do not know that the writers were “specializing in English”; but there they were, university students, and if one had not got one’s eye-teeth cut, one might say they were therefore presumably literate, presumably intelligent. The following specimens bear testimony on these points:</p> |
| <> | <blockquote> | |
| <p class="indentaa">“Being a tough hunk of meat, I passed up the steak.”</p> | <p>“Being a tough hunk of meat, I passed up the steak.”</p> | |
| <p class="indentaa">“Lincoln’s mind growed as his country kneaded it.”</p> | <> | <p>“Lincoln’s mind growed as his country kneaded it.”</p> |
| <p class="indentaa">“The camel carries a water tank with him; he is also a rough rider and has four gates.”</p> | <> | <p>“The camel carries a water tank with him; he is also a rough rider and has four gates.”</p> |
| <p class="indentaa">“As soon as music starts silence rains, but as soon as it stops it gets worse than ever.”</p> | <> | <p>“As soon as music starts silence rains, but as soon as it stops it gets worse than ever.”</p> |
| <p class="indentaa">“College students, as a general rule, like such readings that will take the least mental inertia.”</p> | <> | <p>“College students, as a general rule, like such readings that will take the least mental inertia.”</p> |
| <p class="indentaa">“Modern dress is extreme and ought to be checked.”</p> | <> | <p>“Modern dress is extreme and ought to be checked.”</p> |
| <p class="indentaa">“Although the Irish are usually content with small jobs they have won a niche in the backbone of the country.”</p> | <> | <p>“Although the Irish are usually content with small jobs they have won a niche in the backbone of the country.”</p> |
| </blockquote> | ||
| <> | <blockquote> | |
| <p class="indentsa">Edmund in “King Lear” “committed a base act and allowed his illegitimate father to see a forged letter.” Cordelia’s death “was the straw that broke the camel’s back and killed the King.” Lear’s fool “was prostrated on the neck of the King.” “Hotspur,” averred a sophomore, “was a wild, irresolute man. He loved honor above all. He would go out and kill twenty Scotchmen before breakfast.” Kate was a “woman who had something to do with hot spurs.”</p> | <p>Edmund in “King Lear” “committed a base act and allowed his illegitimate father to see a forged letter.” Cordelia’s death “was the straw that broke the camel’s back and killed the King.” Lear’s fool “was prostrated on the neck of the King.” “Hotspur,” averred a sophomore, “was a wild, irresolute man. He loved honor above all. He would go out and kill twenty Scotchmen before breakfast.” Kate was a “woman who had something to do with hot spurs.”</p> | |
| </blockquote> | ||
| <p class="indspl">Also Milton:</p> | <> | <p>Also Milton:</p> |
| <> | <blockquote> | |
| <p class="indentsa">“Diabetes was Milton’s Italian friend,” one student explained. Another said: “Satan had all the emotions of a woman and was a sort of trustee in heaven, so to speak.” The theme of “Comus” was given as “purity protestriate.” Mammon in “Paradise Lost” suggests that the best way “to endure hell is to raise hell and build a pavilion.”</p> | <p>“Diabetes was Milton’s Italian friend,” one student explained. Another said: “Satan had all the emotions of a woman and was a sort of trustee in heaven, so to speak.” The theme of “Comus” was given as “purity protestriate.” Mammon in “Paradise Lost” suggests that the best way “to endure hell is to raise hell and build a pavilion.”</p> | |
| </blockquote> | ||
| <p class="cen"><b>III</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">III</h2> |
| <p class="indents">The third fundamental convention which besets our educational system is that by which we ignore the difference between formative knowledge and instrumental knowledge; the convention whereby we assume that instrumental knowledge is all one need have, that it will perfectly well do duty for formative knowledge; indeed, that it is in itself formative, as much so as any, and that the claims heretofore made for the formative power of another type of knowledge were hierarchical and spurious. When our system remodelled its processes to suit the requirements of educational mass-production (speaking in industrial terms) our educators began to talk a great deal about the need for our being “men of our time,” and taking on only such studies as “adapt us to modern conditions” and “fit us to take our place in the present-day world”—such studies, in short, as directly bear on the business of becoming chemists, engineers, bond-salesmen, lawyers, horse-doctors, and so on. There was no direct relation superficially apparent between the type of study hitherto known as formative, and the actual practice of stock-jobbing, company-promoting, or horse-doctoring; therefore this type of study could and should be laid aside as a sheer waste of time and effort. Time was a great consideration, in fact, alike with students, parents, and a public that, as Bishop Butler says, was everywhere feverishly “impatient, and for precipitating things.” The public ideal of excellence and success, generally speaking, was embodied in men who had themselves never been under the discipline of formative knowledge, and who neither wished nor were able to appraise that discipline intelligently for others. Our educational system at once rose to meet this attitude of the public—what else could it do?—and in the remodelling of its processes, formative studies either were flatly discarded or, when they went on at all, went on only in a vestigial fashion and under the blight of a general disregard and disparagement. At the present time even, as well as I am informed, our system has little or nothing to say about the relation of formative knowledge to the vocational practices of a really educated citizenry. Yet there is something to be said about it, and in view of the state of our society, about which most thoughtful observers have begun to be a little uneasy—a state resultant upon the unquestioned dominance of the conventions I have named—the subject seems worth reopening and reexamining. President Butler of Columbia University was lately quoted by the newspapers as wondering why there are no longer any great men. The obvious rejoinder, of course, if one were ill-natured enough to make it, would be, How can there be any great men as long as Columbia University keeps on being what it is and doing what it does? The just rejoinder, however, is, How can there be any great men among us until the right relation between formative knowledge and instrumental knowledge becomes implicit in the actual practice and technique of education?</p> | <> | <p>The third fundamental convention which besets our educational system is that by which we ignore the difference between formative knowledge and instrumental knowledge; the convention whereby we assume that instrumental knowledge is all one need have, that it will perfectly well do duty for formative knowledge; indeed, that it is in itself formative, as much so as any, and that the claims heretofore made for the formative power of another type of knowledge were hierarchical and spurious. When our system remodelled its processes to suit the requirements of educational mass-production (speaking in industrial terms) our educators began to talk a great deal about the need for our being “men of our time,” and taking on only such studies as “adapt us to modern conditions” and “fit us to take our place in the present-day world”—such studies, in short, as directly bear on the business of becoming chemists, engineers, bond-salesmen, lawyers, horse-doctors, and so on. There was no direct relation superficially apparent between the type of study hitherto known as formative, and the actual practice of stock-jobbing, company-promoting, or horse-doctoring; therefore this type of study could and should be laid aside as a sheer waste of time and effort. Time was a great consideration, in fact, alike with students, parents, and a public that, as Bishop Butler says, was everywhere feverishly “impatient, and for precipitating things.” The public ideal of excellence and success, generally speaking, was embodied in men who had themselves never been under the discipline of formative knowledge, and who neither wished nor were able to appraise that discipline intelligently for others. Our educational system at once rose to meet this attitude of the public—what else could it do?—and in the remodelling of its processes, formative studies either were flatly discarded or, when they went on at all, went on only in a vestigial fashion and under the blight of a general disregard and disparagement. At the present time even, as well as I am informed, our system has little or nothing to say about the relation of formative knowledge to the vocational practices of a really educated citizenry. Yet there is something to be said about it, and in view of the state of our society, about which most thoughtful observers have begun to be a little uneasy—a state resultant upon the unquestioned dominance of the conventions I have named—the subject seems worth reopening and reëxamining. President Butler of Columbia University was lately quoted by the newspapers as wondering why there are no longer any great men. The obvious rejoinder, of course, if one were ill-natured enough to make it, would be, How can there be any great men as long as Columbia University keeps on being what it is and doing what it does? The just rejoinder, however, is, How can there be any great men among us until the right relation between formative knowledge and instrumental knowledge becomes implicit in the actual practice and technique of education?</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>IV</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">IV</h2> |
| <p class="indents">While leading the world in mass-production, the United States also puts out a very slender and unconsidered line of quality-products that, as far as I know, are unequalled. The best suit of clothes I ever saw was made of an American homespun wool textile of which the entire annual output would not be enough, I dare say, to keep Hart, Schaffner & Marx busy fifteen minutes. Europe, the home of sausage, has nothing that can hold a candle to the Kingston sausage or the Lebanon County smoked sausage of Pennsylvania. The best shaving-cream, cologne-water, and mouth-wash I ever used are American, made more or less for the fun of the thing, apparently, by a very busy physician with a turn for chemistry, and if one can ever get them, one is lucky ; I do not believe he takes time to make up a hundred dollars’ worth of all three together in a year, so he almost never has any of them on hand. The best hard-water soap I ever saw—and, having an uncommonly thin skin, I have diligently tried many kinds, especially in our Lake regions, and in Europe, where the water is as hard as Pharaoh’s heart—is American, made as a side line by an old-time concern that does not seem to care whether it sells any of it or not; and hence the amount of search and supplication necessary to get it would be enough, probably, to reconcile a sinner to God, in a pinch. It is in the <i>average</i> of such matters, and many others that might be mentioned, that America ranks relatively low; and it is, of course, by the average that a country’s production is to be judged. But the fact remains, as far as my experience goes, that in many lines America’s quality-products, what little there is of them, and put out gingerly, almost surreptitiously, as they are, cannot be matched anywhere.</p> | <> | <p>While leading the world in mass-production, the United States also puts out a very slender and unconsidered line of quality-products that, as far as I know, are unequalled. The best suit of clothes I ever saw was made of an American homespun wool textile of which the entire annual output would not be enough, I dare say, to keep Hart, Schaffner & Marx busy fifteen minutes. Europe, the home of sausage, has nothing that can hold a candle to the Kingston sausage or the Lebanon County smoked sausage of Pennsylvania. The best shaving-cream, cologne-water, and mouth-wash I ever used are American, made more or less for the fun of the thing, apparently, by a very busy physician with a turn for chemistry, and if one can ever get them, one is lucky; I do not believe he takes time to make up a hundred dollars’ worth of all three together in a year, so he almost never has any of them on hand. The best hard-water soap I ever saw—and, having an uncommonly thin skin, I have diligently tried many kinds, especially in our Lake regions, and in Europe, where the water is as hard as Pharaoh’s heart—is American, made as a side line by an old-time concern that does not seem to care whether it sells any of it or not; and hence the amount of search and supplication necessary to get it would be enough, probably, to reconcile a sinner to God, in a pinch. It is in the <i>average</i> of such matters, and many others that might be mentioned, that America ranks relatively low; and it is, of course, by the average that a country’s production is to be judged. But the fact remains, as far as my experience goes, that in many lines America’s quality-products, what little there is of them, and put out gingerly, almost surreptitiously, as they are, cannot be matched anywhere.</p> |
| <p>The curriculum of the college should cover (1) the whole range of Greek and Roman literature, (2) mathematics up as far as the differential calculus, (3) late in the course, six or eight weeks work (three hours a week) in formal logic; and still later, the same amount of time on the <i>history</i> of the English language. Nothing but that; the college should pursue its mission as an educational experiment under the most jealously safeguarded aseptic experimental conditions, and it should be understood at the outset that the experiment could not be expected to yield anything approximating conclusive data for at least fifty years. There should be no “student activities” of any kind. The college should disallow and discourage any quasi-official relations with its alumni, and discountenance any representations from its alumni concerning its administration. When I went to college, the authorities regarded the alumni as little better than the scum of the earth, and there would have been joy in the presence of the angels on the day that the alumni barged in with suggestions about how the place should be run, or with attempts to cultivate “college spirit,” and induce undergraduates to do and die for their dear old <i>alma mater.</i> You may believe there would. My recollections of the general atmosphere of that institution are very vivid; it was an atmosphere untainted with sentimentalism of any kind. The students regarded the instructors as their natural enemies, hated them manfully, and respected them immeasureably. Anything like a specious and sentimental Elk-Rotarian good-fellowship between professor and student, in those days, was undreamed of; and the thought of it would have been as much resented by the students, on the score of propriety, as by the faculty. It has never yet been clear to me that this state of things was unwholesome or undesirable.</p> | <> | <p>The curriculum of the college should cover (1) the whole range of Greek and Roman literature, (2) mathematics up as far as the differential calculus, (3) late in the course, six or eight weeks work (three hours a week) in formal logic; and still later, the same amount of time on the <i>history</i> of the English language. Nothing but that; the college should pursue its mission as an educational experiment under the most jealously safeguarded aseptic experimental conditions, and it should be understood at the outset that the experiment could not be expected to yield anything approximating conclusive data for at least fifty years. There should be no “student activities” of any kind. The college should disallow and discourage any quasi-official relations with its alumni, and discountenance any representations from its alumni concerning its administration. When I went to college, the authorities regarded the alumni as little better than the scum of the earth, and there would have been joy in the presence of the angels on the day that the alumni barged in with suggestions about how the place should be run, or with attempts to cultivate “college spirit,” and induce undergraduates to do and die for their dear old <i>alma mater</i>. You may believe there would. My recollections of the general atmosphere of that institution are very vivid; it was an atmosphere untainted with sentimentalism of any kind. The students regarded the instructors as their natural enemies, hated them manfully, and respected them immeasureably. Anything like a specious and sentimental Elk-Rotarian good-fellowship between professor and student, in those days, was undreamed of; and the thought of it would have been as much resented by the students, on the score of propriety, as by the faculty. It has never yet been clear to me that this state of things was unwholesome or undesirable.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>v</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">V</h2> |
| <p class="indents">For the purposes of this little essay I am not interested in trying to forecast the results of this test, or to show reasons for stipulating these educational terms for it, because I am not here propounding a thesis, but only making a suggestion. If the suggestion takes root with any one who might wish to endow such an experiment, I should be glad to go into the subject with him to any length and quite disinterestedly, as I have no sort of ax to grind. Almost the last thing I would choose to be at my time of life is a college president, or a professor, or <i>Gott soll hüten,</i> a trustee. My interest is only in a competent diagnosis of the weaknesses and disabilities of American civilization—disabilities which are every day increasingly apparent—and in finding some remedy for them; and I believe that the social experiment I have outlined would throw enough light on both these matters to be worth its cost. With our educational system continually controlled by the conventions which now control it (and there is no prospect that I can see of its release), our civilization is obviously likely to go on as it is. Argument <i>a priori</i> about the kind of civilization that might ensue upon an emancipation from these conventions would be as obviously futile and inert. Some line of practical approach, however, might be indicated <i>a posteriori,</i> by the experimental method, applied through such an institution as I have suggested; and in its essential features, as far as I am informed, there is not an institution in the United States today that remotely resembles the one I propose.</p> | <> | <p>For the purposes of this little essay I am not interested in trying to forecast the results of this test, or to show reasons for stipulating these educational terms for it, because I am not here propounding a thesis, but only making a suggestion. If the suggestion takes root with any one who might wish to endow such an experiment, I should be glad to go into the subject with him to any length and quite disinterestedly, as I have no sort of ax to grind. Almost the last thing I would choose to be at my time of life is a college president, or a professor, or <i>Gott soll hüten</i>, a trustee. My interest is only in a competent diagnosis of the weaknesses and disabilities of American civilization—disabilities which are every day increasingly apparent—and in finding some remedy for them; and I believe that the social experiment I have outlined would throw enough light on both these matters to be worth its cost. With our educational system continually controlled by the conventions which now control it (and there is no prospect that I can see of its release), our civilization is obviously likely to go on as it is. Argument <i>a priori</i> about the kind of civilization that might ensue upon an emancipation from these conventions would be as obviously futile and inert. Some line of practical approach, however, might be indicated <i>a posteriori</i>, by the experimental method, applied through such an institution as I have suggested; and in its essential features, as far as I am informed, there is not an institution in the United States today that remotely resembles the one I propose.</p> |
| <> | <blockquote> | |
| <p class="indentsa">But think of the poor devils who will have gone through your mill! It seems a cold-blooded thing, merely by way of experiment, to turn out a lot of people who simply can’t live at home. Vivisection is nothing to it. As I understand your scheme, you are planning to breed a batch of cultivated, sensitive beings who would all die six months after they were exposed to your actual civilization. This is not Oxford superciliousness, I assure you, for things nowadays are precious little better with us. I agree with you that such spirits are the salt of the earth, and England used to make some kind of place for them, not much, maybe, but there were backwaters where they could at least live and cooperate with their kind. But now—well, I hardly know. It seems as if some parts of the earth were jolly well salt-proof. The salt melts and disappears, and nothing comes of it.</p> | <p>But think of the poor devils who will have gone through your mill! It seems a cold-blooded thing, merely by way of experiment, to turn out a lot of people who simply can’t live at home. Vivisection is nothing to it. As I understand your scheme, you are planning to breed a batch of cultivated, sensitive beings who would all die six months after they were exposed to your actual civilization. This is not Oxford superciliousness, I assure you, for things nowadays are precious little better with us. I agree with you that such spirits are the salt of the earth, and England used to make some kind of place for them, not much, maybe, but there were backwaters where they could at least live and coöperate with their kind. But now—well, I hardly know. It seems as if some parts of the earth were jolly well salt-proof. The salt melts and disappears, and nothing comes of it.</p> | |
| </blockquote> | ||
| <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> | <> | <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> |
| <title>On Doing the Right Thing</title> | <> | <title></title> |
| <link href="../Misc/page-template.xpgt" rel="stylesheet" type="application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" /> | +- | |
| <p class="cht" id="ch6"><i>Anarchist’s Progress</i></p> | <> | <h1>Anarchist’s Progress</h1> |
| <p class="cen"><b>I</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">I</h2> |
| <p class="dp-para"><span class="dp"><b><i>W</i></b></span><small>HEN</small> I was seven years old, playing in front of our house on the outskirts of Brooklyn one morning, a policeman stopped and chatted with me for a few moments. He was a kindly man, of a Scandinavian blonde type with pleasant blue eyes, and I took to him at once. He sealed our acquaintance permanently by telling me a story that I thought was immensely funny; I laughed over it at intervals all day. I do not remember what it was, but it had to do with the antics of a drove of geese in our neighbourhood. He impressed me as the most entertaining and delightful person that I had seen in a long time, and I spoke of him to my parents with great pride.</p> | <> | <p class="noindent"><span class="raisedcap">W</span><span class="smallcaps">hen</span> I was seven years old, playing in front of our house on the outskirts of Brooklyn one morning, a policeman stopped and chatted with me for a few moments. He was a kindly man, of a Scandinavian blonde type with pleasant blue eyes, and I took to him at once. He sealed our acquaintance permanently by telling me a story that I thought was immensely funny; I laughed over it at intervals all day. I do not remember what it was, but it had to do with the antics of a drove of geese in our neighbourhood. He impressed me as the most entertaining and delightful person that I had seen in a long time, and I spoke of him to my parents with great pride.</p> |
| <p>At this time I did not know what policemen were. No doubt I had seen ‘them, but not to notice them. Now, naturally, after meeting this highly prepossessing specimen, I wished to find out all I could about them, so I took the matter up with our old colored cook. I learned from her that my fine new friend represented something that was called the law; that the law was very good and great, and that everyone should obey and respect it. This was reasonable; if it were so, then my admirable friend just fitted his place, and was even more highly to be thought of, if possible. I asked where the law came from, and it was explained to me that men all over the country got together on what was called election day, and chose certain persons to make the law and others to see that it was carried out; and that the sum-total of all this mechanism was called our government. This again was as it should be; the men I knew, such as my father, my uncle George, and Messrs. So-and-so among the neighbours (running them over rapidly in my mind), could do this sort of thing handsomely, and there was probably a good deal in the idea. But what was it all for? Why did we have law and government, anyway? Then I learned that there were persons called criminals; some of them stole, some hurt or killed people or set fire to houses; and it was the duty of men like my friend the policeman to protect us from them. If he saw any he would catch them and lock them up, and they would be punished according to the law.</p> | <> | <p>At this time I did not know what policemen were. No doubt I had seen them, but not to notice them. Now, naturally, after meeting this highly prepossessing specimen, I wished to find out all I could about them, so I took the matter up with our old colored cook. I learned from her that my fine new friend represented something that was called the law; that the law was very good and great, and that everyone should obey and respect it. This was reasonable; if it were so, then my admirable friend just fitted his place, and was even more highly to be thought of, if possible. I asked where the law came from, and it was explained to me that men all over the country got together on what was called election day, and chose certain persons to make the law and others to see that it was carried out; and that the sum-total of all this mechanism was called our government. This again was as it should be; the men I knew, such as my father, my uncle George, and Messrs. So-and-so among the neighbours (running them over rapidly in my mind), could do this sort of thing handsomely, and there was probably a good deal in the idea. But what was it all for? Why did we have law and government, anyway? Then I learned that there were persons called criminals; some of them stole, some hurt or killed people or set fire to houses; and it was the duty of men like my friend the policeman to protect us from them. If he saw any he would catch them and lock them up, and they would be punished according to the law.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>II</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">II</h2> |
| <p class="indents">When I was just past my tenth birthday we left Brooklyn and went to live in a pleasant town of ten thousand population. An orphaned cousin made her home with us, a pretty girl, who soon began to cut a fair swath among the young men of the town. One of these was an extraordinary person, difficult to describe. My father, a great tease, at once detected his resemblance to a chimpanzee, and bored my cousin abominably by always speaking of him as Chim. The young man was not a popular idol by any means, yet no one thought badly of him. He was accepted everywhere as a source of legitimate diversion, and in the graduated, popular scale of local speech was invariably designated as a fool—a born fool, for which there was no help. When I heard he was a lawyer, I was so astonished that I actually went into the chicken-court one day to hear him plead some trifling case, out of sheer curiosity to see him in action; and I must say I got my money’s worth. Presently the word went around that he was going to run for Congress, and stood a good chance of being elected; and what amazed me above all was that no one seemed to see anything out of the way about it.</p> | <> | <p>When I was just past my tenth birthday we left Brooklyn and went to live in a pleasant town of ten thousand population. An orphaned cousin made her home with us, a pretty girl, who soon began to cut a fair swath among the young men of the town. One of these was an extraordinary person, difficult to describe. My father, a great tease, at once detected his resemblance to a chimpanzee, and bored my cousin abominably by always speaking of him as Chim. The young man was not a popular idol by any means, yet no one thought badly of him. He was accepted everywhere as a source of legitimate diversion, and in the graduated, popular scale of local speech was invariably designated as a fool—a born fool, for which there was no help. When I heard he was a lawyer, I was so astonished that I actually went into the chicken-court one day to hear him plead some trifling case, out of sheer curiosity to see him in action; and I must say I got my money’s worth. Presently the word went around that he was going to run for Congress, and stood a good chance of being elected; and what amazed me above all was that no one seemed to see anything out of the way about it.</p> |
| <p>My tottering faith in law and government got a hard jolt from this. Here was a man, a very good fellow indeed—he had nothing in common with the crew who herded around the Wigwam—who was regarded by the unanimous judgment of the community, without doubt, peradventure, or exception, as having barely sense enough to come in when it rained; and this was the man whom his party was sending to Washington as contentedly as if he were some Draco or Solon. At this point my sense of humour forged to the front and took permanent charge of the situation, which was fortunate for me, since otherwise my education would have been aborted, and I would perhaps, like so many who have missed this great blessing, have gone in with the reformers and up lifters; and such a close shave as this, in the words of Rabelais, is a terrible thing to think upon. How many reformers there have been in my day; how nobly and absurdly busy they were, and how dismally unhumorous! I can dimly remember Pingree and Altgeld in the Middle West, and Godkin, Strong, and Seth Low in New York. During the ‘nineties, the goodly fellowship of the prophets buzzed about the whole country like flies around a tar-barrel—and, Lord! where be they now?</p> | <> | <p>My tottering faith in law and government got a hard jolt from this. Here was a man, a very good fellow indeed—he had nothing in common with the crew who herded around the Wigwam—who was regarded by the unanimous judgment of the community, without doubt, peradventure, or exception, as having barely sense enough to come in when it rained; and this was the man whom his party was sending to Washington as contentedly as if he were some Draco or Solon. At this point my sense of humour forged to the front and took permanent charge of the situation, which was fortunate for me, since otherwise my education would have been aborted, and I would perhaps, like so many who have missed this great blessing, have gone in with the reformers and uplifters; and such a close shave as this, in the words of Rabelais, is a terrible thing to think upon. How many reformers there have been in my day; how nobly and absurdly busy they were, and how dismally unhumorous! I can dimly remember Pingree and Altgeld in the Middle West, and Godkin, Strong, and Seth Low in New York. During the ’nineties, the goodly fellowship of the prophets buzzed about the whole country like flies around a tar-barrel—and, Lord! where be they now?</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>III</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">III</h2> |
| <p class="indents">It will easily be seen, I think, that the only unusual thing about all this was that my mind was perfectly unprepossessed and blank throughout. My experiences were surely not uncommon, and my reasonings and inferences were no more than any child, who was more than half-witted, could have made without trouble. But my mind had never been perverted or sophisticated; it was left to itself. I never went to school, so I was never indoctrinated with pseudo-patriotic fustian of any kind, and the plain, natural truth of such matters as I have been describing, therefore, found its way to my mind without encountering any artificial obstacle.</p> | <> | <p>It will easily be seen, I think, that the only unusual thing about all this was that my mind was perfectly unprepossessed and blank throughout. My experiences were surely not uncommon, and my reasonings and inferences were no more than any child, who was more than half-witted, could have made without trouble. But my mind had never been perverted or sophisticated; it was left to itself. I never went to school, so I was never indoctrinated with pseudo-patriotic fustian of any kind, and the plain, natural truth of such matters as I have been describing, therefore, found its way to my mind without encountering any artificial obstacle.</p> |
| <p>Presently I got acquainted in a casual way with some officeholders, becoming quite friendly with one in particular, who held a high elective office. One day he happened to ask me how I would reply to a letter that bothered him; it was a query about the fitness of a certain man for an appointive job. His recommendation would have weight; he liked the man, and really wanted to recommend him—moreover, he was under great political pressure to recommend him—but he did not think the man was qualified. Well, then, I suggested offhand, why not put it just that way?—it seemed all fair and straightforward. “Ah yes,” he said, “but if I wrote such a letter as that, you see, I wouldn’t be reelected.” This took me aback a bit, and I demurred somewhat. “That’s all very well,” he kept insisting, “but I wouldn’t be reelected.” Thinking to give the discussion a semi-humorous turn, I told him that the public, after all, had rights in the matter; he was their hired servant, and if he were not reelected it would mean merely that the public did not want him to work for them any more, which was quite within their competence. Moreover, if they threw him out on any such issue as this, he ought to take it as a compliment; indeed, if he were reelected, would it not tend to show in some measure that he and the people did not fully understand each other? He did not like my tone of levity, and dismissed the subject with the remark that I knew nothing of practical politics, which was no doubt true.</p> | <> | <p>Presently I got acquainted in a casual way with some officeholders, becoming quite friendly with one in particular, who held a high elective office. One day he happened to ask me how I would reply to a letter that bothered him; it was a query about the fitness of a certain man for an appointive job. His recommendation would have weight; he liked the man, and really wanted to recommend him—moreover, he was under great political pressure to recommend him—but he did not think the man was qualified. Well, then, I suggested offhand, why not put it just that way?—it seemed all fair and straightforward. “Ah yes,” he said, “but if I wrote such a letter as that, you see, I wouldn’t be reëlected.” This took me aback a bit, and I demurred somewhat. “That’s all very well,” he kept insisting, “but I wouldn’t be reëlected.” Thinking to give the discussion a semi-humorous turn, I told him that the public, after all, had rights in the matter; he was their hired servant, and if he were not reëlected it would mean merely that the public did not want him to work for them any more, which was quite within their competence. Moreover, if they threw him out on any such issue as this, he ought to take it as a compliment; indeed, if he were reëlected, would it not tend to show in some measure that he and the people did not fully understand each other? He did not like my tone of levity, and dismissed the subject with the remark that I knew nothing of practical politics, which was no doubt true,</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>IV</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">IV</h2> |
| <p class="indents">Perhaps a year after this I had my first view of a legislative body in action. I visited the capital of a certain country, and listened attentively to the legislative proceedings. What I wished to observe, first of all, was the kind of business that was mostly under discussion; and next, I wished to get as good a general idea as I could of the kind of men who were entrusted with this business. I had a friend on the spot, formerly a newspaper reporter who had been in the press gallery for years; he guided me over the government buildings, taking me everywhere and showing me everything I asked to see.</p> | <> | <p>Perhaps a year after this I had my first view of a legislative body in action. I visited the capital of a certain country, and listened attentively to the legislative proceedings. What I wished to observe, first of all, was the kind of business that was mostly under discussion; and next, I wished to get as good a general idea as I could of the kind of men who were entrusted with this business. I had a friend on the spot, formerly a newspaper reporter who had been in the press gallery for years; he guided me over the government buildings, taking me everywhere and showing me everything I asked to see.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>V</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">V</h2> |
| <p class="indents">These experiences, commonplace as they were, prepared me to pause over and question certain sayings of famous men, when subsequently I ran across them, which otherwise I would perhaps have passed by without thinking about them. When I came upon the saying of Lincoln, that the way of the politician is “a long step removed from common honesty,” it set a problem for me. I wondered just why this should be generally true, if it were true. When I read the remark of Mr. Jefferson, that “whenever a man has cast a longing eye on office, a rottenness begins in his conduct,” I remembered the judge who had sentenced the boy, and my officeholding acquaintance who was so worried about reelection. I tried to reexamine their position, as far as possible putting myself in their place, and made a great effort to understand it favorably. My first view of a parliamentary body came back to me vividly when I read the despondent observation of John Bright, that he had sometimes known the British Parliament to do a good thing, but never just because it was a good thing. In the meantime I had observed many legislatures, and their principal occupations and preoccupations seemed to me precisely like those of the first one I ever saw; and while their personnel was not by any means composed throughout of noisy and disgusting scoundrels (neither, I hasten to say, was the first one), it was so unimaginably inept that it would really have to be seen to be believed. I cannot think of a more powerful stimulus to one’s intellectual curiosity, for instance, than to sit in the galleries of the last Congress, contemplate its general run of membership, and then recall these sayings of Lincoln, Mr. Jefferson, and John Bright.<a href="#fn_1a" id="fn1a"><sup>1</sup></a>;</p> | <> | <p>These experiences, commonplace as they were, prepared me to pause over and question certain sayings of famous men, when subsequently I ran across them, which otherwise I would perhaps have passed by without thinking about them. When I came upon the saying of Lincoln, that the way of the politician is “a long step removed from common honesty,” it set a problem for me. I wondered just why this should be generally true, if it were true. When I read the remark of Mr. Jefferson, that “whenever a man has cast a longing eye on office, a rottenness begins in his conduct,” I remembered the judge who had sentenced the boy, and my officeholding acquaintance who was so worried about reëlection. I tried to reëxamine their position, as far as possible putting myself in their place, and made a great effort to understand it favorably. My first view of a parliamentary body came back to me vividly when I read the despondent observation of John Bright, that he had sometimes known the British Parliament to do a good thing, but never just because it was a good thing. In the meantime I had observed many legislatures, and their principal occupations and preoccupations seemed to me precisely like those of the first one I ever saw; and while their personnel was not by any means composed throughout of noisy and disgusting scoundrels (neither, I hasten to say, was the first one), it was so unimaginably inept that it would really have to be seen to be believed. I cannot think of a more powerful stimulus to one’s intellectual curiosity, for instance, than to sit in the galleries of the last Congress, contemplate its general run of membership, and then recall these sayings of Lincoln, Mr. Jefferson, and John Bright.<a href="#fn1" id="ft1">[1]</a></p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>VI</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">VI</h2> |
| <p class="indents">In the course of some desultory reading I noticed that the historian Parkman, at the outset of his volume on the conspiracy of Pontiac, dwells with some puzzlement, apparently, upon the fact that the Indians had not formed a State. Mr. Jefferson, also, who knew the Indians well, remarked the same fact—that they lived in a rather highly organized society, but had never formed a State. Bicknell, the historian of Rhode Island, has some interesting passages that bear upon the same point, hinting that the collisions between the Indians and the whites may have been largely due to a misunderstanding about the nature of land-tenure; that the Indians, knowing nothing of the British system of land-tenure, understood their land-sales and land-grants as merely an admission of the whites to the same communal use of land that they themselves enjoyed. I noticed, too, that Marx devotes a good deal of space in <i>Das Kapital</i> to proving that economic exploitation cannot take place in any society until the exploited class has been expropriated from the land. These observations attracted my attention as possibly throwing a strong side light upon the nature of the State and the primary purpose of government, and I made note of them accordingly.</p> | <> | <p>In the course of some desultory reading I noticed that the historian Parkman, at the outset of his volume on the conspiracy of Pontiac, dwells with some puzzlement, apparently, upon the fact that the Indians had not formed a State. Mr. Jefferson, also, who knew the Indians well, remarked the same fact—that they lived in a rather highly organized society, but had never formed a State. Bicknell, the historian of Rhode Island, has some interesting passages that bear upon the same point, hinting that the collisions between the Indians and the whites may have been largely due to a misunderstanding about the nature of land-tenure; that the Indians, knowing nothing of the British system of land-tenure, understood their land-sales and land-grants as merely an admission of the whites to the same communal use of land that they themselves enjoyed. I noticed, too, that Marx devotes a good deal of space in <i>Das Kapital</i> to proving that economic exploitation cannot take place in any society until the exploited class has been expropriated from the land. These observations attracted my attention as possibly throwing a strong side light upon the nature of the State and the primary purpose of government, and I made note of them accordingly.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>VII</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">VII</h2> |
| <p class="indents">So I set about finding out what I could about the origin of the State, to see whether its mechanism was ever really meant to work in any other direction; and here I came upon a very odd fact. All the current popular assumptions about the origin of the State rest upon sheer guesswork; none of them upon actual investigation. The treatises and textbooks that came into my hands were also based, finally, upon guesswork. Some authorities guessed that the State was originally formed by this-or-that mode of social agreement; others, by a kind of muddling empiricism; others, by the will of God; and so on. Apparently none of these, however, had taken the plain course of going back upon the record as far as possible to ascertain how it actually had been formed, and for what purpose. It seemed that enough information must be available; the formation of the State in America, for example, was a matter of relatively recent history, and one must be able to find out a great deal about it. Consequently I began to look around to see whether anyone had ever anywhere made any such investigation, and if so, what it amounted to.</p> | <> | <p>So I set about finding out what I could about the origin of the State, to see whether its mechanism was ever really meant to work in any other direction; and here I came upon a very odd fact. All the current popular assumptions about the origin of the State rest upon sheer guesswork; none of them upon actual investigation. The treatises and textbooks that came into my hands were also based, finally, upon guesswork. Some authorities guessed that the State was originally formed by this-or-that mode of social agreement; others, by a kind of muddling empiricism; others, by the will of God; and so on. Apparently none of these, however, had taken the plain course of going back upon the record as far as possible to ascertain how it actually had been formed, and for what purpose. It seemed that enough information must be available; the formation of the State in America, for example, was a matter of relatively recent history, and one must be able to find out a great deal about it. Consequently I began to look around to see whether anyone had ever anywhere made any such investigation, and if so, what it amounted to.</p> |
| <p>I then discovered that the matter had, indeed, been investigated by scientific methods, and that all the scholars of the Continent knew about it, not as something new or startling, but as a sheer commonplace. The State did not originate in any form of social agreement, or with any disinterested view of promoting order and justice. Far otherwise. The State originated in conquest and confiscation, as a device for maintaining the stratification of society permanently into two classes—an owning and exploiting class, relatively small, and a propertyless dependent class. Such measures of order and justice as it established were incidental and ancillary to this purpose; it was not interested in any that did not serve this purpose; and it resisted the establishment of any that were contrary to it. No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose than to enable the continuous economic exploitation of one class by another.<a href="#fn_1b" id="fn1b"><sup>1</sup></a></p> | <> | <p>I then discovered that the matter had, indeed, been investigated by scientific methods, and that all the scholars of the Continent knew about it, not as something new or startling, but as a sheer commonplace. The State did not originate in any form of social agreement, or with any disinterested view of promoting order and justice. Far otherwise. The State originated in conquest and confiscation, as a device for maintaining the stratification of society permanently into two classes—an owning and exploiting class, relatively small, and a propertyless dependent class. Such measures of order and justice as it established were incidental and ancillary to this purpose; it was not interested in any that did not serve this purpose; and it resisted the establishment of any that were contrary to it. No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose than to enable the continuous economic exploitation of one class by another.<a href="#fn2" id="ft2">[2]</a></p> |
| <p>Finally, one could perceive the reason for the matter that most puzzled me when I first observed a legislature in action, namely, the almost exclusive concern of legislative bodies with such measures as tend to take money out of one set of pockets and put it into another—the preoccupation with converting labour-made property into law-made property, and redistributing its ownership. The moment one becomes aware that just this, over and above a purely legal distribution of the ownership of natural resources, is what the State came into being for, and what it yet exists for, one immediately sees that the legislative bodies are acting altogether in character, and otherwise one cannot possibly give oneself an intelligent account of their behaviour.<a href="#fn_1c" id="fn1c"><sup>1</sup></a>;</p> | <> | <p>Finally, one could perceive the reason for the matter that most puzzled me when I first observed a legislature in action, namely, the almost exclusive concern of legislative bodies with such measures as tend to take money out of one set of pockets and put it into another—the preoccupation with converting labour-made property into law-made property, and redistributing its ownership. The moment one becomes aware that just this, over and above a purely legal distribution of the ownership of natural resources, is what the State came into being for, and what it yet exists for, one immediately sees that the legislative bodies are acting altogether in character, and otherwise one cannot possibly give oneself an intelligent account of their behaviour.<a href="#fn3" id="ft3">[3]</a></p> |
| <p>Speaking for a moment in the technical terms of economics, there are two general means whereby human beings can satisfy their needs and desires. One is by work—<i>i.e.,</i> by applying labour and capital to natural resources for the production of wealth, or to facilitating the exchange of labour-products. This is called the economic means. The other is by robbery—<i>i.e.,</i> the appropriation of the labour-products of others without compensation. This is called the political means. The State, considered functionally, may be described as <i>the organization of the political means,</i> enabling a comparatively small class of beneficiaries to satisfy their needs and desires through various delegations of the taxing power, which have no vestige of support in natural right, such as private land-ownership, tariffs, franchises, and the like.</p> | <> | <p>Speaking for a moment in the technical terms of economics, there are two general means whereby human beings can satisfy their needs and desires. One is by work—<i>i.e</i>., by applying labour and capital to natural resources for the production of wealth, or to facilitating the exchange of labour-products. This is called the economic means. The other is by robbery—<i>i.e</i>., the appropriation of the labour-products of others without compensation. This is called the political means. The State, considered functionally, may be described as <i>the organization of the political means</i>, enabling a comparatively small class of beneficiaries to satisfy their needs and desires through various delegations of the taxing power, which have no vestige of support in natural right, such as private land-ownership, tariffs, franchises, and the like.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>VIII</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">VIII</h2> |
| <p class="indents">The outbreak of the war in 1914 found me entertaining the convictions that I have here outlined. In the succeeding decade nothing has taken place to attenuate them, but quite the contrary. Having set out only to tell the story of how I came by them, and not to expound them or indulge in any polemic for them, I may now bring this narrative to an end, with a word about their practical outcome.</p> | <> | <p>The outbreak of the war in 1914 found me entertaining the convictions that I have here outlined. In the succeeding decade nothing has taken place to attenuate them, but quite the contrary. Having set out only to tell the story of how I came by them, and not to expound them or indulge in any polemic for them, I may now bring this narrative to an end, with a word about their practical outcome.</p> |
| <p>According to my observations (for which I claim nothing but that they are all I have to go by) inaction is better than wrong action or premature right action, and effective right action can only follow right thinking. “If a great change is to take place,” said Edmund Burke, in his last words on the French Revolution, “the minds of men <i>will be fitted to it.”</i> Otherwise the thing does not turn out well; and the processes by which men’s minds are fitted seem to me untraceable and imponderable, the only certainty about them being that the share of any one person, or any one movement, in determining them is extremely small. Various social superstitions, such as magic, the divine right of kings, the Calvinist teleology, and so on, have stood out against many a vigorous frontal attack, and thrived on it; and when they finally disappeared, it was not under attack. People simply stopped thinking in those terms; no one knew just when or why, and no one even was much aware that they had stopped. So I think it very possible that while we are saying, “Lo, here!” and “Lo, there!” with our eye on this or that revolution, usurpation, seizure of power, or what not, the superstitions that surround the State are quietly disappearing in the same way.<a href="#fn_1d" id="fn1d"><sup>1</sup></a></p> | <> | <p>According to my observations (for which I claim nothing but that they are all I have to go by) inaction is better than wrong action or premature right action, and effective right action can only follow right thinking. “If a great change is to take place,” said Edmund Burke, in his last words on the French Revolution, “the minds of men <i>will be fitted to it</i>.” Otherwise the thing does not turn out well; and the processes by which men’s minds are fitted seem to me untraceable and imponderable, the only certainty about them being that the share of any one person, or any one movement, in determining them is extremely small. Various social superstitions, such as magic, the divine right of kings, the Calvinist teleology, and so on, have stood out against many a vigorous frontal attack, and thrived on it; and when they finally disappeared, it was not under attack. People simply stopped thinking in those terms; no one knew just when or why, and no one even was much aware that they had stopped. So I think it very possible that while we are saying, “Lo, here!” and “Lo, there!” with our eye on this or that revolution, usurpation, seizure of power, or what not, the superstitions that surround the State are quietly disappearing in the same way.<a href="#fn4" id="ft4">[4]</a></p> |
| -+ | <hr /> | |
| <p class="fn-para"><a href="#fn1a" id="fn_1a"><sup>1</sup></a> As indicating the impression made on a more sophisticated mind, I may mention an amusing incident that happened to me in London two years ago. Having an engagement with a member of the House of Commons, I filled out a card and gave it to an attendant. By mistake I had written my name where the member’s should be, and his where mine should be. The attendant handed the card back, saying, “I’m afraid this will ’ardly do, sir. I see you’ve been making yourself a member. It doesn’t go quite as easy as that, sir—though from some of what you see around ’ere, I wouldn’t say as ’ow you mightn’t think so.”</p> | <> | <p><a href="#ft1" id="fn1">[1]</a> As indicating the impression made on a more sophisticated mind, I may mention an amusing incident that happened to me in London two years ago. Having an engagement with a member of the House of Commons, I filled out a card and gave it to an attendant. By mistake I had written my name where the member’s should be, and his where mine should be. The attendant handed the card back, saying, “I’m afraid this will ’ardly do, sir. I see you’ve been making yourself a member. It doesn’t go quite as easy as that, sir—though from some of what you see around ’ere, I wouldn’t say as ’ow you mightn’t think so.”</p> |
| <p class="fn-para"><a href="#fn1b" id="fn_1b"><sup>1</sup></a> There is a considerable literature on this subject, largely untranslated. As a beginning, the reader may be conveniently referred to Mr. Charles A. Beard’s Rise of American Civilization and his work on the Constitution of the United States. After these he should study closely—for it is hard reading—a small volume called The State by Professor Franz Oppenheimer, of the University of Frankfort. It has been well translated and is easily available.</p> | <> | <p><a href="#ft2" id="fn2">[2]</a> There is a considerable literature on this subject, largely untranslated. As a beginning, the reader may be conveniently referred to Mr. Charles A. Beard’s <i>Rise of American Civilization</i> and his work on the Constitution of the United States. After these he should study closely—for it is hard reading—a small volume called <i>The State</i> by Professor Franz Oppenheimer, of the University of Frankfort. It has been well translated and is easily available.</p> |
| <p class="fn-para"><a href="#fn1c" id="fn_1c"><sup>1</sup></a> When the Republican convention which nominated Mr. Harding was almost over, one of the party leaders met a man who was managing a kind of dark-horse, or one-horse, candidate, and said to him, “You can pack up that candidate of yours, and take him home now. I can’t tell you who the next President will be; it will be one of three men, and I don’t just yet know which. But I can tell you who the next Secretary of the Interior will be, and that is the important question, because there are still a few little things lying around loose that the boys want.” I had this from a United States Senator, a Republican, who told it tome merely as a good story.</p> | <> | <p><a href="#ft3" id="fn3">[3]</a> When the Republican convention which nominated Mr. Harding was almost over, one of the party leaders met a man who was managing a kind of dark-horse, or one-horse, candidate, and said to him, “You can pack up that candidate of yours, and take him home now. I can’t tell you who the next President will be; it will be one of three men, and I don’t just yet know which. But I can tell you who the next Secretary of the Interior will be, and that is the important question, because there are still a few little things lying around loose that the boys want.” I had this from a United States Senator, a Republican, who told it to me merely as a good story.</p> |
| <p class="fn-para"><a href="#fn1d" id="fn_1d"><sup>1</sup></a> The most valuable result of the Russian Revolution is in its liberation of the idea of the State as an engine of economic exploitation. In Denmark, according to a recent article in <i>The English Review,</i> there is a considerable movement for a complete separation of politics from economics, which, if effected, would of course mean the disappearance of the State.</p> | <> | <p><a href="#ft4" id="fn4">[4]</a> The most valuable result of the Russian Revolution is in its liberation of the idea of the State as an engine of economic exploitation. In Denmark, according to a recent article in <i>The English Review</i>, there is a considerable movement for a complete separation of politics from economics, which, if effected, would of course mean the disappearance of the State.</p> |
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| <title>On Doing the Right Thing</title> | <> | <title></title> |
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| <p class="cht" id="ch7"><i>On Doing the Right Thing</i></p> | <> | <h1>On Doing the Right Thing</h1> |
| <p class="cen"><b>I</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">I</h2> |
| <p class="dp-para"><span class="dp"><b><i>F</i></b></span><small>OR</small> my sins I had to spend a good deal of time in London lately, while an east wind was blowing; and under these depressing circumstances I had some notion of showing cause why the much-touted understanding between the English people and ours can never really exist. In spite of the Sulgrave Foundation, and of all the perfervid buncombe fired off at Pilgrims’ dinners about cousinship, hands across the sea, common tradition, common ideals, and what Mr. Dooley called “th’ common impulse f’r th’ same money”—only that, I believe, is never mentioned—the two peoples will never understand each other as long as the world stands. There are many obscure, unregarded, and potent reasons against it; of which, for example, language is one. An American can make sounds to which an Englishman will attach approximately the same meaning that the American does, and hence each assumes that they have a common language, when actually they have nothing of the kind; that is to say, language does not enable a true understanding of each other, but rather the contrary. Indeed, I believe that they would come nearer a real understanding if each had to learn a new language to get on with. There are many other reasons; and the reasons proceeding from recondite and apparently insignificant differences in training, habit, social and institutional procedure, and in the ordinary technique of living, account for more, I think, than those arising from weightier matters. As I said, I had the vagrant thought of tracing out and expounding some of these, but indolence interfered so persistently that it never was done and now, probably, never will be. One item on the list, however, recurs to me at the moment as worth salvaging for another purpose.</p> | <> | <p class="noindent"><span class="raisedcap">F</span><span class="smallcaps">or</span> my sins I had to spend a good deal of time in London lately, while an east wind was blowing; and under these depressing circumstances I had some notion of showing cause why the much-touted understanding between the English people and ours can never really exist. In spite of the Sulgrave Foundation, and of all the perfervid buncombe fired off at Pilgrims’ dinners about cousinship, hands across the sea, common tradition, common ideals, and what Mr. Dooley called “th’ common impulse f’r th’ same money”—only that, I believe, is never mentioned—the two peoples will never understand each other as long as the world stands. There are many obscure, unregarded, and potent reasons against it; of which, for example, language is one. An American can make sounds to which an Englishman will attach approximately the same meaning that the American does, and hence each assumes that they have a common language, when actually they have nothing of the kind; that is to say, language does not enable a true understanding of each other, but rather the contrary. Indeed, I believe that they would come nearer a real understanding if each had to learn a new language to get on with. There are many other reasons; and the reasons proceeding from recondite and apparently insignificant differences in training, habit, social and institutional procedure, and in the ordinary technique of living, account for more, I think, than those arising from weightier matters. As I said, I had the vagrant thought of tracing out and expounding some of these, but indolence interfered so persistently that it never was done and now, probably, never will be. One item on the list, however, recurs to me at the moment as worth salvaging for another purpose.</p> |
| <p>The English are addicted to a curious practice which is apprehended by an American only with great difficulty, and to which they give the rather conventional and indefinite name of “doing the Right Thing.” The name at once brings to mind the late Sir Harry Johnston’s fine novel; the best novel in that genre that has been written in our language since <i>The Way of All Flesh.</i> As far as I have been able to discover, the addiction to this practice pervades all classes of English society. The lower and middle classes do a good deal with it. The upper orders do not do as much with it as formerly, but they still do something; and even the official class does not quite escape. It is not a rationalised process, apparently, but on the contrary, one would perhaps say that it amounts to a kind of ritual. Given a certain set of circumstances, that is, an Englishman may be trusted to take a certain course of conduct, and to take it with energy, resolution and courage, for no reason in particular except to satisfy some inward sense of obligation. He may not, usually does not, have much light on the subject; doing the Right Thing may be far enough, indeed, from doing right. In other circumstances, too, where the inner sense is quiescent, he may do something much worse; but in <i>those</i> circumstances he is sure to carry through with a darkened and instinctive allegiance to what he believes to be the Right Thing.</p> | <> | <p>The English are addicted to a curious practice which is apprehended by an American only with great difficulty, and to which they give the rather conventional and indefinite name of “doing the Right Thing.” The name at once brings to mind the late Sir Harry Johnston’s fine novel; the best novel in that genre that has been written in our language since <i>The Way of All Flesh</i>. As far as I have been able to discover, the addiction to this practice pervades all classes of English society. The lower and middle classes do a good deal with it. The upper orders do not do as much with it as formerly, but they still do something; and even the official class does not quite escape. It is not a rationalised process, apparently, but on the contrary, one would perhaps say that it amounts to a kind of ritual. Given a certain set of circumstances, that is, an Englishman may be trusted to take a certain course of conduct, and to take it with energy, resolution and courage, for no reason in particular except to satisfy some inward sense of obligation. He may not, usually does not, have much light on the subject; doing the Right Thing may be far enough, indeed, from doing right. In other circumstances, too, where the inner sense is quiescent, he may do something much worse; but in <i>those</i> circumstances he is sure to carry through with a darkened and instinctive allegiance to what he believes to be the Right Thing.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>II</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">II</h2> |
| <p class="indents">Aside from the apparently irrational character of this addiction, what strikes the American as odd is that casuistry has no place in it. When an Englishman is bitten by a sense of the Right Thing, it seems never to occur to him, for instance, to raise the question whether the Right Thing, after it is done, will have enough practical importance to be worth doing. Again, it seems never to occur to him to put a mere personal desire, however strong, in competition with the Right Thing, and then to cast about him for plausible ways of justifying himself in following his desire. This uncommonly useful faculty seems largely left out of the individual Englishman, though collectively they show more of it than any other nation—a curious anomaly. The great French scholar, M. Nisard, once complimented Matthew Arnold on belonging to a nation that had the <i>savoir se gêner,</i> that did not take a mere powerful desire to do something as a sufficient reason for doing it, but could, if need be, bottle up the desire and cork it down and go steadily on doing something quite different. A dozen times a day one will hear Englishmen mutter in an apologetic tone, “Beastly bore, you know!—oh, dev’lish bore!—but then, you know, one really must do the Right Thing, mustn’t one?” The formula and the intonation never seem to vary, whether the matter at issue be utterly trivial or so important as to redetermine the whole course of a life.</p> | <> | <p>Aside from the apparently irrational character of this addiction, what strikes the American as odd is that casuistry has no place in it. When an Englishman is bitten by a sense of the Right Thing, it seems never to occur to him, for instance, to raise the question whether the Right Thing, after it is done, will have enough practical importance to be worth doing. Again, it seems never to occur to him to put a mere personal desire, however strong, in competition with the Right Thing, and then to cast about him for plausible ways of justifying himself in following his desire. This uncommonly useful faculty seems largely left out of the individual Englishman, though collectively they show more of it than any other nation—a curious anomaly. The great French scholar, M. Nisard, once complimented Matthew Arnold on belonging to a nation that had the <i>savoir se gêner</i>, that did not take a mere powerful desire to do something as a sufficient reason for doing it, but could, if need be, bottle up the desire and cork it down and go steadily on doing something quite different. A dozen times a day one will hear Englishmen mutter in an apologetic tone, “Beastly bore, you know!—oh, dev’lish bore!—but then, you know, one really must do the Right Thing, mustn’t one?” The formula and the intonation never seem to vary, whether the matter at issue be utterly trivial or so important as to redetermine the whole course of a life.</p> |
| <p>A comparison drawn between the English and ourselves in the matter of devotion to the Right Thing seems at first sight unfavourable to Americans; and so, to some extent, it is. But the great point is that an Englishman keeps up his susceptibility to the Right Thing very largely because he is free to do so; because, that is, he is free to regulate so large a portion of his life in such way as he sees fit. In respect of control, the whole general area of human conduct may be laid off into three regions. First, there is the region in which conduct is controlled by law, <i>i.e.,</i> by force, by some form of outside compulsion. A man, for instance, may not murder or steal, because an organized power outside himself will withstand him before the fact, if possible, and make trouble for him after the fact. Second, there is the region of indifferent choice, where, for instance, a man may use one kind of soap or safety-razor rather than another. Third, there is the region where conduct is controlled by unenforced, self-imposed allegiance to moral or social considerations. In this region, for instance, one follows the rule of “women and children first,” takes a long risk to get somebody out of a burning house, or, like Sir Philip Sidney, refuses to slake one’s own thirst when there is not water enough to go round.</p> | <> | <p>A comparison drawn between the English and ourselves in the matter of devotion to the Right Thing seems at first sight unfavourable to Americans; and so, to some extent, it is. But the great point is that an Englishman keeps up his susceptibility to the Right Thing very largely because he is free to do so; because, that is, he is free to regulate so large a portion of his life in such way as he sees fit. In respect of control, the whole general area of human conduct may be laid off into three regions. First, there is the region in which conduct is controlled by law, <i>i.e</i>., by force, by some form of outside compulsion. A man, for instance, may not murder or steal, because an organized power outside himself will withstand him before the fact, if possible, and make trouble for him after the fact. Second, there is the region of indifferent choice, where, for instance, a man may use one kind of soap or safety-razor rather than another. Third, there is the region where conduct is controlled by unenforced, self-imposed allegiance to moral or social considerations. In this region, for instance, one follows the rule of “women and children first,” takes a long risk to get somebody out of a burning house, or, like Sir Philip Sidney, refuses to slake one’s own thirst when there is not water enough to go round.</p> |
| <p>So much for a small matter. At the other end of the scale of social importance, it is noteworthy that in England fornication is not a crime.<a href="#fn_1" id="fn1"><sup>1</sup></a> An unmarried couple may set up housekeeping in London and remain undisturbed by the law as long as they live, and if anyone else disturbs them the law will protect them; for English law protects those against whom it has no stated grievance, even though their conduct may not be exactly praiseworthy or popular. They may register at an hotel under their several names, and the law will not only leave them at peace but will protect their peace. English law interferes in sex relations only in the case of minors, to safeguard immaturity; and in the case of adultery, to safeguard a property-interest, or the vestiges of one. Other cases are put over into the third region of conduct and left subject to the individual sense of the Right Thing.</p> | <> | <p>So much for a small matter. At the other end of the scale of social importance, it is noteworthy that in England fornication is not a crime.<a href="#fn1" id="ft1">[1]</a> An unmarried couple may set up housekeeping in London and remain undisturbed by the law as long as they live, and if anyone else disturbs them the law will protect them; for English law protects those against whom it has no stated grievance, even though their conduct may not be exactly praiseworthy or popular. They may register at an hotel under their several names, and the law will not only leave them at peace but will protect their peace. English law interferes in sex relations only in the case of minors, to safeguard immaturity; and in the case of adultery, to safeguard a property-interest, or the vestiges of one. Other cases are put over into the third region of conduct and left subject to the individual sense of the Right Thing.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>III</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">III</h2> |
| <p class="indents">In America, on the other hand, the first region of conduct is egregiously expanded. I remember seeing recently a calculation that the poor American is staggering along under a burden of some two million laws; and obviously, where there are so many laws, it is hardly possible to conceive of any items of conduct escaping contact with one or more of them. Thus, the region where conduct is controlled by law so far encroaches upon the region of free choice and the region where conduct is controlled by a sense of the Right Thing, that there is precious little left of either. What is left, moreover, is still further attenuated by the pressure of a public opinion whose energy and zeal are in direct ratio to its meddlesomeness and ignorance. The complaint of critics against what they call our “standardisation” is a complaint against this pressure; and it is so just, and its ground so obvious, that it needs no reiteration here. The only thing I wish to remark is the serious and debilitating deterioration of individual responsibility under this state of affairs. In this respect, living in America is like serving in the army; ninety per cent of conduct is prescribed by law and the remaining ten per cent by the <i>esprit du corps,</i> with the consequence that opportunity for free choice in conduct is practically abolished. This falls in very well with the indolent disposition of human nature to regard responsibility as onerous and to dodge it when possible; but it is debilitating, and a civilisation organised upon this absence of responsibility is pulpy and unsound.</p> | <> | <p>In America, on the other hand, the first region of conduct is egregiously expanded. I remember seeing recently a calculation that the poor American is staggering along under a burden of some two million laws; and obviously, where there are so many laws, it is hardly possible to conceive of any items of conduct escaping contact with one or more of them. Thus, the region where conduct is controlled by law so far encroaches upon the region of free choice and the region where conduct is controlled by a sense of the Right Thing, that there is precious little left of either. What is left, moreover, is still further attenuated by the pressure of a public opinion whose energy and zeal are in direct ratio to its meddlesomeness and ignorance. The complaint of critics against what they call our “standardisation” is a complaint against this pressure; and it is so just, and its ground so obvious, that it needs no reiteration here. The only thing I wish to remark is the serious and debilitating deterioration of individual responsibility under this state of affairs. In this respect, living in America is like serving in the army; ninety per cent of conduct is prescribed by law and the remaining ten per cent by the <i>esprit du corps</i>, with the consequence that opportunity for free choice in conduct is practically abolished. This falls in very well with the indolent disposition of human nature to regard responsibility as onerous and to dodge it when possible; but it is debilitating, and a civilisation organised upon this absence of responsibility is pulpy and unsound.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>IV</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">IV</h2> |
| <p class="indents">It is not to the point to protest, for example, that Mr. Roosevelt’s laws or Senator La Follette’s would all be good laws, that their enlargements of the first region of conduct would all be for our own good. The point is that <i>any</i> enlargement, good or bad, reduces the scope of individual responsibility, and thus retards and cripples the education which can be a product of nothing but the free exercise of moral judgment. Like the discipline of the army, again, any such enlargement, good or bad, depraves this education into a mere routine of mechanical assent. The profound instinct against being “done for our own good” even by an Aristides—the instinct so miserably misinterpreted by our Liberals and Progressives—is wholly sound. Men are aware of the need of this moral experience as a condition of growth, and they are aware, too, that anything tending to ease it off from them, even for their own good, is to be profoundly distrusted.</p> | <> | <p>It is not to the point to protest, for example, that Mr. Roosevelt’s laws or Senator La Follette’s would all be good laws, that their enlargements of the first region of conduct would all be for our own good. The point is that <i>any</i> enlargement, good or bad, reduces the scope of individual responsibility, and thus retards and cripples the education which can be a product of nothing but the free exercise of moral judgment. Like the discipline of the army, again, any such enlargement, good or bad, depraves this education into a mere routine of mechanical assent. The profound instinct against being “done for our own good” even by an Aristides—the instinct so miserably misinterpreted by our Liberals and Progressives—is wholly sound. Men are aware of the need of this moral experience as a condition of growth, and they are aware, too, that anything tending to ease it off from them, even for their own good, is to be profoundly distrusted.</p> |
| <p>The practical reason for freedom, then, is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fibre can be developed. Everything else has been tried, world without end. Going dead against reason and experience, we have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds, and the result is nothing to be proud of. Americans have many virtues of their own, which I would be the last to belittle or disparage, but the power of quick and independent moral judgment is not one of them. In suggesting that we try freedom, therefore, the anarchist and individualist has a strictly practical aim. He aims at the production of a race of responsible beings. He wants more room for the <i>savoir se gêner,</i> more scope for the <i>noblesse oblige,</i> a larger place for the sense of the Right Thing. If our legalists and authoritarians could once get this well through their heads, they would save themselves a vast deal of silly insistence on a half-truth and upon the <i>suppressio veri,</i> which is the meanest and lowest form of misrepresentation. Freedom, for example, as they keep insisting, undoubtedly means freedom to drink oneself to death. The anarchist grants this at once; but at the same time he points out that it also means freedom to say with the gravedigger in “Les Misérables,” “I have studied, I have graduated; I never drink.” It unquestionably means freedom to go on without any code of morals at all; but it also means freedom to rationalise, construct and adhere to a code of one’s own. The anarchist presses the point invariably overlooked, that freedom to do the one without correlative freedom to do the other is impossible; and that just here comes in the moral education which legalism and authoritarianism, with their denial of freedom, can never furnish.</p> | <> | <p>The practical reason for freedom, then, is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fibre can be developed. Everything else has been tried, world without end. Going dead against reason and experience, we have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds, and the result is nothing to be proud of. Americans have many virtues of their own, which I would be the last to belittle or disparage, but the power of quick and independent moral judgment is not one of them. In suggesting that we try freedom, therefore, the anarchist and individualist has a strictly practical aim. He aims at the production of a race of responsible beings. He wants more room for the <i>savoir se gêner</i>, more scope for the <i>noblesse oblige</i>, a larger place for the sense of the Right Thing. If our legalists and authoritarians could once get this well through their heads, they would save themselves a vast deal of silly insistence on a half-truth and upon the <i>suppressio veri</i>, which is the meanest and lowest form of misrepresentation. Freedom, for example, as they keep insisting, undoubtedly means freedom to drink oneself to death. The anarchist grants this at once; but at the same time he points out that it also means freedom to say with the gravedigger in “Les Misérables,” “I have studied, I have graduated; I never drink.” It unquestionably means freedom to go on without any code of morals at all; but it also means freedom to rationalise, construct and adhere to a code of one’s own. The anarchist presses the point invariably overlooked, that freedom to do the one without correlative freedom to do the other is impossible; and that just here comes in the moral education which legalism and authoritarianism, with their denial of freedom, can never furnish.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>v</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">V</h2> |
| <p class="indents">But I have no intention of digressing into a syllabus of anarchist philosophy. I have thought it worth while to write out the foregoing thoughts, however, merely to make clear that there is a practical side to this philosophy, as well as a theoretical side, and one which is not perhaps wholly unworthy of consideration. The anarchist does not want economic freedom for the sake of shifting a dollar or two from one man’s pocket to another’s; or social freedom for the sake of rollicking in detestable license; or political freedom for the sake of a mere rash and restless experimentation in system-making. His desire for freedom has but the one practical object, <i>i.e.,</i> that men may become as good and decent, as elevated and noble, as they might be and really wish to be. Reason, experience and observation lead him to the conviction that under absolute and unqualified freedom they can, and rather promptly will, educate themselves to this desirable end; but that so long as they are to the least degree dominated by legalism and authoritarianism, they never can.</p> | <> | <p>But I have no intention of digressing into a syllabus of anarchist philosophy. I have thought it worth while to write out the foregoing thoughts, however, merely to make clear that there is a practical side to this philosophy, as well as a theoretical side, and one which is not perhaps wholly unworthy of consideration. The anarchist does not want economic freedom for the sake of shifting a dollar or two from one man’s pocket to another’s; or social freedom for the sake of rollicking in detestable license; or political freedom for the sake of a mere rash and restless experimentation in system-making. His desire for freedom has but the one practical object, <i>i.e</i>., that men may become as good and decent, as elevated and noble, as they might be and really wish to be. Reason, experience and observation lead him to the conviction that under absolute and unqualified freedom they can, and rather promptly will, educate themselves to this desirable end; but that so long as they are to the least degree dominated by legalism and authoritarianism, they never can.</p> |
| <hr /> | ||
| <p class="fn-para"><a href="#fn1" id="fn_1"><sup>1</sup></a> I am told, to my astonishment, that neither is it a crime in the State of Maryland!</p> | <> | <p><a href="#ft1" id="fn1">[1]</a> I am told, to my astonishment, that neither is it a crime in the State of Maryland!</p> |
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| <title>On Doing the Right Thing</title> | <> | <title></title> |
| <link href="../Misc/page-template.xpgt" rel="stylesheet" type="application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" /> | +- | |
| <p class="cht" id="ch8"><i>A Study in Manners</i></p> | <> | <h1>A Study in Manners</h1> |
| <p class="cen"><b>I</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">I</h2> |
| <p class="dp-para"><span class="dp"><b><i>A</i></b></span><small>MERICAN</small> history has been of late so largely rediscovered and rewritten that one would hardly imagine there were many left to share the late Mr. Harding’s amiable illusions about the Founding Fathers. Yet there must be some, for in the campaign of 1924 I was present when one of the candidates got a rousing hand of applause for telling his audience that the Fathers had established a government of the people, for the people, and by the people! I was greatly tempted to ask him whether he had ever heard of a publication called the <i>Federalist,</i> and if not, whether he would like to borrow my old calf-bound copy and browse around in it a little here and there, before committing himself further to this preposterous proposition.</p> | <> | <p class="noindent"><span class="raisedcap">A</span><span class="smallcaps">merican</span> history has been of late so largely rediscovered and rewritten that one would hardly imagine there were many left to share the late Mr. Harding’s amiable illusions about the Founding Fathers. Yet there must be some, for in the campaign of 1924 I was present when one of the candidates got a rousing hand of applause for telling his audience that the Fathers had established a government of the people, for the people, and by the people! I was greatly tempted to ask him whether he had ever heard of a publication called the <i>Federalist</i>, and if not, whether he would like to borrow my old calf-bound copy and browse around in it a little here and there, before committing himself further to this preposterous proposition.</p> |
| <p>Why may not a wayward scion of his stock say of him what any radical-minded outsider would surely say, that he was a benighted old Tory? He could quite legally and constitutionally have made the move that Hamilton implored him to make, for the old legislature still had tenure of office for seven or eight weeks. If he had done so, no doubt, public sentiment in New York State would have run pretty high; but that need not have concerned him, for, with his own party continued in power at Washington, the Administration would have taken royal good care of him and given him his pick of patronage. Every predilection of his own was in favour of Hamilton’s suggestion. A devout man, he might well have let the end justify the means of keeping a person of Mr. Jefferson’s well-known, unorthodoxy out of the Presidency. Yet he looked at the opportunity and passed it by in silence because <i>he did not think it would be becoming</i> to embrace it.</p> | <> | <p>Why may not a wayward scion of his stock say of him what any radical-minded outsider would surely say, that he was a benighted old Tory? He could quite legally and constitutionally have made the move that Hamilton implored him to make, for the old legislature still had tenure of office for seven or eight weeks. If he had done so, no doubt, public sentiment in New York State would have run pretty high; but that need not have concerned him, for, with his own party continued in power at Washington, the Administration would have taken royal good care of him and given him his pick of patronage. Every predilection of his own was in favour of Hamilton’s suggestion. A devout man, he might well have let the end justify the means of keeping a person of Mr. Jefferson’s well-known unorthodoxy out of the Presidency. Yet he looked at the opportunity and passed it by in silence because <i>he did not think it would be becoming</i> to embrace it.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>II</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">II</h2> |
| <p class="indents">One rubs one’s eyes in astonishment. What an extraordinary reason to assign for a decision of such profound political significance! What an extraordinary standard by which to appraise political conduct! That an act is illegal might conceivably give some shadow of reason why a politician should object to it. The exceptional politician might even, indeed, in an atrabilious moment, object to an act because he found it immoral or dishonest. Objection, however, to an act which is neither illegal nor dishonest, merely because it is <i>unbecoming</i>—this represents a distinction which, to put it gently, few politicians of today could be expected to draw under any circumstances, let alone such circumstances as pressed so powerfully upon Governor Jay.</p> | <> | <p>One rubs one’s eyes in astonishment. What an extraordinary reason to assign for a decision of such profound political significance! What an extraordinary standard by which to appraise political conduct! That an act is illegal might conceivably give some shadow of reason why a politician should object to it. The exceptional politician might even, indeed, in an atrabilious moment, object to an act because he found it immoral or dishonest. Objection, however, to an act which is neither illegal nor dishonest, merely because it is <i>unbecoming</i>—this represents a distinction which, to put it gently, few politicians of today could be expected to draw under any circumstances, let alone such circumstances as pressed so powerfully upon Governor Jay.</p> |
| <p>Let us suppose a case that would stand in some kind of rough correspondence. Governor Smith is said to be one of the most honest and disinterested men in our public life, and Senator La Follette occupied, in the campaign of 1924, a position which in one or two essential respect resembled that of Mr. Jefferson’s in 1800. Suppose now that Senator La Follette’s election, as far as one could see, had hung on the question whether Governor Smith would or would not turn a political trick that was legal and regular enough, but <i>unbecoming</i>—well, without the least wish to disparage Governor Smith, whom I do not know and never saw, and whose public acts as a rule impress me favourably, I merely ask what, in such a case, might one expect? In the campaign of 1924, Senator La Follette was almost as much dreaded, execrated and maligned as was Mr. Jefferson in the campaign of 1800. Would Governor Smith consent to see his own party lose a national election, and the Cagliostro of politics take the Presidency, rather than do something that had no more against it than mere shabbiness and indecency?</p> | <> | <p>Let us suppose a case that would stand in some kind of rough correspondence. Governor Smith is said to be one of the most honest and disinterested men in our public life, and Senator La Follette occupied, in the campaign of 1924, a position which in one or two essential respects resembled that of Mr. Jefferson’s in 1800. Suppose now that Senator La Follette’s election, as far as one could see, had hung on the question whether Governor Smith would or would not turn a political trick that was legal and regular enough, but <i>unbecoming</i>—well, without the least wish to disparage Governor Smith, whom I do not know and never saw, and whose public acts as a rule impress me favourably, I merely ask what, in such a case, might one expect? In the campaign of 1924, Senator La Follette was almost as much dreaded, execrated and maligned as was Mr. Jefferson in the campaign of 1800. Would Governor Smith consent to see his own party lose a national election, and the Cagliostro of politics take the Presidency, rather than do something that had no more against it than mere shabbiness and indecency?</p> |
| <p>One might make use of Governor Jay’s fine action, I suppose, to show how disreputably low the personnel of our public service has fallen in these degenerate days, and how hard we should all work to get good men in office and to keep them there. Yet for one reason or another, I have somewhat of the Psalmist’s diffidence about meddling with these “great matters which are too high for me,” preferring to turn all that kind of thing over to the Liberal publicists. <i>Beati pauperes spiritu!</i>—I bring this incident forward only because I myself greatly enjoy dwelling on it; and I enjoy dwelling on it because it intimates so clearly the enormous power that resides in a proper sense of what is <i>becoming,</i> and the intense satisfaction that one gets out of cultivating and indulging this sense. The incident, in short, provides an excellent study in manners, with which the austere Liberal publicist, absorbed in his great task of educating other people, would probably be impatient, and disdain it as mere shillyshallying, but which is nevertheless not without profit to those humbler spirits, like myself, who are still trying to educate themselves.</p> | <> | <p>One might make use of Governor Jay’s fine action, I suppose, to show how disreputably low the personnel of our public service has fallen in these degenerate days, and how hard we should all work to get good men in office and to keep them there. Yet for one reason or another, I have somewhat of the Psalmist’s diffidence about meddling with these “great matters which are too high for me,” preferring to turn all that kind of thing over to the Liberal publicists. <i>Beati pauperes spiritu</i>!—I bring this incident forward only because I myself greatly enjoy dwelling on it; and I enjoy dwelling on it because it intimates so clearly the enormous power that resides in a proper sense of what is <i>becoming</i>, and the intense satisfaction that one gets out of cultivating and indulging this sense. The incident, in short, provides an excellent study in manners, with which the austere Liberal publicist, absorbed in his great task of educating other people, would probably be impatient, and disdain it as mere shillyshallying, but which is nevertheless not without profit to those humbler spirits, like myself, who are still trying to educate themselves.</p> |
| <p>The word <i>manners,</i> unfortunately, has come to be understood as a synonym for deportment; it includes deportment, of course, but it reaches much further. Properly speaking, it covers the entire range of conduct outside the regions where law and morals have control. Goethe, with extraordinary penetration, called attention to certain “conquests which culture has made over nature,” and to the importance of observing and maintaining them. Law and morals take cognizance, though very imperfectly and often improperly, of some of these culture-conquests; the rest are in the purview of manners.</p> | <> | <p>The word <i>manners</i>, unfortunately, has come to be understood as a synonym for deportment; it includes deportment, of course, but it reaches much further. Properly speaking, it covers the entire range of conduct outside the regions where law and morals have control. Goethe, with extraordinary penetration, called attention to certain “conquests which culture has made over nature,” and to the importance of observing and maintaining them. Law and morals take cognizance, though very imperfectly and often improperly, of some of these culture-conquests; the rest are in the purview of manners.</p> |
| <p>The primitive doctrine of property, for example, now survives in an unmodified form hardly anywhere outside the jungle and the Foreign Offices of imperialist nations. St. Paul, portraying under his admirable figure of the “two selves,” the bitter contest that goes on in the individual between the lower and apparent self, governed by what he so finely calls “the suggestions of the flesh and of the <i>current thoughts,”</i><a href="#fn_1e" id="fn1e"><sup>1</sup></a> the extemporized, capricious and unconsidered promptings of primitive desire, and the higher and real self, governed by loyalties to which all such impulses are wholly repugnant—here St. Paul, I say, is far more accurate and explicit in his account of the operations of culture than Goethe. Yet the great critic’s meaning is clear enough. In stealing an inventor’s purse, let us say, one must reckon with the law; in stealing his idea, one must reckon with the sense of morals, with the common conscience of mankind; in buying up and suppressing his idea or in exploiting it without adequate compensation, one must reckon with the sense of manners, with the fine and high perceptions established by culture, to which such transactions at once appear mean and low. When Baron Tauchnitz paid full royalties to foreign authors whose works he republished before the days of international copyright, he was governed by a sense of manners; for no law compelled him to pay anything, and the morals of trade would have been quite satisfied if he had paid whatever he chose to pay.</p> | <> | <p>The primitive doctrine of property, for example, now survives in an unmodified form hardly anywhere outside the jungle and the Foreign Offices of imperialist nations. St. Paul, portraying under his admirable figure of the “two selves,” the bitter contest that goes on in the individual between the lower and apparent self, governed by what he so finely calls “the suggestions of the flesh and of the <i>current thoughts</i>,”<a href="#fn1" id="ft1">[1]</a> the extemporized, capricious and unconsidered promptings of primitive desire, and the higher and real self, governed by loyalties to which all such impulses are wholly repugnant—here St. Paul, I say, is far more accurate and explicit in his account of the operations of culture than Goethe. Yet the great critic’s meaning is clear enough. In stealing an inventor’s purse, let us say, one must reckon with the law; in stealing his idea, one must reckon with the sense of morals, with the common conscience of mankind; in buying up and suppressing his idea or in exploiting it without adequate compensation, one must reckon with the sense of manners, with the fine and high perceptions established by culture, to which such transactions at once appear mean and low. When Baron Tauchnitz paid full royalties to foreign authors whose works he republished before the days of international copyright, he was governed by a sense of manners; for no law compelled him to pay anything, and the morals of trade would have been quite satisfied if he had paid whatever he chose to pay.</p> |
| <p>But though manners be not a Tory peculium, it is indisputable that a high sense of manners, a fine and delicate perception in matters of conduct, and the supporting strength of character that gives practical effect to both, have been most highly developed and most powerfully propagated by an aristocracy; and an aristocracy is always almost solidly Tory. Where one finds, as in Falkland, or Mr. Jefferson, radical principles and ideals combined with Tory manners, there, of course, one sees about the best that human nature is capable of producing; but such characters are all too seldom met with. I hasten to add that there is no natural reason why the qualities that I have mentioned should not be developed as highly in a democracy, if and when democracy ever comes to pass,<a href="#fn_1f" id="fn1f"><sup>1</sup></a> and I believe they will be much more highly developed; but the fact is that they have been chiefly developed in our modern civilisation through an aristocracy. Indeed, since about all the good one can say of an aristocracy is that it has done this, and since aristocracy is at a pretty heavy discount just now, we can probably afford generosity enough to remember with gratitude that it was no trifling service.</p> | <> | <p>But though manners be not a Tory peculium, it is indisputable that a high sense of manners, a fine and delicate perception in matters of conduct, and the supporting strength of character that gives practical effect to both, have been most highly developed and most powerfully propagated by an aristocracy; and an aristocracy is always almost solidly Tory. Where one finds, as in Falkland, or Mr. Jefferson, radical principles and ideals combined with Tory manners, there, of course, one sees about the best that human nature is capable of producing; but such characters are all too seldom met with. I hasten to add that there is no natural reason why the qualities that I have mentioned should not be developed as highly in a democracy, if and when democracy ever comes to pass,<a href="#fn2" id="ft2">[2]</a> and I believe they will be much more highly developed; but the fact is that they have been chiefly developed in our modern civilisation through an aristocracy. Indeed, since about all the good one can say of an aristocracy is that it has done this, and since aristocracy is at a pretty heavy discount just now, we can probably afford generosity enough to remember with gratitude that it was no trifling service.</p> |
| <p>Half a century ago Ernest Renan acutely pointed out that countries like the United States, which tolerate such imperfections in their educational processes, “would long have to expiate their fault by their intellectual mediocrity, <i>the vulgarity of their manners,</i> their superficial spirit, their failure in general intelligence.” It would seem that his forecast was substantially accurate; there is testimony to it not only in a rather widespread general restlessness and dissatisfaction with the quality of life lived in the United States, but also in innumerable specific complaints that drive us to adopt various forms of censorship and legal regulation. It is also worthy of remark, perhaps, that in our common speech we have constructed a considerable glossary of terms like “getting by,” “putting it across,” and “putting something over,” which intimate the extremely narrow jurisdiction that we habitually assign to manners, and the correspondingly attenuated authority that we attach to the sense of manners.</p> | <> | <p>Half a century ago Ernest Renan acutely pointed out that countries like the United States, which tolerate such imperfections in their educational processes, “would long have to expiate their fault by their intellectual mediocrity, <i>the vulgarity of their manners</i>, their superficial spirit, their failure in general intelligence.” It would seem that his forecast was substantially accurate; there is testimony to it not only in a rather widespread general restlessness and dissatisfaction with the quality of life lived in the United States, but also in innumerable specific complaints that drive us to adopt various forms of censorship and legal regulation. It is also worthy of remark, perhaps, that in our common speech we have constructed a considerable glossary of terms like “getting by,” “putting it across,” and “putting something over,” which intimate the extremely narrow jurisdiction that we habitually assign to manners, and the correspondingly attenuated authority that we attach to the sense of manners.</p> |
| <p>It may be a form of good one hundred per cent Americanism, I suppose, to declare stoutly that in so enlightened and progressive a civilisation as ours, any abstract consideration of manners is impracticable and superfluous, and that we should deal pragmatically with our standard of manners by progressive improvisation as we go along. While visiting an exhibition of paintings with a friend the other day, I raised some questions of taste and style, and my friend said with a strong air of finality, “But what is taste? Simply your taste, my taste, anybody’s taste.” In the view of this naive cynicism, obviously, a general duty to taste is fully discharged when each crude person cleaves happily to what he likes, without troubling himself to ask whether he ought to like it; in other words, without admitting the operation of an artistic conscience, or bethinking himself that the best reason and spirit of the race may have something to say in the premises, and that what it says may conceivably be worth attention. Similarly, too, it may be thought that a general duty to manners is fully discharged when each crude person follows the motions of the herd, or so much of them as his lower and apparent self may elect to follow, and regards his obligations as no more rational or binding, at best, than those of mere fashion.</p> | <> | <p>It may be a form of good one hundred per cent Americanism, I suppose, to declare stoutly that in so enlightened and progressive a civilisation as ours, any abstract consideration of manners is impracticable and superfluous, and that we should deal pragmatically with our standard of manners by progressive improvisation as we go along. While visiting an exhibition of paintings with a friend the other day, I raised some questions of taste and style, and my friend said with a strong air of finality, “But what is taste? Simply your taste, my taste, anybody’s taste.” In the view of this naïve cynicism, obviously, a general duty to taste is fully discharged when each crude person cleaves happily to what he likes, without troubling himself to ask whether he ought to like it; in other words, without admitting the operation of an artistic conscience, or bethinking himself that the best reason and spirit of the race may have something to say in the premises, and that what it says may conceivably be worth attention. Similarly, too, it may be thought that a general duty to manners is fully discharged when each crude person follows the motions of the herd, or so much of them as his lower and apparent self may elect to follow, and regards his obligations as no more rational or binding, at best, than those of mere fashion.</p> |
| <p>Yet a cautious old pedant like myself finds it hard to swallow this, because general human experience seems to be against it. Try as he may, he cannot get quite away from the notion that matters like these are not finally to be settled in this happy-go-lucky way, by the whim of each raw person’s ordinary self, but by what Aristotle calls “the determination of the judicious”—the judicious being those who have disciplined themselves to take the largest view of general human experience and who have become most sensitive to its testimony. There is a fundamental self-preserving instinct in humanity, which in the end comes out for what is truly lovely, truly elevated and becoming, and will not be permanently satisfied without it. Even that strange son of Balaam, the <i>homme sensuel moyen,</i> from Horace down to Mr. Otto H. Kahn, gives this instinct his blessing if not his obedience. It is precisely this instinct which our sturdy Americanism, with its blind insistence on the sanction of law and morals for the exclusive control of conduct, and its equally blind disregard of manners, and of the sense of manners as a law in itself, fails to take into account; and the consequence is that our republican civilisation has an obvious and disconcerting element of instability which it need not and should not have. With aristocracy gone, and republicanism thrown wholly on its own resources in matters of this kind, one would say that it behooves a republic to become aware of the edifying and salutary power resident in a well-developed sense of manners, and to take steps towards concentrating this power and making it effective; and the very first of these steps, logically, is for all of us who have somewhat to do with general education—teachers, editors, preachers, critics, essayists, dramatists, novelists, lecturers—firmly to dissociate from law and morals all courses of conduct that do not belong there, and as firmly to associate them in the category of manners.</p> | <> | <p>Yet a cautious old pedant like myself finds it hard to swallow this, because general human experience seems to be against it. Try as he may, he cannot get quite away from the notion that matters like these are not finally to be settled in this happy-go-lucky way, by the whim of each raw person’s ordinary self, but by what Aristotle calls “the determination of the judicious”—the judicious being those who have disciplined themselves to take the largest view of general human experience and who have become most sensitive to its testimony. There is a fundamental self-preserving instinct in humanity, which in the end comes out for what is truly lovely, truly elevated and becoming, and will not be permanently satisfied without it. Even that strange son of Balaam, the <i>homme sensuel moyen</i>, from Horace down to Mr. Otto H. Kahn, gives this instinct his blessing if not his obedience. It is precisely this instinct which our sturdy Americanism, with its blind insistence on the sanction of law and morals for the exclusive control of conduct, and its equally blind disregard of manners, and of the sense of manners as a law in itself, fails to take into account; and the consequence is that our republican civilisation has an obvious and disconcerting element of instability which it need not and should not have. With aristocracy gone, and republicanism thrown wholly on its own resources in matters of this kind, one would say that it behooves a republic to become aware of the edifying and salutary power resident in a well-developed sense of manners, and to take steps towards concentrating this power and making it effective; and the very first of these steps, logically, is for all of us who have somewhat to do with general education—teachers, editors, preachers, critics, essayists, dramatists, novelists, lecturers—firmly to dissociate from law and morals all courses of conduct that do not belong there, and as firmly to associate them in the category of manners.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>III</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">III</h2> |
| <p class="indents">This, I say, is logical; for what is the use of forever trying mechanically to apply sanctions which are by nature inapplicable and which anyone can see are simply grotesque in their inapplicability, while neglecting others which can be applied intelligently and appropriately? To make a thing illegal, or to put it down as immoral, by sheer fiat, in the face of an instinct which declares it properly to be neither, does not get one very far in the discouragement of its practice. Cardinal Hayes and Dr. John Roach Straton, for instance, have lately been complaining about the “morals of the young,” as exhibited in their amusements, habits of conversation, irregular sex relations, the literature they choose to read and the plays they choose to see. Instinct testifies that in all this these gentlemen have no ground of complaint whatever against morals, and are talking blank nonsense; but that they have an impregnable ground of complaint against manners. If therefore they shifted their ground, they might hope to make an impression which they will never make from where they stand, for they would then have the natural truth of things working with them instead of against them.</p> | <> | <p>This, I say, is logical; for what is the use of forever trying mechanically to apply sanctions which are by nature inapplicable and which anyone can see are simply grotesque in their inapplicability, while neglecting others which can be applied intelligently and appropriately? To make a thing illegal, or to put it down as immoral, by sheer fiat, in the face of an instinct which declares it properly to be neither, does not get one very far in the discouragement of its practice. Cardinal Hayes and Dr. John Roach Straton, for instance, have lately been complaining about the “morals of the young,” as exhibited in their amusements, habits of conversation, irregular sex relations, the literature they choose to read and the plays they choose to see. Instinct testifies that in all this these gentlemen have no ground of complaint whatever against morals, and are talking blank nonsense; but that they have an impregnable ground of complaint against manners. If therefore they shifted their ground, they might hope to make an impression which they will never make from where they stand, for they would then have the natural truth of things working with them instead of against them.</p> |
| <p>A symposium dealing with the subject of sexual insurrection has been lately published under the title, “Our Changing Morality.” Its original serial title, I believe, was “New Morals for Old.” It rather reminded me of Bishop Pontoppidan’s chapter on owls in Iceland, for from end to end of the symposium I could find nothing that had any natural connexion with morals, new or old, changing or fixed. Instinct testifies that there is absolutely nothing in the relations of either man or woman with any paramour or syndicate of paramours, which comes properly under the contemplation of morals; and hence any attempt to place them there is nugatory. These matters come properly under the scrutiny, much more effective because wholly appropriate, much more searching because wholly self-imposed, of high-minded-ness, delicacy of feeling and perception—in a word, of manners.</p> | <> | <p>A symposium dealing with the subject of sexual insurrection has been lately published under the title, “Our Changing Morality.” Its original serial title, I believe, was “New Morals for Old.” It rather reminded me of Bishop Pontoppidan’s chapter on owls in Iceland, for from end to end of the symposium I could find nothing that had any natural connexion with morals, new or old, changing or fixed. Instinct testifies that there is absolutely nothing in the relations of either man or woman with any paramour or syndicate of paramours, which comes properly under the contemplation of morals; and hence any attempt to place them there is nugatory. These matters come properly under the scrutiny, much more effective because wholly appropriate, much more searching because wholly self-imposed, of high-mindedness, delicacy of feeling and perception—in a word, of manners.</p> |
| -+ | <hr /> | |
| <p class="fn-para"><a href="#fn1e" id="fn_1e"><sup>1</sup></a> νελήατα τής σαρκòς καì τ<img alt="image" src="../Images/gk4.gif" />ν διανοίων</p> | <> | <p><a href="#ft1" id="fn1">[1]</a> <span class="greek">θελήματα τής σαρκὸς καὶ τῶν διανοίων</span>—Eph, II: 3.</p> |
| <p class="fn-para"><a href="#fn1f" id="fn_1f"><sup>1</sup></a> I wish to complain against the common and culpable misuse of the term democracy as a synonym for republicanism. Time and again one hears persons who should know better, talk about democracy in this country, for example, as if something like it really existed here. They discuss “democracy on trial,” “democracy’s weakness,” and so on, when it is perfectly clear that they refer only to the political system known properly as republicanism. The fact is that republicanism, which is a system theoretically based on the right of individual self-expression in politics, has as yet done but little for democracy, and that democracy is less developed in some republican countries, as France and the United States, than in some others, like Denmark, whose political system is nominally non-republican.</p> | <> | <p><a href="#ft2" id="fn2">[2]</a> I wish to complain against the common and culpable misuse of the term democracy as a synonym for republicanism. Time and again one hears persons who should know better, talk about democracy in this country, for example, as if something like it really existed here. They discuss “democracy on trial,” “democracy’s weakness,” and so on, when it is perfectly clear that they refer only to the political system known properly as republicanism. The fact is that republicanism, which is a system theoretically based on the right of individual self-expression in politics, has as yet done but little for democracy, and that democracy is less developed in some republican countries, as France and the United States, than in some others, like Denmark, whose political system is nominally non-republican.</p> |
| <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> | <> | <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> |
| <title>On Doing the Right Thing</title> | <> | <title></title> |
| <link href="../Misc/page-template.xpgt" rel="stylesheet" type="application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" /> | +- | |
| <p class="cht" id="ch9"><i>Thoughts on Revolution</i></p> | <> | <h1>Thoughts on Revolution</h1> |
| <p class="cen"><b>I</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">I</h2> |
| <p class="dp-para"><span class="dp"><b><i>O</i></b></span><small>NE</small> afternoon last December as I was passing by a café in Paris I got a jovial hail from an old friend whom I had not seen for years. He was about the last person in the world that I should have expected to turn up in Paris, for I thought he was in Russia, where, indeed, he had been for two years, and was but just out; he had come straight from Petersburg to Paris the week before. I was a bit pressed for time at the moment, so we agreed to meet at noon on the day following; and he left me with the remark, which struck me as a little odd, though I did not pay much attention to it at the time, that if anything interfered I could always find him at that café, “rain or shine, sick or well, drunk or sober.”</p> | <> | <p class="noindent"><span class="raisedcap">O</span><span class="smallcaps">ne</span> afternoon last December as I was passing by a café in Paris I got a jovial hail from an old friend whom I had not seen for years. He was about the last person in the world that I should have expected to turn up in Paris, for I thought he was in Russia, where, indeed, he had been for two years, and was but just out; he had come straight from Petersburg to Paris the week before. I was a bit pressed for time at the moment, so we agreed to meet at noon on the day following; and he left me with the remark, which struck me as a little odd, though I did not pay much attention to it at the time, that if anything interfered I could always find him at that café, “rain or shine, sick or well, drunk or sober.”</p> |
| <p>“I’ll tell you how it is,” he went on. “There is plenty of good in modern Russia, and a great deal to be said for the Government. Any student of history can see that. They have the same old stupid, exasperating bureaucracy that they have always had, but at that, it isn’t any worse than bureaucracy anywhere else, at home, or here in France, or——”</p> | <> | <p>“I’ll tell you how it is,” he went on. “There is plenty of good in modern Russia, and a great deal to be said for the Government. Any student of history can see that. They have the same old stupid, exasperating bureaucracy that they have always had, but at that, it isn’t any worse than bureaucracy anywhere else, at home, or here in France, or———”</p> |
| <p>“Absolutely, I believe,” he said. “I am sure of it. They do a lot of stupid things. Their terrorist policy, for instance, is silly and unnecessary—they are safe enough. But again, like us Americans, or like the French, or any other of the old-line governments, it’s the only method they seem to understand. I can’t put on any airs about them, the Lord knows, when I think of Palmer and Burleson, Funston and Hell-roaring Jake Smith, and all the rest of our thin Tedline of heroes. I only wish they wouldn’t do it, for, as I say, they don’t need to. They have been smart enough to drop most of the old-line fool methods, and found there was no end of popular prestige in it, so I should think they would drop them all. In diplomacy, for instance, I suppose you noticed how Litvinov stood the League of Nations on its head at Geneva the other day, by calling its bluff about disarmament. The press and politicians of the other countries could only blackguard him—they knew he was showing them up, and all they could do about it was to lose their temper. But I have lived close to the Russian Government for two years, and while they do a good deal that I don’t like, I am sure there isn’t a man in it who is not bent solely on doing his level best for the masses of Russia.”</p> | <> | <p>“Absolutely, I believe,” he said. “I am sure of it. They do a lot of stupid things. Their terrorist policy, for instance, is silly and unnecessary—they are safe enough. But again, like us Americans, or like the French, or any other of the old-line governments, it’s the only method they seem to understand. I can’t put on any airs about them, the Lord knows, when I think of Palmer and Burleson, Funston and Hell-roaring Jake Smith, and all the rest of our thin red line of heroes. I only wish they wouldn’t do it, for, as I say, they don’t need to. They have been smart enough to drop most of the old-line fool methods, and found there was no end of popular prestige in it, so I should think they would drop them all. In diplomacy, for instance, I suppose you noticed how Litvinov stood the League of Nations on its head at Geneva the other day, by calling its bluff about disarmament. The press and politicians of the other countries could only blackguard him—they knew he was showing them up, and all they could do about it was to lose their temper. But I have lived close to the Russian Government for two years, and while they do a good deal that I don’t like, I am sure there isn’t a man in it who is not bent solely on doing his level best for the masses of Russia.”</p> |
| <p>“But that’s just where our country comes in to make the world safe for civilization, don’t you see?” I replied. “There’s a stable order of things for you!—rich, powerful, influential, unshakable! We have a benevolent, far-seeing plutocracy and a prosperous, contented proletariat. Can you imagine greater stability than that? Didn’t Mr. Hoover report to the President the other day that real wages were never so high at any time or any place in the world? I assure you that the very last bulwark—if it comes to that—against world-wide revolution will be found in the Mississippi Valley. So we are free from all those preoccupations, and we can help restore the art of civilization-building in those less happy regions where its exercise is temporarily suspended. I make no doubt that this is our destiny, our great mission.”</p> | <> | <p>“But that’s just where our country comes in to make the world safe for civilization, don’t you see?” I replied. “There’s a stable order of things for you!——rich, powerful, influential, unshakable! We have a benevolent, far-seeing plutocracy and a prosperous, contented proletariat. Can you imagine greater stability than that? Didn’t Mr. Hoover report to the President the other day that real wages were never so high at any time or any place in the world? I assure you that the very last bulwark—if it comes to that—against world-wide revolution will be found in the Mississippi Valley. So we are free from all those preoccupations, and we can help restore the art of civilization-building in those less happy regions where its exercise is temporarily suspended. I make no doubt that this is our destiny, our great mission.”</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>II</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">II</h2> |
| <p class="indents">“Come,” he said, finally, dispelling his reverie and reverting to me with a friendly smile. “If all that is pleasantry, I don’t mind being the goat. Really, don’t you know that the United States is the most revolution-cursed country in the world? Why do you suppose that spiritual activity in America is virtually non-existent? Simply because we have never yet had that stable order of things which you speak of. Every year of our life for a century and a half we have either been cleaning up after one revolution or getting ready for another. Don’t you know that?”</p> | <> | <p>“Come,” he said, finally, dispelling his reverie and reverting to me with a friendly smile. “If all that is pleasantry, I don’t mind being the goat. Really, don’t you know that the United States is the most revolution-cursed country in the world? Why do you suppose that spiritual activity in America is virtually non-existent? Simply because we have never yet had that stable order of things which you speak of. Every year of our life for a century and a half we have either been cleaning up after one revolution or getting ready for another. Don’t you know that?”</p> |
| <p>“Then the ‘consolidation’ process had to begin all over again. This time the pious phrase means the arrangement of the terms of exploitation by a victorious social group. Well, I needn’t go into details of that period; you have lived through most of it, from the Grant-Belknap—Gould-Fisk—Northern Pacific-Credit Mobilier kind of thing, down through the South Improvement Company to Fall, Denby, and Sinclair. I don’t meant to blow you to a free lesson in American history, but just to bring out the fact that after Britain, the foreign master, was thrown out on his head at Yorktown it took almost exactly eighty years to decide which of two contesting domestic groups should master the other; and after one of the two was pitched out for good and all in 1864 it has taken all the years since then to establish the victor’s terms of indemnity and guarantee, and they aren’t settled yet.</p> | <> | <p>“Then the ‘consolidation’ process had to begin all over again. This time the pious phrase means the arrangement of the terms of exploitation by a victorious social group. Well, I needn’t go into details of that period; you have lived through most of it, from the Grant-Belknap—Gould-Fisk—Northern Pacific-Crédit Mobilier kind of thing, down through the South Improvement Company to Fall, Denby, and Sinclair. I don’t meant to blow you to a free lesson in American history, but just to bring out the fact that after Britain, the foreign master, was thrown out on his head at Yorktown it took almost exactly eighty years to decide which of two contesting domestic groups should master the other; and after one of the two was pitched out for good and all in 1864 it has taken all the years since then to establish the victor’s terms of indemnity and guarantee, and they aren’t settled yet.</p> |
| <p class="indentsa">“I say that our New World Democracy, however great a success in uplifting the masses out of their sloughs, in materialistic development, products, and in a certain highly deceptive superficial popular intellectuality, is, so far, an almost complete failure in its social aspects, and in really grand religious, moral, literary, and æsthetic results. In vain do we march with unprecedented strides to empire so colossal.... It is as if we were somehow being endowed with a vast and thoroughly appointed body, and then left with little or no soul.”</p> | <> | <p>“I say that our New World Democracy, however great a success in uplifting the masses out of their sloughs, in materialistic development, products, and in a certain highly deceptive superficial popular intellectuality, is, so far, an almost complete failure in its social aspects, and in really grand religious, moral, literary, and æsthetic results. In vain do we march with unprecedented strides to empire so colossal. . . . It is as if we were somehow being endowed with a vast and thoroughly appointed body, and then left with little or no soul.”</p> |
| <p><i>“ ‘An almost complete failure in its social aspects.’</i> Now, why is that? It is because our whole culture has followed the flag, followed it every day of our national life. First, the flag of the revolutionary colonists, then the flag of consolidation, then of revolution again, and now of consolidation again. At this moment every cultural interest in the United States is crowding the flag of consolidation so close that its head is run stone-blind in the folds of it.</p> | <> | <p>“‘<i>An almost complete failure in its social aspects</i>.’ Now, why is that? It is because our whole culture has followed the flag, followed it every day of our national life. First, the flag of the revolutionary colonists, then the flag of consolidation, then of revolution again, and now of consolidation again. At this moment every cultural interest in the United States is crowding the flag of consolidation so close that its head is run stone-blind in the folds of it.</p> |
| <> | <blockquote> | |
| <p class="indentsa">“We are called the pampered, unruly children of the jazz age, but in reality we are the offspring of the machine age, and the cacophony of the band to which we dance is the nerve-tearing bore of electric riveters, the hiss of puddled steel, the almost inaudible whirr of revolving wheels. The machine is turning out dollars and comfort and Ford cars and radios—and the younger generation. Can you stop it—or us?</p> | <p>“We are called the pampered, unruly children of the jazz age, but in reality we are the offspring of the machine age, and the cacophony of the band to which we dance is the nerve-tearing bore of electric riveters, the hiss of puddled steel, the almost inaudible whirr of revolving wheels. The machine is turning out dollars and comfort and Ford cars and radios—and the younger generation. Can you stop it—or us?</p> | |
| </blockquote> | ||
| <p class="cen"><b>III</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">III</h2> |
| <p class="indents">“You needn’t worry about me,” he rejoined. “If anybody doesn’t care for that sort of thing, either in America or in Russia, he can mighty easily move out. But we were talking on an impersonal topic, I believe, weren’t we?—revolutions and their social effect, I think it was. Well, now I seem to be brought logically down to the paradox of more and better revolutions, so I’ll say a word or two about that before we go.</p> | <> | <p>“You needn’t worry about me,” he rejoined. “If anybody doesn’t care for that sort of thing, either in America or in Russia, he can mighty easily move out. But we were talking on an impersonal topic, I believe, weren’t we?—revolutions and their social effect, I think it was. Well, now I seem to be brought logically down to the paradox of more and better revolutions, so I’ll say a word or two about that before we go.</p> |
| <p>“What on earth is the use of hammering the present generation of Americans and Russians, or poking fun at them for their limitations? Fundamentally, their social philosophy is exactly the same. In a somewhat transfigured sense, their god is their belly. Hence I’m not keen to live among either of them. I am not taken in by that ‘certain highly deceptive superficial popular intellectuality’ that Whitman speaks of. I know the depth of being from which the cultural life of both countries is lived, and that’s enough. But I also know the actual history, the social history, of both countries, and what it leads me to expect is exactly what is before my eyes. In a few hundred years, or a few thousand, their people may learn what revolutions really are, and what their social effect is, and how to dodge both. But I shan’t be here then, so meanwhile “</p> | <> | <p>“What on earth is the use of hammering the present generation of Americans and Russians, or poking fun at them for their limitations? Fundamentally, their social philosophy is exactly the same. In a somewhat transfigured sense, their god is their belly. Hence I’m not keen to live among either of them. I am not taken in by that ‘certain highly deceptive superficial popular intellectuality’ that Whitman speaks of. I know the depth of being from which the cultural life of both countries is lived, and that’s enough. But I also know the actual history, the social history, of both countries, and what it leads me to expect is exactly what is before my eyes. In a few hundred years, or a few thousand, their people may learn what revolutions really are, and what their social effect is, and how to dodge both. But I shan’t be here then, so meanwhile———”</p> |
| <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> | <> | <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> |
| <title>On Doing the Right Thing</title> | <> | <title></title> |
| <link href="../Misc/page-template.xpgt" rel="stylesheet" type="application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" /> | +- | |
| <p class="cht" id="ch10"><i>To Youngsters of Easy Means</i></p> | <> | <h1>To Youngsters of Easy Means</h1> |
| <p class="cen"><b>I</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">I</h2> |
| <p class="dp-para"><span class="dp"><b><i>W</i></b></span><small>HEN</small> I was a boy the American millionaire and his impulsive prodigality were already good stage-properties; his generosity towards everything he believed in was as great, as easily touched, and often as spectacular as it is now. Nor was he behindhand in patronizing the fine arts, at least for the embellishment of his own surroundings. He built elaborate houses, some of which it is safe to say were in certain respects truly remarkable, and he ornamented them with pictures bought at inflated prices which he paid without wincing—and concerning a good many of these, too, it is becoming to speak with like indefiniteness and reserve. These ventures often, perhaps, reflected the easy indulgence of feminine fancies and foibles, which early became proverbial of him, but in many cases—I believe in most—they came out of the more admirable sentiment that while pretty much anything would do first rate for him, nothing could be too good for the folks; and the thicker the folks chose to lay it on, the grimmer his satisfaction in seeing them do it. This satisfaction was sometimes about all the poor man got; he was often oppressed by his surroundings, and found it hard to expand his simpler tastes to nice: their demands. Mr. Howells sketched his type well in <i>The Rise of Silas Lapham</i>, and in an earlier day Mr. Curtis also sketched it well in <i>The Potiphar Papers.</i></p> | <> | <p class="noindent"><span class="raisedcap">W</span><span class="smallcaps">hen</span> I was a boy the American millionaire and his impulsive prodigality were already good stage-properties; his generosity towards everything he believed in was as great, as easily touched, and often as spectacular as it is now. Nor was he behindhand in patronizing the fine arts, at least for the embellishment of his own surroundings. He built elaborate houses, some of which it is safe to say were in certain respects truly remarkable, and he ornamented them with pictures bought at inflated prices which he paid without wincing—and concerning a good many of these, too, it is becoming to speak with like indefiniteness and reserve. These ventures often, perhaps, reflected the easy indulgence of feminine fancies and foibles, which early became proverbial of him, but in many cases—I believe in most—they came out of the more admirable sentiment that while pretty much anything would do first rate for him, nothing could be too good for the folks; and the thicker the folks chose to lay it on, the grimmer his satisfaction in seeing them do it. This satisfaction was sometimes about all the poor man got; he was often oppressed by his surroundings, and found it hard to expand his simpler tastes to meet their demands. Mr. Howells sketched his type well in <i>The Rise of Silas Lapham</i>, and in an earlier day Mr. Curtis also sketched it well in <i>The Potiphar Papers</i>.</p> |
| <p>The primeval millionaire’s interest in the arts, however, reached no further than this. He would do anything in reason or out of reason by way of providing gimcrackery to satisfy the notions of his wife and daughters, but he did not regard art in itself as something incumbent on him to reverence and to promote. <i>L’art pour Part</i> was distinctly out of his line. Perhaps the arts were all very well for women, who were strange creatures anyway, and hardly to be understood. In his practical view of women (he being a Victorian of deepest dye) some were superhuman, others subhuman, but none human. Yet even for women, devotion to the arts could be overdone, and the effect sometimes was to make things uncomfortable. Like Silas Lapham, he remembered his earlier surroundings, the rag carpets that his mother made, the bric-a-brac and chromos, the stout rush-bottomed chairs, and so on, and he thought a little rebelliously of how much easier they all were to get along with. For one thing, then, and perhaps primarily, the promotion of the arts meant pushing all the real comforts of personal environment into yet more hopeless inaccessibility, and he instinctively resented the idea. One can criticise this sentiment in the abstract, probably, but all things considered, it is not easy to disparage those who had it. In them, on the contrary, considering all their circumstances, it seemed pretty sound and natural, and its conservatism savored of a wholesome simplicity. After all, the arts were exotic to America, and these men behaved extremely well towards a rather busy and importunate obtrusion of them upon their intimate life. If unselfishness be the first instinct of a gentleman, probably the unpretentious figures of Mr. Potiphar and Silas Lapham will stand pretty well up in the category with Roland’s and Sir Philip Sidney’s.</p> | <> | <p>The primeval millionaire’s interest in the arts, however, reached no further than this. He would do anything in reason or out of reason by way of providing gimcrackery to satisfy the notions of his wife and daughters, but he did not regard art in itself as something incumbent on him to reverence and to promote. <i>L’art pour l’art</i> was distinctly out of his line. Perhaps the arts were all very well for women, who were strange creatures anyway, and hardly to be understood. In his practical view of women (he being a Victorian of deepest dye) some were superhuman, others subhuman, but none human. Yet even for women, devotion to the arts could be overdone, and the effect sometimes was to make things uncomfortable. Like Silas Lapham, he remembered his earlier surroundings, the rag carpets that his mother made, the bric-à-brac and chromos, the stout rush-bottomed chairs, and so on, and he thought a little rebelliously of how much easier they all were to get along with. For one thing, then, and perhaps primarily, the promotion of the arts meant pushing all the real comforts of personal environment into yet more hopeless inaccessibility, and he instinctively resented the idea. One can criticise this sentiment in the abstract, probably, but all things considered, it is not easy to disparage those who had it. In them, on the contrary, considering all their circumstances, it seemed pretty sound and natural, and its conservatism savored of a wholesome simplicity. After all, the arts were exotic to America, and these men behaved extremely well towards a rather busy and importunate obtrusion of them upon their intimate life. If unselfishness be the first instinct of a gentleman, probably the unpretentious figures of Mr. Potiphar and Silas Lapham will stand pretty well up in the category with Roland’s and Sir Philip Sidney’s.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>II</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">II</h2> |
| <p class="indents">Perhaps it was the Marquis, the Duca, the Viscount, and the deportmental exactions of the new house that carried the rich man of my boyhood a little beyond his predecessors in an impatient wariness of the arts. The prosperous American of earlier days, especially in New England, had a little different attitude towards art, at least when art assailed him in the guise of a domestic issue. Once in a generation or so, one of the God-fearing, whale-catching, rum-distilling, close-fisted Puritan families of the New England coast would produce a black sheep who did not want to go to sea, and cared nothing for rum and whales, but instead had a passion for beauty and harmony. He wanted to paint pictures or sing, learn the violin, study architecture, or write books. It was a fearful blow to the family’s pride. The neighbors, hearing of this appalling calamity, would look at one another with blank faces, and say, “Isn’t it awful?” But the stricken family would swallow the disgrace, and if they found their erring son actually obdurate and beyond entreaty, they would grimly and prayerfully stake him. They would send him to Europe to study, devoutly hoping he might soon get it all out of his system, come home, and go before the mast in the honorable tradition of his ancestors. Thus it happened that in those days America showed some well-developed ability and talent; not much, perhaps, but more than one would expect, I think, considering the circumstances of the country.</p> | <> | <p>Perhaps it was the Marquis, the Duca, the Viscount, and the deportmental exactions of the new house that carried the rich man of my boyhood a little beyond his predecessors in an impatient wariness of the arts. The prosperous American of earlier days, especially in New England, had a little different attitude towards art, at least when art assailed him in the guise of a domestic issue. Once in a generation or so, one of the God-fearing, whale-catching, rum-distilling, close-fisted Puritan families of the New England coast would produce a black sheep who did not want to go to sea, and cared nothing for rum and whales, but instead had a passion for beauty and harmony. He wanted to paint pictures or sing, learn the violin, study architecture, or write books. It was a fearful blow to the family’s pride. The neighbors, hearing of this appalling calamity, would look at one another with blank faces, and say, “Isn’t it awful?” But the stricken family would swallow the disgrace, and if they found their erring son actually obdurate and beyond entreaty, they would grimly and prayerfully stake him. They would send him to Europe to study, devoutly hoping he might soon get it all out of his system, come home, and go before the mast in the honorable tradition of his ancestors. Thus it happened that in those days America showed some well-developed ability and talent; not much, perhaps, but more than one would expect, I think, considering the circumstances of the country.</p> |
| <p>The country was at this time, moreover, just on the fag-end of the period when young men at large were rather gingerly encouraged to have an “accomplishment,” and well-to-do young women had one or more as matter-of-course. There was a good deal about this that was afflictive, and a later generation recalls it with merited raillery. Mark Twain speaks of the beribboned guitar standing in a corner of the Southern parlor—a guitar capable, he says, of playing the Spanish Fandango by itself, if you gave it a start. As I remember, however, most of the acute distress caused me by the amateur musicians of that day was due to the <i>repertoires.</i> Young ladies who played the piano were likely to spread themselves on a considerable line of “descriptive music,” like “The Battle of Prague,” or to exude sentiment over the ilk of Leybach’s Fifth Nocturne. The vocalist’s range of choice was even more poverty-stricken, being ninety-eight per cent bilge-water English ballads, and the remaining two per cent Scotch and Irish, with an occasional variant of early American, such as “Home, Sweet Home,” and “The Swanee River.” I have heard many glorious voices and many very decent musical instincts wasted evening after evening on things like “In the Gloaming,” “The Blue Alsatian Mountains,” “O Fair Dove, O Fond Dove,” and “Alice, Where Art Thou?”</p> | <> | <p>The country was at this time, moreover, just on the fag-end of the period when young men at large were rather gingerly encouraged to have an “accomplishment,” and well-to-do young women had one or more as matter-of-course. There was a good deal about this that was afflictive, and a later generation recalls it with merited raillery. Mark Twain speaks of the beribboned guitar standing in a corner of the Southern parlor—a guitar capable, he says, of playing the Spanish Fandango by itself, if you gave it a start. As I remember, however, most of the acute distress caused me by the amateur musicians of that day was due to the <i>répertoires</i>. Young ladies who played the piano were likely to spread themselves on a considerable line of “descriptive music,” like “The Battle of Prague,” or to exude sentiment over the ilk of Leybach’s Fifth Nocturne. The vocalist’s range of choice was even more poverty-stricken, being ninety-eight per cent bilge-water English ballads, and the remaining two per cent Scotch and Irish, with an occasional variant of early American, such as “Home, Sweet Home,” and “The Swanee River.” I have heard many glorious voices and many very decent musical instincts wasted evening after evening on things like “In the Gloaming,” “The Blue Alsatian Mountains,” “O Fair Dove, O Fond Dove,” and “Alice, Where Art Thou?”</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>III</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">III</h2> |
| <p class="indents">At the present time, I seem to see an interesting reversal of this state of things. My observations may be superficial and inaccurate, for I have been for years entirely out of any kind of social life in America, and all manner of things that I know nothing about may be going on there. Quite obviously, however, the arts are lavishly patronized—patronized, I mean, in the sense of direct subsidy. Every few days, it seems, one hears of some great gift or endowment to promote them. Sir Thomas Beecham was lately quoted as saying that one American friend of his spent as much money annually to keep up an orchestra in his town as all England put together raised for like purposes. I do not doubt it. When one reads publications devoted to the various arts, as curiosity has led me to do for some time as regularly as I could get my hands on them, one is impressed by the enormous amount of money laid out in these ways.</p> | <> | <p>At the present time, I seem to see an interesting reversal of this state of things. My observations may be superficial and inaccurate, for I have been for years entirely out of any kind of social life in America, and all manner of things that I know nothing about may be going on there. Quite obviously, however, the arts are lavishly patronized—patronized, I mean, in the sense of direct subsidy. Every few days, it seems, one hears of some great gift or endowment to promote them. Sir Thomas Beecham was lately quoted as saying that one American friend of his spent as much money annually to keep up an orchestra in his town as all England put together raised for like purposes. I do not doubt it. When one reads publications devoted to the various arts, as curiosity has led me to do for some time as regularly as I could get my hands on them, one is impressed by the enormous amount of money laid out in these ways.</p> |
| <p>At the same time, I notice that relatively much less amateur work is being done in any of the arts except one—literature—than was done under the old regime when I was a boy. The arts have come to be a matter concerning two classes only: a professional class and a non-participating public. Most of the immense amount of writing that is being done has a professional or semi-professional turn, being done in some kind of forlorn hope of some day making money by it. The amateur “accomplishment” in the arts has largely disappeared, except in dancing. Nearly all young Americans dance, and most of them extremely well. The youngster of my day, especially the young woman, had, as a rule, a preposterously imperfect idea of what an accomplishment was, and what it was for; but their successors, instead of retaining and valuing the accomplishment, straightening out its theory and improving its practice, have tended rather, I think, to drop it altogether.</p> | <> | <p>At the same time, I notice that relatively much less amateur work is being done in any of the arts except one—literature—than was done under the old régime when I was a boy. The arts have come to be a matter concerning two classes only: a professional class and a non-participating public. Most of the immense amount of writing that is being done has a professional or semi-professional turn, being done in some kind of forlorn hope of some day making money by it. The amateur “accomplishment” in the arts has largely disappeared, except in dancing. Nearly all young Americans dance, and most of them extremely well. The youngster of my day, especially the young woman, had, as a rule, a preposterously imperfect idea of what an accomplishment was, and what it was for; but their successors, instead of retaining and valuing the accomplishment, straightening out its theory and improving its practice, have tended rather, I think, to drop it altogether.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>IV</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">IV</h2> |
| <p>In the new social order, the leisured class—those, that is, who can command leisure if they wish it—stand towards art in somewhat the relation of the old aristocracy; and in Europe one sees the extraordinary leavening power of the talents which were cultivated by such of the aristocracy as had them. As talents, they may have been unpretentious, rather pleasant than robust, but they tended powerfully towards the diffusion of an agreeable and amiable life; and because they did this, one cannot help thinking that they made life amiable primarily for those who exercised them. The poetry of the Grand Duke Constantine connotes a more agreeable life than that which (without pretending to know) one instinctively associates with the thought of the late Judge Gary, for example. Seeing in Brussels the beautiful paintings and sculpture done by the Count de Lalaing—not great, I think, but very lovely—one thinks of him as a happy man, and one would like to have known him. <i>Noblesse oblige</i>—men like these seem really to have made something of their position and opportunities <i>all around,</i> and there is no happiness to match what one gets out of doing that.</p> | <> | <p>In the new social order, the leisured class—those, that is, who can command leisure if they wish it—stand towards art in somewhat the relation of the old aristocracy; and in Europe one sees the extraordinary leavening power of the talents which were cultivated by such of the aristocracy as had them. As talents, they may have been unpretentious, rather pleasant than robust, but they tended powerfully towards the diffusion of an agreeable and amiable life; and because they did this, one cannot help thinking that they made life amiable primarily for those who exercised them. The poetry of the Grand Duke Constantine connotes a more agreeable life than that which (without pretending to know) one instinctively associates with the thought of the late Judge Gary, for example. Seeing in Brussels the beautiful paintings and sculpture done by the Count de Lalaing—not great, I think, but very lovely—one thinks of him as a happy man, and one would like to have known him. <i>Noblesse oblige</i>—men like these seem really to have made something of their position and opportunities <i>all around</i>, and there is no happiness to match what one gets out of doing that.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><b>v</b></p> | <> | <h2 class="sigil_not_in_toc">V</h2> |
| <p class="indents">Americans are inclined to be a little impatient of a critic who does not offer what they call “practical proposals”; one, that is, who does not pretend to do all their thinking for them, furnish all their initiative, and diagram all their actions, thus imposing on them no harder task than the rather mechanical one of putting one foot before the other. For certain reasons hardly worth recounting here, I have always been a little diffident about making practical proposals. Still, if it helps to show that one is in earnest, one might perhaps venture a little way with them. To the men who now give money so liberally to promote the arts, the men who might be thought, perhaps, to be looking at the arts a little wistfully—men like the late Mr. Munsey, for example—I would say, If you wish really to promote the arts, keep on with the money, but also sell one of your motorcars, buy a second-hand piano or some paint or crayons or modelling-clay, and get somebody to show you what to do with it. You will have a great deal of fun, more fun than ever you had in your life, and you may incidentally turn up some aptitude inside yourself that you never suspected of lurking there.</p> | <> | <p>Americans are inclined to be a little impatient of a critic who does not offer what they call “practical proposals”; one, that is, who does not pretend to do all their thinking for them, furnish all their initiative, and diagram all their actions, thus imposing on them no harder task than the rather mechanical one of putting one foot before the other. For certain reasons hardly worth recounting here, I have always been a little diffident about making practical proposals. Still, if it helps to show that one is in earnest, one might perhaps venture a little way with them. To the men who now give money so liberally to promote the arts, the men who might be thought, perhaps, to be looking at the arts a little wistfully—men like the late Mr. Munsey, for example—I would say, If you wish really to promote the arts, keep on with the money, but also sell one of your motorcars, buy a second-hand piano or some paint or crayons or modelling-clay, and get somebody to show you what to do with it. You will have a great deal of fun, more fun than ever you had in your life, and you may incidentally turn up some aptitude inside yourself that you never suspected of lurking there.</p> |
| <p>Well, the fields of art are full of jobs—great jobs—that ought to be done, that would bring endless satisfaction to those who did them, but that can never be done except by people who can afford to do them, because there is no money in them and never will be. Here, it has always seemed to me, is the leisured young American’s chance, and I cannot understand how he has managed to miss it for so long. In the sciences, I notice, he has long ago caught on in precisely the same adventurous way he might catch on in the arts. He is in the laboratories, he is on all sorts of scientific expeditions, toiling away at his own expense in enterprises that 246 he knows will never bring him the worth of a copper cent in anything but the exhilarating sense of a great job greatly done. Exactly the same chance is waiting for him in the arts.</p> | <> | <p>Well, the fields of art are full of jobs—great jobs—that ought to be done, that would bring endless satisfaction to those who did them, but that can never be done except by people who can afford to do them, because there is no money in them and never will be. Here, it has always seemed to me, is the leisured young American’s chance, and I cannot understand how he has managed to miss it for so long. In the sciences, I notice, he has long ago caught on in precisely the same adventurous way he might catch on in the arts. He is in the laboratories, he is on all sorts of scientific expeditions, toiling away at his own expense in enterprises that he knows will never bring him the worth of a copper cent in anything but the exhilarating sense of a great job greatly done. Exactly the same chance is waiting for him in the arts.</p> |
| <p>Take it in the one department of art with which I am, perhaps, a little acquainted. There is not a publisher in America worth his salt who does not know of at least a dozen great and distinguished pieces of literary work waiting to be done, which can never be done until some one comes along who can afford to do them. I could myself name offhand a dozen such. In my casual talks with publishers about various pieces of work that needed doing, the first question has always been, Who can do it? and the next one was, How will he keep himself going meanwhile? My conviction is that the only procedure that will get this kind of work satisfactorily produced is the one that produced the great Flemish pictures, or the one that now gets analogous results in science—<i>i.e.,</i> training people to produce it; and because there is no money in such work when it is produced, the only people eligible to be trained are the ones I am addressing.</p> | <> | <p>Take it in the one department of art with which I am, perhaps, a little acquainted. There is not a publisher in America worth his salt who does not know of at least a dozen great and distinguished pieces of literary work waiting to be done, which can never be done until some one comes along who can afford to do them. I could myself name offhand a dozen such. In my casual talks with publishers about various pieces of work that needed doing, the first question has always been, Who can do it? and the next one was, How will he keep himself going meanwhile? My conviction is that the only procedure that will get this kind of work satisfactorily produced is the one that produced the great Flemish pictures, or the one that now gets analogous results in science—<i>i.e</i>., training people to produce it; and because there is no money in such work when it is produced, the only people eligible to be trained are the ones I am addressing.</p> |
| <p class="cen"><small>THE</small> <small>END</small></p> | <> | <p class="center margintop">THE END</p> |